E-text prepared by Al Haines Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 20918-h.htm or 20918-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/9/1/20918/20918-h/20918-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/9/1/20918/20918-h.zip) Transcriber's note: The volume from which this e-book was created contained two books, _Auld Licht Idylls_ and _Better Dead_. The Introduction discusses both. The Novels, Tales and Sketches of J. M. Barrie AULD LICHT IDYLLS [Frontispiece: Photograph of J. M. Barrie] Published in New York by Charles Scribner's Sons 1896 Author's Edition Copyright, 1896, by Charles Scribner's Sons. TO FREDERICK GREENWOOD INTRODUCTION This is the only American edition of my books produced with my sanction, and I have special reasons for thanking Messrs. Scribner for its publication; they let it be seen, by this edition, what are my books, for I know not how many volumes purporting to be by me, are in circulation in America which are no books of mine. I have seen several of these, bearing such titles as "Two of Them," "An Auld Licht Manse," "A Tillyloss Scandal," and some of them announce themselves as author's editions, or published by arrangement with the author. They consist of scraps collected and published without my knowledge, and I entirely disown them. I have written no books save those that appear in this edition. I am asked to write a few lines on the front page of each of these volumes, to say something, as I take it, about how they came into being. Well, they were written mainly to please one woman who is now dead, but as I am writing a little book about my mother I shall say no more of her here. Many of the chapters in "Auld Licht Idylls" first appeared in a different form in the _St. James's Gazette_, and there is little doubt that they would never have appeared anywhere but for the encouragement given to me by the editor of that paper. It was pressure from him that induced me to write a second "Idyll" and a third after I thought the first completed the picture, he set me thinking seriously of these people, and though he knew nothing of them himself, may be said to have led me back to them. It seems odd, and yet I am not the first nor the fiftieth who has left Thrums at sunrise to seek the life-work that was all the time awaiting him at home. And we seldom sally forth a second time. I had always meant to be a novelist, but London, I thought, was the quarry.