19 November 1880 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: NN-BGC, UCCL 02545)
My publisher contends that such as wanted the story would go to St. Nicholas for it; & that this would cut our sales down by 40 or 50,000 30 or 40,000 copies when we came to issue the thing in book form. I am afraid he is right. One formidable argument or another has always intruded itself to bar me from the pleasure of publishing serially, & now it has happened again; & this time it hurts—for Mrs. Clemens & Mrs. Warner have decided that this particular Tale comes under the head of that sort which St. Nicholas “must have”.—a verdict which makes up for all the dispraise which they have lavished upon some other of my “works.”
References
- New York Public Library, Albert A. and Henry W. Berg Collection, New York
- 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
- Microfilm Edition of Mark Twain’s Previously Unpublished Letters.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
- New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations, New York
MS, NN-BGC.
Chicago Book Auction catalog, 25 January 1933, no. 30, lot 46, partial publication; MicroPUL, reel 1.
The MS was offered for sale in 1933 by Chicago Book Auction; sometime before 1939 it was purchased by businessman William T. H. Howe (1874–1939); in 1940 Dr. Albert A. Berg bought and donated the Howe Collection to NN.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.