Mark Twain? Frank Nelson Doubleday? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: Mark Twain apparently held a very low opinion of book publishers. He suggested that publishers could be created via a multigenerational combination of individuals from lunatic asylums. Could you please help me find a citation for this sentiment?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1897 Frank Nelson Doubleday and Samuel McClure cofounded the publishing company Doubleday & McClure. The new firm required a stable of successful authors; hence, Doubleday traveled to Europe to attempt to recruit luminaries such as Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain. He visited Twain in a hotel in Vienna, Austria, and Twain delivered the following comical barb. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:1
He told me, among other things, that he had a perfect recipe for making a modern American publisher. “Take an idiot man from a lunatic asylum and marry him to an idiot woman, and the fourth generation of this connection should be a good publisher from the American point of view. I had a perfect publisher myself, as you know,” he said. “His name was Frank Bliss, and thank God, he is dead and gone to hell.”
In 1928 Frank Doubleday privately printed “A Few Indiscreet Recollections” and the text above was included. The slim volume was limited to fifty-seven copies, and the recipients were described with the phrase “Indulgent Relatives”.
Doubleday died in 1934. Many years later, in 1972 the privately printed material was released under the title “The Memoirs of a Publisher”. The 1972 edition included a footnote slyly pointing out that Twain’s lacerating description would ultimately apply to himself:2
* Clemens himself later became a publisher.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
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