22 May 1874 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: CtY-BR, UCCL 01093)
I have mislaid the letter you wrote me Ⓐemendation the other day about House’s Japan book. I am anxious it should go to him. Will you make a copy of it & send to him? It is important that he should know what you said in it.1explanatory note
Please telegraph me the numbers of each of my 3 books that have been sold. Want it for a biographical notice. You Ⓐemendation You needn’t mention the names of the books, but just the number sold of each. I will know ‘tother from which by the varying number—or rather by your putting Innocents first, Roughing It next & Gilded Age last.2explanatory note
All well here.
bottom one-fifth of page cut away 3explanatory note
letter docketed: ✓ and Samuel L. Clemens Ⓐemendation Elmira | N. Y. | May 22 ″74
For three years Clemens had been trying to expedite Bliss’s publication of a book on Japan by Edward H. House ( L4, 388–89; L5 , 30 n. 2, 362 n. 2). If Bliss sent the requested letter copy directly to House, it evidently did not reach him. In a letter of 13 November 1874 to Clemensclick to open link from Japan, House complained that he had written to Bliss the preceding May,
explaining all my ideas of getting new material in Formosa, and my belief that it would add to the value of the book, although a postponement would be necessary. I asked for his opinion about the matter, but have never heard from him since. I can’t tell whether to think he didn’t like the postponement, and concluded to push the whole affair aside, or that he may have written and I not have received his letter. I’m all uncertain in the business, and have shut off work, because I can’t go ahead in such a state of indecision. Have you heard him say anything about it? I was very explicit, and of course thought I was quite convincing, but perhaps I wasn’t, and it may be that Bliss took a totally different view from mine, and got mad because I wanted to extend the contract time. Anyway, I am all in the dark at present. You don’t say anything on the subject, either. Can it be possible that all my letters failed to reach their destination? I hardly think that, since those I sent to the N.Y. Herald were all, or nearly all published. I do wish I could get some word about it, for I am completely at a loss and at a standstill. (CU-MARK)
For further details of House’s planned book and his Herald coverage of Japanese activities in Formosa, see 10 Apr 75 to Bliss, n. 1click to open link, and 17 Nov 75 to Bennett, n. 1click to open link.
Bliss’s reply does not survive. American Publishing Company bindery records (and one Gilded Age statement) provide the following figures through 22 May 1874: 110,843 copies of The Innocents Abroad bound since July 1869; 85,699 copies of Roughing It bound since January 1872; and 47,553 copies of The Gilded Age bound since December 1873. Some of these were review, complimentary, or sample copies and therefore not sold. Clemens evidently intended the statistics for one, and perhaps both, of two biographical sketches that were soon to appear. On 4 July 1874, Appletons’ Journal published “Mark Twain,” by George T. Ferris (1840–1916), who later wrote a number of biographical handbooks, chiefly of musicians. The figures that Ferris reported were consistent with the bindery records:
During the five years which have elapsed since the issue of “The Innocents Abroad,” the aggregate sale of our author’s works has reached two hundred and forty-one thousand copies, representing a money-value of nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Though a large sale is by no means the only or even the best measure of literary excellence, the above-mentioned fact is so remarkable as to be almost unparalleled. (Ferris, 17)
Also pending was an update of the entry for Clemens that had appeared in the eighth edition of Men of the Time: A Dictionary of Contemporaries, issued by his English publishers, George Routledge and Sons, in 1872 ( L5 , 161 n. 2). Clemens’s entry in the ninth edition, published in 1875, was thoroughly revised. It discussed both Innocents and Roughing It, although it gave no sales figures. It did not mention The Gilded Age, reporting instead on the dramatic version of it that Clemens was still writing at this time: “In 1874 he produced in New York a comedy, ‘The Golden Age,’ which had a remarkable success” ( Men of the Time: 1872, 227; 1875, 249; APC 1866–79, 45, 102, 194, 195, 203, 211; “Statement of Sales of Gilded Age,” in Bliss to Warner, 12 Mar 74, CtHT-W).
The letter appears to be complete except for the complimentary close and signature.
MS, Willard S. Morse Collection, Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (CtY-BR).
L6 , 152–153.
The Morse Collection was donated in 1942 by Walter F. Frear.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.