Auction Detail

Wesson time-on-bottom duplex on 2c Green entire, cornercard "Return to S.L. Clemens, Hartford, Conn., If not delivered within 10 days.", addressed to James R. Osgood & Co. in Boston, 1c postage due and "Due 1" and "Due 2" handstamps, light edge wear and toning from storage next to another envelope, fine and rare, a wonderful piece of postal history from Hartford's most notable resident

James R. Osgood was the publisher behind Mark Twain's 1882 The Prince and the Pauper and The Stolen White Elephant. Also in 1882, Osgood accompanied Twain on a riverboat trip to collect material for Life on the Mississippi, published by Osgood the following year. Interestingly, Life on the Mississippi was the first book submitted to the publisher as a typewritten manuscript (typed by Twain's secretary Isabel V. Lyon from his handwritten manuscript). 

The financial failure of Life on the Mississippi resulted in a fractured relation between Twain and Osgood. Mark Twain's Letters to his Publishers: 1867-1894, published by University of California Press in 1967, allows us to read the original letter contained in this envelope: a screed against Osgood which led to the severing of their partnership. It reads, in part:

I am peculiarly situated. The Prince and Pauper and The Mississippi are the only books of mine which have ever failed. The first failure was not unbearable - but this second one is so nearly so that it is not a calming subject for me to talk upon. I am out $50,000 on this last book - that is to say, the sale which should have been 80,000 (seeing that the Canadians were for the first time out of competition), is only 30,000.