BR TO W.W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC. / WARDER NORTON, [11? OCT. 1936]
BRACERS 47172. ALS. Norton papers, Columbia U. SLBR 2: #421
Edited by N. Griffin. Proofread by K. Blackwell and A. Duncan

<letterhead>
Telegraph House
Harting, Petersfield.1
1<?> October 19362

Dear Warder

You will have heard from Feakins that I am not coming to America, and I hope he sent you a copy of my letter. Peter is pregnant but miscarried once before, and was very ill; the Doctors say she is very liable to miscarriage and they won’t let her go to America, or me leave her. I am very sorry not to be seeing you and Polly. We don’t want Peter’s pregnancy mentioned, in case it should go wrong. We are both very glad about it.

Woolf (the Hogarth Press) plans to publish both volumes of the book on my parents in the spring,3 and has a scheme by which you take sheets, without either you or me suffering financially. I think the book will have a very small sale in America, so I should think his scheme would be best. I gathered he was writing to you about it.

I have written a book of about 48,000 words called Which Way to Peace? a purely propaganda book, addressed to the momentary situation in England. I wrote it in 3 weeks, and it is very topical. If you care to have it, it is yours, on the usual terms. But if you think it too exclusively concerned with English as opposed to American circumstances, I shall be by no means hurt if you refuse it. As I wrote, I could not offer it before, as I got tied up, foolishly, with Macmillans, but, as I hoped, the book is not what they want, so I am free. If you want to print it, haste is desirable, because it will soon be out of date. But my own judgment is that it will not greatly interest Americans.4

Best wishes to you both.

Yours ever
B.R.

• 1

  [document] Proofread against a microfilm printout of the original.

• 2

  [date] The date is obscured by Norton’s date stamp indicating that it was received on 20 October.

• 3

  Woolf  … book on my parents in the spring Leonard and Virginia Woolf published The Amberley Papers at the Hogarth Press in 1937. Norton published it in the US the same year.

• 4

  it will not greatly interest Americans The book was BR’s strongest pacifist statement. In it he advocated unilateral disarmament and an individual refusal to fight. It was published by Michael Joseph in England. Norton did not take it. A chapter was published in the US by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (see BR to Norton, 13 Feb. 1937, BRACERS 47172).