AUSTIN, Sarah.

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Autograph letter signed discussing the frustrations of publishing a periodical work for children. Autograph letter signed to an unknown female recipient setting out Austin's thoughts regarding the establishment of a "periodical work for children". Despite the recipient's enthusiasm, her own, "and that of everyone, without a single exception, of my female friends and acquaintances... I am forced to relinquish it from the difficulty of finding a publisher - Murray, though he expressed himself in the handsomest manner both as to the plan and the matter (which he saw) has his hands tied by his family Library. Baldwin is aiming at some older magazine and Harris, though delighted with the scheme and the matter, dreads the expense and fatigue of getting a periodical into sale - a sort of thing he is not accustomed to". Austin, frustrated but determined, goes on to suggest an alternative strategy to ensure the publication of the material using "volunteer assistants".The English writer and international salonnière Sarah Austin (1793-1867), highly praised for her important translations from German and French, supplemented her family's income by writing for periodicals, preferring the anonymity of monthlies and quarterlies. "As several of Austin's letters from 1829 and 1830 to John Murray make clear, she was eager to have him publish children's literature, be that in book form or as a periodical" (Schweitzer, p. 59). One such proposal made to Murray was for a translation from the German

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