Critics have complained about the swift education one of my characters, Martin Eden, achieved.

In three years, from a sailor with a common school education, I made a successful writer of him.

The critics say this is impossible.

Yet I was Martin Eden.

At the end of three working years, two of which were spent in high school and the university and one spent at writing, and all three in studying immensely and intensely, I was publishing stories in magazines such as the "Atlantic Monthly," was correcting proofs of my first book (issued by Houghton, Mifflin Co.), was selling sociological articles to "Cosmopolitan" and "McClure's," had declined an associate editorship proffered me by telegraph from New York City, and was getting ready to marry.
Now the foregoing means work, especially the last year of it, when I was learning my trade as a writer.