endezvous and place of
depot and exchange as the Leipsic fair presents to the dispersed
members of the publishing body. By means of this fair (which is held
half-yearly--at Easter and Michaelmas) a connexion is established
between the remotest points of the German continent--which, in a
literary[1] sense, comprehends many parts of Europe that politically
are wholly distinct from Germany. The publishers of Vienna, Trieste,
and Munich, here meet with those of Hamburgh and Dresden, of Berlin and
Koenigsburg: Copenhagen and Stockholm send their representatives: and
the booksellers of Warsaw and even of Moscow are brought into direct
contact with the agents of the foreign booksellers in London.

Hence, as may be supposed, it is an object of much importance that all
books, which found any part of their interest upon their novelty,
should be brought out at this time: and something or other is generally
looked for from the pen of every popular writer as a means of giving
zest and seasoning to the heavy Mess-Catalog. If it happens therefore
upon any account that an author fails to meet these expectations of the
Leipsic fair,--obliging persons are often at hand who step forward as
his proxy by forging something in his name. This pleasant hoax it was
at length judged convenient to practise upon the author of Waverley;
the Easter fair offering a favourable opportunity for such an attempt,
from the circumstance of there being just then no acknowledged novel in
the market from the pen of that writer which was sufficiently recent to
gratify the wishes of the fair or to throw suspicion upon the
pretensions of the hoaxer. These pretensions, it is asserted, for some
time passed unquestioned; and the good people of Germany, as we are
assured, were universally duped. A work, produced to the German public
and circulated with success under such assumptions, must naturally
excite some curiosity in this country; to gratify which it has been
judged proper to translate it.

It may be as well to add that the name "_Walladmor_" is accented upon
the first syllable, and _not_ upon the penultimate, by the German
author; who may reasonably be allowed to dictate the pronunciation of
names invented by himself.

FOOTNOTE TO "ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER":

[Footnote 1: Many literary men of Russia, Denmark, &c write
indifferently in their native or the German languages.]

DEDICATION