[ St John Adcock, journalist, novelist and poet. ] Typed Letter Signed ('St. John Adcock') to J. Cuming Walters, on his health (a year before his death), work as editor of 'The Bookman', 'Collected Poems', and Cuming Walters's 'Charm of Lancashire'.

1p., 4to. In good condition, on lightly-aged paper. The first paragraph reads: 'Dear Cuming Walters, | Forgive me for not writing sooner. The fact is I have been down with influenza and pneumonia for the last three weeks. The worst time of the year for me! After the first week I contrived with difficulty to carry on with things, lying on my back dictating letters to my daughter, who has helped me enormously. But I am up again, and though not allowed out of doors have for the last four days been working in my room here, so shall manage all right and get my Christmas No. [of 'The Bookman'], which I believe will be about the best we have done. Luckily I had arranged for all my chief articles before I caved in, and the only trouble has been raking in the pictures.' He next turns to Cuming Walters' 'Charm of Lancashire', which he describes as 'a delightful book' and 'intensely interesting', adding that he is 'borrowing the drawing of Manchester from it to use with the review'. He considers that the book was 'worth doing and you have done it uncommonly well'. He has 'dropped my B. W. column and some outside work for a month, as I find the Christmas Bookman is as much as I can manage'. He thanks him for his comments on his 'Collected Poems': 'Shut up here, I do not know how the book is going but hope it is going well.' Adcock's obituary in The Times, 10 June 1930, reports his death after 'a short illness […] His elder daughter, Mrs. Marion St. John Webb, author of “The Littlest One” and other stories, died a month ago, and he felt this bereavement severely.'