December 8 Friday – The release date for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer [Camfield, bibliog.]. Hirst gives this as the date “the earliest copies of the first edition came from the bindery” [“A Note on the Text” Oxford edition, 1996]. Only 23,638 copies were sold the first year, and less than 29,000 by the end of 1879, providing only half the income of The Gilded Age [Emerson 95].

Sam ordered a copy of Albert Deane Richardson’s Beyond the Mississippi (1867) from American Publishing Co. Sam had also ordered a copy of the book in Oct. 1870. It was briefly mentioned in Roughing It. Sam later credited Richardson for advising him on publishing Innocents Abroad. He was billed for the book on Feb. 1, 1877 [Gribben 577].