20 May 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: Daley, UCCL 00465)
Confidential.
Appleton wants me to furnish a few lines of letter fr press for a humorous picture-book—that is, two lines of remarks under each picture. I have intimated that if the pictures & the pay are both good, I will do it. What do you think of it? I thought that inasmuch as half the public would think I made the engravings as well as did the letter-press, it would be a unique & splendid advertisements wherewith to boost the “Innocents.” I am to see proofs of the pictures before I contract. 1explanatory note
letter docketed: Mark Twain | May 20/70 | Author
Bliss objected to this proposal from D. Appleton and Company, of New York, eventually leading Clemens to end the “picture-book” negotiations (23–26 June 70 to Appleton; 4 July 70 to Blissclick to open link).
References
- Collection of Robert Daley
- 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 4: 1870–1871. Edited by Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Lin Salamo. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1995
- Hill, Hamlin, ed. Mark Twain’s Letters to His Publishers, 1867–1894. Edited by Hamlin Hill. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1967
- Sotheby. Fine Books and Manuscripts. Sale no. 6515 (10 and 11 December). New York: Sotheby’s. 1993
MS, collection of Robert Daley until 1993.
L4 , 131–132; MTLP , 35.
The MS evidently remained among the American Publishing Company’s files until it was sold (and may have been at that time copied by Dana Ayer; see Brownell Collection in Description of Provenance). An Ayer handwritten transcription and a typed transcription are at WU. Sold in 1993 to an unidentified purchaser (Sotheby 1993, lot 214).
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.