When your father's close friend is one of the best writers in English literature and the editor of his own journal, it would not be unreasonable to request a small leg-up for one's own fledgling career.Not if that friend is Charles Dickens. An 1860 letter from the author, unpublished until now, reveals one such would-be author was given short shrift after asking for advice, with Dickens berating her for having the temerity to bother him.The autographed note, described as "wonderfully rude", was sent from Dickens to Florence Marryat, the daughter of his friend, Captain Frederick Marryat, the author of Children of the New Forest. She had offered him a short story for consideration in his journal All The Year Round, asking for advice on any parts he felt did not work.Instead, she received a furious three-page missive, declaring the story entirely uninteresting and her request "scarcely reasonable".The letter has now emerged at auction and its contents revealed for the first time. It goes on sale at Bonhams on March 16 for an estimated £23000 (about R500000).In his note Dickens tells Marryat his sole objective at the journal is to elicit the best writing possible."I do not deem it suitable for my Journal. I do not think it is a good story. I think its leading incident is commonplace and one that would require for its support some special observation of character, strength of dialogue, or happiness of description."It is signed, with Dickens' unmistakable scrawl, in February 1860 when Marryat was in her 20s.She appears to have been unperturbed by the sharp rebuke, going on to write her first novel five years later - and 68 in total. ..