Dato: 17. september 1869
Fra: Horace E. Scudder   Til: H.C. Andersen
Sprog: engelsk.

Riverside, Cambridge, Mass. 17 September 1869

My honoured friend,

you will have received by this time I trust the letter which I wrote you just as I was leaving home for a little journey, in which I acknowledged the receipt of "What happened to the Thistle» &and "Chicken Grethe's Family." On my return a few days since I found your very pleasant letter of 14 August, and now take my first opportunity to send you a word of greeting.

"What happened to the Thistle» appears in the October number, to be issued next week. In the November number will be printed "Chicken Grethe's Family,» although I may be obliged to divide the story, publishing the latter half in December. However that need make no difference as to your plans for publishing the story in Denmark. We are now pretty well protected I think by the fact that we publish in advance of the Copenhagen edition.

. The artist drew a very pretty picture for "What happened to the Thistle," but unfortunately while I was away there was a misunderstanding and it was not used. Two illustrations also will be given for "Chicken Grethe's Family."

The complete edition of your works goes on well in preparation and publication. Two volumes, The Improvisatore and The Two Baronesses, are now ready, and I hope to have the pleasure in a few days of sending you some copies of both books. I will write by what conveyance they go. The next volume, now in press, is one volume af your Eventyr, under the title of Wonder Stories.

This will contain eighty-four stories and have one hundred and seventeen illustrations. I am daily engaged in revising the material, and I find very great pleasure in reading again stories long dear to me, and in putting them into such shape as shall make them most attractive to our children.

I found that all your shorter stories could not be brought within the compass of a single volume. The principle which I assumed in dividing them was nearly as possible to classify them as Eventyr and Historier, although I found that some belonged apparently to one class as much as to the other. I hope you may be pleased with the division which I have made. It is a pleasure to find that you are meeting those Americans whom we most like to send abroad as representatives of our country. You must not let the Atlantic dismay you. It is a very short voyage, and then you are with friends!

Will yon kindly send me Miss Raaslöff’s address? I ask it for the purpose only that we may send her regularly our little magazine, as a slight expression of our appreciation of her good services. I trust to send you in a few days a draft on London for your recent Mss. I write hastily now, not to be too long silent. Your publishers unite with me in sincere regards.

Always most truly yours

HORACE E. SCUDDER

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