Dear Friends,

Next November we shall have finished the tale of which we are at present engaged, and shall have travelled together through twenty monthly parts and eighty-seven weekly numbers. It is my design when we have gone so far, to close this work. Let me tell you why.

I should not regard the anxiety, the close confinement, or the constant attention, inseparable from the weekly form of publication (for to commune with you in any form is to me a labour of love) if I had found it advantageous to the conduct of my stories, the elucidation of my meaning, or the gradual development of my characters. But I have not done so. I have often felt cramped and confined in a very irksome and harassing degree by the space in which I have been constrained to move. I have wanted you to know more at once than I could tell you; and it has frequently been of the greatest importance to my cherished intention, that you should do so. I have been sometimes strongly tempted (and have been at some pains to resist the temptation) to hurry incidents on, lest they should appear to you who waited from week to week, and had not, like me, the result and purpose in your minds, too long delayed. In a word, I have found this form of publication most anxious, perplexing, and difficult. I cannot bear these jerky confidences which are no sooner begun than ended, and no sooner ended than begun again.

Many passages in a tale of any length, depend materially for their interest on the intimate relation they bear to what has gone before, or to what is to follow. I have sometimes found it difficult when I issued thirty-two closely printed pages once a month, to sustain in your minds this needful connection: in the present form of publication it is often, especially in the first half of a story, quite impossible to preserve it sufficiently through the current numbers. And although in my progress, I am gradually able to set you right, and to show you what my meaning has been, and to work it out, I see no reason why you should ever be wrong when I have it in my power by resorting to a better means of communication between us to prevent it.

Considerations of immediate profit and advantage ought in such a case to be of secondary importance. They would lead me, at all hazards, to hold my present course. But for the reason I have just now mentioned, I have after long consideration, and with especial reference to the next new tale I bear in my mind, arrived at the conclusion that it will be better to abandon this scheme of publication in favour of our old and well-tried plan which has only twelve gaps in a year, instead of fifty-two.

Therefore my intention is, to close this story (with the limits of which I am of course by this time acquainted) and this work, within, or about, the period I have mentioned. I should add, that for the general convenience of subscribers, another volume of collected numbers will not be published until the whole is brought to a conclusion.

Taking advantage of the respite which the close of this work will afford me, I have decided, in January next, to pay a visit to America. The pleasure I anticipate from this realization of a wish I have long entertained, and long hoped to gratify, is subdued by the reflection that it must separate us for a longer time than other circumstances would have rendered necessary.

On the first of November, eighteen hundred and forty-two, I purpose, if it please God, to commence my book in monthly parts, under the old green cover, in the old size and form, and at the old price.

I look forward to addressing a few more words to you in reference to this latter theme before I close the task on which I am now engaged. If there be any among the numerous readers of Master Humphrey’s Clock who are at first dissatisfied with the prospect of this change—and it is not unnatural almost to hope there may be some—I trust they will, at no very distant day, find reason to agree with

ITS AUTHOR

September, 1841.