10? October 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: DLC, UCCL 00507)
Clemens’s inscription reads:
Mr. Spofford, could I get you to preserve this work of art among the geographical treasures of the Congressional Library?
Yrs Truly
Mark Twain.
Ainsworth Rand Spofford (1825–1908) had been associate editor of the Cincinnati Commercial from 1859 until 1861, when he left the paper to become chief assistant to the librarian of Congress. He became librarian himself in 1864, holding the post until 1897, at which time he resumed, for the remainder of his life, the position of chief assistant. The informality of Clemens’s request, his first known letter to Spofford, suggests that the two men were already acquainted, probably since late 1867 and early 1868, when Clemens lived in Washington ( L2 , 108 –59, 170–202). Spofford evidently did not treat this letter as a copyright application: the records of the Copyright Office do not include a registration of the “Fortifications of Paris,” reproduced here (Lehr 1982).
References
- United States Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
- 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
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 2: 1867–1868. Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, Richard Bucci, and Lin Salamo. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1990
- Lehr, Eugene R. United States Copyright Office inventory of works registered under the names Mark Twain and Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1867–1910. Unpublished TS in “Clemens, S. L. Copyright registrations of his works,” subject file, CU-MARK 1982
MS note on clipping, “Fortifications of Paris,” Buffalo Express, 17 Sept 70, 2, in Papers of Ainsworth Rand Spofford, Library of Congress (DLC).
L4 , 207–208.
Donated to DLC between 1923 and 1982 by Mrs. Barbara Spofford Morgan.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.