THE INNOCENTS
A STORY FOR LOVERS
BY
SINCLAIR LEWIS
author of
“the trail of the hawk”,
“the job” etc.
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Innocents
Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published October, 1917
F-R
A DEDICATORY INTRODUCTION
If this were a ponderous work of realism, such as the author has attempted to write, and will doubtless essay again, it would be perilous to dedicate it to the splendid assembly of young British writers, lest the critics search for Influences and Imitations. But since this is a flagrant excursion, a tale for people who still read Dickens and clip out spring poetry and love old people and children, it may safely confess the writer’s strident admiration for Compton Mackenzie, Hugh Walpole, Oliver Onions, D. H. Lawrence, J. D. Beresford, Gilbert Cannan, Patrick MacGill, and their peers, whose novels are the histories of our contemporaneous Golden Age. Nor may these be mentioned without a yet more enthusiastic tribute to their master and teacher (he probably abominates being called either a master or a teacher), H. G. Wells.