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[[MS 2750/487/20/]]

Boar's Hill

Oxford

June 5th. 1926

Dear Woolf,

Thank you for your letter.

I hope you wont [sic] reprint the Medal unless you are clear that it will pay its way. What I sh[oul]d. like to see is a 2/6 or 3/6 edition. But I suppose that is impossible?

It may do better than seems likely now. I have been surprised at its reception in India. Tagore*1 wrote to me, some time ago, 'You are in disgrace with your own people, for which you have my congratulations'. But I have had the friendliest reviews in the Pioneer & the Lahore Civil & Military Gazette. [1 word illeg.] expressed themselves as very puzzled

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that my play Atonement, which they never advertised, was selling better eighteen months after publication than at the beginning. I have just been told the reason. The Student Christian Movement are using it as a 'mission study circle' book! A man told me he had found a 'circle' studying it at Wellington, New Zealand. That, of course, makes a considerable sale. I think it quite likely that a cheaper Medal might find a sale among (1) Indians (2) mission study circles.

But of course, I know that you w[oul]d. have to sell far more copies of a cheaper edition.

In any case, you, as the publisher, are

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the best judge, & I take it that you wont [sic] want to decide for another four or five months? If you do decide to reprint, I sh[oul]d. like to add Cooper's nephew's letter, & to change a couple of words.

I dont [sic] suppose my selection of Poems, just out, will make much stir, they will seem so old fashioned & aloof - but the [a word seems to be missing here] by Tagore*1, which Milford is publishing next week, ought to get a considerable press & make a small difference to sales of my other Indian books, esp[ecially]. in India. So the Medal may have a little future left yet.

Yours sincerely | Edward Thompson [signature]

I send a sheaf of Indian reviews that reached me yesterday. Please dont [sic] return. I dont [sic] suppose they are any use to you.

* Endnotes

1. Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Bengali scholar and social reformer; Associate of Thompson; awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.