A Conspiracy of Paper

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE ADVICE OF numerous readers enriched and sharpened this novel, and I would like to thank Paul Budnitz, Mary Pat Dunleavey, Matthew Grimm, Sue Laizik, Michael Seidel, Al Silverman, Brian Stokes, and Chloe Wheatley for their fine criticism and attention. I would like to acknowledge in particular Laurie Gwen Shapiro for her advice, encouragement, and generosity of spirit; she has nurtured this project as if it were her own, and without her help this book might never have happened. I would like to thank Joseph Citarella, who provided me with an extraordinary wealth of information on eighteenth-century clothing. I am also indebted to Kelly Washburn and the Partnership for Jewish Life for their avowed support of Jewish fiction.

I owe a considerable debt to the Georgia State University Department of English, which not only introduced me to the field of eighteenth-century studies but also encouraged my work with sincere and bountiful enthusiasm. More recently, I thank the Department of English and Comparative Literature of Columbia University for many years of support, both financial and scholarly.

I cannot sufficiently acknowledge Liz Darhansoff and, indeed, everyone at the Darhansoff and Verrill agency, who believed in this project from Day One and labored long and hard on its behalf. My editor, Jon Karp, has wonderfully steered and fostered this novel, and I am grateful to him for his keen insight, good humor, and strong encouragement. I’d also like to thank Ann Godoff, Jean-Isabel McNutt, and Andy Carpenter of Random House.

Finally, for reasons that cannot, and need not, be enumerated here, I thank my wife, Claudia Stokes; my much-loved friend Godot Liss; and my family.