Letters from the Little Blue Room: An Intimate Portrait of World War I

"A new and unique voice and an important addition to the canon of literature of the First World War." – Prof. Angela K. Smith, author of Women's Writing of the First World War

A 'lost' women's classic from World War I - discovered in the rare books room of the British Library, last seen in 1917!

A Scottish woman sends funny, moving, compassionate and rousing letters to her younger brother, set to fight with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the trenches of WWI. Dunfermline, her hometown and the base for the Scottish regiment The Black Watch, morphs into an active home front.

Letter by letter we watch the war unfolding. Her brother trains with his cavalry regiment on England’s Salisbury Plain and moves to frontline duty in France. Shocked by the war and those who inflame it, the sister’s letters are frank and also encouraging. Others are vanishing. She needs her brother, her young Canadian, to survive. Complete with an introduction, a closing biography, and original photographs of the author and the period.

Daisy Thomson Gigg (1885-1953) was born in Brooklyn, New York . At the age of four she moved to Scotland with her Scottish family, settling in the town of Dunfermline. Letters from the Little Blue Room was her first book, published anonymously in . 1916, followed by a book of short stories, The Call. Styling herself 'a fiction writer' she emigrated back to the USA in 1921. Marrying a fellow novelist and farmer she settled in Penrose, Colorado, where she continued writing stories and being active in the suffragette movement.