When, in 1999, Rosalind Bleach discovered some forty letters from Henry James in a bureau that had belonged to her mother, she was naturally astonished. Her mother had never mentioned their existence. They were written to Mrs Ford, a friend and country neighbour whose name appears only occasionally in James's notebooks. As philip Horne writes, the fine old letters 'breathe an air of relaxed affection and intimate warmth that makes Henry James's Waistcoat a comfort to -- well, put on'. And the story they tell is framed by the editor's account of the mysterious way the letters came down to her.