Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes ()

Source: United States Library of Congress, Washington, D.C ([DLC])

Cue: "Now that notice"

Source format: "MS"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: AB

Published on MTPO: 2007

Print Publication: v5

MTPDocEd
To Whitelaw Reid
22 April 1873 • (2nd of 3) • Hartford, Conn. (MS: DLC, UCCL 00906)
My Dear Reid—

Now that notice is bully! Wh If any man is deceived by that, he will be deceived in the happy direction, at any rate—& s emendation that is what we want. All right, now!1explanatory note

Ys
Mark.

letter docketed: 24 Apr. 1873 | Hartford

Textual Commentary
22 April 1873 • To Whitelaw Reid • (2nd of 3) • Hartford, Conn.UCCL 00906
Source text(s):

MS, Whitelaw Reid Papers, Library of Congress DLC).

Previous Publication:

L5 , 352–353.

Provenance:

The Whitelaw Reid Papers (part of the Papers of the Reid Family) were donated to DLC between 1953 and 1957 by Helen Rogers Reid (Mrs. Ogden Mills Reid).

More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.

Explanatory Notes
1 

It is possible that Clemens misdated his letter by one day, and that he wrote after seeing the Tribune’s second notice of The Gilded Age, published (in minion) on 23 April in the upper right quarter of the editorial page (4). It is somewhat more likely, however, that Reid telegraphed the text before publication to Clemens, who wrote this reply late on 22 April, so that it was not docketed until 24 April. The notice read:

The work upon which Mark Twain and Mr. Charles Dudley Warner have been engaged for the past year is likely to prove the chief literary event of the season. Its first mention in The Tribune has excited great attention and interest, and we are able now to announce its name. It is called “The Gilded Age”—a name which gives the best promise of the wealth of satire and observation which it is easy to expect from two such authors. It is an unusual and a courageous enterprise for two gentlemen who have already won honorable distinction in other walks of literature, to venture upon untrodden paths with a work so ambitious and so important as this is likely to be. In one sense there is nothing to fear. An immense audience is already assured beforehand; and it is fair to conclude that writers who have displayed so much wit, insight, and delicate and fanciful observation, in former works, will not be unprovided with the equipment which is necessary to successful fiction. The new novel will be eagerly looked for and enormously read, and we hazard little in predicting that it will contain as much food for thought as for laughter.

Emendations and Textual Notes
  s  ●  partly formed
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