‸P. S. I enclose the “Conscience” [article. Please] correct it mercilessly.‸1
Monday afternoon2
My dear Howells:
Here is the “Blindfold Novelettes.” You will see that I have altered it as we contemplated. The most prominent features in the story being the Murder & the Marriage, the one name will aptly fit all the versions. Then the thing will read thus in the headings:
“A Murder & a Marriage. Story No. ‸1,‸ (‸or‸ 2, or 3, &c)—Mr. Harte’s Version of it.”
You could add to this screed of mine an editorial bracket to this effect.—(over)
“Messrs. Howells, Trowbridge, &c., have agreed to furnish versions of this story, but it is also desirable that any who please shall ‸ furnish versions of it also, whether the writers be of literary fame or not.3 The MSS offered will be judged upon their merits & accepted or declined accordingly. ‸The stories should be only 8 or 10 Atlantic pages long.‸—Ed. Atlantic.”
Something of that sort, you know, th to keep people of from imagining that because my name is attached to the proposition, the thing is merely intended for a joke.4
Bliss promises me those sheets Friday night.5
Great love to you all.
Yrs Ever
Mark.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
”The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut” (SLC 1876h). For an indication of Howells’s suggestions
for revision, see 3 Apr 1876 to Howells.
Previously it was believed that Clemens wrote this letter on 1 May 1876 (MTHL, 1:135). But he clearly wrote it just after Howells and his seven-year-old son,
John (Bua), left Hartford after visiting from Saturday evening, 11 March, through Monday
morning, 13 March. That visit had been arranged by: a letter of early March from Olivia
Clemens to Elinor Howells; a letter of 5 March from Howells to Clemens; a telegram
of around 6 March from Clemens to Howells; a postcard of around 6 or 7 March from Howells. Only Howells’s part of the
correspondence has been found (CU-MARK): Howells’s postcard of 6 or 7 March was undated and unpostmarked;
evidently it was mailed in an envelope, which is now lost (CU-MARK): Back at home in Cambridge, Howells wrote the following letter (CU-MARK), which probably crossed in the mail with Clemens’s present one: The letter on copyright has not been recovered. Winny (Winifred) was Howells’s twelve-year-old daughter
(Howells 1979a, 94, 297, 299 n. 1).
During Howells’s visit Clemens had broached his scheme for several writers to
each write a story with the same plot. The enclosed “screed,” a proposed announcement of the work, is not known
to survive: on 2 April Howells sent it on to Thomas Bailey Aldrich (see 26 Apr 1876 to Howells, n. 8). John Townsend Trowbridge (1827-1916) was a journalist, novelist, and poet.
Howells and the Atlantic Monthly weren’t Clemens’s first choices to promote his literary idea. In late January or early February, in a letter (now lost) dictated to his unidentified stenographer, he had proposed it to Mary Mapes Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas magazine for children. She had replied (CU-MARK): Clemens wrote his “skeleton novelette” on 21 and 22 April (SLC 1876g; see 22 Apr 1876 to Howells).
That is, early proofsheets of
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
, which Howells was to use in writing his review of the book. (By 9 April Clemens himself had received only two chapters.) Howells acknowledged them with a postcard postmarked 20 March (CU-MARK):
Source text(s):Previous publication:
MTHL, 1:135, misdated 1 May 1876.
Provenance:
See Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
article. Please • ~.— | ~
