Original:  The biographer Marilyn Duckett dates the estrangement between Harte and Twain to their letters in 1877, when Twain suggested that he hire Harte to work on another play with him for $25 a week (rather than lend him any money), and Harte reacted with outrage. Harte also held Twain responsible for recommending a publisher who would then mishandle Harte's novel, and declared that because of the financial losses that resulted, he need not repay Twain money he had previously borrowed. Twain described Harte's letter as "ineffable ". Twain reworked Ah Sin without Harte, and it opened on Broadway in July, although it was not a success. The final direct communication between the two writers was a telegram from Harte asking for his share of the box office receipts. When some influential friends recommended Harte to then-President Rutherford B. Hayes for a diplomatic post, Twain contacted William Dean Howells, who was related by marriage to the President, to work against any such appointment, claiming that Harte would disgrace the nation. Twain's letter included "Wherever he goes his wake is tumultuous with swindled grocers & with defrauded innocents who have loaned him money...No man who has ever known him respects him." However, Harte would eventually win an appointment to Germany. As Twain's fame as a writer grew and Harte's faded, Twain continued to comment on Harte's work and character, including the suggestion that Harte was homosexual. Even several years after Harte's death, in Twain's reminiscences which were published as Mark Twain in Eruption, Twain included derisive comments about Harte: "He hadn't any more passion for his country than an oyster has for its bed; in fact not so much, and I apologize to the oyster." Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Dunn English Thomas Dunn English was a friend of author Edgar Allan Poe, but the two fell out amidst a public scandal involving Poe and the writers Frances Sargent Osgood and Elizabeth F. Ellet. After suggestions that her letters to Poe contained indiscreet material, Ellet asked her brother to demand the return of the letters. Poe, who claimed he had already returned the letters, asked English for a pistol to defend himself from Ellet's infuriated brother. English was skeptical of Poe's story and suggested that he end the scandal by retracting the "unfounded charges" against Ellet. The angry Poe pushed English into a fistfight, during which his face was cut by English's ring. Poe later claimed to have given English "a flogging which he will remember to the day of his death", though English denied it; either way, the fight ended their friendship and stoked further gossip about the scandal. Later that year, Poe harshly criticized English's work as part of his "Literati of New York" series published in Godey's Lady's Book, referring to him as "a man without the commonest school education busying himself in attempts to instruct mankind in topics of literature". The two had several confrontations, usually centered around literary caricatures of one another. One of English's letters which was published in the 23 July 1846, issue of the New York Mirror caused Poe to successfully sue the editors of the Mirror for libel. Poe was awarded $ 225.06 as well as an additional $101.42 in court costs.
Revised:  The biographer Marilyn Duckett dates the estrangement between Harte and Twain to their letters in 1877, when Twain suggested that he hire Harte to work on another play with him for $25 a week (rather than lend him any money), and Harte reacted with outrage. Harte also held Twain responsible for recommending a publisher who would then mishandle Harte's novel, and declared that because of the financial losses that resulted, he need not repay Twain money he had previously borrowed. Twain described Harte's letter as "ineffable ". Twain reworked Ah Sin without Harte, and it opened on Broadway in July, although it was not a success. The final direct communication between the two writers was a telegram from Harte asking for his share of the box office receipts. When some influential friends recommended Harte to then-President Rutherford B. Hayes for a diplomatic post, Twain contacted William Dean Howells, who was related by marriage to the President, to work against any such appointment, claiming that Harte would disgrace the nation. Twain's letter included "Wherever he goes his wake is tumultuous with swindled grocers & with defrauded innocents who have loaned him money...No man who has ever known him respects him." However, Harte would eventually win an appointment to Germany. As Twain's fame as a writer grew and Harte's faded, Twain continued to comment on Harte's work and character, including the suggestion that Harte was homosexual. Even several years after Harte's death, in Twain's reminiscences which were published as Mark Twain in Eruption, Twain included derisive comments about Harte: "He hadn't any more passion for his country than an oyster has for its bed; in fact not so much, and I apologize to the oyster." Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Dunn English Thomas Dunn English was a friend of author Edgar Allan Poe, but the two fell out amidst a public scandal involving Poe and the writers Frances Sargent Osgood and Elizabeth F. Ellet. After suggestions that her letters to Poe contained indiscreet material, Ellet asked her brother to demand the return of the letters. Poe, who claimed he had already returned the letters, asked English for a pistol to defend himself from Ellet's infuriated brother. English was sceptical of Poe's story and suggested that he end the scandal by retracting the "unfounded charges" against Ellet. The angry Poe pushed English into a fistfight, during which his face was cut by English's ring. Poe later claimed to have given English "a flogging which he will remember to the day of his death", though English denied it; either way, the fight ended their friendship and stoked further gossip about the scandal. Later that year, Poe harshly criticized English's work as part of his "Literati of New York" series published in Godey's Lady's Book, referring to him as "a man without the commonest school education busying himself in attempts to instruct mankind in topics of literature". The two had several confrontations, usually centred around literary caricatures of one another. One of English's letters which was published in the 23 July 1846, issue of the New York Mirror caused Poe to successfully sue the editors of the Mirror for libel. Poe was awarded $ 225.06 as well as an additional $101.42 in court costs.
Edit intent: fluency