THE ENGLISH NOVEL From the Earliest Days to the Death of Joseph Conrad by FORD MADOX FORD LONDON CONSTABLE & CO. 1930 PUBLISHED BY _Constable & Company Limited_ _London W. C. 2_ BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS LEIPZIG _Oxford University Press_ Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London AUTHOR’S APOLOGY To Hugh Walpole. MY DEAR WALPOLE,-- This little book was intended at the time it was written solely for the consumption of students in the United States at a time when I had arrived at a decision to publish nothing more in the country of my birth. A curious set of circumstances all happening on the same day have made me change my decision, at least as to this book. In the first place I received in the morning the present publisher’s offer to publish the book; in the afternoon some kindly person gave me a copy of the _New York Herald’s_ Literary Supplement containing your far too eulogistic references to myself; and in the evening a Rhodes Scholar from one of the Oxford Colleges told me that in that place of education typewritten and then mimeographed copies of this work were--the book being unobtainable in England--being used by certain students as a textbook in their English classes. They were all, I understand, Rhodes Scholars. I had by that time turned down the publisher’s offer. Indeed, I had thought that the publisher must be mad, for he must be as aware as I that a good average of English readers of my works has for many years been about four hundred. I do not mean to say that that is all that English editions of my books have sold, for there is a fashion in the United States of ordering the first editions (which are generally the London ones) of certain authors, those including my fortunate self. And the first edition of this book has appeared so long ago in the United States that that sale must be lost. But the thought of all those Rhodes Scholars having to take that trouble made me wish to make the matter easier for their devoted selves, and the reading of your words coming on top of so many generosities of yours towards me as writer made me determine to manifest some sense of my real gratitude towards yourself. And how could I do it better than by addressing to you a work, however small, on the subject of an art that you have for so long, so steadfastly, and so unswervingly pursued?