To
Edward Hastings 17 February 1876 • Hartford, Conn.(Paraphrase: Edward Hastings to SLC, 25 April 1876, CU-MARK, UCCL12943) (SUPERSEDED)
You were right when you wrote that no American author would say “no” to my requests
on
behalf of my comrades, who will have a respectable, if not a large, collection of
books very soon.1explanatory note
This fragment of Clemens’s letter is paraphrased in a final letter from Hastings, again on the National Home letterhead (CU-MARK):
UCLC32332
elizabeth city county, va.,April 251876
Mark Twain, Hartford. Conn.
Sir,
The frank cordiality and sincerity of your letter to
meclick to open link, dated February 17, assures me that you will not deem me presumptuous in asking you
to gratify the eager expectation of our
men to read your new book “Tom Sawyer”. I can truly say that your books have not reposed on myour shelves one hour since I received them, but are in constant use, knowing which will,
I am sure, please you much. You
were right when you wrote that no American author would say “no” to my requests on
behalf of my comrades, who
will have a respectable, if not a large, collection of books very soon. Of Mr Clemens my comrades know very
little, but with Mark Twain they have formed an acquaintance; and feel for him a regard
at once familiar and respectful, and they would
all be pleased to have the opportunity of showing it.
With unfeigned respect I subscribe myself
Your obedient servant
Edward Hastings
Librarian
Reading-room
4. p.m.
“Answered,” Clemens wrote on Hastings’s envelope. The answer is not known to
survive.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
was not published until December 1876, so Hastings presumably had been alerted to
it by Howells’s early review in the Atlantic Monthly for May 1876, available by mid-April (Howells 1876, 621–22).
See Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.click to open link