4 September 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00502)
During past week have written first four chapters of the book, & I tell you the “Innocents A B Abroad” will have to get up early to beat it. It Ⓐemendationwill be a book that will jump right strait Ⓐemendationinto a continental celebrity the first month it is issued. Now I want it illustrated lavishly. , & if We shall sell 90,000 copies the first 12 months. if it I haven’t even a shadow of a doubt of that.1explanatory note I see the capabilities of my subject.
Got Franks Ⓐemendationac/.2explanatory note All right.
letter docketed: ✓ and Mark Twain | Sep 4/70
That is, nearly a third more than The Innocents Abroad had sold in its first year (69,500). Roughing It actually sold about 75,000 copies in its first year ( RI 1993 , 890–91).
Frank Bliss’s statement of the first year’s sale of Innocents, which Clemens had been expecting for a month. It does not survive (27 July 70 to JLC and family, n. 4click to open link; 2 Aug 70 to Blissclick to open link).
References
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
- 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
- Paine, Albert Bigelow. Mark Twain: A Biography. By Albert Bigelow Paine. 3 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers. [Volume numbers in citations are to this edition; page numbers are the same in all editions.] 1912
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain to Mrs. Fairbanks. Edited by Dixon Wecter. San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library. 1949
- Hill, Hamlin. “Escol Sellers from Uncharted Space: A Footnote to The Gilded Age.” American Literature 34 (March): 107–13. 1962
- 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
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Roughing It. Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, Edgar Marquess Branch, Lin Salamo, and Robert Pack Browning. The Works of Mark Twain. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. This edition supersedes the one published in 1972. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1993
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L4 , 190; MTB , 1:421–22, with omissions; MTMF , 137 n. 3, excerpts; Hill, 44, brief excerpt; MTLP , 39.
see Mendoza Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.