Produced by Elizabeth Trapaga, S. R. Ellison, William A. Pifer-Foote, Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team In earlier days a preface to a novel with no direct historical source always seemed to me somewhat out of place, since I believed that the author could be indebted solely to his own imagination. I have learned, however, that even in a novel _pur sang_ it is possible to owe much to others, and I now take the opportunity which the despised preface offers to pay my debt--inadequately it is true--to Mr. Hughes Massie, whose enthusiastic help in the launching of this, my first serious literary effort, I shall always hold in grateful remembrance.…
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