Ten Preludes to a Preface

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the making of the preface for Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses in the Himalayan Foothills. Writing the preface to The Philosophy of Natural History, published in 1790. "Every preface, besides occasional and explanatory remarks, should contain not only the general design of the work, but the motives and circumstances which led the author to write on that particular subject". Opening paragraph of the first preface to Everyday Creativity that can find on current desktop, preserved across computers and the transition from WordPerfect. Recently copied into an email exchange in which one scholar was advising another to move all key orienting material out of the preface and into the introduction of her book manuscript. Many academic friends, though, confess to starting scholarly books with a quick flip to ascertain the conversations invoked in the bibliography or the networks revealed through acknowledgments.