Preface

I was fourteen years old when I first read Artemis McIvor’s account of her life and times. It was a wild and rambling tale and it seized my imagination. These are quieter times, and we look back in awe at the great history of our civilisation, in all its absurdity, barbarity, and cruelty.

The book I read was somewhat erratically edited, and in publishing this new corporeal edition¹ we considered very carefully whether to delete some of the interpolations from this unnamed and now forgotten scribe before eventually deciding to retain them. However, readers should be aware that large sections of McIvor’s manuscript were excised by this editor for reasons which in the eyes of posterity appear spurious; and all these deleted sections have now been lost. And, apparently, McIvor herself showed no interest in revising her manuscript, even when the charges against her were dropped.

So this is the story of Artemis. She was not a revolutionary, or an idealist; she was merely a survivor. But we salute her spirit.

Henry Exon, publisher-in-chief of
Heritage of Humanity Books.