literary canaille; that his soul consumes with wrath to see the Queen
stooping to talk with such; and that the old man feels his nobility
defiled by contact with Shakespeare, etc., and yet he has got to stay
there till Her Majesty chooses to dismiss him.)
DESCRIPTION: Title as above, verso blank; pp. [i]-xi, text; verso p. xi
blank. About 8 x 10 inches, printed on handmade linen paper soaked in
weak coffee, wrappers. The title is set in caps and small caps.
COLOPHON: at the foot of p. xi: Done Att Ye Academie Preffe; M DCCC LXXX
II.
The privately printed West Point edition, the first printing of the text
authorized by Mark Twain, of which but fifty copies were printed. The
story of this printing is fully told in the Introduction.
3. Conversation As It Was By The Social Fire-side In The Time Of The
Tudors from Ye Diary of Ye Cupbearer to her Maisty Queen Elizabeth.
[design] Imprinted by Ye Puritan Press At Ye Sign of Ye Jolly Virgin
1601.
DESCRIPTION: 2 blank leaves; p. [i] blank, p. [ii] fronds., p. [iii]
title [as above], p. [iv] “Mem.”, pp. 1-[25] text, I blank leaf. 4 3/4
by 6 1/4 inches, printed in a modern version of the Caxton black letter
type, on M.B.M. French handmade paper. The frontispiece, a woodcut by
A. E. Curtis, is a portrait of the cup-bearer. Bound in buff-grey
boards, buckram back. Cover title reads, in pale red ink, Caxton type,
Conversation As It Was By The Social Fire-side In The Time Of The Tudors.
[The Byway Press, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1901, 120 copies.]
Probably the first published edition.
Later, in 1916, a facsimile edition of this printing was published in
Chicago from plates.