This edition of "How the Chimney-Sweep Got the Ear of the Emperor" establishes the text of the story as a discrete work of fiction. Twain appears to have written it thus, though it never appeared in print independently of "Two Little Tales" during his lifetime. Beginning with its intial publication in Century Magazine in November 1901, "Chimney-Sweep" has been paired with "The Man With a Message for the Director-General" as "Two Little Tales." Structurally, "Chimney-Sweep" is embedded within "Man With a Message" as an illustrative kind of moral fable discussed by the two characters of the latter. I have been unable to find evidence explaining Twain's decision to twin the stories. "Chimney-Sweep" was written independently, and it appears to have been written first; the last part of "Man With a Message" is drafted in autograph mannuscript at the end of the typed, corrected manuscript of "Chimney-Sweep." I have not been able to locate an manuscript materials for the beginning of "Man With a Message," or reference to the creation of this tale anywhere. I would suspect that Twain likely sent "Chimney-Sweep" to Century or another of his regualr periodicals and was asked to lengthen it; he likely did so by combining "Chimney-Sweep" with "Man With a Message."
I have thus chosen to focus only on "Chimney-Sweep," given the excellent situation of having access to the original autograph manuscript, the original typescript, the original Century Magazine, and a first-edition of the story's first American appearance in My Début as a Literary Person with Other Essays and Stories, volume 23 of the Authorized Uniform Edition of the Writings of Mark Twain (1903). I have also included facsimiles of the Century and Uniform editions of "Two Little Tales," as well as a transcription of the typescript, so that the reader might examine the pair as she or he wishes. "Two Little Tales" also appeared in 1902 in Europe, as part of A Double-Barreled Detective Story and Other Stories, but I was unable to examine this version of the text.
It seemed "most common-sensible" (as Twain might have said) to select the typescript as my copy-text, for several reasons. Twain was, throughout his career, very concerned about the appearance of his works in print. He was fascinated with typesetting, and the typescript is an attempt to fix his work, especially in the accidentals, and mark it specifically for typesetting. Indeed, the typescript is littered with corrections and printer's symbols, some in Twain's hand, some in an undetermined hand. I view the typescript as the most stable and final surviving version of the text as Twain would have created it.
Furthermore, in addtition to being published as part of another story, "Chimney-Sweep" was published only in formats heavily dictated by house styles. Both the Century and the Uniform editions take numerous liberties with accidentals, as compared with the typescript, in the interest of maintaining a common look, feel, and reading tone among works in a given volume. By choosing the typescript as copy-text, I hope to establish the text as Twain intended it to look and read.
However, I discovered a most interesting dilemma upon inspection of the typescript: dozens and dozens of accidental variants which do not appear in either the Century or the Uniform are also variants against the autograph manuscript. I believe this is a result of historical circumstance. Twain wrote the story in December 1899. It first appeared in Century in November 1901. It is unclear at what point the AMS was typed, but presumably it was during this interval, when Twain was either in England, Italy, or elsewhere in Europe. If so, he likely had an English secretary, who would have done the typing. Twain himself loathed the act of typing, becoming easily frustrated by the machine. Most of the emendations I have made in the copy-text can be easily explained by differences in English and American conventions, with a few attributed to carelessness. When I have made emendations, I have turned to the autograph manuscript for authority, thus maintaining the privilege of authorial intention.
In my collations I have compared the typescript [T] (1901?), the Century Magazine [C] (1901), and the Uniform Edition, Hillcrest Edition [U] (1903) versions of the text. I decided not to collate the autograph manuscript [AMS] (except for emendations, as noted above), since the typescript represents an authorial revision of the AMS. The Uniform was most surely set from the Century copy, since it replicates most variants, with exceptions noted below. I have preserved the lineation of the copy-text (T) in the electronic edition, and all variants refer to this lineation. These are the only appearances of the text in Twain's lifetime, although the Uniform edition went through multiple issues.
I have discovered only one substantive variant, a transposition at 2.12: all over] over all. I cannot determine whether this was inadvertent or intentional; though probably unintentional, the sentence makes sense in both readings, and the Century editors have changed other accidentals in order to modify the tone and flow of a reading. The accidental variants fall into one of several categories: inversion of final punctuation and quotation marks at the close of dialogue, where the typescript reflects the British convention of placing the punctuation outside the quotation marks and the C and U have reproduced the American convention of placing the punctuation inside. I have emended this class of error to reflect the American convention as evidenced in the AMS. Second, the typewritist introduced a number of British spellings and compound hyphenations ("grey-headed," "water-melon,") which appear not in the AMS, C, or U, as well as word division picked up by C and U, but variant to the AMS: ("tiptoed" "drug-store"). In addition, the transmission of this class of error has led to a few instances of inconsistency in T, C, and U. I have also emended all these instances to reflect Twain's conventions. Third, the C has introduced spaces in many contractions, as per the house style of the magazine; the U has emended these to reflect Twain's own convention of contractions without spaces, and I have preserved the conventions of the AMS. Fourth, I think the most flagrant and significant class of variants is that in which the C and the U have intentionally changed punctuation, sentence division, and paragraph division to affect the tone and rhythm of the story. Most often, the effect renders the structure of the story more formal (replacing emdash or comma with colon or period, for example); especially in the dialogue sections, these variants change the enthusiasm of the speech, the ryhthm of the exchange between Jimmy and Tommy, and ultimately, the personality of these two characters. Compare these examples at 7.19-8.2:
T: "But it's all right, Jimmy, don't you fret, there's more than one way to skin a cat: I'll get the word to him". "Oh, if you only could, Tommy! I should love you for ever!"
C: "But it's all right, Jimmy, don't you fret; there's more than one way to skin a cat. I 'll get the word to him." "Oh, if you only could, Tommy, I should love you for ever!"
U: "But it's all right, Jimmy, don't you fret: there's more than one way to skin a cat. I'll get the word to him". "Oh, if you only could, Tommy, I should love you for ever!"
The C and U appear to alter punctuation in the interest of grammatical precision; yet the easy rhythm of the conversation and Jimmy's ebullient admiration of Tommy are lost in the change. I believe these are subtleties which Twain would have belabored to effect, and the emendations in this critical edition reflect the tone of the original, grammatical error notwithstanding.
The opportunity to compare both the autograph MS and the typed MS with two early printed editions of the story has also provided some insight into what use Twain was able to make of this new technology in controlling his work. Before I began this project, my hypothesis supposed that the typewriter would provide greater control over the appearance of the text in print. However, what I've discovered was that the typewriting conventions of Twain's day were not as developed as he needed: for example, his frequent use of emdashes was represented by a single hyphen bookended by a single space on either side. Twain feared this would be set literally, and so he emended the typescript in ink, drawing a legitimate emdash over each of these "hyphens." Today, the convention of typing two hyphens together to represent an emdash is widely accepted and understood. It's difficult to tell to what extent the peculiarities of this typescript are common conventions of the day or particular to Twain's secretary. Since very few of Twain's typescripts survive, this rare evidence stands with little comany or corroboration.
In the electronic edition with variants, I have provided links to facsimile images from the original texts; this seemed a most effective means of elucidating variants, since most of these accidental variants are best explained as functions of typesetting and appearance on the page. Thus, an digital image-based annotation allows the readers to access the rare MSS directly, without losing a sense of the print object, as can often happen in electronic editions. I have provided these links for the first four pages of the text, with the intention of further developing this aspect of the edition.