I hope it will not seem presumptuous to ask my critics to treat this new
edition of _Vain Fortune_ as a new book: for it is a new book. The first
edition was kindly noticed, but it attracted little attention, and very
rightly, for the story as told therein was thin and insipid; and when
Messrs. Scribner proposed to print the book in America, I stipulated that I
should be allowed to rewrite it. They consented, and I began the story with
Emily Watson, making her the principal character instead of Hubert Price.
Some months after I received a letter from Madam Couperus, offering to
translate the English edition into Dutch. I sent her the American edition,
and asked her which she would prefer to translate from. Madam Couperus
replied that many things in the English edition, which she would like to
retain, had been omitted from the American edition, that the hundred or
more pages which I had written for the American edition seemed to her
equally worthy of retention.
She pointed out that, without the alteration of a sentence, the two
versions could be combined. The idea had not occurred to me; I saw,
however, that what she proposed was not only feasible but advantageous. I
wrote, therefore, giving her the required permission, and thanking her for
a suggestion which I should avail myself of when the time came for a new
English edition.
The union of the texts was no doubt accomplished by Madam Couperus, without
the alteration of a sentence; but no such accomplished editing is possible
to me; I am a victim to the disease of rewriting, and the inclusion of the
hundred or more pages of new matter written for the American edition led me
into a third revision of the story. But no more than in the second has the
skeleton, or the attitude of the skeleton been altered in this third
version, only flesh and muscle have been added, and, I think, a little
life. _Vain Fortune_, even in its present form, is probably not my best
book, but it certainly is far from being my worst. But my opinion regarding
my own work is of no value; I do not write this Prefatory Note to express
it, but to ask my critics and my readers to forget the original _Vain
Fortune_, and to read this new book as if it were issued under another
title.