"Unprejudiced"

                                                                                              " 14 East 95th St.
                                                                                                New York City

                                                                                                MAY 11, 1952



Dear Frank:
Meant to write to you the day the Angler arrived, just to thank you, the woodcuts alone are worth ten times the price of the book,  what a weird world we live in when so beautiful a thing can be owned for life -- for the price of a ticket to a Broadway movie palace, or 1/50th the cost of having one tooth capped.

Well, if your books cost what they're worth I couldn't afford them!

You'll be fascinated to learn ( from me that hates novels) that I finally got round to Jane Austen and went out of my mind over Pride & Prejudice which I can't bring myself to take back to the library till you find me a copy of my own.

Regards to Nora and the wage-slaves.  

HH"

84 Charing Cross Road  Helene Hanff

School books

"As for the few textbooks  that the class possessed, you could hardly look at them without feeling as though you had stepped back into the mid-nineteenth century.  There were only three textbooks of which each child had a copy.  One was a shilling arithmetic,  pre-War but fairly serviceable, and another was a horrid little book called The Hundred Page History of Britain --a nasty little duodecimo book with a gritty brown cover, and, for frontispiece, a portrait of Boadicea with a Union Jack draped over the front of her chariot.....

The date of the book was 1888.   Dorothy, who had never seen a history book of this description before, examined it with a feeling approaching horror.  There was also an extraordinary little 'reader' dated 1863.  It consisted mostly of bits out of Fenimore Cooper, Dr. Watts and Lord Tennyson, and at the end there were the queerest little 'Nature Notes' with woodcut illustrations.  There would be a woodcut of an elephant and underneath in small print: 'The Elephant is a sagacious beast.  He rejoices in the shade of the Palm Trees, and though stronger than six horses he will allow a little child to lead him.  His food is Bananas.'  And so on to the Whale, the Zebra, the Porcupine and the Spotted Camelopard."

A Clergyman's Daughter  George Orwell

Bibles in Iceland

"It is too well-known to need mentioning that according to an ancient Icelandic price-scale, the cost of a Bible is equivalent to that of a cow -- and that means an early-calving cow, or else six well-fleeced lambing ewes.  This price is written on the title page of the Bible edition that was printed in a remote mountain valley in northern Iceland in 1584, and as is known, Icelanders have never believed in any other Bible but this one;  it was printed with tasteful vignettes and decorative woodcuts and weighs five pounds, and is very  like a raisin-box in shape.  This volume has always been available in the better churches in Iceland."

The Fish Can Sing  Halldor Laxness
 translated by Magnus Magnusson