1 On or shortly before 29 July 1876, Belford Brothers of Toronto had issued a pirated edition of the English edition of Tom Sawyer, which had been published on 9 June. The Belfords first priced their edition at $2.25 and then offered a $1.00 hardback and a $.75 paperback (Roper 1966, 31, 47; TS 1980, 20–21).

2 This telegram has not been found, but Conway responded for Andrew Chatto (CU-MARK):

For the illustrated English editions of Tom Sawyer, see 4 July 76 to Conway, n. 2. Conway’s apparent illusion to Benjamin F. Butler, the former Union general and Republican congressman, remains unexplained.

3 In his reply (CU-MARK), Conway alluded first to Clemens’s 28 October letter to Ellen Conway: Conway’s other two enclosures do not survive. Chatto felt that by making “entries at Stationers Hall for Mark Twain” (between 1554 and 1924 British copyright was secured by registration with the Stationers’ Company in London), rather than for Chatto and Windus, he had potentially weakened his ability to litigate for copyright infringement. Conway soon reported the reply to Chatto’s 15 November telegram (CU-MARK):

The Belfords were taking the same position they had taken in the suit against them in Canadian courts by Scottish reformer Samuel Smiles (1812–1904) for their unauthorized 1876 reprinting of Thrift, one of his popular self-help manuals, originally published in London in 1875. There they argued, unsuccessfully, that the Canadian copyright act of 1875, which required separate printing and copyright registration in Canada, superseded the Imperial copyright law and that therefore Smiles, who had not complied with the Canadian law, was not protected in Canada. Despite this recent “decision against Belford,” Clemens evidently did not pursue legal redress for the misappropriation of Tom Sawyer. Although “under Imperial copyright law” he “could have sought an injunction restraining the reprinting in Canada,” the damage to sales of the American Publishing Company edition could not be undone and the Canadian “penalty for illegal reprinting was small” (Roper 1966, 40–42, 49; Stationers’ Hall 2005; Smiles 1875). See also 13 Dec 76 to Conway.