had an effect of which I have little reason to complain, for I
was allowed almost to call them life-long self-deceivers to their faces, and
they said it was quite true, but that it did not matter.
    I must not conclude without expressing my most sincere thanks to my critics
and to the public for the leniency and consideration with which they have
treated my adventures.
    
    June 9, 1872.
 

                         Preface to the Revised Edition

My publisher wishes me to say a few words about the genesis of the work, a
revised and enlarged edition of which he is herewith laying before the public. I
therefore place on record as much as I can remember on this head after a lapse
of more than thirty years.
    The first part of »Erewhon« written was an article headed »Darwin among the
Machines,« and signed Cellarius. It was written in the Upper Rangitata district
of the Canterbury Province (as it then was) of New Zealand, and appeared at
Christchurch in the Press newspaper, June 13, 1863. A copy of this article is
indexed under my books in the British Museum catalogue. In passing, I may say
that the opening chapters of »Erewhon« were also drawn from the Upper Rangitata
district, with such modifications as I found convenient.
    A second article on the same subject as the one just referred to appeared in
the Press shortly after the first, but I have no copy. It treated Machines from
a different point of view, and was the basis of pp. 266-270 of the present
edition of »Erewhon.« This view ultimately led me to the theory I put forward in
»Life and Habit,« published in November 1877. I have put a bare outline of this
theory (which I believe to be quite sound) into the mouth of an Erewhonian
philosopher in chapter XXVII of this book.
    In 1865 I rewrote and enlarged »Darwin among the Machines« for the Reasoner,
a paper published in London by Mr. G. J. Holyoake. It appeared July 1, 1865,
under the heading, »The Mechanical Creation,« and can be seen in the British
Museum. I again rewrote and enlarged it, till it assumed the form in which it
appeared in the first edition of »Erewhon.«
    The next part of »Erewhon« that I wrote was »The World of the Unborn,« a
preliminary form of which was sent to Mr. Holyoake's paper, but as I cannot find
it among those copies of the Reasoner that are in the British Museum, I conclude
that it was not accepted. I