Father and Son


Edmund Gosse - 1907
    Father and Son remains one of English literature's seminal autobiographies. In it, Edmund Gosse recounts, with humor and pathos, his childhood as a member of a Victorian Protestant sect and his struggles to forge his own identity despite the loving control of his father. His work is a key document of the crisis of faith and doubt and a penetrating exploration of the impact of evolutionary science. An astute, well-observed, and moving portrait of the tensions of family life, Father and Son remains a classic of twentieth-century literature.This edition contains an illuminating introduction, and provides a series of fascinating appendices including extracts from Philip Gosse's Omphalos and Edmund Gosse's harrowing account of his wife's death from breast cancer.

Homage to Catalonia


George Orwell - 1938
    This famous account describes the war and Orwell’s own experiences. Introduction by Lionel Trilling.

The Return of Eva Peron With The Killings In Trinidad


V.S. Naipaul - 1980
    Michael X in Trinidad, Peronism in Argentina, the cult of Kingship in Mobutu's Zaire - the author brings his novelist's questioning to bear upon the "half-made" societies, those still suffering from the profound deprivations of colonialism and prey to corruption.

Moments of Being: A Collection of Autobiographical Writing


Virginia Woolf - 1976
    In "Reminiscences," the first of five pieces, she focuses on the death of her mother, "the greatest disaster that could happen," and its effect on her father, the demanding Victorian patriarch. Three of the papers were composed to be read to the Memoir Club, a postwar regrouping of Bloomsbury, which exacted absolute candor of its members."A Sketch of the Past" is the longest and most significant of the pieces, giving an account of Virginia Woolf's early years in the family household at 22 Hyde Park Gate. A recently discovered manuscript belonging to this memoir has provided material that further illuminates her relationship to her father, Leslie Stephen, who played a crucial role in her development as an individual and as a writer.

Q's Legacy: A Delightful Account of a Lifelong Love Affair with Books


Helene Hanff - 1985
    Hanff recalls her serendipitous discovery of a volume of lectures by a Cambridge don, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. She devoured Q’s book, and, wanting to read all the books he recommended, began to order them from a small store in London, at 84, Charing Cross Road. Thus began a correspondence that became an enormously popular book, play and television production, and that finally led to the trip to England – and a visit to Q’s study – that she recounts here. In this exuberant memoir, Hanff pays her debt to her mentor and shares her joyous adventures with her many fans.

Something of Myself


Rudyard Kipling - 1937
    This memoir describes his bitter childhood years in the 'House of Desolation', his beloved parents and his pride in his own work.

Lark Rise to Candleford


Flora Thompson - 1939
    This story of three closely related Oxfordshire communities - a hamlet, the nearby village and a small market town - is based on the author's experiences during childhood and youth. It chronicles May Day celebrations and forgotten children's games, the daily lives of farmworkers and craftsmen, friends and relations - all painted with a gaiety and freshness of observation that make this trilogy an evocative and sensitive memorial to Victorian rural England.With a new introduction by Richard Mabey

The Best of James Herriot: The Favorite Stories of One of the Most Beloved Writers of Our Time


James Herriot - 1983
    Within its covers are unforgettable episodes from the remarkable series of memoirs that began with All Creatures Great and Small-"the ones my family and I have laughed at over the years and the ones my readers have said they most enjoyed," as Herriot, himself, put it. Yet the book is far more than a simple anthology: Its gorgeous pages also include hundreds of line drawings and color photographs, capturing Herriot's Yorkshire in a worthy complement to the writer's words.The 1991 publication of Every Living Thing, rendered the original edition of this book incomplete. This fall will mark the publication of the complete, definitive edition with the addition of five of his best, more recent stories, as well as new art. Once again The Best of James Herriot becomes the quintessential Herriot volume-one of those invaluable books that will be loved as much in decades to come as it is today.

Selected Letters of James Joyce


James Joyce - 1957
    This correspondence provides a balance between the letters of Joyce as a man, and as a writer.

Experience: A Memoir


Martin Amis - 2000
    He also examines the life and legacy of his cousin, Lucy Partington, who was abducted and murdered by one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers. Experience also deconstructs the changing literary scene, including Amis' portraits of Saul Bellow, Salman Rushdie, Allan Bloom, Philip Larkin, and Robert Graves, among others.

De Profundis


Oscar Wilde - 1897
    Wilde wrote the letter between January and March 1897; he was not allowed to send it, but took it with him upon release. In it he repudiates Lord Alfred for what Wilde finally sees as his arrogance and vanity; he had not forgotten Douglas's remark, when he was ill, "When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting." He also felt redemption and fulfillment in his ordeal, realizing that his hardship had filled the soul with the fruit of experience, however bitter it tasted at the time.

The Summing Up


W. Somerset Maugham - 1938
    Autobiographical and confessional, and yet not, this is one of the most highly regarded expressions of a personal credo; both a classic avowal of an author's ideas and his craft.

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater & Other Writings


Thomas De Quincey - 1998
    This selection of De Quincey's writings includes the title piece - his most famous work - as well as On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth, The English Mail-Coach, and the Suspiria de Profundis.

Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947-1997


Salman Rushdie - 1997
    Selected by Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West, these novel excerpts, stories, and memoirs illuminate wonderful writing by authors often overlooked in the West. Chronologically arranged to reveal the development of Indian literature in English, this volume includes works by Jawaharlal Nehru, Nayantara Sahgal, Saadat Hasan Manto, G.V. Desani, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Kamala Markandaya, Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan, Ved Mehta, Anita Desai, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Satyajit Ray, Salman Rushdie, Padma Perera, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Rohinton Mistry, Bapsi Sidhwa, I. Allan Sealy, Shashi Tharoor, Sara Suleri, Firdaus Kanga, Anjana Appachana, Amit Chaudhuri, Amitav Ghosh, Githa Hariharan, Gita Mehta, Vikram Seth, Vikram Chandra, Ardashir Vakil, Mukul Kesavan, Arundhati Roy, and Kiran Desai.

The Portable Coleridge


Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1950
    Edited and with an introduction by the critic I.A. Richards, this volume vastly expands our understanding of a writer of visionary insight and protean range.