SAMUEL L. CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN) The American author famous for his characters Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer signed and wrote this framed letter in 1895! Autograph Letter Signed: "S L Clemens", 2p, 3¾x6, conjoined leaves. On letterhead of Villa Viviana Settigano, (Florence, Italy). Written from Hartford, Connecticut, 1895 February 20. To "My Dear Mrs. Bronson". In full: "Mrs. Clemens sends her best bow & thanks with mine for your steadfast kindness in regard to the glass. I shall drop Moses of the Tower a line & propose as you suggest. I shall drop Mr. Forbes a line, too, & ask him to waive rank & call on me, & as soon as I get a chance I will pay back in kind. Florence is 4,000 miles from here & I hardly ever attempt the achievement of going there. This further off than any place that I've got friends in except heaven Hell, & sometimes even that resort doesn't seem so far. (But I didn't need to make that correction - it doesn't seem to disexaggerate  (sic) the distance as much as I thought it would.) Mrs. Clemens' health is not improving, I am sorry to say, but the rest of us are without ailments. read more...

ERNEST HEMINGWAY and PAULINE HEMINGWAY The author and his second wife sign a 1930 Trust Agreement, consigning bonds and preferred stocks to the trust. Typed Document signed: "Ernest Hemingway" and "Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway" on page 7, 10 pages, 8¾x11¼. New York, 1930 February 18. Trust Agreement with City Bank Farmers Trust Company. The Hemingways, who were living in Paris, France at this time, donate property described on Schedule A for "Trust Estate": "$10,000 Kingdom of Belgium External Sinking Fund 6% bonds due January 1, 1955; 100 Shares Electric Bond and Share Company 6.00 Cumulative Preferred Stock; 300 Shares William H. Warner & Co. Inc. Preferred Stock Par Value $100". Also signed by a Trust Officer. Struggling writer Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) met Pauline Pfeiffer, an editor with the Paris edition of "Vogue" at a party in Paris in 1925. Hemingway, who was married to his first wife, Hadley Richardson, at the time, divorced Hadley, the mother of his first son, and married Pauline on May 10, 1927, the year after his novel, The Sun Also Rises, had been published. read more...

ERNEST HEMINGWAY Handwritten letter to associate Peter Buckley, signed "Papa," filled with tales of his time spent in Spain and France meeting bullfighters and other famous friends. Autograph Letter signed: "Papa", 1 page, 8¼x10½. Paris, 1956 November 24. On letterhead of the Hotel Ritz to "Dear Peter" [Buckley], in full: "Thank you very much for the lovely big pictures. The ones at Zaragosa and the one of Antonio [Ordonez] and Mary were especially good. Would you do me a very big favour and be a good boy and do it promptly? Please send the pictures you took of Mary and me and Cooch Behar and Gina Egan in the bariera to Miss Gina Egan [at London address]. I promised to see they were sent and have worried about them. Please do this Peter. We saw a lot of Juanito Madinaveitia and also had lunch once and dinner twice with Juan Belamonte . We had a wonderful time together. Mary is much better in every way. I've been following Juanito's regime faithfully. When get next pressure taken will assess how things go. Coldest Nov. 23 in Paris since 1914, -4°. Shot a lot of partridges in Spain. Got some good pictures. We took Caro to the shoot. He sends his best to you. Mary and I send love. read more...

MARGARET MITCHELL Her typed and signed 1937 letter upon learning that Gone With the Wind had won the Pulitzer Prize, addressed to the literary critic who had first predicted that it would, framed with her picture in the Gallery of History style to 30x22. Typed Letter Signed: "Margaret", 1 page, 6½x10. Atlanta, Georgia, 1937 May 4. To Mabel and Edwin Granberry. In full: "Your telegram has just arrived and thank you so very much for it. As soon as I got the news last night I thought of you two and Herschel at the table last summer when you predicted it and I laughed so hard my glasses fell into the gravy. Naturally, this is a happy day for me and a wire like yours adds greatly to my happiness." Typed note by Granberry at lower margin: "(NOTE: GONE WITH THE WIND had just won the Pulitzer Prize. - E.G.)". MARGARET MITCHELL (1900-1949) had won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, Gone With the Wind, the day before she wrote this letter. Mitchell, who had begun writing her epic about the Civil War and Reconstruction South in 1926, finally submitted her manuscript to Macmillian Company in 1935. read more...

ERNEST HEMINGWAY Handwritten 1936 manuscript intended for publication in Esquire magazine, vividly describing the horrors of war, with his third person signature in the text Autograph Manuscript signed in text: "Mr. Ernest Hemingway" in pencil, 1 page, 8½x11. No place, c. 1936. Headed by him: "Please Mr. Ernest Hemingway by Paul Harris, The American Criterion, Dec 1935, about 'letters' appearing monthly in Esquire...." Ernest Hemingway was a frequent contributor to "Esquire" magazine. He wrote a total 31 "letters" which were published in "Esquire" in the 1930s. In the September 1935 issue, he wrote: "Notes on the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter". This may be a rough draft of one of the 31 "letters". Hemingway has made an "X", crossing out the entire letter. In part: "Mr. Hemingway, you were at the front. You saw people die? I was ten and I saw people, I saw something in them die and they had to go on making believe they were alive still with their guts out of them. I saw people age. I saw the unseeable, the drawn faces, the haunted eyes...A child is sensitive to change in those he knows [he is referring to an aunt, a cousin, involved in changes resulting from life in wartime]. read more...

SAMUEL L. CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN) Signed 4½x7 autograph letter from a London hotel, writing that he hopes to lecture in Britain "if other & more necessary business shall permit." ALS: "Saml. L. Clemens", 1 page, 4½x7. Langham Hotel,/Portland Place, London. W, no year, October 18. To unknown recipient. Begins: "Sir". In full: "I think it will be 2 or 3 weeks before I shall really know whether I can lecture in Great Britain or not. So I am obliged to be thus indefinite in my reply. I certainly shall lecture about 8 or 10 times in this country if other & more necessary business shall permit." From the University of California Press review of Volume 5 of Mark Twain's Letters prepared by the Mark Twain Project at the University of California, Berkeley. "After beginning work on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, he [Clemens] set it aside to collaborate, almost as a lark, on a novel with Charles Dudley Warner. After a few months of intense labor in the winter of 1872-1873, they produced The Gilded Age, which gave a lasting name to the era it satirized. read more...

SAMUEL L. CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN) Visiting Sweden in search of a cure for his daughter's epilepsy, Clemens asks a bookseller to send him some "the very best of Clark Russell's sea-tales". Autograph Letter Signed: "SL C.", 1p, 5½x8½. Sanna, Rosendala, Sweden, 1899 July 16. "Telegraphic address: Sanna Jonkoping, Sweden". To bookseller "C&W". In full: "Please send me a couple of the very best of Clark Russell's sea-tales that you've got in stock. If any of my photos are only about as big as this page, we shall be glad to have them here - but bigger ones we prefer to leave with you for the present. If you haven't heard from Clara when this reaches you, please drop her a line. Jonkoping is pronounced Zhenshepping - think of that!" Samuel, his wife Olivia and their daughter Jean had arrived in Sweden early in July 1899, and remained until October. JEAN CLEMENS (1880-1910), then 19 years old, suffered from epilepsy. Clemens had heard of an osteopathic treatment as practiced by Heinrick Kellgren in Sanna. Kellgren's method was known as the "Swedish movements". read more...

MARGARET MITCHELL Typed letter from Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and author of Gone With the Wind, to Edwin Granberry (and wife), who wrote one of the first good reviews of her book. She discusses the up roar of a Dutch publisher bringing Gone With the Wind out in Holland without her consent Typed Letter Signed: "Margaret", 1p, 7x11. Atlanta, Georgia, 1937 December 15. On personal letterhead to Edwin and Mabel. In part: "By all means keep 'Co. "Aytch"' as long as you like. Our plans, as usual, are in a snarl. Perhaps you've seen items in the paper about a Dutch publisher bringing out 'Gone With the Wind' in Holland without my consent. I have lost my case in the lower Dutch courts and have appealed. I took the matter to the Department of State in Washington and they are working on it now. That may mean we will have to remain in Atlanta in case we are needed...." "CO. AYTCH", MAURY GRAYS, FIRST TENNESSEE REGIMENT; OR, A SIDE SHOW OF THE BIG SHOW , published in 1882, was written by Samuel R. Watkins. Watkins, a Confederate private with Co. H, 1st Tennessee Infantry, fought in the western theatre of the war and saw action in most of the major battles in the west. read more...

MARGARET MITCHELL Long personal letter to friend and fellow author Edwin Granberry, mentioning several literary friends and the exigencies of life in wartime Typed Letter signed: "Margaret", 3 pages, 7¼x10. Atlanta, Georgia, 1942 September 21. On personal letterhead to "Dear Mabel and Edwin" [Granberry], in part: "I have been laying off to write to you for the longest and foolishly postponed doing so until I could write a long letter. That time may never come, and so I am grabbing this opportunity while the house painters are out at lunch. ... I've just come back from a quick trip to New York where John had to be on business. The only people I saw were the Clifford Dowdeys, who asked to be remembered to you. Clifford has been having fits trying to get into the army, with no luck so far because his eyes are bad. He has almost finished a new novel , which is about Memphis or Natchez in the 1830's. He told me news of Kenneth Littauer which I am passing on to you. He has been in the air corps for nearly a year, with the rank of major. His address is Headquarters 21st Bomb Group, MacDill Field, Tampa, Florida. read more...