Reproduced by courtesy of the
Our aim in this edition has been to transcribe the content of the letters as accurately as possible without reproducing the physical appearance of the manuscript. Craik’s spelling, punctuation, underlining, superscripts, abbreviations, additions and deletions are retained, except for words which are hyphenated at the end of a line, which we have silently emended. Where Craik uses a non-standard spelling, we have encoded both her spelling and the standard Oxford English Dictionary spelling to facilitate searching. The long s is not encoded.
I have gone through all the fairy-tales I can muster out of the books you sent
& others which I have borrowed from friends – made a list of the best –
& sent the list & the books for the printer to calculate the quantity it
will make set off. I expect more than will be required – & then I must weed
the list after & choose the best. – It seems to me this is this is the only
way. – And then they should be set up & corrections made in the proofs –
which corrections will not be so numerous, I find, as to need you to plan of
inter-leaving. – Besides, as one half the tales
came out of books belonging to friends of which you can't get a second copy –
& therefore the printer must do as well as he can in printing from the book & returning it intact. –
I did not want to bother you on your holiday – so wrote
– This is the first day that our home has been empty of visitors. – & now I
want to set to work about the fairy book immediately. I hope to hear soon how
you all are after