WCP5048

Letter (cc) (WCP5048.5522)

[1]

23.9 [189]81

Dr Alfred Russel Wallace,

Dear Sir,

We shall soon have to think of reprinting your Wonderful Century2. Have you any alterations you would wish to have made in the stereotype plates?

Are you acquainted with the "National Home Reading Union"3, which now numbers some thousands of members & a great many thousand "readers"? We believe that if we were to bring out a quite cheap Ed[itio]n of the first part of your book, they would take an [1 word illeg.] of 1000 copies straight off, & perhaps use several[?] [2]4 thousands in the end. Would you approve of this? Many people would be interested in the first part of the book who would not care for the second, for instance boys & girls, who form a very large proportion of the N. H. R. U. members. We send you a set of their magazines herewith.

Yours very truly | Swan Sonnenschein [illeg.]5 [signature]

1
The set of letters with the WCP numbers WCP5041 to WCP5046 and WCP5048 were most likely written in 1898, as this is the year that The Wonderful Century and Vaccination were both published by Swan, Sonnenschein & Co.
2
The Wonderful Century: Its Successes and Its Failures. Book written by Alfred Russel Wallace, published in 1898 by Swan Sonnenschein & Co.
3
National Home Reading Union. British organisation set up in 1889 by John Brown Paton to encourage reading, particularly amongst recent school leavers.
4
In the bottom-right of page two of the manuscript, the number "313" has been printed vertically for an unknown purpose.
5
Swan Sonnenschein & Co. British publishing company founded by William Swan Sonnenschein in 1882. It is unclear whether William personally wrote this letter.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (cc) (WCP5048.5522)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by Rodwell, Stephen [2014-08-08]

Please cite as “WCP5048,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 5 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP5048