The fragmentary manuscript in the Mark Twain Papers with the above title is thirty-four pages long. Pages 1 through 7 are ruled, tan paper, 5 5/16 inches by 8 5/16 inches; pages 8 through 34 are cross-barred paper of the same dimensions.

Paine says that while in Weggis, Switzerland, Twain wrote a “half-finished manuscript about Tom and Huck” and another uncompleted manuscript “with the burning title of ‘Hell-Fire Hotchkiss.’ ”1 The author himself recorded the fact that the story about Hotchkiss was started on 4 August 1897,2 part-way through his stay in Weggis, from 18 July to 27 August of that year. Parts of both “Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy” (Paine's “half-finished manuscript”) and “Hellfire Hotchkiss” were written on cross-barred paper precisely like that used for “Villagers,” and a portion of “Hellfire Hotchkiss” was written on the ruled, tan paper also used in “Villagers.” John S. Tuckey, who has made an exhaustive study of papers used in manuscripts of the Weggis period, characterizes the cross-barred paper as a sort “which Twain used extensively at Weggis and perhaps there only.”3 Moreover, portions of [begin page 371] the author's Autobiography that Paine believes were written in this period also utilize the cross-barred paper, and these recall several men, women, and children who figure in “Villagers.”4 For these reasons, this fragment has been dated 1897.

In the second paragraph of this biographical essay Mark Twain indicates that, according to his calculation, the death of his brother Benjamin “dates back forty-seven years.” Since Benjamin died on 12 May 1842, the calculation (if accurate) would place the writing of this piece in 1889. However, in stating Ben's, Jane's, and his own age at the time, Twain was a year or more off: Ben died when he was not ten, but nine; the author was not eight, but six; and Jane not forty, but thirty-eight. Instead of being forty-seven years in the past, the event would seem to have occurred forty-eight or forty-nine years before, placing the time of composition in 1890 or 1891.

The first paragraph shows that the sketch was begun after Jane's death, which took place on 27 October 1890. When Paine first published a portion of the essay in Harper's Magazine (CXLIV February 1922, 277–280), he dated it 1890–1891. Paper and handwriting also confirm this dating.

Mark Twain used Crystal Lake Mills paper such as that in “Tupperville-Dobbsville” in at least thirty-six letters between 1876 and 1880 and in a number of working notes and manuscripts between the summer of 1877 and mid-June 1880. Twain wrote in violet ink of the sort that he used when in Hartford and in Europe between late November 1876 and mid-June 1880, but not thereafter for several years. As the note introducing the passage indicates, details such as those in the passage occur often in writings of the period from 1873 to 1880. It seems probable that “Tupperville-Dobbsville” was written in the late 1870's when the author was in Hartford.

Except for the not very helpful fact that Mark Twain wrote about “Mental Telegraphy” between 1878 and 1907 and about the clairvoyant powers of young Satan between 1897 and 1908, there is no external evidence that can be used to date this fragment.

Internal evidence, though slightly more helpful, does not make precise dating possible. In the upper right corner of the first two manuscript pages, Paine has written “80's,” and Paine often proved to be correct when he dated Mark Twain's manuscripts. The paper is Keystone Linen, used by the author (as I notice in discussing the date of the Indians manuscript) between 1883 and 1889. It is written in pencil, which the author used frequently in manuscripts of 1883 and 1884 and less frequently thereafter. Hence it seems likely that the fragment was written in one of those two years.

Paine labeled this fragment “90's.” Three notebooks contain suggestions for a story with its subject matter (TS 20, p. 10, in 1885 or 1886, TS 21, p. 7, in 1886 or 1887, and TS 32a, pp. 37 and 45, in June or July 1897). The manner of writing and the materials are the same as “Indiantown,” and at one point the author thought of inserting this fragment or a rewritten version of it in “Indiantown.” In WWD (p. 151) John S. Tuckey assigns “Indiantown” to 1899; and “A Human Bloodhound” probably was written during that year also.

In the final paragraphs of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, written in 1883, Tom Sawyer proposes that he, Jim, and Huck go West for “howling adventures amongst the Injuns,” and Huck talks of a plan to “light out for the Territory.” In “Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians,” Mark Twain started to write the narrative thus forecast, one he never completed. Albert Bigelow Paine's biography places the writing of the fragment in 1889.1 Ordinarily Paine's dating of manuscripts is quite reliable, since he discussed it with Mark Twain, [begin page 373] who was usually dependable on this, and since Paine also checked on the author's memory. Paper of the sort on which the fragment was written was used as late as 4 August 1889.2 Moreover, the incomplete story was preserved not only in manuscript but also in galley proof set on the Paige typesetting machine,3 in which the author invested huge sums between 1880 and 1895; and there is some evidence that these proofs date back to 1888 or 1889.4

Nevertheless, a plausible guess is that Mark Twain wrote most or all of the surviving manuscript in 1884.5 The fact that the fragment was set on the Paige machine is not decisive, since the machine could have been used as early as 1885 or as late as 1889, to set earlier writings.6 Although the paper used for the manuscript was used as late as 1889, it was also used during the six years preceding 1889, notably in parts of “Tom Sawyer: A Play,” written in 1883 and 1884, and in an account of the author's visits to a dentist in 1884. The manuscript is written in pencil, and an incomplete but fairly extensive survey of manuscripts and letters for the period indicates that although the author ordinarily used a pencil in 1884, between 1885 and 1889 he customarily used ink.7 Twain recorded his plan to write the book on 6 July 1884 in a letter asking his business manager, Webster, to send him books to use as sources, and on 17 July he indicated that Webster need not send any more books.8 On 15 July he told his friend Howells that between visits [begin page 374] to a dentist “I work at a new story (Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians 40 or 50 years ago).”9 Composing at a speed which he often achieved, he could have written that portion of the story that survives in holograph pages and galley proofs—some 240 of his usual manuscript pages—in ten or twelve days. The manuscript offers no evidence that he wrote the fragment in more than one spurt, and the scarcity of corrections in the galleys may indicate that when he gave his incomplete story to the typesetter for a practice run on the Paige machine, he had decided not to go on writing it.10 He makes no identifiable mention of the fragment after the summer of 1884.

As the introductory note for “Doughface” indicates, Mark Twain mentions this incident three times in his 1897 notebook entries concerning “Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy” and twice in entries made in 1902 dealing with a projected “fifty years after” story about Tom and Huck and their gang. Although it seems probable therefore that “Doughface” was written in one of these years, the story, as presented by Huck, is highly self-contained, and there is no internal evidence that the author intended it to be part of a longer work. There is no completely satisfactory external evidence upon which to base a preference either for 1897 or for 1902 as the date of composition. Paper similar to that used in “Doughface” appears to have been used by Mark Twain only after 1900, but the nondescript quality of the papers involved makes this similarity alone an insufficient justification for placing “Doughface” in 1902. In the absence of further evidence, the precise date of composition cannot be determined, and 1897 and 1902 remain likely possibilities.

This fragment was written on paper similar to paper which Mark Twain apparently used only after 1900. However, the lack of distinguishing characteristics in the paper and the absence of any other evidence make it unwise to eliminate the possibility that the piece was composed before 1900. Mark Twain's desire to write a sea story, particularly one that would burlesque the misuse of sea terms, was so nearly omnipresent that, in the absence of more definite evidence, the precise date of composition of this narrative cannot be determined.

Evidently Mark Twain began to write “Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy” when he was in Weggis during the summer of 1897.1 A notebook entry of 1884, one of November 1896, and several entries in a notebook kept between 2 June and 24 July 1897 show him thinking about details of the plot, but they do not indicate that he was writing.2 Paper of several of the early manuscript pages, though, is the kind he used in Weggis, and quite possibly only there, during a stay between 18 July and 26 September 1897;3 Paine dated an envelope containing part of the manuscript, 1897;4 and the datable draft of a letter on the back of p. 91 of the manuscript indicates that the author had written about a third of the manuscript which survives—about 12,000 words of it—by late August or early September 1897.5

On 29 September 1897 the Clemenses moved into the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, to stay until late in the spring of 1898.6 Mark Twain must have continued to work on the story there, since some working notes which list characters and locales in the order of their appearance through p. 114 of the manuscript are on a paper distinctive of this place and period.

Metropole stationery was used in additional working notes which outline events recounted on pp. 115–232 of the manuscript. But since this section is on a new type of paper—Joynson Superfine—the likelihood is that it was written after the Clemenses left the Metropole. Just when, is hard to say: evidence supports guesses that it was in 1898, 1899, or 1900 and perhaps in all three. Paine has labeled an envelope containing part of the manuscript “Vienna, 1898–9,”7 and after a summer in Kaltenleutgeben the author was in Vienna again, this time at Hotel Krantz, from 20 September 1898 to 22 May 1899. During this period, so Paine says, intermittently “he worked on several unfinished longer tales”; and on the back of a discarded p. 181 is an unrelated bit of writing which Paine assigns to 1899.8 Clemens used Joynson Superfine paper in letters written in London between October 1899 and 6 October 1900, and in New York between 15 October and the end of 1900.9 Writing from London on 31 July 1900, he may have referred to “Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy” in a letter to R. W. Gilder: “I am 25,000 words deep in a story which I began a long while ago (in Vienna, I think) and I mean to finish it now.”10 There is some evidence that the author made numerous revisions in this part of the story, which may have thrown him off schedule.11 Final pages of the manuscript are on Schoellerpost paper, which he used in letters in 1900 but not, I believe, in 1901 or 1902.

In 1902 Mark Twain returned to the manuscript: the verso of p. 86 contains the discarded initial page of a sketch which he wrote during the first months of that year.12 The reason probably is indicated in a 1902 notebook entry: “Make this brief: Tom's selling Huck as a nigger. See the discarded Conspiracy.”13 The note indicates that (1) Twain intended to lift one detail from the fragment for inclusion in a story he was planning about his boyish heroes,14 and (2) he had made up his mind to abandon the nearly completed narrative about Tom's conspiracy.

Paine believed that “about 1872” Mark Twain began to write the story of Tom Sawyer, not as a novel but as a play.1 This may be, but, as Bernard DeVoto has argued, Paine's belief is based upon evidence so scanty as to make it unconvincing.2 Rodman Gilder wrote in 1944 that “Tom Sawyer was begun by Mark Twain as a drama in 1872 and copyrighted as such three years later. . . .”3 Probably Gilder too trustfully accepted Paine's guess about the first version, but he was right about this copyright date. “TOM SAWYER. / A Drama. / By Mark Twain—(Samuel L. Clemens)” was copyrighted in Washington on 21 July 1875.4

Since this copyright was procured by submitting a one-page synopsis rather than a completed script, one cannot say with assurance how far the author proceeded with the play. The synopsis, I believe, reads as if it were written before any of the play. A letter dated 14 August 1876, however, suggests that by that date Twain had finished at least a part of [begin page 378] the drama. The same letter shows that he had decided that he himself could not satisfactorily dramatize the story.5

Nevertheless, he tried again. Rodman Gilder also noted that a second copyright on a dramatization of Tom Sawyer was obtained by Clemens in 1884, a fact verified by the U.S. Copyright Office. “TOM SAWYER. / A Play in 4 Acts / by / S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain)” was entered in Washington on 1 February 1884, again on the basis of a synopsis rather than a script.6

Paine believed that the version of the play completed in 1884 was destroyed,7 but the close correspondence of the 1884 synopsis with the play which has survived in the Mark Twain Papers discredits this belief. The first three acts of the surviving version are in holograph, and all four acts are in typescript (except for one lengthy handwritten replacement for a canceled part of the typescript). The initial thirty-three pages of the holograph version appear to have been salvaged from the 1875/76 version, because they are on paper often used during those years but evidently not used after mid-June 1880.8 A classroom scene (mentioned in the letter to Conway of August 1876), or possibly a revision of it, occurs in Act III. The parts of the manuscript written after August 18769 pretty clearly were written early in 1884. Paine reported that a version of the play was composed “within the space of a few weeks”;10 Clemens boasted to Howells on 13 February 1884 that in four weeks he had written all of the play Tom Sawyer plus two and a [begin page 379] half acts of another drama;11 and in a letter to his old friend Mrs. Fairbanks he placed its completion precisely on 29 January 1884.12 Evidence afforded by the writing materials supports these indications of the time of composition;13 and an entry in a notebook, some time shortly after 21 December 1883, contains Aunt Polly's speech at the end of Act III and a version of a speech by Tom Sawyer which closely resembles a speech in Act IV.14 Augustin Daly read the play Tom Sawyer early in 1884 and rejected it in a letter dated 27 February.15 There is no evidence that the author worked on it after that date.