Excerpt from The Life of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1
Prefaces seem to be falling into general dislike in England. At times, however, they are necessary evils. I will endeavour to make the present ill as brief as possible.
There is absolutely no need to dwell upon the lack of a full and authoritative English "Life of Wagner," for - pace Mr H. T. Finck's two entertaining volumes - the thing has never yet been seriously attempted. The same might be said with regard to every country, save for one exception: even in Germany, the Bayreuth master's native land, there exists but one biography of him that aspires to the completeness of a standard work; it naturally has both fed and swallowed up the rest. That biography is the incomparable work of Carl Fr. Glasenapp. Originally published in 1876, for the opening of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, in 1882 (the year of Parsifal) it was brought down to date by a second edition with a supplemental section; then came a pause. Richard Wagner died in 1883, and it might have been thought advisable for Herr Glasenapp to hasten forward yet a third edition, with a second supplement; but he felt, and rightly, that no further edition ought to be issued before time, research and meditation should have enriched his work with riper thought and a far larger body of material. Meanwhile appeared the shorter monographs of Wilhelm Tappert and Richard Pohl; supplying valuable information in many respects, however, they made no pretension to that monumental character Herr Glasenapp had prefigured as his own ideal.
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