It failed to change the world, of course, but at least it was published. When Orion Books offered to reissue it after it had been out of print in the UK for almost a decade, I was glad for two reasons. First, because all the people who’d told me they’d like to read The Hope but couldn’t find a copy could now do both, and second, because a reissue would provide me with an opportunity to give the original text a bit of a refit, patch over some of the more corroded sections, touch up the paintwork here and there, scrape off a few barnacles, generally spruce the thing up and get it all shipshape for its relaunch. In the event, and probably more through laziness on my part than anything, I have made very few revisions. Where I have made changes, it has been for the sake of textual clarity and to correct solecisms. Other than that, I have let the novel stand as it is, with all its rawnesses and crudenesses (as I perceive them) intact. I’d like to thank Mechelle Dudley for her sterling efforts on the copytyping front, and Mark Morris, who championed the book when it first came out.
