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Richardson experienced waves of popularity and neglect. The publication of Maurice Guest in 1908, followed by The Getting of Wisdom in 1910, earned her moderate acclaim. Her massive trilogy, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, the first volume of which was published during the First World War in 1917, was initially so neglected that her publisher, Heinemann, sought to be released from the publication of the final volume, which had to be underwritten by Richardson's husband's peronsal funds. Surprisingly, that book (Ultima Thule) went into a number of printings and ushered in a second wave of popularity for the happy author (Heinemann quickly bought back the rights, despite having let the previous volumes go out of print). Thereafter, Richardson's reputation again slowly waned, though her books continued to be reissued.

In 1960, Heinemann republished The Getting of Wisdom in its New Windmill Series. For this edition the publisher deleted the German-language epigraphs, taken from Nietzsche, and made numerous editorial changes in the language, vocabulary, and punctuation of the text, apparently in an effort to "modernize" it. Following Bruce Beresford's 1977 film of The Getting of Wisdom, Virago/Dial issued a paperback version of the book (with a still from the movie on the cover). This is the edition most readily available, and we are fortunate to have it, since otherwise the book would have been almost completely inaccessilbe; it also includes the valuable introduction by Germaine Greer. Unfortunately, it reproduces the 1960 edited text. (To imagine the author's reponse to this edition, consider that in 1939, when Richardson discovered unauthorized changes made by the publisher in the second proofs of her last novel, The Young Cosima, she insisted quite forcefully on removing all of them, and succeeded in doing so.) For this Mercury House edition we are pleased to restore the original 1910 text, as Richardson intended the work to be published.

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