English As She is Spoke: or A Jest in Sober Earnest (The Parchment Paper Series I)
New York: D. Appleton & Company, [1884].
Early American edition. (One of 14 English language editions identified by George Monteiro in his review of the book in Luso-Brazilian Review; perhaps the third American edition reprinting the British first edition, which was also the first English language edition.) [vi], xvi, 60, [2] pp. Publisher's wraps. About Very Good with foxing and soiling to wraps, separation starting along spine and front wrap; foxing to endpapers, lightly to main body of text.
An uncommon edition of the famously bizarrely and humorously mistranslated English phrasebook for Portuguese speakers, which first appeared in Paris in 1836. Perhaps as early as the 1850s Mark Twain became aware of the book; he wrote an introduction to the first American edition in 1883. Its nonsense still amuses. Take for instance its hitherto-unknown category of "Insects-reptiles," which consists of "Asp, aspic," "Morpion," "Fly," "Butter fly" and of course "Serpent." The "Familiar Dialogues" are equally goofy-- English conversations one would theoretically have with a tailor or while hunting, etc. that despite the possibility of infinite universes with infinite possibilities quantum physics postulates may exist, still definitely never, ever occurred anywhere except within the pages of this book.
Price: $700.00