The Sot-Weed Factor

FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION

I've taken the opportunity to reread The Sot-Weed Factor with an eye to emending and revising the text of the original edition before its reissue, quite as Ebenezer Cooke himself did in 1731 with the poem from which this novel takes its title. The cases differ in that Cooke's objective was to blunt the barbs of his original satire, he having dwelt by then many years among its targets, but mine is merely, where possible, to make this long narrative a quantum swifter and more graceful.

Buffalo, New York 1966

John Barth