22 July 1869 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS, damage emended, and transcript:
Cooper and CtY-BR, UCCL 00327)
Mr Bliss, are you not making a mistake about publishing this year? The book was to have been ready peremptorily just a year ago, exactly. Then, as it was necessary to make room & a market for Grant’s biography, it was judged much better to delay this book of mine a month or two. Then, to harass be up with a rival publisher & damage Ⓐemendation & make capital out of a rival book, it was thought best to make a spring book of mine, in order to give the “Metropolis” a chance. And then, in order once more to fight a rival book & a rival house, it was considered best to make mine a summer book & give the “Mississippi” a fresh boost. And now that the further delay of my book will encourage agents to continue to labor for the “Mississippi” (I only just barely suppose this from hearing you tell a new agent he could have my book when issued if he would work on the “Mississippi” until that vague & uncertain event transpiredⒶemendation,) it is deemed best to hold it back Ⓐemendation & make a fall book of it.Ⓐemendation
Do not misunderstand. Ⓐemendation I am not complaining. I am not contending that there is any a occasion for you to comply with that portion of a contract which stipulates that the book shall be issued “early in the spring.” I am not pretending that there is Ⓐemendationa community of interest here which would make it improper for you to take the liberty & the responsibility of departing from the letter of a contract in order to subserve your interest, without first inquiring, for form’s sake whether it will be satisfactory all round—or whether it will be equally profitable all round. I am not contending that I am hurt unto death simply because the delay for “Grant” damaged my interests,; or that because the delay for the “Metropoliss Ⓐemendation,” damaged my interests likewise; or because the delay necessary to make me a spring vegetable damaged my interests; or because the delay in order to open up the “Mississippi” again damaged my interests; or because the further delay to bail the “Mississippi” dry is still damaging my interests. No. All I want to know is,—viz:—to-wit—as follows:
After it is done being a fall book, upon what argument shall you perceive that it will be best to make a winter book of it? And—
After it is done being a winter book, upon what argument shall you perceive that it will be best to make another spring book of it again? And—
When it is done being another spring book again, upon what argument shall you perceive that it will be best to—to—to—1explanatory note
Are you going to publish it before Junius Henri Brown’s entir t Travels in Italy & Germany, or after?2explanatory note
All I desire is to be informed from time to time what future season of the year the publication Ⓐemendation is postponed to, & why—so that I can go on informing my friends intelligently—I mean that infatuated baker’s dozen of them who, faithful unto death, still believe that I am going to publish a book.
But seriously, I object to any further delay, & hereby enter my protest against it. These delays are too one-sided. Every one of them has had for its object the furthering of the Am. Pub. Co.’s interest, & to compass this, my interests have been entirely disregarded Ⓐemendation. We both know what figure the sales were expected to reach if due & proper diligence were exerted in behalf of the publication. If that result is not achieved shall you be prepared to show that your tardiness was not the cause?—& sh failing this, shall you be prepared to recompense me for the damage sustained? These are grave questions. I have ceased to expect a large sale for a book whose success depended in a great measure upon its publication while the public were as yet interested in its subject,3explanatory note but I shall feel entirely justified in holding the Publishing Company responsible in case the sales fall short or Ⓐemendation reasonably short of what Ⓐemendation we originally expected them to reach.
I think you will do me the justice to say that I have borne these annoying & damaging delays Ⓐemendation as patiently as any man with Ⓐemendation bread & butter & reputation Ⓐemendation at stake could have borne Ⓐemendation them. I cannot think I have Ⓐemendation been treated just right.
P. S. I am sorry Ⓐemendation to add to your woes—I know Ⓐemendation you have your full complement, anyhow Ⓐemendation—but consider that remember Ⓐemendation that my share may be cut short Ⓐemendation, or even threatened by the delays.Ⓐemendation 4explanatory note
letter docketed: Samuel Clemens Ⓐemendation
This letter was prompted by the following response (CU-MARK) to a Clemens inquiry, no longer extant, about exactly when The Innocents Abroad would be published:
After completing three months of proofreading on 5 June, and having acquiesced in previous postponements, Clemens expected to promptly receive bound copies of his book. The announcement that its publication was again delayed therefore struck him as just another in a series of deliberate obstructions, including Bliss’s 1868 publication of Albert Deane Richardson’s A Personal History of Ulysses S. Grant and his 1869 publication of Richardson’s Beyond the Mississippi (revised edition) and Junius Henri Browne’s The Great Metropolis: A Mirror of New York (14 May 69 to OLL; 4 June 69 to Fairbanks; L2 , 163 n. 5, 169–70, 217, 239 n. 2, 257, 421–22). For Bliss’s responses to Clemens’s charges, see 1 Aug 69click to open letter and 12 Aug 69 to Blissclick to open letter, nn. 1.
Apparently the working title for Browne’s Sights and Sensations in Europe, not published by the American Publishing Company until July 1871 (APC 1866–79, 70).
As a result of Clemens’s 1868–69 “American Vandal Abroad” lecture tour.
Clemens’s postscript has been partly obliterated by damage to the manuscript page. Approximately half of the present reading has been supplied conjecturally (see the textual commentary).
The MS consists of 9 torn half-sheets of flimsy wove paper, inscribed on one side only. Pages 2 and 9 are badly damaged, with several words, characters, and punctuation marks wholly or partly missing. See below for illustrations of the damaged pages, editorially reconstructed.
MS, collection of Jack F. Cooper, serves as copy-text, with damage emended from a handwritten transcription made by Dana Ayer, Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (CtY-BR), made when the MS was presumably in somewhat better condition. By 1925, however, it had been damaged and repaired: “Each sheet backed with transparent silk gauze, and inlaid; a portion of the second and of the last sheets torn away, damaging some words” (Dawson’s Book Shop, lot 112).
L3 , 284–86; AAA 1924, lot 65, excerpts; MTLP , 22–24, with omission.
The MS, accompanied by a typewritten transcript, was sold in 1924 (AAA 1924, lot 65) and again in 1925 (Dawson’s Book Shop, lot 112). Thereafter, probably during the 1930s, it was acquired by Sadie Lydia Marshall Cooper, grandmother of the present owner, Jack F. Cooper. Two distinct transcriptions of the letter in Dana Ayer’s hand exist, both lacking the postscript. The first, at CtY-BR, was evidently made directly from the MS. The second, now at WU, derives from the first, as does a typescript, also at WU. See Brownell Collection, pp. 581–82.