Just as a note:  I e-mailed Random House customer service last night asking about the “missing” Twain story pages that the Steads promised, on their copyright page, would be available.  I have received an initial reply from them, asking the specific page URL, which I provided as www.princeoleomargarine.com <http://www.princeoleomargarine.com/> together with a request that we get images of the holograph pages together with searchable and perhaps annotated HTML text, either on the site directly or as a link from it.

I find it highly encouraging that someone at PRH chose to respond to this so rapidly; I think others on this list might want to CONSTRUCTIVELY comment on how they’d like to see the promised material presented.  

I did not, and do not plan to, invoke John Bird’s name or his publishing “circumstances” in my communications with PRH on this issue.  That is not because I want to disparage him, or don’t want to see his version in print, but because PRH now has a strong vested interest in getting the Stead version promoted and, hopefully, profitable.  While I think one of us, perhaps a team, should write the necessary New Yorker article The Purloining of “Prince Oleomargarine” in a month or so, I don’t want PRH to start circling the wagons and ignoring or actively denigrating any part of the Twain community or wider scholarly community that declares itself appalled at the Stead version… something that in the current state of letters seems all too probable.