April 12 Monday – The ledger books of Chatto & Windus show that 1,500 (3s.6d.) additional copies of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were printed , totaling 32,500 [Welland 236].

April 10 Saturday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London, Sam wrote to Mr. Maxwell (not further identified), approving some unspecified action of Maxwell’s, which Sam thought a good idea: “What do I think of it? I think you did well & wisely” [MTP]. Note: Again this is a reply to an not-extant letter. It would seem that many incoming letters from this London period were not saved.

April 9 Friday – Two copies of How to Tell a Story and Other Essays were deposited with the US Copyright Office [Hirst, “A Note on the Text” Afterword materials p.21, Oxford ed. 1996]. Note: the title piece, “How to Tell a Story” ran first in the Oct. 1895 issue of Youth’s Companion. Note: M. Johnson gives Mar. 9 as official publication date.

April 8 Thursday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London, Sam wrote to James R. Clemens [MTP]. Note: No text is available.

April 6 Tuesday – At 4 a.m., 23 Tedworth Square in London Sam replied to a not-extant note from John Y. MacAlister.

Ah, but I mustn’t stir from my desk before night, now when the publisher is hurrying me & I am almost through [with FE]. I am up & at work now—4 o’clock in the morning—& a few more spurts will pull me through. You come down here & smoke; that is better than tempting working men to strike & go to tea.

April 4 Sunday – William Dean Howells wrote to Sam.

“I am very sorry that I cannot read at the Authors’ Guild Entertainment. I long ago decided not to take part in Author’s readings, and there is nothing but your kindly wish, to make me revise this decision in the present case. Yours…” [MTP; not in MTHL].

April 3 Saturday – Johannes Brahms, composer, pianist died in Vienna.

April 2 Friday – Munsey’s Magazine included “My Favorite Author and His Best Book,” by William Dean Howells, p. 18-25. Tenney: “Surprisingly, a discussion of many novelists in various periods as favorites; near the end, praises CY as ‘delicious…I feel under all its impossibilities that it is true to the character of that man (Morgan) and true to all the conditions’” [MTJ Bibliographic Issue Number Four 42:1 (Spring 2004) p.7].

April – The April issue of Atlantic Monthly included Charles Miner Thompson’s “Mark Twain as an Interpreter of American Character,” p. 443-50. Tenney: “‘He is not a great or a skillful writer,’ and lacks the taste of an Oliver Wendell Holmes.

March 19 Friday – In London Sam wrote to Frank E. Bliss.

I enclose renewal-application & letter about it. Please attend to the matter for me.

I finished the book (in the rough) March 1st, then spent a week gutting it. I gutted a third of it out, & then began a careful revising & editing of the remaining two-thirds. I shall complete this revision in two or three days. I set the type-writer to work on the first 10,000 words a couple of days ago.