Belford Regis Or Sketches Of A Country Town (1846)

PREFACE. IN an Article on the last Volume of Our Village, the courteous critic recommended, since I had taken leave of rural life, that I should engage lodgings in the next country town, and commence a series of sketches of the inhabitants a class of the community which, whilst it forms so large a portion of our population, occupies so small a space in our literature, and amongst whom, more perhaps than amongst any other order of English society, may be traced the peculiarities, the prejudices, and the excellences of the national character. Upon this hint I wrote and the present work would have been called simply Our Market Town, had not an ingenious contemporary, by forestalling my intended title, compelled me to give to ry airy nothings, a local habitation and a name. It would not quite do to have two Simon Pures in the field, each asserting his identity I am so far from and jostling for precedence although accusing Mr. Peregrine Reedpen as the Frenchman did the ancients of having stolen my best thoughts, that I am firmly of opinion that were twenty writers to sit down at once to compose a book upon this theme, there would not be the slightest danger of their interfering with each other. Every separate work would bear the stamp of the Authors mind, of his peculiar train of thought, and habits of observation. The subject is as inexhaustible as nature herself. Our Town or, Rough Sketches of Character, Manners, c. By Peregrine Reedpen. 2 vols. London, 1834.