Mary, Mary

INTRODUCTION BY PADRAIC COLUM
BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Printed in the United States of America
1912, BY SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY (INCORPORATED)
BETHEL SOLOMONS, M.B.

If any of James Stephens' books might be thought to have need of an Introduction it would be the delightful story that is called Mary, Mary on one side of the Atlantic Ocean and The Charwoman's Daughter on the other. It was written in 1910, when the author was known as the poet of Insurrections and the writer of a few of the mordant studies that belong to a later book, Here Are Ladies.
In 1911 four people came together to establish The Irish Review. They were David Houston, Thomas MacDonagh, James Stephens and the present writer. James Stephens mentioned that he could hand over some stuff for publication. The stuff was the book in hand. It came out as a serial in the second number with the title Mary, A Story, ran for a twelvemonth and did much to make the fortune (if a review that perished after a career of four years ever had its fortune made) of The Irish Review.
From the publication of its first chapters the appeal of Mary was felt in two or three countries. Mary Makebelieve was not just a fictional heroine—she was Cinderella and Snow-white and all the maidens of tradition for whom the name of heroine is big and burthensome. With the first words of the story James Stephens put us into the attitude of listeners to the household tale of folk-lore. Mary, Mary is the simplest of stories: a girl sees this and that, meets a Great Creature who makes advances to her, is humiliated, finds a young champion and comes into her fortune—that is all there is to it as a story. But is it not enough to go with Mary to Stephens' Green and watch the young ducks pick up nothing with the greatest eagerness and swallow it with the greatest delight, and after that to notice that the ring priced One Hundred Pounds has been taken from the Jewellers' window, and then stand outside the theatre with her and her mother and make up with them the story of the plays from the pictures on the posters?—plays of mystery and imagination they must have surely been.