CLEMENS SAMUEL LANGHORNE [MARK TWAIN] (1835-1910).

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Result : 7 150EUR
CLEMENS SAMUEL LANGHORNE [MARK TWAIN] (1835-1910).
Signed autograph letter, signed « S.L. Clemens » with an autograph POEM, Elmira (New York) 1 September 1886, To the Bride [Clara SPAULDING] ; 4 pages in-8 format (letter on pp. 1-2, poem on pp. 3-4), tied with a blue ribbon in the upper lefthand corner; in English. A « humble though squalid poem for a bride », composed by Clemens [Mark Twain] on the occasion of the marriage of Clara Spaulding, a girlhood friend of Clemens’ wife Olivia “Livy” Langdon. Clara, her sister Alice and the future Olivia (Livy) Clemens spent their youth playing parlor games together, reading to one another, and engaging in the typical activities of well-bred girls in Victorian times. When Livy married Clemens on February 2, 1870, the large wedding was attended by the entire Spaulding family; Clara remained a close friend of the new couple for the rest of their lives. On September 2, 1886, Clara Spaulding married John B. Stanchfield, a young Elmira attorney, at the home of her parents, Henry and Clarissa Spaulding. She was thirty-seven years old, and he was seven years younger. His poem is entitled S’klk! G’lang! and was written in Elmira, Clemens’ summer retreat. It was at this retreat that Clemens wrote his most famous novels, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and, in 1883, Life on the Mississippi. The poem S’klk! G’lang! was published in Arthur L. Scott, On the Poetry of Mark Twain (Urbana and London: University of Illinois Press, 1966). Sold with a photograph of Mark Twain with his wife (dimensions: 13,2 x 11 cm).  
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