To Francis S. Drake
26 December 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: NN-B, UCCL 02789)

Buffalo, Dec. 26.

F. S. Drake, Esq
Dr Sir:

I have received your note, through your brother, & enclose the r [within. There] is n really no biography to my career.

I have put in the only striking thing that occurs to me.—viz., that I fully expected the “Jumping Frog[”] to sell 50,000 copies & it only sold 4,000;1 & I only expected the “Innocents” to sell 3,000 copies but it astounded me by selling 85,000 copies in ‸within‸ 16 months—which, I am told, is the largest sale of a four-dollar book (price [ $ ] is $3.50 to $5—$4 about the average) ever achieved in America in so short a time.2 That is the only thing in my life that seems to me remarkable enough to merit public attention—

Besides, my idea is, that you only desire the mere name & one or two items—for your full biographies must be necessarily given to the men of permanent fame, like our generals & [ chei chief] poets & historians.3

Ys Truly

Samℓ. L. Clemens.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 See 22 Dec 70 to Bliss, n. 4.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 See 20 Dec 70 to Judd, n. 7.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

3 Francis Samuel Drake (1828–85) was preparing the first edition of his one-volume Dictionary of American Biography, Including Men of the Time (1872). Drake used Clemens’s enclosure for the following entry, which was shorter than those for Artemus Ward, Josh Billings, and Petroleum V. Nasby:

Clemens, Samuel Langhorne, “Mark Twain,” humorist, b. Florida, Munroe Co., Mo., 30 Nov. 1835. Entered journalism in Virginia, Nevada, in 1862; continued in it 3 years there, 3 years in San Francisco, and one in Buffalo. Author of “The Jumping Frog, and other Sketches,” 12mo, 1867; “The Innocents Abroad,” 8vo, 1869, of which 100,000 copies have been sold in two years. Contrib. of humorous sketches to “The Galaxy,” 1870–1. (Francis Samuel Drake, 195)

Sales of The Innocents Abroad reached 100,000 around July 1872 (Hirst 1975, 326).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN-B).

Previous publication: L4, 287–288; Anderson Galleries 1924, lot 208, excerpt.

Provenance:Owen D. Young Collection, acquired by NN-B in 1941 (Bruccoli, 218).

Emendations and textual notes:

within. There • within.—|There

$ • [partly formed]

chei chief • cheiief [canceled ‘i’ partly formed]