Tales from Jókai

TRANSLATED FROM THE HUNGARIAN
BY R. NISBET BAIN

WITH COMPLETE BIOGRAPHY AND PHOTOGRAVURE PORTRAIT OF MAURUS JÓKAI

LONDON
JARROLD & SONS, 10 & 11, WARWICK LANE, E.C.
[All Rights Reserved]

Dr. Maurus Jókai's Novels

The Green Book
Black Diamonds
Pretty Michal
The Lion of Janina
A Hungarian Nabob
Dr. Dumany's Wife
The Poor Plutocrats
The Nameless Castle
Debts of Honor
The Day of Wrath
Eyes Like the Sea
Halil the Pedlar (The White Rose)
'Midst the Wild Carpathians
The Slaves of the Padishah

JARROLD & SONS'
NEW AND RECENT FICTION.

London
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10 & 11, Warwick Lane, E.C.

PREFACE

Besides his romances, Jókai has, from time to time, published volumes of shorter stories which, in the opinion of many good Magyar critics, contain some of his most notable work. The present selection will enable English readers to judge of the merits of these stories for the first time. It does not profess to be the best selection which might be made. Many excellent tales could not be included within its narrow limits; others again, equally good, suit Hungarian rather than British taste. But, anyhow, it claims to be fairly representative, and to give a taste of the many widely differing qualities of the most Protean of romancers. Numbers I. and IX., for instance, are models of what historical tales should be, and could only have been written by an author gifted with the historical imagination; Numbers II. and V. are light comic sketches; Number VIII. is a ghost story which Dickens might have written; Numbers III. and IV. are narratives of a grimmer order, with touches of horror not unworthy of the author of "Pretty Michal;" Number VI. is a faithful and picturesque narrative of social life in old Poland—evidently studied with care; while in Number VII. Jókai gives full rein to his wondrous imagination, and his Pegasus actually carries the reader right away to the capital of the lost island of Atlantis!

Finally, a bibliographical note. The earliest in date of these stories is Number VII., which was originally published, in 1856, under the title of "Oceánia." Next in chronological sequence come Numbers I.-IV., which are to be found in the collection "Jókai Mór Dekameronja," published in 1858. Number VIII. first appeared in the collection "A Magyar világból," 1879; Number V. is taken from "Humoristicus papirszeletek," 1880; Number IX. from "Kis Dekameron," 1890; and Number VI. is the first story in the volume entitled, "Kétszer Kettö-negy," 1893.

R. NISBET BAIN.

May, 1904.

CONTENTS