THE YOUNG NOVELIST

Taranaki Daily News, 8 May 1930, Page 19

THE YOUNG NOVELIST

FIRST BOOK AT ELEVEN - . A TALE -OF CEYLON. ' Tired of having nothing to do ;while waiting for a vacancy in a European school in Ceylon, Maurice Wiltshire, a happy and high-spirited boy of 11, decided to write a novel. And having finished, the novel, he sent it to his grandfather, Mr. L. W. Stephens, of Hampstead. With a delicious confidence of youth, he instructed his grandfather to find a publisher for the novel. Being a sympathetic —and obedientgrandfather, Mr. Stevens set to work and the result is the publication by Messrs. Jarrolds, of “Billy in Ceylon.” It is an astonishing book. It will delight all boys and most girls, because it is such very good fun, full of adventures on board a great liner, and with glimpses of the kind of life an English boy leads in Ceylon- .when his father accepts an appointment in that fascinating country. The -book is • entirely ■< the . work of young Maurice Wiltshire. Written -in a childish, but-.n,'-very -good hand; it-is quite unaltered, and was sent to the printers in its original condition.

‘■Nearly three years ago my: son-in-law, who is an electrical engineer; Aceepted a Government contract in Ceylon, and decided to take his wife and two children with him,” Mr. Stephens said to an English-. interviewer. '’Maurice was then at’the William Ellis School in Kentish Town, and I have no doubt that his old', schoolmates, and many people in Hampstead, where I have lived for 50 years,-will be interested in the book. Members, of a tennis club in Colombo used to spend warm summer evenings reading the novel in manuscript., i They found. it so amusing that it was circulated among them as a novel from a lending library ■ might have been. “Until he.. Went to Ceylon, Maurice was more interested in drawing than in writing, and he had never been a great reader. But he writes very good letters, and while waiting until arrangements could 'be made for him to go to school-’in the- hill.Sj he amused himself by writing-this book. • . "He was very- ■ much -impressed by: life on tho Orient liner Oronsay, on which ho made -the journey-to. Ceylon, and his account of the doings of the ’Blue Blooded Buccaneers’ —the little company whichrjiis.i hero formed on board ship— has .given me many, a. Jaugh, and will, I thiiikj amuse. every gwwiw-

" “In "his last letter Maurice told, 'me that he intended to write another novel, which he means to call ‘Bill Among the Ancient Britons.’ The boy is now only . 12 years of age, and when he knew that I had been able to. find a publisher for him I do not think he' was much impressed.”