Excerpt from Stories of Naples and the Camorra The author of these striking tales was a remark able man. It is impossible to read them without forming this opinion, and those who knew him and lament his death would, with emphasis, declare it to be just. Yet his life, though never commonplace, was an extremely simple one, marked by few incidents or outward features to form the basis of a narrative. The aim of these short pages is therefore explanatory rather than strictly biographical, to show how the stories came to be written, and how their author gained the extraordinarily exact and intimate know ledge of Neapolitan life and character which they reveal. Incidentally, perhaps, some light may be thrown on his own engaging personality, which com bined great charm with no mean literary gifts. Charles Grant was born in Hackney, on March 25th, 1841, and died at Gratz, in Styria, on July 8th, 1889. His father, who had been a merchant on the Gambia, West Africa, died in Scotland in 1848. Grant's mother, a woman of much ability, whose character exerted a strong and attractive influence upon those who came in contact with her, had been married previously to a Wesleyan missionary, who, together with his children. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.