May 15 Tuesday – Robert Hirst gives this as the date the “earliest copies of the first edition [LM] were published” [“A Note on the Text” Oxford edition, 1996]. The first review, this from the Hartford Courant, p.1:

Mark Twain’s new book Life on the Mississippi is just out, a handsome volume of 625 pages and over 300 illustrations. It is one of his best and most entertaining works, and likely to be one of his most successful. It is full of the genius of its author, who is equally at home in serious descriptions, in entertaining anecdotes, and in the clever sketching of queer characters. The whole book is pervaded by his quaint and irresistible humor, and is eminently readable throughout [Budd, Reviews 235].