Project Gutenberg's The Parisians, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Parisians, Complete

Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Release Date: March 16, 2009 [EBook #7749]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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

Produced by David Widger

THE PARISIANS

By Edward Bulwer-Lytton

PREFATORY NOTE. (BY THE AUTHOR'S SON.)

"The Parisians" and "Kenelm Chillingly" were begun about the same time,
and had their common origin in the same central idea. That idea first
found fantastic expression in "The Coming Race;" and the three books,
taken together, constitute a special group, distinctly apart from all
the other works of their author.

The satire of his earlier novels is a protest against false social
respectabilities; the humour of his later ones is a protest against the
disrespect of social realities. By the first he sought to promote social
sincerity and the free play of personal character; by the last, to
encourage mutual charity and sympathy amongst all classes, on whose
interrelation depends the character of society itself. But in these
three books, his latest fictions, the moral purpose is more definite and
exclusive. Each of them is an expostulation against what seemed to him
the perilous popularity of certain social and political theories, or a
warning against the influence of certain intellectual tendencies upon
individual character and national life. This purpose, however, though
common to the three fictions, is worked out in each of them by a
different method. "The Coming Race" is a work of pure fancy, and the
satire of it is vague and sportive. The outlines of a definite purpose
are more distinctly drawn in "Chillingly,"--a romance which has the
source of its effect in a highly wrought imagination. The humour and
pathos of "Chillingly" are of a kind incompatible with the design of
"The Parisians," which is a work of dramatized observation. "Chillingly"
is a romance; "The Parisians" is a novel. The subject of "Chillingly" is
psychological; that of "The Parisians" is social. The author's object in
"Chillingly" being to illustrate the effects of "mod