“I WAS MUCH amused at your final paragraph in The Critic of last week” (April 8), writes Anna Katharine Green, from Brooklyn, “especially as I rather pride myself on the clearness of my writing and the general appearance of my MS. I do write with a lead-pencil now, but if I am not much mistaken ‘The Leavenworth Case’ was written in ink. As to the paper employed I will say nothing, for I am well aware that it was of all sizes, shapes and colors. The reason for this is, however, easily explained. The chapters of this my first novel were re-written so many times, that the paper with which I started soon gave out, and as during the two years it took me to complete this work, I travelled from place to place, I naturally renewed my stock from different dealers, with the result alluded to. I do not exaggerate when I say that when I had finished this book I had left on my hands a large drawer-full of paper closely written over with words I thought unworthy of publication. Such was the labor I expended over ‘The Leavenworth Case.’ In face of this fact I could not but marvel over a statement made a few days since in the New York Herald. In criticising the play which I have made out of this story, it said that the book was written spontaneously while the dramatization had been the result of much thought and labor. You see how spontaneously the book was written, while the play—well if ever anything gushed from the brain without pause or hindrance, it was that play. I thought for two years over its construction, but when once I sat down to work, it was as if the words were put in my mouth, I could not utter them fast enough. I say ‘utter,’ because they were dictated by me to my husband. It is the only instance in which I have been able to dictate anything.”