To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
21 June 1871 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00618)

Elmira, June 71.1

[Dear] Bliss:

Here are three articles which you may have if you’ll pay $100 or $125 $125 for the lot. , according to present state of your exchequer—& if you don’t want them I’ll sell them to “Galaxy,” but not for a cent less than three times the money—have just sold them a short article (shorter than either of these,) for $100.2 If you take them, pay one-tenth of the money a week ‸$125 in weekly instalments‸ to Orion till he has received it all. Don’t go over the one-tenth at a time—otherwise he will do no sort of good with it. [in margin, in pencil: Send dozen copies of the Beecher article to T. W. Crane, Elmira.] 3

If you use the articles, print the Beecher one first, then let a whole edition go by before printing either of the others—then let the scientific articles appear one after the other in successive issues of the paper.4

Yes, I would like to have you mention the lecture—& you can [ say that it ‸add this: “It‸ ] is not a fight against Woman’s rights or against any particular thing, but is only a pretentiously & ostentatiously supplicating appeal in behalf of the boys, which the general tendency of the times converts into a good-natured satire,—otherwise it ‸the lecture‸ would not deserve to be, or seem to be a satire at all. hardly sound like a satire at all—at least to a careless listener.”5

Have you heard anything from Routledge? Considering the large English sale he made of one of my other books (Jumping Frog,) I thought may be we might make something if I could give him a secure copyright.— There seems to be no convenient way to beat those Canadian re-publishers anyway——though I could can go over the line & get out a [copyright ] if you wish it & think it would hold water.6

Yrs

Mark.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 Clemens wrote this letter just before the next one. Since he neglected to date either letter, both have been assigned the date of the postmark of the second.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 The enclosures were “A New Beecher Church,” and “A Brace of Brief Lectures on Science,” parts 1 and 2. Francis P. Church had bought “About Barbers” for the August Galaxy (SLC 1871 [MT01049], 1871 [MT01051], 1871 [MT01053], 1871 [MT01056]).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

3 “A New Beecher Church” described the radically designed church complex that Thomas K. Beecher planned for his Elmira congregation. After its publication in the July 1871 American Publisher, the paper claimed to have paid “in cash a large price” for it (“Editorial Notes,” American Publisher 1 [Aug 71]: 4).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

4 Bliss followed instructions, publishing the “Brace of Brief Lectures,” on paleontology, in September and October.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

5 But see 27 June 71 to OC (1st).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

6 In 1870, in a belated attempt to combat British and Canadian book pirates, Clemens consulted the New York representative of George Routledge and Sons of London—publishers of both unsanctioned and sanctioned editions of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, And other Sketches—about British copyright on The Innocents Abroad (3 Mar 70 to Bliss, n. 2; 11 Mar 70 to Bliss, n. 3). Routledge and Sons had authorized Bliss to issue the American edition of one of their books, and in 1872 became the official English publishers of Roughing It (21? Nov 70 to OC, n. 4; SLC 1872). The Routledge edition of that work was published a few days before the American in order to secure British copyright, but portions of it were pirated in England nevertheless, and the entire book was reprinted without authorization in London in 1880 (see RI 1993, 876–77, 893).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).

Previous publication: L4, 395–396; MTB, 1:440–41, excerpt; MTLP, 66–67.

Provenance:see Mendoza Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

Dear • [‘ar’ conflated]

say that it ‸add this: “It‸ • say that ‸add this: “‸ i It

copyright. • [possibly ‘copyright.—’; deletion implied]