... Having now found such a publisher—having
secured my mountain—I am prepared to go on delivering my message
from its top, as long as the world will consent to hear it. I will
willingly forgo the serial value of my novels, and forfeit
three-quarters of the amount I might otherwise earn, for the sake
of uttering the truth that is in me, boldly and openly, to a
perverse generation.
For this reason, and in order to mark the distinction between these
books which are really mine—my own in thought, in spirit, in
teaching—and those which I have produced, sorely against my will,
to satisfy editors, I propose in future to add the words, "A Hill-
top Novel," to every one of my stories which I write of my own
accord, simply and solely for the sake of embodying and enforcing
my own opinions.
Not that, as critics have sometimes supposed me to mean, I ever
wrote a line, even in fiction, contrary to my own profound beliefs.
I have never said a thing I did not think: but I have sometimes had
to abstain from saying many things I did think. When I wished to
purvey strong meat for men, I was condemned to provide milk for
babes. In the Hill-top Novels, I hope to reverse all that—to say
my say in my own way, representing the world as it appears to me,
not as editors and formalists would like me to represent it.
The Hill-top Novels, however, will not constitute, in the ordinary
sense, a series. I shall add the name, as a Trade Mark, to any
story, by whomsoever published, which I have written as the
expression of my own individuality. Nor will they necessarily
appear in the first instance in volume form. If ever I should be
lucky enough to find an editor sufficiently bold and sufficiently
righteous to venture upon running a Hill-top Novel as a serial
through his columns, I will gladly embrace that mode of
publication...
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