[1] The publication of this humorous adventure story in 1839 was an immediate sensation and led to even his friends nicknaming him "Franco", much to his dismay.

The organization sought to spread awareness of the need for international copyright law, though Briggs left the Club when a magazine named Centurion "contrived to monopolize all the credit".

[5] In December 1844, Lowell wrote to Briggs to recommend Edgar Allan Poe for a job at the new magazine.

[7] Poe called Briggs "grossly uneducated" and said that he "has never composed in his life three consecutive sentences of grammatical English.

[13] He went on: ...as he draws near You find that's a smile you took for a sneer; One half of him contradicts t'other; his wont Is to say very sharp things and do very blunt, His manners as hard as his feelings are tender[14] Later, Lowell wrote to him in 1844, "You Gothamites strain hard to attain a metropolitan character, but I think if you felt very metropolitan you would not be showing it on all occasions".