the riverside press, cambridge, mass. hurd & houghton, publishers.
boston office, 219 washington st. 13 astor place, new york.
the riverside press is a regular station of the western union telegraph company,
and is in direct communication with every telegraph office in the country
riverside, cambridge, mass.
6 February 187
5
Confidential
Dear Sir: We should like to ask your favorable consideration of a scheme which we
have formed, in carrying out
which your cooperation would be of great value. We have been struck with the comparatively
slight attention paid by American publishers
to American fiction. In the various “libraries of select fiction” American authors
find small place, and the
general style of presentation is rarely such as to attract public notice. We ourselves
have published but few novels, except the
standard ones, of Dickens & Cooper, but it is our wish, having no entanglements with
modern British novelists, to make a
specialty of the publication of bright, short American novels, giving them all the
prominence which very careful attention to the
printing and binding can secure, making them cheap, advertising them widely and securing
thus popularity for the several books and all
possible reputation as well as profit for the authors.
We design to make this series, which we have projected, exclusively of the foremost
American novelists; of high
grade in respect of literature, selecting the writers with care, and more desirous
of getting a few notable books than of publishing a
long list of good bad and indifferent ones. We wish to make the series an event in
American literature, showing that when publishers
and authors combine they can show that there is an independent class of American fiction
worthy of all prominence. We mean to see what
the Riverside Press can do in turning out a set of books, inexpensive yet beautiful
to the eye and with elements of wide and lasting
popularity.
Pray set down any excessive to our enthusiasm and not to any spirit of brag, and let
us ask if we may not count
on you for No I in this series? We trust you will give this matter favorable consideration and
we should be
glad to confer further with you, either personally or by letter. Meanwhile have the
kindness to regard our communication as
confidential as we wish to perfect our plans before any part of them become public.
We remain
Very truly yours,
H. O. Houghton & Co.
Samℓ L. Clemens Esq
Hartford Ct.
MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1925 [390]).
L6 , 379–80; MTLP , 83; Monteiro, 9–10.
deposited by Houghton, Mifflin Company sometime after 1943.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.