Elisha P. Bliss, Jr., was president (1870, 1873–80) of the American Publishing Company of Hartford, Conn., a subscription house that published all of SLC’s major books from The Innocents Abroad (1869) to A Tramp Abroad (1880). Bliss greatly expanded the company’s business, arousing SLC’s suspicion that his own books—the company’s mainstay—were inadequately promoted. In 1870, SLC’s brother Orion worked for Bliss as a magazine editor; Orion’s reports to SLC convinced him Bliss was “dishonest,” but only after Bliss’s death did he determine to change publishers.