I must confess, too, that I have more than once hesitated before the thought of trying to repay some fraction of my debt to you by offering you a book that was meant to be. It is just possible that it was not quite the kind of joy you intended them to give, for which of us is infallible? But it was joy all right. They have given me (in the midst of the vulgar and meaningless bustle of newspaper offices) joy. They have been springs of refreshment, loafings for the soul, eyes in the dark. Your books have been something more to me, in the last ten years, than books. Which of us does? But the thing’s done! Ecco! E finito! And such as it is, and for what it is worth, it is yours. You, who are so adept at the lovely polishing of every grave and lucent phrase, will realize the magnitude of the task which confronted me when I found, after spending ten years as a journalist, learning to say exactly what I meant in short sentences, that I must learn, if I was to achieve literature and favourable reviews, to write as though I were not quite sure about what I meant but was jolly well going to say something all the same in sentences as long as possible.įar be it from me to pretend that the following pages achieve what first burned in my mind with pure lambency ten years ago. The life of the journalist is poor, nasty, brutish and short. The effect of these locust years on my style (if I may lay claim to that lovely quality in the presence of a writer whose grave and lucid prose has permanently enriched our literature) has been perhaps even more serious. There are some things (like first love and one’s reviews) at which a woman in her middle years does not care to look too closely. I dare not think too much about it-even now.

God alone knows what the effect has been on my output of pure literature. But perhaps I may be permitted to take this opportunity of explaining to you, a little more fully than I have hitherto hinted, something of the disabilities under which I had laboured to produce the pages now open beneath your hand.Īs you know, I have spent some ten years of my creative life in the meaningless and vulgar bustle of newspaper offices.

You know (none better) the joys of the clean hearth and the rigour of the game.

It is with something more than the natural deference of a tyro at the loveliest, most arduous and perverse of the arts in the presence of a master-craftsman that I lay this book before you. TO ANTHONY POOKWORTHY, ESQ., A.B.S., L.L.R. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. This edition copyright 2018 Dead Authors Society.Īll rights reserved.

Cold comfort farm author