"Autobiographical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by flooded rivers, and in the long and listless hours of heat — in fact, to see again your life, as it were, acted for you in some camera obscura, with the chief actor changed. But diaries, unless they be mere records of bare facts, must of necessity, as in their nature they are autobiographical, be false guides; so that, perhaps, I in my carelessness was not quite so unwise as I have often thought myself. Although I made no notes of anything, caring most chiefly for the condition of my horse, yet when I think on them, pampa and cordillera, virgin forest, the ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... 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 present ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... a little 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 indulgent reader or the intrusive author ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... "The Twins," though written from living models, is very inferior, as the hero is too goody-goody and the villain too hopelessly wicked: "Heart" has more merit, and has been much praised by a celebrated authoress for its touching chapter on Old Maids. Much of it also is autobiographical, as with "The Twins." ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Autobiographical Recollections. By the late Charles Robert Leslie, R.A. Edited, with a Prefatory Essay on Leslie as an Artist, and Selections from his Correspondence, by Tom Taylor, Esq., Editor of the "Autobiography of Haydon." ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... 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
... inevitably coexistent with every form of civilized society 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 furnish studies for it, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... contains all the essays on flies, or Diptera, from the Souvenirs entomologiques, to which I have added, in order to make the dimensions uniform with those of the other volumes of the series, the purely autobiographical essays comprised in the Souvenirs. These essays, though they have no bearing upon the life of the fly, are among the most interesting that Henri Fabre has written and will, I am persuaded, make a special appeal to the reader. The ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... his "History of Scotland," to the era of the Disruption; he also meditated the publication of a volume of essays. His poetical works, which appeared at various intervals, were re-published in 1850, in two duodecimo volumes, with an interesting autobiographical sketch. Of his poems those most deserving of notice, next to the "Sabbath," are "The House of Mourning, or the Peasant's Death," and "The Plough," both evincing grave and elevated sentiment, expressed in correct poetical language. The following songs are favourable ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Wordsworth. In youth "Hamlet" is to us the greatest of all plays; in old age, "Lear." I know of no more interesting account of the development of a mind in the choice of books than that presented in John Beattie Crozier's autobiographical volume entitled "My Inner Life." The author is an English philosopher, who was born and lived until manhood in the backwoods of Canada. He tells us how as a young man groping about for some clew to the mystery of the world in which he found himself, he tried one great ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... reference to the excitement and speculation it had aroused in trade 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 she ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 7th, 1770. His father, John Wordsworth, was the agent of Sir J. Lowther, who later became the first Earl of Lonsdale. At the age of eight the boy was sent to school at Hawkshead. The impressions of his boyhood period are related in the autobiographical poem, The Prelude, (written 1805, published 1850), and from this poetical record we discern how strong the influences of Nature were to shape and develop his imagination. Wordsworth's father died in 1783, leaving the family poorly provided for. The main asset ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... The autobiographical and autopsychical lines and passages scattered through the poem are of immediate interest. Generously the poet repays his debt to Shelley, whom he apostrophises as "Sun-treader," and invokes in strains of lofty emotion—"Sun-treader—life and light ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the Elizabethan period he is perhaps the one whose life and character we can best picture to ourselves; for in his last years, repentant and sorrow-stricken, he wrote with the utmost sincerity autobiographical tales and pamphlets, which are invaluable as a picture of the times; they are, in fact, nothing else than the "Scenes de la vie ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... of fiction—the autobiographical—had already been invented. It grew directly out of the public interest in autobiography, and particularly in the tales of their voyages which the discoverers wrote and published on their return from their adventures. Its establishment in literature was the work of two authors, ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... eyes the precarious situation of men of classical education; it was therefore conformable to my wishes that I was taken from school and served a long apprenticeship to a silver-plate engraver." This is printed in Allan Cunningham's Life of Hogarth, together with many more extracts from autobiographical memoranda, from which we may learn at first hand a great deal of information bearing on the state of painting at this period, and the circumstances under which it received such a stimulus from Hogarth, before the sun had fully risen (in the person of Reynolds) to illumine ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... of the oil of sentimentality in mixing his colours for the portraits, his portraits are subordinate to the background; and there his eye is true and keen, his hand steady and unflinching, his colours and brushwork unimpeachable. Whether, like his own Platonov—who may be called to some extent an autobiographical figure, and many of whose experiences are Kuprin's own—"came upon the brothel" and gathered his material unconsciously, "without any ulterior thoughts of writing," we do not know, nor need we rummage in his dirty linen, as he puts it. Suffice it to say here—to cite but two instances—that ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... context, gives us a little autobiographical glimpse which is singularly and interestingly confirmed by some slight incidental notices in the Book of the Acts. He says, in the context, that he was with the Corinthians 'in weakness and in fear and in much trembling,' and, if we turn to the narrative, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... in others the intention of doing benefit to the world has added zest and energy to the chase. Of this class there is one memorable and beautiful instance in Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham, who lived and laboured so early as the days of Edward III., and has left an autobiographical sketch infinitely valuable, as at once informing us of the social habits, and letting us into the very inner life, of the highly endowed student and the affluent collector of the fourteenth century. His little book, called Philobiblion, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... 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. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... 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. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Rubinstein, brother of the famous Anton Rubinstein. Nicholas Rubinstein was declared by many to be a far abler teacher than his brother, who eclipsed him upon the concert platform. From 1884 to 1885 Sauer studied with Franz Liszt. In his autobiographical work, "My Life," Sauer relates that Liszt at that time had reached an age when much of his reputed brilliance had disappeared, and the playing of the great Master of Weimar did not startle Sauer as it did some others. However, Liszt took a great personal ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... 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 in his mind and will some powerful initial force of resolve and ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... conception which forms the bond of union between the 'New Life,' the 'Banquet,' and the 'Divine Comedy,' and not merely as literary compositions but as autobiographical records. Dante's life and his work are not to be regarded apart; they form a single whole, and they possess a dramatic development of unparalleled consistency and unity. The course of the events of his ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... known beyond what may be gleaned from a discriminating study of the "Book of Delight." That this romance is largely autobiographical in fact, as it is in form, there can be no reasonable doubt. The poet writes with so much indignant warmth of the dwellers in certain cities, of their manner of life, their morals, and their culture, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... on June 22nd, Mr. Gladstone related the interesting autobiographical fact that he himself was not a Freemason, and never had been; and, indeed, having been fully occupied otherwise—this delicate allusion to that vast life of never-ending work—of gigantic enterprises—of solemn and sublime responsibilities, was much relished—he never had had sufficient curiosity ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... differ materially from the same incidents and episodes as set down in the writings of Mr. Clemens himself. Mark Twain's spirit was built of the very fabric of truth, so far as moral intent was concerned, but in his earlier autobiographical writings—and most of his earlier writings were autobiographical—he made no real pretense to accuracy of time, place, or circumstance—seeking, as he said, "only to tell a good story"—while in later years an ever-vivid imagination and a capricious ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Easy Chair, with autobiographical relish, "they wrote me together, but it was not long before Mr. Mitchell left off, and Curtis kept on alone, and, as you say, he incomparably characterized me. He had his millennial hopes as well as you. In his youth he ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... tragical, except Dante's. In both these great poets, more than in any others, the character of the men makes part of the singular impressiveness of what they wrote and of its vitality with after times. In them the man somehow overtops the author. The works of both are full of autobiographical confidences. Like Dante, Milton was forced to become a party by himself. He stands out in marked and solitary individuality, apart from the great movement of the Civil War, apart from the supine acquiescence of the Restoration, a self-opinionated, unforgiving, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... dissatisfied farmer vote is shown in the autobiographical sketches which Senators and Representatives wrote for the Congressional Directory of the Fifty-second Congress. Some who had never before held office stated the fact with apparent pride. One, who appeared from the Texas district which ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... 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 part of Scottish history, and which have ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... often fails, and that practical mistakes are often as fatal as moral ones. From Brutus, Shakespeare came to Hamlet, a character in transition from fine youth, full of illusions, to a manhood whose faith is broken by the hard facts of the world. This is distinctly autobiographical. Hamlet and Sonnet 66 are of one piece. Shakespeare was disillusioned. Add to this his struggle against his enemy, Puritanism, and a growing conviction that the miseries of life bottom in ignorance, and the reason for his growing pessimism becomes clear. From Hamlet, whom ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... the later years of her life, which for the last three, was a weariness to herself, and a source of suffering to all who saw her suffer. Certain that it could not last long, she began at one time the little autobiographical diary, found among her papers after death, and containing the only personal details that remained, even these being mere suggestions. All her life she had been subject to sudden attacks of faintness, and even as early as 1656, lay for hours unconscious, remaining in a state ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... anyone else can make out of it." His other 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 ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... In his autobiographical sketch the poet tells us that, "The farm proved a ruinous bargain. I was the eldest of seven children, and (p. 005) my father, worn out by early hardship, was unfit for labour. His spirit was soon irritated, but not easily broken. There ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... smiled to himself as Cheyenne departed for the corral. This wayfarer, breezing in from the spaces, suggested possibilities as a character for a story No doubt the song was more or less autobiographical. "A top-hand once, but the trail for mine," seemed to explain the singer's somewhat erratic dinner schedule. Bartley thought that he would like to see more of this strange itinerant, who sang both coming into and ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... 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 ever deceive anyone except ourselves? We alone seem unable ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... more 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
... in a sense autobiographical. But while other self-recording creatures are permitted at least to seem to change the subject, apparently nobody cares what I think of the tariff, the conservation of our natural resources, or the conflicts which ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... majestic. I never knew a rogue to cut so fat; his villainy was ample, like his belly, and I could scarce find it in my heart to hold him responsible for either. He was good enough to drop into the autobiographical; telling me how the farm, in spite of the war and the high prices, had proved a disappointment; how there was 'a sight of cold, wet land as you come along the 'igh-road'; how the winds and rains and the seasons had been misdirected, it seemed 'o' purpose'; how Mrs. Fenn had died—'I lost ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Minstrelsy to sell, but a more modern taste would choose to put them in a place by themselves, not in a collection of old ballads. An essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad was written, as were the Remarks on Popular Poetry, for the 1833 edition. It is chiefly interesting for its autobiographical matter, though it also contains criticisms of Burns and other writers of ballad poetry—"a species of literary labour which the author has himself pursued with some success."[67] Scott's statement that the ballad style was very popular at the time ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... 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. ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... quote the autobiographical passages in "David Copperfield" which bear on the difficulties of stenography. The book is in everybody's hands. But I cannot forego the pleasure of brightening my pages with Dickens' own description of his experiences as a reporter, a ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... receive 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 ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... greatly improved, and with it Mrs. Clemens's health, notwithstanding she had an alarming attack in December. One of the stories he had finished was "The $30,000 Bequest." The work mentioned, which would not see print until after his death, was a continuation of those autobiographical chapters which for years he had been setting down as ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the deep, clear consciousness with which he cherished it. The most beloved of his lady friends was Isabel Fenwick, who was a frequent visitor at Rydal Mount during the last twenty years of his life. She wrote, to his dictation, the autobiographical notes used in the memoir of him. Her admiring and devoted friendship was evidently a strong inspiration and precious solace to him. It was for her sake that he built the Level Terrace, on which he paced to and fro for many an hour, in sight ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... Durgin alone in a corner of the bar-room. With two or three potations Durgin became autobiographical. Was he acquainted with Mr. Shackford outside the yard? Rather. Dick Shackford? His (Durgin's) mother had kept Dick from starving when he was a baby,—and no thanks for it. Went to school with him, and knew all about his running off to sea. Was near going with him. ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... for NOVEMBER contains, among other articles: The Prelude, Wordsworth's Autobiographical Poem; Rejoicings on the Birth of the Son of James II.; The Castle and Honour of Clare (with Engravings); Original Letters of Bishop Bedell; Memoir of Thomas Dodd, author of the "Connoisseur's Repertorium" (with a Portrait); Chaucer's ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... personal element which has established photography and given it art character. Says J. C. Van Dyke, "a picture is but an autobiographical statement; it is the man and not the facts that may awaken our admiration; for, unless we feel his presence and know his genius the picture is nothing but a collection of incidents. It is not the work but the worker, not ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... will be published in one of our magazines, are hereafter to be added, in their complete form, to the Appendix of this volume.] which he wrote for this Romance would of themselves make a small volume, and one of autobiographical as well as literary interest. There is no other instance, that I happen to have met with, in which a writer's thought reflects itself upon paper so immediately and sensitively as in these studies. To read ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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
... old books of travel is, that they are, unconsciously, autobiographical. The honest pilgrim, in his desire to give a faithful description of new lands, is little aware that he is all the time describing himself as well. His prejudice, his likings, his disappointments and aspirations are all transparently revealed to ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... truly drawn the life of love. So with Rossetti's sonnets. They may or may not be "occasional." Many readers who enter with sympathy into the series of feelings they present will doubtless insist upon regarding them as autobiographical. Others, who think they see the stamp of reality upon them, will perhaps accept them (as Hallam accepted the Sonnets of Shakspeare) as witnesses of excessive affection, redeemed sometimes by touches of nobler sentiments—if affection, however excessive, needs ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Rimas, there appeared one of the first versions of the Intermezzo,[1] and it is not unlikely that in imitation of the Intermezzo he was led to string his Rimas like beads upon the connecting thread of a common autobiographical theme. In the seventy-six short poems that compose his Rimas, Becquer tells "a swiftly-moving, passionate story of youth, love, treachery, despair, and final submission." "The introductory poems are meant to represent a stage of absorption in the beauty and complexity of the natural world, during ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... autobiographical interest in his poems. He was a student of books as well as of men, as is shown by these lines ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... of removing the remainder of Mr. Darwin's books and papers from Down, the following autobiographical notes, written in 1838, came to light. They seem to us worth publishing—both as giving some new facts, and also as illustrating the interest which he clearly felt in his own development. Many words are omitted in the manuscript, and some names incorrectly spelled; the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... was different. Although it was not published until 1818, and though it may never have been intended by its writer to have been given to the world in book form, yet it was very clearly intended to be an autobiographical legacy to his family. Hence it is no mere outpouring of the spirit upon pages meant only for the subsequent perusal of him who thus rendered in indelible characters his passing thoughts of the ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... "stupendous" fund of anecdotes of Napoleon and his marshals, and told them with such charm that his son acquired an unusual fondness for anecdotes, which he indulges extensively in some of his writings, particularly the autobiographical works and books of travel. The problem of making both ends meet seems to have occupied the father less than the gratification of his "noble passions," chief among which was card playing. He gambled away so much money that in eight years he was forced to sell his business and move ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... rapture with his cook-maid and cheerfulness in a garret." Here is a kit-kat showing the man indeed: all his fiction may be read in the light of it. The main interest in "Amelia" is found in its autobiographical flavor, for the story, in describing the fortunes—or rather misfortunes—of Captain Booth and his wife, drew, it is pretty certain, upon Fielding's own traits and to some extent upon the incidents of his earlier life. The ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... look into the inmost secrets of human experience which sounds strangely autobiographical, Browning wrote ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... Guildford, on the 17th of August. Its history and issue may best be told in the words of an autobiographical fragment, written by Lord Dundonald shortly before his death. "I was accompanied to Guildford," he said, "by Sir Francis Burdett and several other leading inhabitants of Westminster, whose names are forgotten ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... novels and stories which Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley left in manuscript,[i] only one novelette, Mathilda, is complete. It exists in both rough draft and final copy. In this story, as in all Mary Shelley's writing, there is much that is autobiographical: it would be hard to find a more self-revealing work. For an understanding of Mary's character, especially as she saw herself, and of her attitude toward Shelley and toward Godwin in 1819, this tale is an important document. ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... was by no means autobiographical. She gave no sketches of her idiosyncrasies, and she repeated no remembered comments and prophets of her contemporaries about herself. She either concealed or she had lost any great interest in her own personality. But she was interested in and curious about the people she ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... of his life is characteristically told in this brief autobiographical sketch, written at the request of an ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... meaning of this autobiographical episode, we must remember the extent to which Shelley idealizes. "More popular poets clothe the ideal with familiar and sensible imagery; Shelley loved to idealize the real,—to gift the mechanism of the material universe with a soul and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... volume is "An Affair of the Misty City," a valuable chapter, since it is wholly autobiographical, and at the same time embodies pen portraits of all the celebrities of California's first literary days, that famous group of which Stoddard was one. Of all the group, Ina Coolbrith was closest and dearest to ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... eternally the same solitary figure. "Then came sudden alarms, hurrying to and fro; trepidations of innumerable fugitives; darkness and light; tempest and human faces." Many of De Quincey's papers were autobiographical, but there is always something baffling in these reminiscences. In the interminable wanderings of his pen—for which, perhaps, opium was responsible—he appears to lose all trace of facts or of any continuous ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... There is an 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 a welcome ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... in this volume have been published serially in The State of South Africa, in a more or less abridged form, under the title of "Unconventional Reminiscences." They are mainly autobiographical. This has been inevitable; in any narrative based upon personal experience, an attempt to efface oneself ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... drawn from a vast mass of letters and other original documents, including some very curious autobiographical memoirs. The possession of all these papers, kindly furnished by friends and admirers of the poet, has enabled the writer to give more detail to his description than is usual in short biographies—at least in biographies of men born, like John Clare, in what may truly ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... 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, as if there never had been a jar, with my parents. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the original is written in an autobiographical style. It is profusely interladed with spicy, catchy colloquials patent to the people of Tokyo for the equals of which we may look to the rattling speeches of notorious Chuck Conners of the Bowery of New York. It should be frankly ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... 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 might ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "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
... who annoy an author more than any others—the person who calmly supposes that everything he writes is biographical, or even autobiographical, and the person who declares, "I've got a dandy plot for you"—and proceeds ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... from Rome during the week after Easter, 1506. He relates the circumstances in a letter of October 1542, No. c. d. xxxv. "Le Lettere p. 489," which corroborates Condivi's story word for word, and is another proof of the autobiographical ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... autobiographical and narrative. There was a lot of his deep-breathing, spacious philosophy of life mixed up in it. And this the girl, consciously, and deliberately, provoked. It didn't need much. She said something about discipline and he snatched the word ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... quest' anno in terra del Langravio di Hassia insieme con la moglie et figliuoli tutti miserabilmente, et come da miracolo, in gran calamita son crepati." Aleander to Sanga, Brussels, November 25, 1531, Vatican Library, Laemmer, Monumenta, 90. See Lambert's autobiographical sketch, entitled: "Rationes propter quas Minoritarum conversationem habitumque rejecit," Gerdes., iv. (Doc.) 21-28, and translated, Herminjard, i. 118, etc.; F. W. Hassencamp, Fr. Lambert von Avignon; Haag, France prot., s. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... have read Sir Walter Besant's delightful but little known "All in a Garden Fair" (it is interesting to know that this was semi-autobiographical, and that its original title was "All in a Garden Green") will recollect the minute description of the locality in which the opening scenes take place. The author and I "talked it over." He told me the exact spot where the story ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... valley of the Tocketuck and the great sea. Here he would sit, 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, we should ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... December 1, 1804, at Covent Garden, as "Selim" disguised as "Achmet," in Browne's 'Barbarossa'. In the winter season of 1804-5, when he appeared at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, such crowds collected to see him, that the military were called out to preserve order. Leslie ('Autobiographical Recollections', vol. i. p. 218) speaks of him as a boy "of handsome features and graceful manners, with a charming voice." Fox, who saw him in 'Hamlet', said, "This is finer than Garrick" ('Table-Talk of Samuel ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... other reasons damped his courage, felt that he could not trust to the Pope's mercies. What effect San Gallo may have had upon him, supposing this architect arrived in Florence at the middle of May, can only be conjectured. The fact remains that he continued stubborn for a time. In the lengthy autobiographical letter written to some prelate in 1542, Michelangelo relates what followed: "Later on, while I was at Florence, Julius sent three briefs to the Signory. At last the latter sent for me and said: 'We do not want to go to war with Pope Julius because of you. You must return; and if you do so, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... 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 ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... a double thread—delightful, wise, sunshiny talks on the lines laid down by the Autocrat, and an autobiographical love story. It is full of wisdom and of beauty, of delicate delineation, and of inspiring ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... 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 ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... little annotation, except for the purpose of relating the stories to the lives of their writers; for it contains some very valuable autobiographical matter. But there are a ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... horror of the egotistical, he flatly declined to give. "I will not venture on a psychological self-portraiture," he writes, "fearing—and I believe with sufficient reason—to be betrayed into affectation, dissimulation or some other alluring shape of lying. I believe that all autobiographical sketches are the result of mere vanity—not excepting those of St. Augustine and Rousseau—falsehood in the mask and mantle of truth. Half ashamed and half conscious of his own mendacious self-flattery, the historian of his own deeds or geographer of his own mind breaks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... treatment of the sonnets I have pursued what I believe to be an original line of investigation. The strictly autobiographical interpretation that critics have of late placed on these poems compelled me, as Shakespeare's biographer, to submit them to a very narrow scrutiny. My conclusion is adverse to the claim of the sonnets to rank as autobiographical documents, but I have ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... a rare interest, not only for the missionary student, but equally so for the general reader. The amount of information it contains, descriptive, social, evangelistic, and even political, is astonishing; and the discursive and, in part, autobiographical form in which it is written, renders it so easy, that he who runs may read. The contrast is drawn graphically, and with a light and lively pen, between the state of things fifty years ago and that which now prevails: the exchange of slow and cumbrous means of conveyance for those which ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... consideration, because such sheep cannot consider; they can only criticise. The next thing they did, therefore, was to take out the incident in the book which was most likely to damage her reputation, and declare that it was autobiographical. There was one man who knew exactly when the thing had occurred, who the characters were, and all ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Thomas Somerville, minister of Jedburgh, author of the History of Great Britain during the reign of Queen Anne, and other works, died 14th May 1830, in the ninetieth year of his age, and sixty-fourth of his ministry.—J.G.L. Autobiographical Memorials of his Life and Times, 1741-1814, 8vo, Edinburgh, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... ignored the interest of this autobiographical statement, and with a contemptuous shake of the head began to feel in his pocket for a pipe. Every one knew that Mike Duffy was a person much too fond of his ease, and that all the credit of their prosperity belonged to his hard-worked ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... old when he first went to sea. That is his own statement, and it is one of the few of his autobiographical utterances that we need not doubt. From it, and from a knowledge of certain other dates, we are able to construct some vague picture of his doings before he left Italy and settled in Portugal. Already in his young heart ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... followers the Conqueror of sin. He went forth to wage war with evil in the world, because He was conscious that He had first bound the strong man, and could spoil his house. In an autobiographical parable He seems to have told them something of His own battle with temptation and of His victory. They found in Him One who both shamed and transformed them; they saw Him forgiving and altering sinners; and, above all, His cross, from ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... metaphor will bear yet further expansion, for this autobiographical record which we are busy preparing, which is at once ledger and indictment, is to be read out one day. There is a great scene in the last book of Scripture, the whole solemn significance of which, I suppose, we shall ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... to a certain point an autobiographical cast. This is not because I deem my actual life of any interest to any one but myself, but because things do occur to one "in time," and the chronological sequence is as good as another, and much the most easy of any. ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... the kind interposition of Bishop Barlow of Lincoln, Bunyan was released, and resumed his work of a preacher until his death from fever in London in 1688. Bunyan also wrote the Holy War and Grace Abounding, an autobiographical narrative. ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... the rest be "wrop in mystery," it would probably have been the best way. But the bulk of the book is beyond improvement: and there is a fluid grace about the autobiographical recit which is very rare indeed, at least in French, except in the unfortunate Gerard de Nerval, who was akin to Cazotte in many ways, and actually edited him. A very carping critic may object to ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... exercising the least particle of intelligence, I should recover those six rubies (representing six gouttes or drops gules) and replace them in the black agate shield (representing a field sable); and naturally enough, like the autobiographical hero of The Six Rubies (representing——I beg your pardon, I mean, published by WARD, LOCK), I should not dream of calling in the aid of the police. Another jolly thing that would inspirit me would be the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... 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
... go on to 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 ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... title is given at the beginning of this section had been written several years before the date of its publication. It is a great advance in certain respects over the first novel, but wants the peculiar interest which belonged to that as a partially autobiographical memoir. The story is no longer disjointed and impossible. It is carefully studied in regard to its main facts. It has less to remind us of "Vivian Grey" and "Pelham," and more that recalls "Woodstock" ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that is autobiographical, and helps us to understand Carlyle's childhood and youth; but it is so mixed up with fantasy and humour that it is difficult to separate fiction from fact. Its chief aim seems to be the overthrow of cant, the ridiculing of empty conventions, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... 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
... autobiographical fragment ceases. I am glad that it has enabled me to use his own words in speaking of his marriage. No one, I think, can doubt their sincerity, nor can anyone who was a witness of his subsequent life think that they over-estimate the results to his happiness. I need only add that the marriage had ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... A celebrated father of the Latin church, who flourished in the fourth century. His most famous work is his Confessions, an autobiographical volume ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... "Part Two; 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 door, communicating with Mrs. Macallan's bedchamber. Locked! I looked ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... been proposed, "Some have looked on them as one poem." says Fleay; "some as several poems—of groups of sonnets; some as containing a separate poem in each sonnet. They have been supposed to be written in Shakespeare's own person, or in the character of another, or of several others; to be autobiographical or heterobiographical or allegorical; to have been addressed to Lord Southampton, to Sir William Herbert, to his own wife, to Lady Rich, to his child, to himself, to his Muse." The safest and wisest course seems to be, first to regard each of the one hundred and fifty-four ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... of assimilation may be best studied in personal narratives and documents, such as letters and autobiographies, or in monographs upon urban and rural immigrant communities. In recent years a series of personal narrative and autobiographical sketches have revealed the intimate personal aspects of the assimilation process. The expectancy and disillusionment of the first experiences, the consequent nostalgia and homesickness, gradual accommodation to the new situation, the first ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... on the organ, and sang, or heard another sing; then studied; to six; then entertained his visitors till eight; then supped, and after a pipe of tobacco and a glass of water went to bed." On which his comment is characteristic and plainly autobiographical. "So is his life described; but this even tenour appears attainable only in colleges. He that lives in the world will sometimes have the succession of his practice broken and confused. Visitors, of whom Milton is represented to have had great numbers, will come and stay unseasonably: ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... 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 ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... falls into two distinct groups—the first consisting of his novels, and the second of his miscellaneous writings, which include several biographies, a dissertation on Love, some books of criticism and travel, his letters and various autobiographical fragments. The bulk of the latter group is large; much of it has only lately seen the light; and more of it, at present in MS. at the library of Grenoble, is promised us by the indefatigable editors of the new complete edition which is now appearing in Paris. The interest of this portion of ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... printed in the Hoosier. Under the spur of Taine's argument, I now proceeded to write a short story wholly in the dialect spoken in my childhood by rustics on the north side of the Ohio River. This tale I called "The Hoosier School-Master." It consisted almost entirely of an autobiographical narration in dialect by Mirandy Means of the incidents that form the groundwork of the present story. I was the newly installed editor of a weekly journal, Hearth and Home, and I sent this little story in a new dialect to my printer. It chanced that one of the ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... Wander Jahre is one of those autobiographical novels that were popular throughout the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century. It was published in 1970, and one must understand Wander Jahre rather in a spiritual and intellectual than in a literal sense. It is indeed an allusive title, carrying the world back to the ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... be 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 is ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Sir W. Forbes, see his autobiographical 'Memoirs of a Banking House'; Chambers's 'Eminent Scotsmen'; and ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... sir," replied Johnson, "many men, many women, and many children." Boswell, however, got on very well, and before long had the high honour of drinking a bottle of port with Johnson at the Mitre, and receiving, after a little autobiographical sketch, the emphatic approval, "Give me your hand, I have ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... he sent in a letter, which possesses much autobiographical interest, to the Committee of Public Instruction, in which ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... Vol. IV., is an extract from the Class Book of 1838, which is very curious and unique. To this is appended the following note:—"It may be necessary to inform many of our readers, that the Class Book is a large volume, in which autobiographical sketches of the members of each graduating class are recorded, and which is left in the hands of ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... small collections of verses. At the recommendation of some influential friends, he published, in 1848, a compact little volume of his best pieces, under the title, "Leaves from a Peasant's Cottage-Drawer;" and to which was prefixed a well-written autobiographical sketch. He was often oppressed by poverty; and, latterly, was the recipient of parochial relief. He died in the parish of Hounam, on the 6th April 1855; and his remains rest in the church-yard of his native parish. Many of his poems are powerful, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various |
