Mark Twain
Writing being such a personal business, I'm aware that writers' attitudes to copy-editors and proofreaders are often ambivalent. Mark Twain was downright hostile - the Giles Coren of the nineteenth century - and in a letter from 1889 he had this to say:
'Yesterday Mr. Hall wrote that the printer's proof-reader was improving my punctuation for me, & I telegraphed orders to have him shot without giving him time to pray.'
This is a passage from a letter he wrote in July 1897 to his publisher, Chatto & Windus:
I'm assuming that when it comes to the copy-editing course I intend to do next, there will be a whole section devoted to diplomacy, or at the very least how to avoid being shot on the orders of the author.
