To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
7 July 1873 • London, England
(MS and transcript: ViU and WU, UCCL 00948)

The Langham Hotel
London, July 7.

Friend Bliss:

Finally concluded not to go to [Paris. & y ] So you can take the Herald letters & put them in a pamphlet along with the enclosed article about the Jumping Frog in French, ‸(which is entirely new)‸ & then add enough of my old [sketches] to make a good fat 25 cent pamphlet & let it slide—but don’t charge more than 25c nor less. If you haven’t a Routledge edition of my sketches to select from you will find one at my house or Warner’s.1

I don’t expect to write any more Herald letters at present.

Yrs Truly

SL. Clemens

You can mention, if you choose, that the Frog [article] is has not [been] printed before.

I enclose Prefatory remarks, “To the [ Rel Reader]”

[enclosure:]

To the Reader.

It is not my desire to republish these New York Herald letters in this form; I only do it to forestall some small pirate or other in the book trade.

If I do not publish some such person may, [&] I then become tacitly accessory to a theft. I have had a recent unpleasant experience of this kind.2 I have copyrighted the letters here in London simply to prevent their republication in Great Britain in pamphlet form.3 My objection to such republication, either in America or England, is, that I think everybody has already had enough of the [Shah] of [Persia.] I am sure I have.

To the letters I have added certain sketches of mine which are little known or [not known] at all in America, to the end that the purchaser of the pamphlet may get back a portion of his money & skip the chapters that refer to the Shah altogether.

With this brief apology, I am

Respectfully

Mark Twain

London, July 7

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 The last three of Clemens’s five letters to the New York Herald about the shah of Persia were unpublished when he wrote this letter (see SLC 1873 [MT01123], 1873 [MT01124], 1873 [MT01125], 1873 [MT01126], 1873 [MT01127]). He had told Olivia in April that he intended to make a literal retranslation of Thérèse Bentzon’s “French version of the Jumping Frog” (26 Apr 73 to OLC). The manuscript of the resulting article—dated “London, June 30, 1873” and preserved with the present letter at the University of Virginia—does not include the text of the original “Jumping Frog” sketch, nor of the French translation. Instead Clemens wrote, “(Insert pages A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Jumping Frog in English.),” and then, on a new page, “[Translation of the above back from the French.],” indicating that he included a clipping (now lost) of Bentzon’s French version from the Revue des deux mondes for 15 July 1872 (see SLC 1865, 1873 [MT01121], and Blanc, 313–35). The text of the enclosure was first published in Sketches, New and Old (SLC 1875, 28–43). The “Routledge edition” was Mark Twain’s Sketches, issued in May 1872 (SLC 1872 [MT01064]). The pamphlet of sketches described here was never published (see 2 Aug 73 to Bliss). The shah letters were first reprinted by Paine in 1923 (SLC 1923, 31–86).

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2 See 17 May 73 to Warner, n. 5.

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3 No evidence has been found that Clemens applied in any formal way for British copyright. It is unlikely that he could have secured such a copyright, since the shah letters were being published in the New York Herald and British copyright required that publication occur first in England.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU), is copy-text for the letter. A transcript facsimile is copy-text for the enclosure. The editors have not seen the original handwritten transcript, made by Dana S. Ayer during the late 1890s or later, which is in the Rare Book Department, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison (WU). (A second enclosure, the MS of “The ‘Jumping Frog.’ In English. Then in French,” survives at ViU with the MS for the letter; it is described in the notes.)

Previous publication: L5, 409–410; Parke-Bernet 1954, lot 12, excerpts; MTLP, 79–80 n. 1, enclosure only.

Provenance:The MS for the letter was deposited at ViU by Clifton Waller Barrett on 16 April 1960. The enclosure evidently remained among the American Publishing Company’s files until it was sold (and may have been copied at that time by Ayer; see Brownell Collection in Description of Provenance). The Ayer transcription was in turn copied by a typist and this typed transcription is also at WU.

Emendations and textual notes:

Paris. & y • [insertion and cancellation doubtful]

sketches • sketc[h]s [obscured by inkblot]

article • [a]ticle [obscured by inkblot]

been • bee[n] [obscured by inkblot]

Rel Reader • Relader

& • and [also at 410.8]

Shah • Shas

Persia. • Persia‸

not known • not know