23 December 1884 • 1st of 2 (MS, in pencil: NPV, UCCL 03068)
written on a page torn from an Estes and Lauriat book catalog; SLC drew two lines in the margin next to the advertisement for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and wrote across the page
Charley, if this is a lie, let Alexander & Green sue them for damages instantly. And if we have no chance at them in law, tell me at once & I will publishe them as thieves & swindlers.
the letter continues on another page torn from the catalog with the printed address of Estes & Lauriat; SLC underlined “111 nassau street.” with two wavy lines
Hadn’t you better send a 6 witnesses or so to to try to buy 3 copies each? Use their testimony.
in ink:
I think you better print the enclosed in fac simile of my handwriting, & put a copy in every canvassers hands.
enclosure, in ink:
“Huckleberry Finn.”
My new book is not out of the press; no man has a copy of it; yet Estes & Lauriat, of Boston and New York announce it as “now ready,” & for sale by them—& at a reduced price. These vermin people deliberately lied when they made that statement. Since it was a lie which could in no possible way advantage them, it was necessarily a purely malicious lie, whose only purpose was to injure me, who have in no way harmed them.
They will have an immediate opportunity to explain, in court, & pay for the opportunity of explaining.
Hartford, Dec. 23, 1884.
MS, in pencil, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Special Collections, NPV.
MTBus, 284–85.
see McKinney Family Papers in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.