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].

December 6 Wednesday – Christian Bernard Tauchnitz wrote from Leipzig, Germany to Sam.

My dear Sir, / In consequence of your kind letter of Sept 14 I have added your “Tom Sawyer” to my series. It filled one of my little volumes. I have printed it from the London edition, in adding the dedication you wished.

December 5 Tuesday – Sam was back in Hartford. He dictated a letter through Fanny C.

December 4 Monday – In Cambridge, Mass., Howells wrote to Sam, enclosing a letter from Belford Brothers to Howells Nov. 29. The Belfords wanted the right to publish Sam’s future contributions to the Atlantic. “We would be willing to pay liberally for the right to publish them in the magazine, although the law allows us to pirate them.” “What answer?” Howells asked [MTHL 1: 166]. (See Dec. 5 for Sam’s answer.)

December 3 Sunday – Sam wrote from the St. James Hotel in New York to Livy. James R. Osgood visited Sam at his hotel around noon. Mrs. T. B. Aldrich had also called and he would soon return her call. He wrote that he’d “used no whisky or other liquor to sleep on [but] was utterly tired out.” NYC temperatures ranged from 35-24 degrees F. with no precipitation [NOAA.gov].

December 2 Saturday – In the evening Sam dined with “those leddy-hets till 12, then went to bed” [MTLE 1: 149]. Note: The “leddy-hets” (Clara Clemens’ pronunciation of “leatherheads”) are unidentified.

NYC temperatures ranged from 24-15 degrees F. with no precipitation [NOAA.gov].