per Fanny C. Hesse
13 December 1876 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, signed by SLC: NNC, UCCL 01394)
ItsⒶemendation a mistake, I am not writing any new book. Belford has taken the profits all out of “Tom Sawyer”. We find our copywrightⒶemendation law here to be nearly worthless, and if I can make a living out of plays, I shall never write another book. For the present I have placed the three books in mind, in the waste basket, but if I should write one of them, Chatto shall have a say in it.2explanatory note
The Canadian “Tom Sawyer” has actually taken the market away from us in every village in the Union. We cannot accomplish anything against the news dealers, because the newsdealer is privileged to sell a pirated book until we give him personal and distinct notice, that that book is copywrightedⒶemendation. The Publishers say that as near as their lawyers can make it out, English copywrightⒶemendation is not worth anything in Canada, unless it be recorded in Canada, within sixty days after publication in England.3explanatory note
We still hope to see you in London in April & I shall be very sorry if anything interferes to prevent it.4explanatory note
With kindest regards, I am ever yours truly and sincerely
P. S. Have just written a new play with Bret Harte, which we expect great things from, tho’ of course we may be disappointed.
Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK):
Andrew Chatto must have seen the 25 November 1876 number of the London Athenæum, which reported: “Mr. Mark Twain is said to be engaged on a book named ‘The North Pole, and how we didn’t get there’” (“Literary Gossip,” 691). Jennie Lee (1846–1930) won acclaim for her enactment of the title character in Jo, a play written by her husband, John Pringle Burnett, based on the orphan boy in Dickens’s Bleak House. She made her London debut in the role at the Globe Theatre in February 1876 and performed it there and abroad for several years (Fitz-Gerald 1910, 246–49). Clemens had discussed his hope for a dramatization of Tom Sawyer in his 14 August 1876 letter to Eustace Conway click to open letter, and presumably in subsequent letters to Moncure Conway that have not been found. For details of Clemens’s earnings on the two thousand copies of the English edition of the book, see 29 Dec 1876 to Conwayclick to open letter, n. 1.
Clemens paraphrased Elisha Bliss, who had written him on 11 December (CU-MARK):
The difficulty is that we have to prove that the news dealer knew it was a copyrighted book, to sustain our case. Such has been the construction put upon the law by lawyers. It is hard doing this. Everyone will claim they did not know of this fact & were not responsible for selling it. . . . I learn that to hold a copyright in Canada—taken out in England, it is necessary to have it recorded in Canada also, within 60 days of its publication in England, or it is lost—I fear your copyright in Canada is worthless—
The Canadian Copyright Act of 1875 did not include any sixty-day requirement. Section 4 stated that copyright could be obtained for works “printed and published or reprinted and republished in Canada . . . whether they be so published or produced for the first time, or contemporaneously with or subsequently to publication or production elsewhere.” Bliss may have read about the sixty-day limitation in the Publishers’ Weekly for 28 October, which incorrectly asserted, “The Dominion law of 1875 declares that to preserve his copyright in Canada, the English author must have his book reprinted or republished in Canada within sixty days of its appearance in England” (“Copyright Notes,” 28 Oct 1876, 700). Section 10 of the new law stipulated that an author could “obtain an interim copyright” on a work he intended to publish in Canada, which was valid for one month “from the date of original publication elsewhere.” This one-month option might have been the source of the misunderstanding (“Act of April 8, 1875,” Solberg 1903, 76–78). See also 2 Nov 1876 to Conway, n. 3.
MS, signed by SLC, Conway Papers, NNC.
MTLP , 106–7, partial publication; MicroPUL, reel 1.
The Conway Papers were acquired by NNC sometime after Conway’s death in 1907.