The enclosed announcement2 will give you the particulars of a series which we have in hand, and expect soon to begin the publication of.
We write now in hopes of securing your co–operation in the work.
We understand that you have one or more lectures on Lincoln,3 and have beside a quantity of available material. Would you be willing to furnish us a volume not to exceed sixty thousand words? We would leave the treatment of the subject entirely to your best judgment, so that you might present Lincoln from any point of view that seems to you particularly affective. The details of his life have of course been done at great length.
We think that such a volume as we propose from your pen would attract very wide attention.
We are paying the authors in this series ten per cent of the retail price of all books sold. But if you would prefer a lump sum instead of the copyright, we should be happy to pay you Five hundred ($500) Dollars for such a volume as we outline, on receipt of the manuscript from you.
Trusting that the idea may stike you favorably, and that we may have an answer in the affirmative, we are,
Yours very truly, Dodd, Mead & CompanyDictated.
loc.01438.002_large.jpg loc.01438.003_large.jpg loc.01438.004_large.jpg loc.01438.005_large.jpg loc.01438.006_large.jpg loc.01438.007_large.jpg loc.01438.008_large.jpgCorrespondent:
Dodd, Mead, & Company
was a New York publishing house founded in 1839 that, operating under several
names, continued until 1990. The firm began as a publisher of religious books
under partners Moses Woodruff Dodd (1813–1899) and John S. Taylor; within
a year, Dodd had bought out Taylor's part of the company and renamed it M. W.
Dodd. Dodd's son, Frank Howard Dodd later joined the business, as did his cousin
Edward S. Mead. The Company became known as Dodd, Mead, & Co. in
1876.