Excerpt from Personal Literary Letters of Robert, First Earl of Lytton, Vol. 1 of 2 This book, as the title shows, is a collection of letters, and makes no pretension to be a complete biography. An account of my father's Indian Administration (the most important public work of his life), compiled from his official letters and despatches, has already been published. The letters in the present volumes are selected from the great mass of his private correspondence with the object, first, of setting forth as truthfully and vividly as possible the human personality of the writer, his thoughts, feelings, opinions, and outlook on the world; and secondly, of illustrating his poetical and literary work. Letters on public affairs have been preserved here and there; but for the most part only so far as they serve to show the writer's point of view or motives for action. During the four years of his Indian Viceroyalty the interest and overwhelming amount of his official work wholly absorbed him, and for the time literature was put aside. 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.