It has given me great pleasure that a new impression of my _History of Bohemian Literature_ should have been required. I am, I think, justified in believing that the British public now takes a certain though still limited interest in the literature and language of my country. I am also perhaps not wrong in thinking that the origin of the struggles in the Austro-Hungarian empire--almost entirely attributable as it is to racial and linguistic discord--has become better understood in England. As I show in my book, the revival of Bohemian literature was largely responsible for the movement in favour of Bohemian autonomy; and the early leaders of the Bohemian movement in the nineteenth century were mostly literary men. I am justified, therefore, in claiming a certain political importance for this book. The new impression on the whole differs little from the former one, and in revising the book I noticed with pleasure how few printer's errors required correction--a somewhat astonishing fact if we consider how difficult the spelling of Slavic words is. I have added considerably to the last pages of the book, which deal mainly with writers who are now alive. This part of the subject had been previously somewhat neglected, as I originally intended to omit all mention of living authors. LÜTZOW. ŽAMPACH, _October 26, 1906._ PREFACE With the approval of Mr. Gosse, I have written this short History of Bohemian Literature according to a plan that differs considerably from that of certain earlier volumes in this Series. The works of Modern English, French, Italian, and even of Ancient Greek and Spanish writers, will be known to many readers of the volumes that deal with them. Bohemian literature, on the other hand, is absolutely unknown in Western Europe, and a large amount of space has therefore been devoted to translated quotations from Bohemian writers. Many of these unknown works have great interest and value. Bohemian literature, as we possess it, is to a certain extent disappointing and unsatisfactory. In consequence of the wholesale destruction of everything written in Bohemian that continued during more than a century, countless Bohemian books, many of which are known to have been valuable, have disappeared. Many forms of literature are scarcely represented in Bohemian. No dramatic works worthy of notice exist before the present century. Poetry also is valuable only in the earliest period and in the present century.