A nice tidbit for the Adelaide reviewer, but evidently not heavy on accurate facts.  According to the U of C edition of Twain's notebooks (vol. 1), a pertinent notebook entry records, "Wrote this story for Artemus [Ward]--his idiot publisher, Carleton gave it to [Henry] Clapp's Saturday Press [not the Saturday Gazette]" (p. 80).  The Saturday Press did cease publication in 1866, but Twain's 1865 sketch apparently wasn't in the last issue.  And the jumping frog, far from killing it, was a great success.  Also, Twain refers to the Smiley character in early notes as "Coleman," but there are no references (so far as I know) to "Greeley."  As we know, Twain cared a lot more about telling a good story than sticking to the sort of dreary facts I'm offering here.  By the way, Twain's 1894 "Private History of the 'Jumping Frog' Story" relates a version of the story's composition that combines elements of the notebook entries with the "snapper" (killing the Press/Gazette) that he would again use for the Adelaide reviewer the following year.   --Jim L. 


-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Twain Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Clay Shannon
Sent: Saturday, January 07, 2017 11:39 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Reopening the Jim Smiley question

We discussed whether Jim Smiley was a real person; note this from twainqout= es=C2=A0Mark Twain quotations - Jumping Frog
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Mark Twain quotations - Jumping Frog
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He was a real character, and his name was Greeley. The way he got the name = of Smiley was this -- I wrote the story for the=C2=A0New York Saturday Gaze= tte, a perishing weekly so-called literary newspaper -- a home of poverty; = it was the last number -- the jumping frog killed it. They had not enough "= G's", so they changed Greeley's name to "Smiley." That's a fact.
- "Mark Twain Put to the Question" interview, Adelaide=C2=A0South Australia= n Register, 10/14/1895
=C2=A0- B. Clay Shannon