Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

Source: Columbia University, New York ([NNC])

Cue: "I've a letter"

Source format: "MS, correspondence card"

Letter type: "correspondence card"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: Paradise, Kate

Published on MTPO: 2022

Print Publication:

This edited text supersedes the previously published text
MTPDocEd
To Moncure D. Conway
21 December 1877 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, correspondence card: NNC, UCCL 01515)
Hartford, Dec. 21.

slcDear Conway—I’ve a letter from Routledge wanting the Old Times on Mississippi & my Bermuda articles for a book.Ⓐemendation on a royalty.1explanatory note

Now my impression is, that my English matters are in your hands, on the same per centage paid you for attending to Tom Sawyer.2explanatory note It is also my impression that you are about to open negotiations with Chatto, & doubtless with Routledge too, for this very book (with the addition of a nice unique short story which I shall send to Chatto for his magazine about a week hence.)3explanatory note Please tell me at once if I my impressions are correct, so I can answer Routledge.4explanatory note

Yrs
S L Clemens
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):

MS, correspondence card, Conway Papers, NNC.

Previous Publication:

MicroPUL, reel 1.

Provenance:

The Conway Papers were acquired by NNC sometime after Conway’s death in 1907.

More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.

Explanatory Notes
1 The letter from George Routledge and Sons, Clemens’s former English publishers, is not known to survive.
2 In 1876 Conway had acted as Clemens’s agent in contracting with Chatto and Windus for the publication in England of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Clemens had agreed to pay him a commission of 5 per cent of the profits on that edition (9 Apr 1876 to Conway).
3 

“The Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton” (see 10 Dec 1877 to Chatto, n. 3). Conway replied (CU-MARK):

UCLC32623
office of “belgravia”
of “the gentleman’s magazine” & of “academy notes”
london. w.Jan 1 187 8
Dear Clemens,

First of all a happy New Year to you & yours!—old-fashioned but never more heartfelt.

Your note came today & here I am. Chatto & I have consulted & bargained; and he proposes to bring out your new all-inclusive book, so soon as our two shilling Tom Sawyer (just out) is a little out of the way. On each copy of the “Random Notes of an Idle Excursion”—which we both think would be the best label,—you will get 4d per copy. That is the biggest available royalty (about 17 per cent of two shillings) which can be got on a cheap book. If any body offers more than that he is sure to cheat and we do not wish nor mean to be cheated.—All will go well. Chatto means to sell lots of the cheap books.

I have had to hurry this note to catch boat.

Write to Routledge that you have arranged elsewhere

Ever yours
M D Conway

Chatto and Windus issued An Idle Excursion and Other Papers in 1878. In addition to “Some Rambling Notes” and the Alonzo and Rosannah story, its contents were: “Old Times on the Mississippi,” “A Literary Nightmare,” “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut,” “The Canvasser’s Tale,” and Clemens’s 1876 speech on the weather to the New England Societyclick to open link (20 Dec 1876 to Perkins, n. 1).

4 No such letter to the Routledges has been found.
Emendations and Textual Notes
Ⓐ  book.  ●  deletion implied
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