1899-05-31 to Anne Douglas Sedgwick

Autograph letter signed, Huntington Library, 301 words

[Edited for paragraph breaks, capitalization, spelling and punctuation.]

92, VICTORIA STREET, S.W.

Wednesday [31 May 1899]

Dear Madam,

I have read your book. There were times when it interested me, there were moments when I thought you had a good deal of talent. I still think you have talent. A pulse of life often beats in your pages.

Those I liked best were when your authoress tells the author why she left her husband, that reads like an actual experience. If you are not a married woman, if you never left a man in the circumstances you describe, there is little doubt that you have talent. Your imagination reaches a higher pitch in these chapters than elsewhere.

But I find it difficult to believe that you were not working from a document of some kind; if you had not been you would have imagined a better story. You would not have accepted the wreched contrivance of making one woman protect the other from a dangerous villain who dared to speak to her in the underground. In this scene life ebbs out of your writing altogether.

It seems to me a weakness to choose an author for hero and for his surroundings an authoress and a type writing office. Tales that are half imaginary and half autobiographical are never satisfactory. The writer should create an entirely fictitious world.

But had you had a better story I think you might have written a good book. I cannot go further into the matter here; but if you think it would be of use to you to talk the matter out with me, I shall be glad to see you when you can make it convenient to call.

Truly yours

George Moore.