Autograph Letter Signed [to his bookseller (James Stoddart Bain?)].

English man of letters (1874-1945), associated with G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. Two pages, octavo. A frail item in poor condition: on grubby, discoloured, frayed paper, with slight loss to text and several closed tears. Line of text on fold worn but still legible. Precocious pronouncements from a nineteen-year-old. 'Salome [by Oscar Wilde] arrived safely yesterday morning - I wonder at the author of it having published a piece of patchwork so naif; "To be intelligible is to be found out." [quotation from Wilde's 'Lady Windermere's Fan'] but I daresay Theophile Gautier or Maeterlinck find it interesting.' Asks to be sent George Moore's 'Essays' 'as soon as they come out & anything of A C Benson's - if anything of his should be published'. Signed 'Maurice Baring'. In a postscript asks for Benson items to be sent, charged to his account, to the Hon. Lady Ponsonby in Florence and the Honorable Mrs Spencer in Northampton.