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Etext by James Rusk, jrusk@mac-email.com. Italics are indicated by the
underscore charcter, _.
POOR MISS FINCH
by Wilkie Collins
TO MRS. ELLIOT,
(OF THE DEANERY, BRISTOL).
WILL YOU honor me by accepting the Dedication of this book, in
remembrance of an uninterrupted friendship of many years?
More than one charming blind girl, in fiction and in the drama, has
preceded "Poor Miss Finch." But, so far as I know, blindness in these
cases has been always exhibited, more or less exclusively, from the ideal
and the sentimental point of view. The attempt here made is to appeal to
an interest of another kind, by exhibiting blindness as it really is. I
have carefully gathered the information necessary to the execution of
this purpose from competent authorities of all sorts. Whenever "Lucilla"
acts or speaks in these pages, with reference to her blindness, she is
doing or saying what persons afflicted as she is have done or said before
her. Of the other features which I have added to produce and sustain
interest in this central personage of my story, it does not become me to
speak. It is for my readers to say if "Lucilla" has found her way to
their sympathies. In this character, and more especially again in the
characters of "Nugent Dubourg" and "Madame Pratolungo," I have tried to
present human nature in its inherent inconsistencies and
self-contradictions--in its intricate mixture of good and evil, of great
and small--as I see it in the world about me.
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