Maria Edgeworth 
Tales and Novels – Volume 1 

Excerpt: "PREFACE. It has been somewhere said by Johnson, that merely to invent a story is no small effort of the human understanding. How much more difficult is it to construct stories suited to the early years of youth, and, at the same time, conformable to the complicate relations of modern society-fictions, that shall display examples of virtue, without initiating the young reader into the ways of vice-narratives, written in a style level to his capacity, without tedious detail, or vulgar idiom! The author, sensible of these difficulties, solicits indulgence for such errors as have escaped her vigilance…"