Preface to
The Charles Dickens Edition
I REMARKED IN THE ORIGINAL PREFACE TO THIS BOOK
THAT I DID not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from it,
in the first sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with
the composure which this formal heading would seem to require. My
interest in it was so recent and strong, and my mind was so divided
between pleasure and regret—pleasure in the achievement of a long
design, regret in the separation from many companions—that I was in
danger of wearying the reader with personal confidences and private
emotions.
Besides which, all that I could have said of the
Story, to any purpose, I had endeavoured to say in it.
It would concern the reader little perhaps, to
know how sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two
years’ imaginative task; or how an Author feels as if he were
dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a
crowd of the creatures of his brain are going from him for ever.
Yet, I had nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess
(which might be of less moment still), that no one can ever believe
this Narrative, in the reading, more than I believed it in the
writing.
So true are these avowals at the present day that
I can now only take the reader into one confidence more. Of all my
books, I like this the best. It will be easily believed that I am a
fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever
love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond
parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favorite child. And his
name is DAVID COPPERFIELD.
1869