The World's Best Memoir Writing: The Literature of Life from St. Augustine to Gandhi, and from Pablo Picasso to Nelson Mandela

458 Pages·2007·1.39 MB·English

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
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Eve Claxton has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this
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embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writ-
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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