7, Chilworth Street, Paddington, W. _December 14th_, 1910. Dear Mr. Lane, The book is very outspoken and occasionally nasty, but I shouldn't call it obscene, and the reputation of the author is your justification for publishing it. Personally, I think the first half brilliant and the last half tedious and unpleasant. A great many authors not nearly so famous as Sudermann could write a somewhat bald catalogue or series of risque episodes. It is a book, in my opinion, for the student of literature and the mature, certainly not for the young person; but the student, I take it, would be able to read it in the original. I am, Yours sincerely, Lucy Clifford. Windlesham, Crowborough, Sussex. Dear Sir, Many thanks. I read the book with great interest. To say it is ever "obscene" is an abuse of words. That there are passages which are coarse, and unnecessarily coarse, is on the other hand indisputable. I should not like any woman under forty to read it. And yet it is not written for the purpose of being coarse, and that is the essential point. Yours very truly, A. Conan Doyle. Max Gate, Dorchester. _December 15th_, 1910. Dear Mr. Lane, I am sorry to hear that you have been laid up with bronchitis, and hope that you are on the way to health again. I finished reading last night the translation of Sudermann's novel, "Das hohe Lied," that you sent me a few days back. I am not in a position to advise positively whether or not you should withdraw it, but I think that, viewing it as a practical question merely, which I imagine to be your wish, I should myself withdraw it in the circumstances. A translation of good literary taste might possibly have made such an unflinching study of a woman's character acceptable in this country, even though the character is one of a somewhat ignoble type, but unfortunately, rendered into the rawest American, the claims that the original (which I have not seen) no doubt had to be considered as literature, are largely reduced, so that I question if there is value enough left in this particular translation to make a stand for. Believe me, Yours very truly, John Lane, Esq., Thomas Hardy. The Bodley Head.