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A Note on Some Early Reviews of Tom Sawyer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Dennis Welland
Dennis Welland
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

It is well known that The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published in England in June 1876, almost six months before its appearance in the United States, and that the publication of the English edition was negotiated with Messrs Chatto and Windus by Moncure Daniel Conway. Clemens had given him a copy of the manuscript when Conway was returning to England after an American lecture tour at the beginning of 1876, and had authorized Conway to act on his behalf. Jacob Blanck records that the book was advertized in the Athenaeum of 10 June as ‘ready’, listed in the Publishers' Circular and Booksellers' Record on 16 June, and reviewed in the Athenaeum on 24 June.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , April 1967 , pp. 99 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1967

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References

page 99 note 1 Blanck, Jacob, Bibliography of American Literature (New Haven and London, 1957), vol. ii, entry no. 3367Google Scholar. The review is in Athenaeum no. 2539, 24 June 1876, p. 851.

page 100 note 1 The manuscript (HM 722) is a fragment of a letter with no inscription, signature or date, but which is ascribed to Henley. It contains the sentences: ‘If you meet Mark Twain, or Mark Twain's ghost, thank him for me for “A Tramp Abroad”. Especially for the Blue Jay. I've just done a crackling review of him in Athenaeum’ (reproduced by courtesy of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California). The review was published the Athenaeum no. 2739, 24 April 1880, pp. 529–30.

page 100 note 2 The Examiner (London), 17 06 1876, pp. 687–8Google Scholar.

page 101 note 1 Both Conway letters quoted in this paragraph, together with that of 10 August mentioned below, are in Mark Twain's scrapbook for 1872–8, which is now in the possession of the Mark Twain Papers, General Library, University of California, Berkeley, by whose courtesy they are referred to here.

page 102 note 1 Letter from Conway to Clemens of 10 August 1876. See note 1 on p. 101.

page 103 note 1 See Hill, Hamlin: Mark Twain and Elisha Bliss (Columbia, Missouri, 1964), pp. 112–19Google Scholar. Hill records that Bliss quoted the Examiner and Athenaeum reviews in his prospectus for the American edition and one from the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer. He mentions also a review by Conway in the Chicago Tribune of 3 July.

page 103 note 2 See Mark Twain—Howells Letters, ed. Smith, Henry Nash and Gibson, William M. vol. i (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 127–9, 132–4Google Scholar.

page 103 note 3 Letter from Clemens to Conway dated 24 [July 1876] in the Conway Collection, Columbia University Library, New York. Also referred to in Burtis, Mary Elizabeth: Moncure Conway, 1832–1907 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1952), p. 158Google Scholar.