MARK TWAIN AND HIS ENGLISH EDITOR.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 264, 20 February 1873, Page 7

MARK TWAIN AND HIS ENGLISH EDITOR.

[To the Editor of the l i Spectator " J Sir,— -I only venture to intrude upon you because I come, in some sense, in the interest of public morality, and this makes my mission respectable. Mr. John Camden Hotten, of London, has, .of his awn individual motion, repnb lished several of my books in England. I do not protest against this, for there is no law that would give effect to the \ protest ; and, besides, publishers ai-enot accountable to the hvws of heav.en, or garth in, any country, as I understand it. But ray, little grievance is. this : My books are bad 1 enough just aa they are written ; then Mr. John Camden Hotten has composed half-a-dozen chapters and added the same to them 1 I feel, that all true hearts will bleed for an author whose volumes have fallen under such a dispensation as this. If a friend of yours, or if even you yourself, were to write a book and set it adrift among the people, with the gravest apprehensions that it was not up to what it ought to be intellectually, how would you like to have John Caraden Hotten sit down and droll two or three original chapters on, the end of that bookj Would not, the world seem cold and hollow to you 1 "Wjould you not feel that you wanted to die and be at, rest 1 Little the- world knows of' true suffering. And supposing he should entitle these chapters "Holiday Literature," "True Story of Chicago," "Train up a child, and Away he Goes, and "i-Veno;eance," and then, on the strength of having evolved these marvels from his own. consciousness, go and " copy-right " the entire book, and put in the title-page a picture of a man. with his. hand in another man's pockets, and- the legend " All Rights Reserved." (I- only suppose the picture ; still it would be rather a neat thin?.^ And, further, su-ppose that in the kindness of his heart andtthe exuberance of his untaught fancy, this thorough w.ell meaning innocent should expunge the modesfe title which you have given, your book, and.replac3 it with so foul an invention as this "Screamers and Eye-opener&" and went and got that copy-righted too.

And suppose that on the top of all this he continually and persistently forgot to offer you a single penny, or eveii send you a copy of your mutilated book to burn, Let one suppose all this. Let him suppose it with strength enough, and then h,e will know something about woe. Sometimes when I read ope of those additu onal chapters constructed by John Oamden Hotten., I feel as if I wanted to take a broom-straw and go and knock that man's brains out. Not in anger, for I feel none. Oh no ! not in anger ; but 6nly too see, that is aIL Mere idle curiosity. And Mr, Hotten says that one norn de plume of mine is •' Carl Byng." 1 hold there is no affliction in this world that makes a man feel so down-trodden and abused as the giving him a, name that does not belong to him. How would this sinful aborigine fee^ if I were to call him John Camden Hottentot, and come out in the papers and say he was entitled to it by divine right ? Ido honestly believe it would throw him into a brain fever, if there were not an insuperable obstacle in the way. Yes — to oome bask to, the original subject, which is the sorrow that is slowly but surely undermining my health — Mr. Hotten prints unrevised, uncorrected, and in some respects spurious books, with my name to them as author, and thus embitters his customers against one of the most innocent of men. Messrs. George Rautledge and Sons are the only English publishers who pay me any copy-right, and therefore, if my books are to disseminate either suffering or crime among the readers of our language, I would cvsr so much rather they did it through that house, and then. I could contemplate the spectacle oaljUi\y as th,e dividends came in. — I am, Sir, &c, Samuel L. Olemees ("Mark Twain,"), London, September 20, 1872.