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26 December 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(Transcript and MS: New York Tribune, 29 Dec 70, and DLC, UCCL 02791)
[Mark] Twain will publish a burlesque autobiography, in pamphlet form, in a few days, through Sheldon & Co.
Buffalo, Dec. 26.
Friend Reid:
I would like it very much if you would put the above item into your column of [little] floating paragraphs & general notes. As the thing is not known to anybody, it is a fair & legitimate item of literary news, & so it is not unpardonable in the subscriber to ask you to print it.1
Merry Christmas & a happy New Year to you! I have had the one, in unexampled magnificence, & so am ready to hail the other.
Was exceedingly sorry I did not get to dine with you—& scarce even see you. I sent you a voluminous explanatory telegram just before taking the cars—which I hope you rec’d.2
Mark.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
I think the book will do quite as well 6 or 8 weeks from this time as it could now. During the month of Jan almost every bookseller is engaged on his inventory. I think however that it is best to get the book ready just as fast as possible; even if we hold them for a time after they are all made. There always are delays in getting a book ready. The engrav[ings] are promised for the end of this week. It will be next Tuesday [3 January 1871] before we can put them into the stereotypers hands & begin on the plates. (CU-MARK)
Sheldon promised to send an advertising circular “to every bookseller”—as soon as he and Clemens agreed to “the exact day of publication & the price.” On Saturday, 31 December, ahead of schedule, he sent Clemens “proofs of all the cuts,” that is, the electrotyped illustrations (CU-MARK). Setting a price was a matter of some contention, however (27 Jan 71 to Sheldon). Mark Twain’s (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance was finally published in March 1871.
I have been waiting all the week for you to make your appearance, and here it is Thursday night. Please you send me word by the bearer that you will dine with me tomorrow (Friday) evening at half past 6 o’clock at the Union League Club. If you will say yes, I’ll have one or two friends, not more, to meet us over a quiet bottle of wine. (DLC)
Clemens’s “voluminous” telegram in reply is not known to survive. In his 1 January 1871 letter, Reid remarked: “I got your dispatch in time to send word to a friend or two I had asked not to come. Better luck next time” (DLC). The Union League Club was founded in 1863 to support the North during the Civil War and afterward turned its attention to political and social reform. Its headquarters were currently “in a fine mansion on the corner of Twenty-sixth Street and Madison Avenue” (Lossing, 748–52).
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Previous publication:
L4, 288–289.
Provenance:
The MS for the Tribune squib is not known to survive. The Whitelaw Reid Papers (part of the Papers of the
Reid Family) were donated to DLC between 1953 and 1957 by Helen Rogers Reid
(Mrs. Ogden Mills Reid).
Emendations and textual notes:
Tribune is copy-text for ‘Mark . . . Co.’ (288.7–8)
MS is copy-text for ‘Buffalo
. . . Mark.’ (288.9–289.4)
[¶] Mark • [no ¶] Mark
little • [possibly ‘b little’]
Mark • [‘ar’ conflated; ‘k’ partly formed]