The text will be,
for the most part, that of the first editions, except for the correction
of a few obvious errors and some modernisation of spelling. _Rattlin the
Reefer,_ so frequently attributed to Marryat, will not be reprinted
here. It was written by Edward Howard, subeditor, under Marryat, of the
_The Metropolitan Magazine,_ and author of _Outward Bound,_ etc. On the
title-page it is described simply as _edited_ by Marryat and, according
to his daughter, the Captain did no more than stand literary sponsor to
the production. In 1850, Saunders and Otley published:--_The Floral
Telegraph, or, Affections Signals_ by the late Captain Marryat, R.N.,
but Mrs Lean knows nothing of the book, and it is probably not Marryat's
work.
_The Life and Letters of Captain Marryat: by Florence Marryat (Mrs
Lean), in 2 vols.: Richard Bentley_ 1872, are the only biographical
record of the novelist extant. In some matters they are very detailed
and personal, in others reticent. The story has been spiritedly retold,
with reflections and criticisms, by Mr David Hannay in the "Great
Writers" Series, 1889.
The frontispiece is from a print, published by Henry Colburn in 1836,
after the portrait by Simpson, the favourite pupil of Sir Thomas
Lawrence, which was "considered more like him than any other." Count
D'Orsay took a portrait of Marryat, in coloured crayons, about 1840, but
it was not a success. A portrait, in water colours, by Behnes, was
engraved as a frontispiece to _The Pirate and The Three Cutters.
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