Currently on show in the Upper West Library is an exhibition of book cover art from the late Victorian and Edwardian golden age of popular literature. Some of the items on show, chosen by Dr. Kit Baston and Jo Hockey, include first editions of Kipling’s Just So Stories and Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince.
One item, Frederick Watson’s 1914 novel Muckle John, is special in that the Signet Library copy once belonged to the Senator of the College of Justice Lord Guthrie, and he was interested enough in the book (an adventure for boys about the 1745 Rebellion) to write to Watson with his comments and criticisms (which included a comment about the absence of women amongst the characters and worries about the use of modern language). He inserted the text of his letter into the book, alongside Watson’s reply, which read:
I am so glad that you found the story enlivening, but as it is for boys between 12 and 17 I have to leave out the heroine. It is difficult to say how the book will go at such a fearsome time, but as a Christmas present it may not fall quite flat.
Your shrapnel at my twentieth century phrases is I feel sure, deserved. I make no defence historically – my defence must lie in another channel, and here I would like your opinion. .... The modern fiction reader loathes dialect in expressions that sound fantastic today. .... I will not ask you to reply to this, but we can discuss it in the Spring (Kaiser Volens).