Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

Source: Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass ([MH-H])

Cue: "If there is"

Source format: "MS, postal card, in pencil"

Letter type: "postal card"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: AB

Published on MTPO: 2022

Print Publication:

This edited text supersedes the previously published text
MTPDocEd
To William Dean Howells
5 December 1876 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, postal card, in pencil: MH-H, UCCL 01392)

If there is another magazine in Toronto (or Montreal) I want to give it advanced sheets. BelfordⒶemendation Bros., the miserable thieves have couldn’t buy a sentence from me for any money.1explanatory note Is there another magazine—I earnestly want to give advanced sheets to it. Tell me if there is.2explanatory note

S L C

us postal card. | write the address on this side—the message on the other | W D Howells, Esq 37 Concord ave Cambridge Mass postmarked: hartford conn. dec 5 6pm

Textual Commentary
Source text(s):

MS, postal card, in pencil, MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 (98).

Previous Publication:

MTHL , 1:167.

Provenance:

See Howells Letters in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.

Explanatory Notes
1 See 2 Nov 1876 and 13 Dec 1876 to Conway.
2 

Clemens answered the following note from Howells, written on the back of its enclosure and mailed on 4 December (CU-MARK):

UCLC32448

“What answer?” as our friend Miss Dickinson would say.

enclosure:

belford’s monthly magazine editor’s department

rankin block, 11, colborne st,

toronto, ont.

Nov. 29th 1876
Dear Sir.

We notice in the Prospectus of the Atlantic for 1877, your announcement that Mark Twain will contribute during the year. Can we make arrangements with “The Atlantic” to publish his sketches simultaneously in our magazine. We would be willing to pay liberally for the right to publish them in the magazine, although the law allows us to pirate them—

Awaiting your reply,

We Remain
                                         Yours Truly
Belford. Bros

W. D Howells Esq
    CambridgeⒶemendation

Howells’s cover note alluded to Anna Dickinson’s novel about an interracial romance, What Answer?, which he had reviewed tolerantly, but negatively, in the Atlantic Monthly for January 1869 (Dickinson 1868; Howells 1869; Atlantic Index 1889, 105). The request from Belford Brothers was in response to “The Atlantic Monthly for 1877. Twentieth Year,” in the front advertising pages of the December 1876 number of the magazine. There it was announced that Mark Twain “will be a frequent contributor to the Atlantic during the year.” In fact, at this time Clemens was committed for only a single article—which, Howells knew, was about Dickinson—for the January 1877 “Contributors’ Club” (11 Oct 1876 to Howellsclick to open link, n. 11). Howells’s reply to Clemens’s letter has not been found.

Emendations and Textual Notes
Ⓐ sheets. Belford ● ~.— | ~
Ⓐ W. D . . . Cambridge ● a vertical brace spans the right margin of these two lines
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