A First-Class Fool, Mark Twain and Humor, Featuring the Collection of Susan Jaffe Tane. November 2025.

Two identical bindings made for the Grolier Club.

Chemise- 8.75”w x 10.9”h x 1.75”d

Chemise and ticket bound in St. Armand handmade paper, letterpress printed by Gabby Cooksey at Springtide Press with handset type and a hand cut linoleum toad. Type used was Garamond and Adstyle. Full leather, hollow tube, laced in boards binding covered in Pergamena goat skin, tattooed with black and blue ink featuring frogs, ovals, and Garamont typeface. A hand cut brass toad is riveted to the back cover in two layers of brass. Hand-sewn blue silk endbands, leather hinge, and marbled paper pastedown/flyleaf by Gabby Cooksey. Custom clamshell box.

Honoring Samuel Clemens as a cheeky, clever man with my cover of A First-Class Fool was the goal. This is depicted by the word-play in the chemise and reference to who this author was in his doodles that are tattooed around the frogs. The story that grabbed me the most was about his debut of The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County selling worldwide which garnered many pirated copies in all sorts of languages. I found it quite charming and fiery that Clemens bought a French version, re-translated it back into English, and showed that it was no longer funny. This is the idea behind my retranslated frog into a warty brass toad on the back cover surrounded by tattooed frogs in all forms. I also wanted to pay homage to the title of this book, A First-Class Fool, on the chemise, choosing words that are another version of that title, The Most Excellent Bamboozler or Topnotch Oaf. There are also 5 stars and no star ornaments as well.

*The typefaces are not a typo, Garamond and Garamont are very similar but different typefaces.