ALWAYS AN EXCEPTION TO THE RULE

Hello everyone. I came across a sweet little book in a charity shop recently. It was "J. Smith - A Fairy Story" by Fougasse dated MCMXXII. It is a delicious little volume that was, apparently, first written in a book the size of a postage stamp to go into the library of Queen Mary's Doll House in 1922 along with 199 others. My verson is more the size of most Beatrix Potter books (but much thicker), and it caught my eye because of its small size and gilt edge pages. It is simply told and simply illustrated. It tells the story of a fairy lost in London and all the changes he has to go through in order to find his way back to Fairyland. It appears as if written in fountain pen, which, one has to assume, was the only way it could be written in a volume tiny enough to go into a Doll's House!

Now go back a couple of years to the publication of Charlie Mackesy's delightful story "The Boy, the mole, the fox and the Horse". I bought this having seen the TV animation which, by the way, I can see becoming a Christmas classic rather like "The Snowman" by Raymond Briggs. This book too appears as if it is written with a pen rather than printed in the standard way and I just wondered how it came to be published, looking like a first or second draft written in longhand? Don't get me wrong, it is a truly enchanting book and I love it. And I did try contacting Charlie Mackesy to ask him without success. My point is the first lesson I ever learned as an embrioic writer was to NOT send publishers work written in longhand.

I understand there are always exceptions to the rule. There's something rather homely and personal about something written in longhand, even if its is a book like these two. I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this. Being an advocate for the preservation of actual handwriting as opposed to key-tapping, would the production of further books written this way work out cheaper than those printed in the traditional way ...?