The World's Best Memoir Writing: The Literature of Life from St. Augustine to Gandhi, and from Pablo Picasso to Nelson Mandela PDF
Preview The World's Best Memoir Writing: The Literature of Life from St. Augustine to Gandhi, and from Pablo Picasso to Nelson Mandela
the worlds’ best memoir writing the worlds’ best memoir writing The Literature of Life from St. Augustine to Gandhi, and from Pablo Picasso to Nelson Mandela EVE CLAXTON EDITED BY ©2007 by Eve Claxton Cover and internal design © 2007 by Sourcebooks, Inc. Cover photos ©Corbis Internal permissions credit lines found on pages 415–431 Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc. Eve Claxton has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writ- ing from its publisher,Sourcebooks, Inc. Published by Sourcebooks, Inc. P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410 (630) 961-3900 Fax: (630) 961-2168 www.sourcebooks.com Originally published in Great Britain 2005 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data World’s best memoir writing : the literature of life from St. Augustine to Nelson Mandela / [edited by] Eve Claxton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4022-0975-8 (pbk.) 1. Autobiography. I. Claxton, Eve. CT25.W665 2007 920.02—dc22 2007024052 Printed and bound in the United States of America. VP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 “I would rather be well versed about myself than about Cicero. In the experience I have of myself I find enough to make me wise if I were a good scholar.” —MICHELDEMONTAIGNE,“Of Experience,” 1588 “It is a hard and nice subject for a man to write of himself, it grates his own heart to say anything of disparagement, and the reader’s ears to hear anything of praise from him.” —ABRAHAMCOWLEY,“Of Myself,” 1668 “The three essentials for an autobiography are that its compiler shall have had an eccentric father,amiserable, misunderstood childhood,and a hell of a time at his public school, and I enjoyed none of these advantages. My father was as normal as rice pudding, my childhoodwent like a breeze from start to finish, with everybody I met understandingme perfectly, while as for my schooldays at Dulwich they were just six years of unbroken bliss. It would be laughable for me to attempt a formalautobiography. I have not got the material.” —P. G. WODEHOUSE,Over Seventy: An Autobiography with Digressions,1957 Table of Contents G Acknowledgments...........................................................................xix Introduction ......................................................................................1 Publisher’sNote................................................................................19 BEGINNINGS:BIRTHTHROUGHAGETWELVE ...........................21 Birth St. Augustine: The Confessions of St. Augustine..............................22 Ariel Dorfman: Heading South, Looking North: ABilingual Journey ......................................................................23 Harriet Martineau: Harriet Martineau’sAutobiography....................23 One Hannah Lynch: Autobiography of a Child ........................................24 Two Thomas Carlyle: Reminiscences .......................................................25 Henry James: ASmall Boy and Others .............................................26 Sherwin B. Nuland: Lost in America: A Journey with My Father ....27 Three Charles Chaplin: My Autobiography ...............................................28 Czeslaw Milosz: Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition .............30 Mrs. Scott, JP: “A Felt Hat Worker” ..............................................31 viii The World’s Best Memoir Writing D Four Paul Bowles: Without Stopping .........................................................31 Charlotte Charke: ANarrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke .........................................................................................32 Vladimir Nabokov: Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited ...34 Reinaldo Arenas: Before Night Falls: A Memoir ..............................36 Shen Fu: Six Records of a Floating Life .............................................37 Five Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Confessions .........................................38 Benvenuto Cellini: My Life ............................................................39 Edmund Gosse: Father and Son .......................................................40 Peter O’Toole: Loitering with Intent: The Child ...............................42 Mary Karr: The Liars’ Club ..............................................................44 Helen Keller: The Story of My Life ..................................................45 Wole Soyinka: Aké: The Years of Childhood ....................................46 Alan Bennett: “The Treachery of Books” ......................................49 John Muir: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth ..............................50 Janet Frame: To the Is-land ..............................................................51 Patrick Chamoiseau: School Days ....................................................54 Lorna Sage: Bad Blood .....................................................................55 Andrea Ashworth: Once in a House on Fire ...................................56 Abraham Cowley: “Of Myself” .......................................................59 Lynne Tillman: “Hole Story” ..........................................................60 Annie Besant: Annie Besant: An Autobiography .............................61 John Ruskin: Praeterita: Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts Perhaps Worthy of Memory in My Past Life ..............................................62 Marlon Brando: Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me ...................63 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus: The Meditations .................................64 Six Eudora Welty: One Writer’s Beginnings ............................................65 P. T. Barnum: The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself ...........66 William Cowper: Memoir of the Early Life of William Cowper, Esq., Written by Himself ..............................................................67 Sara Coleridge: “Memoir” ...............................................................68 Naguib Mahfouz: Echoes of an Autobiography .................................71 Salvador Dali: The Secret Life of Salvador Dali ................................72 James Hogg: “Memoir of the Author’sLife” ...................................73 The World’s Best Memoir Writing ix E Seven Mary Darby Robinson: Memoirs of the Late Mrs. Robinson, Written by Herself ........................................................................74 Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave ......................................................76 Anthony Trollope: An Autobiography .............................................79 Michel de Montaigne: “Of the Education of Children” ................80 Gertrude Simmons Bonnin: Impressions of an Indian Childhood .....81 Andrew Carnegie: Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie ....................83 Ingmar Bergman: The Magic Lantern ..............................................84 James Baldwin: “The Devil Finds Work” .......................................87 Isadora Duncan: My Life .................................................................89 Edmund Gosse: Father and Son .......................................................90 Eight Giacomo Casanova: Story of My Life ..............................................91 George Orwell: “Such, Such Were the Joys . . .” ...........................93 Harriet Martineau: Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography....................98 Nine Roald Dahl: Boy:Tales of Childhood ..............................................100 P.J.Kavanagh: The Perfect Stranger ..............................................103 Mrs. Wrigley: “A Plate-Layer’s Wife” ...........................................105 Ten Colley Cibber: AnApology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber, Written by Himself .....................................................................106 Jean-Paul Sartre: The Words ..........................................................108 Charles Dickens: “Autobiographical Fragment” ..........................110 Charles Darwin: “An Autobiographical Fragment”......................114 Gerald Durrell: My Family and Other Animals ..............................115 Roy Hattersley: AYorkshire Boyhood .............................................119 Walt Whitman: “Specimen Days” ................................................120 Dylan Thomas: “Holiday Memory” ..............................................122 Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography..........................................124 Eleven Maxim Gorky: My Childhood ........................................................126 Emmeline Pankhurst: My Own Story ............................................132
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