19 JUNE 1926, Page 3

A correspondent has sent us an article in the New

York World which twits British reviewers with not having discovered so quickly as Americans did evidence for the belief that the book Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion was not a genuine eighteenth-century work. The World says that its own reviewer led the way by discovering that the reference, under the date October, 1764, to Walpole's Castle of Otranto preceded the actual publication of that book by two months and preceded Walpole's acknowledgment that he had written the book (for it at first appeared anonymously) by two years. This is not a matter of vast importance but in justice to our own contributor, Mr. W. A. Hirst, let us say that he described these mistakes in the Spectator before the review in the World was published.

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