"Autobiographical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to appear on canvas." It is probable that in some way or other Haydon offended his sitter, who, regretting his acquiescence, antedated the episode and depicted himself as refusing the invitation. Such a liberty with fact and date would be quite in accordance with Borrow's autobiographical methods. ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... circles. Claude Ditmar's ability to put it through was unquestioned; one had only to look at him,—tenacity, forcefulness, executiveness were written all over him.... In addition, the article contained much material of an autobiographical nature that must—Janet thought—have been supplied by Ditmar himself, whose modesty had evidently shrunk from the cruder self-eulogy of an interview. But ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to buy her children fruits and candies, to carry all her parcels, and even to sleep upon the floor that she might profit by my empty seat. Nay, she was such a rattle by nature, and so powerfully moved to autobiographical talk, that she was forced, for want of a better, to take me into confidence and tell me the story of her life. I heard about her late husband, who seemed to have made his chief impression by taking her out pleasuring on Sundays. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... than for men to figure as women. In the theatre we have conjectured how and why this may be, but the privilege, for less obvious reasons, seems yet more liberally granted in fiction. A woman may tell a story in the character of a man and not give offence, but a man cannot write a novel in autobiographical form from the personality of a woman without imparting the sense of something unwholesome. One feels this true even in the work of such a master as Tolstoy, whose Katia is a case in point. Perhaps a woman may play Hamlet with a less shocking effect than a man may play Desdemona, but ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... all surety, were very, very idle. Moreover, unless she went out greedily in search of fresh variety, how could she bring it into his present prison? If she spent too much time with him, inevitably they would exhaust their fund of gossip. Then they would be driven into becoming autobiographical, and that would be the finish of their ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... inside of pawnshops and had to sing in the streets, to secure a lodging. But this "singing in the streets" business was, if a picturesque one, not an original touch. It is still in active use, as a stock portion of the autobiographical equipment of every stage and film heroine who wants "publicity." Further, if Lola Montez ever did anything of the kind, it was not for long. A "rich man"—she had a knack of establishing contact with them—promptly came to the rescue; and, assisted ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Autobiographical Style," he announced, with a wave of his hand. "I hopped along the Guests' Corridor, and turned into the South Corridor. I stopped at the little study. Door open; nobody there. I crossed the study to the second ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... references to early days were rare. He would repeat queer reminiscences of the backwoods to illustrate questions of state; but of his own part in that old life he spoke reluctantly and sadly. Nevertheless there was once extracted from him an awkward autobiographical fragment, and his friends have collected and recorded concerning his earlier years quite as much as is common in great men's biographies or can as a rule be reproduced with its true associations. Thus there are tales enough of the untaught student's perseverance, and of the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... took hours. A few minutes had been enough on the subject of the duke and Michael, but when Fay came to dilate on her own sufferings, when the autobiographical flood-gates were opened, it seemed as if the rush of confidences would never cease. Magdalen listened hour by hour. Is it given even to the wisest of us ever to speak a true word about ourselves? Do our whispered or published autobiographies ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... Chapter I. The first chapter in this novel is practically autobiographical, though fictitious names have ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... projection of certain features of the writer into all and sundry of his important characters, thus imparts, if not an air of egotism, then most certainly a somewhat constrained, if not somewhat artificial, autobiographical air—in the very midst of action, questions of ethical or casuistical character arise, all contributing to submerging individual character and its dramatic interests under a wave of but half-disguised autobiography. Let ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... 54. Two autobiographical works, the Malfuzat and the Tuzukat, are attributed to Timur and probably were composed under his direction. The latter was translated by Major Davey (Oxford, 1783), and the former, in part, by Major Stewart (Or. Transl. Fund, 1830). An independent version of the portion of the Malfuzat ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... turned from with disgust. A temporary condition of this sort, connected with the religious evolution of a singularly lofty character, both intellectual and moral, is well described by the Catholic philosopher, Father Gratry, in his autobiographical recollections. In consequence of mental isolation and excessive study at the Polytechnic school, young Gratry fell into a state of nervous exhaustion with symptoms ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the attempts for Ireland's freedom, and the dire failures that culminated at Ballingary, are told in a manner which give an intimate insight into the history of the Young Ireland movement. If the book cannot be considered autobiographical, the reader will not forget that the author was contemporary with the events described, and will have little difficulty in perceiving that many of the principal characters are strongly suggestive of the Irish leaders of that day, which gives the ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... desperate service. We have this on the authority of a distinguished seaman of Nelson's time. Departing this life as Admiral of the Fleet on the eve of the Crimean War, Sir Thomas Byam Martin has recorded for us amongst his all too short autobiographical notes these few characteristic words uttered by one young man of the many who must have felt that particular inconvenience ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... changes were still as dependent as ever on the arbitrary will or caprice of the Monarch, we have only to glance at their position in the time of Paul I., the capricious, eccentric, violent son and successor of Catherine. The autobiographical memoirs of the time depict in vivid colours the humiliating position of even the leading men in the State, in constant fear of exciting by act, word, or look the wrath of the Sovereign. As we read these contemporary records we seem to have before us a picture of ancient ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... his latest book, "Endymion," his respect for Punch's influence at that time, as well as his desire to temper the ardour of its attacks if not to secure its silence, for he there explains how the hero, who to some degree at least is to be considered an autobiographical study, "flattered himself that 'Scaramouche'" would regard him in a more friendly spirit. Punch, with pardonable pride, devoted a cartoon to this pointed reference, but merely remarking, "H'm—he did flatter himself," abated not one jot ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... for a biography of Sterne are by no means abundant. Of the earlier years of his life the only existing record is that preserved in the brief autobiographical memoir which, a few months before his death, he composed, in the usual quaint staccato style of his familiar correspondence, for the benefit of his daughter. Of his childhood; of his school-days; of his life at Cambridge, ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... in him by curious observers living in the day of his greatness. It is due in part also to the fact that, unlike the greatest of his predecessors, he flourished in an all-communicating, all-recording age; and partly it is due to autobiographical notices, embracing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... dates his autobiographical letter to Campanus saw the publication in Strasbourg of Franck's best-known literary work: Chronica, Zeitbuch und Geschichtsbibel ("A Universal Chronicle of the World's History from the Earliest Times to the Present").[7] It has {50} often been pointed out that much of the ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... Letters of Charles Darwin. With an Autobiographical Chapter. Edited by Francis Darwin. Portraits. 3 volumes 36s. Popular Edition. Condensed in ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... gruesome hostelry and wrote an article on 'Impecunious Life in London.' It appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, then published by Messrs. Grant & Co. and under the editorship of my old friend Richard Gowing. The article was not far from being autobiographical. I think—but I am not quite sure—that I got sixteen guineas for it. I know that it set me on my feet, and that since then any acquaintance I may have had with the Thames Embankment has ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... French Bohemia; his journeys are recorded in "Travels with a Donkey" and "An Inland Voyage"; while his South Sea sketches, which appeared in periodicals, deal with his Oceanic adventures. He was the most autobiographical of authors, with an egoism nearly as complete, and to us as delightful, as the egoism of Montaigne. Thus, the proper sources of information about the author of "Kidnapped" ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... of the statements furnished by homosexual persons. This has sometimes been called in question. Many years ago we used to be told that inverts are such lying and deceitful degenerates that it was impossible to place reliance on anything they said. It was also usual to say that when they wrote autobiographical accounts of themselves they merely sought to mold them in the fashion of those published by Krafft-Ebing. More recently the psychoanalysts have made a more radical attack on all histories not obtained by their own ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... life is one which interests many thousands in this country, and which will also be read with interest in other lands, for her reputation as a reformer and writer is international; her strong personal characteristics give to this autobiographical work a charm of its own. It contains some of the most entertaining reminiscences that have been given to the public. It is a book which is sure to be widely ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... so inhuman in his art as some of his admirers have held him to be. Mr. Hueffer, I think, has described him as pitiless, and even cruel. But can one call Daisy Miller pitiless? Or What Maisie Knew? Certainly, those autobiographical volumes, A Small Boy and Others and Notes of a Son and Brother, which may be counted among the most wonderful of the author's novels, are pervaded by exquisite affections which to a pitiless ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... the life and history of Virginia, the best known of them being "Surry of Eagle's Nest," which is said to be partly autobiographical. They hold well the popular favor. His "Stories of the Old Dominion" are specially ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... beauty and freshness in a marvelous degree. The effect of Grassini's singing on people of refined taste was even greater than the impression made on regular musicians. Thomas De Quincey speaks of her in his "Autobiographical Sketches" as having a voice delightful beyond all that he had ever heard. Sir Charles Bell thought it was "only Grassini who conveyed the idea of the united power of music and action. She did not act only without being ridiculous, ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... good many amusing things (I mean amusing in MY sense - amusing to do). You know, I lose all my forenoons at Court! So it is, but the time passes; it is a great pleasure to sit and hear cases argued or advised. This is quite autobiographical, but I feel as if it was some time since we met, and I can tell you, I am glad to meet you again. In every way, you see, but that of work the world goes well with me. My health is better than ever it was before; I get on without any jar, nay, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... though he was, Godwin made friends and kept them. Thomas Holcroft came into Godwin's life in 1786. Thanks to Hazlitt's spirited memoir, based as it was on ample autobiographical notes, no personality of this group stands before us so clearly limned, and there is none more attractive. Mrs. Shelley describes him as a "man of stern and irascible character," but he was also lovable and affectionate. There was ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... same underlying sympathy with progress and what is called the ideas of the age. What mastery of description, what rich and vigorous colors, Kielland had at his disposal was demonstrated in such scenes as the funeral of Consul Garman and the burning of the ship. There was, moreover, a delightful autobiographical note in the book, particularly in the boyish experiences of Gabriel Garman. Such things no man invents, however clever; such material no imagination supplies, however fertile. Except Fritz Reuter's Stavenhagen, I know no small town in fiction which is so vividly and completely individualized, and ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... examine without a peculiar emotion the private letters of such a man as Smollett. A strange sensation accompanies the unfolding of the faded sheets, that have hardly been disturbed during the greater part of a century. And as one at least of the documents in question is of an almost autobiographical character, its tattered folds at once assume a value to the literary student far beyond the usual ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... island; and even a particular incident, here and there, such as the fright he receives one night from something in his bed, 'was word for word a history of what happened.' In other words, this novel too, like many of the best ever written, has in it the autobiographical element which makes a man speak from greater depths of feeling than in a purely ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... demonstrated the action of the scene to Saint-Prosper, and the soldier became collaborator, "abandoning, as it were," wrote the manager in his autobiographical date-book and diary, "the sword for the pen, and the glow of the Champ de Mars for the glimmer of a kerosene lamp." And yet not with the inclination of Burgoyne, or other military gentlemen who have courted the buskin ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... wife, who had died childless in the first year of their marriage, and he had abandoned himself after this event to a despairing seclusion, devoted to art and music. He had filled the great house with fine pictures, he had written a book of poems, and some curious stilted volumes of autobiographical prose; but he had no art of expression, and his books had seemed like a powerless attempt to give utterance to wild and melancholy musings; they were written in a pompous and elaborate style, which divested the thoughts of such charm as they ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... simple, homely, and attractive in literature than Franklin's autobiographical account of the first period of his life, of which we have transcribed a portion, nor nothing more indicative of the great changes which time has produced in the conditions of this country, and which it produced in the life of our ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... enjoying the calm beauty of the landscape, pointing out to me localities interesting from their historical or traditional associations, or connected in some way with humorous or pathetic passages of his own life experience. Some of these autobiographical fragments affected me deeply. In narrating them he invested familiar and commonplace facts with something of the fascination of romance. "Human life," he would say, "is the same everywhere. If we could but get at the truth, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... autobiographical, it would indisputably correspond well enough to a period in Chaucer's life, and to a mood of mind preceding those to which the introduction to the "Book of the Duchess" belongs. If it be not autobiographical—and in truth there ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... more encouraged to lay this performance at the feet of your Highness, because, with a change in the grammatical person, it preserves, almost as in a reprint, Israel Potter's autobiographical story. Shortly after his return in infirm old age to his native land, a little narrative of his adventures, forlornly published on sleazy gray paper, appeared among the peddlers, written, probably, not by himself, but taken ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... to provide interest, all sorts of accessories— aunts, parsons, gamekeepers, nurses, a fire and some hairbreadth escapes, but they were none of them essential and they were all manufactured. The only parts not worthless were those which were autobiographical. ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... in a great measure autobiographical, and is drawn from deep wells of experience, thought, and feeling. Inasmuch as its writer was a very typical Scotsman, it also was in a sense a manifesto of the national convictions which had made much of the noblest ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... that I was unintelligible; but the questions he put to me, 'Why had I no hat on in the open street?—Where did my mother live?—What was I doing out alone in London?' were so many incitements to autobiographical composition to an infant mind, and I tumbled out my history afresh each time that he spoke. He led me into a square, stooping his head to listen all the while; but when I perceived that we had quitted the region of shops ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... He is one of the least autobiographical of men. He sits, and smokes, and giggles, and sometimes he makes small jests; but his contributions to the art of pleasing are generally confined to looking like a gentleman and being one. No," added Stennis, "he'll never suit you, Dodd; you like more ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... have gone before us in the battle,—taken together, they build up a face that "I have loved long since and lost awhile," the face of what was once myself. This has come by accident; I had no design at first to be autobiographical; I was but led away by the charm of beloved memories and by regret for the irrevocable dead; and when my own young face (which is a face of the dead also) began to appear in the well as by a kind of magic, I was the first to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... than that," said Miss White. "At least it seems to." She sighed and added, "My partners have been very autobiographical to-night." ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... the Memoir of Butler on which I am still engaged, I marked all the more autobiographical notes and had them copied; again I was struck by the interest, the variety, and the confusion of those I left untouched. It seemed to me that any one who undertook to become Butler's accountant and to post his entries upon himself would have to settle first how many and what ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... he seems to have gone directly to Tuolumne County, and it must have been late in 1856. His delightful sketch "How I Went to the Mines" is surely autobiographical. He says: "I had been two years in California before I ever thought of going to the mines, and my initiation into the vocation of gold-digging was partly compulsory." He refers to "the little pioneer settlement school, of which I was the somewhat youthful, and, I fear, not over-competent master." ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind; an Autobiographical Poem. By William Wordsworth. London. Moxon. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the inheritance of the fathers and upon whose shoulders rest the responsibility of passing the work down to a new century." The editors disclaim pretension to scientific historical treatment. The work is rather biographical and autobiographical and was prepared under such a handicap that some of the matter presented could not be verified. Yet when we consider the fact that the editors had access to the files of newspapers, church histories, and other church encyclopedias, we must conclude that they have here compiled information ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... love-poetry, one of the most enduring forms of literature because of its elementariness and universality; but it is also found in other parts of the emotional field. In seeking concrete material for lyrical use the poet may take some autobiographical incident, but commonly the world of inanimate nature yields the most plastic mould. It is a marvellous victory of the spirit over matter when it takes the stars of heaven and the flowers of earth and makes them utter forth its speech, less as it seems in words of human language than in the pictured ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... that Hawthorne's genius had now waxed to a stature which made its emanations less immediately dependent on his actual mood. I am far from assuming an exact autobiographical value for the "Twice-Told Tales"; a theory which the writer himself condemned. But they, as he has also said, require "to be read in the clear brown twilight atmosphere in which they were written"; while the "Mosses" are the work of a man who has learned to know ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... Brulard, of high importance for a History of Novelists, is in strictness outside the subject of a historian of the Novel, though it might be adduced to strengthen the remarks made on Rousseau's Confessions.[144] And the rest of the "resurrected" matter is also more autobiographical, or at best illustrative of Beyle's restless and "masterless" habit of pulling his work to pieces—of "never being able to be ready" (as a deservedly unpopular language has it)—than contributory to positive novel-achievement. But the first and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... traces the perilously narrow line that separates love from hate; in 'Opinions de M. l'Abbe Jerome Coignard' he has given us the most radical breviary of scepticism that has appeared since Montaigne. 'Le Livre de mon Ami' is mostly autobiographical; ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... our young Minister of Finance." He spoke softly as the fugitive smile played around the corners of his lips. "Very thoughtful indeed, but the suggestion is, after all, unavailable." He paused, and the smile died. "I don't think I've ever become autobiographical with ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... he spent in travel on the Continent and in Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine. His visit to the birthplace of his race made an impression on him that lasted through his life and literature. It is embodied in his 'Letters to His Sister' (London, 1843), and the autobiographical novel 'Contarini Fleming' (1833), in which he turned his adventures into fervid English, at a guinea a volume. But although the spirit of poesy, in the form of a Childe Harold, stalks rampant through the romance, there is both feeling and fidelity to nature whenever he describes the Orient ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... once criminal to my taste, I find myself hereby about to become indictable; and do set my hand and seal, on this day of the recall of my dearest literary oath, in this year of eminent autobiographical examples, one ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... afforded, or which her friends could send to her—novels, for which she confessed to a great liking; poems, political pamphlets, newspapers, all that came to her hand. Her longest and greatest poem, Aurora Leigh, was written during her Italian years. While the story of the poem is in no sense autobiographical, the heroine is in her beliefs and her ideals Mrs. Browning's self, and this was the poem by which she felt herself most willing ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... autobiographical sketch of the last few weeks of my existence, I had conceived, as I have already said, the notion of making it chiefly a guide to conduct for my young disciple, Dale Kynnersley. Not only was it to explain to him ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... remarkable, that—though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends—an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. The first time was three or four years since, when I favoured the reader—inexcusably, and for no earthly reason that either the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cannot but feel that it is, if not directly and circumstantially, at least in essence, autobiographical. One finds oneself speculating over the author, wondering what was her history, and how much of it was Miss Milner's. Unfortunately the greater part of what we should most like to know of Mrs. Inchbald's life has vanished beyond recovery. She wrote her Memoirs, and ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... autobiographical form the above two stories are not the record of personal experience. Their quality, such as it is, depends on something larger if less precise: on the character, vision and sentiment of the first twenty independent years of my life. ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... Travels of Ida Pfeiffer: Inclusive of a Visit to Madagascar. With an Autobiographical Introduction. Translated by H.W. Dulcken. New York. Harper & Brothers. 12mo. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... poet that talking about one's self in public is to be avoided as unbecoming unless there is need of self vindication or edification of others. Only once in the Divine Comedy does he mention his own name and at once he apologizes for the intrusion. It is true that the poem is autobiographical but it is that in so far as it concerns matters of universal interest from which the poet may draw the moral that what God has done for him He will do for all men if they will but let Him. That being so it was not necessary for him to exploit ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... October 1819, joined in Venice his friend Byron, who had been absent from England since 1816. The poets met in the best of humor, and on terms of hearty good-fellowship—Moore staying with Byron for five or six days. On taking leave of him, Byron presented the Irish lyrist with the MS. of his autobiographical memoirs stipulating that they should not be published till after the donor's death: at a later date he became anxious that they should remain wholly unpublished. Moore sold the MS. in 1831 to Murray for L2100, after some negotiations with Longman, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... to keep; it lets the truth shine unobstructed through every harmless little deception he tries to play; it pitilessly exposes him as a tin hero worshipping himself as Big Metal every time he tries to do the modest-unconsciousness act before the reader. This is not guessing; I am speaking from autobiographical personal experience; I was never able to refrain from mentioning, with a studied casualness that could deceive none but the most incautious reader, that an ancestor of mine was sent ambassador to Spain by Charles I., nor that in a remote branch of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... commonly be recognized by the stamp, but such a type of character rarely lent itself to autobiography. In effect, the school created a type but not a will. Four years of Harvard College, if successful, resulted in an autobiographical blank, a mind on which only a water-mark had ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... playwright and the impecunious debtor. A German savant observes that Schiller was not, like Goethe, a virtuoso in love. And so it certainly looks, albeit the difference might perhaps appear a little less conspicuous if he had lived to a ripe old age and dressed up his recollections of youth in an autobiographical romance. He did not lack the data of experience, but without the charm of the retrospective poetic treatment his early love-affairs are not profoundly interesting. In the midst of his troubles it came over him that marriage ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... equally good at the autobiographical style," he said. "Shall we try that next, by way ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... now there is a curious autobiographical interest in the opening sentences of the first number; but surely even the public of the day must have imagined that the new writer who was now addressing them, was not to be confounded with the common herd of magazine-hacks. What could be more delightful than this odd mixture of ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... arisen from a change of residence of our hero's parents during his infancy. But the oldest Volksbuch was written nearly forty years after the death of Faustus, and Widmann's work appeared even ten years later,—both, indeed, professing to be founded on the Doctor's writings, as well as on an autobiographical manuscript, discovered in his library after his death. Perhaps, however, the assertion of two of his contemporaries, one of whom was personally acquainted with him, is more entitled to credit in this respect. Joh. Manlius and Joh. Wier—the latter in his biography of Cornelius ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... to escape from it, but must try to hide the fact whenever the real Spain fell below the ideal, however I might reason with my infatuation or try to scoff it away. It had once been so inextinguishable a part of me that the record of my journey must be more or less autobiographical; and though I should decently endeavor to keep my past out of it, perhaps I should not try very hard and should not ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL.—I should be glad to know whether it would be advisable for me to write a book of "Reminiscences," as I see is now the fashion. My life has been chiefly passed in a moorland-village in Yorkshire, so that it has not been very eventful, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... yet known to the world. The author has sought his end by means of a fictitious autobiography. This was of course. No unusual faculty in the selection of methods was necessary to the choice; for only in the autobiographical form could the inner life of a courtesan be so revealed as to present a truthful and living picture of her soul's experience. A fine novel of this kind would be a great book, and one productive of much good; not, indeed, directly to the wretched class that would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... was repeated. An air of ridiculous unreality is given to this part of the story in which the impossible talk of impossible people is paraded as a genuine representation of what takes place in civilized society. The autobiographical form which he had first adopted in this tale he continued in the two series of "Afloat and Ashore." These appeared respectively in June and in December, 1844. They are essentially one novel, though the second part ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... flawed hearts, and bowed necks straight." In 1791 he wrote an anonymous letter to Fox, in which he advanced the sentiments to which he later gave expression in his "Political Justice," his principal work. In his autobiographical ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... a certain vogue, and though it was published anonymously, the authorship was within my own circle detected. I saw several reviews of it, and I was amused to find that the critics perspicuously conjectured that because it was written in the first person it was probably autobiographical. I had several criticisms made on it by personal friends: some of them objected to the portraiture of persons in it being too life-like, selecting as instances two characters who were entirely imaginary; others objected to the portraiture as not being sufficiently life-like, and therefore ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to Augusta.] and the poet who is a wanderer from choice has not been unknown since Byron's day. [Footnote: Alfred Dommett and George Borrow are notable.] The poet vagabond of to-day, as he is portrayed in Maurice Hewlitt's autobiographical novels, Rest Harrow and Open Country, and William H. Davies' tramp poetry, looks upon his condition in life as ideal. [Footnote: See also Francis Carlin, Denby the Rhymer (1918); Henry Herbert Knibbs, Songs of ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... W. Silver (ed.), "Chauncey Brockway, an Autobiographical Sketch," Pennsylvania History, ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... victim into desert places; and Shelley, prompted by Peacock, chose it for the title of a poem which describes the Nemesis of solitary souls. Apart from its intrinsic merit as a work of art, "Alastor" has great autobiographical value. Mrs. Shelley affirms that it was written under the expectation of speedy death, and under the sense of disappointment, consequent upon the misfortunes of his early life. This accounts for the somewhat unhealthy vein of sentiment which threads the wilderness of its ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... has been possible but just to touch upon a few of the inner springs of Borrow's life as revealed in the autobiographical Lavengro—brings us once again to that spring day in 1825—May 20th—when the author disposed of an unidentifiable manuscript for the sumptuous equivalent of 20 pounds. On May 22nd, after little more than a year's residence ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... which I heard years ago and had forgotten. It now came back to me in a newspaper from Miami, of all places in the world, sent me by a correspondent in that town. He—Mr. J. L. Rodger—some time ago when reading an autobiographical book of mine made the discovery that we were natives of the same place in the Argentine pampas—that the homes where we respectively first saw the light stood but a couple of hours' ride on horseback apart. But we were not born on the same day and so missed meeting ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... the story of Hesiod's death, it will be well to inquire how far the "autobiographical" notices can be treated as historical, especially as many critics treat some, or all of them, as spurious. In the first place attempts have been made to show that "Hesiod" is a significant name and therefore fictitious: it is only necessary to mention Goettling's derivation from IEMI to ODOS (which ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... because I have no personal friends in whom I can confide as I trust I may do in the man I have never seen, simply because he will bear my name and represent my lineage. There will be found in my writing-desk, which always accompanies me in my travels, an autobiographical work, a record of my own life, comprising discoveries, or hints at discovery, in science, through means little cultivated in our age. You will not be surprised that before selecting you as my heir ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had said that his head was full of plots the supply seemed to have run thin by the time he set to work on The Martian. The value of this book rests with its autobiographical character. The knot is not tied in the first half and unravelled in the second, after the approved manner in which plots should be woven. The story is chiefly a record of people and places, vivid, and written in a breathless, chatty style. ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... autobiographical comment published, written presumably at the request of the late Hamilton Wright Mabie, which is not only worth preserving as a matter of record, but as measuring a certain facility in anecdote and felicity of manner which have always made Thomas ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... of history few things are more interesting than a great historian's autobiographical remarks which relate to the composition of his work. "Had I been more indigent or more wealthy," wrote Gibbon in his Autobiography, "I should not have possessed the leisure or the perseverance to prepare and execute my voluminous history."[133] "Notwithstanding the hurry ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes |
