12 July 1869 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS facsimile: Sears, UCCL 00326)
The circular for the Book is nice—it is tip-top—it is handsome. I wish you would send me half a dozen more—& if you have plenty to spare, send a few dozens Ⓐemendation or a few hundred to my agent, James Redpath, 20 Bromfield street, Boston.1explanatory note
In a hurry
letter docketed: ✓ and Mark Twain | July 12/69
On 17 July Frank Bliss replied for his father: “We send via mail a very few of the circulars all that we have today, shall have plenty in 2 or 3 days as soon as some corrections are made in the plates, we send a few to Redpath, & will send him more in a short time, if you wish more of them let us know, have all you want” (CU-MARK). The corrected circular, with a redesigned final page, was most likely the one distributed, at least on occasion, at Clemens’s lectures during the fall of 1869. It was incorporated into the canvasser’s prospectus for The Innocents Abroad, which was ready on 13 July (“Mark Twain’s New Book,” Boston Journal, 10 Nov 69, 4; Hirst, 256, 258). Both the original circular and the redesigned final page are reproduced in Advertising Circular for The Innocents Abroad click to open link. See also 10 May 69 to Redpath, n. 1.click to open link
References
- Sears, Minnie Earl, ed. Song Index: An Index to More Than 12000 Songs in 177 Song Collections Comprising 262 Volumes. New York: H. W. Wilson Company. 1926
- Machlis, Paul, ed. Union Catalog of Clemens Letters. Edited by Paul Machlis. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. [In some cases, UCCL catalog numbers cited in this volume supersede those assigned in 1986 and reflect corrections or additions to the catalog since publication. An updated version of the catalog can be consulted via the Letters Search page at MTPO.] 1986
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 3: 1869. Edited by Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Dahlia Armon. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1992
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
- Hirst, Robert H. “The Making of The Innocents Abroad: 1867–1872.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley 1975
MS facsimile. The editors have not seen the MS, which is in the collection of Daphne B. Sears.
L3 , 283.
In 1949 the Mark Twain Papers received a transcription from Francis Richmond Sears, whose father had acquired the letter from Elisha Bliss. In 1981 Sears’s widow, Daphne B. Sears, sent the photograph of the MS that serves as copy-text.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.