December 14 Friday – Sam wrote 2,000 words on JA, Book III [Dec. 16 to Rogers].

December 13 Thursday – Sam wrote 2,100 words on JA, Book III [Dec. 16 to Rogers]. A review of PW by the London Chronicle, p.3:

There is in this volume a good deal of Mark Twain at his best, and not a little of Mark Twain at his worst. The story is one of the strangest compounds of strength and artificiality we have read for many a day. Pathos and bathos, humour and twaddle, are thrown together in a way that is nothing less than amazing [Budd, Contemporary Reviews 360].

December 12 Wednesday – Sam wrote 2,600 words on JA, Book III [Dec. 16 to Rogers].

December 11 Tuesday – Not allowed to go out except on dry days, which were absent for the next week, Sam worked again on JA, Book III. On this day he wrote 1,300 words [Dec. 16 to Rogers].

December 10 Monday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam wrote to Henry M. Alden of Harper & Brothers asking to see his proofs of JA, after discovering he’d made “two or three mistakes.” 

December 9 Sunday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, responding to his Nov. 30 letter.

Yours of Nov. 30 has just arrived. I shall welcome the Kipling poem. There were good things in Riley’s book, but you have noticed, of course, that there’s considerable padding in it, too.

December 8 Saturday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, the Clemenses had a dinner party. Sam “sat up till midnight without observable fatigue.” He wrote of the event but did not list guests in his Dec. 9 to Rogers.

December 7 Friday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, confessing his mood prevented him from working on JA:

December 5 Wednesday – The London Morning Post in “Literary Notes” p.6:

Having provided a grievous disappointment in Tom Sawyer Abroad, Mark Twain has produced, in Pudd’nhead Wilson, a book which must add considerably to its author’s reputation. Even the most devoted lover of Mark Twain’s writings could not have anticipated that he would produce a work of such strength and such serious interest as this [Budd, Contemporary Reviews 359].

The Glasgow Herald p.10:

December 3 Monday – Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish author died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Samoa.