May Gibbs was in a fever of emotion when she wrote this letter to her husband, having learnt that the Armistice ending the First World War was signed. ‘My little book [Snugglepot and Cuddlepie] is out,’ she writes towards the end of the first page. ‘I was excited about it, once — ages ago in the early days of November 1918. It is now as if I had never slaved for it — worried over it — shed tears because of it. Nothing matters — the war is over …’