3 January 1871 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: Craven, UCCL 00554)
I tell you it is perfectly Ⓐemendation magnificent!——rich, delicious, me fascinating, brim full of meat.—the humor is transcends anything I have seen in print or heard from a stage this many a day.—& every page glitters like a cluster-pin with many-sided gems of fancy—Warner’s Ⓐemendationbook I mean—it is splendid.1explanatory note ButⒶemendation I haven’t dressed yet—the barber is waiting to shave me, Livy & the rest of the family2explanatory note are clamoring for breakfast & it does seem that a body can’t sit down in his shirt-tail to drop a friendly line to a friend without all the elements “going for” him.
All well here. Hope same to you & yrs. Happy N. Y.r & all that.
Gd bye—
Twichell had told Clemens in December about My Summer in a Garden, which gathered Charles Dudley Warner’s humorous essays about a small farm, previously published in the Hartford Courant. Warner’s first book, it was an immediate success, selling out the first printing by mid-December, within three weeks of publication (19 Dec 70 to Twichellclick to open link; Lounsbury, xiv–xvi; Hartford Courant: advertisement, 28 Nov 70, 2; “Brief Mention,” 17 Dec 70, 2).
Including Olivia Lewis Langdon, who had arrived for a visit of nearly two months in late November 1870 (19 Nov 70 to Olivia Lewis Langdonclick to open link; 20 Nov 70 to Charles J. Langdonclick to open link; 25 Jan 71 to Dayclick to open link).
MS, collection of Mrs. Robin Craven.
L4 , 294; Parke-Bernet 1945, lot 90, excerpt.
In or after 1945, the MS was acquired by Mrs. Craven’s father, Sidney L. Krauss.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.