Pencillings by the Way / Written During Some Years of Residence and Travel in Europe

Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved. The author's use of accents was retained as printed.
BY N. PARKER WILLIS.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER, 124 GRAND STREET.
MDCCCLX.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by CHARLES SCRIBNER, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.
A word or two of necessary explanation, dear reader.
I had resided on the Continent for several years, and had been a year in England, without being suspected, I believe, in the societies in which I lived, of any habit of authorship. No production of mine had ever crossed the water, and my Letters to the New-York Mirror, were (for this long period, and I presumed would be forever), as far as European readers were concerned, an unimportant and easy secret. Within a few months of returning to this country, the Quarterly Review came out with a severe criticism on the Pencillings by the Way, published in the New-York Mirror. A London publisher immediately procured a broken set of this paper from an American resident there, and called on me with an offer of £300 for an immediate edition of what he had—rather less than one half of the Letters in this present volume. This chanced on the day before my marriage, and I left immediately for Paris—a literary friend most kindly undertaking to look over the proofs, and suppress what might annoy any one then living in London. The book was printed in three volumes, at about $7 per copy, and in this expensive shape three editions were sold by the original publisher. After his death a duodecimo edition was put forth, very beautifully illustrated; and this has been followed by a fifth edition lately published, with new embellishments, by Mr. Virtue. The only American edition (long ago out of print) was a literal copy of this imperfect and curtailed book.