My dear Miss Smith, Many thanks for your kind answer, I think these ladies’ biographies will be very nice work to do together, and I believe that to look into real life minutely is the best school for one’s own mind or for fiction. If I write nothing but fiction for some time, I begin to get stupid, and to feel rather as if it had been a long meal of sweets - then history is ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith

I have all but finished Mrs Grant and most interesting she is. Many many thanks for her. I am not sure whether she is not a little too long, to be in thorough proportion with the others, and if I find it so, perhaps I may have to take out a few of the letters that relate less directly to her personal history, but certainly not the American ones. What an old ... continue reading