“I certainly feel extremely gratified at the generous treatment I have received at the hands of my many publishers”

Andrew Patterson Melville (1867-1938) was apprenticed to Mitchell and Baxter; he was to became a W.S. in 1896.

[For correct and critical edition of this letter, see Mehew 8, 2732.]

To Andrew P. Melville [Baxter Letters, p. 358: http://www.hathitrust.org]

Vailima, 18 May 1894

Andrew P. Melville Esq.

Dear Sir,

I have the pleasure to acknowledge your memorandum and copies of correspondence in the matter of the Edinburgh Edition.

The Works of RLS, Edinburgh Edition 1894-1903 [www.rookebooks.com]

I certainly feel extremely gratified at the generous treatment I have received at the hands of my many publishers; and I hope I may trust you to convey to them the expression of my sentiments.

One point strikes me as doubtful. I mean the sale to McClure.

Samuel Sidney McClure (1857-1949), American publisher who became known as a key figure in investigative, or muckraking, journalism. He co-founded and ranMcClure’s Magazine 1893-1911. He got the serial rights to RLS’s letters from the South Seas, serialised in Black and White magazine. Pinkerton, the character in The Wrecker, was based on him [https://alchetron.com]

I suppose he may be trusted to understand for himself the terms of the late treaty; but according to my opinion, the edition is entirely excluded from America. But that is nothing. The question is, whether you have approached my copyright publishers, Messrs Chas. Scribner’s Sons?

Charles Scribner’s Sons, 743 Broadway, New York [http://library.princeton.edu]

And what these gentlemen have replied? I have been treated by them in a manner which leaves me very sore. I should not like to repay them in kind. Please call Mr. Baxter’s attention to these points.

I have been running over the text of several of my books with a view to the E.E. The corrections are not many, but some of them decidedly important. For this reason, while I do not think it worth while to send the corrections home beforehand, I should like to make sure of seeing in good time the proofs of the E.E.

Yours faithfully,

Robert Louis Stevenson