Luther: A Life
by John M. Todd

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to many people for help in respect of a book which has taken five years to write. First to my publisher for being so patient. It is dangerous to make a contract with an author who is also a publisher; he tends to have a cavalier attitude when it comes to delivery dates. Over the years Hamish Hamilton’s editors, first Raleigh Trevelyan and latterly Jane Everard, have been of great assistance in helping me to get the text into the right shape. Then with great pleasure, I must thank Professor George Yule of Aberdeen University who read my typescript and made many particular and a few general suggestions of great importance, and Professor Gordon Rupp who very kindly ran his critical eye over the proofs.

I give some account of sources in my Note at the end of the book. But I must mention here the great kindness of Fortress Press, Philadelphia, in allowing me to quote freely from many of the fifty-four volumes of their translation of Luther’s Works. Their edition, together with all its numerous introductions and annotations, has been of inestimable value to me.

A special note of gratitude is due to my literary agent, Mark Hamilton of A. M. Heath and Co. Ltd who has looked after me so well since the middle fifties, to the American publisher John McHale who first turned my mind to Luther, and to Boston College, America, who greatly daring allowed me to teach a Luther seminar for an invaluable semester in 1972. Finally, I must salute my family: my children who, so one daughter tells me tolerated the writing of the book and provided some inspiration, and my wife who has, in a manner of speaking, lived bravely with Luther for twenty years, after only a brief sojourn with John Wesley.

John M. Todd