8 June 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, author’s copy: MH-H, UCCL 01241)
(Copy.)1explanatory note
It is perhaps no more my publisher than it is myself that objects to the insertion of my matter in outside books.
I think that nothing of mine has ever so appeared (except in one case) without my permission being first asked & obtained. This permission I have time & time again refused, without speaking to my publisher. I almost always refuse it. I have granted it in the case of obscure books like “Readers,” but never in the case of conspicuous works like your series.3explanatory note
It was hardly right of you to announce me & then propose to ask my permission. But I gather from your letter that your justification for this was that you felt free to take possession of any uncopyrighted matter of mine which might be lying around, & you meant to ask permission only in the case of coypyrighted matter.4explanatory note There was another publisher who allowed that queer sort of morality to fool him. He discovered, in a United States court, to his serious pecuniary cost, that my sole ownership of my matter is perfect & impregnable—I mean all my matter—every single page I ever wrote.5explanatory note
Now in giving you fair warning that if a single line of mine appears in one of your books I will assuredly stop that book with an injunction I beg you to believe me when I say that I do not do this in any fractious or unamiable spirit toward you or your editor,6explanatory note but solely & only because I think it injurious to me to come prominently into print any oftener than I am professionally obliged to do.
The source of this text is Clemens’s holograph file copy of the letter sent (see 13 July 75 to Osgood, n. 1click to open link).
Gill’s reply to Clemens’s letter of 31 May is not known to survive; but see note 4.
Clemens meant the unauthorized inclusion of his work in anthologies, not the wholesale piracy of entire books or the compilation of collections of his sketches. Several anthologies, English as well as American, contained unauthorized reprintings of his sketches, or excerpts from longer works ( ET&S1 , 670–71; BAL , 2:246–48 [unnumbered items]). For the “one case” see note 5.
Neither the “uncopyrighted matter” nor the “copyrighted matter” that Gill wanted to reprint in his Treasure-Trove series has been identified. For the sketch he ultimately did include, without Clemens’s permission, see 13 July 75 to Osgood, n. 2.click to open link
In 1873 Clemens had granted Benjamin J. Such permission to reprint one of his sketches in an advertising pamphlet, A Book for an Hour, Containing Choice Reading and Character Sketches, but Such included five. The suit, which was heard by the New York Supreme Court, was not based on a claim of copyright infringement (a federal matter), but on Clemens’s common-law property rights to his literary work and to his nom de plume as a trademark. Although Chief Justice Daniel P. Ingraham granted an injunction to prevent further sale of the book, he did not award the $25,000 Clemens sought in damages. Nor did he clearly articulate the legal basis for his decision, which was not the claim of trademark. Nevertheless, Clemens persisted in believing otherwise: in 1879 he recalled the suit as “a trade-mark case decided in my favor by Judge Lawrence in New York (about 1873)” ( N&J2 , 307; L5 , 368, 370 n. 5; Feinstein, 22–44).
Richard H. Stoddard.
MS, Rogers Memorial Room, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H).
L6 , 494–495; MTLP , 88–89.
The Henry M. Rogers and Kathleen Rogers Collection was donated in 1930.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.