"Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion," a fictionalized account of Mark Twain's travel to Bermuda with Joe Twichell in May 1877, was originally published as a four-part serial in the Atlantic Monthly beginning October 1877, and in book form, An Idle Excursion and Other Papers, by London publishers Chatto and Windus in 1878. A study of the manuscript paper and ink suggests that "The Invalid's Story" was written in the late 1870s, probably 1877; Emerson contends that Mark Twain heard the story from Twichell during their Bermuda travels. The scholarly assumption, supported by Mark Twain-Howells correspondence, is that it was intended to be part of "An Idle Excursion" but was excised because William Dean Howells thought the piece to be indelicate. Manuscript evidence further indicates that Mark Twain had requested the story be inserted "at.....
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