Introduction by Floyd Dell

INTRODUCTION

These "Confessions of a Young Man" constitute one of the most significant documents of the passionate revolt of English literature against the Victorian tradition.  It is significant because it reveals so clearly the sources of that revolt.  It is in a sense the history of an epoch—­an epoch that is just closing.  It represents one of the great discoveries of English literature:  a discovery that had been made from time to time before, and that is now being made anew in our own generation—­the discovery of human nature.

The reason why this discovery has had to be made so often is that it shocks people.  They try to hush it up; and they do succeed in forgetting about it for long periods of time, and pretending that it doesn't exist.  They are shocked because human nature is not at all like the pretty pictures we like to

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