Peter Simple; and, The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 Read online

  This edition will include all the novels and tales, only omitting thethree items marked in the above list with an asterisk. The text will be,for the most part, that of the first editions, except for the correctionof a few obvious errors and some modernisation of spelling. _Rattlin theReefer,_ so frequently attributed to Marryat, will not be reprintedhere. It was written by Edward Howard, subeditor, under Marryat, of the_The Metropolitan Magazine,_ and author of _Outward Bound,_ etc. On thetitle-page it is described simply as _edited_ by Marryat and, accordingto his daughter, the Captain did no more than stand literary sponsor tothe production. In 1850, Saunders and Otley published:--_The FloralTelegraph, or, Affections Signals_ by the late Captain Marryat, R.N.,but Mrs Lean knows nothing of the book, and it is probably not Marryat'swork.

  _The Life and Letters of Captain Marryat: by Florence Marryat (MrsLean), in 2 vols.: Richard Bentley_ 1872, are the only biographicalrecord of the novelist extant. In some matters they are very detailedand personal, in others reticent. The story has been spiritedly retold,with reflections and criticisms, by Mr David Hannay in the "GreatWriters" Series, 1889.

  The frontispiece is from a print, published by Henry Colburn in 1836,after the portrait by Simpson, the favourite pupil of Sir ThomasLawrence, which was "considered more like him than any other." CountD'Orsay took a portrait of Marryat, in coloured crayons, about 1840, butit was not a success. A portrait, in water colours, by Behnes, wasengraved as a frontispiece to _The Pirate and The Three Cutters._ Hisbust was taken by Carew.

  R.B.J.