The Project Gutenberg EBook of Miss Bretherton, by Mrs. Humphry Ward

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Title: Miss Bretherton

Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward

Release Date: September 11, 2004 [EBook #13432]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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MISS BRETHERTON

BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

1888

PREFATORY NOTE

It ought to be stated that the account of the play _Elvira_, given in
Chapter VII. of the present story, is based upon an existing play, the
work of a little known writer of the Romantic time, whose short,
brilliant life came to a tragical end in 1836.

M. A. W.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

So many criticisms, not of a literary but of a personal kind, have been
made on this little book since its appearance, that I may perhaps be
allowed a few words of answer to them in the shape of a short preface to
this new edition. It has been supposed that because the book describes a
London world, which is a central and conspicuous world with interests and
activities of a public and prominent kind, therefore all the characters
in it are drawn from real persons who may be identified if the seeker is
only clever enough. This charge of portraiture is constantly brought
against the novelist, and it is always a difficult one to meet; but one
may begin by pointing out that, in general, it implies a radical
misconception of the story-teller's methods of procedure. An idea, a
situation, is suggested to him by real life, he takes traits and
peculiarities from this or that person whom he has known or seen, but
this is all. When he comes to write--unless, of course, it is a case of
malice and bad faith--the mere necessities of an imaginative effort
oblige him to cut himself adrift from reality. His characters become to
him the creatures of a dream, as vivid often as his waking life, but
still a dream. And the only portraits he is drawing are portraits of
phantoms, of which the germs were present in reality, but to