The Young Visiters or Mr. Salteena's Plan

Would we enjoy this book as much if it was not written by a nine year old child? Was it written by a nine year old child? Does it appeal to Americans or to Britishers who are not familiar with the nuances of social pretensions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? Frank Swinnerton, and James Barrie are suspects for being the true authors but there good evidence (although I don't know if it's been recently reevaluated) for Daisy Ashford. The compartments in the Crystal palace in which the nobility live seem to me to be authentic products of nine year old imagination. Small children often come up with gems like that. The ability to create a coherent plot and follow narrative theme for the length of a novel, even if only a sixty page one is unusual for even a talented child. Children are lazy and, even if they write at length, their stories become fragmented, lose their thread, and are often derivative. It takes adult skills and capacity for sustained hard work to write a coherent full-length work of fiction.. Ashford's failure to write after Barrie's death is suspicious.. Whatever the answers, the fact remains that I did enjoy it - treemendusly.

I was surprized at how very funny this book is and how true!Try it you'll like it!

How many self styled "comic" novels could hope to be as funny as this one...not many in my opinion. When a novel can be read through in a couple of hours and give you laughs on every page, you'd be mad not to buy it. Plus you'll probably want to read it again. There's plenty of information surrounding the background to this unique book, so I won't repeat any of it here. But basically, anyone with an interest in humour, absurd romantic situations, social history and a love of the English language simply has to have a copy of this. The charm of this book lies chiefly in the reading, it cannot be understood by just having it explained to you. Nor does it translate well to filmed adaptation; the recent BBC dramatisation with Jim Broadbent made a real ham-fisted job of it, adding their own extra plot and even making up new dialogue and mis-spellings...unforgivable!! I agree with another reviewer who has mentioned that the J.M. Barrie forward is almost as entertaining as the book itself, drawing attention as it does to many of the best passages. Everybody I have introduced this book to has fallen in love with it, because it's nothing less than a pleasure to read. And its cheap too. In fact, my review could really be confined to two words - "Buy It!"

This is the book that started the schoolchild genre subsequently defined by '1066 and All That' and Molesworth's various manuals such as 'Down with Skool' and 'Whizz for Atoms'. As with 'The Young Visiters', the grammar, the language and the authorial viewpoint of those classics contribute much to our enjoyment. But unlike its descendants, 'The Young Visiters' wasn't written by an adult ... probably.To my knowledge, there isn't an audiobook version of the full text. But there are a couple of gushing extracts contained on the Naxos compilation '1000 Years of Laughter' which demonstrate that it isn't just the troubled spelling which make the book so amusing. The introduction to those extracts lead us to believe that JM Barrie, who wrote the introduction, could have had much to do with the entire work. Certainly once Barrie had died, she never wrote again, but my feeling is that the nine-year-old Ashford probably was the author. The story is less than 60 pages long, and can be enjoyed in a couple of sittings, then repeatedly re-read.This work is likely to experience a dramatic surge in popularity this year. A TV adaptation starring Jim Broadbent (of 'Moulin Rouge' fame) will be broadcast, and this recently overlooked masterpiece will return to prominence once again.