This collection of correspondence between Clemens and Rogers may be thought of as a continuation of Mark Twain's Letters to His Publishers, 1867-1894, edited by Hamlin Hill. It completes the story begun there of Samuel Clemens's business affairs, especially insofar as they concern dealings with publishers; and it documents Clemens's progress from financial disaster, with the Paige typesetter and Webster & Company, to renewed prosperity under the steady, skillful hand of H. H. Rogers. But Clemens’s correspondence with Rogers reveals more than a business relationship. It illuminates a friendship which Clemens came to value above all others, and it suggests a profound change in his patterns of living. He who during the Hartford years had been a devoted family man, content with a discrete circle of intimates, now became again (as he had been during the Nevada and California years) a man among sporting men, enjoying prizefights and professional billiard matches in public, and—in private—long days of poker, gruff jest, and good Scotch whisky aboard Rogers’s magnificent yacht.
Table des matières
Abbreviations
Introduction
I. ‘Fussing with Business’ (December 1893-February 1895)
II. ‘As Long as the Promise Must Be Made’ (March 1895-August 1896)
III. ‘Our Unspeakable Disaster’ (August 1896-July 1897)
IV. ‘You and I Are a Team’ (July 1897-May 1899)
V. ‘This Everlasting Exile’ (June 1899-August 1900)
VI. ‘This Odious Swindle’ (October 1900-June 1904)
VII. ‘Nothing Agrees with Me’ (July 1904-March 1908)
VIII. ‘I Wish Henry Rogers Would Come Here’ (June 1908-May 1909)
Afterword
Appendixes
A Calendar of Letters
Biographical Directory
Genealogical Charts
Index