Letter from J.W.T. Ley, Newport, Monmouthshire, to Edward Wagenknecht, 1939 August 25 : typescript with manuscript corrections signed.

Informing that he has "not done anything with my MS" due to the expected publication of "Dickens and Daughter" by Gladys Storey; telling that Mrs. [Kate] Perugini expected to place "the true story of the domestic trouble" in the Dickens household with the British Museum but that Bernard Shaw convinced her to destroy it and later, regretting "her own neglect of her mother, she asked a very much younger woman to tell the story"; doubting that Perugini married Charles Collins to get out of the "hell at Gads Hill"; further doubting the existence of familial troubles due to the accounts of "Mamie, and Charles, and Henry, and Alfred" and referencing letters to Lady Angela Coutts "which tell her why reconciliation is hopeless"; adding that Storey's book says that Thomas Wright's account of Dickens' affair with Ellen Ternan is true and that the two "had a baby boy which died in infancy"; asserting that Ternan only came into Dickens' life after his encounter with Maria Beadnell "had completely awakened something that had only lain dormant for years"; claiming that Walter Dexter "is wholly biassed [sic] against Dickens" regarding his treatment of his family; asking for his opinion on Storey's book; expressing a need to rewrite his book; expressing busyness as President of the National Union of Journalists.