The last several years have been devoted to the collecting and classifying of Kentucky books and authors from Filson, in 1784, to Mr. Allen, in 1912. While the author has done other things, this has been his most serious business.

Of the more than a thousand Kentucky writers, one hundred and ninety-six, or those who achieved considerable reputation in their day and generation, or others to whom fame came late, are now discussed. The author hopes to publish within the next two or three years a Dictionary of Kentucky Writers, which will attempt to bring together in brief biographical and critical notes all of Kentucky's literary workers from the beginning until the present time. The crossroads poet is a most elusive, most diffident figure, but I shall do my best to bring him into the Dictionary that is to be.

I have received assistance from many quarters. Colonel Reuben T. Durrett, Dr. Henry A. Cottell, General Bennett H. Young, Colonel Robert M. Kelly, Mrs. Evelyn Snead Barnett, Mrs. Elvira Miller Slaughter, and Mr. George T. Settle, of Louisville, Kentucky, have aided me in many directions. Mr. George McCalla Spears, of Dallas, Texas, author of Dear Old Kentucky, and the owner of one of the best collections of Kentucky books ever gotten together, I have to thank for a catalogue of his library and a dozen informing letters. Judge James H. Mulligan, Miss Anna Totten, Mrs. Annie Gratz Clay, Miss Jo Peter, and Mr. James M. Roach, of Lexington, Kentucky, have loaned and given me many rare Kentucky items; to Mr. William Kavanaugh Doty, of Richmond, Kentucky, Mrs. Daniel Henry Holmes, of Covington, Kentucky, Mrs. Lucien Beckner, of Winchester, Kentucky, Dr. Thomas E. Pickett, of Maysville, Kentucky, State Librarian Frank K. Kavanaugh, of Frankfort, Kentucky, Mr. Alexander Hill, and Miss Marian Prentice Piatt, of Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Henry Cleveland Wood, of Harrodsburg, Kentucky, Mr. Paul Weir, of Owensboro, Kentucky, Mr. Ingram Crockett, of Henderson, Kentucky, Mrs. Mary Addams Bayne, of Shelbyville, Kentucky, Miss Leigh Gordon Giltner, of Eminence, Kentucky, and Mrs. Caroline S. Valentine, of New Castle, Kentucky, the majority of whom are writers, I am doubly indebted for facts regarding their own work, as well as for what I now more especially thank them—information concerning other Kentucky writers.

Death found the two best friends, perhaps, this work had during the course of its preparation, when it took Charles J. O'Malley, the Kentucky poet and critic, and Jahu Dewitt Miller, the Philadelphia lecturer and bookman. Both of these men had just gotten into the spirit of the work when they died within a year of each other. O'Malley wrote the most illuminating letters concerning Kentucky authors it has been my good fortune to receive; Miller made the most gratifying and surprising additions to my collection of Kentuckiana, exceedingly scarce volumes and pamphlets which he alone seemed able to unearth from the old bookshops of the country. The memories of them both must be ever green with me and in this work.

I have to thank Mr. Allen for his very fine introduction. To have one's name associated with his is reward sufficient for the years of toil and sacrifice this work has demanded of its author.