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Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester.
Oct 8th 1886

MS Princeton University, Parrish Collection

Dear Mrs Molesworth

I think Felix can go into the December number as my Ulysses finishes in November, and there will be the space it leaves, before another begins1 I have tried to keep down the serials this year to leave more room for selfcontained articles but it is very difficult.

I will do my best to notice your books if I see them, but I cannot always mention a book as a matter of course because I am very anxious to keep to notices in the Packet of books for a definite purpose. Of all your books I liked best one of the Summer stories, but I have been witheld [sic] from giving it to children by the eeriness of the Ghost, and I must own myself to be not very fond of the dreamy semi fairy tale nor of Walter Crane’s drawings2

But I do like a charge fulfilled – and also the live children lost in Paris and the gypsy pair. But do you think children like phonetic spellings of their lispings? It seems to me to make their reading more difficult

Pray forgive me
Yours sincerely
C M Yonge

1Mary Louisa Molesworth, ‘Felix, an outcast. (From the French of Madame de Pressense.) MP 3s 12 (December 1886), 568-580. In the event, 'A Modern Quest of Ulysses' did continue into the December number, but they made room for 'Felix' anyway.



Cite this letter


The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge(1823-1901) edited by Charlotte Mitchell, Ellen Jordan and Helen Schinske.

URL to this Letter is: https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/yonge/2842/to-mary-louisa-molesworth

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