7 July 1873 • London, England (MS and transcript: ViU and WU, UCCL 00948)
Finally concluded not to go to Paris. & y Ⓐemendation So you can take the Herald letters & put them in a pamphlet along with the enclosed article about the Jumping Frog in French, (which is entirely new) & then add enough of my old sketchesⒶemendation to make a good fat 25 cent pamphlet & let it slide—but don’t charge more than 25c nor less. If you haven’t a Routledge edition of my sketches to select from you will find one at my house or Warner’s.1explanatory note
I don’t expect to write any more Herald letters at present.
You can mention, if you choose, that the Frog articleⒶemendation is has not beenⒶemendation printed before.
I enclose Prefatory remarks, “To the Rel ReaderⒶemendation”
enclosure:
To the Reader.
It is not my desire to republish these New York Herald letters in this form; I only do it to forestall some small pirate or other in the book trade.
If I do not publish some such person may, &Ⓐemendation I then become tacitly accessory to a theft. I have had a recent unpleasant experience of this kind.2explanatory note I have copyrighted the letters here in London simply to prevent their republication in Great Britain in pamphlet form.3explanatory note My objection to such republication, either in America or England, is, that I think everybody has already had enough of the ShahⒶemendation of Persia.Ⓐemendation I am sure I have.
To the letters I have added certain sketches of mine which are little known or not knownⒶemendation at all in America, to the end that the purchaser of the pamphlet may get back a portion of his money & skip the chapters that refer to the Shah altogether.
With this brief apology, I am
London, July 7
The last three of Clemens’s five letters to the New York Herald about the shah of Persia were unpublished when he wrote this letter (see SLC 1873 [MT01123], 1873 [MT01124], 1873 [MT01125], 1873 [MT01126], 1873 [MT01127]). He had told Olivia in April that he intended to make a literal retranslation of Thérèse Bentzon’s “French version of the Jumping Frog” (26 Apr 73 to OLCclick to open link). The manuscript of the resulting article—dated “London, June 30, 1873” and preserved with the present letter at the University of Virginia—does not include the text of the original “Jumping Frog” sketch, nor of the French translation. Instead Clemens wrote, “(Insert pages A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Jumping Frog in English.),” and then, on a new page, “Translation of the above back from the French.,” indicating that he included a clipping (now lost) of Bentzon’s French version from the Revue des deux mondes for 15 July 1872 (see SLC 1865, 1873 [MT01121], and Blanc, 313–35). The text of the enclosure was first published in Sketches, New and Old (SLC 1875, 28–43). The “Routledge edition” was Mark Twain’s Sketches, issued in May 1872 (SLC 1872 [MT01064]). The pamphlet of sketches described here was never published (see 2 Aug 73 to Blissclick to open link). The shah letters were first reprinted by Paine in 1923 (SLC 1923, 31–86).
No evidence has been found that Clemens applied in any formal way for British copyright. It is unlikely that he could have secured such a copyright, since the shah letters were being published in the New York Herald and British copyright required that publication occur first in England.
References
- University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
- Madison Memorial Union Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison
- 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 5: 1872–1873. Edited by Lin Salamo and Harriet Elinor Smith. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1997
- Parke-Bernet. The Distinguished Collection of First Editions, Autograph Letters & MSS. of American Authors . . . Formed by Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. Sale no. 1556 (7 and 8 December). New York: Parke-Bernet Galleries. 1954
- 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). “The Man of Mark Ready to Bring Over the O’Shah.” Letter dated 18 June. New York Herald, 1 July, 3. SLC 1923[bib00449], 31–46. 1873
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). “General Grant.” Hartford Courant, 24 July 1885, 2. 1885
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). “Mark Twain Takes Another Contract.” Letter dated 21 June. New York Herald, 9 July, 3. SLC 1923, 57–69. 1873
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). “Mark Twain Hooks the Persian out of the English Channel.” Letter dated 26 June. New York Herald, 11 July, 3. SLC 1923, 69–78. 1873
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). “Mark Twain Gives the Royal Persian a ‘Send-Off.’ ” Letter dated 30 June. New York Herald, 19 July, 5. SLC 1923, 78–86. 1873
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog.” New York Saturday Press 4 (18 November): 248–49. Reprinted in ET&S2, 262–72, 282–88. 1865
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). “The ‘Jumping Frog.’ In English. Then in French. Then clawed back into a civilized language once more, by patient, unremunerated toil.” MS of thirty-nine pages, dated 30 June, ViU. Published in SLC 1875, 28–43. Reprinted in Budd 1992a[bib00146], 588–603. 1873
- Blanc, Marie-Thérèse [Thérèse Bentzon, pseud.]. “Les humoristes américains: I. Mark Twain.” Revue des deux mondes 100 (15 July): 313–35. 1872
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old. Hartford: American Publishing Company. 1875
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Sketches. Selected and Revised by the Author. Copyright Edition. London: George Routledge and Sons. 1872
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Europe and Elsewhere. With an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine and an appreciation by Brander Matthews. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1923
MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU), is copy-text for the letter. A transcript facsimile is copy-text for the enclosure. The editors have not seen the original handwritten transcript, made by Dana S. Ayer during the late 1890s or later, which is in the Rare Book Department, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison (WU). (A second enclosure, the MS of “The ‘Jumping Frog.’ In English. Then in French,” survives at ViU with the MS for the letter; it is described in the notes.)
L5 , 409–410; Parke-Bernet 1954, lot 12, excerpts; MTLP , 79–80 n. 1, enclosure only.
The MS for the letter was deposited at ViU by Clifton Waller Barrett on 16 April 1960. The enclosure evidently remained among the American Publishing Company’s files until it was sold (and may have been copied at that time by Ayer; see Brownell Collection in Description of Provenance). The Ayer transcription was in turn copied by a typist and this typed transcription is also at WU.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.
MS is copy-text for ‘The ... Reader”’ (409.1–15)
Transcript is copy-text for ‘To ... 7’ (409.17–410.13)