Preface to the Ninth Edition

Now that The Simple Life has been reprinted so many times that the old plates are worn out and the text must be set in type all over again, it will probably not be without interest to record here a few facts about the origin and the fortunes of this book.

The day after Monsieur Armand Colin heard a wedding address on the subject of the simple life as it applies to the home, the Paris publisher wrote to me:

"Do write us a book on 'the simple life.' Nothing could be more timely or more necessary."

Six months later the book appeared.

It had a good press and an even better public. Its readers, passing it from one to another, gave it that familiar and solid kind of advertising by which we recommend books to each other just as we introduce our friends. It quickly became known and, without making the slightest noise, spread and was translated throughout Europe.

In 1901 Miss Mary Louise Hendee translated it into elegant English for the McClure firm in New York. A distinguished American novelist, Miss Grace King, prefaced it with an introduction written with great care and grace.

The book was already making good headway in the United States when President Roosevelt read it and was particularly struck by it. He wrote to the author: "I preach your books to my countrymen." In two resounding public speeches, one in Bangor and the other in Philadelphia, he urged Americans to read The Simple Life. Finally he invited the author to come to America, and on November 22, 1904, in the great theater on Lafayette Square in Washington, he presented him to the audience himself, opening his address with these words: "This is the first time, and it will also be the one and only time, that during my Presidency I am introducing a speaker to an audience. And I am more than glad to do so on this occasion, for if there is one book that I wish to see read by our whole people as a tract, and an interesting tract, it is The Simple Life, written by Monsieur Wagner. There are other books of his from which we can draw great good. But I know of no work written in recent years, here or abroad, that contains so many things which we children of America ought to take to heart as The Simple Life."

On a recent and delightful journey to the United States, I was able to see for myself how fully America had followed the advice of its President.

Families, universities, businessmen, a wide public drawn from the most varied circles, all began reading the book. Newspapers ran it as a serial, preachers drew whole series of sermons from it, and cartoonists caricatures. Lastly, cheap popular editions were being cried in the streets by hawkers.

All this is proof that the book came at its proper time and answers a deep need for simplification in the midst of this restless and complex age.

By a very natural effect, the extraordinary success of the translations is now reflecting back on the French edition and giving it fresh energy.

May these pages, as they spread, bring the attention of many of our contemporaries back to the first of all subjects: the use and the ordering of life.

And may we, as we meditate on this problem of problems, come to understand that the happiness, the strength, and the beauty of existence have their source, in large part, in the spirit of Simplicity.

Charles Wagner.

Paris, February 1905.

Translator's notes

Roosevelt's words: Roosevelt spoke in English; they are translated here from the French version that Wagner printed.