Excerpt from Sybil: A Tragedy, in Five Acts This letter is reprinted in justice to myself, especially as lengthy Statements were put forth suggesting an imputation on my motives in using the material which furnished the key note of the drama. William Gilmore Simms wrote two novels on the subject; Charles Fenno Hoffman, I learn, also made it the theme of a novel. Our friend, Clifton W. Tayleure, drew a melodrama from it, and the excitement jointly produced by the representation Of Sybil and the Statements against it made me acquainted with the fact that other dramas and sto ries had been founded upon it. With much more justice might the motives of these authors be impugned, if any such imputation be warranted by the use of facts which have gone into history. The late distinguished author Of the Blithedale Romance, in his preface to that work - fearful lest readers might conformd his romance with the persons and scenes of a certain community - stated, that while availing himself of act ual reminiscences to give a more life-like tint to the creation of his fancy, he so used scenes, incidents, and persons, that the creatures Of his brain might play their phantasmagorical antics without exposing them to too close a comparison with the actual events of real lives. The same, in a still greater degree, is true of the use of material in Sybil. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.