Peter Binney: A Novel

ARCHIBALD MARSHALL
NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1921
PUBLISHED 1921 IN U. S. A. BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
First Printing, September, 1921 Second Printing, October, 1921 Third Printing, December, 1921 Fourth Printing, January, 1922
PRINTED IN THE USA BY The Quinn & Boden Company BOOK MANUFACTURERS RAHWAY NEW JERSEY
TO E. F. BENSON
INTRODUCTION
It is over twenty years since Peter Binney was first published in England, and I should be unwilling to offer it to my American readers at this time of day without some plea for leniency towards a young man's book, which contains perhaps more than the average number of crudities to be found in such beginnings. A few of the crudities I have been able to soften, but if you begin tampering with early work in the light of maturer knowledge, you are very apt to rub off the bloom that attaches to it just because it is early work, written with spirit and freshness, though with little skill. So I have left Peter Binney much as it was, with most of its imperfections on its head, and I trust some compensating merits.
One merit I know it to possess. It presents a picture of the lighter side of undergraduate life as it was in Oxford and Cambridge, and as it still exists, in spite of superficial changes; and that is something that can only be done by a young man, whose memories are still fresh, and to whom that life is still important enough to make it the basis of a story.
New York, July, 1921
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