My dear Sir, I have to thank you for the pretty tale of the Nut Brown Maids which we are reading with much interest and pleasure.

Some months ago, Miss Roberts, I believe, wrote to you about a tale of the Roman Revolution of 1848 which you rejected. She has since lent me the M S and I am so much struck with it, that I cannot for bear venturing to ask whether it were an account ... continue reading

My dear Sir, I have authorized M. Tauchnitz to republish “The Little Duke,” and Mr Sydney Williams tells me that he is about to apply to you for a cast of the frontispiece - I am afraid however that the lithographs can be no longer renewed, and I must reply to him that only the vignette of the little page is still to be had. I believe Mrs Blackburn had the stones broken up after the ... continue reading

My dear Miss Warren,

Many thanks for your three letters and their enclosures. I am very glad the Society has taken it up, for not only will it now be cheaper and better got up, but it is a relief from responsibility - Miss Goodrich is personally known to Mr Evans, and has written a good many little books and tracts for the SPCK -'The cross bearer' - Faith Ashwin, the Chamois Hunters &c- Fanny Wilbraham ... continue reading

My dear Miss Peard, There is a part of it in which I think perhaps you would be so kind as to help. We are trying to bring in accounts of that troublesome contemporary time of the history of each country, that have not got into books so as to enable ‘our readers’ to know what is going on. Now Mr. Church has done Greece, Poland is in good hands, and Miss Roberts, I believe, does ... continue reading

My dear Mr Macmillan I am sorry that Dr Vaughan cannot undertake to give us his name. I wish indeed that the Archbishop of Dublin could, but if it is in vain to fly so high, what do you think of Dean Alford? I do not know him personally, nor would his name give the same complete confidence to the High Church as those before mentioned, but it might be the best attainable.

I had only thought ... continue reading

My dear Miss Sewell, I ought to have answered you long ago that I am very glad that you are as Hampshire people say 'tackling' that beginning of mine

I suppose Carter’s history was the other authority for Hereward that I proposed, I have however a great mind for Thierry, as the place where I fell in love with him first. Perhaps I had better send you the book, or shall I translate it, I think I ... continue reading

Dear Mr Dodgson Your kind note and parcel have followed me here, and much obliged we are for them. We - and all the party here - think these by far the best photos that have yet been taken of me - and they are pronounced to be excellent likenesses of us both, as I am sure they are admirable photographs. Would you let us have - on the purchasing terms - half a dozen of ... continue reading

My dear Maggie, Your book marker [is] a great beauty, and I thank you very much for it, particularly admiring the beautiful little shy bee. Mamma thanks Alice for her [note] and good news of you all. I hope we shall see you before long I am much better, and feel quite proud that I am sitting up to my work this morning while Miss Wilford is lying on her back. It is ten weeks since ... continue reading

Dear Sir I have been so much interested by the book you have kindly sent me, in common with rest of the Author’s Society and, having had a little correspondence with you many years ago, when you were editing the English Plutarch, I venture to write, thinking you may care to hear some experiences of a long life of writing, not from necessity but because I had something to say.

The passion for telling a story developed ... continue reading

My dear Edith It is indeed a great treat to have had a note from you again. I always feel as if my grand setting to rights when you ought to have been resting in peace was one of the drops that assisted in making your bucket overflow Friday seems to me to have been a day that in the rudest health might be felt to be like air to a fish, but how kind the ... continue reading

My dear Arthur Aimée Leroy is at Ilfracombe at this moment. I don’t know how soon she comes home, but a letter would find her in a few days. The person who could do the thing best of all is Miss Roberts, author of Mademoiselle Mori but she is abroad and last time I heard of her, she was in Corsica. I think I could do the thing for you, a good deal by ... continue reading

My dear C C I am doing my best to write to Macmillan I think it is our only hope and rather a forlorn one- and explaining some of its history and scope hoping not to say too much or too little, nor to shew personal feeling

But I am sure it is a thing to be considered how to have a high class magazine for young persons, as I have been telling him and ... continue reading

My dear C C The Kings of Scotland were Earls of Huntingdon from the time of St David, and sat in parliament as English peers down to John Baliol.

Newspaper history has been a good deal at fault. Miss Finlaison saw that Henry VII married a daughter of Edward III which might have been only a misprint, but that it went on to say that Lionel had no children and that the York claim came from ... continue reading

My dear Edith I should not think Miss Adams could have any objection to your girl. She has one now whose father is Miss Sturges Bourne's bailiff, and her mother a ladys maid, the girl is refined and more naturally ladylike looking than any of the others, but the sound is not much superior to yours. I am going from home on Monday for a month but it can all be settled with ... continue reading

My dear Edith I have thought much of you, you may be sure, in the great sorrow and loss that has come to you - in your Soldier of the Cross having passed the narrow stream

What a grand and beautiful thing it is that the needs and the down treading of the Church should have the power to awaken the latent power and heroism in men's souls. How little anything but a Divine faith could ... continue reading

My dear Marianne, It seems a long time since I have written - in fact Miss Wordsworth hardly let me do anything for talking. I have not taken to a person so much for a great while past; she is so good and so sensible, and, what I was far from expecting, so funny, and her fervent love and devotion to her father are so very charming, and her last evening she made such ... continue reading

My dear Mr Freeman If the Scotsman is prunable, it will be a great relief to Miss Roberts and myself. If we do it at all it will be on the Cameo plan, with a table of contemporary Princes of the Empire at the head of each section. To divide by Emperors’ reigns any time between Frederick II and Maximilian would bring one to the verge of distraction. But I suspect our plan would make us ... continue reading

My dear Gertrude Thanks for your chapters. If anything strikes me, I will tell you, but I like all I have read very much. I think Miss Peard does know Arcachon, so I am desiring her to write to you, but I do not believe that Miss Roberts has ever been on that side of France. She /MR is at the Crescent Hotel, Filey, sadly laid up by a strain of the hip, which ... continue reading

My dear Elizabeth I have been waiting till the wedding was over to write to you and should have done it before post time today but that Mrs Newland brought her children to a dancing lesson and came in here. I am afraid you did not get the fine day on SS Simon & Jude though I don’t think it was quite so bad as some. Gertrude was very bad the day you mentioned ... continue reading

My dear Christabel

Here are a not very brilliant set of answers I rather doubt whether the question about the fall of Constantinople was understood I expect there will be a rush at Gridiron’s ghost question.

I shall be very glad if Fernando ends by coming to me. Miss Webers At Sixes and Sevens, a conclusion to I wonder why is very disappointing Grace is so stupidly in love ... continue reading

My dear Christabel

Thank you for your proverbs, which are very curious. There are some odd Eastern ones in todays Saturday, one of which takes my fancy, though not for a Christmas number ‘If a Jackal howls shall my old buffalo die’. I am afraid people would not understand it. I mean to have

Crow not, Croak not

as the next year’s proverb. I think most peoples’ stories are variations of a certain ... continue reading

My dear Lizzie-

. . . Yes, I saw the Spectator on Chantry House, but indeed I did not put in the ghost for the sake of variety or sensation, but to work out my own belief and theory. I could tell you things I quite believe that chime with it. One I must tell, not that it is a ghost probably, it is so curious. The poor people in the Torquay outskirts think a ... continue reading

My dear Miss Kirke

I send you my autograph and a few more that I happened to have by me, but I do not know if those that are only initials with [sic] be useful to you. CRC is Christabel Rose Coleridge, author of Lady Betty, Hugh Crighton’s Romance &c. F M P is Frances Mary Peard author of a good many novels, M R is Margaret Roberts, author of Mlle Mori. Louisa Molesworth (Mrs) has ... continue reading