Ernest Maltravers

Ernest Maltravers

The Project Gutenberg EBook Ernest Maltravers, by Bulwer-Lytton,
Complete #77 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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Title: Ernest Maltravers, Complete
Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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MALTRAVERS, LYTTON, COMPLETE ***

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ERNEST MALTRAVERS
BY EDWARD BULWER LYTTON (Lord Lytton)

DEDICATION:
TO THE GREAT GERMAN PEOPLE, A race of thinkers and of critics;
A foreign but familiar audience, Profound in judgment, candid in
reproof, generous in appreciation, This work is dedicated By an English
Author.

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1840.
HOWEVER numerous the works of fiction with which, my dear
Reader, I have trespassed on your attention, I leave published but three,
of any account, in which the plot has been cast amidst the events, and
coloured by the manner, of our own times. The first of these, /Pelham/,
composed when I was little more than a boy, has the faults, and perhaps
the merits, natural to a very early age,--when the novelty itself of life

quickens the observation,--when we see distinctly, and represent
vividly, what lies upon the surface of the world,--and when, half
sympathising with the follies we satirise, there is a gusto in our
paintings which atones for their exaggeration. As we grow older we
observe less, we reflect more; and, like Frankenstein, we dissect in
order to create.
The second novel of the present day,* which, after an interval of some
years, I submitted to the world, was one I now, for the first time,
acknowledge, and which (revised and corrected) will be included in this
series, viz., /Godolphin/;--a work devoted to a particular portion of
society, and the development of a peculiar class of character. The third,
which I now reprint, is /Ernest Maltravers/,** the most mature, and, on
the whole, the most comprehensive of all that I have hitherto written.
* For /The Disowned/ is cast in the time of our grandfathers, and /The
Pilgrims of the Rhine/ had nothing to do with actual life, and is not,
therefore, to be called a novel.
** At the date of this preface /Night and Morning/ had not appeared.
For the original idea, which, with humility, I will venture to call the
philosophical design of a moral education or apprenticeship, I have left
it easy to be seen that I am indebted to Goethe's /Wilhelm Meister/. But,
in /Wilhelm Meister/, the apprenticeship is rather that of theoretical art.
In the more homely plan that I set before myself, the apprenticeship is
rather that of practical life. And, with this view, it has been especially
my study to avoid all those attractions lawful in romance, or tales of
pure humour or unbridled fancy, attractions that, in the language of
reviewers, are styled under the head of "most striking descriptions,"
"scenes of extraordinary power," etc.; and are derived from violent
contrasts and exaggerations pushed into caricature. It has been my aim
to subdue and tone down the persons introduced, and the general
agencies of the narrative, into the lights and shadows of life as it is. I do
not mean by "life as it is," the vulgar and the outward life alone, but life
in its spiritual and mystic as well as its more visible and fleshly
characteristics. The idea of not only describing, but developing
character under the ripening influences of time and circumstance, is not

confined to the apprenticeship of Maltravers alone, but pervades the
progress of Cesarini, Ferrers, and Alice Darvil.
The original conception of Alice is taken from real life--from a person I
never saw but twice, and then she was no longer young--but whose
history made on me a deep impression. Her early ignorance and
home--her first love--the