The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Part One


8th January, 1946
Mr. Sidney Stark, Publisher
Stephens & Stark Ltd.
21 St. James's Place
London S.W.1
England

Dear Sidney,
Susan Scott is a wonder. We sold over forty copies of the book, which was very pleasant, but much more thrilling from my standpoint was the food. Susan managed to procure ration coupons for icing sugar and real eggs for the meringue. If all her literary luncheons are going to achieve these heights, I won't mind touring about the country. Do you suppose that a lavish bonus could spur her on to butter? Let's try it you may deduct the money from my royalties.

Now for my grim news. You asked me how work on my new book is progressing. Sidney, it isn't.

English Foibles seemed so promising at first. After all, one should be able to write reams about the Society to Protest the Glorification of the English Bunny. I unearthed a photograph of the Vermin Exterminators' Trade Union, marching down an Oxford street with placards screaming "Down with Beatrix Potter!" But what is there to write about after a caption? Nothing, that's what.

I no longer want to write this book my head and my heart just aren't in it. Dear as Izzy Bickerstaff is and was to me, I don't want to write anything else under that name. I don't want to be considered a light-hearted journalist anymore. I do acknowledge that making readers laugh or at least chuckle during the war was no mean feat, but I don't want to do it anymore. I can't seem to dredge up any sense of proportion or balance these days, and God knows one cannot write humor without them.
In the meantime, I am very happy Stephens & Stark is making money on Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War. It relieves my conscience over the debacle of my Anne Bront biography.

My thanks for everything and love,
Juliet

P.S. I am reading the collected correspondence of Mrs. Montagu. Do you know what that dismal woman wrote to Jane Carlyle? "My dear little Jane, everybody is born with a vocation, and yours

Mary Ann Shaffer who passed away in February 2008, worked as an editor, librarian, and in bookshops. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was her first novel.

I can t remember the last time I discovered a novel as smart and delightful as this one, a world so vivid that I kept forgetting this was a work of fiction populated with characters so utterly wonderful that I kept forgetting they weren t my actual friends and neighbors. Treat yourself to this book please I can t recommend it highly enough. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

Traditional without seeming stale, and romantic without being naive . . . It s tempting to throw around terms like gem when reading a book like this. But Guernsey is not precious. . . . This is a book for firesides or long train rides. It s as charming and timeless as the novels for which its characters profess their love. San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

[The] characters step from the past radiant with eccentricity and kindly humour. [The] writing, with its delicately offbeat, self-deprecating stylishness, is exquisitely turned. The Guardian (U.K.)

I ve never wanted to join a club so desperately as I did while reading Guernsey. . . . [The novel] is a labor of love and it shows on almost every page. The Christian Science Monitor

I could not put the book down. I have recommended it to all my friends. Newsday

A jewel . . . Poignant and keenly observed, Guernsey is a small masterpiece about love, war, and the immeasurable sustenance to be found in good books and good friends. People

A book-lover's delight, an implicit and sometimes explicit paean to all things literary. Chicago Sun-Times

A sparkling epistolary novel radiating wit, lightly worn erudition and written with great assurance and aplomb. The Sunday Times (London)

Cooked perfectly à point: subtle and elegant in flavour, yet emotionally satisfying to the finish. The Times (London)

A sweet, sentimental paean to books and those who love them. . . . It affirms