Morris Harvey did not, perhaps, have great expectations, but surely he did not expect quite the response he got when, in 1941, he sent a poem he had written to George Bernard Shaw for a reaction. “It does not amount to poetry,” wrote back Shaw, adding “anyone with a literary turn and a good ear could manufacture it by the mile.” Shaw advised Harvey, “Find a woman willing and able to keep you as a household pet on the chance of your proving a genius.” As a Guardian story by Maev Kennedy reports, the previously unpublished letter has been put up for auction by an anonymous person.