"The work that I was born to do is done,"

Too Long; Didn't Read

"The work that I was born to do is done," a great poet wrote when at last he had completed his task. And although I am not entitled to sing any Nunc dimittis, I am well aware that the task that has occupied the best part of my life can have left few years and little strength for any work that comes after. It is more than thirty years ago since the first resolve to write the work now here concluded began to shape itself, still dimly though insistently; the period of study and preparation occupied over fifteen years, ending with the publication of Man and Woman, put forward as a prolegomenon to the main work which, in the writing and publication, has occupied the fifteen subsequent years.