The “new book” was the printer’s copy for a collection of sketches which, in December 1870, Clemens had prepared and contracted to publish with Bliss. By 5 January 1871 he had drawn up a table of contents and prepared most or all of the printer’s copy for thirty-eight sketches, but by 27 January he had postponed further work on it until after Roughing It was published. As Clemens wrote Roughing It, he removed from the sketchbook printer’s copy one or more unpublished sketches, as well as five previously printed ones, incorporating them into his narrative. And although he probably did no substantial work on the sketchbook in late 1871 or early 1872, he may have added a few sketches from the Buffalo Express and the American Publisher ( ET&S1 , 595 n. 141). Bliss had again suggested an addition to the contents: “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” Ever since Clemens purchased the plates of his Jumping Frog book in December 1870, Bliss had consistently favored—and Clemens had just as consistently opposed—including its title sketch in the new sketchbook. Clemens’s preference was to reprint it in a pamphlet with only a few other pieces, as he ultimately did in 1874 with Mark Twain’s Sketches. Number One. The present letter indicates that Clemens had brought the printer’s copy for the sketchbook with him to Elmira, intending to ready it again for publication. Within the next few days, however, he accepted an offer from George Routledge and Sons to reprint his sketches in England. He used the printer’s copy he had on hand, doubling its size with some two or three dozen additional sketches and sending the whole to England (see 31 Mar 72 to Osgood, n. 4click to open link). Bliss seems to have made no objection to deferring the American sketchbook once again: apparently by mutual consent, Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old was not published until 1875 ( L4 , 281, 282–83 n. 5, 295–96, 319; RI 1993 , 826–28; ET&S1 , 571–86, 589–90, 608, 611; SLC 1865 [MT00383], 1867 [MT00505], 1874 [MT01134], 1875).

The Chicago Tribune reported on 17 March:

A similar report appeared in the Elmira Advertiser on 24 March (“In Great Demand,” 4). The binding records of the American Publishing Company show that from February through June 1872, at least 10,000 copies a month were bound, the peak coming in May with 16,905 copies. Since 30,000 orders had been received by 18 March, but only 23,695 copies were bound by the end of the month, Bliss’s “edition” was indeed “short” (APC, 74–76, 109; 18 Mar 72 to Howellsclick to open link; RI 1993 , 890, gives 24,676 copies for March because it includes 981 copies bound on 1 and 2 April).