The Secret Victory

The Secret Victory

You, who have read the three volumes of The Sensationalists in manuscript, place me under further obligation by allowing me to dedicate the third to you in commemoration of a friendship which has been long, intimate andto meunmatched. Though I acquit you of responsibility for shortcomings in anything that I have written, the tale of these shortcomings would have been far longer if I had not availed myself of your unfailing vigilance and ever-ready help, as I have profited by your sensitive criticism and sympathetic encouragement. The novel-trilogy is so little acclimatized to latter-day Georgian England that, though it may need no defence, it has provoked attacks from readers who will suffer all artistic forms but those which are offered to the public in his present majestys reign; I say no more in its apology than that it provides a convenient medium for a study in which the story-teller occupies, in succession, three different standpoints. In Lady Lilith, the emotion hunters and sensation-mongers who supply the drama of this trilogy are still practising their poses in mirrored and passionless detachment; in The Education of Eric Lane, artifice has grown to such strength that, in its contest with reality, the battlebetween antagonists no longer detached nor passionlessstands drawn; in The Secret Victory, a close contact with reality deflates the tumid pretensions of artifice and forces an amateur company of tragi-comedians into the revealing daylight of the open street. Even if it had been possible to present these three phases in a single volume, I should have been sorry to lose the interval which bridged the transition from one phase to another. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 48133
Author: McKenna, Stephen
Release Date: Feb 1, 2015
Format: eBook
Language: English