8–10 July 1874 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: DLC, UCCL 01106)
Make it 600 pages, octavo, prices ranging from $3.50 up to $5 according to binding. Each of those 600 pages will contain 350 words——so you can see how much MS is required.2explanatory note
About the letters. Your Ⓐemendation engraved card will make your name unmistakable & show whence you come. I was an entire day—from breakfast unrtil Ⓐemendation evening—writing the 30 or 44 40 pages I put into those few introductory letters. And now you suggest that those people will have forgotten about you!
Good God! {Which expression Livy will mark out, so I may as well do it myself} 3explanatory note
No indeed—if they have forgotten, on their heads be it!4explanatory note
Livy & babies & Langdons & Cranes all well—all send love.5explanatory note
Clemens replied to the following letter, which answered his of 28 June (CU-MARK):
Dickinson’s confused apology was for misspelling Clemens’s name in her 23 June letter to him (28 June 74 to Dickinson, n. 1click to open link).
Dickinson had been seeking advice and assistance in dealing with Elisha Bliss for almost two years, from Clemens and Charles Dudley Warner, and most recently from Charles E. Perkins, her friend and Clemens’s lawyer (28 June 74 to Dickinson, n. 1click to open link; see also L5 , 140–41 n. 2). Perkins wrote her on 26 June 1874, informing her that Bliss “would like to publish your book” for a royalty of 8 percent: he
will do his best to get it up in the best style—with new illustrations &c. I am inclined to think—from my knowledge of the man that this is the best he will do—and it lies with you to say whether this will be satisfactory. He says he can arrange for an English copyright for you if you wish—there are various matters of detail to be talked about if you agree— (Anna E. Dickinson Papers, DLC)
Dickinson and Bliss never came to terms, and consequently she never published a book through the American Publishing Company or its subsidiaries. It is not known if the book she was working on for Bliss was among those later published through other houses. None of them was commercially successful, although two received some favorable critical response: A Paying Investment (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1876), her plea for compulsory education for children, technical institutes to train workers, and government intervention to prevent poverty and crime; and A Ragged Register (of People, Places and Opinions) (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1879), her reminiscences (Chester, 106, 166, 173, 197–98).
Clemens canceled this paragraph with fine lines so that it could be easily read.
The Langdon family’s enduring friendship with Dickinson was based in part on their strong sympathy with the abolitionist sentiments that had made her famous during the Civil War. She regularly visited them, often when her lecture itinerary brought her to Elmira. Her most recent visit seems to have been in March 1872 ( L5 , 67–68 n. 5).
See 11 July 74 to JLC, n. 7click to open link. Dickinson replied (CU-MARK):
Dickinson had not always thought so well of Clemens. In 1873, in a letter to her mother, she characterized him as a “vulgar boor” (see L3 , 66 n. 2, which, however, misidentifies her correspondent).
L6 , 180–181.
MS, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress (DLC).