THE NEWCOMES Memoirs of a Most Hespectable Family EDITED BY ARTHUR PENDENNIS, ESQ. BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY WITH ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY M DCCC XCI INTRODUCTORY NOTE. IN writing The Newcomes Thackeray may be said to have retreated from the severer task which held him in Esmond and to have returned to a field in which he could work easily and readily, and which would yield him, as he well knew, the best returns. Not only so, but the very material which he used was, as it were, old material to his hand, and several facts point to the conclusion that this novel was more positively a piece of bread-winning than any of his other great works. He had, as we have intimated, expended arduous labor on Esmond; the returns from it in fame, and especially in the esteem of the best readers, had been great, but it had not the elements of wide and remunerative popularity. He had made a lecturing tour in America; he had added to his family by the adoption of Amy Crowe, the daughter of an old friend; he was plunged in what he called "a skurry of business and pleasure," and he had changed his residence from Kensington to Onslow Square. When he was working on The Newcomes in Switzerland in the summer of 1853, he wrote to Mr. Reed: "I am about a new story, but don't know as yet if it will be any good. It seems to me I am too old for story-telling; but I want money, and shall get 20,000 dollars for this, of which (D. V.) I'll keep fifteen." It may be added that the substitution of illustrations by Doyle for his own less artistic work might well |