12 July 1869 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS facsimile: Sears, UCCL 00326)
bituminous coal office no. 6 baldwin street
The circular for the Book is nice—it is tip-top—it is handsome. I wish you would send me half a dozen more—& if you have plenty to spare, send a few dozens Ⓐemendation or a few hundred to my agent, James Redpath, 20 Bromfield street, Boston.1explanatory note
In a hurry
letter docketed: ✓ and Mark Twain | July 12/69
On 17 July Frank Bliss replied for his father: “We send via mail a very few of the circulars all that we have today, shall have plenty in 2 or 3 days as soon as some corrections are made in the plates, we send a few to Redpath, & will send him more in a short time, if you wish more of them let us know, have all you want” (CU-MARK). The corrected circular, with a redesigned final page, was most likely the one distributed, at least on occasion, at Clemens’s lectures during the fall of 1869. It was incorporated into the canvasser’s prospectus for The Innocents Abroad, which was ready on 13 July (“Mark Twain’s New Book,” Boston Journal, 10 Nov 69, 4; Hirst, 256, 258). Both the original circular and the redesigned final page are reproduced in Advertising Circular for The Innocents Abroad click to open link. See also 10 May 69 to Redpath, n. 1.click to open link
MS facsimile. The editors have not seen the MS, which is in the collection of Daphne B. Sears.
L3 , 283.
In 1949 the Mark Twain Papers received a transcription from Francis Richmond Sears, whose father had acquired the letter from Elisha Bliss. In 1981 Sears’s widow, Daphne B. Sears, sent the photograph of the MS that serves as copy-text.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.