Liza of Lambeth [antikvár]

PREFACE This is my first book. At the age of seventeen I wrote a biography of Meyerbeer; I cannot imagine why, since I knew nothing of music and had never heard any of his operas. I have long forgotten whatever I knew about him, but I do not believe that he was a romantic figure; and I can only surmise that a centenary or something of that kind made me think that the subject was of topical interest. One rejection was sufficient to discourage me. I threw the manuscript into the fire. Then I began to write plays, chiefly in one act, of a harrowing nature and unflinching realism. I had learned to know Ibsen in Germany and the plays that I wrote between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one ruthlessly delved into the secrets of the human soul; few of my characters but suffered from a fatal or a venereal disease, and since I was studying medicine I was able to go into some very elegant detail; most of them bore a hereditary taint that poisoned their lives, and such as were lucky enough to have had healthy and respectable parents concealed a shameful, guilty secret which in the course of the play was boimd to be disclosed. It would have narked me to have my plays