MS British Library Add MSS 54921: 161-3:
Dear Mr Craik
Thank you for the Wilberforce extract.
It occurs to me that if the Jubilee history were put out without illustrations, and with more of the religious element than would be fit for the English Illustrated Mag. but would be liked by my own special world of readers, the publication if cheap, might answer /moderately\. But you will judge when you have looked at the chapters I sent. They go about half way.
You would rejoice me by republishing the Herb of the Field. I should like to have the old copy to look over, for the only one I have was interleaved and illustrated by my mother, and I could not let it go away.
I do not think there is much wrong in it but perhaps I shall think otherwise when I bring critical eyes to it again.
There are two other sets of papers which I wrote for Mozley’s Magazine for the Young, and I should like much to see published separately. ‘Householders, which is on shells and quite as entertaining as well as newer than the Herb of the Field, and Thoughts on Pictures – being descriptions for the youthful mind of notable works of art, and their stories. I could add a few more.
I think it would tell more now than when it was written – as it was too much beforehand with the cultivation of art.
Mr W. Smith has all the back vols of the Mag for the Young, where these are.
If you are looking up my old books there are some I should like to resuscitate, if you can find out what became of Groombridge’s books (I believe he failed) He had a series of Magnet stories, for which I wrote four[,] three little plays – the Mice At Play, the Strayed Falcon and the Apple of Discord – and a story The Sea Spleenwort, each making a little book, for the plays (historical) are embedded in a story.1 I think I had £5 for the copyright of each, but they have never been reprinted and I should think could easily be bought back if they can be traced.
Yours truly
C M Yonge