This volume opens on 2 January 1872, with Clemens traveling the Midwest in the eleventh week of his winter lecture tour. Although chafing to be done with “this lecturing penance” (p. 14), he could not manage a home visit with Olivia and fourteen-month-old Langdon until 25 January, eight days before his second wedding anniversary. In late February, after a half dozen more performances, “the most detestable lecture campaign that ever was” (p. 43) was at last over.

The 309 letters gathered here, well over half of them never before published, document in intimate detail the events of 1872 and 1873, during which the Clemenses prospered from the royalties on Roughing It (over ten thousand dollars in the first three months), rejoiced at the birth of a healthy daughter and mourned the loss of their son shortly thereafter, and began building the house in Hartford in which they would live contentedly for nearly two decades. Meanwhile, Clemens‘s professional life flourished, as he became established among the leading writers and journalists of his day. The letters shed light on his friendships with many prominent people, among them Whitelaw Reid, the new editor in chief of the New York Tribune, the most influential newspaper in America; Bret Harte, at the peak of his fame; William Dean Howells, the highly respected editor of the Atlantic Monthly; Thomas Nast, the crusading political cartoonist of Harper‘s Weekly; and Charles Dudley Warner, his congenial neighbor and the coauthor of The Gilded Age. At the same time, Clemens was earning an international reputation. By the end of 1873, when this volume closes, he had made three trips across the Atlantic, spending a total of eight and a half months in Great Britain, where he reveled in his success as both an author and a lecturer.

During the first half of 1872 Clemens was occupied with several literary projects. In late February Roughing It was published, and despite his early anxiety about its critical reception, brisk sales and “sufficient testimony, derived through many people‘s statements” made him feel “at last easy & comfortable about the new book” (p. 69). Another project, a book about the South African diamond mines planned in 1870 with John Henry Riley as surrogate traveler and collaborator, was first postponed, and then—with Riley fatally ill—abandoned. In the meantime Clemens made short work of revising The Innocents Abroad and two collections of sketches for publication in England by George Routledge and Sons, who, with their edition of Roughing It, were now established as his official English publishers. Casting about for a new project, Clemens followed a suggestion from Joseph Blamire, the Routledges’ New York agent, to write a book about England. On 21 August he embarked for London, intending to spend several months sightseeing and quietly gathering information. Within days of his arrival, however, he was over-whelmed with “too much company—too much dining—too much sociability” (p. 155). Welcomed everywhere as a literary lion and flooded with invitations to lecture, he was astounded and gratified to discover that he was “by long odds the most widely known & popular American author among the English” (p. 197). In November he sailed for home, having decided to postpone an English lecture series and any further research on his book until he could return the following spring, accompanied by Olivia.

Back home in Hartford, Clemens turned his attention to topical issues, firing off letters and articles to the New York Tribune, the Hartford Evening Post, and the Hartford Courant in which he commented—with characteristic humor—on subjects as wide ranging as street repair, safety at sea, incompetent juries, and political corruption. His most significant pieces were two long letters on the Sandwich Islands, written in January 1873 in response to an invitation from Whitelaw Reid. The attention these letters received led to several lecture invitations, and in February Clemens revived his Sandwich Islands talk for enthusiastic audiences in New York, Brooklyn, and New Jersey.

Clemens’s next major project reflected his heightened interest in social issues and took him in a new direction, away from personal narrative and toward fiction. Inspired by newspaper reports of government corruption and scandal in New York and Washington, he set to work, in collaboration with his friend Charles Dudley Warner, on a political satire: The Gilded Age. Writing with a rare enthusiasm, the two authors completed their manuscript in about four months. By early May the American Publishing Company had agreed to issue the book, and arrangements for simultaneous publication in England had been made with the Routledges.

On 17 May, Clemens again sailed for England, this time accompanied by Olivia (on her first trip abroad), ten-month-old Susy and her nurse-maid (Nellie Bermingham), Olivia’s childhood friend Clara Spaulding, and a secretary, Samuel C. Thompson. To his original objectives—research and lecturing—Clemens had added two further missions: to secure a valid British copyright on The Gilded Age by establishing residency in Great Britain, and to correspond for the New York Herald.

In London the Clemens party was busy with excursions, sightseeing, and dinners. Clemens held court in their rooms at the Langham Hotel, and was often seen about town or at clubs in company with Joaquin Miller, the eccentric poet. Anthony Trollope, Robert Browning, and other prominent English and American visitors came to call or issued invitations. After seven hectic weeks in London, the Clemenses fled north in search of rest and quiet, visiting Scotland and Ireland for several weeks.

In October Clemens kept his promise to lecture, appearing for a week in London before large and appreciative audiences with his talk on the Sandwich Islands. By this time, however, Olivia was “blue and cross and homesick”—and newly pregnant (p. 457). But Clemens’s business in London was by no means concluded: the English publication of The Gilded Age had been delayed. He therefore accompanied Olivia home in late October, returning immediately to London for a third time to “finish talking” (p. 472). Comfortably settled again at the Langham Hotel, he now had his old San Francisco friend Charles Warren Stoddard as a secretary and amiable companion. Clemens lectured from 1 to 20 December, soon replacing the Sandwich Islands lecture with “Roughing It,” which was equally well received by London’s “bully audiences” (p. 521). By the end of the year—with both the American and English editions of The Gilded Age in print, but with his English book still in abeyance—Clemens was making preparations to return home. “Thirteen more days in England, & then I sail!” he wrote Olivia on 31 December. “If I only do get home safe, & find my darling & the Modoc well, I shall be a grateful soul. And if ever I do have another longing to leave home, even for a week, please dissipate it with a club” (p. 543).