The Author to His Readers
The author of “Ada” and “Jane Brightwall” cannot conclude these romances without returning his most grateful acknowledgments to his numerous readers for the signal and most unprecedented favour with which they have been pleased to regard those productions. “Lloyd’s Weekly Miscellany” having attained a circulation quite unparalleled in periodical literature, might have well assured the author of the above tales, that his best friends, the public, were willing to afford him the highest, the noblest, and the best stimulus to future exertion—namely, their applause; but he is in a situation, however inadequately, to return his personal thanks to some two hundred and more ladies and gentlemen who have favoured him with private communications expressive of their approbation.
If anything would move the heart and head to future exertion, it would be such generous appreciation of what has been already attempted to be done, and the author can only say that in the tales which he msy have the honour of laying before his kind patrons, as well as those already in progress, his constant aim shall be originality, true sentiment, and poetic justice.