WE were three quiet, lonely old men, and SHE was a lively, handsome young woman, and we were at our wits' end what to do with her. A word about ourselves, first of all - a necessary word, to explain the singular situation of our fair young guest. We are three brothers; and we live in a barbarous, dismal old house called The Glen Tower. Our place of abode stands in a hilly, lonesome district of South Wales. No such thing as a line of railway runs anywhere near us. No gentleman's seat is within an easy drive of us. We are at an unspeakably inconvenient distance from a town, and the village to which we send for our letters is three miles off.
Letter of Dedication
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 whose capacity for seeing all a writer's defects may be matched by many other critics, but whose rarer faculty of seeing all a writer's merits is equaled by very few.
Letter of Dedication
19/11/2017
The Queen of Hearts.Chapter i. Ourselves
19/11/2017
Chapter ii. Our Dilemma
19/11/2017
Chapter iii. Our Queen Of' Hearts
19/11/2017
Chapter iv. Our Grand Project
19/11/2017
The Ten Days. The First Day
19/11/2017
Brother Owen's Story
19/11/2017
The Second Day
19/11/2017
Brother Griffith's Story
19/11/2017
The Third Day
19/11/2017
Brother Morgan's Story Chapter i
19/11/2017
Chapter ii
19/11/2017
Chapter iii
19/11/2017
Chapter iv
19/11/2017
The Fourth Day
19/11/2017
Brother Griffith's Story Chapter i
19/11/2017
Chapter ii
19/11/2017
Chapter iii
19/11/2017
Chapter iv
19/11/2017
Chapter v
19/11/2017
Chapter vi
19/11/2017
The Fifth Day
19/11/2017
Brother Morgan's Story
19/11/2017
The Sixth Day
19/11/2017
Brother Griffith's Story
19/11/2017
The Seventh Day
19/11/2017
Brother Owen's Story Chapter i
19/11/2017
Chapter ii
19/11/2017
The Eighth Day
19/11/2017
Brother Griffith's Story
19/11/2017
Chapter ii
19/11/2017
Chapter iii
19/11/2017
Chapter iv
19/11/2017
Chapter v
19/11/2017
Chapter vi
19/11/2017
The Ninth Day
19/11/2017
Brother Morgan's Story
19/11/2017
Chapter ii
19/11/2017
The Tenth Day
19/11/2017
Brother Owen's Story
19/11/2017
Other books by Wilkie Collins
More