An alternative course now lay before me: to revise my own book, with the help of the material furnished by the authorised _Life and Letters_, or to take in hand an English translation of the latter. The first would have been the less arduous and exacting task; on the other hand, there was no doubt in my mind as to the greater value and importance of Modeste Tchaikovsky’s work. The simplest--and in many ways most satisfactory--course seemed at first to be the translation of the Russian edition in its entirety. Closer examination, however, revealed the fact that out of the 3,000 letters included in this book a large proportion were addressed to persons quite unknown to the English and American publics; while at the same time it contained a mass of minute and almost _local_ particulars which could have very little significance for readers unversed in every detail of Russian musical life. Another practical question confronted me. What publisher would venture upon launching this biographical three-decker, with its freight of 3,000 letters, amounting to nearly 2,000 pages of closely printed matter? Such colossal biographies, however valuable as sources of information to the specialist, are quite beyond all possibility of purchase or perusal by the general public. That the author himself realised this, seems evident from the fact that the German edition was lightened of about a third of the original contents. Following the lines of these authorised abridgments, while using my own judgment as to the retention of some portions of the Russian text omitted in the German edition, I have condensed the work still further. It may be true, as Carlyle has said, that mankind takes “an unspeakable delight in biography”; but it is equally certain that these “headlong days” which have witnessed the extinction of the three-volume novel are absolutely unfavourable to the success of the three-volume biography. While admiring the patient and pious industry which has raised so colossal a monument to Tchaikovsky’s memory, I cannot but feel that it would be unreasonable to expect of any nation but his own a hero-worship so devout that it could assimilate a _Tchaikovskiad_ of such prodigious dimensions. The present volume is the result of a careful selection of material. The leading idea which I have kept in view throughout the fulfilment of my task has been to preserve as far as possible the _autobiographical_ character of the book. Wherever feasible, I have preferred to let Tchaikovsky himself tell the story of his life. For this reason the proportion of letters to the additional biographical matter is even greater in my version than in the German edition. When two or three letters of only moderate interest have followed in immediate succession, I have frequently condensed their contents into a single paragraph, keeping as closely as possible to the phraseology of the composer himself.