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Add to My CitationsTo Chatto and Windus
1 December 1880 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: IU-R, UCCL 01863)
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[Hartford, Dec. 1, 1880.]

Dear [Sirs:]

Yours of Dec. 15 is just received, with the four notes, & I have to thank you for the pleasant surprise which the so handsome a sale of the book furnished me. The largeness of the sale in the United States has surprised me, too, considering the confounded activity of our friends the Canadian pirates, for they managed to get advance-sheets from the several steam-press establishments here, (the book & were on the market almost as soon as we were. I think they hurt us to the extent of 20,000 copies, perhaps, but we have sold 70,000 in spite of them.

I mean to have the “Atlantic” people delay my articles hereafter, so that I can “simultane” with you.

Yours faithfully

S. L. Clemens.

Your $6,000 makes it sure that I shall get $50,000 out of the “Tramp” for the [twelve]-months’ sale, from 1st of last March.



[enclosure simulated, line by line:]

If any person supposes that the American
reading public has lost any of its relish for the
writings of Mark Twain, here are some figures
which will undeceive him. Seventy thousand
copies of the “Tramp Abroad” have already
been sold, and the eightieth thousand is now
being printed. This is a little larger sale, in
eight and a half months, than the “Innocents
Abroad” reached in ten.

Textual Commentary



glyphglyphSource text(s):glyph
MS, Franklin J. Meine Collection, IU-R. The MS included a pasted-on newspaper clipping when it was photocopied for CU-MARK in August 1964. Only a few words or partial words of the clipping now survive with the MS. The photocopy serves as copy-text for the enclosure.

glyphglyphPrevious publication:glyphCharles S. Boesen catalog, 1947, no. 16, part 2, item 68, partial publication; MTLP, 127.

glyphglyphProvenance:glyphThe MS was offered for sale in 1916 by Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge for Mrs. Isabel Brocklesby, daughter of Andrew Chatto (29 June, lot 53). It was again offered for sale in 1947 by Charles S. Boesen as a selection “from the library of the late Dr. Samuel Wyllis Bandler.” Then or thereafter it was bought by Franklin J. Meine, who sold two of three parts of his collection to IU-R in 1955 and 1962. His widow sold them the remainder in 1969.

glyphglyphEmendations and textual notes:glyph


Hartford, Dec. 1, 1880. • Ha[white diamondwhite diamondwhite diamondwhite diamondwhite diamondwhite diamondwhite diamond white diamondwhite diamondwhite diamondwhite diamond white diamondwhite diamond white diamondwhite diamondwhite diamondwhite diamondwhite diamond] [text obscured by clipping in MS photocopy; supplied by TS]

Sirs: • Sirs[white diamond] [obscured by clipping in MS photocopy; supplied by TS]

twelve • tw twelve [corrected miswriting]