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

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Title: Harold, Complete
The Last Of The Saxon Kings

Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Release Date: October 21, 2006 [EBook #7684]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger

HAROLD

by Edward Bulwer Lytton

DEDICATORY EPISTLE
TO THE RIGHT HON. C. T. D'EYNCOURT, M.P.

I dedicate to you, my dear friend, a work, principally composed under
your hospitable roof; and to the materials of which your library, rich in
the authorities I most needed, largely contributed.

The idea of founding an historical romance on an event so important and
so national as the Norman Invasion, I had long entertained, and the
chronicles of that time had long been familiar to me. But it is an old
habit of mine, to linger over the plan and subject of a work, for years,
perhaps, before the work has, in truth, advanced a sentence; "busying
myself," as old Burton saith, "with this playing labour--otiosaque
diligentia ut vitarem torporen feriendi."

The main consideration which long withheld me from the task, was in my
sense of the unfamiliarity of the ordinary reader with the characters,
events, and, so to speak, with the very physiognomy of a period ante
Agamemnona; before the brilliant age of matured chivalry, which has given
to song and romance the deeds of the later knighthood, and the glorious
frenzy of the Crusades. The Norman Conquest was our Trojan War; an epoch
beyond which our learning seldom induces our imagination to ascend.

In venturing on ground so new to fiction, I saw before me the option of
apparent pedantry, in the obtrusion of such research as might carry the
reader along with the Author, fairly and truly into the real records of
the time; or of throwing aside pretensions to accuracy altogether;--and
so rest contented to turn history into flagrant romance, rather than
pursue my own conception of extracting its natural romance from the
actual history. Finally, not without some encouragement from you,
(whereof take your due share of blame!) I decided to ha