Simon Gurr Knihy

In the depths of a harsh Yorkshire winter, I embarked on a journey that inspired this book. Eager to meet a few schoolmasters, I was warned they might be hesitant to welcome the author of the _Pickwick Papers_. To navigate this, I collaborated with a friend who had connections in Yorkshire and devised a clever ruse. He provided me with letters of introduction, supposedly written by my traveling companion, concerning a fictional little boy left with his widowed mother. The mother, desperate for help, considered sending him to a Yorkshire school, and I was to be her friend seeking guidance on local schools. I traveled to several towns known for their educational establishments, but it wasn't until I reached a particular town—nameless here—that I found the recipient of my letter absent. However, he ventured out through the snow to the inn where I was staying that evening. After dinner, he needed little encouragement to join me by the fire and share some wine. I fear he may no longer be alive.

Every town should have a 'card' - someone who gets talked about, someone who does mad and wonderful things, someone who makes you laugh. Bursley in the Five Towns has a 'card': Edward Henry Machin (Denry for short). Denry begins life in a poor little house where the rent is twenty-three pence a week. But before he's thirty, he's made a lot of money, and had more adventures than you and I have had hot dinners. The town of Bursley never stops talking about him. Whatever will young Denry do next?