January 7 Tuesday – A.E. Pattison for Pope Mfg. wrote to Sam asking where he might buy a “paper covered collection of short sketches” of Sam’s which included his “Bermuda paper,” by Slote, he thought. (“Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion”) [MTP].

The Manchester Guardian, p.6 in “Books of the Week” wrote:

We owe sincere and large thanks to “Mark Twain” for writing and publishing this book [Budd, Contemporary 299]. Note: CY.

Note: Not all English reviews would be so kind. Paine writes:

It was referred to as a “lamentable failure” and as an “audacious sacrilege” and in terms still less polite. Not all of the English critics were violent. The Daily Telegraph gave it something more than a column of careful review, which did not fail to point out the book’s sins with a good deal of justice and dignity; but the majority of English papers joined in a sort of objurgatory chorus which, for a time at least, spared neither the author or his works. Strictures on the Yankee extended to his earlier books. After all, Mark Twain’s work was not for the cultivated class [MTB 894].