The Project Gutenberg eBook, Vain Fortune, by George Moore

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Title: Vain Fortune

Author: George Moore

Release Date: February 26, 2004 [eBook #11303]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VAIN FORTUNE***

[Illustration: "She slipped on her knees, and burst into a passionate fit
of weeping."]

Vain Fortune

A Novel

By

George Moore

_With Five Illustrations By__Maurice Greiffenhagen_

New Edition

Completely Revised

London: Walter Scott, Ltd. Paternoster Square

1895

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty

Prefatory Note

I hope it will not seem presumptuous to ask my critics to treat this new
edition of _Vain Fortune_ as a new book: for it is a new book. The first
edition was kindly noticed, but it attracted little attention, and very
rightly, for the story as told therein was thin and insipid; and when
Messrs. Scribner proposed to print the book in America, I stipulated that I
should be allowed to rewrite it. They consented, and I began the story with
Emily Watson, making her the principal character instead of Hubert Price.
Some months after I received a letter from Madam Couperus, offering to
translate the English edition into Dutch. I sent her the American edition,
and asked her which she would prefer to translate from. Madam Couperus
replied that many things in the English edition, which she would like to
retain, had been omitted from the American edition, that the hundred or
more pages which I had written for the American edition seemed to her
equally worthy of retention.

She pointed out that, without the alteration of a sentence, the two
versions could be combined. The idea had not occurred to me; I saw,
however, that what she proposed was not only feasible but advantageous. I
wrote, therefore, giving her the required permission, and thanking her for
a suggestion which I should avail myself of when the time came for a new
English edition.

The union of the texts was no doubt accomplished by Madam Couperus, without
the alteration of a sentence; but no such accomplished editing is possible
to me; I am a victim to the disease of rewriting, a