23 March 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: PHi, UCCL 01067)
Please send me per express, all these books, with bill for same. I don’t know what “half-roan” binding is,1explanatory note but still I think I would prefer that.
If it is your custom to make a reduction to authors, I am willing to take advantage of it—but if not, I do not wish to create a damaging precedent.2explanatory note
A style of binding in which the spine and the four corners of the book were covered in red leather, and the sides, or boards, were covered in cloth or paper. The spine covering usually extended onto the boards for about a quarter of their width. Roan leathers, made from sheepskin, were used extensively in the nineteenth century (Roberts and Etherington, 127, 219).
During 1874 Clemens purchased books from at least two dealers: Estes and Lauriat, at 143 Washington Street, in Boston; and Scribner, Welford and Armstrong, at 654 Broadway, in New York. Either of these might have been the recipient of the present letter and the enclosed book list, now lost (bills of 1 May 74 and 2 Dec 74 from Estes and Lauriat, CU-MARK; 6–8 June 74 to Scribner, Welford and Armstrongclick to open link).
References
- Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
- 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 6: 1874–1875. Edited by Michael B. Frank and Harriet Elinor Smith. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 2002
- Roberts, Matt T., and Don Etherington. Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books: A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress. 1982
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
MS, Simon Gratz Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (PHi).
L6 , 88.
The Simon Gratz Collection was donated in 1917.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.