Autograph Letter Signed, to "My dear Mr [John] Lane.

1899. Two pages of stationery printed with the address "17 R Street, Corner | New Hampshire Avenue" [Washington DC]. Dated by hand "June 4, 1899".

The text of this letter reads as follows: I have waited to answer your letter of a week or two ago. I refer to its receipt [?] because I did not know what to say. I am, however, now engaged in writing a story which I believe would meet your requirements and which I might arrange to let you have. It is a racing-story, of a kind which I think will be sufficiently original to attract notice. It will be between 5000 & 10000 words. Such a story I should charge an American Magazine for from $500.00 to $1000.00 according to length. I do not know what you would expect to pay for the English Magazine rights; but I should have to arrange with the American Magazine for its publication by you in Eng'd, and I should want enough to make up for any deduction the Edition on this side might claim for such contemporaneous publication on your side. I sh'd also want to know when the story w'd appear in the _Anglo-Saxon_ that it might come out over here about the same time. If these matters can be arranged, I think I could get the story finished in abundant time. Yours very truly [signed vertically] Thos Nelson Page. The periodical alluded to is The Anglo-Saxon Review -- a short-lived "quarterly miscellany," created and edited by Lady Randolph Churchill (her son Winston served as an advisor), published by John Lane in handsome leather-bound volumes with elaborate gilt tooling. The new periodical sent out an appeal for original material to many prominent British and American authors; contributors included Henry James, Winston Churchill, George Gissing, and Stephen Crane. The subscription list included many from the wealthy, the nobility, even heads of state. But maybe it was all a bit too much -- for there were only ten quarterly issues, from June 1899 to September 1901. We find no record of a Thomas Nelson Page contribution, so apparently "matters" could not be "arranged." The letter is in fine condition (though Page's signature, squeezed in vertically at the end, overwrites some of his text). Provenance: from the renowned three-generation Dodge Family Autograph Collection.