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[[MS 2750/351/20]]

Donald Brace, Esq., 
Harcourt Brace & Company, 
383, Madison Avenue, 
New York.U.S.A

June 6th. 1926

Dear Sir:

On the 18th of May Mr. Woolf sent you our press cuttings about TURBOTT WOLFE, with a request for their return. We shall be glad if you will see these are sent back to us at once, as they are the only copies we have.

We give you the following extract about William Plomer, which appeared in one of the S.[outh] African papers:

“William Plomer is only about 21 years of age, and confesses that he wrote this, his first novel at the age of 18.

A man less like an author one could not meet. Always quietly but well dressed, fair-haired and wearing a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, there is nothing to suggest the Bohemian about him.

All his writing, too, is done in a most orderly fashion, sheet after sheet being carefully filed away as it is writ-ten.

But to write a novel such as “Turbott Wolfe” at the age of 18 is indeed an achievement for a South African, for this young man was born in this country.

His father was once a well-known civil servant but had to retire from the service owing to a newvous [sic] breakdown. In order to live he opened a store in Zululand, about 12 miles from Eshowe. Here the sick man and his wife tried to earn a living.

Young Plomer also flung himself into the work, and practically all the business of the store is on his shoulder It does not leave a man much time for reflection of writing and that is why this first novel should be regarded as an achievement”

Yours faithfully,

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Donald Brace, Esq., 
Harcourt Brace & Company, 
383, Madison Avenue, 
New York. U.S.A.

June 4th. 1926

Dear Mr. Brace:

On the 18th of May I sent you our press cuttings about TURBOTT WOLFE AND AT THE SAM