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Jezebel's Daughter

by Wilkie Collins

Pages
about 366
Category
Literature & Fiction
Language
English
Reading time
6.7 h at 250 wpm
Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 3.7 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

Let me begin by informing you, that this new novel does not present the proposed sequel to my last work of fiction--"The Fallen Leaves."

The first part of that story has, through circumstances connected with the various forms of publications adopted thus far, addressed itself to a comparatively limited class of readers in England. When the book is finally reprinted in its cheapest form--then, and then only, it will appeal to the great audience of the English people. I am waiting for that time, to complete my design by writing the second part of "The Fallen Leaves."

Your knowledge of English Literature--to which I am indebted for the first faithful and intelligent translation of my novels into the Italian language--has long since informed you, that there are certain important social topics which are held to be forbidden to the English novelist (no matter how seriously and how delicately he may treat them), by a narrow-minded minority of readers, and by the critics who flatter their prejudices. You also know, having done me the honor to read my books, that I respect my art far too sincerely to permit limits to be wantonly assigned to it, which are imposed in no other civilized country on the face of the earth. When my work is undertaken with a pure purpose, I claim the same liberty which is accorded to a writer in a newspaper, or to a clergyman in a pulpit; knowing, by previous experience, that the increase of readers and the lapse of time will assuredly do me justice, if I have only written well enough to deserve it.

In the prejudiced quarters to which I have alluded, one of the characters in "The Fallen Leaves" offended susceptibilities of the sort felt by Tartuffe, when he took out his handkerchief, and requested Dorine to cover her bosom.

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