ALS signed “S. L. Clemens,” one page, 4.5 x 7, personal Farmington Avenue letterhead, June 20, no year but circa 1874. Letter to a bookseller, written while staying in Elmira, New York. In full: “Yes, I want them, but please lay them by for me, if it isn’t too much trouble, for I am here summering till August, & if I keep accommodating books here I’ll have too much luggage, shortly. I don’t like to stow them in our new dwelling at Hartford, because it is full of builders and plumbers, yet, & they’re a whoreson lot to thin out literature, as Shakespeare would say. If this Vol. I of The Chancellors has been sent through Brown & Gross for me (as the bill seems to say,) all right—they will pay for it & collect from me. I keep an account there.” In fine condition. Clemens’s wife Olivia was from Elmira, where they returned every summer to visit her family. Construction on their dream house on Farmington Avenue in Hartford had begun in 1873, and they would move in a year later. In addition to the great Shakespeare reference, Clemens mentions Lord John Campbell’s Lives of the Lord Chancellors of England, published in 1874. He studied English history extensively in preparing to write The Prince and the Pauper, his first attempt at historical fiction, published in 1881. A boldly penned letter with excellent literary and biographical associations. Pre-certified John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA.
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