To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
28 May 1868 • San Francisco, Calif.
(MS: ViU, UCCL 02733)

San Francisco, May 28.

Dr Sir—H H. Bancroft & Co, Publishers, here, are anxious to have the agency for my book for this coast & Japan & China. Their subscrip-tion department is entirely separate from their other departments, & is superintended by a man who has no other duty to perform. They say they have sold 2,500 copies of Richardson’s Mississippi, & will sell about as many more. But the winter has been severe, & they would not let the agents go out & spoil the field for spring labor. They say they have an energetic crops of canvassers, & one which has been sifted of inefficient material; & that their subscription business [ in is ]ciphered down to a careful system.1

I said I would write you, because I have a large number of personal friends in Japan & China, & [ ◇ Mr. ]Burlingame told me not to overlook that trade.2 Bancroft has agencies there, & is establishing more. The paper I correspond for here (the Alta,) is taken by all the mercantile houses in that part of the Orient.

I shall have the MSS finished in twenty days & shall start east in the steamer of the i st July. If delayed beyond that time I shall go overland. I have the [R.R.s ]Co’s invitation to do so.3

Very Truly, &c

Sam. L. Clemens

[letter docketed:] Author [and] Samuel J Clements | May 28/68 | Author letter

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Hubert Howe Bancroft (1832–1918) opened a San Francisco book and stationery store in 1856. It soon grew into a publishing firm that issued (among other things) law books, school texts, maps, and music, and also employed a large staff of subscription-book salesmen. The Bancroft subscription department was the West Coast agency for A. D. Richardson’s Beyond the Mississippi, published by Bliss’s company in June 1867. A total of 33,000 copies of this book were sold by the end of 1867, when a second edition was published, of which an additional 23,000 copies had already been sold by the date of this letter. Richardson’s current book, A Personal History of Ulysses S. Grant (which Bliss was to issue in late July), would be handled in San Francisco by R. J. Trumbull and Company, publishers and general agents. Even so, Bancroft did become the West Coast general agent for The Innocents Abroad (American Publishing Company, entries for Beyond the Mississippi, May 67–May 68; “A Valuable Book,” Marysville [Calif.] Appeal, 14 Mar 68, 3; “Richardson’s Life of Grant,” San Francisco Alta California, 31 May 68, 2).

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2 Presumably between 2 and 16 April, the only time Burlingame and Clemens were both in San Francisco.

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3 The Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s Sacramento was scheduled to sail on 30 June. By late July 1868, passengers could make the overland trip from San Francisco to New York in only thirteen days, despite having to travel some of the distance by stagecoach, while the steamship voyage took about three weeks. At that time the Central Pacific Railroad tracks had reached only as far as Wadsworth, Nevada, about thirty-five miles east of Reno, while the Union Pacific Railroad, building west from Omaha, Nebraska, had reached a point about half-way across Wyoming. One year from the time of this letter, in May 1869, the two lines were joined at Promontory Point, Utah (“Across the Continent via Pacific Railroads and Wells, Fargo & Co.’s Stages,” San Francisco Alta California, 23 July 68, 2; Sabin, 171, 183, 225).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU).

Previous publication: L2, 217–219; MTLP, 16.

Provenance:deposited at ViU on 17 December 1963.

Emendations and textual notes:

in is • is n

◇ Mr. • [‘M’ over partly formed ‘m’ or ‘n’]

R.R.s • [deletion implied]