Books with author Daisy Ashford

'The Young Visiters' is the book that started the schoolchild genre subsequently defined by '1066 and All That' and Molesworth's various manuals such as 'Down with Skool' and 'Whizz for Atoms'. As with 'The Young Visiters', the grammar, the language and the authorial viewpoint of those classics contribute much to our enjoyment. Unlike its descendants, 'The Young Visiters' probably wasn't written by an adult. Purportedly written by a 9-year-old girl in Victorian England, her inadvertent send-up of Victorian social mores, "status-climbing", and middle class ideas of gentility are absolutely delightful. She also disposes of her characters in an abrupt and very satisfying way. If you like the book, you will also enjoy the movie, which is fully as delightful.

"The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan" by Daisy Ashford. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

Excerpt from The Young Visiters or Mr.: Salteena's PlanThe "owner of the copyright" guarantees that "The Young Visiters" is the unaided effort in fiction of an authoress of nine years. "Effort," however, is an absurd word to use, as you may see by studying the triumphant countenance of the child herself, which is here reproduced as frontispiece to her sublime work. This is no portrait of a writer who had to burn the oil at midnight (indeed there is documentary evidence that she was hauled off to bed every evening at six): it has an air of careless power; there is a complacency about it that by the severe might perhaps be called smugness. It needed no effort for that face to knock off a masterpiece. It probably represents precisely how she looked when she finished a chapter.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

42-year-old Alfred Salteena, who, born on the wrong side of the blanket, wishes to become a gentleman. The suave and well-connected earl of Clincham imparts to his apt pupil the essence of becoming one of the upper class: have plenty of money, keep your unsavory past hidden, wear the right clothing and, above all, know how to hunt, shoot and ride. Armed with this knowledge, Salteena is instantly transformed into Lory Hyssops and gets a job with the royal family. Written by a nine-year old.

The Young Visiters or Mister Salteena's Plan is a 1919 novel by Daisy Ashford. Ashford wrote the novel at the age of nine, in 1890, in an exercise book. Full of spelling mistakes, each chapter was also written as a single paragraph. Many years later, in 1917 and aged 36, Ashford rediscovered her manuscript languishing in a drawer, and lent it to Margaret Mackenzie, a friend who was recovering from influenza. It passed through several other hands, before arriving with Frank Swinnerton, a novelist who was also a reader for the publishing house of Chatto and Windus. Largely due to Swinnerton's enthusiasm for this piece of juvenilia, the book was published almost exactly as it had been written. J. M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, agreed to write a preface, and the book became a huge success. The book was so successful that it was reprinted 18 times in its first year alone. After its publication, untrue rumours soon started that the book was in fact an elaborate literary hoax, and that it had been written by J. M. Barrie himself. These rumours persisted for years.