The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Caxtons, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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Title: The Caxtons, Complete

Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Last Updated: March 15, 2009
Release Date: October 20, 2006 [EBook #7605]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAXTONS, COMPLETE ***

Produced by Pat Castevens and David Widger

THE CAXTONS

(Complete)

A FAMILY PICTURE

By Edward Bulwer Lytton

(Lord Lytton)

PREFACE.

If it be the good fortune of this work to possess any interest for the
Novel reader, that interest, perhaps, will be but little derived from
the customary elements of fiction. The plot is extremely slight, the
incidents are few, and with the exception of those which involve the
fate of Vivian, such as may be found in the records of ordinary life.

Regarded as a Novel, this attempt is an experiment somewhat apart from
the previous works of the author. It is the first of his writings in
which Humor has been employed, less for the purpose of satire than in
illustration of amiable characters; it is the first, too, in which man
has been viewed, less in his active relations with the world, than in
his repose at his own hearth,--in a word, the greater part of the canvas
has been devoted to the completion of a simple Family Picture. And thus,
in any appeal to the sympathies of the human heart, the common household
affections occupy the place of those livelier or larger passions
which usually (and not unjustly) arrogate the foreground in Romantic
composition.

In the Hero whose autobiography connects the different characters and
events of the work, it has been the Author's intention to imply the
influences of Home upon the conduct and career of youth; and in the
ambition which estranges Pisistratus for a time from the sedentary
occupations in which the man of civilized life must usually serve his
apprenticeship to Fortune or to Fame, it is not designed to describe
the fever of Genius conscious of superior powers and aspiring to high
destinies, but the natural tendencies of a fresh and buoyant mind,
rather vigorous than contemplative, and in which the desire of action is
but the s