Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Typed letter signed (‘RK’) with autograph additions to H. Rider Haggard, Bateman’s Burwash, 30 July 1923
Two pages, 212 x 215mm, typed and handwritten with a number of corrections in pen throughout. Envelope. Provenance: Roy Davids Ltd., 1999.

‘Private: Better burn this when you’re done with it’. Kipling apologises for his delayed reply owing to his rereading of Wisdom’s Daughter: ‘The more I went through it, the more I was convinced that it represented the whole sum and substance of your convictions along certain lines’. He offers suggestions on taking ‘the whole book up again’ and alters the point of view: ‘I do not know whether this would be right or effective in the long-run, but I am fairly sure that it would be a satisfaction to you yourself’. Kipling goes on to recommend putting the book to one side before returning to it: ‘All this is on the assumption, which I never hid from you, that the whole book is miles and miles above the heads of the reader at large. It will not come to its own for a long time, but, to those to whom it is a message or a confirmation it will mean more than the rest of your work’. With honesty (‘If you cut me open, I could not say in what manner one should go about the business of revision’) he continues with further suggestions for improvement of the novel, before exclaiming, ‘Damn it! You’ve got the whole tragedy of the mystery of life under your hand’.

Wisdom’s Daughter, a fantasy novel written by Haggard, was published in 1923. Haggard and Kipling met in 1889 and remained close friends for the following thirty-five years; they wrote to one another frequently, often offering advice on one another’s writing.