“Every fancy which dwells much with the unborn and immortal characters of Fiction must ask itself, Did the persons in contemporary novels never meet? In so little a world their paths must often have crossed, their orbits must have intersected, though we hear nothing about the adventure from the accredited narrators. In historical fiction authors make their people meet real men and women of history—Louis XI., Lazarus, Mary Queen of Scots, General Webbe, Moses, the Man in the Iron Mask, Marie Antoinette; the list is endless. But novelists, in spite of Mr. Thackeray’s advice to Alexandre Dumas, and of his own example in “Rebecca and Rowena,” have not introduced each other’s characters” (from the Introduction). In this volume, Andrew Lang shows, what a letter from one fictional character to another might look like.     [chương_files]  

With twenty two letters, addressed to various already deceased authors, Andrew Lang discusses literary subjects with his usual humour and acidity. The impulse for the writing of the letters came, almost as a joke, from the editor of the ‘St. James’s Gazette,’ and sixteen of the letters collected in the volume appeared first in that journal. According to the author, “some of the Letters are written rather to suit the Correspondent than to express the writer’s own taste or opinions”; in all of them, though, the reader will find the charming wit of their author. (Summary by Leni)     [chương_files]