The intellectually respectable reasons for writing this book are given in our Prologue. Here we should record that our collaboration is the outcome of common tastes and interests, shared teaching duties, and, above all, friendship. Every stage in the planning and execution of the book has involved very close, and often highly convivial, co-operation; both the closeness and the conviviality have made it difficult in some cases to remember who should now be credited with particular ideas or phrases. We have decided, therefore, to accept full collective responsibility for the book as a whole, and to mark this fact by not assigning authorship to the individual essays in the main text. For those – apart from ourselves – who are interested in such matters, the Prologue is the joint effort of all three authors; Essays i, ii, and iii were written by Winch; Essay iv by Collini; Essays v and vi by Burrow; Essay vii by Burrow and Collini; Essays viii and ix by Collini; Essay x by Winch and Collini; Essay xi and the Epilogue by Collini. The only exception to our practice of collective responsibility is the following sentence. Donald Winch and John Burrow wish to pay tribute to the qualities of energy and tact, at times much needed, with which Stefan Collini has discharged the dual office of being both the team's captain and its leading scorer: but for his promptings this book would most probably not have been started, and without his coaxing, his reproaches, and his example it would almost certainly never have been finished.