A further note on Merle Johnson, because it relates to his general
reliability. I mentioned QUEEN VICTORIA'S JUBILEE and completely forgot to
mention two pieces of evidence on its publication --it's first appearance in
the book trade and Johnson's possession of the proofs and first copy. It
first appeared in the book trade at a Robinson Auction Gallery sale in
October, 1909. It appeared twice again in 1910, five times in 1911, once in
1912 and 1913, and in 1914 Johnson's own copy (#1) along with the marked
proof sheets appeared for sale. It first appeared in a bookseller's stock in
January, 1910.   If anyone here is familiar with the methods of the famous
forger Thomas J. Wise (still active at this same time), they will recall
that he tried to get his forgeries (genuine texts with fake printing dates)
accepted by sneaking them into the market, usually through an auction, as
soon as the ink was dry, and then presented arguments in his published
bibliographies to make them appear to have been printed earlier than they
were, while concealing his own connecton with their appearance in the
market.  QVJ is printed on paper watermarked 1887. When it was first being
sold in the book trade it was presented as an 1897 publication. And in
Johnson's 1910 Twain bib he entered it under 1897, but with a hedging note
in the description saying the date was uncertain but it was surely earlier
than 1908. By 1935 he had it entered under 1909 and included no hedging
note, a date repeated by Jake Blanck in his later revisions of Johnson's
work. By the 1950s Blanck was saying ca. 1910, but curiously overlooked the
1909 auction sale. Blanck himself, by the way, concealed his connections
with his own private printings of Twain, and worked as MJ's assistant.

The use of earlier watermarked paper, the sudden burst of copies into the
book market, and the slippery dating by MJ all smell a lot like the way Wise
introduced his forgeries into the market, and while the text of QVJ is
certainly genuine (it had previosuly appeared in a newspaper) I think the
evidence strongly points toward Johnson's intent to deceive. But for some
reason (questions or rumors in the book trade?) he backed off of his early
attempts to hint at an earlier date, and settled with the truth of 1909, but
never came clean about his connections with this piece or the others he is
now known to have had printed. Blanck, while concealing his own private
printings of Twain's works (with fake imprints) did reveal some of Johnson's
connections in the Bibliography of American Literature (BAL), but not all of
them.

This does not settle any questions about Johnson's supposed use of original
manuscripts in MORE MAXIMS, but because I presented some of the evidence
about Johnson on QVJ, I thought I should be sure to present all of it. And
because a lot of T J Wise's bibliographical data has been called into
question over the years, the same caution (not outright rejection) should
apply to Johnson when it comes to Mark Twain.

Kevin Mac Donnell
Austin TX