Mark Twain stories, 150 years old, uncovered by Berkeley scholars | Hacker News Reader

Mark Twain stories, 150 years old, uncovered by Berkeley scholars

theguardian.com

122 pointsdnetesn16 comments

I don't understand why the default documentcload embedding doesn't have an easy way to link to the actual PDF. The page on the documentcloud site has a download link, however that can only be found by viewing the Guardian page's source, determining the documentcloud document-id, and going to /documents/<document-id>.html (where the document-id consists of a number folowed by a lowercase hyphenated title) on the documentcloud site itself. For convenience, here is the PDF itself for the Mark Twain story:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2072...

Thanks for this. Not sure if I'd have gone through the trouble.

It's amusing, reading through Twain's prose, how back-handed he is about his "compliments". I can only imagine how furious his target would have been.

The "modern day" court jester.

Just a note that Mark Twain is smoking a Peterson Pipe in that photo, he used to smoke corncobs only until introduced to Peterson's. Their pipes are still made today. http://www.peterson.ie/

Link to the pages: http://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2015/may/04/...

Why are they typewritten, with corrections? Did somebody find them years after the typewriter was invented and transfer them from handwritten archives?

Yes someone transferred the newspaper archives to digital copies at some point, as the article states.

"Hirst told the Guardian the digitisation of newspaper archives had been like “opening up a big box of candy”, allowing as it did Twain’s articles to be tracked down in a way that was not possible when archives were all on microfilm."

When they were written (in 1865), he was only 10 years away from getting his first typewriter.

>> Hartford, March 19, 1875

Gentlemen:

Please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge the fact that I own a machine. I have entirely stopped using the Type-Writer, for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that I would not only describe the machine but state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc., etc. I don't like to write letters, and so I don't want people to know that I own this curiosity-breeding little joker.

Yours truly,

Saml. L. Clemens

how would copyright work for these? They were never copyrighted, so they're not outside the copyright->public works window. could super evil publisher copyright them? maybe I should just google for copyright.

All documents have copyright, as I understand it, automatically. Although, I guess these were created before that was established, so perhaps you are right and they were never copyrighted...? IANAL and all that.

It is specifically addressed in the law:

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap3.html#303

But only the legitimate owner of the documents will be able to publish them, not any random evil corporation.

It sounds like this is mostly stuff that appeared in newspapers in the 1800s, so the term of any possible protection they had has long expired. Unpublished writings would be treated differently, but even they would be out of copyright if first published today.

Not that long ago. A copyright term of life plus 70 years would mean that protection ended in 1980. Well, 1980 seems like a long time ago now but I was there.

Stuff published in the 1800s wouldn't have ever had the life-plus-70 term, they'd have the shorter fixed term-plus-renewal scheme from the 1831 and 1909 copyright acts.

For anything that was unpublished, you're right, though if they'd been found and published before 2002, they'd still be protected until 2047.

Trademarks must be actively registered, whereas the creator of a work holds the copyright for that work by default. At least in the US.

Strange article - as if I'm more interested in the bloggers viewpoint than say, an actual unknown Twain story! Nothing to see here folks.

Did they find the story of how Data's head came to be found in that abandoned basement?

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