1900-12-31 to Thomas Fisher Unwin

Autograph letter signed, New York Public Library, 274 words

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

92 VICTORIA STREET. S.W.

[Monday, 31 December 1900]

Dear Fisher Unwin,

All the best writers have rewritten their works: Wagner, Wordsworth, Balzac. I am not aware that the inferior writers rewrote their works. If Balzac had not rewritten the Human Comedy would it have lived?

I think, I feel sure, the rewritting, the reconstruction which I can. put into Evelyn Innes will give it a permanent value. If I don’t rewrite the book is dead. Sister Teresa will sell the remaining copies for you

and then no more.

I am going conte qui conte to alter the text — I have had an estimate, the money loss will be about 50£. So the matter you have to settle is a very simple one: will you sacrifice the copies you have in stock and start afresh or will you sell them off first and start with the revised text when they are disposed of? You will miss the boom if you do this. I should like to see them sacrificed but the matter is for you to decide —

Understand that the revision of my text is a reconstruction and not merely verbal emendation. I agree with you that verbal emendations would not endow the book with five minutes more life than it has now.

Sister Teresa is a most original work — it is a thousand times a better book than Evelyn Innes and the two together, the revised version and Sister Teresa, will be my most important work.

Always sincerely yours

George Moore