Author's Preface to the First Edition.
The wife of the Bengalee is very often his chief support: sometimes also she is not.
Revolutions are very generally processes of self-torture and rebels are suicides.
The English have saved Bengal from anarchy.
These truths are elucidated in this work.
Author's Preface to the Third Edition.
This time the true history of the Sannyasi Rebellion has been given in extracts from English works in the Appendix. The reader will see that it was a very serious affair.
He will also see that there is some difference between a history and a novel. The battles described in the novel did not really happen in Birbhum but in Northern Bengal. And, in the novel, the name of Major Wood has been used in the place of Captain Edwards. This difference I do not consider essential, for the novel is a novel and not history.
Author's Preface to the Fifth Edition.
It was found unnecessary to retain the differences referred to in the preface to the third edition and the necessary emendations have been made in the present edition. There has been alterations in some other respects also. Santi has been made a little gentler and the part of her life which was left to the reader to guess in previous editions has been explicitly set forth in a fresh chapter.
