Thank you for your kind words about the Autograph Edition³. I think Mr. Rogers⁴ did a very fine piece of work - indeed, he never does anything that has not distinction.

I never received the copy of the Sewanee Review⁵. I was abroad during most of '29 and '30, and my publishers cannot forward second class mail to me. There is too much of it.

Now to the object of your letter. You will see that in returning the list you sent me I have crossed out six of the early stories you attribute to me, because they are not really genuine; some of them are wholly spurious. I cannot give you the history of each of these, but let us take the first one, “On the Divide”⁶. It was a college theme written for a weekly theme class. The professor⁷ was a very young man, just out of college himself, and was one of those mistaken young men who think they can reflect credit upon their department by rushing their students into print. As the Overland Monthly⁸ did not pay for contributions, he was able to get it printed there. Before he sent it there, he touched it up very considerably and added what he called “color”. My theme was a short account of a Swede farmer who carried off a girl in a storm. I forget now how much the professor added, but I remember I was amazed when he attributed to this Swede some skill in wood carving - said he did this in his lonely hours, or something of that sort. I have only the dimmest recollection of this theme, but I remember that he put in several high spots which amazed me. Incidently, he had the story printed quite without my knowledge. I was not in the least offended, and thought he had been very kind to dress up a dull college theme.

The story “Eldorado”⁹, though it was written much later, was sent to the same professor and highly retouched by him. He was older by that time, and so was I,—but we were neither of us any wiser. I will say for myself however, that I had no intention of publishing the story. It was the result of a kind of correspondence course which I kept up with this young man after I left college.

The other stories¹⁰ which I have marked out as wholly or partially spurious, were the collective effort of a club of four youngsters¹¹, of whom I was one, who worked on Pittsburgh¹² newspapers. along with me. The reason that the stories were sent about under my name was that, thanks to the young professor to whom I have just referred, I had had several stories printed in magazines while the other members had not. The New England mMagazine¹³ did not pay for contributions, any more than did the Overland Monthly, so there were no profits to be shared. I had almost entirely forgotten about this little club of newspaper youngsters, but we had a jolly time collaborating, and the results, though worthless enough, did nobody any harm.

The first published story¹⁴ that which was altogether my own work was “A Death in the Desert”¹⁵, published in Scribner’s¹⁶. I forget the date. The remaining titles on your list, beginning with 1907, are all protected by copyright, which I am very careful to renew at proper intervals, as I wish to keep the stories out of print. They are all immature work, most of them carelessly written in the intervals of very exacting editorial work. I became an editor on the staff of McClure’s magazine¹⁷ in 1907¹⁸, and managing editor in 1908. Several attempts have been made to print collections of these stories by small publishing houses in the West, but we have always been able to prevent it. An instructor in one of the western colleges had several of the stories made up in mimeograph sheets, which he used in his class room. bBut some copies were circulated outside the class room, and I was able to stop it and have the all mimeograph copies all destroyed. In many states the law rules that any form of reproducing a writer’s work without the writer’s consent is a form of publishing. ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ I do not know what the law may be on this point in the State of Washington¹⁹, and I do sincerely hope that I shall not have occasion to ask my attorney to investigate.

My dear Professor Wagenknecht, your quotation²⁰ from the publisher who put out the early essays²¹ of George Elliot²² is simply a publisher’s salesman talk. There is no interest or profit for any “scholar” in examining immature and labored productions. There is no profit in it even for this sales-talking publisher. When an American publisher put out a volume of Kipling²³'s very early work²⁴ which had run out of copyright, he made nothing on it at all - I believe he lost money.

I am sorry to say that I cannot by any twist of thinking, construe your wish to call attention to these long forgotten stories, signed with my name, as a friendly wish.

It seems to me a rather indelicate proceeding on your part. I cannot imagine myself doing such a thing with Mr. Hemingway²⁵'s early work, for instance.

Suppose I were an apple grower, and, packing my year’s crop, I were very careful to put only the apples I thought reasonably sound into the packing boxes, and left leaving the defective ones in a pile on the ground. While I am asleep or at dinner, a neighbour comes to the orchard and puts all the worthless apples into the boxes that are to go to market. Would you call that a friendly action, or the neighbour a friendly man? Writing is subject to outside conditions,; to drought, crow-peckings, wasps, hail storms, just as much as apples are. The honest writer, like the honest fruit grower, sorts his work over and tries to keep only what is fairly sound. Everyone has that right of supervision over their handiwork - the carpenter, the dressmaker, the cabinetmaker. He can put his flimsy work in his cellar and forget it, and our copyright laws give the writer the same privilege.