From Sea Sodoms by G. L. Morrill, 1921.

The author promised that the reader would live 100 years or money back upon request.  From How to Live 100 Years by Guy Lockwood, 1912.

Here's a rhymed note to the reader, apologizing for the "devil in ink."  From A Critical Fable by A Poker of Fun, 1922.

This author in 1996 addresses her readers in the 22nd century.  From the rare Children of the Void by Regina Snow, 1996.

"A book to amuse the frivolous, pique the curious, confound the materialist, shock the orthodox, and give Wisdom to the Understanding."  From Rosicrvcian Symbology by George Winslow Plummer, 1916.

Here's the form the epigraph takes in Positive Magic by Marion Weinstein. 

What a great pre-apology for causing offense: it's not you, it's your next-door neighbor the author was eviscerating.  From Needles and Pins by Mina Deane Halsey, 1909.

Great instruction on how to use a book!  This one must be read in bed and must not be borrowed.  For a double bed, buy two.  From Mince Pie by Christopher Morley, 1919.

The introduction to Puffs and Mysteries (a.k.a. A. B. Has Returned, 1855) is addressed to the "mythical multitude of readers," since few ever read prefatory matter.  "What no one thinks of reading is of course beyond criticism," so the author safely fills paper while going to very little trouble.

After an editor's note of no fewer than 142 pages, the editor presents the book itself, saying (presumably with a straight face), "I offer no remarks on it."  From The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, 1824.

An apology for tinkering with the phases of the moon so as to provide sufficiently dramatic lighting for the story.  From (the very charming, in the style of golden age British mysteries) A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley, 2011.

The author reveals that his aim in the book is to kill a passing moment.  From Quips and Cranks by Thomas Hood, 1861.

There are possible readers of books not yet printed, and here's part of a preface to them.  From Ixora, A Mystery by John Harrison, 1888.

Here's an author's apology for letting a couple of fairies slip into the pages of her book.  From The Primrose Ring by Ruth Sawyer, 1915.   See How to Believe in Your Elf.

Nicholas Royle would prefer no title for his In Memory of Jacques Derrida, or else a ghostly but irreducible proliferation of titles.

Here's a book entitled What the Sam Hill (What the Sam Hill by Wib. F. Clements, 1911), along with the explanation.

The anonymous author of Whose Poems? (1850) asks his possibly phantasmagorical reader to be kind.  He would have benefitted from How to Believe in Your Elf.