Clemens wrote the inscription to Col. Morgan in his own copy of the 1880 printing of Date, 1601, and sent it to him in 1881, probably via Lt. Wood, who had passed on Morgan’s request for a copy to Clemens, along with a note of his own identifying Morgan, and expressing his curiosity about what it was Morgan wanted: “Col. Morgan belongs to the Van Vliet[,] Sherman, McCook whist crowd and evidently is anxious to replace his lost treasure, what was it?” (Wood to SLC, 13 June 1881, UCLC 40787 enclosing Morgan to Wood, 9 June 1881, UCLC 39317; Wood to SLC, 27 June 1881, CU-MARK, UCLC 40794). The book was advertised for sale in 1991 at Christie’s (17 May, lot 75) and, according to Kevin Mac Donnell, it was accompanied by some “old notes that claimed this copy had belonged to Wood, who then gave it to his brother James, who then passed it along to an ‘unknown editor.’ ” Christie’s evidently returned the book to its owner, who sold it “several years later” to Mac Donnell (Mac Donnell to Victor Fischer, 3 Dec 2015, personal communication). It is not known exactly when the inscription was clipped from the 1880 copy and pasted into the 1882 copy, but it was presumably done by Wood.

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