Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

Source: University of Illinois, Rare Book Room, Urbana, Ill ([IU-R])

Cue: "This is the first of a series"

Source format: "MS"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: Paradise, Kate

Published on MTPO: 2022

Print Publication:

This edited text supersedes the previously published text
MTPDocEd
To George Bentley
3 August 1877 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: IU-R, UCCL 12343)

‸(We remain in this our summer home till Sept. 7.⟧Ⓐemendation

————————————————————‸

Elmira, N.Y. Aug. 3.
My Dear Mr. Bentley:

This is the first of a series of four articles which are to begin six weeks hence (Sept. 15 or 17) in the October number of the Atlantic. If you desire, you can “simultane” in Temple Bar, beginning about that date, Sept. 15.1explanatory note

I told Howells he must let me have slips for you at least 4 weeks (& I preferred 6) before printing, & he said he would.

If you shouldn’t want these, will you be so kind as to send them to Mr. Chatto for one of his two magazines?2explanatory note

Very Truly Yrs
Samℓ. L. Clemens.
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):

MS, Papers of Richard Bentley and Son, IU-R.

Previous Publication:

MicroPUL, reel 1.

Provenance:

Purchased between 1951 and 1961.

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

Explanatory Notes
1 Bentley had published “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut” in his magazine, Temple Bar, in June 1876, the same month it appeared in the Atlantic Monthly (26 Apr 1876 to Bentley, n. 2; 2 July 1876 to Bentley, n. 2; SLC 1876h; SLC 1876i). In the hope that Bentley would “simultane” another article, Clemens now sent him proofsheets of the forthcoming first episode of “Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion” (SLC 1877–78a).
2 

In January 1877 Andrew Chatto, of Chatto and Windus, had expressed to Moncure Conway, Clemens’s literary agent in England, an interest in having early proofsheets of an article by Mark Twain:

If Temple Bar simultanes with the Atlantic I wonder why Mark Twain’s “How we did not reach the North Pole” was not reprinted? I wish we had had the early sheets of it. I hope Mark Twain will not forget us. We now have two Magazines; the “Gentleman’s” as well as “Belgravia.” (Welland 1978, 93)

Chatto was misinformed: Clemens was not writing a book about the North Pole (see 13 Dec 1876 to Conway, n. 1).

Emendations and Textual Notes
Ⓐ  (We . . . Sept. 7.⟧ ●  sic
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