The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Coast of Bohemia, by William Dean Howells

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Title: The Coast of Bohemia

Author: William Dean Howells

Release Date: August 10, 2007 [EBook #22297]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE COAST OF BOHEMIA

By W. D. Howells

Biographical Edition

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
1899

Copyright, 1893, 1899, by WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.

_All rights reserved._

INTRODUCTORY SKETCH.

In one of the old-fashioned books for children there was a story of the
adventures of a cent (or perhaps that coin of older lineage, a penny)
told by itself, which came into my mind when the publishers suggested
that the readers of a new edition of this book might like to know how
it happened to be written. I promptly fancied the book speaking, and
taking upon itself the burden of autobiography, which we none of us
find very heavy; and no sooner had I done so than I began actually to
hear from it in a narrative of much greater distinctness than I could
have supplied for it.

"You must surely remember," it protested to my forgetfulness, "that you
first thought of me in anything like definite shape as you stood
looking on at the trotting-races of a county fair in Northern Ohio, and
that I began to gather color and character while you loitered through
the art-building, and dwelt with pitying interest upon the forlorn,
unpromising exhibits there.

"But previous to this, my motive existed somewhere in that nebulous
fore-life where both men and books have their impalpable beginning; for
even you cannot have forgotten that when a certain passionately
enterprising young editor asked you for a novel to be printed in his
journal, you so far imagined me as to say that I would be about a girl.
When you looked over those hapless works of art at the Pymantoning
County Fair, you thought, 'What a good thing it would be to have a n