Opening Day Auction Closing May 9th
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/10/2015
Samuel Clemens, known to millions as Mark Twain, must have felt good as he shopped at the biggest department store in Hartford, Fox & Co. The date was July 6, 1875 and that day he purchased $41.75 worth of merchandise, paying with a check drawn on his First National Bank of Hartford account. Signing his name to this check, Twain must have known that his bank account would soon be filled to the coffers for the day before he had just finished the manuscript of the book that would make him rich and famous: "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer". Indeed the day before Twain had written a letter to his good friend, William Dean Howells, editor of the “Atlantic Monthly,” that “I have finished the story & didn’t take the chap beyond boyhood … I wish you would promise to read the MS of Tom Sawyer some time, & see if you don’t really decide that I am right in closing with him as a boy...”
The cancelled check with its beautiful gold, blue and black Victorian graphics measures 7 3/4" x 2 3/4". The front is made out by Twain to Fox & Co. and is boldly signed "Saml. L. Clemens" with a lyrical flourish beneath his last name. The check has been endorsed on the back by Fox & Co. This check dates from the period before the use of perforated cancelations thus leaving this piece unblemished and very attractive. A superb piece dating from the most important moment of Mark Twain's literary career. Encapsulated and Graded a MINT 9 by PSA/DNA #83495986.