Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

On the matter of prefaces, Dickens sided with Henry Fielding. Be honest about what you have provided, Fielding wrote in his “Introduction” to Tom Jones (1750). Let customers peruse the “Bill of Fare,” and then make their decision. They will either “stay and regale” themselves with “the Entertainment” provided by the host, or they will depart elsewhere. In a variation of these words, Dickens stated a similar principle when he advised Richard Henry Horne on “the expediency of the preface” Horne had sent him. Don't undercut what you have written with an elaborate justification, Dickens urged. Discerning readers understand that an author or editor “makes a weak case when he writes to explain his writing” ( Letters 6: 636). The draft preface in question accompanied a volume of “Minor Poems” for which Horne failed to find a publisher. The advice Dickens gave, however, was sound. Provide too much by way of explanation, and a lengthy preface will take a book “by the throat and strangle it.” Of this, Dickens was “quite certain — absolutely sure” — in fact. Keep the preface short and let the contents of the volume “rest manfully and calmly” on what the work has to offer. Readers, like diners, will make their choice. This Companion offers a range of focal points posited on the assumption that factual and referential knowledge from many fields will enhance one's engagement with Dickens's ... log in or subscribe to read full text