23 June 1868 • San Francisco, Calif. (MS: PPiU, UCCL 02736)
The book is finished, & I think it will do. It will make more than 600 pages, but I shall reduce it at sea.1explanatory note I sail a week hence, & shall arrive in New York in the steamer Henry Chauncey, about July 22. I may tarry there a day or two at my former quarters (Westminster Hotel,) & then report at Hartford.2explanatory note
letter docketed: Mark Twain | June 23/68 | Author
In 1904, when Clemens recalled that he wrote The Innocents Abroad in “sixty days” by working “every night from eleven or twelve until broad day in the morning” and averaging “more than three thousand words a day,” he was thinking principally of the two months between 5 May, when he returned to San Francisco from Virginia City, and 6 July, when he finally departed San Francisco (SLC 1904, 78). As early as 7 June the Call reported that he had “been industrious of late, strange as it may seem. By dint of almost superhuman application, he has nearly prepared for press the narrative of his travels in the East” (“Nearly Completed,” San Francisco Morning Call, 7 June 68, 1). More than half the manuscript, however, consisted of printed dispatches from the Alta, Tribune, and Herald, pasted to separate leaves and revised in the margins. And when Clemens began his intensive stint in May, he already had in hand “the first ten chapters” completed earlier in Washington (22? Feb 68 to MECclick to open link). In fact, Clemens seems to have completed his manuscript draft in less than “sixty days,” for he began to “reduce” it sometime in mid- to late June, when he asked Bret Harte, who was then struggling to complete the first issue of the Overland Monthly for publication by 1 July, to read “all the MS of the ‘Innocents.’” Harte did so, and told him “what passages, paragraphs & chapters to leave out,” and Clemens “followed orders strictly. It was a kind thing for Harte to do, & I think I appreciated it” (SLC to Charles Henry Webb, 26 Nov 70click to open link, ViU). At Harte’s suggestion, Clemens may have omitted as many as sixty-five pages of manuscript, most of which survive—some with Harte’s penciled suggestions on them. Clemens also recalled that he told Harte “to take such matter out of it as he pleased for the Overland free of charge” (SLC to Milicent Washburn Shinn, 27 Oct 82click to open link, CU-MARK). The Overland was announced as “now ready” on the evening of 30 June, and it included, among other things, the first of four extracts from the Innocents manuscript which Harte had selected and edited for the new magazine (advertisement, San Francisco Evening Bulletin, 30 June 68, 2; SLC 1868). Harte’s reading and suggested revisions of the manuscript must therefore have been completed shortly after this letter to Bliss. For a full discussion of Harte’s editorial advice, see Hirst 1978.
Clemens had agreed to deliver his manuscript to the American Publishing Company “about the first of August” (27 Jan 68 to Blissclick to open link).
MS, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh Libraries (PPiU).
L2 , 232–233.
This letter was tipped into a copy of “My Début as a Literary Person” with Other Essays and Stories (Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1903), volume 23 in set 163 of the Autograph edition of the Writings of Mark Twain. The Autograph edition, issued in 512 numbered sets, was one of four limited “editions” printed from the same plates and published by the American Publishing Company: the Autograph, Royal, De Luxe, and Japan editions. Volumes 1–21 of each edition were published in 1899, and subscribers had the option of purchasing subsequent volumes, bound uniformly with their own set, as they were issued: volume 22 in 1900, 23 in 1903, and 24 and 25 (published by Harper and Brothers) in 1907. Each set of the Autograph edition included a leaf signed by Clemens bound into the first volume (The Innocents Abroad, Part 1) and one or more leaves of manuscript (sometimes a letter, sometimes leaves from a literary work) tipped into one or more volumes of the set. This letter to Bliss, who was president of the American Publishing Company until his death in 1880, was almost certainly tipped in by the publisher, before the volume was delivered to its first purchaser (a circumstance further evinced by the fact that the letter was not transcribed by Ayer; see Brownell Collection, pp. 509–11). Set 163 of the Autograph edition, which contains all twenty-five volumes, was donated to PPiU by Mrs. Pitt O. Heasley.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.