December 10 Tuesday – The official U.S. publication date for Connecticut Yankee. Some 25,000 copies were printed before the end of the year [Hirst, “A Note on the Text” Afterword materials p.28, Oxford ed. 1996].
December 9 Monday – Sam’s notebook carries a “Mem. Of Agreement” dated this date in the body and Dec. 14 (date to be executed?) in the heading, for sales of 50 “Royalty Deeds of the Paige Compositor for fifty thousand dollars” to Elmira businessman Matthias Hollenback Arnot. Sam signed his wife’s name in the memo to be a witness [3: 536].
Note: right after this entry: West Point Jan 11 / Eggleston, Author’s Club, midnight, Dec. 31. (See Dec. 19 & 31 entries)
December 8 Sunday – The intended official publication date for Connecticut Yankee in Canada [Aug. 20 to Hall].
December 7 Saturday – Robert Donald wrote to Sam:
December 6 Friday – The official publication date for Connecticut Yankee in London [Aug. 20 to Hall].
Sam’s notebook: 8.03 am — leaves Spr. 9.50 — get to Buf 8.35 pm [MTNJ 3: 534].
December 5 Thursday – Two bound copies of Connecticut Yankee were deposited with the U.S. Copyright Office [Hirst, “A Note on the Text” Afterword materials p.28, Oxford ed. 1996].
Under the headline, “THEATRICAL GOSSIP.” the New York Times ran an article on page 8 about the dramatization of P&P.
December 4 Wednesday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Joe Goodman encouraging him to “come east & lay regular siege to Jones.” Now Sam was using Jan. 20 as the date “when the machine will go to work again.” In order to strategize about Senator John P. Jones, Sam urged Joe to “come east immediately.” Sam also called the Mergenthaler “so feeble an enemy” based on its average production rate of 2,000 ems per hour.
December 3 Tuesday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Sylvester Baxter of the Boston Herald, who evidently had asked for a piece from Sam for publication:
December 2 Monday – In Hartford Sam wrote a short note to decline Richard Bowker’s Nov. 30 invitation. Bowker was in the forefront of the lobby for international copyright legislation, and his name is familiar today to anyone involved in publishing:
Blessed are the dead that died in the cause. I’ve really got to stay away, this time, & let the other boys conduct the slaughter [MTP].
December 1 Sunday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Daniel Whitford, letter not extant but referred to in Whitford’s Dec. 2 to Sam [MTP].