University of Virginia Library

I

On 14 March 1866 an anthology of humorous writings called Wit and Humor; or, Odds and Ends was advertised in the New York Daily Tribune. Readers were encouraged to send the publisher, J. R. Sutherland and Co. of Philadelphia, $1.50 for a cloth-bound book or $1.00 for a paperback; in return they would receive a "thick volume" of selections, many by featured contributors with nationally recognized names. From that date the volume was the subject of an extensive advertising campaign which did not end until the third week of May.

Advertisements for Wit and Humor, in four textually distinct versions, appeared in at least nine prominent American publications. The Tribune advertisement ran in each issue through 20 March. On 17 March the same text began appearing in the New York Saturday Press (see figure 1), the leading paper of America’s Bohemian avant-garde, where it was printed, with evident care, ultimately in nine consecutive issues. Starting on 25 March this Tribune-Saturday Press version was in turn published in two issues running of the New York Sunday Mercury, one of the widest-circulating periodicals in the nation. A second version, with wording that described an apparently later conception of the volume, likewise began on 14 March, in the Washington, D.C., Daily National Republican. This form was in turn printed in the Round Table (see figure 2), New York’s self-consciously stuffy literary weekly, on 24 and 31 March. The text is also distinguished by the inclusion of "Mrs. Partington" as a contributor and the omission of "Pomeroy Brick." On 15 March a third version, reflecting the change to Mrs. Partington and today conspicuous for the error "Mark Train," made the first of six appearances in the New York Times. This text, misprint and all, would reappear later in the month, beginning on 26 March, in six issues of the Boston Evening Transcript. A fourth version, including both "Mrs. Partington" and "Pomeroy Brick" but omitting "Josh Billings," appeared in every issue of the New York Evening Express from 23 through 31 March and in every issue of the Springfield (Mass.) Republican from 27 March through 2 April.1

The anthology was likely a piracy: of the contributors named in the advertisements, most had national reputations, and all but two had already published their works in authorized editions. The two exceptions were "'Bret,' of The Californian" and Mark Twain. Depending on how the measurement is taken, Wit and Humor was their first book.

"Bret" was of course Francis Bret Harte (1836–1902). He had already edited a book, Outcroppings: Being Selections of California Verse, which was published by Anton Roman in San Francisco in December 1865 (copyrighted 1866). Harte selected many of the poems in this volume, but included none of his own; he wrote a brief preface, but did not sign it. The first authorized book of his own writings would be called Condensed Novels and Other Papers. When assembled, the manuscript for this volume would consist mainly of pieces written for the Californian, a San Francisco literary weekly founded in 1864 by New York transplant and Outcroppings contributor Charles Henry Webb (1834 – 1905). Harte and Webb alternately edited the Californian, and in seeking a publisher for his collection, Harte may have consulted with his more worldly colleague. Eventually secured (with the help of the New York agent of Anton Roman) was George W. Carleton, Webb's friend and publisher and the publisher of a number of other notable humorists, including Artemus Ward. When Harte's book appeared in October 1867, it drew favorable notices, but the author soon grew unhappy in his relationship with Carleton. In a letter to James R. Osgood, he revealed that his arrangement with Carleton was informal and expressed a desire to have Osgood's company publish a revised Condensed Novels (this came to pass in 1871). Harte also revealed that Carleton printed 1,800 copies of the original edition and intended to print no more; bibliographical investigation by Nathan Van Patten discovered that the edition comprised separate issues, in 1867 and 1870, likely constituted respectively of 1,500 and 300 copies.

FIGURE 1. One of the versions of the advertisement in its early state: example from the New York Saturday Press, 31 March 1866, p. 8 (original size approximately 4.5 × 7.0 cm).

FIGURE 2. The later state of the advertisement: example from the Round Table 3 (24 March 1866): 189 (original size approximately 5.5 × 7.5 cm).

Harte brought out a second book two or three months after Condensed Novels appeared: The Lost Galleon and Other Tales was a collection of some of his poems, finely printed by Towne and Bacon in San Francisco at the end of 1867. This volume also drew notice in the East, though it was unfavorably compared to Condensed Novels and Harte was warned of adopting a poetic demeanor imitative of Holmes.2

As for Mark Twain, he would beat Harte to market by five months with a book of his own, despite its having been refused in prospect by Carleton in early 1867.3 The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, And other Sketches appeared at the end of April 1867, through the enterprising efforts of the ubiquitous Webb. He had returned to New York one year earlier, and sold his interest in the Californian within a few months (having briefly considered transferring it to New York).4 Mark Twain followed him to New York in January 1867, where Webb arranged for him to see Carleton about publishing a collection of his sketches from the

Californian and the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. Webb then came to his aid when Carleton sent the author away: he published the book himself, or jointly with the American News Company. A Webb penname, "John Paul," appeared on the title page as editor, along with his real name as publisher; he also copyrighted the book in his own name (an action that would eventually contribute to the disruption of his relationship with the author).

Apart from Wit and Humor, two other unauthorized collections published before 1867 contained Mark Twain writings. The first was Fun for Three Months (New York: T. W. Strong, 1864 or 1865), an anthology partly composed of sheets of the humor journal Yankee Notions. In the issue of Yankee Notions for April 1864, a Mark Twain item appeared below the editorial title, "The Play of Ingomar in California." Jacob Blanck described Fun for Three Months as a "twilight book," a classification he applied to publications "made up of the sheets of the original periodical publication, or produced from the plates thereof... ."5 The questioned status of this volume has contributed to the tendency to regard the second unauthorized anthology, Beadle's Dime Book of Fun No. 3, as the first book in which Mark Twain's work appeared. Itself little more than a pamphlet at 80 pages, the Beadle volume was the third in a series, and it also had the appearance of a periodical. Blanck did not regard it as a periodical or a twilight book however, and it contained three items by Mark Twain, all copied from periodical printings.6 The presumed issue date of the third Dime Book of Fun was April 19, 1866, however— more than one month later than the appearance of the first advertisements for Wit and Humor. The later versions of these advertisements imply that the volume had already been published; the advertisements also mark the first time that the names of Bret Harte and Mark Twain were used to attract Eastern readers. Unlike the Beadle volume, Wit and Humor was promoted in literary papers and advertised as an anthology of the writings of particular authors.

No further sign of Wit and Humor has been discovered after the advertisement in the Saturday Press of 12 May; none of the copies that the publisher advertised as ready for shipment has been located. Of that publisher, J. R. Sutherland, little can be said with confidence. Beyond the advertised mailing address, a Philadel-

phia cxsonnection has not been established: the name is not listed as a person or business in the Philadelphia directories, and Sutherland advertisements have not been found in Philadelphia newspapers.7 The instruction in Sutherland's advertisements, "Mailed to any address on receipt of price," is characteristic of the advertisements of publishers of cheap editions, especially the large Philadelphia establishment T. B. Peterson and Brothers. This firm frequently advertised in Eastern newspapers of this period; in the New York Tribune of 16 March 1866, for example, a T. B. Peterson advertisement appeared almost adjacent to the advertisement for Wit and Humor, offering to ship the novels of Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth "postage paid on receipt of retail price." However, most of the books by American authors on Peterson's long list were, like the novels by Mrs. Southworth, commissioned by that publisher.8 While there will be cause further to discuss T. B. Peterson and Brothers in another context, this company was unlikely to have been connected with Wit and Humor, despite the Sutherland company's advertised Philadelphia address and similar approach to marketing and sales.

J. R. Sutherland was almost certainly a Canadian firm; the evidence for this deduction is cumulative and sufficiently convincing. J. R. Sutherland and Company (and A. R. and J. R. Sutherland) published gazetteers and business directories of Canada West counties in the early and mid-1860s. For example, J. R. or James Sutherland was compiler and publisher of the 1862 volume for Oxford County and the 1865–1866 volume for the combined counties of Northumberland and Durham; A. R. and J. R. Sutherland published the volumes for Brant County that same year, and for Kent County the previous year (1864–65). J. R.'s location was shown as Woodstock, a town in Oxford County, while the A. R. and J. R. Sutherland company was located in Ingersoll, a town ten miles further to the west in the same county. A few years earlier, possibly as far back as 1856, James Sutherland was living in the United States. There he compiled and published directories and other works at least until 1860, possibly for Michigan and Wisconsin. Beginning in 1858 he published directories for Indiana, Kansas, and Missouri, mostly with a partner named Henry N. McEvoy. Perhaps war's outbreak brought him and McEvoy to Canada, where the partnership eventually resumed: in 1870 the two men were collaborating on Canadian county directories. J. R. Sutherland was also listed in 1870 as publishing a monthly journal in Hamilton, Ontario. According to a contemporary Canadian practice, Sutherland may have been a distributor rather than the actual producer of Wit

and Humor. In attested instances of this practice a Canadian printing house would perform the presswork for a particular unauthorized edition of a work by an American author, presumably using an original American printing as printer's copy. The resulting copies would be identical except for advertising matter and different title page imprints belonging to particular Canadian news dealers. A tantalizing clue that potentially connects Wit and Humor to this practice concerns Sutherland's partner, McEvoy. In 1869, McEvoy was the editor and compiler for the C. E. Anderson company, the gazetteer and directory branch of the Daily Telegraph Printing House in Toronto. As will be discussed in the following section, this printing company, owned by John Ross Robertson and James B. Cook, produced unauthorized editions of Mark Twain's first books the following year (1870), according to the method just described.9

However Wit and Humor may have been produced, it is likely to have been the first book in which the sketches of Bret Harte and Mark Twain were featured. The presence of their names in advertisements in the East is also without known precedent. The advertisements are important evidence of the early national esteem of California's two leading authors, and invite questions relating to the progress of their careers. As these questions are pursued, particular revelations about Bret Harte and Mark Twain disclose connections to a larger literary landscape, in its commercial and artistic dimensions, during the transformative 1860s. The deceptively narrow testimony provided by the advertisements acts ultimately as a prism through which the strands of an inadequately remembered world of publishing and authorship appear: democratic and nonconforming, centered in New York and not Boston, looking westward for new inspiration and audiences.