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

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Title: Falkland, Complete

Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Release Date: March 16, 2009 [EBook #7761]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FALKLAND, COMPLETE ***

Produced by David Widger

FALKLAND

By Edward Bulwer-Lytton

PREFATORY NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION.

"FALKLAND" is the earliest of Lord Lytton's prose fictions. Published
before "Pelham," it was written in the boyhood of its illustrious
author. In the maturity of his manhood and the fulness of his literary
popularity he withdrew it from print. This is one of the first English
editions of his collected works in which the tale reappears. It is
because the morality of it was condemned by his experienced judgment,
that the author of "Falkland" deliberately omitted it from each of the
numerous reprints of his novels and romances which were published in
England during his lifetime.

With the consent of the author's son, "Falkland" is included in the
present edition of his collected works.

In the first place, this work has been for many years, and still is,
accessible to English readers in every country except England. The
continental edition of it, published by Baron Tauchnitz, has a wide
circulation; and since for this reason the book cannot practically be
withheld from the public, it is thought desirable that the
publication of it should at least be accompanied by some record of the
abovementioned fact.

In the next place, the considerations which would naturally guide an
author of established reputation in the selection of early compositions
for subsequent republication, are obviously inapplicable to the
preparation of a posthumous standard edition of his collected works.
Those who read the tale of "Falkland" eight-and-forty years ago' have
long survived the age when character is influenced by the literature of
sentiment. The readers to whom it is now presented are not Lord Lytton's
contemporaries; they are his posterity. To them his works have already
become classical. It is only upon the minds of the young that the works
of sentiment have any