Charles L. Webster and Company
Mark Twain was never truly satisfied with any of his book publishers. Charles H. Webb neglected to pay him the royalties his “jumping frog” book had earned; Elisha Bliss frustrated him with frequent delays in publishing his work; and he considered James R. Osgood to be inexperienced and inept. He felt he should be making more money from his books.
His solution was to start his own subscription publishing firm. In 1884 he founded Charles L. Webster and Company, which he named after his business agent (and his niece’s husband), who became its director. Clemens hoped to reap the combined benefits of being an author and a publisher.
The new company enjoyed great success with its first two publications, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. Sales of the two-volume memoir generated a record-breaking royalty payment of $200,000 for the president’s widow and made Clemens a wealthy man.
But the firm never duplicated its early triumphs, and projects that seemed so promising—biographies of Pope Leo XIII and Henry Ward Beecher, memoirs of other Civil War generals, and Elizabeth Custer’s chronicles of her famous husband’s journey west—failed to realize their expected profits. Mark Twain’s works still sold well, but Clemens was forced to pump his royalties back into the firm. Tensions flared as the company foundered. In 1888 an exasperated Clemens forced the overworked and ailing Webster out of the company. Deep in debt, the firm declared bankruptcy on April 18, 1894. In the end, his attempt to seize control of the publishing process left Clemens as just another book publisher who disappointed Mark Twain.
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Mark Twain. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade). New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885. First American edition, first issue. [zoom] To promote his new book, Clemens read selections from Huckleberry Finn during his lecture tour in 1884-1885. He also agreed to pre-publish excerpts of the book in The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, a practice he had not allowed with his books. Clemens hoped to sell 40,000 subscriptions of the book by December 15th, publish the book that day, and then release thousands of additional copies into bookstores in time for Christmas shoppers. However, problems with a defaced illustration held up publication until early 1885. Within weeks of its publication the book was banned by the Concord Public Library, which generated publicity and public discussion. From the collection of Susan Jaffe Tane |
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Mark Twain. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade). New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885. First American edition. Blue binding. [zoom] Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was the first book published by Charles L. Webster and Company, Clemens’s own publishing firm. As a subscription book, it was offered in a variety of bindings: library (sheep), half morocco, and cloth. The earliest prospectus offered the book in green cloth, but a later prospectus presented the book in both green and blue cloth. One story about the book, likely apocryphal, asserts that the blue bindings were discontinued because blue did not sell well in the post-Civil War South. Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections |
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Mark Twain. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade). New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885. First American edition. [zoom] Clemens selected Edward W. Kemple, a young New York artist, to illustrate the original edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 174 of his illustrations appeared in the book. The second frontispiece, a heliotype photograph of a clay bust of Mark Twain by Karl Gerhardt, was printed separately and inserted into each book and salesman’s prospectus for the first edition. From the collection of Susan Jaffe Tane |
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Mark Twain. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade). Montreal: Dawson Brother, Publishers, 1885. First Canadian edition. [zoom] The first Canadian issue of Huckleberry Finn was published by Dawson Brothers on December 10, 1884, two months before the first American edition was released. An authorized edition, it was printed from a duplicate set of plates provided by the Webster company. From the collection of Susan Jaffe Tane |
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Mark Twain. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade). New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885. First American edition. Presentation copy inscribed, signed, and dated by Twain: “To Edith Beecher with the very best wishes of Mark Twain March 1885.” [zoom] Edith Beecher (1872-1898) was the granddaughter of Henry Ward Beecher and grandniece of Clemens’s Hartford neighbor Harriet Beecher Stowe. From the collection of Susan Jaffe Tane |
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Ulysses S. Grant. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. New York, Charles L. Webster & Company, 1885-86. [zoom] | Additional images:  "View a larger image")  "View a larger image")
Defrauded by a corrupt business partner, the nearly bankrupt former President and General was persuaded by Clemens to write and publish his memoirs with the Webster firm. Dying of throat cancer, Grant wrote until the last days of his life. Issued in two volumes, the set was one of the most popular books of the 19th century. It is now regarded as one of the greatest of military memoirs. Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections |
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Elizabeth Custer. Tenting on the Plains or General Custer in Kansas and Texas. New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1889. [zoom] After the success of the Grant memoirs, Clemens and Charles L. Webster published the biographies of several other Civil War generals and military heroes, including this work written by the widow of General George Armstrong Custer. The book sold well enough to be reprinted several times. Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections |
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William C. Beecher and Rev. Samuel Scoville. A Biography of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1888. [zoom] The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, one of the most influential and controversial clergymen of his day, contracted to write his autobiography for Charles L. Webster & Company, but he died as he was beginning the work. His family put together this biography, which “brought only a moderate return.” Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections |
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