To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
4 September 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00502)

Buf. Sept. 4.

Friend Bliss—

During past week have written first four chapters of the book, & I tell you the “Innocents A B Abroad[”] will have to get up early to beat [it. It ]will be a book that will jump right [strait ]into a continental celebrity the first month it is issued. Now I want it illustrated lavishly. , & if We shall sell 90,000 copies the first 12 months. if it I haven’t even a shadow of a doubt of that.1 I see the capabilities of my subject.

Got [Franks ]ac/.2 All right.

Yrs

Clemens.

[letter docketed:] [and] Mark Twain | Sep 4/70

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 That is, nearly a third more than The Innocents Abroad had sold in its first year (69,500). Roughing It actually sold about 75,000 copies in its first year (RI 1993, 890–91).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 Frank Bliss’s statement of the first year’s sale of Innocents, which Clemens had been expecting for a month. It does not survive (27 July 70 to JLC and family, n. 4; 2 Aug 70 to Bliss).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L4, 190; MTB, 1:421–22, with omissions; MTMF, 137 n. 3, excerpts; Hill, 44, brief excerpt; MTLP, 39.

Provenance:see Mendoza Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

it. It • it.— | It

strait • [sic]

Franks • [sic]