Genre: Epistolary Fiction
Chapter: 15
Listen: 4
Letters to a Daughter is a collection of essays proffering ‘fatherly advice’ in the form of a one-sided correspondence. Each of these takes the form of a response to a question that a young woman who is about to enter adult society might pose. The fictional daughter in Letters to a Daughter is named ‘Alexa.’ The author, Hubert Bland, a columnist and political activist, dedicated the book to his daughter, Rosamund Edith Nesbit Bland.
While married to the author Edith Nesbit, Mr. Bland had a lifelong extramarital relationship with Alice Hoatson, the birth mother of Rosamund – Edith, Alice and Hubert lived together ‘openly’. Rosamund wrote The Man in the Stone House, a novel about a young woman’s relationship with her parents, and the children’s book Moo Cow Tales; she also wrote the children’s book Cat Tales with her adoptive mother, Edith Nesbit – Summary by Brian Fullen