The identification of Harriet Wasson is correct. I know her one of her
descendants personally, and she has a copy of the book with the author's
signature in it, as well as some of the family history. My friend was
amazed that I knew of the book, and I was delighted to have the mystery of
its authorship solved! We have known each other for years, but the subject
never came up before. Wasson's brother Joseph was a journalist who for a
time edited a newspaper in Bodie, California. I turned my info over to Ken
Sanderson, who has been collecting a file on the rest of the family, some
of whose letters are here in the Bancroft Library. Harriet Smith



At 12:49 PM 3/23/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>Thanks, Kevin, for that list.  We've had the sections of *Facts, By a
>Woman* that treats selling Mark Twain door-to-door in California up in the
>site *Mark Twain in His Times* for a couple years, but I didn't know about
>the other two books.  If I can track them down, I'll try to add them to
>*Facts.*  And thanks, Barbara, for finding out more about who "A Woman"
>was.  There's a copy of the book in the Barrett Collection here at U.Va.,
>but no identification of the author.  Unless someone in the Forum thinks
>there is any reason to doubt the identification, I'll add the information
>as "probable" to the site, and pass it on to our cataloguer.
>If you want to read the excerpt from *Facts,* its in *Mark Twain in His
>Times* (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton) under the category
>"Marketing Twain."  It's very readable, and a good reminder of how
>complicated were the motives that 19th century Americans had for buying
>Twain's books.  Stephen Railton
>
>
>At 11:24 AM 3/23/00 -0600, you wrote:
> >In reponse to one part of Kevin Mac Donnell's questions regarding
> >_Facts By a Woman_ -- there appears to have been some later
> >research done on her and her book.  WorldCat lists the following
> >entry:
> >
> >AUTHOR: =CAWasson, Harriet, b. 1842.=20
> >TITLE: =CAFacts by a woman : written 1877 by Harriet Wasson, born Sept. 15,
> >1842, Wooster, Ohio (daughter of John M.  Wasson, 1802-1883)=20
> >PLACE: =CAWest Milton, Ohio :=20
> >PUBLISHER: =CAA.M. Schumann,=20
> >YEAR: =CA1996=20
> >PUB TYPE: =CABook=20
> >FORMAT: =CA1 v. (various pagings) : ill., maps, ports. ; 29 cm.=20
> >NOTES: =CA"A biography and book review done in 1973"--P. [2] Facts by a
> >woman originally published: Oakland, Calif. :Pacific Press Publishing
> >House, 1881. 356 p. photocopied two pages to one, with some slight error
> >in sequence. "Reprinted [photocopied] and added to by Arthur M. Schumann."
> >pt. 1. A biography and book review / by Arthur M. Schumann -- pt. 2. Facts
> >by a woman / by Harriet Wasson.=20
> >SUBJECT: =CAWasson, Harriet, -- b. 1842. Oakland (Calif.)=20
> >OTHER: =CASchumann, Arthur M.     =20
> >