The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Queen of Hearts, by Wilkie Collins

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Title: The Queen of Hearts

Author: Wilkie Collins

Last Updated: January 3, 2009
Posting Date: November 6, 2008 [EBook #1917]
Release Date: October, 1999

Language: English

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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUEEN OF HEARTS ***

Produced by James Rusk

THE QUEEN OF HEARTS

By Wilkie Collins

LETTER OF DEDICATION.

TO

EMILE FORGUES.

AT a time when French readers were altogether unaware of the existence
of any books of my writing, a critical examination of my novels appeared
under your signature in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. I read that
article, at the time of its appearance, with sincere pleasure and
sincere gratitude to the writer, and I have honestly done my best to
profit by it ever since.

At a later period, when arrangements were made for the publication of
my novels in Paris, you kindly undertook, at some sacrifice of your own
convenience, to give the first of the series--"The Dead Secret"--the
great advantage of being rendered into French by your pen. Your
excellent translation of "The Lighthouse" had already taught me how
to appreciate the value of your assistance; and when "The Dead Secret"
appeared in its French form, although I was sensibly gratified, I was by
no means surprised to find my fortunate work of fiction, not translated,
in the mechanical sense of the word, but transformed from a novel that
I had written in my language to a novel that you might have written in
yours.

I am now about to ask you to confer one more literary obligation on me
by accepting the dedication of this book, as the earliest acknowledgment
which it has been in my power to make of the debt I owe to my critic, to
my translator, and to my friend.

The stories which form the principal contents of the following pages
are all, more or less, exercises in that art which I have now studied
anxiously for some years, and which I still hope to cultivate, to
better and better purpose, for many more. Allow me, by inscribing the
collection to you, to secure one reader for it at the outset of its
progress through the world of letters w