To Whitelaw Reid
15 August 1869 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: DLC, UCCL 00334)

Hartford, Aug. 15.

Dear Sir:

To-day my new book will be sent to the Tribune—& this is to ask you if you won’t get your reviewer to praise the bad passages & feeble places in it for me. [They ] are the only ones I am worrying about, you know—the meritorious parts can get along themselves, of course.

I date this at Hartford, so that there shall not appear to be any collusion between my publisher & me, or that he has suggested this note,—but in reality I am rea in reality in the “Express” office at Buffalo, & have not been near Hartford lately.1

Heartily Yrs

Samℓ. L. Clemens.

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1 This letter may have accompanied a review copy. The New York Tribune’s long and complimentary notice appeared on 27 August 1869. For Clemens’s reaction to it, see his letter of 7 September to Reid.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Papers of the Reid Family, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (DLC).

Previous publication: L3, 303.

Provenance:donated to DLC between 1953 and 1973 by Mrs. Helen Rogers Reid and her sons, Whitelaw Reid and Ogden R. Reid.

Emendations and textual notes:

They • T[h] [torn]