Daddy-Long-Legs

While throwing out my old exercise-books I discovered the following document embedded amongst discussions of "My Family and Other Animals" and analyses of the character of Julia Pendleton.

It was evidently something we were set to do at school, and on reading on further in my schoolwork I discovered that it is actually fan-fiction for a 1912 novel entitled Daddy-Long-Legs (and having discovered the original on Project Gutenberg, I'm quite impressed by how well I managed to capture the character's canon voice!) Possibly the first piece of fan-fiction I ever did, if you don't count things like "write an account of the events of 'Romeo and Juliet' in the form of a newspaper article showing a clear bias towards either the Montague or Capulet side".

The funny thing is that I have absolutely no recollection of ever having read the novel at all -- and I thought I remembered every book I ever knew. We must have studied it in some detail, for there are three or four references to it in that term's work! The other funny thing is that my rough notes contain the instruction to use 'fudge episode', and yet this particular episode doesn't seem to appear in the book at all...

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Nov 2nd

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Julia and Sallie and I have been having very earnest discussions about our New Year's resolutions — at least Julia has been stating hers and suggesting ours! Sallie and I meekly agreed with everything she said and then went away and decided on something different. Unluckily Julia found out and is very offended.( Read more... )