A second article on the same subject as the one just referred to
appeared in the Press shortly after the first, but I have no copy. It
treated Machines from a different point of view, and was the basis of
pp. 270-274 of the present edition of “Erewhon.”[1] This view
ultimately led me to the theory I put forward in “Life and Habit,”
published in November 1877. I have put a bare outline of this theory
(which I believe to be quite sound) into the mouth of an Erewhonian
philosopher in Chapter XXVII. of this book.
In 1865 I rewrote and enlarged “Darwin among the Machines” for the
Reasoner, a paper published in London by Mr. G. J. Holyoake. It
appeared July 1, 1865, under the heading, “The Mechanical Creation,”
and can be seen in the British Museum. I again rewrote and enlarged it,
till it assumed the form in which it appeared in the first edition of
“Erewhon.”
The next part of “Erewhon” that I wrote was the “World of the Unborn,”
a preliminary form of which was sent to Mr. Holyoake’s paper, but as I
cannot find it among those copies of the Reasoner that are in the
British Museum, I conclude that it was not accepted. I have, however,
rather a strong fancy that it appeared in some London paper of the same
character as the Reasoner, not very long after July 1, 1865, but I have
no copy.
I also wrote about this time the substance of what ultimately became
the Musical Banks, and the trial of a man for being in a consumption.
These four detached papers were, I believe, all that was written of
“Erewhon” before 1870. Between 1865 and 1870 I wrote hardly anything,
being hopeful of attaining that success as a painter which it has not
been vouchsafed me to attain, but in the autumn of 1870, just as I was
beginning to get occasionally hung at Royal Academy exhibitions, my
friend, the late Sir F. N. (then Mr.) Broome, suggested to me that I
should add somewhat to the articles I had already written, and string
them together into a book. I was rather fired by the idea, but as I
only worked at the MS. on Sundays it was some months before I had
completed it.
I see from my second Preface that I took the book to Messrs. Chapman &
Hall May 1, 1871, and on their rejection of it, under the advice of one
who has attained the highest rank among living writers, I let it sleep,
till I took it to Mr. Trübner early in 1872. As regards its rejection
by Messrs. Chapman & Hall, I believe their reader advised them quite
wisely. They told me he reported that it was a philosophical work,
little likely to be popular with a large circle of readers. I hope that
if I had been their reader, and the book had been submitted to myself,
I should have advised them to the same effect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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