Mark Twain's Publication of Ulysses S. Grant's Memoirs: Background information when reading The General and Julia

Mark Twain's Publication of Ulysses S. Grant's Memoirs

This article relates to The General and Julia

As recounted in Jon Clinch's The General and Julia, Samuel Clemens (who wrote under the alias Mark Twain) met President Ulysses S. Grant in the White House, introduced by a senator from Nevada. When the men crossed paths again after the end of Grant's presidency, they developed a friendship. Clemens frequently encouraged Grant to write his memoirs, but Grant always demurred, saying he wasn't a writer. That is, until financial ruin and a terminal cancer diagnosis made him fear for his wife Julia's future. Grant made arrangements with Century Magazine to write articles about Civil War battles, paid at $500 each. Century was also willing to publish his memoirs, but the standard terms of the contract—10% of royalties—were not advantageous.

In the meantime, Clemens and his niece's husband had started a publishing house, Charles L. Webster and Company. Clemens offered to publish Grant's memoir on much more favorable terms: 70% of royalties, plus an advance to live off of. He traveled from his home in Hartford, Connecticut to New York City to make his competing offer in person. The story goes that Grant and his son Frederick were reading through the Century contract, and Grant was preparing to sign it, at the moment Clemens arrived. Grant was reluctant to let the Century down so late in the negotiation process, but eventually agreed, a decision that would make his widow's fortune.

Clemens chose a subscription model and had war veterans go door-to-door selling pre-orders of the two-volume memoirs. Pre-sales numbered 100,000, and the first run of 350,000 copies sold out. Julia Grant eventually earned $450,000 (the equivalent of $11+ million) in royalties, making her one of the country's wealthiest women. Clemens sold his own Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through the same subscription model, and Charles L. Webster and Company made millions on these two titles alone. However, the publisher's future projects lost money, Clemens fired his relative, and the company went bankrupt in 1894.

Early on, gossip spread that Clemens was heavily involved in the production of Grant's memoirs—that he was not just proofreader or publisher, but effectively a ghostwriter. Rumors about the memoir's authorship were spread, at least in part, by a disgruntled former U.S. Army staff officer of Grant's, Adam Badeau, who helped Grant remember details of certain battles. Badeau had published his own three-volume account entitled Military History of Ulysses S. Grant and claimed that he himself was the ghostwriter of Grant's memoirs. However, Grant's manuscripts are still extant, and a simple handwriting analysis refutes allegations that Badeau or Clemens was the true author. Grant's book is still in print and well respected among presidential memoirs.

General Ulysses S. Grant writing his memoirs, June 27th, 1885, courtesy of Library of Congress.

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This "beyond the book article" relates to The General and Julia. It originally ran in January 2024 and has been updated for the July 2024 paperback edition. Go to magazine.