Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/13

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PREFACE

Russian fiction is like German music—the best in the world. It is with the hope of persuading some American and English readers to substitute in their leisure hours first-class novels for fourth and fifth class that I have written this book.

I am grateful to Mr. Mandell, Instructor in Russian at Yale, and to Mr. Noyes, Professor of Russian at the University of California, for some information on the work of contemporary Russians. It is a pleasure to record my thanks to Mr. Andrew Keogh, Reference Librarian of Yale, for his unselfish labour in preparing the List of Publications. This is certain to be valuable, for it exists nowhere else.

W. L. P.

Yale University,
Tuesday, 29 November 1910.

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