21 March 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: ViU, UCCL 00446)
Dear Sir:
Fields Osgood & ⒶemendationCo. do not appear to send us any more books to notice. We haven’t got one lately. We Will Ⓐemendationyou be so kind as to kill the person who is to blame, & appoint a more reliable officer in the murdered man’s place? We do not like to intrude, but really it is utterly impossible to git Ⓐemendation get along without books.2explanatory note
With many apologies—
Until his retirement in late December 1870, Fields (1817–81) was the senior partner in Fields, Osgood and Company, the Boston publishing firm whose list included Browning, Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Tennyson, Thackeray, and Whittier, among many others. For ten years he was also editor of the Atlantic Monthly, a post he relinquished to William Dean Howells in July 1871. Clemens had known him at least since December 1869 (Weber, 109, 111–12, 115–17; Mott 1938, 493 n. 1; L3 , 382–83 n. 6).
This mock complaint may have had a real effect. Among the books briefly reviewed in the Buffalo Express of 26 March was one recently published by Fields, Osgood and Company: Hedged In, a novel by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (“Literary,” 2). There is no indication that Clemens himself wrote the review.
MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU).
L4 , 93–94.
deposited at ViU by Clifton Waller Barrett on 17 December 1963.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.