This novel ranks the third, in order of succession, of the works of fiction which I have produced. The history of its reception, on its first appearance, is soon told.

Unfortunately for me, “Hide And Seek” was originally published in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-four, at the outbreak of the Crimean War. All England felt the absorbing interest of watching that serious national event; and new books—some of them books of far higher pretensions¹ than mine—found the minds of readers in general pre-occupied or indifferent. My own little venture in fiction necessarily felt the adverse² influence of the time. The demand among the booksellers was just large enough to exhaust the first edition, and there the sale of this novel, in its original form, terminated.

Since that period, the book has been, in the technical phrase, “out of print.” Proposals have reached me, at various times, for its republication; but I have resolutely³ abstained⁴ from availing myself of them for two reasons.

In the first place, I was anxious to wait until “Hide And Seek” could make its re-appearance on a footing of perfect equality with my other works. In the second place, I was resolved to keep it back until it might obtain the advantage of a careful revisal, guided by the light of the author’s later experience. The period for the accomplishment⁵ of both these objects has now presented itself. “Hide And Seek,” in this edition, forms one among the uniform series of my novels, which has begun with “Antonina,” “The Dead Secret,” and “The Woman In White;” and which will be continued with “Basil,” and “The Queen Of Hearts.” My project of revisal has, at the same time, been carefully and rigidly⁶ executed. I have abridged⁷, and in many cases omitted, several passages in the first edition, which made larger demands upon the reader’s patience than I should now think it desirable to venture on if I were writing a new book; and I have, in one important respect, so altered the termination of the story as to make it, I hope, more satisfactory and more complete than it was in its original form.

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