Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes ()

Source: Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y ([NPV])

Cue: "Charley, if this is a lie"

Source format: "MS"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: Larson, Brian

Published on MTPO: 2025

Print Publication:

MTPDocEd
To Charles L. Webster
23 December 1884 • 1st of 2 (MS, in pencil: NPV, UCCL 03068)

written on a page torn from an Estes and Lauriat book catalog; SLC drew two lines in the margin next to the advertisement for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and wrote across the page


Charley, if this is a lie, let Alexander & Green sue them for damages instantly. And if we have no chance at them in law, tell me at once & I will publishe them as thieves & swindlers.

S L Clemens

the letter continues on another page torn from the catalog with the printed address of Estes & Lauriat; SLC underlined 111 nassau street. with two wavy lines


Hadn’t you better send a 6 witnesses or so to to try to buy 3 copies each? Use their testimony.


in ink:

I think you better print the enclosed in fac simile of my handwriting, & put a copy in every canvassers hands.

S L C

enclosure, in ink:

“Huckleberry Finn.”


My new book is not out of the press; no man has a copy of it; yet Estes & Lauriat, of Boston and New York announce it as “now ready,” & for sale by them—& at a reduced price. These vermin people deliberately lied when they made that statement. Since it was a lie which could in no possible way advantage them, it was necessarily a purely malicious lie, whose only purpose was to injure me, who have in no way harmed them.

They will have an immediate opportunity to explain, in court, & pay for the opportunity of explaining.

Mark Twain

Hartford, Dec. 23, 1884.

Textual Commentary
Source text(s):

MS, in pencil, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Special Collections, NPV.

Previous Publication:

MTBus, 284–85.

Provenance:

see McKinney Family Papers in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.

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