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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 edition. Excerpt: ...severe damage to the original, separates the novel from the play. I would abandon to the adaptor--if fed he must be--works of no importance to the lover of literature. But Esmond/ It had been thought that the masterpieces of fiction would remain untouched by the desecrating hand. What should we say of the Goth who turned The School for Scandal into a novel? We might, perhaps, admire his courage, but we should most certainly deplore his audacity. As for the result, as lief let us read the expurgated edition of Tom Jones! Should the Vandal who dramatises the greatest historical romance in the language go scot free? I have read that 'Mr. Pemberton loves his Thackeray, and in that spirit set about his dramatisation of Esmond.' I would point out to him that there is a love so passionate that by very force of its passion it brings about the ruin of the object of its affection. Esmond stands on a pedestal from which it cannot be dragged, even by its most injudicious admirers; and it may therefore be urged that there is no cause for complaint. For those who say so I have no answer, if they cannot find it for themselves in the announcement: 'Esmond, a novel, written by Thackeray, dramatised by Mr. T. E. Pemberton.' Thackeray's novels, of all writings extant, cannot be dramatised successfully. Esmond, for instance, is the love-story of half a lifetime. His dialogue, written for the study, is impossible on the stage. If the play-maker uses the dialogue, he ruins his play; if he does not use it, he loses the atmosphere of the story--for who but Thackeray can write as Thackeray? If he follows the lines of the book, he can scarcely have a play at all, for there is very little action, certainly little dramatic plot, in any of the novels; if he abandons the...

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