The Harp of a Thousand Strings - an antique book compiled by Samual P. Avery

by Jeffrey Johnson
(Knoxville, TN)

The book, published in 1858, is a compilation of humorous stories without any credit given to the original authors. The compiler and engraver, Samual P. Avery, gives himself plenty of credit. This was before the days of adequate copyright laws.

I was attracted to this book because it contains two stories written by an author from my area of the country (East Tennessee) named George Washington Harris who created the seminal comic character of Sut Lovingood. Of course, Mr. Harris is not credited but is his first appearance in hard covers.

He followed up with his own collection several years later entitled "Sut Lovingood's Yarns" which Mark Twain enthusiastically reviewed. This book also contains the first hard cover appearance of Lewis Carroll (also uncredited)!

A near fine first edition cost me $200 and I am not 100% sure that it is the first printing but it does match the copies scanned into the literature banks.