One hundred and five pieces, printed in 1913, but only a dozen dated later than 1902: some explanation of the discrepancy is owing to the kind patience of the subscribers won by the indulgent enthusiasm of the ‘only begetter’ of this belated edition, my friend Judge Edmunds: if no fit apology to him and them for tardiness to fulfil the promise given seven years since, it may serve other readers as a completion of the bibliography indicated in the preceding list. In 1897 appeared XXI POEMS TOWARDS THE SOURCE, 200 copies now dispersed, mainly by the author’s gift: the subtitle here covers seventeen poems of the original edition (one re-written) and thirteen others, of which ten were ready before the end of 1897. The poem LILITH, approached in 1897, begun in 1898, served as a focus for the grouping of certain early pieces (The Twilight of Disquietude) and for the generation of others: so grew the plan of THE BOOK OF LILITH. now THE FOREST OF NIGHT, a plan communicated in full to friends before the beginning of the century. Eight pieces of THE WANDERER appeared in 1902. Nothing, then, seemed to prevent the early completion of a book containing at least ninety-three of these pieces. There intervened what humanity is accustomed to call, with equal vagueness in either case, ‘Life,’ or the ‘circumstances’ which it likes to imagine as ‘beyond its control’ pendebant opera interrupta : the fault was the author’s. Interest came back slowly: much had to be reduced, torn down, rebuilt, much completed, much written that had not been as much as begun – and some was written as late as last June: the original plan has been carried out.
Three-fifths of this book is new to print: what has already appeared, in howsoever hidden fashion, finds due acknowledgment of favour in the table of contents. But onlv by names of periodicals: this page would not have discharged all its debt without mention of the name of A. G. Stephens and the hospitality which the author’s work found in the ‘Red Page’ of the Bulletin, under his editorship.
22 xii 1913
Chris Brennan 1914