Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln Memorabilia to Auction
Heritage Auctions
Clemens business card
A first edition of Mark Twain's The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, an angry letter about edits to his publisher, and a Lincoln funeral train invitation are among the highlights of Heritage Auctions’ Extraordinary Dan Madsen Collection auction on March 18.
Star Trek and Star Wars official fan clubs founder Dan Madsen collects items connected to the historic figures he calls “the two giants of the 19th century”. His interest in collecting began in his youth with comic books and evolved to include Star Trek and then Star Wars items as his love of science fiction led him to become a fan of the television series and movies.
“I remember watching the Civil War PBS series by Ken Burns, and what stood out to me was what an amazing man Abraham Lincoln was,” Madsen says. “I started buying books and learning more and more about him and just became fascinated with Lincoln. I started getting auction catalogs, making friends in the Lincoln collecting community. I would look at every auction catalog from the last 40 years that had anything Lincoln. It was almost like a wildfire. Once I started collecting Abraham Lincoln items, I just went crazy.”
The fascination with Twain began in a similar manner after he picked up a biography and was captivated. Madsen saw parallels between the two and began collecting Twain items as well.
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Heritage Auctions
Lincoln funeral pass
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Heritage Auctions
Lincoln funeral train ticket
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Heritage Auctions
Twain letter to publisher
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Heritage Auctions
Celebrated Jumping Frog first edition
Highlights of the sale include:
an invitation to ride on Lincoln’s funeral train for L.L. Crounse of the New York Times, and a pass to Lincoln’s April 19, 1865, funeral at the Executive Mansion, one of fewer than 600 issued to officials and dignitaries
a signed business card of Samuel Clemens, Twain’s given name
an 1876 letter from P.T. Barnum to Samuel Clemens about the contentious 1876 presidential election that resulted in Rutherford B. Hayes eventually taking office.
an 1881 letter from Twain to his publisher, James R. Osgood: "I am sending chapter VI back unread. I don’t want to see it any more until this goddamded idiotic punctuating & capitalizing has been swept away & my own restored… which latter mess of God-forever-God-damned lunacy has turned my hair white with rage... Sweetly, sweetly yours, Mark.”
first editions of Twain’s The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, A True Story, and the recent Carnival of Crime
Twain’s personal copy, with his signature of ownership on the title page, of The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England
Though the collection focuses on Lincoln and Twain, it also features a military discharge paper from 1783 signed by George Washington, a Revolutionary War-era letter signed by Thomas Jefferson as Governor of Virginia directing the tax commissioners of Rockingham County to submit overdue returns, and a signed studio portrait of Theodore Roosevelt.
