Letters From the Cape by Lucie Duff Gordon

The following letters were written, as the reader will readily perceive, without the remotest view to publication. They convey in the most unreserved manner the fresh and vivid impressions of the moment, to the two persons with whom, of all others, the writer felt the least necessity for reserve in the expression of her thoughts, or care about the form in which those thoughts were conveyed. Such letters cannot be expected to be free from mistakes. The writer is misinformed; or her imagination, powerfully acted upon by new and strange objects, colours and magnifies, to a certain extent, what she sees. If these are valid objections, they are equally so to every description of a country that has not been corrected by long experience. It has been thought, however, that their obvious and absolute genuineness, and a certain frank and high-toned originality, hardly to be found in what is written for the public, would recommend them to the taste of many. But this was not the strongest motive to their publication.