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To
Elisha Bliss, Jr.
6 August 1877 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS, in pencil: Sotheby’s,
New York, October 1993, UCCL
01465)
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Elmira, Monday.
Friend Bliss:
I guess you can’t fix them at Toronto. As I understand it, the English
copyright would have been good in Canada if Conway had registered it there 60 days before
publication—which he didn’t do.1
Mr. ‸Andrew‸ Chatto of Chatto & Windus, the present owner of the English copyright was in
New York last week; has gone to Canada & will presently visit Toronto. If you telegraph Stephen Fiske, Fifth Avenue Theatre,
New York, I guess he can tell you where to communicate with Chatto, & I guess Chatto can tell you all about that law.
Entry at Stationer’s Hall & “simultaneous” publication makes a
copyright which will not be meddled with in England—no matter about being on the soil at the time.2
S L C
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1The Imperial copyright on
Tom Sawyer did not prevent Belford Brothers of
Toronto from publishing a pirated edition in July 1876, but not for the reason Clemens gives: Conway could not have registered the work in Canada because it was
not printed there. Bliss himself had told Clemens in December 1876 about the “60
days before publication” requirement, but the Canadian Copyright Act of 1875
explicitly states that a copyright could be obtained without regard to the timing of
publication (see 2 Nov 1876, 13 Dec 1876, and 10 Jan 1877 to Conway).
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2The Imperial copyright on
Tom Sawyer had probably been transferred from
Clemens to Chatto and Windus following his November 1876 correspondence with
Conway, but no independent evidence of the transfer has been found (see 2 Nov
1876 to Conway, nn. 2, 3). The law on the residency requirement was open to
interpretation. An 1868 lawsuit,
Routledge v. Low, had established that an American
author who published simultaneously in England but resided in Canada, even
temporarily, was entitled to an Imperial copyright. Although two of the judges in that
case further opined that an author’s place of residence was irrelevant, their opinion
was incidental to the decision and had no legal force (
Dawson 1882, 19–26).
According to legal expert William B. Hale, after the 1891 Chace Act (this country’s
first international copyright law) established reciprocal rights with Great Britain, the
“law officers of the Crown in England were consulted by the American law officers,
and they advised that an American author could acquire copyright in his work by
simultaneous publication in this country and America, even although he was not at
any time resident within the British dominions.” But this right was not statutory until
the passage of the English copyright law of 1911 (
Hale 1917, 1057).
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MS, in pencil, collection of Robert Daley, seen at
Sotheby’s, New York, while awaiting sale in December 1993.
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MicroPUL, reel 1.
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This letter from the Daley collection was offered for sale by Sotheby’s on 10–11
December 1993, lot 210.