[begin page 501]

From the beginning of his career as a professional journalist Mark Twain took steps to gather and preserve clippings of his work, intending to republish them. “Put all of Josh's letters in my scrap book,” he told Orion Clemens when his first contributions to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise began to appear in 1862, “I may have use for them some day.” The request was typical, and, indeed, the files were maintained so carefully that four years later, in June 1866, Mark Twain said he was able to lend Anson Burlingame “pretty much everything I ever wrote.”1

But Mark Twain's early impulse to preserve and republish his newspaper and magazine work was often accompanied by a counter-current of procrastination—a pretense of laziness or of indifference toward his literary future. As early as September 1864 we find him making excuses to Orion: “I would commence on my book, but . . . Steve [Gillis] & I are getting things ready for his wedding.” He promised, however, “As soon as this wedding business is over, I believe I will send to you for the files, & begin on my book.”2 What became of this project, or when “the files” were sent to San Francisco, is not known—but it would probably be at least another year before Orion's brotherly prompting took effect.

It was not until October 1865 that Mark Twain privately resolved to “drop all trifling, & sighing after vain impossibilities,” and determined to strive for fame as a humorist—“unworthy & evanescent though it must of necessity be.”3 This resolution immediately produced “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” (no. 119), published in the [begin page 502] eastern press that November,4 but it also returned Mark Twain's attention to the problem of how to make use of his newspaper clippings. The success of his “Jumping Frog” tale brought him at least one offer to reprint the journal pieces, for on 20 January 1866 he told his family that Bret Harte, “late editor of the ‘Californian,’ ” wanted him to “club a lot of old sketches together with a lot of his, & publish a book together.” He explained his interest in the collaboration in some detail, emphasizing his own laziness and indifference to fame by placing the focus of interest on the money he would make:

Either the “New York publisher” declined to offer the requisite terms or the would-be collaborators changed their minds; no collection of sketches by the two men was ever published, although Mark Twain may have begun to prepare his material “for the press” in January and February 1866. The air of indifference and the pretense of hard bargaining seem to mask tenderer feelings commonly associated with literary ambition. Certainly the weeding out of sketches “not worth republishing” indicates that Mark Twain was not wholly indifferent to his literary reputation. Ultimately, however, this early emphasis on easy money—the “scissors & slash” method—came to dominate Mark Twain's attitude toward republishing his short works and to influence the way in which he collected and reprinted them long after he had achieved a measure of renown.

Mark Twain's early diffidence about his literary ambition has important consequences for the textual critic, affecting not only how the author collected and revised his sketches, but also how we assess the evidence of his revision. He talked expansively about burning up cartloads of his old sketches and about ruling them forever “out of [begin page 503] any book”; but he also claimed he was willing to republish this work only if someone else took “all the trouble.” Was he in fact so self-critical or so indifferent? These are questions that bear directly on the preparation of his first collection of sketches, issued in the spring of 1867.

The textual introduction that follows here undertakes to give more than an account of purely textual matters. The long history of Mark Twain's revision and republication of his apprentice writing begins in 1867, when he published his first sketchbook, and ends in 1875, when he collected fifty early pieces in Sketches, New and Old. It is a history complicated by the sheer quantity of sketches; by the large number of sketchbooks Mark Twain published, or planned but never produced; by the variety and instability of his publishing arrangements in the early phase of his career; by the multiple reprintings of the early pieces in numerous collections; and by the participation of his publishers and editors—Charles Henry Webb, John Camden Hotten, and Elisha Bliss—in revising the sketches. But the rewards that this long and complex history yields are surprisingly rich and various. As we shall see, the story not only provides a precise record of what and how Mark Twain revised, it also sheds light on other matters of general interest: the author's habitual practice of selfcensorship for varying audiences, the differing attitudes of various editors in this country and in England, the conditions of the publishing trade in both countries, and the reactions of critics and readers to Mark Twain's early work—reactions that can now be documented not only by reviews, but by English sales figures. In short, the textual introduction is necessarily long and detailed, but should nevertheless be of interest to anyone concerned with the early period of Mark Twain's professional development.

Twenty-seven sketches from Mark Twain's early newspaper and magazine work were reprinted in his first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog (JF1).6 These sketches had first appeared in six western and two eastern journals between September 1863 and December 1866: [begin page 504] one each in the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle, Golden Era, and California Youths' Companion; two in the New York Saturday Press; three in the New York Weekly Review; three in the Sacramento Union; six in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise; and ten in the Californian. Collation shows, however, that some of the JF1 texts contained errors because they derived from unauthorized, edited texts instead of the original printing. Eighteen sketches were demonstrably set from the Californian, for example, while only ten of these had first appeared there. In addition, collation indicates that almost every sketch in JF1 had been revised in some small way, and a handful had been quite radically altered. These facts alone pose the most fundamental textual questions: What kind of document served as printer's copy? Who selected and who revised that copy? Were variants introduced only in the printer's copy, or were there changes in proof as well?7

Our most detailed firsthand account of how JF1 was produced comes from Mark Twain himself in a recollection dictated in 1906, thirty-nine years after the event:

In fact, Mark Twain asserted, “Webb undertook to collate the sketches. He performed this office, then handed the result to me, and I went to [George W.] Carleton's establishment with it.” Mark Twain also recalled—with undiminished bitterness—that Carleton rudely declined to publish it:

He began to swell, and went on swelling and swelling and swelling until he had reached the dimensions of a god of about the second or [begin page 505] third degree. . . . Finally he made an imposing sweep with his right hand which comprehended the whole room and said, “Books—look at those shelves. Every one of them is loaded with books that are waiting for publication. Do I want any more? Excuse me, I don't. Good morning.”

When Mark Twain reported this “adventure,” Webb “bravely said that not all the Carletons in the universe should defeat that book, he would publish it himself on a ten per cent royalty. And so he did. . . . He made the plates and printed and bound the book through a job printing house and published it through the American News Company.”8

This is a circumstantial and generally accurate account—so far as it goes—and its central implication is clear: Webb alone was responsible for assembling and editing, as well as for publishing, the volume of sketches. Moreover, Webb's 1867 prefatory “Advertisement” to JF1 appears to corroborate Mark Twain's recollection. By way of offering an “explanation . . . for the somewhat fragmentary character of many of these sketches,” Webb wrote that

Despite its facetious allusion to “serious articles and moral essays,” the advertisement accurately describes how the JF1 sketches were edited. Certainly Webb seems to suggest that, as the editor, he performed these operations for Mark Twain. In addition, shortly before publication Mark Twain himself wrote the San Francisco Alta California in a way that tends to confirm both Webb's version and his own 1906 recollection:

Publicly and privately, in 1867 and 1906, Mark Twain said that his first book was edited and produced by Charles Henry Webb.

Yet despite Mark Twain's claim that he “made no suggestions,” and his assertion that Webb alone “undertook to collate the sketches,” some evidence has survived to show that the author himself played a large and important role in shaping JF1 for the press. Although Webb must have performed the editorial chores to which he alludes— extracting threads of humor from longer articles and removing local references—it is apparent that Mark Twain helped to collect, to select, and to revise the sketches used in his book. The evidence for this conclusion has not been recognized before. It is contained in one of the scrapbooks kept by Mark Twain and now preserved in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale.

The Yale Scrapbook now contains part or all of forty-eight newspaper and journal articles by Mark Twain: twenty from the Californian, twenty-one from the Territorial Enterprise, six from papers such as the Golden Era and Dramatic Chronicle reprinting the Enterprise, and one from the Sacramento Union reprinting the New York Weekly Review. Their dates of publication range from mid-December 1863 to late October 1866. Mark Twain assembled the clippings into roughly two groups: those from the Californian (October 1864–December 1865) occupy the first half of the scrapbook, while those from the Enterprise and its reprints (December 1863–March 1866) occupy the second half, with the solitary clipping from the Sacramento Union (23 October 1866) coming last of all.11 The two groups of clippings are not arranged chronologically within themselves, which suggests that Mark Twain did not assemble the clippings as [begin page 507] they were published, but reviewed his files of the two journals sometime in February or March 1866, shortly after he told his family, “I will only have to take the scissors & slash my old sketches out of the Enterprise & the Californian.” The Yale Scrapbook is almost certainly the result of that plan.

It has long been known that this collection of clippings “shows many revisions and explanatory footnotes in Mark Twain's handwriting, as if he were preparing copy for a printer.”12 In fact, these revisions and footnotes often suggest that he had a book, and an eastern audience, in mind. For example, Mark Twain added a note to an Enterprise clipping of his speech before the Nevada Third House, justifying his impulse to reprint it: “Conventions & legislatures are a good deal alike, all America over—which fact may excuse the insertion of this burlesque.”13 At another point he wrote, “It is hardly worth while to explain that gold & silver coin form the circulating medium on the Pacific coast.” Still other changes removed or modified his slang and obscure topical references, and deleted or softened allusions to sex, damnation, and drink.

Yet most of the revisions preserved in the scrapbook were never used in a collection of Mark Twain's sketches. And perhaps for this reason it has generally been supposed that JF1 must have been “compiled from scrapbooks which have since disappeared.”14 Close examination of the Yale Scrapbook, however, shows conclusively that it provided at least half of the printer's copy for JF1. The evidence is clear, but somewhat elusive, because so much of what survives in the scrapbook was not used in the published work: we are usually left not the actual printer's copy, but the eloquent testimony of gaps and holes created by the compilers of that copy.

The scrapbook shows that Mark Twain revised—or crossed out—every clipping in it, thereby making a tentative selection from a limited sample of his early work. Subsequent to that revision, someone removed clippings from the scrapbook using two distinct methods. Where clippings occupied only one side of a leaf (usually in the front of the scrapbook), the leaf was scissored out, preserving the [begin page 508] clipping intact with the author's revisions in the margin. But where clippings filled both sides of a scrapbook leaf, the requisite article or part of an article was peeled away, leaving Mark Twain's revisions behind in the margin. This double method had a number of interesting consequences, but the simplest of these can be easily stated: what was demonstrably removed from the scrapbook, by either method, was almost always reprinted in JF1.

For instance, page stubs in the scrapbook show that eleven full leaves and two half-leaves have been scissored out. Ten of the eleven missing leaves were taken from the front part of the scrapbook where Mark Twain had pasted his Californian clippings. Since fully eighteen sketches in JF1 were demonstrably set from the Californian, and since collation indicates that some of these were revised by the author, it seems possible that the missing leaves were used as printer's copy, or at least as a source for such copy. Two cases, fortunately, are more conclusive. Only the last half of “An Unbiased Criticism” (no. 100) survives in the scrapbook, where it is preceded by three page stubs from missing leaves. And only the last half of “The Facts” (no. 116) survives in the scrapbook, where it too is preceded by three page stubs. In both cases Mark Twain's penciled revisions appear on the part of the clipping which remains intact—and in both cases, the missing portion was reprinted, slightly revised, in JF1. This is persuasive evidence that the Yale Scrapbook supplied printer's copy for at least these two sketches. Of course, it also implies that some of the JF1 variants are Mark Twain's revisions, while at the same time it raises the question of who decided—subsequent to the author's revision of these two sketches—to reprint only part of each in JF1.

In addition to these missing leaves, sixteen scrapbook pages have had part or all of their clippings peeled away—a process that often left the pages blank except for Mark Twain's holograph revisions, which now float mysteriously in the margin. For instance, Mark Twain revised a portion in each of two separate Enterprise letters before these two portions were peeled away from the scrapbook page. In both cases, the missing portions can be identified from what remains, and in both cases the missing portions were reprinted in JF1: see the discussion of “Voyage of the Ajax” (no. 182) below, and the textual commentary for “The Spiritual Séance” (no. 202). Printer's copy must have been made by removing and then remounting the [begin page 509] clippings on separate sheets, to which Mark Twain's revisions and corrections could then be transferred. This second method probably encouraged further revision, and it clearly resulted in several small errors, since a number of authorial corrections in the Yale Scrapbook were simply lost in the process of preparing the printer's copy.

The gaps and holes in the scrapbook can, in these two ways, be precisely matched with half a dozen sketches reprinted in JF1, and this evidence firmly establishes that the scrapbook was a major source of printer's copy. Once given this tangible link, moreover, we are sometimes afforded a deeper glimpse into the processes that lay behind the preparation of JF1. This is especially true whenever clippings have been peeled away from the scrapbook page, for in almost every case it has proved feasible to reconstruct the page as Mark Twain originally revised it—that is, to reconstruct the first stage of a printer's copy that has itself been lost. From such reconstructions we can learn many things, simple and complex. For instance, we can show that the printer's copy for “A New Biography of Washington” (no. 183) was not its original printing in the Enterprise, nor a reprinting of the Enterprise in the Californian, but a 4 March 1866 reprinting in the San Francisco Golden Era, a clipping of which once occupied a page in the scrapbook (see figures 1 and 2). This relatively simple case also shows that Mark Twain corrected the clipping and in that sense authorized its use as printer's copy.

On the other hand, our reconstructions sometimes show that Mark Twain's revisions in the scrapbook were further altered, quietly ignored, or simply lost in the shuffle. The Yale Scrapbook thereby refutes Mark Twain's overmodest claim to have made “no suggestions,” while it supports Webb's claim to have edited the JF1 sketches. In fact, the one recurrent textual problem for JF1 is to decide, in each separate sketch, just how fully Mark Twain joined in its preparation and revision, and ultimately to distinguish between the author's revisions and those of his editor. The mix of editorial and authorial variants is different from sketch to sketch, and the scrapbook itself provides much less evidence for some sketches than for others. As it turns out, deciding which of the two humorists was responsible for any given variant is a lively problem that renews itself with every sketch in JF1.

To illustrate the range of evidence we may look closely at the longest sketch in JF1, “Burlesque ‘Answers to Correspondents’ ” (no. 201). [begin page 510]

[begin page 511] [begin page 512] Collation establishes that the JF1 text of this sketch was created by revising, selecting, and then rearranging parts of four long articles that first appeared in the Californian.15 It can be further shown that ten pages in the scrapbook once held complete copies of these same four Californian articles. Yet those ten pages are now almost completely blank, preserving only a few sections of clipping that were struck through and presumably rejected, some that were revised but not ultimately removed, a number of floating marginal revisions, and a few telltale scraps of clipping containing only two or three characters. From this evidence it can be demonstrated that when Mark Twain wrote in the scrapbook margin “Make paragraph in 5th line of ‘Arithmeticus,’ after ‘Conchology,’ ” his change was followed in JF1. And when he inserted the phrase “and soaked in a spittoon” at another point, his change was likewise followed. Roughly speaking, about half of Mark Twain's marginal changes in the scrapbook were reproduced verbatim in the JF1 text for this sketch.

For example, figure 3 shows a page of the Yale Scrapbook from which part of a clipping has been peeled away. It is possible to identify the missing portion from the small surviving fragment, to determine how that clipping was mounted on the scrapbook page, and, by comparing the reconstruction with the corresponding passage in JF1, to demonstrate Mark Twain's insertion of “would” and his deletion of “you” (see figures 4 and 5). Indeed, once the compilers had removed the clipping, remounted it, and transferred the author's changes, this portion of the JF1 printer's copy must have looked very much like the top half of figure 4.

In other cases our reconstruction shows that additional revision was undertaken after the clipping was removed from the scrapbook. In figures 6, 7, and 8 (another portion from the same sketch) we see that three changes entered by Mark Twain were incorporated in the JF1 text, but that his footnote was omitted. And in figures 9, 10, and 11 we find a complete discrepancy between Mark Twain's scrapbook revisions and the JF1 text: none of his scrapbook changes was included in the book, and, moreover, the JF1 text included further revisions not [begin page 513] entered in the scrapbook. The phrase “with your eyes buried in the cushion” replaced “always pay your debts in greenbacks,” thereby obviating Mark Twain's explanatory footnote in the scrapbook.

These examples show that while it is easy to reconstruct what Mark Twain did to his sketches in the scrapbook, it is by no means easy to discover what occurred after the copy was removed from it.16 In this particular case, however, we are left several clues about what happened and who was responsible. It seems that Mark Twain played an unusually active role in preparing printer's copy: he clearly selected which elements in the original articles he wanted to reprint, and he even supplied a new title (“Burlesque ‘Answers to Correspondents’ ”) in the scrapbook. Moreover, he seems to have made further changes on the culled printer's copy: the substituted phrase “with your eyes buried in the cushion” is very characteristic, and, in another passage, JF1 “sprawling” instead of “vast gloved” as in the scrapbook may also be authorial. On the other hand, it is significant that Mark Twain's new title was not adopted in JF1, and that two of the three changes illustrated in figure 10 and not made in JF1 (“wretched” and “any”) were almost identically reproduced by the author when he revised and reprinted the text in 1872.17 Both these omissions suggest that Webb was an active editorial presence, sifting and judging the changes supplied by Mark Twain in the scrapbook.

One particular discrepancy between the scrapbook and JF1 indicates that Webb indeed exerted significant editorial power. The scrapbook shows that Mark Twain drafted a footnote to explain the original circumstances of the sly hoax in the “Melton Mowbray” section of the sketch: “This absurd squib was received in perfect good faith by [begin page 514]

[begin page 515] [begin page 516] [begin page 517] several editors on the Pacific Coast, & they rated the author unsparingly for not knowing that the ‘Destruction of the Sennacherib [’] was not originally composed in Dutch Flat!” Like several other footnotes inscribed in the scrapbook, this one never appeared in print. In JF1 the footnote reads as follows: “This piece of pleasantry, published in a San Francisco paper, was mistaken by the country journals for seriousness, and many and loud were their denunciations of the ignorance of author and editor in not knowing that the lines in question were ‘written by Byron.’ ” It seems unlikely that Mark Twain wrote this flat-footed revision of his original note. The style of the JF1 version, along with its pointed allusion to the alleged “ignorance of author and editor,” both suggest that the revised version was supplied by Webb: he was the editor of the Californian, where the sketch first appeared.

Webb's editing can be detected in other cases where it runs counter to or otherwise modifies what Mark Twain wrote in the scrapbook. For instance, JF1 reprinted “Bearding the Fenian in His Lair” (no. 170), retitling it “Among the Fenians.” This sketch first appeared as part of Mark Twain's letter to the Enterprise of 30–31 January 1866, and in the scrapbook Mark Twain canceled the entire letter, indicating that he found nothing in it worth republishing. Moreover, the JF1 text begins with a revised introductory sentence that does not seem to be Mark Twain's work: “Wishing to post myself on one of the most current topics of the day, I, Mark, hunted up an old friend, Dennis McCarthy, who is editor of the new Fenian journal in San Francisco, The Irish People.” The awkward locution “most current” is not typical of the author, nor is the superfluous “Mark,” which Mark Twain deleted in a subsequent revision of this sketch.18 Although such evidence is not conclusive, it does suggest that Webb independently decided to include the sketch in JF1, that he copied out the relevant section from the canceled Enterprise letter, and that he added a new introductory sentence.

In other cases we seem to detect Webb's altering further what Mark Twain had begun to revise in the scrapbook—a tendency illustrated by “Voyage of the Ajax” (no. 182), part of an Enterprise letter that was reprinted in JF1 as “Remarkable Instances of Presence of Mind.” The [begin page 518]

[begin page 519] [begin page 520] [begin page 521] scrapbook shows that Mark Twain revised a section of the letter, which was then peeled away, presumably remounted, and reinscribed with his marginal revisions (see figure 12). He corrected the punctuation by inserting a needed dash, changed “sung” to “sang” and “God!” to “Heaven,” and altered the personal reference to “Leland” to the anonymous initial “L.” or “L—.”19 Collation with the JFl text shows, however, that at some point further changes were introduced. JFl followed Mark Twain's correction of the punctuation, his change from “sung” to “sang,” and his shortening of “Leland,” but it also extended the modification of local allusions, very much in accord with the policy Webb articulated in his “Advertisement” to JF1. The book changed “Fretz, of the Bank of California” to “F——, of a great banking-house in San Francisco”; it changed “Lewis Leland, of the Occidental” to “Lewis L——, of a great hotel in San Francisco.” Moreover, it failed to make Mark Twain's reverent substitution of “Heaven” for “God!” and made one long deletion not indicated in the scrapbook. Of course, it is not impossible that Mark Twain made some or all of these later alterations on the culled printer's copy, but the mundane style of revision and the careless omission of one change both hint that Webb was the person responsible. Indeed, when Mark Twain revised this sketch again in 1874–1875, he deleted the phrases “a great banking-house in” and “of a great hotel in San Francisco,” and he again canceled “God!”—substituting for it the milder expletive “Pooh.”20

Webb's editing is perhaps most clearly evident in two sketches which, unlike the others, were not removed from the scrapbook after Mark Twain had revised and corrected them. These interesting anomalies are “Whereas” (no. 94) and all but the opening paragraphs of “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” (no. 119)—as it happens, the first two sketches reprinted in JF1. In both cases what appears to be printer's copy has survived intact in the scrapbook, and in both cases most of Mark Twain's revisions and corrections (some of them quite minute alterations of his text) were incorporated in JF1, but collation shows [begin page 522]

[begin page 523] [begin page 524] [begin page 525] [begin page 526] that there were also significant departures from the marked clippings which do not seem, by and large, to be authorial.

The presence of actual printer's copy in the scrapbook is itself a problem warranting some explanation: if, as we have conjectured, printer's copy was generally removed after it had been revised, what must have happened to preserve these two sketches alone? Two explanations seem possible: (1) Webb or Mark Twain may have used duplicate clippings, now lost, to which they transferred some (but not all) of Mark Twain's scrapbook revisions, and to which they added further changes; or (2) they may have handed the scrapbook itself to the “job printing house” and introduced the additional changes in proof. The alternatives are of some interest because it seems unlikely, as we shall see, that Mark Twain read proof. So if a duplicate set of clippings was used, the author cannot be excluded as the agent of some of the later changes. But if it seems more likely that the clippings in the scrapbook were actual printer's copy, then we must attribute quite bold and major changes to Webb.

“Whereas” is the simpler of the two cases. The complete text of the sketch, revised and corrected by Mark Twain, survives in the Yale Scrapbook. On the first part of the clipping Mark Twain made two substantive revisions and also supplied a new title: “LOVE'S BAKERY. To which is added the Singular History of Aurelia Maria.” On the second part he made six meticulous changes in the paragraphing and inserted one substantive revision. Although the JF1 printing carefully followed each of the seven changes in the second part, it omitted the first part entirely: the long digression about “Love's Bakery” was not reprinted, and the remaining material was of course not given the new scrapbook title, but was called instead “Aurelia's Unfortunate Young Man.” Since this radical deletion is in no way indicated on the scrapbook clipping, the question arises, How was the change given to the compositor? Webb or Mark Twain might have copied his minute changes onto a duplicate clipping or a transcription of this one, now lost. But if either did so, his motive remains unclear, for the scrapbook clipping was completely legible and could easily have been extracted with the scissors, as others manifestly were. It therefore seems slightly more likely that the scrapbook clipping itself was printer's copy, and that Webb either told the compositor where to start with the clipping or else deleted the first section in proof. Such a procedure is consistent [begin page 527] with his stated policy of extracting threads of humor from “moral essays.”

“Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” presents the more complex as well as the more interesting case. The scrapbook pages show that Mark Twain fully revised and corrected a clipping from the Californian of 16 December 1865, which reprinted his sketch from the New York Saturday Press. Not counting his correction of “Greeley” to “Smiley” throughout, he made eleven substantive revisions or corrections on this clipping, ranging all the way from an explanatory footnote to minute adjustments in the dialect spelling (“setting” instead of “sitting,” for instance). At some point the first three paragraphs were peeled away from the scrapbook page, presumably remounted, and then further revised to remove all allusions to Artemus Ward (see figures 13, 14, and 15). It is by no means certain that Mark Twain authorized these changes, and the omission of one of his corrections (the deletion of “me” in the third paragraph) may suggest that the new version was prepared by Webb. At any rate, only the first page of the clipping was removed from the scrapbook, presumably because it required more extensive editing than the scrapbook margin permitted. The other sections of the clipping remain in place, except for the last one: at some point it too was peeled away from a page that had been scissored out. The clipping itself was remounted, out of order, in the scrapbook—and two corrections that Mark Twain had originally inscribed on it (the word “lively” and the deletion of n from “an”) were both lost (see figures 16, 17, and 18).21

Collation shows that the JF1 text of the “Jumping Frog” story was indeed set from the Californian reprinting, and that it followed six of the eleven changes Mark Twain had inscribed in the scrapbook. Of the five changes not made, one was the footnote about Artemus Ward (now superfluous because of the revisions in the early paragraphs); the second was the phrase written almost vertically in the left scrapbook margin, “it took him to make the trip” (omitted in favor of the original reading, clearly legible beneath the canceling pencil marks); and three were the corrections (“me,” “lively,” and “a” for “an”) that had probably been inadvertently lost in preparation of the scrapbook [begin page 528]

[begin page 529] [begin page 530] [begin page 531] [begin page 532] [begin page 533] [begin page 534] clipping. The loss of these three changes in JF1 is strong evidence that the clipping now in the scrapbook was the ultimate source of, if not the actual, printer's copy. Nothing less will account for the coincidence of the lost corrections.

However, in addition to rejecting the revision “it took him to make the trip,” JF1 introduced numerous small substantive changes that did not appear in the scrapbook clipping—many of them in dialect spellings, some of them suspiciously like authorial revisions elsewhere in the scrapbook. JF1 substituted “hang” for “curse,” for example, and “been doin' ” for “done”—both revisions that Mark Twain could have made. If he was responsible for any of these later changes, however, he must have made them on a duplicate clipping—for he did not read or revise proof.

In spite of this puzzling situation, it seems unlikely that a duplicate clipping or transcription was prepared or, therefore, that Mark Twain made any revision of his sketch which is not preserved in the scrapbook. As in the case of “Whereas,” the scrapbook clipping could provide legible printer's copy without the chore of transcribing minute changes from one clipping to another. Nevertheless, the use of a duplicate cannot be positively excluded: the omission of one change, and the very characteristic substitution of “hang” for “curse” and “being doin'” for “done,” may indicate that Mark Twain or Webb did the inexplicable—transferred some but not all of the author's changes to a second clipping, which was then further revised.

It is of some interest, however, that even if a duplicate was used, none of the variants between the marked scrapbook clipping and JF1 may be safely attributed to Mark Twain. For Webb was entirely capable of making changes like this, and clearly did so elsewhere. Moreover, we know that Mark Twain was particularly dissatisfied with the JF1 text of his most famous sketch. When he revised a copy of JF1 in 1869 he restored sixteen substantive readings that had been present in the original marked clipping in the scrapbook—including many correct dialect spellings and the three lost changes.22 Mark Twain's [begin page 535] restoration of so many scrapbook readings argues not that he wavered in his judgment, but rather that he failed to control the JF1 printing of this sketch beyond the scrapbook stage—for he would surely have made the corrections then that he later made, presumably from memory, in 1869. If the clipping in the scrapbook was indeed printer's copy, then we must suppose that Webb was a sufficiently adept editor to simulate authorial changes (“hang” for “curse”) on the proof, and that either he or an overzealous and somewhat careless compositor was responsible for tinkering with Mark Twain's dialect spellings. While it remains possible that Mark Twain further revised a duplicate clipping, making a few changes and failing to see the errors he corrected two years later, it seems somewhat more likely that no duplicate was used, that the omissions and errors were compositorial or editorial, and that we have a rather striking example of the way Mark Twain could abandon even his best early work to the arbitrary judgment of others.

These examples and others like them confirm that the Yale Scrapbook was mined for the JF1 printer's copy. They show that Mark Twain certainly initiated some variants in JF1, but that these are everywhere intermingled with variants probably introduced by his editor, Webb, who also took it upon himself to select material for the book, and to reject or modify revisions that the author had supplied in the scrapbook. These facts alter the description that Mark Twain and Webb gave of the production of JF1 in 1867. Using the new information, we can revise Mark Twain's 1906 recollection to accord with the facts, and to provide some general constraints for interpreting the textual variants we find in JF1.

As we have already indicated, Mark Twain must have begun by revising—or rejecting—every clipping in the scrapbook. We cannot say with certainty when he began this revision, but if we assume that the scrapbook was first compiled and then revised, he could not have begun before March 1866, for the scrapbook contains articles that did not appear until then. Mark Twain sailed for the Sandwich Islands on 7 March 1866 and spent the rest of the year writing travel letters for the Sacramento Union, preparing a book composed from those [begin page 536] letters, and making his first lecture tour. He sailed again from San Francisco on December 15, this time as the official traveling correspondent for the Alta California, intending to go around the world in that capacity, and he did not arrive in New York City until 12 January 1867.23

Mark Twain's first preoccupation on arrival was completing and publishing his Sandwich Islands travel book, but Webb must soon have tempted him with the easier “scissors & slash” project of a book of sketches.24 Many years later, in a letter to Webb, Mark Twain fondly recalled “that January day in your rooms in Broadway”— presumably an early meeting in New York, and very possibly the occasion of Webb's proposal.25 Webb had himself just published Liffith Lank, or Lunacy with George W. Carleton, and may have suggested that Mark Twain too would find him a willing publisher of western humor.26 Since Mark Twain encountered Webb in January and did not meet with Carleton's painful indifference until sometime in February, there was certainly time to select and revise the clippings in his scrapbook.27

Contrary to Mark Twain's recollection in 1906, there is no reason to suppose that Webb collected the clippings that the author presented to Carleton: the scrapbook is manifestly a document that was most readily compiled in San Francisco. And it likewise seems im- [begin page 537] plausible that Mark Twain removed some of the clippings from the scrapbook instead of carrying it intact to Carleton: he would have removed both the “Jumping Frog” and “Whereas” if he removed anything, and both of these are preserved in the scrapbook. When Carleton declined to publish the contents of the scrapbook, Mark Twain returned with it to Webb, who said “he would publish it himself.” One contemporary source, evidently close to Webb, said that Mark Twain's “ ‘book’ in the form in which he had prepared it, was refused on all sides,” implying that the author had taken the scrapbook to Carleton (and perhaps to other publishers, like Dick and Fitzgerald) before Webb undertook to edit it. The same source also said that the author was “very much indebted to ‘John Paul’ for his skill displayed in editing,” and wondered “what the book would have been without judicious excision.” Webb himself recalled, in an autobiographical letter written to Edmund Clarence Stedman about 1889: “While publishing some skits of his own to demonstrate his conviction that publishers did not know what they discarded, Mr. Webb also edited and published the first book of Mark Twain, which the regular publishers to whom it was offered one and all refused.”28 As we have seen, the scrapbook itself shows that Webb's editorial work must have followed Mark Twain's initial revision of the contents. It was in this sense, then, that Webb “undertook to collate the sketches” (as Mark Twain recalled in 1906), and he must have done so by selecting and removing clippings from the scrapbook and probably from other sources as well.

Mark Twain's cancellation of many sketches (and parts of sketches) in the Yale Scrapbook was probably a preliminary stage in the selection of contents for JF1. The revised scrapbook as Carleton presumably saw it still contained more material than was ultimately desired: the author probably anticipated that the publisher or Webb would make the final choice after some agreement had been reached. When Webb took over the editing he seems to have been given a relatively [begin page 538] free hand, but Mark Twain continued to be actively involved in selecting which pieces to reprint. On the last page of the scrapbook he made two lists that seem to name sketches which are now, or once were, in the scrapbook. The first reads:

Petrified Man.
Children's Christmas Stories.
Volcano Kileaua.
Accidental Insurance.
Wandering Jew.

The second, written toward the bottom of the page and at right angles to the first, gives seven seemingly more doubtful selections, as follows:

?—Sacramento Letter.
Portion after Hawks
Dream of Stars
Badlam Sharks.
Séances—2
Geewhillikens
Graceful Compliment29

On the facing endpaper Mark Twain drew a line pointing to the second list of seven and added “(Don't run average),” meaning that [begin page 539] they were either much shorter or much longer than the other sketches already chosen for JF1.30

The lists now seem cryptic, but they are clearly linked with the production of JF1 and were probably intended to supply some guidance to Webb in compiling the book. Only one sketch in the first list of five survives in the scrapbook: “How, for Instance?” (no. 192), in a clipping from the Sacramento Union. Three of these five sketches—including “How, for Instance?”—were in fact reprinted in JF1, all of them set from printings or reprintings in the Californian. This suggests that copies of all five were removed from the front part of the scrapbook to serve, at least tentatively, as printer's copy. (The Union clipping survives only because the same sketch was reprinted in the Californian as well; in other words, there were duplicate clippings of at least this one sketch.) On the other hand, the reverse situation holds with the seven sketches that didn't “run average”: all but one of these remains completely intact in the scrapbook, where Mark Twain revised them, and only that single exception (designated “Séances—2”) was reprinted in JF1.31

The lists cannot be preliminary selections for the book, because they omit such obvious choices as the “Jumping Frog” story. They appear to be additional choices to fill out a volume for which the main selections have already been made: of the twelve sketches named only four were reprinted in JF1, which contained twenty-seven sketches in all. This last conjecture indicates that the lists and the scrapbook revisions to which they refer were probably not completed until sometime in February 1867, when Webb began to act as Mark Twain's editor and publisher.

Although the scrapbook clearly contained more than enough revised material for a modest collection of sketches, several pieces in [begin page 540] JF1 were typeset from other sources. When Webb began to “collate the sketches” he undoubtedly mined the 1866 Californian, in which he, Bret Harte, and James F. Bowman had loyally reprinted a number of selections from Mark Twain's Sandwich Islands letters to the Sacramento Union, as well as everything that the author published in the eastern press. Collation establishes that all of the Union sketches reprinted in JF1, as well as several other pieces, were set from Californian reprints. Since Webb undoubtedly had access to his personal file of the journal, he may have used it to supply copy for the printer: altogether six sketches, not much altered by Mark Twain, were reprinted in JF1 from the 1866 Californian.32

Having revised and helped select the sketches for JF1, could Mark Twain also have edited the printer's copy further? Conclusive evidence of such activity is hard to find. As we have already suggested, he probably helped to piece together composite sketches like “Burlesque ‘Answers to Correspondents’ ” and “The Spiritual Séance” (nos. 201 and 202), and it seems likely that he made some additional changes on the culled printer's copy: both sketches contain revisions in JF1 which are characteristic of the author but do not appear in the scrapbook margins.33 Nevertheless, Webb was clearly responsible for a number of other revisions (and mistakes), and could conceivably have introduced these as well.

Although it is possible that Mark Twain made minor revisions in the culled printer's copy, he almost certainly did not read proof for JF1 at all. After making preliminary arrangements to sail on the Quaker City in early June, he left New York on 3 March 1867 to spend six weeks in St. Louis with his family. On March 19 he wrote to ask Webb “what date” he expected to publish, and he promised [begin page 541] to lecture in New York if the book were to be issued “before March is out.” We must regard this as a measure of Mark Twain's lack of participation in the later stages of production. He did return to the city by April 15, two weeks before publication was accomplished, but he probably could not have made any changes during the final days of binding and distribution. Moreover, he wrote Bret Harte when the book appeared: “It is full of damnable errors of grammar & deadly inconsistencies of spelling in the Frog sketch because I was away & did not read the proofs.”34 Although Mark Twain was elsewhere less than candid about his role in producing JF1, there is good reason to suppose that he spoke the truth to Harte. As we have already noted, when he subsequently revised a copy of JF1 in 1869, he corrected sixteen substantive errors in that sketch alone. This fact is persuasive evidence that Mark Twain did not read proof for JF1, for he would surely have done so on the title sketch if at all.

To sum up: we conjecture that Mark Twain participated in the preparation of JF1 printer's copy first by revising and selecting sketches in his scrapbook and then by assisting Webb in removing that copy from the scrapbook and tinkering it into final shape. Many of his revisions in the scrapbook appear in the texts of JF1. While Mark Twain seems to have left the final selection of sketches to Webb, he did make preliminary choices in the scrapbook and even provided a list of alternates. But he probably confined his work on the culled printer's copy to a few sketches, and he almost certainly did not read or revise the work in proof. Webb, on the other hand, assumed the main responsibility for extracting and preparing printer's copy from Mark Twain's scrapbook. He decided which of the author's revisions to reproduce and even rewrote some of these revisions; and he decided which sketches to include, sometimes contradicting Mark Twain's original judgment. And he alone saw the book through the press while Mark Twain was in St. Louis.

These conjectures provide a set of constraints for interpreting the variants in JF1. We are able to identify some variants as merely the result of using an unauthorized reprinting for printer's copy—a choice that both author and editor unthinkingly endorsed. Variants that can [begin page 542] be matched with holograph revisions in the scrapbook are of course clearly authorial. But when JF1 differs from the scrapbook revision we must consider at least three possibilities: further revision by the author, further revision by the editor, or mistakes of the author or the editor. The generous sampling of Mark Twain's revisions preserved in the scrapbook helps us to characterize variants in JF1 for which no holograph evidence survives. But Webb's skill as an editor, his capacity for imitating what Mark Twain had begun to do in the scrapbook, poses the constant possibility that variants undocumented by holograph evidence are in fact the editor's. Therefore where Mark Twain's active presence cannot be demonstrated, we must always suspect that Webb was the responsible agent.

JF1 presents an unusual situation in Mark Twain's works, for all of the sketches that it reproduces are in some degree the product of an intermingling of authorial and editorial decisions about what sketches to reprint, which portions to select, and even what words to use. The editorial process was carried out in such a way that confident distinctions between the literary contributions of Webb and Mark Twain are now no longer possible. We know that Mark Twain entrusted Webb with the editing of his sketches, and that for at least a while he accepted what Webb had done. It was only in retrospect that Mark Twain came to regret the amount of autonomy he had given his first editor and publisher. Early in 1869 he told Elisha Bliss of the American Publishing Company, when Bliss wanted to intervene in the same way with The Innocents Abroad manuscript, “I don't much like to entrust even slight alterations to other hands. It is n't a judicious thing to do, exactly.”35

JF1 was at last published late in April 1867. Webb's advertisements announced, too optimistically, that it would be ready “on Wednesday, April 24,”36 but it was evidently delayed until April 30. On April 15 Mark Twain was back in New York, predicting that his book would “probably be in the booksellers' hands in about two weeks.” By April [begin page 543] 19 he may have seen an early copy, for he told the San Francisco Alta California that it would have a “truly gorgeous gold frog on the back of it, and that frog alone will be worth the money.” Webb filed for copyright on April 15, but a copy of the book was not deposited until May 14. The bindery records indicate that the first impression was bound on April 30.37 On that day Mark Twain also wrote the Alta:

The uneasy, almost apologetic tone of this newspaper letter suggests that Mark Twain was not wholly sanguine about the prospective sale of his first book. Webb, who had invested his own money in the project, was worried about the same problem, and wrote to John Russell Young of the New York Tribune to complain that the paper had not given his new publishing venture sufficient publicity.39 The advertising material directed at the trade shows a similar concern for JF1: “This is the first published book of this celebrated and rising humorist. Abounding with the quaintest and rarest wit, which never degenerates into coarseness, it cannot fail to have an extensive sale.”40

Nevertheless, JF1 did fail in this respect. Mark Twain and his editor had both tried to delete offensive words and allusions from [begin page 544] his newspaper pieces—thus saving the book from “coarseness”41—but economic conditions and Webb's limited capacity for advertising probably combined against the merit of its humor to prevent a large sale. The book was favorably but briefly noticed by such papers as the Boston Evening Transcript, the Chicago Times, the Nation, and the New York Tribune and Times. The Transcript noted that Mark Twain had “acquired a wide newspaper reputation, not only for his drollery, but for his sagacity of observation, his keen perception of character, and the individuality of his style and tone of thinking,” and it singled out the “Jumping Frog” story as “the best representation of one phase of California life and character that we have seen.” The Times thought the title sketch “a fair specimen of the whimsical fancies in which the book abounds,” but asserted that there were “other sketches nearly equal to it in merit.” Mark Twain was different from “other recent writers of his class in not resorting to the adventitious aid of bad spelling to make his jokes seem more absurd, and this is, of course, decidedly in his favor. There is a great deal of quaint humor and much pithy wisdom in his writings, and their own merit, as well as the attractive style in which they are produced, must secure them a popularity which will buy its own profit.” The Nation said only that JF1 was “a volume not unworthy of a place beside the works of John Phœnix, A. Ward's books, and the two volumes of the Rev. Mr. Nasby.” In the West, JF1 was favorably reviewed by the Enterprise and by the Californian—but like the eastern reviews, these were to little avail. According to one contemporary source the sale in California was “only two hundred copies.”42 The records of the printer and binder, John A. Gray and Green, show that 1,000 copies were bound by April 30 and another 552 followed shortly on May 20; these [begin page 545] were supplemented by 150 and 182 on September 6 and October 3, and 101 on 3 February 1868. By the end of the year only about 2,200 copies had been sold—a disappointing record.43

Although before publication Mark Twain had followed Webb's progress from St. Louis, he now seemed to lose interest in his book. When he wrote to his family on May 20, he was discouraged and pretended to be indifferent: “Don't know how my book is coming on—shall leave instructions here to send such money as may accrue from it to Ma every few weeks,” he wrote, but added sardonically, “It may make her rich, or it may reduce her to abject poverty, possibly.” On June 1, only a week before sailing to Europe and the Holy Land, he asked Frank Fuller to collect the “ten cents a copy due me on all sales of my book . . . from my publisher, C. H. Webb, from time to time, & remit all such moneys to my mother.”44 By June 7 he had quite given up hope for it: “As for the Frog book, I don't believe that [begin page 546] will ever pay anything worth a cent. I published it simply to advertise myself & not with the hope of making anything out of it.” Yet this was clearly a rationalization, for in December 1870, when The Innocents Abroad had salved the wound of his first book by selling 80,000 copies in sixteen months, Mark Twain admitted that in 1867 he had “fully expected the ‘Jumping Frog’ to sell 50,000 copies & it only sold 4,000.”45

Despite its relatively modest sale in the United States, JF1 was well received in England, even by sophisticated literary journals like the Saturday Review:

Nevertheless, probably only a few copies of JF1 were sold in England, for it was soon pirated by George Routledge and Sons, who thereby drove Webb's edition out of the market. The Routledges' JF2 reprinted the whole of JF1, sold for at most one-sixth the price, and was enthusiastically reviewed in the press. The London Review said on 21 September 1867:

And in October, Tom Hood lavishly praised the book in Fun:

Needless to say, this kind of support was helpful: according to the Routledge records, the first impression of JF2, ordered on 1 August 1867, consisted of 6,000 copies, and a second impression ordered less than a year later, on 1 April 1868, was for an additional 2,000 copies.49

The Routledges' chief competitor, especially when it came to reprinting American authors, was John Camden Hotten. By late 1867 he was publishing a veritable library of American humor that included what he termed “the authorized and only complete editions” of Artemus Ward's books, “the only Complete and Correct Edition published in this country” of Lowell's Biglow Papers, an edition of Josh Billings' His Book of Sayings, and one of the Orpheus C. Kerr Papers (the last two edited by Edward P. Hingston).50 Mark Twain's Jumping Frog, however, was conspicuously absent from this list. Hotten seems to have respected the Routledges' prior claim—at least at first—for he [begin page 548] did not begin to republish Mark Twain's books until early 1870, when it became apparent that The Innocents Abroad was selling extraordinarily well in the United States. Although Innocents was probably his primary incentive, Hotten began by publishing his own edition of the Jumping Frog book, JF3, sometime in late March or early April 1870. Hotten's edition, coming as it did some two and a half years after JF2, was initially less successful, selling only about 5,700 copies (in two formats) by July 1871.51 Yet despite this late start, within another two years Hotten had sold more than 18,900 copies of JF3—a very respectable showing that must have had an adverse effect on the sales of his competitor. By the same time (July 1873) the Routledges had printed only 24,000 copies of their piracy—certainly an excellent sale, but only about half what it might have been without Hotten's interference.52

Collation shows that JF3 was not set “from the original edition,” as Hotten's title page proclaimed, but from a copy of the Routledges' JF2. The initial textual differences between JF2 and JF3 were few, but they were perpetuated (and increased) in later printings of these sketches because each house subsequently used its own text for printer's copy. Collation also demonstrates that Mark Twain had nothing whatever to [begin page 549] do with either piracy—all their variants are errors or sophistications—but he was scarcely unaware of their combined effect on his reputation. In January 1888 he recalled in his notebook: “It may be a good thing sometimes for an author to have one book pirated & a scramble made—I think it true. Look at my first book.”53 Indeed, the double piracy of JF1 yielded double benefits for Mark Twain: it introduced him to thousands of English readers who had never seen any of his work, even his most famous sketch, and it produced a “scramble” between the Routledges and Hotten (and Hotten's successors) to secure his cooperation on future books—a scramble that did not end until August 1881, when Mark Twain agreed to an arrangement that was to provide a steady, lifelong income from British and Continental publication of his works.54

But in 1867 no copyright was possible, and no British firm could guarantee its own profits, much less payments to the author, for an American book. British piracies of American publications were, of course, commonplace: the United States had balked repeatedly at making any provision for international copyright, and British law recognized such a copyright only where the other nation had a reciprocating regulation. All of the American humorists could be republished in England without the author's permission and without any payment to the author—a situation that undoubtedly contributed to their international popularity. There were methods for “copyrighting” American books, but they all depended on the moral restraint of other English publishers. An American author could sell early sheets for a flat fee to an English publisher, who might then be permitted to issue the works without interference simply because he had preceded his competitors. Another method was to have the author publicly designate an “official” publisher, as Artemus Ward did with Hotten. But Hotten was unpopular with his fellow London publishers in part [begin page 550] because he did not always respect their prior claims or claims of exclusivity.55

An important change in this situation came about on 29 May 1868, when the Routledges lost their appeal in the well-known case of Routledge v. Low. The American author Maria Susanna Cummins had taken up brief residence in Canada while Sampson Low published and copyrighted her Haunted Hearts in London. The Routledges had nevertheless reprinted the book. Sampson Low sued and won, and the case was appealed to the House of Lords. That body ruled unanimously in favor of Sampson Low, saying that “a foreign author, residing in any part of this empire and publishing his work for the first time in London, is entitled to copyright in the same way as an English writer.” Moreover, one justice, Lord Cairns, “went far beyond this point in his ‘liberal interpretation of a liberal Act.’ He expressed an unusually strong conviction that the Act of Parliament gives a real copyright to every author who first publishes his book in England, no matter where he lives. . . . Lord Cranworth objected to this view, and Lord Chelmsford doubted whether it was good in law.”56

Thus in late May 1868 the highest British court ruled that an American could obtain a valid British copyright by publishing first in London while residing or “sojourning” in Canada or indeed any other part of the British Empire. And some support was held for the proposition that an author might even be able to obtain such a copyright without British residency. Since the Routledges had lost this case, we may be sure that they were alert to the significance of the new ruling: it meant that if they could secure an American author's cooperation, they could hold a legal copyright to his works and foil the kind of interference that Hotten or another publisher might offer.

By June or July 1868 the Routledges had already approached Mark [begin page 551] Twain. In an early August advertisement for their house journal, The Broadway: A London Magazine, they announced, “The friendly relations we continue to preserve with American writers have enabled us to secure from Mr. Mark Twain, the author of ‘The Celebrated Jumping Frog,’—one of the raciest and dryest works of humour,—a number of articles of a similar character, which it is anticipated will even distance the celebrated frog in their capacity for ‘jumping’ for the public approbation.”57 These articles were probably solicited by Joseph L. Blamire, the Routledges' New York agent, at a time when Mark Twain was just completing his first draft of The Innocents Abroad.58 There is no record that Blamire made any offer for the British rights to Innocents, but he did finally secure one original sketch: “Cannibalism in the Cars” (no. 232), which was published in the November 1868 issue of the Broadway. The Routledges paid Mark Twain generously for this work—ten or fifteen pounds (fifty or seventy-five dollars)— and they doubtless held a valid British copyright on the sketch. Mark Twain remembered the occasion many years later, for the Routledges had succeeded in flattering him at a time when his national and international reputation were not yet established.59

Mark Twain spent the rest of 1868 and much of 1869 preparing his Innocents manuscript for the press, courting Olivia Langdon, lecturing throughout the eastern states, and then proofreading and further revising his book. He first expected to publish in the winter of 1868, [begin page 552] then in the spring of 1869, but publication was not finally accomplished until late summer of that year. Either because he was still naive about British copyright law, or because he was distracted by his wedding plans and a second lecture tour, Mark Twain delayed seven months—until February 1870—before contacting Blamire about British copyright for his book. On March 3 he asked his publisher, Elisha Bliss, to send a copy of Innocents to “George Routledge & Sons, 416 Broome street, N. Y.” He explained, “I wrote them to know if it would pay me to go over the Niagara river & get a British copyright, & you see what he says.”60 Blamire's letter, evidently enclosed to Bliss, has been lost—but his answer must certainly have been discouraging: first publication in England was a requirement for valid copyright there. The Innocents Abroad was, at least in Great Britain, exactly like a book whose copyright had expired and could not be renewed.

Nevertheless, at this time no British piracy of Innocents had yet appeared, and Mark Twain still naively hoped to forestall one. On March 11 he mentioned his wish to visit England and asked Bliss: “Have you heard yet what the possibilities are in the matter of selling our book there?”61 Just what plan they were considering is not known, but it is clear that Mark Twain was trying to protect himself—albeit belatedly. The Routledges stoically refrained from republishing the book because of their desire to develop and maintain good relations with the author, not because of the hazards of competition, which they were well prepared to meet. Perhaps to reassert their moral claim to the humorist's work, they ordered a new edition of JF2, which they received on April 1. This edition, JF4a, contained a “New Copyright Chapter”—the sketch first published in their November 1868 Broadway, “Cannibalism in the Cars” (no. 232).62 Collation shows that JF4a was set from a copy of JF2 and perpetuated most of its few errors while adding several more: Mark Twain did not revise the “copyright chapter” or any other sketch in the book. Although there is no evidence that he authorized the new edition, we can assume that he [begin page 553] endorsed it; in fact the Routledges probably sent him a complimentary copy.

It is not clear whether the Routledges issued JF4a in response to, or in anticipation of, Hotten's piracy, JF3. The records show that Hotten began his edition in February 1870, and did not issue it until sometime in late March or early April. We know that the Routledges first advertised JF4a on April 9, and that they asserted their claim of priority and authenticity by calling it “the only Complete Edition,” which of course implicitly acknowledged competition.63 If their decision to publish a new edition anticipated Hotten, they may have hoped to trap him with the “copyright chapter”; but they were, as we have noted, too late. Hotten's JF3 was set from JF2 and ran no risk of infringement of the Routledges' copyright.

JF3 was only the beginning for Hotten. In March 1870 he had also started work on his edition of The Innocents Abroad. In May he began to advertise it: “A delightfully fresh and amusing Volume of Travel. . . . There has been no work like it issued here for years.”64 And in August and October he finally published his two-volume edition—more than a year after first publication in the United States—and soon made a large sale.65 Despite the obvious financial sacrifice, the Routledges still refrained from publishing a competing edition; they continued instead to work slowly toward an effective sanction from Mark Twain whereby they would secure British copyright and become the “official” English publishers of his future works.

In early March 1871 Mark Twain published a little pamphlet called Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography. Probably because of complications in its production, he failed to notify the Routledges ahead of time, and both they and Hotten yielded to temptation, pirating the [begin page 554] little book in London. By June, however, Mark Twain seemed more alert to the same danger confronting his next book, Roughing It, and began negotiations well ahead of time. “Have you heard anything from Routledge?” he asked Bliss. “Considering the large English sale he made of one of my other books (Jumping Frog,) I thought maybe we might make something if I could give him a secure copyright.”66 His concern was stimulated not only by Hotten's piracy of Innocents, a copy of which he had certainly seen by February 1871, but also by the appearance of a Canadian piracy of the same book.67

By late 1871 Mark Twain had reached an agreement with the Routledges to “simultane” Roughing It in London. Meanwhile Hotten had industriously exploited the numerous sketches that Mark Twain was publishing in the Buffalo Express, the Galaxy, and other papers. Late in November 1870 Hotten had published 10,000 copies of The Piccadilly Annual of Entertaining Literature, which contained (among other things) five Mark Twain sketches from the Galaxy.68 Then late in 1871 Hotten published Eye Openers and Screamers, two little volumes that collected many more of Mark Twain's Galaxy pieces and a few from the Express. Moreover, early in 1872 Hotten announced plans to publish Practical Jokes with Artemus Ward, which turned out to include seventeen more Mark Twain pieces. And in August 1872 he began plans for The Choice Humorous Works of Mark Twain, an immense single-volume collection of all the material he had previously published under separate titles—and then some.

As we shall see, all this furious activity did not ingratiate Hotten with Mark Twain, who earned nothing from such books. Indeed, Hotten's growing catalog of Mark Twain's books soon prompted the author and the Routledges to cooperate on several more “authorized” or “copyright” editions after Roughing It, including a new issue of [begin page 555] JF4a. On 16 May 1872, some 4,000 copies of JF4b were received by the Routledges; they had been printed from the unaltered plates of JF4a, but the two sketches from the Burlesque Autobiography pamphlet were reset and added at the end.69 On JF4b the author finally acknowledged the Routledges in the same way Artemus Ward had acknowledged Hotten: “ ‘Messrs. George Routledge & Sons are my only authorized London publishers.’—Mark Twain.”70 This position was one they were to hold, as it turned out, only very briefly during 1872 and 1873.

The enormous success of the English piracies of JF1 had very little effect on Mark Twain's basic dissatisfaction with the book—a dissatisfaction that arose early and lasted long. When his new friend Mrs. Fairbanks wrote to praise the book as “authentic” in February 1868, he responded with bitter sarcasm:

By late December his bitterness had grown still more emphatic. When Olivia wrote that she had been reading his work, he responded with violent emphasis: “Don't read a word in that Jumping Frog book, Livy—don't. I hate to hear that infamous volume mentioned. I would be glad to know that every copy of it was burned, & gone forever.” And he resolved that he would “never write another like it.”72 The vehemence of this rejection is so remarkable that it is tempting to regard it as merely the result of damaged pride. But there were objective grounds for his unhappiness: he was manifestly dissatisfied with the accuracy of the texts and even with the choice of sketches for a book which, as we have conjectured, was largely the work of his editor, Webb.

The immense task of writing and revising The Innocents Abroad effectively forestalled any plans Mark Twain had to supersede Webb's collection of sketches, but in May 1869, even as he was reading the revised proofs of Innocents in Hartford, his interest in a new sketchbook was rekindling: “Livy dear, please send me that mutilated copy of the Jumping Frog of mine, if it is there—send by express, not mail. It has writing in it & would require letter postage—& it is considered improper to break the law.”73 Apparently Mark Twain had already begun to revise the texts of his twenty-seven JF1 sketches.

Mark Twain's earliest known revisions of JF1 are preserved in a copy of the book now in the Estelle Doheny Collection, St. John's Seminary, Camarillo, California. Like a number of other books in the Doheny collection, this copy of JF1 (here designated JF1MT) was preserved in the author's library at the time of his death:74 the inside front cover is signed “Mark Twain,” and his revisions, in pencil and ink, appear throughout. The date of the revisions cannot be certainly fixed, but he could not have made them before 1869, the date of the title page. [begin page 557] Moreover, the revisions, in their striving for even greater propriety and restraint, seem to accord with Mark Twain's conciliatory attitude in that year—the year of his courtship. Indeed, JF1MT is almost certainly the “mutilated copy” that he asked Olivia to send in May 1869.

Mark Twain singled out eight sketches in the table of contents, using a dash or a plus sign, and he revised four of these in the book itself. Three additional sketches not so marked in the table of contents were also revised, making a total of seven. The revisions vary from the extensive alterations and corrections in “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” to the deletion of merely two sentences in “Depart, Ye Accursed!”: “I have cursed them in behalf of outraged bachelordom. They deserve it” (presumably a sentiment not worthy of a man about to become a husband). Among other changes, he canceled “tearful” and “infernal” in “Whereas” and changed “get up and snort” to “just rair & charge” in “The Christmas Fireside.”75

Despite these meticulous (though uneven) changes, JF1MT was never used as printer's copy for a later edition of Mark Twain's sketches. Its interest lies in the fact that Mark Twain would eventually make many identical or similar changes in collections that appeared in 1872 and 1873. When we do not have his marked printer's copy for these later editions, characteristic changes detected by collation must remain only conjecturally authorial in the absence of corroborating evidence. But when these changes coincide with the autograph evidence in JF1MT, we may be almost certain that they were instituted by Mark Twain. For instance, when in JF1MT he canceled “nearly” and “certainly” in “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” he provided strong evidence that the same changes in the Routledges' 1872 Mark Twain's Sketches were his work.

When The Innocents Abroad was published in August 1869, it soon demonstrated Mark Twain's enormous popularity, selling nearly [begin page 558] 40,000 copies by the end of January 1870. It was on the strength of this showing that Mark Twain decided not only to move ahead with plans for another book like the first one—Roughing It 76—but also to clear the ground for a new book of sketches. “I am prosecuting Webb in the N. Y. Courts,” he wrote Bliss, “—think the result will be that he will yield up the copyright & plates of the Jumping Frog, if I let him off from paying me money. Then I shall break up those plates, & prepare a new Vol. of Sketches, but on a different & more ‘taking’ model.”77

The issue of the JF1 copyright was not resolved until the end of the year—but it was a year that the author filled with ambitious literary plans and a great deal of bargaining with Bliss. Mark Twain's wedding in early February, his obligations to the Buffalo Express, and a series of illnesses in the family were all major distractions. But early in March the author engaged to write short sketches on a monthly basis for the Galaxy magazine, and his agreement with the editors specified that he was to retain the copyright of all his material. On March 11 he told Bliss, “They want a publishing house there to issue have the privilege of issuing the matter in book form at the end of the year in a $1.50 book (250 pp. 12mo,) & pay me a royalty of 20 per cents on each copy sold”—that is, about 14 percent, more than double his percentage on Innocents. Of course, he said, Bliss would “have to have a bid” in the project as well, but he added, “I own the matter after use in the magazine & have the privilege of doing just what I please with it.” Such veiled threats were not, of course, lost on “one of the smartest business men in America” (as Mark Twain described him in November):78 Bliss spent most of the year bargaining with Mark Twain for his exclusive devotion to the American Publishing Company.

Mark Twain clearly understood his position, and his correspondence with Bliss shows that he also knew how to bargain. On March 11 he told Bliss that he had “a sort of vague half-notion of spending the [begin page 559] summer in England.—I could write a telling book.” By April 1 Bliss had taken this bait, for the author reported that his publisher was “very anxious that I should go abroad during the summer & get a book written for next spring.” But on April 23 Mark Twain indicated that he was not quite ready to pursue the English book: “When you come,” he wrote Bliss from Buffalo, “we'll talk books & business. I wish my wife wanted to spend the summer in England, but I'm afraid she don't.” This was tantalizing indeed. In fact, Mark Twain went on to tease Bliss with vague allusions to a variety of projects: “I have a bid for a book from a Philada subscription house offering unlimitedly,” he wrote on May 5, deliberately withholding details. And on May 20 he reported, “Appleton wants me to furnish a few lines of letter press for a humorous picture-book—that is, two lines of remarks under each picture. I have intimated that if the pictures & the pay are both good, I will do it. What do you think of it?” Bliss must have grumbled, for on July 4 Mark Twain backed away from both projects: “I fancy the book you speak of must be the Appleton book,” he wrote, forgetting the offer from the Philadelphia subscription house. “I cannot think of any other, & have no knowledge of any other. But I shall probably never have to do the Appleton book.” The company disliked his terms: “Therefore it is far from likely that any ‘humorous book’ will issue from my pen shortly.”79

Just a few days later, on July 15, this strategy bore its first fruit: Bliss traveled to Elmira, where he and Mark Twain signed a contract for Roughing It which set the author's royalty at 7 ½ percent—an unprecedented figure for subscription publishing. Mark Twain agreed, overoptimistically, to submit the printer's copy within six months.80 But even now that he had formally assumed the burden of writing a second long book, his appetite for other projects was unappeased. He certainly knew, as he told Orion in November, that Bliss was still trying to keep him “from ‘whoring after strange gods,’ which is Scripture for deserting to other publishers,” and his persistent interest in [begin page 560] such projects was in part a means of covert bargaining. By late November, for instance, he had put his “greedy hands on the best man in America,” J. H. Riley, with whom he planned to collaborate on a book about the South African diamond mines. He wrote Bliss demanding not only an advance of $1,500, but a royalty of 10 percent—settling in the end for 8 ½ percent. But bargaining with Bliss was only part of Mark Twain's drive toward other projects: he was fascinated by the prospect of fast, easy money and by the wide publicity he hoped to achieve with “a humorous picture-book”—the kind of publicity he did achieve, for example, with the graphic comedy of his “Fortifications of Paris” (no. 323) in the September 17 Buffalo Express. In fact, as his clippings from the Express and the Galaxy gradually accumulated, he was strongly tempted to reprint them in some spectacular way. On October 13 he wrote Bliss that he had a “notion to let the Galaxy publishers have a volume of old sketches for a ‘Mark Twain's Annual—1871’—provided they will pay me about 25 per cent. That is what they offered once, I believe.” His initial thought was to excuse this project as an ephemeral one: “My idea is to use in this, among other things, some few sketches which will not ‘keep.’ ” But he considered more carefully, canceled the sentence, and put the matter squarely in business terms: “I believe a Christmas volume will out-pay Josh Billings' Allminax. What do you think? Write me at once—& don't discourage me.”81

Evidently Bliss did discourage him, probably by reminding him that the Roughing It contract stipulated that he was “not to write or furnish manuscript for any other book unless for said company during the preparation & sale of said manuscript & book.”82 Roughing It was far from done, and would not be done until October of the following year. So when Webb proposed a revised edition of JF1 in late November 1870, Mark Twain diplomatically declined: “I could not consent to a new edition of the J. F. any time within two or three years without vitiating my contracts with my present publishers & creating dissatisfaction.” And he explained that he would have issued his “Galaxy . . . & other sketches, in a couple of volumes, before this, but [begin page 561] for the reason abovementioned.” This response shows admirable restraint; indeed, on November 14 Mark Twain had told another correspondent that he could not “meddle with the Almanac business with a clear conscience—have had heaps of offers, but that belongs to Josh & I won't touch it.”83 Nevertheless, within a few weeks the temptation had become irresistible, and while he put Webb off with polite excuses, Mark Twain quietly forged ahead with two plans to reprint his sketches: a comprehensive collection with Bliss, and the kind of cheap illustrated pamphlet that had been tempting him all year, with Sheldon and Company of New York.

The production of Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography (BA1), a fifty-page pamphlet, was an experimental interlude in the evolution of Mark Twain's plans to issue an American edition of his sketches. As it turned out, the complications of production with an unfamiliar publisher, the friction created with Bliss, and finally the disappointing sales and hostile reactions of the press were at least momentarily discouraging, and they influenced Mark Twain's attitude toward similar projects in the future. BA1 was not to be the last of such cheap sketchbooks, but as a publishing venture it proved an instructive mistake.

On 8 December 1870 Mark Twain wired a proposal for the pamphlet to Sheldon and Company, his Galaxy publishers, who had been urging him to collect his magazine sketches. Although his telegram is not extant, it seems likely that he proposed essentially what BA1 now contains: one new sketch, “A Burlesque Autobiography” (no. 355); a slightly revised version of “An Awful—Terrible Medieval Romance” (no. 276);84 and a series of cartoons for which he devised the captions, “The House That Jack Built.”85 The audience Mark Twain aimed for [begin page 562] was the holiday crowd—the same that made Josh Billings' Allminax a best seller at Christmas and New Year's.

On December 9 Isaac E. Sheldon agreed to undertake the pamphlet: “We will publish it, and of course do our very best as to getting it out in time &c &c and give you half of all the book can be made to pay. This is much better for you than any copyright we could name, if the book proves a success.” In a postscript Sheldon added, “Should you prefer a copyright we would give 15 per cent on the retail price.” Although Mark Twain himself may have suggested the half-profit arrangement (it was a favorite scheme of his), he ultimately decided instead to take the latter offer, which was the safer if the less profitable of the two. At any rate, Sheldon went on to warn in the same letter that it was “of course late in the season to get out a book and there are always delays we can never calculate on, as each step in the process of manufacturing is made.”86 The author evidently dismissed this caution, for he set out for New York the next day “to issue a pamphlet,” as he told Mrs. Fairbanks. He stayed a week before returning home to Buffalo on December 17, well before the little book was ready to “issue.” Two days later Sheldon assured him that he would “see that the book is copyrighted before it is issued,” and that he would also send “a complete proof . . . before we attempt to print the book.”87 The implication of this letter is that Mark Twain thought, and Sheldon tacitly agreed, that proofs of the book would soon be ready. In reality, however, Mark Twain would see no proofs of the text until sometime in mid-January 1871.

The delay was caused by just those incalculable problems that Sheldon had mentioned on December 9. The drawings for “The House That Jack Built” were to be done by Henry Louis Stephens and engraved by D. B. Gulick, but the drawings were not ready for the engraver until December 22. On that day Sheldon assured Mark Twain that he would send him “proofs as soon as they are engraved, which they promise shall be the end of next week.” And he himself promised, “As soon as the engravings are done I will get the book into type & [begin page 563] have you see the whole before it is printed. You will probably see some changes which can be made to advantage.”88

Mark Twain must have recognized at this point that the little pamphlet could not possibly appear before New Year's, and perhaps not even in January. On December 29 Sheldon reassured him that the unexpected delay would have no effect on overall sales: “I think the book will do quite as well 6 or 8 weeks from this time as it could now. During the month of Jan almost every bookseller is engaged on his inventory.” Sheldon agreed, however, that “it is best to get the book ready just as fast as possible; even if we hold them for a time after they are all made.” And he repeated that “the engrav[ings] are promised for the end of this week.” Sheldon managed to send Mark Twain “proofs of all the cuts” (that is, engravings) on December 31 as promised, and he asked the author to approve and return them: “Please also send in ‘The House that Jack built’ just as you want it set up. I understood that you were to make some changes in it to make it fit this case better. Please also indicate where each cut is to go. . . . As soon as I hear from you, the whole book will go into type.”89

On 4 January 1871 Bliss wrote to inquire after Mark Twain's health. “Have looked for advt. of your pamphlet also,” he said; “Your brother & myself have expected to see it advertised. What is the title?”90 Mark Twain, too, must have wondered about the delay, but he waited until January 15 before writing Sheldon to complain that he had not yet seen any proofs. Sheldon answered on January 18 that he had been delayed by the “stereotypers”: “It was placed in their hands as soon as the cuts were done & it would have gone on at once, but they had a peculiar font of type which I wanted to use, which was then in use; they promised to send me half of the book in type last week Monday. [I]nstead of that I rec'd one sample page last Thursday.” He also admitted that he had not been able to supervise the project as closely as necessary because he had been “upside down moving.”91 Still, Mark [begin page 564] Twain's complaint had some effect: on the next day Sheldon sent “8 or 10 pages of proof,” but he noted, “The stereotyper has forgotten my (your) direction to have each other page a cut. That however can yet be done by simply changing the no on the page.” Evidently the page numbers were changed and the pages imposed in the desired order, for the eleven illustrations appeared distributed throughout the text of the sketches, although not invariably on “each other page.” On January 21 Sheldon indicated that he thought Mark Twain himself was causing delay: “Why do you not, return the proof sent to you some days since? I fear that it may not have reached you.” Sheldon said that to “save time” he planned now to “set up & cast all the balance at once. Any verbal corrections can be made in the plates.”92

On January 25 Orion wrote to report on a new problem. Bliss had encountered Sheldon on the street in New York; he “at first refused to shake hands, being angry about a neglect to answer a couple of letters,” but this petty grievance was soon forgotten in the light of more serious matters. Orion said that the two men had apparently “made it up” when “Sheldon told [Bliss] that the cuts (10 full page) cost him $400, and wanted Bliss to circulate it for him, and he thinks he will do so.” But if Bliss's quarrel with Sheldon was shortlived, he now nursed a small grudge against Mark Twain:

Orion added a mitigating postscript: “Bliss is anxious that my letter should not show any feeling on his part in regard to the Sheldon pamphlet.” Nevertheless, Mark Twain certainly took the objection seriously, for on the envelope of Orion's letter he noted: “Jan. 27—71 I wrote She [1]don to-day protesting against a higher price than 25 [begin page 565] cents for the pamphlet.”93 On January 31 he telegraphed Bliss: “Have an appointment at Grand Hotel eleven tomorrow can you be there at noon.” This appointment was with Sheldon, who had recently occupied new quarters “under the Grand Central Hotel.”94 Mark Twain probably hoped to extract a promise from Sheldon to lower the price of BA1 and to issue only a token number of copies in the offending muslin. Sheldon must have insisted, in turn, that the pamphlet should sell for at least forty cents, and although he agreed to the restricted number of cloth copies, he in fact went on to issue as many as he liked. In 1882 Mark Twain privately threatened to double his royalty on these unauthorized copies: “If I could find out how many cloth-bound books Sheldon sold, I would require him to pay me 25 cents on every one over the 75 copies (he was to bind no more than that.)”95

One more matter almost intervened between BA1 and a breathless public. When Mark Twain returned home from his trip to New York (and Washington, D.C.) he found Olivia dangerously ill with typhoid fever. With his wife apparently near death Mark Twain was struck by how “utterly incongruous” it would be for him to appear as a humorist in the Galaxy memoranda column, and on February 5 he telegraphed Frank Church to ask him to withdraw the department from the March issue and also to “tell Sheldon to stop the book.”96 After some confusion, the department was withdrawn and the request about BA1 passed along to Sheldon, who received it on February 10. Sheldon answered, “The Pamphlet I can hold a few days if you desire it, but a few samples of it have got out. I might hold the Editors copies back, while the distant orders are on their way by freight lines & they will not reach their destination for some time to come.” Then, in an effort to calm Mark Twain's feelings of pending impropriety, he added, “Of course it is universally understood that this book was [begin page 566] written long ago & has been in the press for some time.”97 So much for instant publication.

Because the printer's copy for BA1 does not survive, we cannot know what revisions, if any, Mark Twain made on the proofs. As we have seen, Sheldon was eager to have the electrotype plates made as soon as the book was finally typeset, and he planned to make revisions by altering the plates if Mark Twain did not return the corrected proofs before plating began.98 It is impossible to tell from the copies of BA1 we have examined whether any plate alterations were in fact made. Collation of BA1 with the first printing of “Medieval Romance” in the Buffalo Express shows that Mark Twain made only a few revisions in the sketch, probably when he prepared the printer's copy in early December 1870. A secretarial copy of the manuscript for “A Burlesque Autobiography” does survive, but it was probably not used as printer's copy. Collation of the transcription with BA1 shows that a few small revisions were made before the sketch was printed. These revisions, as well as any last-minute changes in the other two pieces, could have been made at any time before the book was printed in late January or early February.

Precise figures on the sale of BA1 have not been found, but nothing indicates that it quite fulfilled Mark Twain's expectations. He made some effort to publicize the pamphlet in December 1870, when he still thought publication was imminent: “I would like it very much if you would put the above item in your column of little floating paragraphs & general notes,” he wrote Whitelaw Reid of the New York Tribune. A few days later, on December 29, the Tribune complied with an announcement that Mark Twain would “publish a burlesque autobiography, in pamphlet form, in a few days, through Sheldon & Co.” Mark Twain also volunteered to write advertising copy for Sheldon, who replied to his suggestion on December 29: “Your idea is first rate & it is the very thing that I intended to do. We are accustomed whenever we have a book of any account to set up & print off 100 about like the inclosed & send to every paper with which we advertise. . . . Suppose you write out the announcement as you [begin page 567] would like it . . . & we will set it up & send it out thoroughly. I would like to get up just as much interest in advance as possible.”99

By mid-January 1871 Sheldon was using the forthcoming pamphlet to promote the Galaxy, offering a free copy with every four-dollar subscription. Whether this was part of Mark Twain's “first rate” idea is not known, but in any event there seems to have been a sizable prepublication sale. On February 10 Sheldon told Mark Twain that he could not further delay the pamphlet because of Olivia's illness, explaining that “our orders are very large & our promises & contracts are such that it will be possible to hold it but a few days.” On that day Sheldon filed for copyright in his own name, and eight days later—on February 18—two copies were deposited with the Library of Congress.100

Official publication was delayed another two weeks: on March 4 Sheldon announced it in the New York Times. Evidently Bliss had been persuaded to help distribute the pamphlet (as Orion had mentioned in January), for an advertisement in the first issue of his American Publisher boldly trumpeted “Mark Twain's New Book” as the “most humorous . . . published in years.” It bragged somewhat deceptively,

One Hundred Thousand Copies

it is expected will be

Sold Within Ten Days.

A more restrained advertisement in the New York Times one week later reported “forty thousand copies sold in three days.” And the loyal New York Tribune reported on March 10 that “orders for Mark Twain's burlesque biography have been received, it is said, to the extent of 50,000 copies, and his publishers expect to sell 100,000. As Twain gets six cents a copy, he may consider his $6,000 for such a bagatelle rather easily made.”101

[begin page 568]

Reviews were relatively scarce, invariably brief, and, with few exceptions, negative in tone. The New York Tribune and the Boston Evening Transcript made valiant efforts to be amused. BA1 was, according to the first paper,

The Transcript briefly concurred, saying that BA1 was “crammed with fun, of which the illustrations form no small part. The hits with pen and pencil will be enjoyed by all interested in Erie and other Fiskal operations.” But most reviewers could not summon up even that much facetious energy. The Chicago Tribune indicated that “as a whole the work is not up to Twain's average of humor, and suggests, perhaps, that the well has been pumped too long.” Alluding to Mark Twain's “family tree” (a hangman's gibbet), it suggested that “if capital punishment were the penalty of a poor burlesque, he would soon adorn it, for the Autobiography cannot be called a success.” And the editor of Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine in Philadelphia was even more severe: “This autobiography does not do justice to Mark Twain's reputation for humor. The necessity for making a book must have borne very heavily on him to compel him to send before the public such a collection of weak jokes and mild witticisms as this. We do not mean to say that it is not funny, and absurd, or that the reader will not laugh at every page, but it does not do full justice to the author.”102

The Boston Literary World specifically attacked the book as a rather transparent scheme on the publisher's part to reap excessive profits. It said with heavy irony:

The reviewer was more direct in his criticism of Mark Twain, saying that his name raised the “suspicion that the work is one of humor; but the book itself affords not the feeblest fibre of corroboration. . . . As to the literary merit of these effusions, they would have had a more appropriate place in some quack medicine almanac. We are sincerely sorry to see Mark Twain, who has done some admirable work, lending himself to a mere money-catching scheme like this.”103

Mark Twain was anything but indifferent to this sort of criticism. On April 26 he complained to Mrs. Fairbanks that although he was still “pegging away” at the manuscript of Roughing It, he expected it to have “no success” because the “papers have found at last the courage to pull me down off my pedestal & cast slurs at me—& that is simply a popular author's death rattle. Though he wrote an inspired book after that, it would not save him.”104 BA1 had been less than inspired, and Mark Twain was convinced that no financial reward, however large, would be sufficient to mend the wound to his reputation.

Although the profits from BA1 may well have been substantial, they were inevitably of short duration. Sheldon himself explained on April 4 that “the returns for copyright, after the first settlement, will of course not be large, as a book like this has its main sale at [begin page 570] once.” Two days later Mark Twain acknowledged this letter and put his finger on yet another problem: “You intimate that the present pamphlet don't give a man his money's worth, considering the price. I feared that that was so, at first—but you said 40 cents was the cheapest it could be sold at.”105 It was an important lesson.

Albert Bigelow Paine reported that “a year or two” after publication Mark Twain “realized the mistake of this book, bought in the plates and destroyed them.” The author clearly did realize his mistake but the plates of BA1 remained in existence, if not in use, until 1882. Mark Twain, however, seems not to have received any substantial payment from the book after 1874. In September 1882 Sheldon and Company quietly advertised that the plates would be sold at auction, and James R. Osgood, Mark Twain's publisher at the time, offered to buy them, saying that “it would be better that [they] should not fall into the hands of any cheap shyster.” Osgood almost certainly bought the plates and had them destroyed. But Mark Twain's initial impulse was to embarrass Sheldon for alleged nonpayment of copyright. He fashioned an advertisement to be placed in the New York Herald “Personals” column: “Will the publishers, Sheldon & Co., furnish to the undersigned a statement of account (now eight years overdue, although several times demanded,) & accompany it with the overdue cash, or will they not? And will they also be warned & make no attempt to sell certain stereotype plates advertised by them, except to be broken up? Address MARK TWAIN, Hartford, Conn.” On October 21 Osgood reported that Sheldon also had “about 1300 copies paper, and 50 cloth” on hand, for which he was asking a total of fifty-seven dollars (exclusive of copyright).106 Presumably Mark Twain, through Osgood, also bought up and destroyed this remaining stock. He never published the provocative advertisement in the Herald.

Probably because Mark Twain conceived of BA1 as a pamphlet that he could issue in a matter of days, he made no effort to arrange with the Routledges for simultaneous publication in London, and both [begin page 571] they (with BA2) and Hotten (with BA3) soon pirated the little book, although neither undertook to reproduce the cartoons of “The House That Jack Built.” Mark Twain made no contribution to either BA2 or BA3, and the textual differences between them are so slight that we cannot be absolutely sure whether both were set from BA1 or one was set from the other. Routledges' records indicate that a printing of 4,000 was received on 4 May 1871 and another impression of 4,000 at some unspecified later date, for a total of 8,000 copies.107 Hotten's records show that he ordered 5,000 copies of his edition on May 6 and received the sheets on May 15, but 1,000 of these remained unsold by June 1873.108 The Routledges published sometime in the first two weeks of May and sold their pamphlets for sixpence. Hotten must not have published until late in May and likewise sold his work for sixpence, although he also advertised a more expensive binding for three shillings and sixpence. Hotten described the volume as “a very droll book indeed” and claimed that “readers of this Author's ‘Innocents Abroad’ will not be disappointed with any acquaintance they may form with the new book.”109 He also advertised his book as the “Author's Edition, containing twice as much as any other,” because he included what he doubtless regarded as a bonus: in addition to “A Burlesque Autobiography” and “Medieval Romance” he reprinted “Advice to Parents” and “Train up a Child, and Away He Goes”—two sketches that he believed were written by Mark Twain because they had been published in the Buffalo Express, albeit over the signature of Carl Byng.110

The path for a volume of sketches like JF1 but on a “more ‘taking’ model” was cleared in late November and early December 1870. On [begin page 572] November 26 Mark Twain apologized to Webb for instituting legal measures the previous January:

On December 10 the JF1 printer gave Webb a full accounting of the copies printed and bound, and by the middle of the month Mark Twain could report that he had succeeded in buying his “ ‘Jumping Frog’ copyright back again from Webb.” He planned now to “melt up the plates” and begin over again with Bliss. “I gave him his indebtedness ($600,) & $800 cash beside,” he told Mrs. Fairbanks, “for the his share of the copyright & right of publication. Think of purchasing one's own property after never having received one cent from the publication!”111

It is likely that Mark Twain completed these negotiations in New York on the same trip that set BA1 in motion. He had originally planned to travel from New York to Hartford to discuss progress on Roughing It and the proposed book of sketches, but he returned to Buffalo without seeing Bliss. On December 17 he telegraphed him, “Got homesick. Will come shortly with sketches & manuscript.” This trip was delayed until sometime in early January, perhaps indefinitely, but in the meantime Mark Twain set to work in earnest. On December 22 he wrote Bliss again, and his letter was filled with plans for the “real” sketchbook even as he awaited Sheldon's proofs of BA1.

Mark Twain urged Bliss to “make out a contract for the sketch-book (7½ per cent.)”; and he continued to make a distinction between this project and other, cheaper, sketchbooks: “I think of a Jumping Frog pamphlet (illustrated) for next Christmas—do you want it?”112

The publisher answered this letter on December 28, adopting an ironic tone: “Yours of 22nd rec'd. Glad to hear you are progressing with the Books”—a gentle reminder that Roughing It, which Mark Twain had not mentioned, ought to take precedence over the sketchbook. Bliss also apologized for not sending the contracts for this and the Riley diamond-mine book sooner, and promised them the next day. He noted that he would begin to “canvass for Sketchbook as soon as Prospectus is ready for it,” which of course could not be done until Mark Twain submitted at least part of the printer's copy. Bliss also agreed to “have Mullin illustrate the sketchbook,” and congratulated Mark Twain on retrieving the “Jumping Frog” tale. It was here that Bliss rightly foresaw trouble, and in a nearly incoherent paragraph he suggested using the story in the large sketchbook, urged reissuing JF1 from the old plates, and concluded by reassuring the author that he would publish any pamphlet he wanted. His motive throughout was to retain control of Mark Twain's most famous work to date:

Mark Twain was not, however, interested in using the tale in the large sketchbook or in reissuing JF1. Alluding to his current project [begin page 574] with Sheldon, he reiterated his position to Bliss: “If this pamphlet pays, I want to is you to issue Jumping Frog illustrated, along with 2 other sketches for the holidays next year. I've paid high for the Frog & I want him to get his price back by himself. The Sketch Book will be good enough without him.”113 In short, the author regarded his project with Sheldon as an experiment, to be repeated if it turned out profitably. As we shall see, despite his disappointment over BA1 his basic promotional idea of simultaneously issuing cheap sketchbooks and expensive durable ones persisted into 1874 and 1875.

Bliss did in fact forward the contract for the sketchbook on December 29 as he had promised the previous day, and in his covering letter he said, “I mention your altering the old sketches a little to secure a new copyright on them. Would it not be a good plan. You know best, but if you dont do it some scallawag may run us opposition you know, by copying most of the work—& throwing it in the track. If the sketches are altered somewhat & a new copyright got it will hold on them pretty strong.” Mark Twain no doubt agreed with Bliss's suggestion, but he probably didn't need any excuse to revise the sketches for this collection. On January 3 he told Bliss to “name the Sketch book ‘Mark Twain's Sketches’ & go on canvassing like mad. Because if you don't hurry it will tread on the heels of the big book next August. In the course of a week I can have most of the matter ready for you I think. Am working like sin on it.”114

Just two days later he apparently sent part of the printer's copy to Hartford; only the postscript from his letter of transmittal has survived: “The curious beasts & great contrasts in this Pre-deluge article offer a gorgeous chance for the artist's fancy & ingenuity, I think. Send both sketches to Mullen—he is the man to do them, I guess.”115 This postscript alludes to an extract from Mark Twain's long-germinating “Noah's Ark book,”116 which was never published. The author included the extract (calling it “Pre-flood show”) in a list of thirty- [begin page 575] eight sketches which apparently served as the preliminary table of contents for “Mark Twain's Sketches” (see figure 19). The two-page document, now in the Mark Twain Papers, lists thirteen items from the Buffalo Express and ten from the Galaxy. In addition, it includes six items from the Spirit of the Times, the Broadway, Packard's Monthly, the New York Tribune, the Newark (N.J.) Press, and the New York Sunday Mercury, as well as nine that were apparently unpublished: in short, many sketches that were “scarcely known,” either because they had not appeared in the regular Express or Galaxy columns or because they had not been published at all. Mark Twain listed such things as “Great Land Slide” (“The Facts in the Great Land-Slide Case,” no. 286), which had appeared in the Express and would eventually be made part of Roughing It (chapter 34). He listed “Singular Sagacity” and “Dining wh Cannibal,” parts of two “Around the World” letters (nos. 267 and 270), the first of which would also find its way into Roughing It (chapter 61). The unpublished material is less easily identified, but we may conjecture that the four sections of “P.C.S.” were “Pacific Coast Sketches,” either extracted from the Express “Around the World” letters or new reminiscences about the West. “Tom Leathers in Washn” and “Sailor Story” remain unidentified, as does “Fearful Adventure.” All in all, Mark Twain was planning a sketchbook that would indeed “give a man his money's worth.” His own calculation at the top of the first page suggests that he estimated an average length of twelve pages per sketch, for a total of 456 pages, doubtless to be “as profusely illustrated as the Innocents.”

The nature of the printer's copy for this planned sketchbook is clear because two of the pieces Mark Twain prepared at this time have survived: one of them, “Around the World. Letter No. 2” (subtitled “Adventures in Hayti,” no. 264) was not demonstrably included in the preliminary table of contents; the other, “A Ghost Story” (no. 278), was seventh on the list. Portions of both are reproduced in figures 20–21. Mark Twain pasted these clippings to loose sheets, revised them in pencil, and completed the work in his distinctive purple ink of the 1870s, mostly in the margin. On the first leaf of each [begin page 576]

[begin page 577] 1.      Unidentified, possibly “Pacific Coast Sketches” from the “Around the World” letters published in the Express from October 1869 through January 1870 (nos. 263–270).
2.      “The Facts in the Great Land-Slide Case,” Express, 2 April 1870 (no. 286).
3.      “Private Habits of Horace Greeley,” Spirit of the Times, 7 November 1868 (scheduled to appear in the collection of social and political writings in The Works of Mark Twain).
4.      “About a Remarkable Stranger,” Galaxy, April 1871 (no. 358).
5.      Never published, not extant.
6.      “A Mysterious Visit,” Express, 19 March 1870 (no. 285).
7.      “A Ghost Story,” Express, 15 January 1870 (no. 278).
8.      From “Around the World. Letter Number 5,” Express, 18 December 1869 (no. 267).
9.      From “Around the World. Letter Number 8,” Express, 29 January 1870 (no. 270).
10.      “The Legend of the Capitoline Venus,” Express, 23 October 1869 (no. 272).
11.      See first entry above.
12.      See first entry above.
13.      See first entry above.
14.      “Cannibalism in the Cars,” Broadway, November 1868 (no. 232).
15.      “Personal Habits of the Siamese Twins,” Packard's Monthly, August 1869 (no. 237).
16.      “Getting My Fortune Told,” Express, 27 November 1869 (no. 274).
17.      “More Distinction,” Express, 4 June 1870 (no. 307).
18.      “The Latest Novelty. Mental Photographs,” Express, 2 October 1869 (no. 262).
      Appendix:
      Sailor Story—unidentified.
      Map—“Mark Twain's Map of Paris,” Galaxy, November 1870 (no. 324).
[begin page 578] [begin page 579] 19.      “The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract,” Galaxy, May 1870 (no. 291).
20.      “Riley—Newspaper Correspondent,” Galaxy, November 1870 (no. 330).
21.      “A Reminiscence of the Back Settlements,” Galaxy, November 1870 (no. 331).
22.      “Science vs. Luck,” Galaxy, October 1870 (no. 328).
23.      “How I Edited an Agricultural Paper Once,” Galaxy, July 1870 (no. 308).
24.      “Political Economy,” Galaxy, September 1870 (no. 318).
25.      “My Watch—An Instructive Little Tale,” Galaxy, December 1870 (no. 340).
26.      “The Facts in the Case of George Fisher, Deceased,” Galaxy, January 1871 (no. 345).
      “Mark Twain's Map of Paris,” Galaxy, November 1870 (no. 324); canceled.
27.      “The Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation,” New York Tribune, 27 December 1867 (no. 217).
28.      “My Late Senatorial Secretaryship,” Galaxy, May 1868 (no. 226).
29.      “Back from ‘Yurrup,’ ” Express, 4 December 1869 (no. 275).
30.      “Curious Dream,” Express, 30 April and 7 May 1870 (no. 289).
31.      “Journalism in Tennessee,” Express, 4 September 1869 (no. 252).
32.      “A Wicked Fraud Perpetrated on Mark Twain in Newark,” Newark Press, 31 December 1868 (no. 234).
33.      “A Day at Niagara,” Express, 21 August 1869 (no. 241).
34.      Unidentified.
35.      “Jim Wolf and the Tom-Cats,” New York Sunday Mercury, 14 July 1867 (no. 212).
36.      Unidentified.
[begin page 580] [begin page 581] [begin page 582] [begin page 583] [begin page 584] sketch he entered his estimate of the number of book pages it would fill along with another number—“W.A. 13” or “W.A. 15”—which remains unexplained, but may have had something to do with an earlier (or a later) arrangement in the sketchbook.

In addition to mounted clippings, several manuscripts were included in the printer's copy. Mark Twain seems to have asked in his January 5 letter of transmittal that at least these unique items, and perhaps all of the printer's copy, be transcribed to protect against loss: on January 25 Orion wrote Clemens that he had “finished copying the day after mailing my last letter to you,” and he reported that Bliss had started for New York City the “ensuing Monday” (January 16). Bliss presumably carried Orion's transcription with him, for he went in search of the illustrator whom Mark Twain had repeatedly demanded for the sketchbook. Orion said that Bliss “hunted for Mullin and Lant Thompson, or whatever his name is, two days, but returned to Hartford on January 23 empty-handed. “He is going back to-morrow [January 26] and will find Mullin.”117 The sketchbook now seemed clearly on its way: typesetting could begin as soon as the engravings were completed.

But it seems likely that once Bliss had secured Mark Twain's signature on the sketchbook contract early in January 1871, the publisher's main object was met, and other considerations—timing and maximizing profits—came into play. Bliss was certainly assured that Mark Twain would not soon desert him for another publisher, because he was under contract to Bliss for no fewer than three books. But the furious productive energy that Bliss had thus brought under his control now needed to be carefully guided: here was a situation to challenge the publisher's craft. While appearing to comply with Mark Twain's wish to expedite production of the sketchbook, Bliss was actually sowing seeds of doubt, through Orion. On January 24, apparently in response to a letter from Orion (not extant, but probably written about January 14), Mark Twain wrote Bliss: “Orion says you hardly know whether it is good judgment to throw the Sketch Book on the market & interfere with the Innocents. I believe you are more than half right—it is calculated to do more harm than good, no [begin page 585] doubt.” In fact, Mark Twain offered a new timetable for his three projects:

Drop me a line on it.

Orion was likewise asked to respond to this proposal. “About the sketch-book interfering with the Innocents—Bliss says he is going on with the sketch-book, and you will see which is right. The substance is that the new book will outsell the old one, and few people want to buy two books from the same author at the same time.”118 Although Bliss said he was “going on with the sketch-book” (and his pursuit of Mullen indicates that he was), he indirectly argued against it (“you will see which is right”). This subtle discouragement was no doubt motivated by the knowledge that The Innocents Abroad continued to sell more than 1,000 copies a month in 1871, and that a sketchbook published at this time would only detract from the continuing sale, as well as from the prospective sale of Roughing It. Bliss clearly had nothing to gain by executing all three contracts as rapidly as Mark Twain wanted him to, and he doubtless preferred to see Roughing It precede the sketchbook as originally planned. At any rate, the publisher's strategy was totally effective: on January 27 Mark Twain answered Orion's letter by insisting that Bliss put the sketchbook over “till another time,”119 and this policy was adopted. Roughing It became Mark Twain's central literary activity and began to absorb some of the sketches he had planned for the sketchbook, [begin page 586] which would never be published just as the author had planned it in 1870 and 1871.

The pressure on the Routledges to work out an effective agreement with Mark Twain increased late in 1871. On August 21 Hotten bound his first 3,000 copies of Eye Openers: Good Things, Immensely Funny Sayings & Stories That Will Bring a Smile upon the Gruffest Countenance (EOps). And on October 9 he bound his first 3,000 copies of Screamers: A Gathering of Scraps of Humour, Delicious Bits, & Short Stories (Scrs).120 These two small volumes, for which Hotten boldly claimed “copyright,” reprinted most of Mark Twain's contributions to the Galaxy (May 1870–August 1871), along with a few odd sketches from the Buffalo Express, the Chicago Republican, the San Francisco Alta California, and Hotten's own JF3.121 The books were inexpensive (one shilling in wrappers, two shillings and sixpence in cloth), well received, and very popular. The London Sunday Times noted that Scrs was a collection of Mark Twain's “recent and funniest stories”: “The humour of some of these is remarkable. We have laughed over some of the contents of the volume until tears of [begin page 587] irrepressible hilarity have rolled down our cheeks.”122 Hotten had printed 21,000 copies of EOps by 20 October 1872, and 19,000 copies of Scrs by December 9. The plates, slightly modified, continued in use long after they were sold to Ward, Lock and Co. on 29 July 1874.123

The Routledges probably alerted Mark Twain to Hotten's latest ventures by sending him copies of both EOps and Scrs in late 1871, during negotiations to “simultane” Roughing It. The problem posed by these books had little to do with the issue of copyright; rather, it was that Hotten could now advertise seven titles (as he did in both volumes) as the “Works of Mark Twain, Widely known for their fresh and delightful humour.”124 It must have been apparent to the Routledges that if they did not soon take steps to prevent Hotten from single-handedly issuing Mark Twain's works in England, their claim to be the “author's only English publisher” would lose much of its significance. Mark Twain had a corresponding dependence on them: they were his only chance to get fair compensation on any future works that might be republished in England. From this mutual need, we conjecture, an agreement was evidently reached.

The Routledges' copyright edition of Roughing It was the first fruit of their patience, and the initial step in a major counterattack against Hotten. The edition was divided into two volumes, called Roughing It and The Innocents at Home. The first 6,000 copies of Roughing It were, according to the Routledge records, printed by 6 February 1872, and 10,000 copies of The Innocents at Home by February 28; by February 23 another 4,000 of the first volume had been prepared, and as early as April 12 another impression of 4,000 (both volumes) was called for. The sale was brisk and profitable: within a year of publica- [begin page 588] tion in England the Routledges had printed 22,000 copies of each volume.125

The strength of the Routledges' position is suggested indirectly by Hotten's reaction. On 3 February 1872, just before the English edition of Roughing It (volume 1) appeared, he wrote Mark Twain offering to pay an indefinite amount for selections from it: “I see you have a new book in hand ‘Roughing It’ will you oblige by MAILING TO ME ON RECEIPT of this some of the proofs—a few chapters. You may depend upon my dealing honourably with you & I will place to your credit whatever is fair & equitable.”126 Needless to say, Mark Twain ignored this request, not only because of his arrangement with the Routledges but because of his growing animosity toward Hotten. Moreover, the Routledges had a number of other cards to play: before the summer was out they had fully matched Hotten's long list of “Mark Twain's Works,” and they had also consolidated their position with the author.

[begin page 589]

Hotten must have sensed the way things were moving. In early March he announced still another unauthorized volume: “Practical Jokes; or, Mirth with Artemus Ward, and other Papers. By MARK TWAIN.” Hotten's advertisement was enticingly vague: “The connection of two such names as Mark Twain and Artemus Ward will indicate to the reader the pleasant feast in store for him.”127 The reader, however, had some time to wait. Practical Jokes with Artemus Ward, Including the Story of the Man Who Fought Cats (PJks) did not appear until late August 1872. It contained thirty-seven sketches, only seventeen of which were by Mark Twain: they had been drawn from the Express, the Galaxy, and other newspapers, as well as from the Routledges' edition of Roughing It and The Innocents at Home. Hotten eventually published 17,000 copies of PJks.128

Well before Hotten actually issued PJks, the Routledges had brought to bear the full weight of their prestige as the author's official English publishers. Probably sometime in February or March 1872 they solicited a complete and revised edition of Mark Twain's sketches. The author first alluded to this plan in a letter probably written in late March or early April, in which he turned down an offer from the American publisher James R. Osgood to issue a collection of his sketches in the United States: “Indeed I would like to publish a volume of sketches through your house,” he admitted, “but unfortunately my contracts with my present publisher tie my hands & prevent me. I have just made up quite a portly volume of them for [begin page 590] Routledge & Sons, London, but I have to leave my own countrymen to ‘suffer & be strong’ without them.”129 Just how this new Routledge collection was prepared and received sheds some light on the struggle with Hotten and on the republication history of Mark Twain's early sketches.

What Mark Twain called a “portly volume” actually became two volumes, almost certainly at the publisher's behest: A Curious Dream; and Other Sketches (CD) and Mark Twain's Sketches (MTSk). Both volumes were (according to the title page) “Selected and Revised by the Author.” CD contained only fifteen sketches, all of them reprinted in England for the first time; it cost one shilling. MTSk contained sixty-six sketches, including the fifteen new ones reprinted in CD, with the remainder drawn from Galaxy pieces and from older pieces already collected in JF1; it cost two shillings. The Routledges received from their printer 10,000 copies of CD on May 8, but only 6,000 copies of the more expensive MTSk on May 10. They paid Mark Twain £18 10s. for each volume—the same amount they paid him for each of the two volumes Roughing It and The Innocents at Home. Publication must have occurred nearly simultaneously in mid-May 1872, with CD slightly preceding MTSk.130

[begin page 591]

Although the Routledges conspicuously advertised both books as “copyright” editions, their claim (like Hotten's with Scrs and EOps) had moral rather than legal significance: even with such revisions as Mark Twain made in his texts, neither book could be effectively protected by copyright law. Nevertheless, the Routledges could now advertise six titles of “Mark Twain's Works
Routledge's Editions”: JF4b (“With a Copyright Chapter”), Roughing It, The Innocents at Home, BA2, and of course CD and MTSk. By August 24, moreover, they could list two more titles, “The Author's Edition” of The Innocents Abroad and The New Pilgrim's Progress, both “Revised by the Author. With a New Preface, especially written for this Edition.”131 Most of these books proved to be profitable for the Routledges, who continued to sell some of them well into the 1900s. But their initial motive for so many simultaneous publications—eight volumes printed or reprinted in 1872 alone—was to please and impress Mark Twain as well as his British public. The Routledges' eight titles now stood as an implicit answer to Hotten, who by 1872 also had eight ostensible titles but could not claim the author's blessing.

Indeed, it appears that the Routledges encouraged Mark Twain to speak out against Hotten's editions—something he was already inclined to do, for he was greatly angered by Hotten's including in Scrs six sketches that the author claimed (and most scholars now agree) he did not write. His discomfort at being saddled with these sketches was acute and quite justified, not merely an excuse for more publicity. For instance, when the London Spectator belatedly reviewed Scrs on 18 May 1872, they had high praise for what they termed its “excellent nonsense”—sketches like “The Late Benjamin Franklin” (no. 311) and “My Watch—An Instructive Little Tale” (no. 340). But they thought the book “rather a hotch-potch, and of very unequal merit.” “The tales are not all ‘screamers,’ ” they declared: “Some even have a distinctly serious purpose, though put humorously,” while “other papers are of a very vulgar type, such as the one ‘About Barbers,’ ‘Dan Murphy,’ the ‘True Story of Chicago,’ and ‘Vengeance.’ . . . The only piece, however, which seems the result rather of a forced and laboured than a natural drollery is the first, an essay on the nursery rhyme, ‘Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle.’ ” The Spectator thus unknowingly [begin page 592] singled out half of the nonauthorial pieces for its dispraise: the last three mentioned were not by Mark Twain. The Spectator concluded its review by saying, “In a future edition, we trust Mark Twain will carefully weed out the vulgar papers, and the extravaganzas, and the no-sense as distinguished from the nonsense.”132

When the Routledges read this review, they sent a letter of protest to the magazine and a copy of their letter to Mark Twain, hoping to underscore both publicly and privately his need for an authorized English publisher. They quoted the last sentence of the Spectator review and went on to announce:

The “Author's advertisement” was included in most Routledge advertisements as well as in MTSk itself. In writing it Mark Twain was manifestly prompted by Hotten's piracies and mistaken attributions:

This book contains all of my sketches which I feel at all willing to father.

Mark Twain.134

The Spectator published a brief retraction on 1 June 1872: “We are requested to state . . . that several of the papers attributed to Mark Twain in that volume [Scrs] are not by him, and had never been seen by him till that volume appeared. We understand that a volume [begin page 593] of sketches is to be published this week by another publisher, authenticated and revised by the author himself.”135 One week later, on June 8, the Spectator also published a reply from Hotten, who defended his selection of pieces: “Nothing has been issued here by me as ‘Mark Twain's’ which has not already been published in the United States or elsewhere under this signature, or under that of ‘Carl Byng,’ another nom de plume of the same author.”136

But Hotten also criticized the recently published MTSk in a way that tells us something about how Mark Twain prepared the volume:

Nevertheless, collation shows that this is precisely what Mark Twain had done. The convenience of being able to revise his Galaxy pieces in book form had overcome any scruples he may have entertained. We have already conjectured that the Routledges sent him copies of EOps and Scrs in late 1871, presumably as a kind of warning. In March 1872 he must have used these books to fill out the “portly volume” of sketches he was preparing for them.

Hotten was sarcastic in his letter, but he was not bluffing: he had gathered the textual evidence to convict Mark Twain of pirating his own pirate, and he used it as the basis of his allegations in the Spectator. Hotten had obviously compared MTSk with the edited printer's copy for EOps and Scrs, and he reported his findings in withering detail:

Collation confirms everything that Hotten alleged. He wrote the Spectator again later that year: “The punctuation, English orthography, and even our printer's errors all appeared in the new ‘author's revised edition.’ As no denial of my statement has ever appeared in your journal, I suppose its truth will not now be challenged.”139 It never was.

The Spectator did, however, answer Hotten's first letter in a brief editorial comment, alluding to a marked book that must have served as part of the printer's copy for MTSk:

In fact, collation shows that Mark Twain revised copies of EOps and Scrs, deleting eighteen authorial sketches as well as the six nonauth- [begin page 595] orial ones, to create part of the printer's copy for MTSk. In doing so he adapted an English edition of his work to his own purposes, and he accepted many substantive revisions and typographical errors introduced by his English editor, John Camden Hotten.

Mark Twain prepared MTSk for the Routledges almost exactly as Hotten had discerned: in most of the pieces taken from EOps and Scrs he caught only a handful of errors; he retained most changes in wording, many of Hotten's titles, and of course the bowdlerized versions of sketches like “Journalism in Tennessee” (no. 252). He also revised many of the sketches, Hotten's scorn notwithstanding. To fill out these selections he took a copy of JF4a (the second Routledge edition of the Jumping Frog book, sent to him in 1870 or 1871), revised all but a few of sixteen sketches and deleted the remaining twelve, and then “sorted [them] in to give the appearance of a fresh collection.” For most of the fifteen sketches in MTSk which were previously unpublished in England (and ignored by Hotten in his angry Spectator letters), Mark Twain probably raided the contents of his unpublished edition of “Mark Twain's Sketches,” which included all but three of them.141 (The amanuensis copy prepared by Orion probably had an unanticipated use here, for it could have allowed Mark Twain to send printer's copy for the twelve sketches to England while retaining the American sketchbook intact.) Of these fifteen new pieces, nine were first printed in the Buffalo Express, two in the Galaxy, and four others in journals that published Mark Twain more rarely: the Newark (N.J.) Press, the New York Tribune, Packard's Monthly, and the American Publisher. Collation shows that Mark Twain slightly revised these sketches—just enough, perhaps, to frustrate the “scallawag” whom Bliss had envisioned copying the material and threatening the American copyright. We cannot determine exactly when Mark Twain completed his revisions: for the twelve pieces from “Mark Twain's Sketches” it may have been as early as January 1871, when he completed the original printer's copy for Bliss; for the three other pieces it may have been as late as March or April 1872, when he mailed the new printer's copy to the Routledges. All of the printer's copy—the marked [begin page 596] copies of EOps, Scrs, JF4a as well as the new sketches—has been lost. Collation shows that CD, which contained only the fifteen new pieces, was set not from MTSk but from the same printer's copy used for MTSk: either clippings pasted to sheets and revised by Mark Twain, or the amanuensis copy prepared by Orion. This circumstance permits a slightly better reconstruction of the printer's copy for these sketches than can be conjectured for others.

MTSk was indeed a “portly volume” of sketches: some three hundred sixty pages in all, with sixty-six pieces of varying length, ranging in time of composition from “How to Cure a Cold” (no. 63), written in 1863, to “About Barbers” (no. 361), written in 1871. Unlike the contents of the sketchbook Mark Twain had planned to publish in the United States, MTSk included fifteen JF1 sketches; furthermore, it omitted eight pieces that (in the meantime) had been absorbed by Roughing It. But drawing on EOps and Scrs it included twenty-three of the original thirty-eight selections. MTSk was very different from the kind of sketchbook Mark Twain had experimented with in publishing his BA1 pamphlet: it contained no illustrations, and it gave the reader a great deal for two shillings (fifty cents). There is some indication that the author feared his readers might be overwhelmed by so large a collection of detached pieces, but in spite of this fear MTSk made a bold claim on the interest of his English public.142

Mark Twain did not let the matter of his conflict with Hotten stand thus resolved. When he traveled to England in the summer of 1872 (in part to begin work on his book about English manners, but also to meet the Routledges and to support their campaign on his behalf), he launched an attack on Hotten in the Spectator—the first of his many public statements on the problem of international copyright. Citing the “interest of public morality” in the question, he dismissed Hotten's piracies with great bitterness: “I do not protest against” them, he wrote, “for there is no law that could give effect to the protest; and, besides, publishers are not accountable to the laws of heaven or earth in any country, as I understand it.” His real grievance—or at least the one he felt most keenly—lay elsewhere:

[begin page 597]

The image of Hotten idiotically drooling unwanted “chapters” into the canon was but one of Mark Twain's unflattering fantasies about the publisher; the other was a direct allusion to EOps and Scrs. He envisioned an imaginary title page with “a picture of a man with his hand in another man's pocket, and the legend ‘All Rights Reserved.’ ”143

Given such antipathy, one may well wonder why Mark Twain adopted Hotten's texts, bowdlerization and all. Was this mere expediency, or was there a more deliberate method in Mark Twain's “unreasonable” behavior? A partial answer may be inferred from a manuscript in the Mark Twain Papers—another quite vicious attack on Hotten, probably written in 1872 but never published. In this manuscript Mark Twain reported, as part of his vilification, that “Bret Harte says Hotten not only gives him the benefit of idiotic explanatory notes, but furnishes other notes in which he apologizes for Harte's western indelicacies of speech. Hotten cleanses me carefully before spreading me before the British public, but I suppose it rather benefits me than otherwise I doubt I suspect he leaves more dirt by contact of his person than he removes from me by his labor.”144 Although Mark Twain revised his words to prevent any compliment to Hotten, the canceled passage shows that the author recognized and endorsed the kind of “cleansing” that Hotten had given him. Further- [begin page 598] more , Mark Twain's own revisions of the sketches included in MTSk show the same spirit of restraint that Hotten thought necessary before spreading this western humorist “before the British public.”

Indeed, the course of Mark Twain's revisions—from JF1 through MTSk, and then later in Choice Humorous Works and finally Sketches, New and Old—was always toward progressively more restraint. This is a complex phenomenon, but one of its fundamental causes was Mark Twain's extraordinary sensitivity to the kind of audience he was addressing: he was keenly aware that an expression admissible in the American West might be unacceptable to easterners, while something admissible in the East might have to be modified for British and Continental readers. When he was a newspaper man in Nevada, he could be defensively proud of his “vulgar” language. For instance, sometime in January 1864 (while Mark Twain was in Carson City) an unwary compositor on the Territorial Enterprise silently altered Mark Twain's “devil” to “d——1,” and the author responded in print:

Yet this defiant stance could not be maintained when Mark Twain sought literary fame in the East and in England. Hotten's “cleansing” was the one welcome part of his editions, and Mark Twain accepted it just as he would other “literary” or “editorial” criticism from friends and colleagues. The list of such critics is long, and in these years includes Mary Mason Fairbanks, Emily Severance, Pamela Clemens, Jane Clemens, Olivia Clemens, Bret Harte, and William Dean Howells. To these we must now add Charles Henry Webb and John Camden Hotten. These critics varied widely in their motives and perspicacity, [begin page 599] but in one sense what they all had in common was a sensitivity to “the language of the vulgar, the low-flung and the sinful, and such as will shock the ears of the highly civilized.” As we have seen, Mark Twain initiated the effort to “civilize” his language and humor in JF1, and he was assisted in this step by Webb. We know that in 1868 and 1869 Mark Twain carried out—following the specific recommendations of Mrs. Fairbanks, Harte, and Olivia—a wholesale revision of the Alta California and Tribune letters for The Innocents Abroad; and after he had prepared MTSk for the Routledges in March 1872, he undertook (in May and June) to revise the text of Innocents again, deliberately modifying it for a British audience. In all these books he weeded out much of the slang and profanity, and moved the general tone of discourse toward a distinctly more restrained level. His apprentice work, and his “usual frank and open manner,” had been left far behind.146

Mark Twain's attack on Hotten in the Spectator was preceded by a visit to the publisher on 7 September 1872. On that day Hotten told Ambrose Bierce that Tom Hood and Mark Twain had just visited him together, pretending that Mark Twain was in fact “Mr. Bryce.” “I suppose the joke wd have succeeded, but I at once brought out my portrait of Mark Twain, & this did the business, altho ‘Bryce’ intensified his sternness & swore—at least he asseverated—he was of that ilk to the last.” When Hotten responded to Mark Twain's Spectator letter on September 28, he alluded to this hoax and suggested (to defend his reprinting the “Carl Byng” material) that Mark Twain had recently shown a “taste for many noms de plume,” including “Mr. Bryce.” And on October 12, Hotten carried the joke further into the enemy's camp, announcing “Mr. Bryce's Joke-Book. The most won- [begin page 600] derful Joke-Book ever issued in this or any other country. It is,—well, readers must see it and judge for themselves. The work is placed under the distinguished patronage of ‘Mr. Bryce,’—the latest nom de plume of that great Humourist, Mark Twain. If the authorities permit it, the work will be entitled ‘Awful Crammers!’ ”147

Mark Twain was so troubled by this advertisement—or conceivably by another less facetious advertisement for a collection of his sketches which has not been found—that he offered Hotten his surrender. On November 8 he made a second visit to the publisher and, finding him absent, left a message. Hotten replied the same day:

[begin page 601]

The spectre of seeing still more nonauthorial—or perhaps merely “uncleansed”—work republished in England under his name had momentarily overcome the author's loyalty to the Routledges and led him to volunteer to revise and correct Hotten's book.

The volume in question was surely The Choice Humorous Works of Mark Twain (HWa), on which Hotten had started work in mid-August 1872.149 Mark Twain probably never replied to Hotten's letter—he may never have received it—for he was “called home by a Cable Telegram” on the same day.150 Although Hotten clearly had most of HWa in type by early November, he delayed publication until late March 1873 in order to complete a long biographical essay on Mark Twain, which appeared as the introduction. There is no indication that Mark Twain revised the sheets at this time.151

HWa was an immense volume, costing seven shillings and sixpence, in which Hotten gathered together all of the Mark Twain material he had previously printed in smaller volumes. His introductory biographical sketch (40 pages) was followed by the complete, unrevised text of The Innocents Abroad (340 pages), which in turn was followed by one hundred seven sketches (240 pages). Collation shows that printer's copy for these sketches was made up in part from JF3, EOps, Scrs, and PJks. Hotten reprinted most of JF3 and EOps, omitted the six non-authorial sketches in Scrs, and retained about half of the sketches in [begin page 602] PJks. He also added several sketches from various periodicals, and he quietly reprinted seven of the fifteen new sketches that the Routledges and Mark Twain had “copyrighted” for MTSk and CD.152

Hotten received 2,000 copies of HWa in sheets on 20 March 1873, and by late October all but 229 of these had been sold.153 He failed, however, to see a second impression of his large collection: Hotten died on 14 June 1873.154 He was succeeded by his assistant, Andrew Chatto, who (in partnership with W. E. Windus) soon approached Mark Twain about the author's original offer to revise and correct the contents of HWa. On November 25 Chatto wrote:

Chatto accordingly sent the folded and gathered sheets of HWa to Mark Twain, who was again in London, and the author proceeded to revise and correct them extensively. The corrected sheets served as printer's copy for Chatto and Windus' reissue of the volume, HWb, in early April 1874, and are preserved in the Rare Book Division of the New York Public Library. All of Mark Twain's autograph changes are reported in the historical collations for the present edition, identified by the symbol HWaMT.156 Hinman collation of HWa against HWb [begin page 604] shows that the printers altered the original plates to incorporate Mark Twain's revisions and corrections: sometimes this meant resetting only a few lines or words on a page, but occasionally whole pages or large parts of pages had to be reset because Mark Twain deleted entire sketches and heavily revised others.

Mark Twain began his revision by reading and correcting Hotten's long biographical sketch. Although he found several passages that he said were untrue (“& would be useless rubbish IF true”), he was on the whole quite favorably impressed. “This is a well written biographical sketch & ought not to be disfigured by this sort of thing,” he wrote after canceling an offending passage. “If Hotten wrote it I wholly lay aside the ancient grudge I bore him. However, I did that when he died.” Mark Twain had not begun to correct the sketches, however, and his patience was as yet untried.

Mark Twain ignored the text of The Innocents Abroad, except to delete five illustrations he considered in bad taste,157 and concentrated instead on the short pieces. He deleted seventeen sketches: some because they were nonauthorial or too completely corrupted; others because they seemed “juvenile” or “puerile,” embarrassing relics of his apprenticeship.158 The violence of his rejection of early material is remarkable: “A New Biography of Washington” (no. 183) was “rubbish . . . leave it all out.” “An Open Letter to the American People” [begin page 605] (no. 181) was also “rubbish—leave it out.” “Washoe.—‘Information Wanted’ ” (no. 75) was “puerile hogwash”; “Origin of Illustrious Men” (no. 193) was “literary vomit”; and “Earthquake Almanac” (no. 122) was “puling imbecility.” All five of these had first been collected in JF1. “The Story of Joseph” (extracted by Hotten from an Alta California letter of 12 January 1868) was “hellfired rubbish.” Even some relatively recent material from the Galaxy was found wanting: “A Book Review” (no. 351), for instance, was dismissed as “d—d rubbish—leave it out”; “The Reception at the President's” (no. 325) was also omittable “rubbish.” Most emphatically, however, he canceled a sketch that Hotten had titled “On Letter Writing,” saying in the margin:

The sketch in question, originally titled “One of Mankind's Bores” (no. 354), first appeared in the Galaxy: Hotten reprinted it in PJks, then in HWa, virtually without change. Mark Twain's illusion that an editor was to blame for work that now struck him as embarrassingly youthful may have made the confrontation with his apprentice work more bearable.

Mark Twain also revised the language and scope of pieces that he decided to retain in the collection. “Burlesque ‘Answers to Correspondents’ ” (no. 201) was again shortened, as it had been when he revised MTSk the previous year. Indeed, he sometimes managed to duplicate his changes with uncanny precision,159 just as he corrected typographical errors, restoring the original word or even—when the sense required it—the original punctuation. He corrected British practices [begin page 606] that were always annoying to him: “I say a hundred,—not an hundred, like [a] d—d fool.” Correcting Hotten's “proprietors” to “proprieties,” he remarked that “the proof-reading on this book must have been very hurriedly done, or else done by a novice”; and he wrote, then canceled, a more pointed remark: “I hope the new firm has hired a proof-reader instead of a shoemaker.”

Although Mark Twain confined himself almost without exception to corrections and revisions which affected meaning, he did try to revise the system of paragraphing that had been imposed on one of the sources of printer's copy for HWa, Hotten's earlier collection PJks. His changes reversed Hotten's editing and often restored the original paragraphs. “Make ONE paragraph of this,” he noted on page 390 of HWaMT; and on the next page asked, “Why is this d—d paragraph split in two?” His notes continue in the same vein throughout the book: “Run in—all one ¶”; “Run this into the preceding Paragraph—I wonder what besotted ass punctuated this edition.” His anger gradually increased: “No Paragraph—may God eternally roast the man who punctuated this book.” On pages 423–424 he repeated over and over again, “All one paragraph”; “All one paragraph”; “All one paragraph”; and on page 480, “Run this & the next paragraph together. I wish this fool was in hell.” Finally, on page 551, he wrote, “I do hope the man is in hell that paragraphed this edition.”

Despite his violent criticism of Hotten's editing, Mark Twain could not hope to restore his original texts. “Journalism in Tennessee” (no. 252), which Hotten himself had singled out as an example of his bowdlerizing, was transmitted from EOps through HWa into HWb essentially as the editor had left it. Indeed, in some sketches Mark Twain furthered Hotten's attempts to modify his strong or vulgar language for more fastidious audiences. He deleted allusions to “slobbering” and to the man who “blew his nose on my coat tail.” The “spittoon” became a more respectable “cuspidor”; the “blowing of noses” became simply “barking”; and “victims of consumption” became merely “patients.” Even the vaguest hint of the scatological was subject to removal: “diarrhoea? dysentery?” became the deadlier but cleaner “cancer? consumption?” He canceled or replaced “vile” several times, along with irreverent allusions to hell or swearing: such words as “infernal,” “diabolical,” or “cussed” were deleted; “swear” [begin page 607] became “rage”; “blasted” became “single”; “cursing” became “raving”; and “d——d” became “hanged.”

When Mark Twain retained sketches in HWb which Hotten had originally taken from the Jumping Frog book, he often found that they needed more such pruning than later material did—in spite of the fact that he had already gone over them once when preparing JF1. For example, in “The Spiritual Séance” (no. 202) he deleted “or perdition, or some of those places” and changed “infernal” to “disgraceful,” “hell” to “Tophet,” “damned” to “lost,” “perdition” to “the nether world,” and “damnation” to “destruction.” He made the sketch into a piece that (in the words of the Saturday Review) could “be read aloud, without missing a word, by the most fastidious mother to a family circle.” The same man who, in the privacy of the printing house, repeatedly wished Hotten in hell, eternally roasting for his absurd punctuation, carefully eliminated such words and allusions from his public, literary utterances.

Chatto and Windus published HWb—“Revised & Corrected by the Author,” as Mark Twain wrote on the HWaMT title page—in early April 1874. Thus in England there were two contemporaneous editions of Mark Twain's sketches—MTSk and HWb—published by rival firms, both containing numerous corrections and revisions by the author together with the editorial contributions of Charles Henry Webb and John Camden Hotten. Their contents varied slightly (HWb was larger by twenty-four pieces, and of course The Innocents Abroad), but each had taken its selection of Galaxy pieces from Hotten's EOps and Scrs, and each contained at least some of the newly revised pieces that Mark Twain had also published in CD, as well as independently revised texts from JF2 and JF3. Sketches that Mark Twain had revised for MTSk he often revised again for HWb, making similar, sometimes identical changes. All of the texts suffered the usual deterioration in accidentals: some of the sketches in JF1 were reprinted in MTSk and HWb for the fourth or fifth time. And many of the sketches had been heavily edited by Webb or Hotten, as well as by the author himself. Mark Twain added the final touch to this extraordinary situation the following year: in late 1875 he issued an American edition of his sketches called Sketches, New and Old, which drew upon MTSk and HWb for most of its printer's copy.

[begin page 608]

Before Mark Twain went on to produce Sketches, New and Old, however, he made yet another excursion into the realm of the cheap pamphlet. Shortly after Roughing It was published in February 1872, the author returned to the projected American edition of sketches by reviewing the printer's copy he had submitted to Bliss in early 1871. On March 21 he told the publisher that he had at last “sat down in earnest & looked the new book through,” and had decided to stand by his original decision to leave out the “Jumping Frog” sketch.160 As we have seen, the English editions CD and MTSk soon intervened and siphoned off some of his copy in late March and April. Mark Twain also spent part of May and June preparing a revised edition of The Innocents Abroad for the Routledges, and shortly afterward decided to visit England in part to support their efforts on his behalf. Still, on August 7, he tried to prod Bliss into some sort of commitment to the American sketchbook: “Hurry up your figuring on the volume of sketches,” he wrote, “for I leave for England in 10 or 12 days to be gone several months.”161 But Bliss's “figuring” was not soon completed, and when Mark Twain returned to the United States later that year he was preoccupied with other matters, chiefly The Gilded Age. Three months after his return, Bliss must have inquired after the sketchbook and was told: “Can get sketches ready any time, but shall wait awhile, as I have good hopes of finishing a book which I am working like a dog on—a book which ought to outsell the sketches, & doubtless will.”162 The Gilded Age, like Roughing It in 1871, now pushed the sketchbook to one side. Indeed, in January 1873 Mark Twain seemed at least momentarily content with the English editions of his sketches. In an autobiographical essay written for Charles Dudley Warner he [begin page 609] remarked, with some pride, that “in England the Routledges & Hotten have gathered together & published all my sketches; a great many that have not appeared in book form here. There are four volumes of these sketches.”163

In May 1873, Mark Twain returned for a second visit to England, possibly intending to work on his book about English manners, but primarily to see The Gilded Age through the rigors of British publication and copyright. Once there, however, he was persuaded by the London representative of the New York Herald to write a series of newspaper letters about the Shah of Persia—and this endeavor reignited his old flame, the project of a cheap pamphlet of sketches. On June 18, as he began writing the first of five long letters (“O'Shah”), he told Bliss to “seize them as they appear, & turn them into a 25 cent pamphlet (my royalty 10 per cent) & spread them over the land your own way, but be quick! Don't let it get cold before you are out. I suggest that you disseminate them by means of the news companies.”164 By July 7 he had completed his last letter to the Herald, and he now began to consider filling out the little book with additional material. He wrote Bliss:

By this time Mark Twain had gone so far as to write a prefatory note, “To the Reader,” which deprecated the Shah letters and offered his excuse for republishing them. He said he was concerned about copyright, and he warned his public that he had added to the letters “certain sketches of mine which are little known or not known at all in America, to the end that the purchaser of the pamphlet may get back a [begin page 610] portion of his money and skip the chapters that refer to the Shah altogether.”165

The Shah pamphlet never materialized as Mark Twain planned it in 1873, but several things about this plan are worth noting. Mark Twain designated MTSk, the only readily available collection of his short pieces, as the source of printer's copy, but he seems not to have been averse to letting Bliss make the selection of sketches on his own. The idea of publishing “a good fat 25 cent pamphlet” with an entirely new sketch included shows that Mark Twain had learned something from his failure with the too expensive—and too thin—BA1, but the resemblance of the new sketchbook to this earlier volume is unmistakable. The insistence on twenty-five cents as the maximum price, the requisite speed of publication, the use of news companies to achieve a spectacular distribution, and the addition of a single new sketch to palliate republishing older material—all these elements are reminiscent of BA1. By July 27 Mark Twain's confidence in the project had waned, and he urged Bliss not to advertise the pamphlet or send it to the newspapers because, he said, he wanted it “to pass unnoticed.”166 The project died a quiet death while Mark Twain spent the rest of 1873 lecturing in England and arranging for simultaneous publication of The Gilded Age, taking extraordinary pains to coordinate the Routledges' edition with Bliss's.167 As we have seen, in December 1873 he also agreed to revise the sketches in HWa for Andrew Chatto.

The idea of a twenty-five-cent sketchbook persisted into 1874 and, indeed, beyond that year. Mark Twain returned to the United States in late January 1874: he had abandoned the book about England by June 1873168 and had published The Gilded Age in December of that year, and he now turned his attention once again to an American edition of sketches. On 25 February 1874 he told Mrs. Fairbanks about [begin page 611] his newest scheme: “I am preparing several volumes of my sketches for publication, & am writing new sketches to add to them.”169 He had evidently revived the notion of issuing not one, but a series of pamphlets (“several volumes”) reminiscent of Josh Billings' series of Allminax. The only result of this plan was a thirty-two-page papercovered brochure, “Number One” of Mark Twain's Sketches (Sk # 1). Sk # 1 was electrotyped and printed by a now obscure firm, Hutchings Printing House of Hartford, and it was published by the American News Company of New York, sometime in late May or early June 1874. The little pamphlet manifestly failed to satisfy the author's expectations for it, and no “Number Two” was ever issued—although it seems likely that Mark Twain had already begun preparing copy for it in 1874.

Sk # 1 is the Shah book without the Shah letters: it cost only twenty-five cents, it was distributed by the news companies, and it contained three new sketches “From the Author's Unpublished English Notes,”170 in addition to ten items reprinted from the Routledge edition of his sketches, MTSk. Sk # 1 was also the fulfillment of Mark Twain's ambition, dating from December 1870, to publish a “Jumping Frog pamphlet (illustrated),”171 for among the sketches reprinted from MTSk was a slightly revised version of the author's most famous sketch, illustrated by R. T. Sperry, who also produced the cover design: a cigar-smoking frog sitting underneath a toadstool, contemplating an edition of Mark Twain's Sketches (see figure 22).

Sperry also produced eleven additional pictures for other sketches in the collection, but, like the Hutchings Printing House, he too remains obscure. In fact, almost nothing is known about how Sk # 1 was planned, what Mark Twain's arrangements with the illustrator and publisher were, what rationale he pursued in selecting material, or even when or whether he read proof. Only a small portion of what appears to be the printer's copy (the manuscript for “A Memorable Midnight Experience”) has survived, and there is so little correspon- [begin page 612]

[begin page 613] dence about the pamphlet that we cannot even be sure when Mark Twain submitted that copy. The evidence of collation, some scattered documents, and a few letters shed only a little light on this mysterious project.

Mark Twain probably began work on the printer's copy in February 1874, when he told Mrs. Fairbanks that he was writing “new sketches” for the pamphlet series. But none of the new pieces in Sk # 1 was in fact written at this time: all of them came from the abandoned book about England, and had been written in 1872 or 1873. Moreover, Mark Twain did not spend a great deal of time revising the sketches he reprinted from MTSk: only four of these seem to have been revised by him, and these were not extensively altered. Collation shows that he made a few changes in “Depart, Ye Accursed!” (no. 199), “Misplaced Confidence” (no. 296), “A Reminiscence of the Back Settlements” (no. 331), and “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” (no. 119). The overall pattern of cleansing is familiar, but was less severely pursued: “spittoon” became “cuspidor”; “degraded” became “profligate”; “vile” was omitted; and several allusions to cursing chambermaids “in behalf of outraged bachelordom” were dropped. Mark Twain tinkered with the dialect spellings in the frog sketch, apparently altering “wan't” to “warn't,” “again” to “agin,” and “far” to “fur.” He changed “slop-bucket” to “slop-jar” (a delicate refinement), “big funeral” to “lurid funeral,” and probably tinkered with the paragraphing as well. We cannot tell whether all of these alterations were made in the printer's copy, because collation of the manuscript for “A Memorable Midnight Experience” against Sk # 1 suggests that Mark Twain probably revised his pamphlet in proof—changing in this sketch, for example, “splendid” to “noble,” “generation” to “long year,” and “latest novelty” to “latest thing.”

We do not know when Mark Twain read proof, but it was almost certainly sometime before May 1, for on that day he wrote William A. Seaver, editor of Harper's Monthly, asking him to reprint one of the items planned for Sk # 1 (“Misplaced Confidence,” no. 296) in the “Editor's Drawer.” Mark Twain had evidently seen the sketch attributed to someone else in a country newspaper and felt the potential embarrassment: “I wouldn't make the suggestion at all,” he told Seaver, “but for the fact that I am going to publish my sketches, & if this sketch is already electrotyped it will be too late to leave it out & I [begin page 614] shall seem to be stealing from a pauper.”172 Although he remained unclear about the precise stage of production, he seems to have felt that electrotyping was imminent.

Electrotyping may have been completed by early May, but the plate for the cover illustration was not. On May 7 Mark Twain wrote to A. R. Spofford, Librarian of Congress: “I enclose design of a Pamphlet Cover, upon which I desire a copyright. Also, the title-page of the Pamphlet—upon the Contents of which I likewise desire copyright.” What he sent was, in fact, an early print of the engraved cover, lacking “No. 1” and “Price 25 Cents” in the top margin and (of course) the copyright notice at the bottom, as well as the list of sketches and appropriate page numbers under “Contents of No. 1” (see figure 22).173 The last stages of production were yet to be completed. Copyright was officially entered on May 9, but it was not until June 4 that two copies of the pamphlet itself were deposited with the Library of Congress.174 The incomplete title page, lacking the specific sketches to be included, and the month-long delay between copyright and actual publication both suggest that there were unexpected problems with Sk#1. Indeed, on May 10 Clemens wrote Orion that his “pamphlets” were “delayed unreasonably,” and that “everything goes wrong & I'm in a never-ending state of harassment.” The precise cause of this delay is not known—it could have been any of the things that had plagued the earlier experiment in instant publication, BA1. By May 20 Mark Twain had at least resolved his problem with “Misplaced Confidence”: Seaver had written promising to do his best with Harper's. Mark Twain replied, “I'm ever so much obliged to you for fixing up that thing for me—& if it don't get into print I will curse other people, not you.”175 Fortunately, no further cursing was required: the sketch appeared in the July Harper's, shortly after Sk # 1 was published, evidently in time to prevent any misunderstanding about Mark Twain's right to republish it. Harper's introduced the piece with a wry explanation, “The Galena editor who published that funny thing about the Sunday-school superintendent's remark to his scholars about the steamer did not remember how good the original [begin page 615] was, written by Mark Twain, and published three years ago in London.”176

Mark Twain's attitude toward the illustrations of Sk #1 is not well documented, but he must have been involved with approving what Sperry produced. The author was, presumably, happy to have his own map of Paris reproduced from the Buffalo Express, and he undoubtedly approved of two illustrations in “A Memorable Midnight Experience”: both were copied from drawings he himself had made in the manuscript. Moreover, we can infer that Mark Twain was proud of the cover illustration, for he showed a strong proprietary interest in it. When he received notification of his copyright from Spofford, Mark Twain wrote back, this time on May 21: “I lately copyrighted, as proprietor, an Engraved Design for Cover of ‘Mark Twain's Sketches,’ & am informed from your office, that I can have evidence of said copyright in the form of a certificate by paying 50 cents more. I would like to have the certificate, & so enclose the 50 cents in this letter.”177

Still less (if less be possible) is known about the pamphlet's reception by the press, its sale, or even what royalty Mark Twain made on each copy. He probably got the 10 percent he had planned to charge Bliss on the Shah pamphlet, but no contract or letter of agreement has been found. The apparently universal silence observed by the newspapers may indicate that the little brochure was simply too slight to be noticed at all, but this seems unlikely, because similar slight ventures by Thomas Nast were widely remarked upon. The silence may mean, on the other hand, that Mark Twain got cold feet at the last moment and deliberately discouraged reviews, as he had in fact contemplated doing with the Shah pamphlet, which was to “pass unnoticed” without “a copy [sent] to any newspaper.”178 No reviews have been found, and no publishing records have survived. Nevertheless, it seems clear that Mark Twain made less from the sale than he hoped, and that he had at least a temporary change of heart about such projects. Less than a year after the publication of [begin page 616] Sk#1, Mark Twain told Dan De Quille: “Hang it, man, you don't want a pamphlet—you want a book—600 pages 8-vo, illustrated. There isn't a single cent of money in a pamphlet. Not a single cent. But there's money in a book.”179

Mark Twain carefully copyrighted Sk#1 in the United States, but he made no effort whatever to copyright the contents, even the new material, in England. On 20 June 1874, three weeks after publication, Edmund Routledge wrote him to say that he had “just received and read No 1 of Mark Twain's Sketches which contains 3 papers . . . from your unpublished English Notes.” Routledge added that he was “sorry you should thus forfeit your copyright in these papers here, as the result will be that your book on England will be damaged,” and he made a generous offer to “buy electros of the cuts of this edition of the Sketches as they appear.” Routledge said further that he hoped the author would “arrange this matter for us; but at the same time. I hope you will not issue any new work in the States without giving us plenty of time to secure copyright on it here.”180 The Routledges did not reprint any part of Sk#1, with or without illustrations. Having already invested a great deal of time and energy in securing Mark Twain's cooperation, they were perhaps unwilling to offend him with a piracy—but they were also made uneasy by the carelessness he showed about British copyright, a carelessness they rightly understood as a tacit movement toward outright defection.

What the Routledges could not know, and what Mark Twain probably never explicitly told them, was that there would be no occasion to send electros of the illustrations for “this edition of the Sketches” as they appeared, for Sk#1 was the last as well as the first in the series. Three years after publication, on 22 August 1877, some portion of the initial printing evidently remained unsold. William C. Hutchings (presumably of “Hutchings Printing House”) told Mark Twain on that day that he had been offered $300 to dispose of “the entire lot of ‘Sketches’ pamphlets to the Aetna Life Ins. Co.,” for which Hutchings was then an agent in New York City. He explained, “They will print their advertisement on the back cover page, as per enclosed sample, (nothing printed on the inside covers,) and circulate the pamphlets at convenience.” Hutchings added significantly, [begin page 617] “I hope you have no objection to my realizing as above on what is absolutely dead property to me otherwise. It's a small amount, comparatively, but situated as I am at present the $30000 will be a perfect God-send.”181

Mark Twain seems to have made no objection to this plan, and Aetna did indeed buy the remaining sheets and reissue Sk#1 with its advertisement on the cover. Mark Twain's acquiescence in this blatantly commercial scheme suggests that he may well have felt some sort of responsibility toward Hutchings: less than a year after he published Sk#1, Mark Twain set about publishing a book of sketches that was designed to include all but one of the pieces printed or reprinted in Sk#1, effectively reducing its value to zero. This large, fully illustrated American edition appeared in September 1875, and it arose in part out of the belief that Mark Twain had expressed to Dan De Quille: “There isn't a single cent of money in a pamphlet. . . . But there's money in a book.”

Sketches, New and Old (SkNO) was Mark Twain's most ambitious, most thoroughly sifted, and most fully revised collection of his apprentice work. It was also his final one. Alone among the sketchbooks considered here, SkNO became part of the official Writings of Mark Twain which the American Publishing Company began to issue in 1899. It was reprinted several times between 1875 and 1899, and it stood, in the author's lifetime, as the only authorized and widely available edition of sketches written before the author was forty years old.

SkNO may be said to have originated late in 1870 with Mark Twain's plan to publish a collection of his early short work which, as he told Bliss, he wanted “as profusely illustrated as the Innocents.”182 This book, however, had been repeatedly postponed, partly by the demands of two long narratives, Roughing It and The Gilded [begin page 618] Age, and partly by the challenge and opportunity posed by Hotten and the Routledges. The American sketchbook had had to compete, moreover, with an alternative plan many times revived: the cheap illustrated pamphlet that Mark Twain never tired of projecting. Nevertheless, such pamphlets were more than an irrational obsession, for they were to some extent designed to avoid an unintended effect of “portly” volumes like MTSk, and even like JF1: the problem of maintaining interest in separate sketches unsupported by any “narrative plank.” By restricting the number of sketches, charging a small price, and using ample illustration, Mark Twain hoped to recycle some of his sketches in palatable, profitable doses. When Sk#1 failed to produce the expected financial reward, however, he turned again to the original conception of 1870—not without reservations, and with a rather half-hearted enthusiasm. In March 1875, shortly after completing the printer's copy for SkNO, Mark Twain told his friend Dan De Quille (who was thinking of publishing a sketchbook of his own) what he had learned from several years' experience:

This method is, of course, the basis of the form of The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It. The implication of Mark Twain's comments, however, is that he did not regard SkNO as a work of real importance, even as he was in the process of publishing it. Indeed, throughout these months he was far more seriously preoccupied with writing his first long fictional narrative, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Mark Twain's interest in an American edition of sketches was stimulated late in 1874 when he began to think of such a book as a way to transcend subscription-house publishing altogether. As early as March 1874 he had become openly disdainful of the “wretched paper and vile engravings” that seemed the inevitable accompaniment [begin page 619] of subscription books,184 and in mid-December 1874 he began to seriously consider another way of publishing his sketches. On December 17, shortly after returning from an Atlantic dinner in Boston, Mark Twain mentioned to Bliss that he “had a mind to” give his sketches to James R. Osgood.185 Osgood was William Dean Howells' publisher; he had also published Aldrich, Lowell, and Emerson, and he would soon publish Henry James. Osgood had, it will be recalled, approached Mark Twain with an offer to reprint his sketches in the spring of 1872, and the author had reluctantly turned him down because of his contracts with Bliss. This offer was probably renewed when Mark Twain went to Boston in December 1874, and he set to work in December and January preparing a large collection of sketches—some of them old, some of them unpublished or at least uncollected.

By 11 February 1875 he had gotten “the matter all ready for the press, (index, preface and everything,)” and he frankly broached the idea to Bliss. Although Bliss had treated the first signs of wavering loyalty with restraint—merely arguing in December “in favor of publishing with his company” (as Mark Twain admiringly recalled)—he now moved more forcefully to suppress the revolt, and the author was left to sheepishly explain the result to Osgood:

This contract was, of course, the one Mark Twain had eagerly signed early in 1871, when he anticipated publishing “Mark Twain's Sketches” in the spring. The only concessions he was now able to extract from Bliss were that the book should be illustrated and that [begin page 620] the publisher should pay him a 10-percent royalty, retroactively, when 50,000 copies had been sold. The latter concession had no effect, for SkNO failed to sell that many copies even by 1893, when a cheaper edition was produced by the American Publishing Company under Frank Bliss. Illustrations had always been part of Mark Twain's plan—they had just never been written into his contract, and were not now.

Osgood conceded defeat on February 16,187 and Mark Twain was then presumably free to give Bliss the sketches he had “culled and put together” for his Boston rival. On February 26 Mark Twain told Warren Choate and Company of Washington, D.C., that he could not agree to sell them the “Jumping Frog” story as they had asked: “I am just on the point of issuing it in book form through my publishers here, along with all my sketches complete.”188 But this was too optimistic: SkNO would not in fact issue from the press until September 1875, seven months later. The long delay between his discussion with Bliss and the production of the first salesmen's prospectuses was caused by several things, but it can be easily explained.

Mark Twain continued to tinker with the printer's copy in February and March: something about a book of sketches inevitably invited this sort of compulsive revision. He probably further revised and culled the material he had already gathered; he made specific instructions to Bliss and to the illustrator; and he added at least one sketch to the contents. For example, on the manuscript of “The ‘Blind Letter’ Department, London P.O.” he wrote instructions about using facsimile letters to illustrate the piece: “Use as many as you think proper, Bliss.—S.L.C.” And on the map of Paris (torn from a copy of Sk#1) he wrote: “Use an accurate facsimile of this map, with all its studied imperfections. S.L.C.”189 Sometime in March he solicited the publisher's help in another matter: “From London I sent you a horrible translation (in MS) of the Jumping Frog, from the French. [begin page 621] Please hunt it up, if you can, & send to me. I want it for the Vol of Sketches.”190 Bliss found and sent the manuscript that Mark Twain had mailed to him in July 1873, and Mark Twain revised it—changing his imagined audience from Englishmen (whom he had addressed in the original draft) to “anyone,” and altering the date of his concluding remarks from “London, June 30, 1873” to “Hartford, March, 1875.”191 He likewise dated the author's preface “Hartford, March, 1875,” at least on the copy that was used to prepare the salesmen's prospectus.192

Mark Twain probably submitted the completed printer's copy to Bliss in March, and Bliss in turn must have given it to True W. Williams, who had been hired to illustrate the book. Much of the further delay was very likely caused by the time needed to produce some one hundred thirty illustrations, for if production proceeded in a normal way, all the drawings had to be engraved and electroplated before any type would be set or any proofs read. Nor were the pictures the only further cause for delay. On 8 April 1875, some six weeks after he had said he was “on the point of issuing” his book, Mark Twain confided to his old editor and friend, Charles Henry Webb, still another consideration: “It is a mighty tough year for books. The Innocents Abroad & Roughing It, both put together, have not paid me much over $3,000 in the past 12 month. They are old books, they have never had a black eye; I have not lost in reputation—consequently the serious falling off can be reasonably attributed to nothing but the prevailing business prostration.” Mark Twain added, however, that he thought “the next 3 months will show a different state of things,” and he was therefore “venturing to bring out a new book,” something he “could not have been hired to do during any part of the past 12 months, for it would have been a sort of deliberate literary suicide.”193 The depression of 1874–1875 was clearly not over three months after Mark Twain wrote Webb, and Bliss was obviously obliged by it, and by the usual summer slump in sales, to postpone [begin page 622] publication until the fall—even though most of the substantial work on SkNO had apparently been completed by the end of July.

Since Mark Twain was living in Hartford throughout the spring, and since he did not leave town for a summer retreat at Newport until July 31, he had ample opportunity to work with the illustrator and to read and revise proof for SkNO. But his presence in Hartford meant that he could communicate directly with Bliss and the printing house about business matters that would ordinarily have been discussed in letters: “I only go down town when it is necessary to abuse my publisher,” he told Josiah G. Holland on April 29.194 This unusual lack of documentary evidence leaves us doubtful about precisely when Mark Twain saw proof, but he must certainly have done so. On June 2, for instance, Dan De Quille (who was visiting the author at Hartford) wrote his sister that “Mark is getting out a book which will contain some new and good things, particularly some ‘fables for old boys and girls,’ where all manner of insects and a few reptiles go out on a scientific exploring expedition, where they meet with and report upon many of the works of the biped man. His ‘frog’ and other old sketches will be in the book, which will be handsomely illustrated.”195 The allusion here is to “Some Learned Fables, for Good Old Boys and Girls,” the longest of the new sketches included in SkNO. It seems likely, therefore, that Mark Twain was seeing proof of this and perhaps other sketches by early June.

Sometime in mid-July the author wrote out the title page of his book:

Mark Twain's Sketches.

---

[New & Old.]
Now First Published in a Complete
Form in this country.

---

[Sold only by Subscription.]

---

Hartford:
The American Publishing Co.
1875.
[begin page 623]

At the top of this document he wrote: “Bliss please print this title-page & mail to me for transmission to Washington. S.L.C.”196 Copyright was, in fact, entered in Clemens' name on 20 July 1875,197 presumably about the time the book had been finally set in type and prepared for electroplating. Eleven days later, on July 31, the author left for Newport, where he remained throughout August and early September, returning to Hartford about September 10. The first copies of the salesmen's prospectus, printed from plates of the book, were received from the bindery on September 3, and the first one hundred copies of SkNO arrived on September 25.198 In short, Mark Twain's last chance to see proofs for SkNO must have been in late July 1875.

A number of collateral documents have survived which suggest in some detail what Mark Twain did to prepare the printer's copy for SkNO, how he revised proof, and to what extent he and the publisher collaborated on the final selection of material. The manuscript of the author's table of contents as well as most of the printer's copy that he prepared for SkNO have both survived—and from these documents we can now supply a detailed account of Mark Twain's role in publishing this final collection of apprentice work—what he called in February 1875 “all my sketches complete.”199

The table of contents, which is now in the Doheny collection, affords a wealth of information about individual sketches as well as about the book as a whole: it is therefore reproduced in figure 23. This nine-page list is almost certainly the “index” mentioned by Mark Twain in his 12 February 1875 letter to Osgood: every item in it whose date of composition is known was demonstrably written before mid-February, and the few sketches of unknown or uncertain date were probably written by then. For example, Mark Twain sent [begin page 624]

[begin page 625] [begin page 626] [begin page 627] [begin page 628] [begin page 629] [begin page 630] [begin page 631] [begin page 632] [begin page 633] the first draft of “A Couple of Poems by Twain and Moore” to James T. Fields on 7 January 1875.200 And he probably wrote “Experience of the McWilliamses with Membranous Croup” soon after his family's frightening but less than fatal experience with this “epidemical & dreadful” disease in mid-January.201 “Petition Concerning Copyright” was probably written shortly before February 8, when Mark Twain sent a copy of it to S. S. Cox.202 Even the idea that he had in March of including “The ‘Jumping Frog.’ In English” (no. 364) would have occasioned no revision of the list, for he had originally entered the SK#1 version of the story there as simply “The Jumping Frog” (see item 3), the title ultimately used in the SkNO table of contents.

The Doheny table of contents shows that Mark Twain originally planned to offer his publisher a selection of eighty-one sketches, including twelve that had appeared the previous year in Sk#1, fifteen that were either new or uncollected, and fifty-four that had been previously revised and reprinted in two English editions in 1872 and 1874: the Routledges' MTSk and Chatto and Windus' HWb. SkNO ultimately included, however, only sixty-three of these eighty-one selections: between the writing of the list in February and electroplating in late July or early August, eighteen sketches were omitted, for a variety of reasons, and one was inadvertently added, even though Mark Twain had not written it—“From ‘Hospital Days.’ ”203 Of those [begin page 634] included (aside from the nonauthorial piece), collation establishes that thirty-eight were set from a copy of HWb which had been extensively revised and corrected by the author; twelve were set from a less heavily revised copy of MTSk; and thirteen were set from the author's manuscripts and revised clippings. Most of these manuscripts and clippings as well as the marked copies of HWb (hereafter HWbMT) and MTSk (hereafter MTSkMT) were preserved by Mark Twain. They have been identified for the first time in the course of preparing this edition, and, taken together, they shed some light on the details of production, particularly on Mark Twain's method of preparing the printer's copy.204

Mark Twain made his initial selection of old sketches from three—not two—books: HWb, MTSk, and Sk#1. In fact, he probably began by selecting all but one of the thirteen items included in Sk#1: he omitted only “Property in Opulent London” from the Doheny table of contents, and although he listed four Sk#1 pieces there at random (items 3, 17, 42, and 47), he listed eight of them in consecutive order (items 56–63). Most of these sketches had been printed in other collections as well, but two of them—“A Memorable Midnight Experience” (item 58) and “Rogers” (item 62)—could be found only in [begin page 635] Sk #1, and this fact in itself shows that Mark Twain was working from a copy of that pamphlet. The copy that he presumably marked, however, has not been found, and the revisions themselves cannot be recovered because, as collation shows, the printers did not use Sk #1 to set SkNO. Mark Twain evidently withdrew the copy even before the compositors began to set type, perhaps when he realized belatedly what effect SkNO would have on the sale of Sk #1. Sometime during the course of typesetting Bliss wrote beside “A Memorable Midnight Experience” in the Doheny table of contents: “Can't find it. Where is this? Bliss.” This piece was ultimately excluded from SkNO: Bliss could not find it because neither MTSk nor HWb contained the sketch, and he had no copy of Sk #1. “Rogers” was also omitted from SkNO, presumably for the same reason.

After revising his pamphlet, Mark Twain turned for the bulk of his old sketches to the much larger and more comprehensive HWb. Chatto and Windus had doubtless sent him a complimentary copy when they received the first impression from their binder in April 1874. Mark Twain noted on the title page of his 1874 copy (HWbMT) that it contained “200 pages” of sketches with “710 words on a page.” He proceeded to revise, or to cancel, most of the ninety sketches in the second half of the book (he again refrained from revising The Innocents Abroad, which occupied the first half). He made a tentative selection of sketches by this means, excluding pieces that he regarded as too weak to merit republication and material he had republished elsewhere. Brief squibs that Hotten had originally taken from the American Publisher or from Roughing It (“Sending Them Through,” “ ‘The Union—Right or Wrong?’ ” and “A Nabob's Visit to New York”) as well as items that Mark Twain had revised and republished as part of Roughing It (the Baker's cat story in “Around the World. Letter Number 5,” no. 267; “About a Remarkable Stranger,” no. 358; and “The Last Ration,” no. 190) were all simply canceled. He deleted several sketches that had first appeared in JF1 (“An Unbiased Criticism,” no. 100; and “How, for Instance?” no. 192), and he removed some undistinguished Galaxy material originally gleaned by Hotten (“Hogwash,” no. 302; “The Tone-Imparting Committee,” no. 352; and “The Approaching Epidemic,” no. 321). He amalgamated several items into single sketches, directing the compositor, for in- [begin page 636] stance , to “add the article on page 394 to this” and, at another point, to “put this with the lot that begins on page 398.” Thus “A Day at Niagara” (no. 241) and “English Festivities and Minor Matters” (no. 247) were made into a single sketch, and “Answer to an Inquiry from the Coming Man” (no. 350) was reprinted as part of a much earlier piece, itself a complicated mosaic of columns from the Californian first prepared in the Yale Scrapbook (“Burlesque ‘Answers to Correspondents ,’ ” no. 201). Mark Twain canceled sketches that he had presumably prepared already in Sk #1: “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” (no. 119), “Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract” (no. 291), and “The Widow's Protest” (no. 304) were all deleted, even after he had begun to revise parts of them.

In addition to making these large-scale revisions, Mark Twain continued the process of cleansing his texts—even though it might seem that he would, by now, find little to alter. He corrected a few spelling errors and a few misprints of his dialect spellings, supplied explanatory footnotes for some topical allusions that could not be removed, struck out adverbs (“excruciatingly” and “infinitely”), tinkered with verb tenses, and removed or modified a large number of allusions to real people like “Sewall,” “Skae,” “Greeley,” and even “N**” (for “Nye”). He pruned away paired adjectives: “grand and awe-inspiring” became “awe-inspiring”; “proper and ample” became “proper”; “thin and ungenerous” became simply “thin.” The phrase “it had soured on my stomach” was too vivid, and so it was removed. An allusion to Mark Twain's capacity for alcohol (“I am a match for nearly any beverage you can mention except a whisky-cocktail”) was likewise canceled. The barber in “About Barbers” (no. 361) had been described in HWb as “expectorating pleasantly all the while”; he was now no longer permitted to expectorate. Whereas the loafers in “The Editorial Office Bore” (no. 312) were allowed in HWb to “smoke, and sweat, and sigh, and scratch, and perform such other services for their fellow-men as come within the purview of their gentle mission on earth,” Mark Twain deleted these details for his American edition of sketches. At one point he had written that the “entire tribe” of Indians “tore all the clothes off” him; he now modestly changed “all” to “half” (“A Day at Niagara,” no. 241). He modified his slang in several places that had escaped his earlier scrutiny: “mugs” became [begin page 637] “complexions”; “it was rough on the audience, you bet” became “Whe-ew!”; “chaw” became “nibble”; “villain” became “scoundrel”; and “boss” became “head.” References to “perdition” were tempered into mere “destruction,” and the statement that some event militated “against all my notions of orthodox destruction—fire and brimstone” was dropped, as was another injunction to “go to blazes with it.” Finally, after revising a generous selection of material in HWbMT, Mark Twain went back over his work and canceled eight pieces he had just revised, including an extensively altered version of “The Spiritual Séance” (no. 202) and four other sketches that he and Webb had first reprinted in JF1. Apparently as a last step Mark Twain also revised the table of contents in HWbMT, deleting the titles of thirty-three sketches he did not want republished (at least from this source) and altering many of the titles of the remaining fifty-seven sketches to help the SkNO compositors, who would have to find their way from the sketch title listed in the Doheny table of contents to the appropriate revised material in HWbMT or another volume.205

Mark Twain must have remembered that the sketches in HWb were, for the most part, duplicated in the earlier collection MTSk—but he also knew that this second smaller volume contained several pieces that had never been included either in HWb or in Sk #1. He therefore scanned the table of contents of MTSkMT, eliminating by a brief pen stroke in the margin all but seven of the sixty-six sketches listed there. With two exceptions he did not cancel the texts themselves or indicate in the body of the book that he had already supplied authorized versions in HWbMT or Sk #1—an oversight that would cause confusion for the SkNO compositors when they tried to find several sketches in the Doheny table of contents which had been canceled in HWbMT. (Mark Twain expected these sketches to be set from his marked copy of Sk #1. Since the compositors never found this copy, they resorted to using unrevised texts in MTSkMT.) Mark Twain then listed the seven surviving pieces on the last page of the MTSkMT table of contents (see figure 24). By referring to his marked copies of HWb and Sk #1, he now eliminated all but four of these:

[begin page 638] [begin page 639] [begin page 640]

“Back from ‘Yurrup’ ” (no. 275) and “Misplaced Confidence” (no. 296) had already been prepared in his copy of Sk#1, and “A Mysterious Visit” (no. 285) had been revised in HWbMT. This left him with four sketches that needed to be typeset from MTSkMT because they did not appear in either of the other volumes: “Cannibalism in the Cars” (no. 232), “The Legend of the Capitoline Venus” (no. 272), “The New Crime” (no. 288), and “Curious Dream” (no. 289). He accordingly revised and corrected only these four sketches in MTSkMT, making, however, far fewer changes than he had in comparable sketches in HWbMT (see figure 25).

In addition to revising these old sketches, Mark Twain had been gradually accumulating new material ever since he had published CD and MTSk in 1872. At least one of these new sketches, “A Ghost Story” (no. 278), had probably been prepared for the original volume of “Mark Twain's Sketches” in 1870–1871 (see figure 21), but most of the new pieces were either manuscripts written between 1872 and early 1875 or clippings of articles and speeches written or delivered in that period. It is clear that this slow accumulation of short writings not readily adapted to a longer narrative was more or less deliberate. On 28 November 1873, for instance, Mark Twain told his English friend G. Fitzgibbon that he had “written a speech” for an occasion just in case he was called upon to give one, but that if he were not so called upon, or were obliged to “curtail it like sin in the delivery,” his manuscript would nevertheless “easily find room in a future volume of Sketches as the impromptu speech which I intended to make.”206 The speech in question ultimately found its way into SkNO (“Speech at the Scottish Banquet in London,” item 41 in the Doheny table of contents): it was set from a clipping of the London Observer revised by Mark Twain. “Speech on Accident Insurance,” delivered on 12 October 1874, was likewise included, set from a copy printed by the Hartford Accident Insurance Company and slightly revised by Mark Twain. He probably revised clippings or tear sheets of “A Curious Pleasure Excursion” and “A True Story,” and he manifestly supplied holographs for five sketches.

Although the new items numbered only fifteen in a collection of eighty-one items, their overall bulk constituted a “mass of matter [begin page 641] which [had] never been in print before,”207 or at least which had never been collected in a book. The Doheny table of contents shows that Mark Twain planned to scatter these new pieces among the old ones taken from SK#1, HWb, and MTSk, and it suggests that he carefully ordered the sketches—beginning with his strongest and newest pieces, following these with a section of shorter and weaker pieces, and concluding with another burst of strength in pieces such as “Cannibalism in the Cars” (no. 232) and “A Mysterious Visit” (no. 285).

The final selection from this mass of printer's copy was made jointly by Mark Twain and Bliss; their choice was clearly affected by unforeseen problems like the need to fill out a page, the cost of illustrations, and even accidents at the printing house. Mark Twain controlled the preparation of his printer's copy with some rigor; he did not, or could not, exercise the same sort of control over what Bliss and the compositors did with that copy.

True Williams, the illustrator of SkNO, had probably been given the printer's copy for the book sometime in March 1875. We know little about what he was told to do, or whether Mark Twain exercised veto power over the illustrations he produced—but we do know from his procedure with other books that he tended to participate in this process with great zest. Early in January 1876, when Mark Twain was well along in the production of Tom Sawyer, he told William Dean Howells how much he admired Williams' skill: “He takes a book of mine, & without suggestion from anybody builds no end of pictures just from his reading of it.”208

Whereas Williams himself may have chosen what to illustrate in Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain offered some guidance about matter to be illustrated in SkNO. When Mark Twain revised his Galaxy reminiscence about the Nevada petrified-man hoax (“A Couple of Sad Experiences ,” no. 299), he specified in the margin of HWbMT: “Make a picture of him.” Williams complied. And when Mark Twain submitted the manuscript of “Some Learned Fables, for Good Old Boys and Girls,” he made nearly a dozen suggestions and sample sketches for illustrations, in the margin and in the text itself. Williams followed Mark Twain's lead in six separate cases, making, for example, [begin page 642] a “picture of procession” as the author had suggested on manuscript page 102, and redrawing the signs that Mark Twain had supplied on manuscript page 68. There must also have been further suggestions from Mark Twain, communicated directly to Williams or to Bliss who, it will be recalled, was charged with deciding how many of the facsimile letters to use for “The ‘Blind Letter’ Department, London P.O.” The point to be stressed here, however, is that Williams complied with Mark Twain's known suggestions, and that he also read the manuscript and produced appropriate sketches for almost every piece included in SkNO. Since these engravings had to be completed before the typesetting began, their very existence must have exerted pressure to include material so illustrated.

The immediate decisions about which of the listed sketches to set in type, and in what order, must have been made by Bliss—sometimes independently, sometimes in cooperation with the author. The Doheny table of contents provides a full record, not always easily glossed, of these individual decisions. Apparently before any typesetting took place, Bliss annotated the holograph table of contents to indicate where the sketches could be found: a few erroneous page numbers show that he referred to the marked tables of contents in HWbMT and MTSkMT in doing this.209 He identified these two volumes as “large” (meaning HWbMT) and “small” (meaning MTSkMT). Accordingly, “65S” and “169S” mean “page 65” and “page 169” of MTSkMT (items 56 and 57). When the compositors set a sketch,210 they knew almost from the start what page it would begin on in the new book: this number they entered in the left margin, probably as they completed each item. As work progressed, Bliss entered brief notations such as “in” (item 76), “not set” (items 49 and 60), or simply “no” (items 37 and 57). These entries were apparently a record of what had been included in SkNO and a way of communicating this information to Mark Twain. The “no” entries presumably indicate the author's veto.

[begin page 643]

There was a good deal of room for error in Bliss's system. Moreover, sometimes Bliss supplied page numbers for both volumes, as if it were a matter of indifference which text was used; sometimes he supplied no page number. In both cases the compositor was left to choose between HWbMT and MTSkMT for his setting copy. Usually Bliss failed to specify which book to set from when Mark Twain left a sketch unrevised in both volumes, but because HWb and MTSk evolved independently, their texts are almost never identical. Several sketches that Mark Twain probably revised in Sk # 1 for SkNO were in fact set from unrevised printings in MTSkMT: since the compositors could not find the marked copy of Sk # 1 and Mark Twain had not crossed out the items in MTSkMT, they used MTSkMT for printer's copy.

Collation of the printer's copy for SkNO with the book itself shows that Mark Twain read at least some of the proof. He further revised the first five sketches and made intermittent changes in some of the later pieces, including the last one, “A Mysterious Visit” (no. 285). The range of these revisions is understandably limited, but they are very similar in intent to those he inscribed on the printer's copy. It is possible, but not likely, that the author deleted some sketches even at this late stage. He wrote Howells on 14 September 1875 that he thought SkNO an “exceedingly handsome book,” and added, “I destroyed a mass of sketches, & now heartily wish I had destroyed some more of them—but it is too late to grieve now.”211 This “destruction” probably refers to his original weeding of Sk #1, HWb, and MTSk—as well as to the omission of eighteen sketches listed in his autograph table of contents. But it is conceivable that Mark Twain meant he had recently removed some pieces when reading proof.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Mark Twain's proofreading was not systematic, or at least that he did not read final proof of SkNO: the author did not even know that “From ‘Hospital Days’ ” had been included until he saw the completed book. “I saw the first copy yesterday,” he wrote Howells, “& about the first thing I ran across was an extract from ‘Hospital Days’ (page 199)—an entirely gratuitous addition by Mr. Bliss to neatly fill out a page.”212 The inclusion of this [begin page 644] nonauthorial sketch is an extreme example of Bliss's influence on SkNO, but it is clear that he often decided to use very short sketches listed in the Doheny table of contents only when they could “neatly fill out a page.” For example, Bliss was confronted with a minor problem in “The Killing of Julius Caesar ‘Localized’ ” (no. 97): when the compositors reached the end of this sketch they were left with an unsightly blank on two-thirds of the last page. Following Bliss's instructions, they clipped the page of proof to the page in MTSkMT on which “The Widow's Protest” (no. 304) appeared, marked the proof “166” (for the page number of SkNO), and proceeded to typeset the latter sketch to fill up the blank space (see figures 26–27). It is clear that Bliss decided to include “The Widow's Protest” at this point (it was item 47 in the Doheny table of contents) only because it was convenient to do so: the implication must be that it would have been excluded had no such convenient space appeared for it to fill.

In addition to adding one sketch and deciding the fate of others, Bliss undoubtedly altered a few of Mark Twain's texts simply to make them short enough to fit the available space. Collation of the printer's copy with SkNO shows, for instance, that a number of changes were introduced in proof for “Fashions” (no. 221): “a most” was shortened to “an”; “had been standing” and “had been squeezing” to “stood” and “squeezed”; and “the subject is one of great interest to ladies, and it” to “the subject.” “Fashionable” and “of course” were deleted. Nothing in these revisions is characteristic of the author; they were almost certainly the work of Bliss. He had wanted permission from Mark Twain to “cut out a line or an unimportant paragraph when needed to make them come out right on pages” in The Innocents Abroad,213 and Mark Twain had not allowed it. With SkNO, however, either permission was not asked or, if asked, was more readily granted. Bliss clearly felt free to revise a text merely to meet the physical and aesthetic demands of the page. Despite the care that Mark Twain lavished on the revision of his sketches, he apparently was not asked to make or approve minor decisions such as these. Like JF1, therefore, SkNO embodies a complex mingling of authorial and [begin page 645] nonauthorial choices, both in the selections chosen and in the revisions themselves.

Well before Mark Twain began to read proof he apparently wrote out for Bliss some advertising copy that is extremely suggestive of his anxiety about the quality of his book:

We do not know precisely when this was written, but the allusion to “Mark Twain's Miscellaneous Sketches” seems to predate the choice of a title for SkNO, and the effort to praise paper, typography, and illustration likewise reflects the uneasiness Mark Twain felt in January and February 1875 about subscription publishing. SkNO ultimately was not superior in its paper, typography, or illustration— indeed, just the reverse—nor did it incorporate a “complete edition of Twain's sketches” (HWb alone was nearly double its size). Nevertheless, Bliss seems to have taken his cue from Mark Twain's lines, and in copy that eventually appeared in the salesmen's prospectus he boasted of the “artistic illustrations,” the “finest of super-calendered, delicate tinted paper,” and a “dainty blue cover.” More important, he stressed the nature of Mark Twain's audience: “That the pen of our author is not a useless one is proven by the fact that his readers are largely men and women of a highly cultivated class. Scarcely a greater favorite of the Clergy can be named, and Lawyers, Scholars, Merchants, Mechanics and Farmers all read him with undisguised pleasure.”215 As we have seen, Mark Twain undertook to [begin page 646]

[begin page 647] [begin page 648] please—or at least not to offend—this “highly cultivated class” by repeatedly cleansing his sketches of slang, irreverence, and other matters regarded as indelicate or improper.

Apparently by the author's design, SkNO was not widely reviewed. Mark Twain felt that The Gilded Age, which had been widely reviewed, suffered at the hands of the newspapers, and he was not therefore willing to risk the new book in that forum without some sort of insurance. Accordingly, he had Bliss send Howells “advance sheets” of SkNO sometime in early September so that Howells might review it in the Atlantic Monthly “before any one else.” Howells evidently sent the manuscript of his review to Clemens on 19 October 1875, asking that he return it “with objections” at once.216 The review appeared in the Atlantic for December 1875.

Although Howells had mocked his own review as “awful rot” and had complained about the “difficulty of noticing a book of short sketches,” Mark Twain was delighted with his friend's reaction:

Howells had, in fact, shown some uneasiness about the selections in SkNO: “In reading the book, you go through a critical process imaginably very like the author's in editing it; about certain things there can be no question from the first, and you end by accepting all, while you feel that any one else may have his proper doubts about some of the sketches.” But he was emphatic in noticing “another quality,” presumably new—a “growing seriousness of meaning in the apparently unmoralized drolling, which must result from the humorist's [begin page 649] second thought of political and social absurdities.”218 As Mark Twain explained to him, this observation was especially pleasing to his wife: “You see, the thing that gravels her is that I am so persistently glorified as a mere buffoon, as if that entirely covered my case—which she denies with venom.”219 SkNO, the long-awaited American edition of Mark Twain's sketches, was clearly designed to counteract the author's image as a “mere buffoon,” in part by reprinting texts that had been thoroughly refined by Webb, Hotten, and the author himself.

It is not known what effect, if any, the Atlantic review had on other American critics, for no other American reviews have been found. SkNO was briefly noted in at least one English journal, the Saturday Review, which five years before had been so uncomplimentary about The Innocents Abroad. Apparently all was now forgiven:

The reaction of Mark Twain's friends to SkNO was, predictably, favorable. Thomas Nast wrote to thank Clemens for his complimentary copy and twitted him briefly about “From ‘Hospital Days’ ”; he added that SkNO was “very well got up and makes a very attractive book.” Oliver Wendell Holmes likewise thanked Clemens for the “very handsome volume” and reported that he had immediately reread “and rejoiced in my old friend the Jumping Frog and one or two other of the Sketches.” Holmes concluded: “I thank you most heartily for the pleasure your stories have so often given me and especially for this most welcome accession to my library with all its humour and its cheerful good-nature and its pictures of life, dressed [begin page 650] so prettily that if the books of the season should have a ball it would be one of the belles of the evening.” The Reverend Edwin Pond Parker reported that he and his family had “read out of the book with exceeding merriment. . . . Your ‘gift’ is a rare one & a choice one, and long may you live to exercise it, and make people better through a whilom forgetting of the griefs & cares & burdens that make life so heavy & sad.”221 Clemens saved such letters, for he had come to value private testimony above anything the newspapers might say.

Despite the use of new manuscripts in SkNO, and despite the long negotiations carried on by the Routledges between 1868 and 1875, Mark Twain evidently made no effort whatever to secure British copyright for SkNO. He may have authorized Information Wanted—a reprinting of twenty-two sketches (most of them new material) from SkNO which Routledge issued sometime in late December 1875 or early January 1876. But the Routledge account books record no payment to the author,222 and although Information Wanted did carry the authenticating rubric on its title page—“Messrs. George Routledge & Sons are my only authorized London Publishers”—there is no indication that Mark Twain specifically authorized the book. The low status that SkNO had occupied from the beginning evidently combined with Mark Twain's disappointment over the sale of The Gilded Age to make him completely neglectful of the Routledges' copyright and republication needs. Within a year he had been persuaded that Chatto and Windus would be more active than the Routledges in selling his English edition of Tom Sawyer.223

[begin page 651]

American sales of SkNO were at first promising, climbing to 23,700 by the end of December 1875. But unlike Mark Twain's three previous subscription books, SkNO fell off precipitously in its second quarter, January through March 1876. The immediate cause of this was, as we have noted, the persistent economic depression. In fact, Mark Twain told Moncure D. Conway on 16 April 1876 that he wanted to postpone publication of Tom Sawyer because “whereas the Sketch Book sold 20,000 copies the first 3 months, it has only sold 3,700 the second 3 (ending March 30.) This distinctly means that this is no time to adventure a new book.”224 By the end of 1879 SkNO had sold 32,200 copies—about one-third what The Innocents Abroad had sold in a comparable period—and by 1893, when a cheaper onedollar edition was published, it had still not sold the 50,000 copies that would have raised Mark Twain's royalty to 10 percent. Significantly, when Harper and Brothers republished the book as part of a uniform edition, it sold only 8,000 copies between 1904 and 1907—while Innocents sold 46,100.225

Mark Twain did not revise the text of SkNO after publication, despite several opportunities to do so. Bernhard Tauchnitz wrote him on 7 February 1883, asking permission to republish “The Jumping Frog.” Mark Twain answered on March 1, evidently enclosing a copy of SkNO:

Tauchnitz acknowledged this letter on March 31, and agreed to reprint SkNO in the Continental Series “at a similar arrangement to that which we had about your other former books, as for instance ‘Roughing it,’ ‘Innocents at Home’ etc.” Mark Twain agreed to this on April 16, and on May 7 Tauchnitz wrote to say that he had requested [begin page 652] his “London bankers to make over to you a payment of Four Hundred Mark.”226 The Tauchnitz edition appeared in Leipzig in mid-1883. Like Information Wanted, it has no textual authority: the interest of both books lies in their role of popularizing a particular version of Mark Twain's sketches.

Mark Twain did not revise the text of SkNO for the American Publishing Company's “Autograph Edition” in 1899, but he did mark up a copy of the table of contents for SkNO to indicate “Dates of WRITING—& usually of publicat[ion] (to the best of my recollection).” Beside the page numbers for about half the sketches he wrote a date (frequently wrong), and at the bottom of the second page of the contents he added, “I think that the things whose dates I have forgotten were mainly squibs which I put into a ‘Department’ in the Galaxy magazine in 1869–'70—or possibly it was '70–'71.”227 Although Mark Twain made no further contribution to this last lifetime edition, the American Publishing Company's reader, “F.M.,” subsequently corrected the texts of the sketches and compared at least some of them with the original Galaxy printings.228

The original text of SkNO was allowed to stand virtually unchanged throughout Mark Twain's lifetime as the only authorized version of his early sketches. Its publication in 1875 marked the end of the author's willingness to revise and sift this youthful material, but it was hardly the end of the “scissors & slash” method. Even when Mark Twain had transferred his loyalties to James R. Osgood, and [begin page 653] was hard at work on Life on the Mississippi, he was laying plans for The Stolen White Elephant—a collection of eighteen sketches, including two that had been dropped from the original contents of SkNO.229 In April 1882 Mark Twain reiterated his attitude toward such sketchbooks: “I reckon I can get the Sketches ready in time, though publishing books don't pay for the trouble of writing them,” he told Osgood, adding that of course “this one don't have to be written.”230 The Stolen White Elephant fulfilled Mark Twain's ambition for an elegant sketchbook (albeit not illustrated), but he returned repeatedly to his interest in a cheaper pamphlet as well. In 1878 he had issued the paper-covered Punch, Brothers, Punch!—which contained nine sketches, including his “Fortifications of Paris” (no. 323); the spine of the book advertised it as “Mark Twain's Sketches. Price, 25 Cents.” And in February 1885 Mark Twain again toyed with a by-now-familiar scheme: in his notebook he wrote, “Put Jumping Frog &c 25¢, nice cover) in Union News Co. at 25c.”231 Nothing came of this impulse, however, and even though there were later reprintings of SkNO, Mark Twain finally abandoned his apprentice writings as they were preserved in the text of 1875. The history of reprinting and revision which concluded with that book is recapitulated in figure 28 on the following page. American editions and projects appear in the gray area, while Hotten's and Chatto and Windus' editions are on the left and the Routledges' on the right. The entire contents of every edition were not necessarily transmitted in each case, and no single sketch passed through all of the alternative routes of transmission illustrated here.

[begin page 654] [begin page 655]

Mark Twain could always treat his sketchbooks with exasperating indifference, but he did hold to a remarkably steady purpose throughout nine years of revision and republication. He consistently tried to sift his material for sketches “worth republishing,” and he was quite merciless in ruling some material “forever . . . out of any book.” What he chose to reprint he always chose to refine, and usually that meant euphemizing what he had written, under more permissive circumstances, in “the language of the vulgar, the lowflung and the sinful.” From the earliest tentative revisions in the Yale Scrapbook down through his final destruction of a “mass of sketches” for SkNO,232 Mark Twain reprinted only what he thought would endure, rejected what he came to regard as too topical or too juvenile, and revised what he did reprint to meet the standards of his eastern and eventually his English audiences. Of the 365 items included in this collection, Mark Twain is known to have revised 130. SkNO ultimately included only 51 of these.

By contrast, the editorial aim of the present collection is to recover, and preserve in their original form, as many of Mark Twain's early imaginative writings as possible—regardless of the author's later opinion of them. Unlike SkNO, this collection includes two dozen items that Mark Twain wrote but never published, many that he apparently never considered republishing, and some that he republished many times only to exclude at last. And, unlike SkNO, the present collection prints the original version of every item, no matter how much or how little the author subsequently revised it. The collection is therefore emphatically not a critical edition of SkNO, or of any other sketchbook designed by the author. Its rationale, both for including texts and for choosing which version to include, is wholly editorial.

There are several strong reasons for preferring Mark Twain's original intentions to his final revised ones in a collection of this kind. Above all, the chronological sequence of apprentice work that is brought together here for the first time provides a unique tool for studying Mark Twain's development as a writer: indeed, not even [begin page 656] the author himself ever had so comprehensive a text of his own apprentice work. But to introduce some 130 revised texts into the overall sequence of 365 would destroy its continuity and much of its usefulness. This is especially true because of the timing of Mark Twain's revisions: virtually every item in the collection was completed in its original form by the end of 1871, before the author addressed an eastern and an international audience, but Mark Twain revised portions of them in every year from 1867 through 1875. As we have seen, his motive was explicitly to ingratiate himself with a larger and a less tolerant audience, and the effect of his changes (even when they were quite minor) was to remove the sketch from the continuum of apprentice work that we seek to preserve here. The overall aim of the collection is, therefore, sufficient in itself to compel our decision to reproduce the original version of every sketch.

In addition, we should point out that most of the revised sketches have not been readily available in their original form, even to specialists. The most common source of these sketches, SkNO, is a radical selection, made only in part by the author; its texts are completely corrupted by the hands of Charles Henry Webb, John Camden Hotten, and even Elisha Bliss. The present collection reproduces the only version of these sketches that can be regarded as unequivocally Mark Twain's—the original one. Furthermore, the nature of revision and the complexity of its history both make the choice of Mark Twain's original version the most interesting and the most convenient for the reader. Because Mark Twain and his editors were more inclined to delete than to add material, the reader who is familiar with some of these items from SkNO will find himself encountering whole passages and paragraphs that he had not seen before. But he will not be obliged to fish these passages out of a difficult and forbidding apparatus: they appear in the text as Mark Twain originally wrote them, and the author's later decisions to delete or modify are recorded in the apparatus. Moreover, since Mark Twain sometimes made different decisions about how to revise the same sketch, he produced parallel texts that were altered in similar but not identical ways. The decision to print the original version is the only one that permits us to report precisely how, for example, Mark Twain revised a passage in 1872 and 1873, only to delete it in 1875. Indeed, the reader can reconstruct the revised text of any sketch at any point along the bumpy road from JF1 (1867) to SkNO (1875).

[begin page 657]

Other editors may well wish to adopt a different editorial rationale. Indeed, the history of revision and republication uncovered in preparing this edition suggests that we do, in fact, very much need a critical edition of SkNO. Readers and students will not want to ignore the selection and revision of sketches which Mark Twain shrewdly if somewhat carelessly offered in that final volume. In addition, there may even be some interest in critical texts for JF1, MTSk, and HWb. This collection presents the data necessary to produce such editions at the same time that it addresses a different and less limited need: to establish and preserve the continuum of Mark Twain's apprentice writings as he first composed and published them.

The present collection is an unmodernized, critical text based upon the theory of copy-text advanced by Sir Walter Greg.233 It follows Greg in its choice of copy-text but differs from him in its policy of emendation. The copy-text—the document or documents that form the basis of our own text, and from which we depart only in the ways specified in the list of emendations—is always the earliest extant form of the text. We emend that text to correct errors and inadvertencies, but we never emend it to incorporate the author's revisions of his work.234 All of his revisions are, however, recorded in the historical collations, and from these collations, and the lists of emendations, the reader can reconstruct not only the copy-text, but the revised text at whatever stage of revision seems most useful.

The labors of a generation of scholars devoted to the bibliography of Mark Twain have helped to identify the earliest extant form of items included in these volumes.235 The choice of copy-text is accordingly simple.

[begin page 658]

(1) Whenever manuscript has survived, it is copy-text. Only twenty-five items in this collection survive in Mark Twain's holograph, almost always because he chose never to publish them.

(2) When no manuscript is extant, but the first printing typeset from manuscript survives, it is copy-text. About three-fourths of the items collected here are based upon first printings. The reliability of these printings varies somewhat because they range from works set in type by the author on the Hannibal Journal to works sent across the continent or the ocean and published without any opportunity for authorial correction.

(3) When neither the manuscript nor the first printing is extant, reprintings of various kinds are perforce copy-text. Of the fifty items collected here which are based on second printings, many are from contemporary newspaper reprintings of the lost Enterprise, and a few are from nineteenth-century anthologies and other sources. There is a slightly higher incidence of manifest error and editorial intrusion in such reprintings, which were of course completely outside the author's control.

(4) Radiating texts comprise about ten items in this collection; these survive in more than one independent reprinting of the lost original—usually in two, but sometimes in three or more reprintings. For example, a lost Enterprise sketch may survive in two contemporary newspaper reprintings, each of which derives independently, or radiates, from the nonextant original and so may preserve readings not found in the other. When two such reprints share a reading, they provide strong corroborative evidence of what the original must have said. When they differ as to a reading, they pose the necessity of adjudicating between equal authorities. In all such cases, whether there are two or more reprintings to consider, no copy-text is designated because none of the authoritative texts is genetically closer to the original than the other. Instead, all substantive and accidental variants are recorded in a list of emendations and adopted readings, which gives the reading adopted (with its source or sources), the reading or readings rejected (with its source or sources), and any corrections supplied by the editors. Variants are judged according to the majority testimony of the available documents, our knowledge of Mark Twain's habitual practices, and other external evidence. When variants are completely indifferent, they are resolved on the basis [begin page 659] of which text appears on the whole to be most like the lost original.236

A conservative policy of emendation has been followed for every item in this collection, regardless of the nature of its copy-text. We have emended only what we are satisfied Mark Twain did not write or did not mean to write.

(1) Although we do not adopt his revisions, we do incorporate any corrections he made—a distinction that deserves some discussion because it is not always clear-cut. For example, Mark Twain's alterations of “jolly” to “bully” and of “passed in his checks” to “yielded up his life” were manifestly literary revisions; we have recorded such revisions but not incorporated them into the text. But when, for example, the Californian printed “there was a painful negative passing to his sensitive organization,” and two years later Mark Twain inserted the word “current” (after “negative”) in the Yale Scrapbook, he was apparently restoring the reading of his manuscript, and we have adopted the correction. Similarly, when the Californian printed “conferring upon a vice-royalty of itself such an execrable name,” and Mark Twain inserted “heaven” (after “of”) in the Yale Scrapbook, we have adopted his change as a necessary correction—one that could not have been made without the author's help. On the other hand, when the Enterprise printed “all experience teaches us that the best way to ascertain a thing is to find it,” and Mark Twain inserted “out” (after “it”) in the Yale Scrapbook, he made a change that is arguably a revision or a correction. In this case we have adopted the change as a correction, but the decision is clearly a matter of literary judgment, and it is easy to see how a contrary one might be made.

(2) The most common occasion for substantive emendation of these texts is simple omission of small but necessary words. We emend such phrases as “villainous fire brimstone” (supplying “and”) and “not all” (supplying “at”) by considering the context. We correct dittography—that is, unintentional repetition (“of the procession of the procession”). We very rarely correct the author's grammar, and we never change his level of usage. We avoid, if at all possible, cor- [begin page 660] recting dialogue or narrative written in dialect. We emend quotations only when the departure from the original is clearly unintended. We emend physically defective copy-texts, sometimes of necessity conjecturing as many as four or five words in a line. All emendations are of course recorded, and each is identified by its source: holograph evidence like YSMT, JF1MT, HWaMT, HWbMT, and MTSkMT; printings that Mark Twain is known to have corrected or for which he supplied the printer's copy, such as JF1, CD, MTSk, Sk#1, and SkNO; or the editors of this edition, identified as I-C.

(3) The most common occasion for emendation in the accidentals of these texts is simple mechanical error: we correct missing or improper quotation marks, commas where a period is required and vice versa, transposed or dropped letters (“partciular” and “imperturable”), and letters that failed to print clearly or were misset (“hea[r]” and “overlookod”) We also correct misspellings when they are typographical or unintentional (“thorougly” and “sieze”). We have preserved unusual but historically acceptable spellings (“ancle,” “threshed,” and “numscull”), as well as the author's somewhat more idiosyncratic ones (“filagree”). Misspellings in dialect have been treated as deliberate, and not emended: Mark Twain's fondness for characters who cannot spell, pronounce, or punctuate began early and lasted long. Simon Wheeler, the most famous of this breed, can neither spell nor construct proper sentences, but we are not tempted to correct him: “Verily, this man was gifted with ‘gorgis abillities,’ and it is a happiness to me to embalm the memory of their lustre in these columns.”237 Contemporary editors and compositors were, on the other hand, less likely to respect the author's spelling in such cases, and he had frequent occasion to correct them. All variants in dialect spelling are, accordingly, given the status of substantives and are so recorded.

Although it is now clear that Mark Twain would have preferred to correct all the “damnable inconsistencies of spelling”238 in these sketches, and that such consistency—whether self-imposed or imposed by compositors and editors—was the prevailing convention of [begin page 661] the time,239 no effort has been made here to emend what passed the scrutiny of the author or contemporary proofreaders. In these texts slight lapses occasionally ripple the surface of Mark Twain's remarkably uniform practice, but they remind us that absolute regularity was an ideal not always achieved. Such deliberately limited emendation probably preserves some compositorial lapses, but without a manuscript to guide us, we have preferred to reproduce the copytext even in its irregularities.

Mark Twain often denounced his printers and editors for failing to respect his punctuation. He knew, he said, “more about punctuation in two minutes than any damned bastard of a proof-reader can learn in two centuries.”240 We have therefore respected the punctuation of the copy-text whenever it is not glaringly deficient. We emend errors or lapses that would cause confusion or that are pointlessly distracting.

(4) The lists of emendation also record a number of instances in which we have been required not to change the copy-text but to interpret it: ambiguous or doubtful readings arising from physical defects in the copy-text (poor inking, tears, folds, ink blots, etc.); alternate readings left standing in the manuscript (“blood-stained dagger/dagger”); hyphenated compounds broken at the end of a line; and dashes following terminal punctuation at the end of a line. Compound words hyphenated at the end of a line in the copy-text are rendered solid or hyphenated according to other occurrences of the word in the same sketch, in other sketches, and in Mark Twain's other works or letters of the period, and, lacking such evidence, according to parallel forms in the same or in other sketches. Dashes following terminal punctuation at the end of a line were used both by the author and his compositors as an easy way to justify that line. Like page numbers or lineation, these dashes are appurtenances of the manuscript or newspaper printing and are not properly included in the text. But because it is possible that Mark Twain intended some [begin page 662] of them to be set, we record the disposition of all such dashes.

(5) Titles of sketches are those of the copy-text whenever possible, but they may not always be authorial. Any editorial alteration in the words or spelling of the titles is reported as an emendation. Capitalization, terminal punctuation, and line breaks are, however, editorially styled and not recorded as emendations. Thus, while the title of “A Gallant Fireman” (no. 1) appears in the copy-text in capital and small capital letters, followed by a period and a dash, and then by the text, the title here appears in display letters without terminal punctuation of any kind. Some sketches were published without titles; others survive in ways that obscure whatever title Mark Twain may have given them. Whenever the editors were required to supply a title, it is enclosed in square brackets.

(6) Every effort has been made to reproduce the texts without editorial marks. There are no footnote numbers in the text, for example: editorial emendations and notes are given in the apparatus and keyed to page and line; line numbers include all lines except the title. Square brackets in the text are reproduced from the copy-text and are demonstrably or presumably authorial, while square brackets in the apparatus are of course editorial. Ellipsis points in the text, however, are an exception: they are invariably editorial and indicate a lacuna in the copy-text which we have been unable to fill by conjecture. Ellipsis points may represent editorial decisions retained from the copy-text itself, as when we reproduce a partially preserved sketch from a nineteenth-century anthology. If there is any doubt about the editorial origin of such ellipses, a textual note comments on the matter. And when the author himself used ellipsis points in his text, we have adopted the convention of his manuscripts at this time, using asterisks (* * * *) instead of the conventional periods. A few editorial emendations have been required to preserve this convention.

(7) A few mechanical changes from the copy-text are not reported in the emendations lists. Ampersands have been silently expanded to “and” except in business names (“Gould & Curry”) and the form “&c.” By-lines, signatures, and conventional rubrics (like “By S. L. C.” or “For the Journal”) have been silently omitted, but when a sketch takes the form of a letter, or when it is a poem addressed to an individual, we retain the dateline, address, and signature but silently [begin page 663] style them. Although extracts are variously rendered in the copytexts (by indentation, a smaller font, reduced leading between lines, and quotation marks in combination with these other conventions), the present text renders them all uniformly by reduced leading without indentation, but preserves quotation marks when these appear in the copy-text. Internal headings in newspaper letters are sometimes authorial, sometimes not; they are always retained, but have been silently styled in accordance with the design of this edition. Punctuation following italicized words has been styled italic according to the usual practice, whether or not Mark Twain or his compositors so rendered it. The use of an initial display letter followed by small capital letters at the beginning of a sketch is an editorial convention.

All substantive variants that occur in the texts listed under the description of texts, as well as any that occur in printings unique to a given sketch, are recorded in the historical collation for that sketch. In addition, changes in dialect spelling, in emphasis (italics and exclamation points), and in paragraphing are recorded. When Mark Twain demonstrably corrected or revised other accidentals, the full history of such variants is also recorded.

Variants that occur in texts listed as derivative editions are not recorded. Mark Twain revised several copies of his sketchbooks for giving public readings: these revisions are not recorded unless they corroborate other, less certain evidence of Mark Twain's revision.