The present volume includes eighteen Ex Libris, most of which (15) come from Mary's regular Sunday collaboration in the newspaper "Η Εποχή"· one was published in the magazine "Οδός Πανός" and the remaining two had remained unpublished· they were found in her papers at an advanced, unfinished stage of processing.

Two of the above texts are extensive reviews of editions of Cavafy's works (correspondence with E.M. Forster, lexicon of Alexandrian quotations), and two others evaluate books of Cavafian interest by third parties, Dimitris Papanikolaou and Ersi Sotiropoulou, respectively. Three other texts comment on those of "The Cavafy Year" (2013), while the rest constitute detailed and penetrating studies on Alexandrian's relationships with Xenopoulos, Palamas, Seferis, and Papadiamantis. In all of them, Mary's once very sharp ironic humor and her deep knowledge of literary topics are evident.

The conscientious and, at the same time, restless critic does not accept unquestioningly the established and does not rest on any fixed perceptions. According to the prevailing opinion, for example, the relationships between Xenopoulos and Cavafy, as well as the relationships between Cavafy and Palamas, have been sufficiently studied and explored, perhaps in a definitive way. In her relevant studies published in this volume, Mary takes up the thread from the beginning and unravels her thoughts in an inductive, detailed, almost detective-like manner, reexamining the relationships between individuals and texts, challenging the hitherto considered final opinions.

With a similar method, she examines the "unusual publishing and translational fortunes," as she characterizes them, of the Cavafian poem "Walls". In this study, her comfort in the field of Cavafian bibliography is evident, pointing out omissions and suggesting additions. Similar is her approach to the text entitled "The First Time".

A relevant example is also the study "Papadiamantis - Cavafy" which, among other things, highlights Mary's knowledge and interest in linguistic and linguistic topics.

With the same bibliographic ease as above, Mary records in her study "Seferian Cavafy" the long-standing effort of George Seferis to familiarize himself with Cavafian poetry.

By Dimitris Daskalopoulos, from the Introduction