American History

He had become dead broke, for complicated reasons having to do with wall street crooks and credulity/bad decisions, and was desperate to do something to leave his soon-to-be-widow with anything. So some publisher originally offered him 10% royalties, but Mark Twain stepped in with a deal that offered him 70% royalties (totally unheard of degree of royalties, pure friendship/generosity/gratitude not the result of a bidding war). He and the people around him scrambled to get it done before his health failed. Julia ended up getting $450K over the years ($13M in 2020 dollars), and the memoirs are/were praised by historians and literary critics. Not too shabby.