Crane and Henry Abbey had apparently ended their competition to schedule a lecture by Clemens (see 21 Aug 69 to Abbeyclick to open link, and 21 Aug 69click to open link, 3 Sept 69click to open link, and 8 Sept 69 to Craneclick to open link). Clemens lectured in Rondout, New York, for Crane, on 12 January 1870.

James Knowles Medbery (1838–73) was a New York journalist who worked on the Round Table, the Evening Mail, the Evening Post, and from 1869 to 1871 was the literary editor of the Christian Union. “In 1866 he established the American Literary Bureau at New York. This comprised the first lecture bureau, in this country, which combined the promotion of literary lecturers with the examining and editing of various publications—articles for magazines, etc.” (MacKaye, 1:113, 114). In fact, the bureau’s “Authors’ Department” functioned as a complete literary agency, soliciting manuscripts, negotiating contracts, and supervising publication (American Literary Bureau, 12). Medbery evidently was the agent who approached Clemens in the spring of 1869 (see 10 May 69 to Redpathclick to open link, p. 216). Presumably his “tangle” with James Redpath, Clemens’s Boston-based agent, was the result of the American Literary Bureau’s claim to represent Clemens. As late as 20 November 1869, the bureau was advertising itself to “Lecture Committees throughout the country” as Mark Twain’s agent (“Lectures and Meetings,” New York Tribune, 20 Nov 69, 5).