The Young Visiters
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Good
One of literature's most endearing and unlikely masterpieces, The Young Visiters is the remarkable story of the socially ambitious Alfred Salteena — a man who is not quite a gentleman — and his earnest quest to climb the ranks of Edwardian high society, all narrated through the gloriously unfiltered lens of a nine-year-old child. Written entirely by Daisy Ashford at the age of nine and rediscovered decades later, this short comic novel chronicles the romantic entanglements, social aspirations, and aristocratic misadventures of its cast with a breathless, phonetically-spelled sincerity that is simultaneously hilarious and strangely profound. What elevates The Young Visiters beyond mere curiosity is its uncanny ability to satirise the rigid class structures and romantic conventions of Edwardian England — not through cynicism, but through the complete absence of it. J.M. Barrie, who contributed the original preface and championed its publication, recognised in Ashford's prose a purity of comic vision that no adult writer could consciously replicate. Read as social comedy, accidental satire, or a window into the imaginative world of a Victorian child, this slim volume continues to astonish readers over a century after it was first written — leaving one to wonder just how much of its brilliance was truly accidental.
Author: Daisy Ashford
Format: Hardback
Genre: Classic fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Good
One of literature's most endearing and unlikely masterpieces, The Young Visiters is the remarkable story of the socially ambitious Alfred Salteena — a man who is not quite a gentleman — and his earnest quest to climb the ranks of Edwardian high society, all narrated through the gloriously unfiltered lens of a nine-year-old child. Written entirely by Daisy Ashford at the age of nine and rediscovered decades later, this short comic novel chronicles the romantic entanglements, social aspirations, and aristocratic misadventures of its cast with a breathless, phonetically-spelled sincerity that is simultaneously hilarious and strangely profound. What elevates The Young Visiters beyond mere curiosity is its uncanny ability to satirise the rigid class structures and romantic conventions of Edwardian England — not through cynicism, but through the complete absence of it. J.M. Barrie, who contributed the original preface and championed its publication, recognised in Ashford's prose a purity of comic vision that no adult writer could consciously replicate. Read as social comedy, accidental satire, or a window into the imaginative world of a Victorian child, this slim volume continues to astonish readers over a century after it was first written — leaving one to wonder just how much of its brilliance was truly accidental.