The Parisians

The Parisians

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Title: The Parisians, Complete
Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Release Date: March 2005 [EBook #7749] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on May 20, 2003]
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THE PARISIANS
By Edward Bulwer-Lytton

PREFATORY NOTE.
(BY THE AUTHOR'S SON.)
"The Parisians" and "Kenelm Chillingly" were begun about the same
time, and had their common origin in the same central idea. That idea
first found fantastic expression in "The Coming Race;" and the three
books, taken together, constitute a special group, distinctly apart from
all the other works of their author.
The satire of his earlier novels is a protest against false social
respectabilities; the humour of his later ones is a protest against the
disrespect of social realities. By the first he sought to promote social
sincerity and the free play of personal character; by the last, to
encourage mutual charity and sympathy amongst all classes, on whose
interrelation depends the character of society itself. But in these three
books, his latest fictions, the moral purpose is more definite and
exclusive. Each of them is an expostulation against what seemed to him
the perilous popularity of certain social and political theories, or a
warning against the influence of certain intellectual tendencies upon
individual character and national life. This purpose, however, though
common to the three fictions, is worked out in each of them by a
different method. "The Coming Race" is a work of pure fancy, and the
satire of it is vague and sportive. The outlines of a definite purpose are
more distinctly drawn in "Chillingly,"--a romance which has the source
of its effect in a highly wrought imagination. The humour and pathos of
"Chillingly" are of a kind incompatible with the design of "The

Parisians," which is a work of dramatized observation. "Chillingly" is a
romance; "The Parisians" is a novel. The subject of "Chillingly" is
psychological; that of "The Parisians" is social. The author's object in
"Chillingly" being to illustrate the effects of "modern ideas" upon an
individual character, he has confined his narrative to the biography of
that one character; hence the simplicity of plot and small number of
dramatis personae, whereby the work gains in height and depth what it
loses in breadth of surface. "The Parisians," on the contrary, is designed
to illustrate the effect of "modern ideas" upon a whole community. This
novel is therefore panoramic in the profusion and variety of figures
presented by it to the reader's imagination. No exclusive prominence is
vouchsafed to any of these figures. All of them are drawn and coloured
with an equal care, but by means of the bold, broad touches necessary
for their effective presentation on a canvas so large and so crowded.
Such figures are, indeed, but the component features of one great form,
and their actions only so many modes of one collective impersonal
character,--that of the Parisian Society of Imperial and Democratic
France; a character everywhere present and busy throughout the story,
of which it is the real hero or heroine. This society was doubtless
selected for characteristic illustration as being the most advanced in the
progress of "modern ideas." Thus, for a complete perception of its
writer's fundamental purpose, "The Parisians" should be read in
connection with "Chillingly," and these two books in connection with
"The Coming Race." It will then be perceived that through the medium
of alternate fancy, sentiment, and observation, assisted by humour and
passion, these three books (in all other respects so different from each
other) complete the presentation of the same purpose under different
aspects, and thereby constitute a group of fictions which claims a
separate place of