21 June 1874 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 01102)
I am not going to write. I have only been re-reading the f Foregone Conclusion, & it does seem such absolute perfection of character drawing & withal so moving in the matter of tears pathos now, & laughter then now, humor then, & both at once now occasionally, that Mrs Clemens wanted me to defer my smoke & drop you on our Ⓐemendation thanks—& in truth I was nothing loath.1explanatory note
The new baby is a gaudy thing & the mother is already sitting up. 2explanatory note
The first two chapters of A Foregone Conclusion, Howells’s third novel, appeared in the Atlantic Monthly for July 1874. The story won early praise: the Hartford Courant, for example, liked the “warm Italian atmosphere” and the “disenchanting American characters,” and particularly admired “a certain restrained humor in the writer, who lets us see his own amusement and sympathy with his characters” (“The July Magazines,” 19 June 74, 2). The book version was published on 28 November, to coincide with the last serial installment, which appeared in the Atlantic for December. It was a critical success and sold well (Howells: 1874; 1874–75; 1979 [bib01004], 77, 85; BAL , 4:9568).
Howells replied:
(CU-MARK; Howells’s letters to Clemens are included in this edition courtesy of W. W. Howells.) John Mead Howells, Howells’s son, would be six years old in August. Howells was en route to visit his father, William Cooper Howells (1807–94), a former Ohio printer, antislavery newspaper publisher and editor, and state senator, who had been appointed American consul in Quebec on 2 June 1874. The “gay appearance” of the letterhead included a small lithograph of the Memphremagog House (Cady, 5–7, 13–37, 45; U.S. Department of State, 24; Howells 1979 [bib00431], 297, 462).
References
- Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass.
- 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
- MTHL. Mark Twain–Howells Letters. Edited by Henry Nash Smith and William M. Gibson, with the assistance of Frederick Anderson. 2 vols. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1960
- Howells, William Dean. “A Foregone Conclusion.” Atlantic Monthly 34 (July): 1–15; (August): 145–60; (September): 345–60; (October): 475–87; (November): 534–50; (December): 641–58. 1874
- Howells, William Dean. A Foregone Conclusion. Boston: James R. Osgood and Co. 1875
- Howells, William Dean. W. D. Howells, Selected Letters, Volume 2: 1873–1881. Edited and annotated by George Arms and Christoph K. Lohmann. Textual editors Christoph K. Lohmann and Jerry Herron. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1979
- Blanck, Jacob, comp. Bibliography of American Literature. Compiled by Jacob Blanck. 9 vols. New Haven and London: Yale University Press and Oxford University Press. [Citations are to volume and item or page number.] 1955–91
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
- Cady, Edwin H. The Road to Realism: The Early Years (1837–1885) of William Dean Howells. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. 1956
- Howells, William Dean. W. D. Howells, Selected Letters, Volume 1: 1852–1872. Edited and annotated by George Arms, Richard H. Ballinger, Christoph K. Lohmann, and John K. Reeves. Textual editors Don L. Cook, Christoph K. Lohmann, and David Nordloh. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1979
MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 [98]).
L6 , 165–66; MTHL , 1:17–18.
see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.