Excerpt from The Choice of Books HE chapters composing this handbook were originally printed as weekly contributions to a literary newspaper in 1880 and 1881, and were gathered into book form in the latter year. An English reissue and a Russian trans lation soon followed. Owing to an accidental loss of copyright the many subsequent American edi tions, bearing various imprints, have been beyond the author's control; but he has taken pleasure in the fact that the treatise has apparently con tinned to be helpful, notwithstanding the later appearance of many excellent works of similar purpose. In the present issue many new pages have been added, while the less essential portions of the earlier editions have been dropped. The author has preferred, however, to retain the general plan and method unchanged, as having proved to be of practical service. Direct usefulness has been kept in mind, rather than the endeavour to pre sent a sheaf of essays concerning literary themes. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.