Gentle Reader,

An Author who is only making a dÉbut, should be particularly careful not to offend against established rules; otherwise you and I might be spared the plague of a Preface; but as I am heartily desirous to conciliate your regard, I will not forfeit any portion of your esteem at my onset, by the slightest contempt of Court. I will therefore say a few words in the way of introduction to Blue-stocking Hall, though I may find it difficult to tell you more than you will easily find out for yourself, if you take the trouble of reading the following Letters, which sufficiently explain their own story. They are selected from a correspondence which is supposed to have been spread over a period of four years.

As to my motives (for I observe that most prefaces talk of motives) for publishing the letters which I have been at the pains to collect, they are such as we may in charity suppose to operate upon the mind of a criminal, when by the expiatory tribute of his "last speech and dying words," he endeavours, in a recantation of his own errors, to prevent others from falling into similar ones. Besides, we are generally eager to make as many proselytes as we can to any opinion which we have newly adopted; and as my prejudices upon some subjects were very strong before I visited Blue-stocking Hall, I am induced, through abundance of the milk of human kindness, to wish that if my reader entertains any prejudices against ladies stigmatized as Bas Bleus, as I myself once did, he may, like me, become a convert to another and a fairer belief respecting them.