'I have just read Prince Hempseed for the first time. I do hope you don't mind my writing to you about it, because I think it is such a fine book and I was deeply moved by it. It seems to me to be more alive psychologically than any novel by a living English writer that I have read, and one would have thought that even the impenetrable stupidity of the British public would have been pierced by the terible sincerity and truth of this book. But I suppose you've had the usual kind of abuse. I couldn't have believed, until I read Prince Hempseed, that any book about a child could be so interesting; but this goes beyond interest, and all I can say is, if the English people would read this book properly, they might become less brutish. It's an awful thing to think of poor sensitive bewildered children being driven into life like this, amidst such hopeless loneliness. I hope you don't mind me saying all this; but, you see, I do thinkthe book is such a fine achievement that I can't help telling you so. I wonder if Dr. Henry Head has read it. He's always saying he wishes someone would write a really fine book about a child's psychology....At least he said so on the few occasions when I have met him....'