I went to a "Writing Show" sponsored by the James River Writers this year. (Here's the link in case you'd like to check out this great organization: http://www.jrwf.org/.) They had a panel made up of published fiction writers and literary agents. The group overwhelmingly stressed that if you are writing fiction, you need to start your work as close to the action as possible. They said to dump the history and all of the preinformation you provided in the early chapters. They did say that it was good for the writer to think through all of the characters' histories, but not to include it in the final version.

I went home and reviewed my manuscript, and that's exactly what I had done. It was painful, but I cut seven chapters.