To
William Dean Howells
5 December 1876 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS, postal card, in pencil: MH-H, UCCL 01392)
If there is another magazine in Toronto (or Montreal) I want to give it advanced [sheets. Belford] Bros., the miserable thieves have couldn’t buy a sentence from me for any money.1 Is there another magazine—I earnestly want to give advanced sheets to it. Tell me if there is.2
S L C
us postal card.
write the address on this side—the message on the other
W D Howells, Esq
37 Concord ave
Cambridge
Mass
[postmarked:] hartford conn. dec 5 6pm
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Clemens answered the following note from Howells, written on the back of its enclosure
and mailed on 4 December (CU-MARK): Howells’s cover note alluded to Anna Dickinson’s novel about an interracial romance, What Answer?, which he had reviewed tolerantly, but negatively, in the Atlantic Monthly for January 1869 (Dickinson 1868; Howells 1869; Atlantic Index 1889, 105). The request from Belford Brothers was in response to “The Atlantic Monthly for 1877. Twentieth Year,” in the front advertising pages of the December 1876 number of the magazine. There it was announced that Mark Twain “will be a frequent contributor to the Atlantic during the year.” In fact, at this time Clemens was committed for only a single article—which, Howells knew, was about Dickinson—for the January 1877 “Contributors’ Club” (11 Oct 1876 to Howells, n. 11). Howells’s reply to Clemens’s letter has not been found.
Source text(s):Previous publication:
MTHL, 1:167.
Provenance:
See Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
sheets. Belford • ~.— | ~
