11 November 1881 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: NN-BGC, UCCL 02556)
Yours of the 1st inst just received. The paper & the print are beautiful, but I believe our engravings come out a little cleaner & better than yours do. “However,” as George Dolby used to say, “That’s a matter of detail.” (He always added this, in an absent-minded way, after remarking, “Well, I am applying some particularly rough epithet to himself—a thing which happened about fifteen times a day.
I am very much obliged to you for making that continental arrangement for me; & I think you did the right thing to prefer Tauchnitz at £75, instead of a new man—for there is neither wisdom nor fairness in changing publishers except for good & palpable business raeasons;—& in this case these were lacking.
remainder of letter missing
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- Microfilm Edition of Mark Twain’s Previously Unpublished Letters.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
MS, NN-BGC.
MicroPUL, reel 2.
It is not known when the MS became part of the Berg Collection, donated in 1940 by Dr. Albert A. Berg to NN.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.