We have now given a most careful consideration to the question of publishing your larger work on Ceylon, in addition to that on which we are now engaged. We have received from Messrs Cassell Petter & Galpin the very beautiful sketches and photographs with which you propose to illustrate the work, but we regret to say that the cost of producing it in a manner at all adequate to your wishes would be so extremely large, while its prospects of a sale at all immensurate to that which would be needed in order to pay the expenses are so uncertain, that we are unable to risk it. We doubt very much whether you are at all likely to find that, on the scale you propose, the work can be taken up in England. If, however, your German Publishers like to consider the question of a work with a far smaller number of || illustrations we shall be very happy again to consider the question though we are bound to say we are by no means certain that your present book and the large work of Sir Emerson Tennent may not be as much as even the English public, no doubt more interested in Ceylon than the German, may desire.
We are dear Sir,
Yours faithfully
Kegan Paul, Trench & Co
P.S. We retain the drawings and photographs here, until we receive your instructions what to do with them.
