MS British Library: Mary Gladstone Papers. Add MSS 46252: 6-7.
Dear Mrs Drew,
I am almost certain that the Little Duke and the Lances of Lynwood are published in chapter form for school children’s reading and our schoolmistress told us she had seen Kenneth advertised as abridged for School reading – I know Arnold wrote to me for permission and I told him he might use it, if he could arrange with Parker of Oxford, who published it when I knew nothing of arrangements.1 Macmillan has all the rest; I have made some attempts to get them reduced but the Daisy Chain Dove in the Eagle’s Nest was published at /6 and they will reduce no more unless 50,000 are ordered, so I fear nothing can be done.
The National Society might make its reward books cheaper – it has a good many historical tales of mine.
Certainly that catalogue of reward books must have been constructed on considered principles. Nevertheless a shop girl told Christabel Coleridge that the two books which had done her the most good in her life were ‘Cometh up as a flower’ and ‘the Daisy Chain’2
I hope your little girl is arriving at recovery rapidly
The books that my 10 and 9 years old grand nephew and niece3 have liked best lately have been
Little King Richard (SPCK)
Heidi / translated from German of Mme Spyri
Stories from Froissart /Wells Gardiner
Sylvia in Flowerland by Linda Gardiner (Seeley)
Also a book of Agnes Giberne’s explaining common facts – capillary attraction and the like, but I cannot remember the name8 Also a Brave Girl (SPCK) is a very pretty story in the Indian Mutiny and ends well
Did you send me a paper to be signed for I never found it?
Yours sincerely
C M Yonge