Posted
on February 13, 2014
Actually,
it was only half of a manuscript that went missing and was found. But
it's still a big deal, because the half-manuscript was The
Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn!
And
it was the original manuscript, written and heavily edited by author Mark Twain
himself, in his own handwriting!
And
it even had some scenes and pages that had never been published
before!
And
it was missing for more than a century!
How
does half an original manuscript or such value go missing for more
than 100 years? Well, apparently lawyer James Fraser Gluck asked
Twain to donate the manuscript to the Buffalo and Erie County
Library, but Twain could only find one half of the manuscript. He
assumed the other half had been misplaced by the publishers, so in
1885 he mailed the half that he had to Gluck, and it was donated and
exhibited in the library. Two years later Twain found the first half
and mailed it, as well, to Gluck.
Something—we
don't know what—happened at this point. Perhaps Gluck was taking
the pages to be bound in the same leather that the other half had
been bound in. At any rate, Gluck put the missing-for-two-years first
half of Huckleberry Finn into one of his trunks—and then he
died unexpectedly. And of course nobody knew where the
half-manuscript was, and it went missing AGAIN—this time for a lot
more than two years!
Eventually,
about 103 years later, Gluck's granddaughter, Barbara Gluck Testa,
opened up some trunks that had belonged to her long-deceased grandpa,
and she found the manuscript pages. Can you imagine the thrill she
must've felt?
Testa
sent it to Sotheby's to make sure the pages were the “real deal,”
as a preparation to selling them. Sotheby's estimated their value at
$1.5 million, but after they announced the discovery on this date in
1991, people from the Buffalo Library came forward with their claim
of ownership. There was a court hearing to determine who owned the
long-lost pages. It was decided that Testa would give the pages to
the library—so that they could be enjoyed by all—but that she was
awarded a six-figure finder's fee. (Which means that she was paid at
least $100,000 for the pages—and maybe a lot more. But remember, it
was worth a million dollars more than $500,000!!!)
I
think this was a win-win. The two halves of the manuscript were
finally reunited, Testa got a thrill and a nice chunk of change, the
library got a precious artifact, and Mark Twain's intentions were
finally fulfilled!
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