Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

Source: CU-MARK ([CU-MARK])

Cue: ""

Source format: "ms"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified: 2014-02-04T11:43:08

Revision History: RHH 2013-12-23 | vf 2014-02-04 Altered Hartford to Boston and more likely location

Published on MTPO: 2024

Print Publication:

MTPDocEd
To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
25 December 1869 • Boston, Mass. (MS, damage emended: CU-MARK, UCCL 13610)

Bliss, answer Larned, just as if he were your own son—tell him what you can do.1explanatory note


And then tell him you will advertiseⒶemendation the Weekly Express in eachⒶemendation circular, dodger, etc., which you issue, upon such & such terms—However, maybe you could not do that. Answer Larned’s letter, though—I’ll tell him you will.2explanatory note

Yrs Ever
Mark.

Buffalo Nov 26, 1869
Dear Mark

I enclose you copies of the bills and circulars which we are sending off, and which we propose to put into nearly every P.O. in the U.S. How do they suit you.

We made a sudden determination to offer “Innocents Abroad” as a premium and could not wait to consult you. Hope you will approve! We telegraphed to your publishers and learned that they would furnish us the books at 40% off—or $210 per copy for the cloth bound—which takes only 10½ cents off the subscription price off the paper when given for a club of 20

SLC made two square brackets, in pencil, in this paragraph's left margin.

Now cant you make some arrangement with the Am Pub Co whereby they will assist us in pushing the paper, carrying as it does the book with it? What think you?

Can you or your agents scatter these posters any if we send you some?

Give us what suggestions you can, especially as regards the regions to be worked in to best advantage

Write soon

Yours
J N. Larned

letter docketed: ✓ author and Buffalo Express, | J. Larned | Mark Twain | Dec. 26/69.

Textual Commentary
Source text(s):

MS, damage emended, CU-MARK.

Previous Publication:

none.

Provenance:

The MS was tipped in after the half-title page of volume 2 of The Innocents Abroad in the American Publishing Company’s “Autograph Edition of Mark Twain’s Works,” which was “limited to Five Hundred and Twelve Copies, of which this is No. 88.” Eleven similar documents were tipped into other volumes of the set, all of which came from the American Publishing Company’s archives in 1899, the year of publication. The set was offered for sale by Bonhams, 25 July 2013, lot 3269, and purchased by CU-MARK.

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

Explanatory Notes
1 Clemens wrote this undated letter on the blank verso of the first leaf of Larned’s 26 November letter to him, but he must not have received or sent it to Bliss until a month later. Since Clemens was on lecture tour, his mail was being sent or forwarded to Redpath’s Lyceum Bureau in Boston, where he retrieved it on his frequent stops in that city. The docket (“Dec. 26/69.”) indicates the date Bliss received it, not the date sent, since in this case Clemens did not inscribe the date. He was in Boston on 25 December, when he wrote to Olivia that he had “called at Redpath’s a while ago,” hoping to find letters from her (see SLC to OLL, 25 December 1869click to open link). In that hope he was disappointed, but he must have found Larned’s letter and promptly annotated and sent it to Bliss.
2 Bliss’s reply to Larned has not been found, but he doubtless declined to complicate his advertising for the book in this way. Larned, however, did use Innocents to promote the Weekly Express. The “bills and circulars” he enclosed in writing to Clemens have not survived, but their likely content is suggested by advertisements he published in the Express, some of which extolled the “Splendid Premium” of a copy of Innocents given to “each person who raises a club of 20 or more new subscribers” to the paper (Buffalo Express, 18 February 1870, 3).
Emendations and Textual Notes
Ⓐ advertise ● ◇dvertise damaged
Ⓐ each ● ◇ach damaged
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