A History of and Guide to
UNIFORM EDITIONS OF MARK TWAIN'S WORKS
"No weather will be found in this book."
- Mark Twain, The American Claimant (1892)
Chapter 23
Brief Overview of Volume 21:
The American Claimant and Other Stories and Sketches
First Publications
In an agreement with Olivia Clemens dated May 23, 1895, Harper
and Brothers acquired the rights to Mark Twain's books previously published
by Webster and Company including The American Claimant (1892), Merry
Tales (1892), and The £1,000,000 Bank-Note, and Other New Stories
(1893). When Harper and Brothers compiled their uniform editions of Mark
Twain's works in 1896 in red cloth with gold
cornstalk bindings, they combined the three books into one volume,
deleting two short stories from Merry Tales, and titled the volume
The American Claimant and Other Stories and Sketches.
The Harper's 1896 edition of The American Claimant and
Other Stories and Sketches is a collection of previously published material
recycled to maximize profits. The title story "The American Claimant"
had been serialized in the New York Sun from January 3 to March 27,
1892 without illustrations. In England, Idler magazine serialized
it with illustrations by Hal Hurst. Daniel Carter Beard illustrated the
first book edition of The American Claimant for Webster and Company
in 1892. In England, Chatto and Windus released The American Claimant
utilizing both Hurst's and Beard's illustrations. The 1896 Harper edition
retained Beard's illustrations.
Refining the Work
In an agreement between Harper's and American Publishing Company,
dated December 31, 1896, American Publishing Company acquired the rights
to include The American Claimant and Other Stories and Sketches in
their 1899 uniform edition of Mark Twain's works. Under a second agreement
dated November 11, 1898 Frank Bliss was allowed to manufacture new printing
plates that would immediately become the property of Harper and Brothers.
By producing a new set of plates in Hartford, Bliss could save transportation
costs and insurance involved in shipping the plates from New York.
Although Clemens had an opportunity to revise and refine his
work for the 1899 uniform edition, there is little evidence to suggest he
took an active interest in doing so. Production of the new 1899 plates also
had the potential to introduce inconsistencies into the texts that were
the result of typesetting errors.
|
Frank Bliss intended to correct any errors for subsequent printings
and hired Forrest Morgan (b. 1852 - d. 1924), a fastidious proofreader,
to weed out errors. Morgan, a former editor of the Hartford Travelers
Record and later an assistant librarian at Watkinson Library in
Hartford, read from a set of the Royal
Edition to mark errors.
Clemens was familiar with the work of Forrest Morgan in Travelers
Record. When Clemens wrote "Stirring Times in Austria"
in 1897 he quoted from a long passage he credited to Morgan to describe
the history of disunity in the Austro-Hungarian empire. "Stirring
Times in Austria" was published in Harper's Monthly in
March 1898 and is reprinted in Volume 22.
Morgan's 22-volume set of the Royal Edition with his annotations
is in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University,
a gift from William Lyon Phelps in 1922.
No extensive study of Morgan's notes for Volume 21 had been conducted.
|
Forrest
Morgan, proofreader for the 1899 uniform edition, helped refine the
works for subsequent editions. |
Different Titles on the Spines
Frank Bliss planned at least three volumes of Mark Twain's
sketches with Volume 21, The American Claimant and Other Stories and
Sketches, being the third. However, instead of using the book's title
on the spine of the volume, Bliss instead chose to identify the book as
Volume XXI / Short Stories and Sketches III. This designation appears
in all the uniform editions published by American Publishing Company including
Autograph Edition, Edition
De Luxe, Japan Edition, Author's
De Luxe Edition, Royal
Edition, Underwood Edition, Riverdale
Edition and Hillcrest
Edition. However, with the Harper Author's
National Editions of 1909, the title appearing on the spine of Volume
21 was changed to match the title of the work and perhaps reduce confusion.
Spines
for Volumes 19, 20 and 21 from Underwood Edition identifying the volumes
only as Short Stories and Sketches |
Harper's
editions of Volume 21 list the title of the work on the spine |
W. H. W. Bicknell's Contributions
William
Harry Warren Bicknell
photo courtesy of the Winchester, Massachusetts Archival Center |
Frank Bliss hired new illustrators for the 1899 uniform edition.
Artist and etcher William Harry Warren Bicknell (b. 1860 - d. 1947)
was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of a grocer. Bicknell graduated
from the Boston Latin School in 1878 and later studied at the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts. He was a pupil of Otto Grundmann and Frederic
Crowningshield. Bicknell etched a number of frontispieces made from
photographs of Clemens that were used throughout the set. Bicknell's
etching of the Tiffany monogram appears as a title page in every volume
of the Autograph Edition,
Edition De Luxe, Japan
Edition, Author's
De Luxe Edition, and the Royal
Edition. All of these editions began issuing in 1899.
Less expensive editions such as Underwood,
Riverdale, and
Hillcrest feature the Tiffany title
page in Volume 1 only. It was eliminated altogether from the Author's
National Edition.
|
Frontispiece
of Volume 21 etched by William Harry Warren Bicknell from a photograph taken
in 1890.
James Allen St. John, Illustrator
|
James Allen St. John (b. 1872 - d. 1957) was born in Chicago, the
son of doctor Josephus Allen St. John and his artist wife Susan Hely
St. John. When he was a youngster, he accompanied his mother to Paris
where she continued her art studies. As a young man he traveled to
California and there studied with Eugene Torrey. He later returned
to New York and attended the Art Students League and studied under
Henry Siddons Mowbray, James Carroll Beckwith and Frank Vincent Du
Mond who illustrated Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan
of Arc. St. John likely studied alongside artist Francis Luis
Mora who would illustrate Volume
23 of Mark Twain's uniform edition. An 1898 interview in Metropolitan
magazine identified St. John's portrait of Mora as one of his best.
St. John became an instructor in the New York Chase School of Art
and illustrated books for Harper's, McClurg's and Rand McNally. He
also served as an illustrator for New York Herald. In 1904
St. John returned to Chicago and illustrated for the Chicago Record-Herald
and Chicago Tribune. He wrote and illustrated his own book
The Face in the Pool: A Faerie Tale in 1905. After spending
two years in Paris from 1908 to 1910, St. John returned to Chicago
and taught at the Chicago Art Institute and American Academy of Art.
He is most widely known today as the illustrator of Edgar Rice Burroughs's
Tarzan and Mars series of novels. St. John died in Chicago
in May 1957.
|
James
Allen St. John |
James Allen St. John provided three illustrations for The American Claimant
and Other Stories and Sketches. One illustration was for the title story
"The American Claimant;" one for "Mrs. McWilliams and the
Lightning;" and one for "The £1,000,000 Bank-Note."
St. John's
illustration for "Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning" featured
Mark Twain in a fireman's helmet.
St. John's illustration for "The £1,000,000 Bank-Note"
was similar to Dan Beard's frontispiece for the 1893 edition of The £1,000,000
Bank-Note and Other New Stories.
Dan Beard's
frontispiece from the 1893 first edition of The £1,000,000
Bank-Note and Other New Stories |
St. John's
illustration for "The £1,000,000 Bank-Note" from Volume
21 of the 1899 uniform edition |
Why Frank Bliss decided not to utilize Dan Beard's work for the 1899 uniform
edition of The American Claimant is unknown. Since Beard was contributing
to other volumes in the series, expense may have been a consideration.
Harper and Brothers Revises the Contents
From 1899 until 1917 the contents of Volume 21 of the uniform
edition of Mark Twain's works, The American Claimant and Other Stories
and Sketches, remained the same as Harper's first edition of the book
in 1896. In mid-1917, long after Harper and Brothers had taken over production
of the uniform editions begun by American Publishing Company, they revised
the contents for Volume 21 for a new printing of the Author's
National Edition. Almost all of the material from The £1,000,000
Bank-Note, and Other New Stories (1893) was deleted from that volume.
This reshuffling of material is one source of confusion for book collectors
who often try to acquire replacement volumes for incomplete sets. The task
is further complicated due to the fact that the bindings for a number of
years were extremely similar even though the contents were different.
Harper
edition of Vol. 21, The American Claimant, with printing
date of M-Q (December 1916) retains the original 1899 table of contents. |
Harper
edition of Vol. 21, The American Claimant, with printing date
of H-T (August 1919) features slightly smaller binding, Arabic volume
numbers 21 on the spine and less content. |
The following table details the shifting contents of
Volume 21.
|
ORIGINAL THREE FIRST EDITIONS
published by Charles L. Webster and Co.)
|
Table of Contents for Vol. 21
American Publishing Company 1899 uniform editions and Harper's uniform
editions through mid-1917
|
Table of Contents for Vol. 21
Harper's Author's National Edition after mid-1917
|
The American Claimant (1892)
(illustrations by Dan Beard)
_____
Merry Tales (1892)
(unillustrated)
-
The Private History of a Campaign that Failed
(1894)
- The Invalid's Story (1877)
-
Luck (1891)
- The Captain's Story (1877)
-
A Curious Experience (1881)
-
Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning (1880)
-
Meisterschaft (1888)
_____
The £1,000,000 Bank-Note
and Other New Stories (1893)
(frontispiece by Daniel Carter Beard)
- The £1,000,000 Bank-Note (1893)
- Mental Telegraphy (1891)
- A Cure for the Blues (1893)
- The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant (1893)
- About All Kinds of Ships (1892)
- Playing Courier (1891)
- The German Chicago (1892)
- A Petition to the Queen of England (1887)
- A Majestic Literary Fossil (1890)
|
- The Private History of a Campaign that Failed
- Luck
- A Curious Experience
- Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning
- Meisterschaft: In Three Acts
_____
The £1,000,000 Bank-Note
and Other Stories
- The £1,000,000 Bank-Note
- Mental Telegraphy
- A Cure for the Blues
- The Curious Book, Complete: The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant
- About All Kinds of Ships
- Playing Courier
- The German Chicago
- A Petition to the Queen of England
- A Majestic Literary Fossil
|
_____
- The Private History of a Campaign that Failed
- Luck
- A Curious Experience
- Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning
- Meisterschaft: In Three Acts
- Playing Courier *
_____
* "Playing Courier" was originally part of The £1,000,000
Bank-Note and Other New Stories; the listing of it under Merry
Tales is misleading.
|
_____
References
Ericson,
Edward M. An Illustrated Annual of Works by American Artists and Craft
Workers 1915-1916. Online via google
books.
Estes,
Arthur B. "J. Allen St. John," Metropolitan Magazine, 1898
November, pp. 503-06.
Leary,
Lewis, ed. Mark Twain's Correspondence with Henry Huttleston Rogers 1893-1909.
(University of California Press, 1969).
Mark
Twain Project online database of letters from the Mark Twain Papers/Project
at the University of California at Berkeley.
"Obituaries:
J. Allen St. John," Chicago Daily Tribune, 26 May 1957, p. 32.
Rasmussen,
R. Kent. Critical
Companion to Mark Twain, Volumes I and II. (Facts on File, 2007).
Richardson,
Darrell C., "J. Allen St. John, Dean of Fantasy Illustrators." Online
at http://fanac.org/fanzines/Fanscient/Fanscient11-04.html.
_____.
The Life and Work of J. Allen St. John. (Memphis, Tenn: Old Tiger Press,
2005).
Twain,
Mark. The American Claimant and Other Stories and Sketches. Royal Edition.
(American Publishing Company 1899).
_____.
The American Claimant. (Oxford University Press, 1996).
_____.
Merry Tales. (Oxford University Press, 1996).
_____.
The £1,000,000 Bank-Note and Other New Stories. (Oxford University
Press, 1996).
