PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
When the Sleeper Wakes, title I have now to The Sleeper Awakes, was published as a book in 1899 after a in the Graphic and one or two American and periodicals. It is one of the most and least satisfactory of my books, and I have taken the opportunity by this to make a number of and alterations. Like most of my work, it was under pressure; there are marks of not only in the of the part, but in the very of the story. Except for of a which to be an almost in me, there is little to be of in the of the opening portion; but it will be to the that of being put and over through a interlude, the ill-conceived part was pushed to its end. I was at that time overworked, and in need of a holiday. In to necessary tasks, I had in hand another book, Love and Mr. Lewisham, which had taken a very much upon my than this present story. My that one or other should be I took any rest, and so I up the Sleeper to make it a work, to be able to it the book at any got of it. But was against me. I came to England from Italy only to ill, and I still the and of my attempt to put some of to my of Mr. Lewisham, with my temperature at a hundred and two. I couldn't the of that book a fragment. I did to save it from the of that spurt—Love and Mr. Lewisham is one of my most books—but the Sleeper me.
It is twelve years now since the Sleeper was written, and that man of thirty-one is already too for me to attempt any very of his work. I have played now the part of an brother: cut out a number of long passages that all too the fagged, brain, the pen, and out at the end. Except for that, I have done no more than here and there at phrases and repetitions. The thing in the version, and the thing that most in my mind, was the of the relations of Helen Wotton and Graham. Haste in art is almost always vulgarisation, and I into the of making what the newspaper call a "love interest" out of Helen. There was a that of going up in the flying-machine to fight, Graham might have in to Ostrog, and married Helen. I have now the of these connubialities. Not the of any sexual in truth have these two. They loved and one another, but as a girl and her might love, and in a kiss. I have it possible, without any very disarrangement, to clear all that out of the story, and so a little my on the score of this lapse. I have also, with a of the pen, and that the People Ostrog. My Graham dies, as all his must die, with no of either victory or defeat.
Who will win—Ostrog or the People? A thousand years hence that will still be just the open question we to-day.
H.G. WELLS.
