Mark Twain Project :: Letters :: : an electronic text

To Frederick W. Haddon
10 May 1874 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: AuMS, UCCL 10692)

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slc/mt farmington avenue, hartford.

Elmira, N. Y.
May 10.

Dear Sir:

Your letter has just reached me. I venture to reply—but very briefly, for you will doubtless be gone before my letter reaches New York.1

I think it hardly worth while to try to enter into any arrangement, because, although I am engaged upon a book, it is in such a leisurely way that I scarcely expect to have it completed within a year.2

t Thanking you for the compliment of your offer, I am, dear sir,

Ys Truly

Samℓ. L. Clemens

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

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1 Frederick William Haddon (1839–1906), born in England, went to Melbourne, Australia, in 1863, becoming a contributor to and subeditor of the Melbourne Argus. In 1864 he became co-editor and in 1865 editor of the Melbourne Australasian, and then, in 1867, returned to the Argus as editor, a post he held until 1898. He had written to Clemens around 3 May, probably from the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York, where he stayed on the final leg of a tour that had also taken him to India, continental Europe, and England. His letter does not survive, nor is it known when he left New York (Mennell, 208; Woods, 4:313–14; “Personal Notes,” New York Times, 3 May 74, 6).

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2 Haddon may have proposed serializing a book by Mark Twain in the Melbourne Argus. Clemens’s “leisurely” writing was on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS facsimile. The editors have not seen the MS, which is in the La Trobe Library, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (AuMS).

glyph Previous publication: L6, 147.

glyph Provenance:donated in 1957 by Haddon’s daughter.