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37. Frank N. Doubleday
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37 / Frank N. Doubleday Frank Nelson Doubleday (1862–1934) ended his relationship with the book and magazine publishing firm of Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1897 to cofound with S. S. McClure the Doubleday & McClure Co. By late 1899, however, they had dissolved their partnership, and Doubleday formed a new company with former Atlantic Monthly and Houghton, Mifflin editor, Walter Hines Page. Norris too ended his relationship with McClure that year, to serve as a manuscript reader with Doubleday, Page & Co. and to publish his novels with that firm. Double day and Norris enjoyed an amicable relationship, though his response to Walker’s query posed three decades later illuminates only one minor aspect of it. As with Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, which allegedly offended Doubleday’s wife and thus his firm’s suppression of its sale, so with McTeague. Doubleday here denies the rumor that she was responsible for the bowdlerization of the pants- wetting scene in the origi nal printed version of McTeague. Source: Frank N. Doubleday to Franklin D. Walker, letter, May 4, 1931, Franklin Dickerson Walker Papers, BANC MSS C- H 79, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berke ley. My dear Mr. Walker: I have read your letter of April 16th with care and attention. Personally, I had little or nothing to do with matters concerning Mc Teague, but I know that Mrs. Doubleday was not in the habit of passing on such matters for the publishing concern. Some one who has it in for me is always starting this story anew. Mrs. Doubleday died twelve years ago30 and the subject is very painful, and I wish it might be dropped. I am positive that she had nothing to do with any changes which may have been made and about which I know nothing.31 The same thing is true of Sister Carrie. I don’t think that Mrs. Double day ever saw the book; at all events, I know that she expressed no opinion which affected the treatment of it by the publishing house. Very truly yours, F. N. Doubleday ...