The Young Visiters

Daisy Ashford wrote this comic tale in 1890, at the age of nine, then tucked the manuscript away and rediscovered it decades later. Published in 1919 with its original childish spelling intact and a delighted preface by J. M. Barrie, it follows Alfred Salteena, a middle-aged man of forty-two who longs to become a proper gentleman and turns to the aristocratic Earl of Clincham for lessons. Meanwhile his young guest Ethel Monticue is swept into a romance with the well-off Bernard Clark. Half the pleasure comes from Ashford’s solemn, wide-eyed misreadings of grown-up society, filtered through a child’s imagination and left gloriously unedited. It endures as one of the funniest accidents in English literature. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available.