« It is no little satisfaction to me to find that within nine months of the First
Issue of the
Life and adventures of Dick Diminy
, a new and more extended edition should be found necessary. It is also a great satisfaction
to me to be in a position to state, that, as far as I have seen, there has been no
adverse notice of the book, but that, on the contrary, there has been a singular unanimity
of opinion as to its merits. All the notices that I have seen, have paid me the gratifying
compliment of saying, that my drawings are true to nature, and that I have not fallen
into the sin of exaggeration. I look upon this as the highest possible praise.
I entertain the hope that this New Edition will find its way into a very extended
and new circle of readers, because, as I have already said, I have not addressed myself
to ’a class, as upon the first view might appear, but to all who seek amusement and
instruction in the pages of fiction. All works of fiction are class works : they are
intended to depict the characteristics of a class, and in that is to be found their
attraction.
In writing the following pages, my ambition has been to obtain the attention of readers
who have little interest in, or sympathy with, the sports of the Turf; and I have
impressed myself with the conviction that, if they be worth reading at all (and that
they are so, the fact of this edition may be taken as evidence), they will be more
interesting to the general reader than to the frequenter of Tattersall’s and the Racecourse,
Indeed I have been told, in many of the favourable notices to which I have referred,
that the Turf presents strongly marked characters, ready made to the hand of the writer
of fiction. I have seized upon those characters, and I have endeavoured to make them-speak
for themselves; and I think I may assert that I have introduced no word, portrayed
no scene, and advanced no principle, which could be objeetionable even to the most
fastidious; and the verdict that I hope and anticipate at the hands of the impartial
reader is, that I have succeeded in adorning my tale with a good and pointed moral.
» Présentation de l’éditeur (1855)