London
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
MCMVII
First printed, May 1899.
New Edition, April 1907.
This Edition enjoys Copyright in all countries signatory to the Berne Treaty, and is not to be imported into the United States of America.
[FOREWORD TO NEW IMPRESSION]
It has given me great pleasure that a new impression of my History of Bohemian Literature should have been required. I am, I think, justified in believing that the British public now takes a certain though still limited interest in the literature and language of my country. I am also perhaps not wrong in thinking that the origin of the struggles in the Austro-Hungarian empire—almost entirely attributable as it is to racial and linguistic discord—has become better understood in England. As I show in my book, the revival of Bohemian literature was largely responsible for the movement in favour of Bohemian autonomy; and the early leaders of the Bohemian movement in the nineteenth century were mostly literary men. I am justified, therefore, in claiming a certain political importance for this book. The new impression on the whole differs little from the former one, and in revising the book I noticed with pleasure how few printer's errors required correction—a somewhat astonishing fact if we consider how difficult the spelling of Slavic words is. I have added considerably to the last pages of the book, which deal mainly with writers who are now alive. This part of the subject had been previously somewhat neglected, as I originally intended to omit all mention of living authors.
LÜTZOW.