{"product_id":"to-2026-118","title":"Date 1601: Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors (Limited Edition)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTWAIN, Mark [Samuel L. Clemens].\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDate 1601: Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePRIVATELY PRINTED.\u003c\/strong\u003e 1920. One of 110 hand-numbered copies, this copy number 45.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOctavo. [15] pp. Sewn stiff wrappers printed in dark brown; the stock watermarked \"Bay Path Book,\" a Strathmore Paper Company specimen paper. With a foreword that reprints at length Albert Bigelow Paine's account of the work's origin and private circulation. Near fine, with minor wear to the extremities and a small closed tear to the upper edge of the title page. BAL (p. 252) records a cloth-bound edition privately printed for Merle Johnson in 1920 with this same limitation of 110 copies; this copy is in wrappers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwain's mock-Elizabethan squib — a brief, deliberately coarse satire cast as a fireside conversation at the court of Queen Elizabeth, recorded by the Queen's cup-bearer, the comedy turning on scatological frankness set against ornately archaic period diction. Twain wrote it in the summer of 1876 as a private amusement for his clergyman friend the Reverend Joseph Twichell, circulated it among a few intimates, and never published it in his lifetime. Bawdy rather than truly obscene, the piece remained unprintable by mainstream publishers for decades and circulated instead as a perennial private-press favorite. A nicely preserved numbered copy of one of American literature's most enduringly underground texts.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU\u003c\/strong\u003e TO-2026-118\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Twain, Mark","offers":[{"title":"Near Fine","offer_id":46459955052705,"sku":"TO-2026-118","price":300.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0729\/7001\/0785\/files\/TO-2026-118_02.jpg?v=1785794618","url":"https:\/\/twoorangesbooks.com\/products\/to-2026-118","provider":"Two Oranges Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}