Looking back on the method of production of this book, it seems to me not to have been so much a matter of toil as a natural growth. It seems to have produced itself, for my earliest photographs were taken as records of the different characters that I played. These studies, as they were published from time to time in the Sketch, Tatler, Playgoer and other papers, aroused a certain amount of interest.

Frequent requests from brother actors for me to help them with their make-ups convinced me that my instruction was desired.

As the material accumulated, I constantly heard the suggestion reiterated, "Make a book of it."

A profound interest in psychology, physiognomy, or characterisation, the art of the stage, and photography, has enabled me to study the subject from different standpoints, and to gain an entirely individual impression of it.

Many years spent on the stage in, among others, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's, Mr. Forbes Robertson's, and Sir Charles Wyndham's companies, the privilege of watching Sir Henry Irving, Sir Herbert, Charles Warner, Franklin McLeay, and M. de Max making up, and, in some instances, hearing their methods of work explained, has supplemented the knowledge gained by my own experience.