TO AN OLD LADY IN YORKSHIRE.
You remember a time when the country in which this story is placed was quite different from what it is to-day; when the old proprietors lived in their halls undisturbed by modern innovation, and neither enriched by building leases, nor humiliated by the rivalry of mighty manufacturers. You have seen wonderful changes come to pass,—the valleys filled with towns, and the towns connected by railways, and the fields covered with suburban villas. You have seen people become richer and more refined, though perhaps less merry, than they used to be; till the simple, unpretending life of the poorer gentlefolks of the past has become an almost incredible tradition, which few have preserved in their memory.
When this story was first written, some passages of it were read to you, and they reminded you of those strong contrasts in the life of the North of England which are now so rapidly disappearing. Wenderholme is therefore associated with you in my mind as one of its first hearers, and I dedicate it to you affectionately.
PREFACE
TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.
It happened, some time before this story was originally composed, that the author had a conversation, about the sale of novels, with one of the most eminent publishers of fiction in London.[1] The result of his experience was, that in the peculiar conditions of the English market short novels did not pay, whilst long ones, of the same quality, were a much safer investment. Having incurred several successive losses on short novels, my friend, the publisher, had made up his mind never to have any thing more to do with them, and strongly recommended me, if I attempted a work of fiction, to go boldly into three volumes at once, and not discourage myself by making an experiment on a smaller scale, which would only make failure a certainty. The reader may easily imagine the effect of such a conversation as this upon an author who, whatever may have been his experience in other departments of literature, had none at all in the publication of novels. The practical consequence of it was, that, when the present story was written, commercial reasons prevailed, as they unhappily so often do prevail, over artistic reasons, and the book was made far longer than, as a work of art, it ought to have been.
The present edition, though greatly abridged, is not by any means, from the author's point of view, a mutilated edition. On the contrary, it rather resembles a building of moderate dimensions, from which excrescences have been removed. The architect has been careful to preserve every thing essential, and equally careful to take away every thing which had been added merely for the sake of size. The work is therefore at the present time much nearer in character to the original conception of the designer than it has ever been before.