n/29595

This novel is dedicated, in gratitude and affection, to the late Professor Wynn Reynolds, who taught me the importance of wit in his living and dying, and to Lynda Lyall, Wells Cathedral Guide, who instilled in me a fascination for misericords. None of the characters in "The Good Husband" are portraits or sketches of any real persons, living or dead. Though I have taken the grace and dedication and sacramental quality of his daily living from one friend, the quiet beauty and composure from another friend, the admirably tenacious commitment to his art from a writer friend, and the courage to die imaginatively from another friend, Francis, Alice, Hugo, and Magda are, I must admit, four stimulating but often puzzling parts of my own character.