Sold By Subscription Only

In November of 1867, publisher Elisha Bliss contacted Samuel Clemens about writing a book based on his travel correspondence from his 163-day tour of Europe and the Holy Land. That book, The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim’s Progress, would be both a critical and a popular success, selling over 70,000 copies in its first year of publication. It would also be Mark Twain’s best-selling work during his lifetime.

The book was “Issued by subscription only, and not for sale in the book-stores.” All of Mark Twain’s major nineteenth-century titles were sold by salesmen door-to-door rather than as trade publications in bookstores.

The subscription publication industry blossomed in post-Civil War America. Tens of thousands of sales agents, many of them veterans and war widows, canvassed small towns and rural areas armed with a sales prospectus and a “book” containing sample pages and illustrations, and offering multiple binding options to fit every décor and price range. Prospective buyers selected a binding and signed an agreement to pay for the book when it was delivered to their door.

Samuel Clemens sold more Mark Twain books and attained a broader audience than he would have reached with regular trade publications, but he had to contend with the lower status that subscription authors were accorded. Disguised as popular entertainment, his books were bought by the masses—“who never knew what good literature they were.”

Mark Twain. The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims’ Progress. Hartford, Connecticut: American Publishing Company, 1869. First edition, first issue.
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The Innocents Abroad was Mark Twain’s first full-scale work. It began as a series of travel letters written for a San Francisco paper, the Alta California, which sponsored Clemens’s participation in the Quaker City steamer trip to Europe and the Holy Land in 1867. Twain’s publisher, Elisha Bliss, suggested he revise the letters into a book, which he published in 1869.

Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections
Cornell University Library

Mark Twain. The Innocents Abroad prospectus and presentation box.
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All of Mark Twain’s major titles were sold by salesmen door-to-door “by subscription only” rather than as trade publications available in bookstores. This salesman’s prospectus and presentation box was originally owned by William Aldrich, a book salesman in Wisconsin. The prospectus includes a page of the conditions under which the book was available for sale, and order blanks where the names of subscribers are recorded. The box is thought to be home-made, not supplied by the publisher.

From the collection of Susan Jaffe Tane

Mark Twain. Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims’ Progress. Hartford, Connecticut: American Publishing Company, 1869.
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Olivia Clemens’s copy of the Innocents Abroad, with her married name on the cover, was given to her in 1870 by her husband after the book became a bestseller.

From the collection of Susan Jaffe Tane

Mark Twain. Roughing It. Hartford, Connecticut: American Publishing Company, 1872. First edition. Copy inscribed: “Hiram Youngs Geneva, New York. June 7th, 1872.”
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Mark Twain’s second major book, Roughing It, is a patchwork of personal anecdotes and tall tales that document aspects of life in the American West while humorously accounting for his six years in Nevada, California, and Hawaii (Sandwich Islands). As the author noted in his Prefatory:

This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science. Still, there is information in the volume; information concerning an interesting episode in the history of the Far West, about which no books have been written by persons who were on the ground in person, and saw the happenings of the time with their own eyes.

From the collection of Susan Jaffe Tane

Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. The Gilded Age, A Tale of Today. Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1873. First edition.
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Co-written with editor and Hartford neighbor Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age is a burlesque novel filled with pointed social commentary and a political satire of the greed and corruption rampant in post-Civil War America, an era that came to be known as “The Gilded Age.”

From the collection of Susan Jaffe Tane

Mark Twain. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1876. First American edition, first printing.
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is Mark Twain’s most autobiographical novel, and one of the most popular and durable works in American literature. It has been issued in hundreds of editions, dozens of translations and remained in print continuously since 1876. Clemens attempted to coordinate the printing of Tom Sawyer in America and in Britain to ensure that he gained English copyright, which required first publication in England. Because of delays, the British edition was brought out six months before the American edition. During that time a pirated version was published in Canada, which sold well there and hurt Clemens’s sales of the book in the United States.

From the collection of Susan Jaffe Tane

Photograph of Charles Langdon and Mark Twain in Ottoman Costumes. Schier and Schoefft: Alexandria, Egypt. 1869.
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Samuel Clemens met Charles Langdon, from Elmira, New York, aboard the steamer Quaker City during the Mediterranean excursion that he reported on in his book, The Innocents Abroad. On this voyage, Langdon would show Clemens a miniature image of his sister Olivia. Three years later Olivia Langdon would become Mrs. Samuel Clemens.

Charles Langdon returned to the region on his 1869-1870 world tour. In Egypt, Langdon purchased the Ottoman suit that he is seen wearing in a photograph taken in Alexandria. Langdon is seated in the chair. Standing to his left is his travelling companion, Darius Reynolds Ford (b. 1825).

Cornell Costume and Textile Collection

Ottoman Costume. A Dragoman suit made of camel wool purchased by Charles Langdon in Cairo, Egypt ca. 1869-70.
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This Ottoman Turkish suit of heavy camel-colored broadcloth, with a vest embroidered with gold, was typical of clothing worn by members of the Turkish ruling class. Egypt was a province of the Ottoman Empire at that time. Purchased during Langdon’s 1869-1870 world tour, this suit and other Clemens and Langdon family clothes and costumes were donated to the Cornell Costume and Textile Collection by Charles Langdon’s daughter, Ida Langdon, and his grandson, Jervis Langdon, Jr., both Cornellians.

Cornell Costume and Textile Collection

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