Mark Twain: April Fool, 1884
I am making a collection of the autographs of our distinguished writers, and having read one of your works, “Gabriel Conway,”Around the World in Eighty Days. Late in life he suffered from Bright's disease, and his diminished mental capacities led to accusations of insanity. Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819–1891) was a writer nationally renowned for his advice books who also wrote under the pen name “Timothy Titcomb.” He was also a cofounder of Scribner's Monthly, and he not only admired but personally encouraged Emily Dickinson and her poetry. "Barry Gray" was the pen name for Robert Barry Coffin (1826–1886), author of Out of Town: A Rural Episode, among other books. He was a frequenter of Pfaff's cellar in New York City, where he was known to associate with the likes of Artemus Ward and Walt Whitman. Later in life he worked as a clerk at the New York Customs House, where he befriended fellow employee Herman Melville, to whom he affectionately inscribed four of his books ("Old 'Barry Gray' Dead," New York World, 12 June 1886, 5; Melville, Correspondence [Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University and the Newberry Library, 1993], 418). “General” Daniel Pratt Jr. (1809–1887) was a prolific author and lecturer who was known to ostentatiously introduce himself as "the great American traveler!" (see, for example, “Some Hit And Miss Chat,” New York Times, 7 September 1885, 2). "Count Joannes" was the stage name for George Jones (1810–1879), an English-born actor who became a prominent (and outlandish) lecturer in the United States after an 1864 appearance at the Cooper Institute. Charles Guiteau (1841–1882) assassinated Grover Cleveland but was also a failed writer.