



Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger





THE LAST OF THE BARONS

By Edward Bulwer Lytton




DEDICATORY EPISTLE.

I dedicate to you, my indulgent Critic and long-tried Friend, the work
which owes its origin to your suggestion. Long since, you urged me
to attempt a fiction which might borrow its characters from our own
Records, and serve to illustrate some of those truths which History is
too often compelled to leave to the Tale-teller, the Dramatist, and the
Poet. Unquestionably, Fiction, when aspiring to something higher than
mere romance, does not pervert, but elucidate Facts. He who employs it
worthily must, like a biographer, study the time and the characters
he selects, with a minute and earnest diligence which the general
historian, whose range extends over centuries, can scarcely be
expected to bestow upon the things and the men of a single epoch. His
descriptions should fill up with colour and detail the cold outlines