To Sir or Madam
1877–1880 • Hartford, Conn.? (MS, draft form letter: CU-MARK, UCCL 00593)
1877–1880 • Hartford, Conn.? (MS, draft form letter: CU-MARK, UCCL 00593)
⟦Form.⟧
(For replying to seekers after “opinions,”)
(otherwise compliments.
Dr Sir or Madam:
Experience has not taught me very much; still it has taught me that it is not wise to criticise a piece of literature, except to an enemy of the person who wrote it; then, that enem if you praise it, that enemy admires you for your honest manliness, & if you dispraise it he admires you for your sound judgment.
Ys Truly
S L C1explanatory note
Explanatory Notes
1 The date and place of writing of this draft form letter have not been discovered.
Presumably it was written sometime between 1877 and 1880: the ink matches a type that
Clemens used for letters written during those years. So far as is known, the manuscript,
which remained in his possession, was never printed.
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
- 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
- Microfilm Edition of Mark Twain’s Previously Unpublished Letters. Prepared by Anh Quynh Bui, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Robert H. Hirst, Lin Salamo, and Harriet Elinor Smith. 8 vols. Berkeley: The Bancroft Library. 2001
MS, draft form letter, CU-MARK.
MTB , 1:506; MicroPUL, reel 8.
See Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.