“At a tender age, I commandeered half a quire of foolscap from my father's desk and sat down to write a book. ...I had observed onprinted fly leaves the words "By the author of, etc." ...So under the title of my prospective work I wrote: By the author of "Les Miserables," "The Woman in White," "Dombey and Son," "Tom Brown's Schooldays" and "Our Life in the Highlands," the last-named being an opus of good Queen Victoria. I had not read all these works but they existed on our bookshelves, and I hoped to produce something worthy of comparison.”
![“The theory [before the twentieth century] ... was that all…” quote by Rheta Childe Dorr](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/01c/rheta-childe-dorr-37217_century_the-theory-before-the-twentieth-century_2223271.jpg)
