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Add to My CitationsTo Moncure D. Conway
2 November 1876 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS, correspondence card: NNC, UCCL 01386)
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Hartford, Nov. 2.

em spaceslcem spaceMy Dear Conway: Belford Bros., Canadian thieves, are flooding America with a cheap pirated edition of Tom Sawyer.1 I have just telegraphed Chatto to assign Canadian copyright to me, but I suppose it is too late to do any good.2 We cannot issue for 6 weeks yet, & by that time Belford will have sold 100,000 over the frontier & killed my book dead. This piracy will cost me $10,000, & I will spend as much more to choke off those pirates, if the thing can be done. Ask Chatto if he gave bBelford Bros permsission to publish.3

Ever Yours

S. L. C.

Explanatory Notes

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1 Belford Brothers of Toronto had recently issued Old Times on the Mississippi, a republication of Clemens’s articles in the Atlantic Monthly (SLC 1875d), which had no copyright in Canada. The Imperial copyright on Tom Sawyer, however, was supposed to protect it from unauthorized reprinting in all the British dominions, including Canada. But the recently implemented Canadian Copyright Act of 1875 introduced an ambiguity in the law. It allowed any author (or his representative) to obtain a separate copyright in that country, so long as he was resident in Canada (or in any part of the “British Possessions”) and the work was printed, published, and registered there (“Act of April 8, 1875,” Solberg 1903, 76). But the Belfords claimed that under the new law, an Imperial copyright was no longer valid in Canada, and that to be protected a work now required a Canadian copyright. On 29 June 1876 they issued a reprinting of the English Tom Sawyer, offering their first edition at $2.25 and following that with a $1.00 hardback and a $.75 paperback. Their interpretation of the Canadian Copyright Act was soon challenged, however, by Scottish reformer Samuel Smiles (1812–1904), in Smiles v. Belford, for their unauthorized edition of Thrift, one of his popular self-help manuals (originally published in 1875 by John Murray in London). In September 1876 the Court of Chancery in Toronto ruled in Smiles’s favor, and the judgment was upheld upon appeal in March 1877. The decision did not, however, resolve the vexed issue of Canadian copyright. In 1880 Belford, Clarke and Company (the successor to Belford Brothers) published a collection of Mark Twain’s sketches which was very similar in appearance and content to Sketches, New and Old. Clemens brought a lawsuit against the firm, which he lost in 1883 (Roper 1966, esp. 31–49; Tupper 1878; Dawson 1882, 17–27; TS 1980, 20–21; see 29 Aug 1877 to Howells, n. 5; Schmidt 2020).

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).

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2

The Imperial copyright on Tom Sawyer had been registered to Conway, who resided in London, to ensure its validity. In response to this request, he arranged for the transfer of the copyright to Clemens. He assumed that it would be valid not only in Britain but in Canada as well. Clemens’s telegram to Chatto and Windus has not been found, but Conway responded for Andrew Chatto (CU-MARK):

UCLC 32436

For the illustrated English editions of Tom Sawyer, see 4 July 1876 to Conway, n. 2. Conway’s reference to Benjamin F. Butler, the controversial former Union general and Republican congressman, has not been explained.

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3

In his reply (CU-MARK), Conway alluded first to Clemens’s 28 October letter to Ellen Conway:

UCLC 32440

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):

UCLC 32450



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MS, correspondence card, Conway Papers, NNC.

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MTLP, 105–6.

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The Conway Papers were acquired by NNC sometime after Conway’s death in 1907.