Hi Camy,

Great question. I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of other folks on this issue.

Personally, I don't put much stock in introductions. When picking up a book unfamiliar to me, sometimes I read a few paragraphs into the introduction to see if the writer provides interesting context that might enrich my reading of the novel (for example, some background on Homer Plessy and the state of racial relations in the 1890s would help someone new to _Pudd'nhead Wilson_), but as soon as she (or he) goes into plot details, I abandon the introduction and start the novel. If I feel the introduction is, like Mary Jane Wilks, full of sand, I will sometimes return to the rest of it after finishing the novel. 

I'd like to see a history of "critical" introductions (perhaps one exists already of which I am unaware?). A casual look at Google Books will show you that the practice of an "expert" writing an introduction before a novel is a new one. It was standard practice with slave narratives, of course (William Lloyd Garrison for Frederick Douglass, for instance), but not fiction, at least as far as I know. Even later editions of, say, _Huck Finn_ (circa 1912 on Google Books), were published without introductions. My guess is that the practice began in earnest with the rise of cheap paperback editions and the rise of new critical scholarship in the middle of the twentieth century. (Maybe with the rise of the academic study of fiction?). Elizabeth Renker has a new book on the origin of American literature studies that perhaps addresses this. Good excuse for me to buy it and find out.

Jeff Miller

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Jeffrey W. Miller
Gonzaga University