Frank Bliss hired new illustrators for American Publishing Company's uniform editions begun in 1899. 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'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. Bicknell's engraved title page is present in Volume 24 of these editions but it is omitted from the illustration list. Thus, Bicknell's work is uncredited in Volume 24 for these editions.

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.

William Thomas Smedley (b. 1858 - d. 1920) was born in Pennsylvania, the son of a miller. At age fifteen he began working in a newspaper office in Chester County, Pennsylvania and later studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He later was commissioned to travel through the Northwest with Lord Lorne of Canada. He also visited Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia and Paris where he studied under Jean-Paul Laurens. In New York he secured work with Harper's and Scribners. Smedley had provided six full-page illustrations for the 1899 uniform editions of The Gilded Age, Volumes 10 and 11.

In 1903 Smedley provided four illustrations for Mark Twain's "A Dog's Tale" in the December 1903 issue of Harper's Magazine. In September 1904 Harper published the story as a slim 36-page book using the illustrations by Smedley. One of Smedley's full-page illustrations is featured in Volume 24. It is the only full-page plate inserted into the volume.

Albert Levering (b. 1869 - d. 1929) was born in Hope, Indiana, the son of Levi L. Levering, a carpenter. The family later relocated to Kansas City, Missouri. Levering studied architecture and practiced that profession for eight years in San Antonio, Texas. He later abandoned architecture to become a newspaper artist. Levering worked for newspapers in Kansas City, Missouri as well as the Minneapolis Times and Chicago Tribune. In 1896 he moved to New York and worked on the staff of the New York Journal, Tribune and Herald-Tribune. He subsequently worked as a book and magazine illustrator on the staff of Puck, Life, Collier's, and Cosmopolitan. By 1903 he had a regular full-page feature in Harper's Weekly.

Mark Twain's "Italian Without a Master" appeared in Harper's Weekly on January 2, 1904 with six illustrations by Albert Levering. The essay is the only one in The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories that retains all of its original illustrations from the first printing (plus six photo reproductions of Italian newspaper headlines).

In 1909 Levering drew the cover and frontispiece for Mark Twain's short book Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.

Henry Louis Stephens (b. 1824 - d. 1882) was born in Pennsylvania the son of William Stephens and Marie Picard Stephens. Stephens was one of the country's first political comic illustrators. Among his earliest work is The Comic Natural History of the Human Race published in Philadelphia in 1851 which features faces of prominent citizens perched atop animal bodies. Stephens included his own picture on a page titled "The Hen That Hatched This Egg." The book was produced in conjunction with John Cassin, curator of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. Stephens also worked as an artist for the U.S. Exploring Expedition reports, many of which were published in Philadelphia.

In the late 1850s Henry, along with his two brothers, Louis Henry Stephens (who shared the same names as his brother, although in reverse order), William Allan Stephens, and Henry's brother-in-law George Wevill, an engraver, relocated to New York. Stephens found work with Frank Leslie's publications and later Harper and Brothers.

Stephens also provided unsigned illustrations for the first edition of The Gilded Age issued in 1871. Stephens achieved distinction later in his career as a watercolor artist. He died in December 1882 at the relatively young age of 50 after complications from diabetes had left him blind for several years.

Lester Ralph (b. 1876 - d. 1927) was born in New York, the son of noted New York journalist Julian Ralph. He studied art in Paris at Julian's and at the Slade School in London. When war between Greece and Turkey broke out in 1897, he covered that conflict for the London Times. During the Boer War, 1899-1902, he traveled to South Africa as a correspondent again for the London Times.

In 1906 Ralph provided 55 illustrations for Mark Twain's Eve's Diary for Harper and Brothers. The 106-page book featured Ralph's full-page illustrations on every other page. The book was, in part, a tribute to Clemens's wife Livy who died in 1904 and Clemens wanted the illustrations to be elegant and graceful. He was pleased with Ralph's drawings in spite of the fact that one library banned the book because Adam and Eve were depicted naked. Two of Ralph's full page illustrations from Eve's Diary appear in Volume 24 of the uniform edition of Mark Twain's works.

Lester Ralph died at age 48 in New York after an operation for appendicitis. His obituary in The New York Times recalled his work on Eve's Diary and the pleasure Mark Twain took in them.