PREFATORY NOTE
226 Words
PREFATORY NOTEThe following story, the first published by the author, was
written nineteen years ago, at a time when he was feeling his way
to a method. The principles observed in its composition are, no
doubt, too exclusively those in which mystery, entanglement,
surprise, and moral obliquity are depended on for exciting
interest; but some of the scenes, and at least one of the
characters, have been deemed not unworthy of a little longer
preservation; and as they could hardly be reproduced in a
fragmentary form the novel is reissued complete—the more readily
that it has for some considerable time been reprinted and widely
circulated in America. January 1889.
To the foregoing note I have only to add that, in the present
edition of 'Desperate Remedies,' some Wessex towns and other places
that are common to the scenes of several of these stories have been
called for the first time by the names under which they appear
elsewhere, for the satisfaction of any reader who may care for
consistency in such matters.
This is the only material change; for, as it happened that
certain characteristics which provoked most discussion in my latest
story were present in this my first—published in 1871, when there
was no French name for them it has seemed best to let them stand
unaltered.
T.H. February 1896.
Chapter 1
THE EVENTS OF THIRTY YEARS
- Writer
