Memoirs of My Dead Life

Memoirs of My Dead Life

[The APOLOGIA which follows needs, perhaps, a word of explanation, not to clear up Mr. Moore's text--that is as delightful, as irrelevantly definite, as paradoxically clear as anything this present wearer of the Ermine of English Literature has ever written--but to explain why it was written and why it is published. When the present publisher, who is hereinafter, in the words of Schopenhauer, "flattened against the wall of the Wisdom of the East," first read and signified his pride in being able to publish these "Memoirs," the passages now consigned to "the late Lord ----'s library" were not in the manuscript. On the arrival of the final copy they were discovered, and thereby hangs an amusing tale, consisting of a series of letters which, in so far as they were written with a certain caustic, humorous Irish pen, have taken their high place among the "Curiosities of Literature." The upshot of the matter was that the publisher, entangled in the "weeds" brought over by his Mayflower ancestors, found himself as against the author in the position of Mr. Coote as against Shakespeare; that is, the matter was so beautifully written that he had not the heart to decline it, and yet in parts so--what shall we say?--so full of the "Wisdom of the East" that he did not dare to publish it in the West. Whereupon he adopted the policy of Mr. Henry Clay, which is, no doubt, always a mistake. And the author, bearing in mind the make-up of that race of Man called publishers, gave way on condition that this APOLOGIA should appear without change. Here it is, without so much as the alteration of an Ibsen comma, and if the Mayflower "weeds" mere instrumental in calling it forth, then it is, after all, well that they grew.--THE PUBLISHER.] ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 7789
Author: Moore, George
Release Date: Mar 1, 2005
Format: eBook
Language: English