the young visiters In the long summer of 1890, a young lady decided to write her first novel. She wrote a chapter a day between breakfast and bath-time and delivered it to her parents in a stout twopenny exercise book exactly 12 days later. The young lady’s name was Daisy Ashford and she wrote it when she was 9 years old. She called it, The Young Visiters; or Mr. Salteena’s Plan. After several years a publisher discovered it amongst her mother’s papers. To this day it has never been out of print. i wrote a novel when i was nine called, raynor’s giant sandwich. without giving too much of the plot away, it was about a giant sandwich named franklin and how i went about eating him and the lessons that i subsequently learned after consuming my only friend in the world. my parents humored me by telling me that it was super-phat—but everyone else who read it said it smelled worse than asparagus urine. but whatever: the young visiters is sublime. it doesn’t need to be contextualised in terms of the age of its author. it’s not juvenilia. unlike raynor’s giant sandwich or your roommate’s latest dream, it has a cohesive plot and interesting characters. and it’s world-view is absolutely captivating. here is how it starts: Mr. Salteena was an elderly man of 42 and was fond of asking people to stay with him. He had quite a young girl staying with him of 17 named Ethel Monticue. Mr. Salteena had dark short hair and mustache and wiskers which were very black and twisty. He was middle sized and he had very pale blue eyes.  the published version (with an intro by j.m. barrie) retains miss ashford’s charming misspellings: brekfast, idiotick, bronkitis, &c, and is worth your perusal. also: the novel was adapted into a beebeecee movie in 2003 and stars: harold zidler, house,  billy mack, and cleopatra.  finally: i would be thoroughly scolded by my niece if i didn’t use this occasion to plug her novel called the great day. 

the young visiters

In the long summer of 1890, a young lady decided to write her first novel. She wrote a chapter a day between breakfast and bath-time and delivered it to her parents in a stout twopenny exercise book exactly 12 days later. The young lady’s name was Daisy Ashford and she wrote it when she was 9 years old.

She called it, The Young Visiters; or Mr. Salteena’s Plan. After several years a publisher discovered it amongst her mother’s papers. To this day it has never been out of print.

i wrote a novel when i was nine called, raynor’s giant sandwich. without giving too much of the plot away, it was about a giant sandwich named franklin and how i went about eating him and the lessons that i subsequently learned after consuming my only friend in the world. my parents humored me by telling me that it was super-phat—but everyone else who read it said it smelled worse than asparagus urine.

but whatever: the young visiters is sublime. it doesn’t need to be contextualised in terms of the age of its author. it’s not juvenilia. unlike raynor’s giant sandwich or your roommate’s latest dream, it has a cohesive plot and interesting characters. and it’s world-view is absolutely captivating. here is how it starts:

Mr. Salteena was an elderly man of 42 and was fond of asking people to stay with him. He had quite a young girl staying with him of 17 named Ethel Monticue. Mr. Salteena had dark short hair and mustache and wiskers which were very black and twisty. He was middle sized and he had very pale blue eyes. 

the published version (with an intro by j.m. barrie) retains miss ashford’s charming misspellings: brekfast, idiotick, bronkitis, &c, and is worth your perusal.

also: the novel was adapted into a beebeecee movie in 2003 and stars: harold zidler, house,  billy mack, and cleopatra. 

finally: i would be thoroughly scolded by my niece if i didn’t use this occasion to plug her novel called the great day. 

February 8, 2011
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raynor recommends early 1900s literature
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