Variant Openings
In the first edition of 1889 the book began with Chapter One, "Summary of Events During the Master's Wanderings". For the second edition (known as the Edinburgh Edition) Stevenson added a preface in which he pretended to have been given the manuscript by an acquaintance. There is also an "Art-Type Edition" which includes a preface and contains an Editorial Note. Stevenson stated in a letter that he made this change because he wanted to draw a portrait of a real-life friend of his upon whom the acquaintance in the preface is based. In the many reprintings since then the preface has sometimes been included and sometimes not. Nothing in the preface, however, has any direct relevance to the story.
Read more about this topic: The Master Of Ballantrae
Famous quotes containing the words variant and/or openings:
““I am willing to die for my country” is a variant of “I am willing to kill for my country.””
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“There are a thousand unnoticed openings ... which let a penetrating eye at once into a man’s soul; and I maintain ... that a man of sense does not lay down his hat in coming into a room,—or take it up in going out of it, but something escapes, which discovers him.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)