A great success, it sold around half a million copies during the twentieth century and has been adapted for film, television, and as both a stage play and a musical.

He invites Alfred to accompany him to a reception hosted by the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII), introducing Salteena as Lord Hyssops.

Many years later, in 1917 and aged 36, Ashford rediscovered her manuscript languishing in a drawer, and lent it to Margaret Mackenzie, a friend who was recovering from influenza.

[2] A stage play of The Young Visiters by Mrs George Norman and Margaret Mackenzie was first performed in London in 1920 and transferred shortly afterwards to New York.

One reviewer stated that The Young Visiters ... has been turned into a play by the simple use of a pair of shears and a pot of paste.

[4]A two-act musical comedy version, Quite a Young Girl by Alicen White, Martha D Coe and Peter Colonna, was written in 1960.

A television film version was made by the BBC in 2003 starring Jim Broadbent as Alfred Salteena, Lyndsey Marshal as Ethel Monticue and Hugh Laurie as Lord Bernard Clark.

[7] Evelyn Waugh mentions the book in his novel A Handful of Dust (1934) as part of the childhood reading of his hero Tony Last.