My Fifteen Lost Years

The writing of this book has been to me no joyful task, as its making has been at the expense of much-needed rest and peace of mind. In returning to my dear native land after a long imprisonment, I cherished the hope that I might as quietly as possible be permitted to take up the threads of outward existence so cruelly broken, little dreaming that trials hardly less grievous than those left behind awaited me; for no sooner had I touched these hospitable shores, when I was met by the fear-inspiring cry, “You must write a book—you must give the world an account of your sufferings”—as if one could never suffer enough. My well-meaning friends could hardly have known what they were asking in forcing upon me a mental return to the dread past. Solitary confinement in Woking Prison (as the reader may learn from these pages) was not such an elysium that one should voluntarily desire to hark back to it, nor is penal servitude in Aylesbury an Arcadian dream.