It gives me deep pleasure to express my thanks to all the collaborators in this volume, not only for their generous written contributions but also for their helpful participation at every stage of its making. I am likewise grateful to the three translators – Jean Stewart, Jonathan Hunt and Rodney Livingstone – for the care with which they have rendered the often demanding French, Italian and German of their originals into English, and thus enabled us to produce a truly international volume.

Certain topics have been touched on in more than one chapter. It is hoped that the minor overlaps, which have been allowed to remain, bring with them the advantage of showing diverse facets of questions through diverse contexts of discussion.

I have greatly valued the steady encouragement of Jeremy Mynott, at Cambridge University Press, who first invited me to embark upon this volume, and the substantial help of Maureen Street in assembling the General Bibliography and of Jenny Swanson in compiling the Indices. A special word of thanks, finally, to Jane Hodgart, who, with her gentle and perceptive copyediting, has once again given of her expertise, making light of the complexities of adjustment in so many-sided a publication.