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.
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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