"Autobiographical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... placed upon the 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 John H. Reagan ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... great advance in it of late, can do a 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, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been overwritten. His death in 1881 caused little emotion and attracted but small attention in the newspapers. The Times, then as now so excellent in its biographies as a rule, devoted but twenty lines to him. Here I may be pardoned for being autobiographical. I was last in Norwich in the early eighties. I had a wild enthusiasm for literature so far as my taste had been directed—that is to say I read every book I came across and had been doing so from my earliest boyhood. But I had never heard of ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... can read Rousseau without being convinced that he believed what he wrote, at least at the moment of writing it. Truthfulness of this kind is quite consistent with inaccuracy, and it is probable that some incidents in Rousseau's autobiographical writings have been wrongly remembered, colored by prejudice, or embellished by vanity. Some of them may even be completely fictitious; the author caring little for facts except as the ornaments and illustrations of ideas. But what he thought in the abstract Rousseau ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... 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 down from ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... 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 which ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... reduced to such a pass that in the Belgian capital she became familiar with the 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 by, it is said, the mysterious ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... because of a theory that marriage is an epoch, determining the career of life after it. The epoch once announced, nothing more need be explained; everything else follows as a matter of course. These notes of mine are autobiographical, and not a romance. I have never known much about epochs. I have had one or two, one specially when I first began to read and think; but after that, if I have changed, it has been slowly and imperceptibly. My life, therefore, is totally unfitted to be the basis ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... down 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 would tend ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... and—leaving out of count some of the short poems—is the one by this author which approaches nearest to being 'popular.' It is elevated in sentiment, classical in form,—in substance, biographical in relation to Keats, and in some minor degree autobiographical for Shelley himself. On these grounds it claimed a reasonable preference over all his other poems, for the present method of treatment; although some students of Shelley, myself included, might be disposed to maintain that, ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... "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. ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... highly applauding the result, he had scrawled and daubed his brush about in a sort of intoxication of self-glory... In Haydon's work there is not sufficient forgetfulness of self to disarm criticism of personality. His pictures are themselves autobiographical notes of the most interesting kind; but their want of beauty repels, and their want of modesty exasperates. Perhaps their principal characteristic is lack of delicacy and refinement of execution.' While describing ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... through the preacher of the story, in the latter half of the book, are the identical things the author was preaching. The first chapters of the story are very largely colored by Mr. Wright's early life, but they are by no means autobiographical. ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... "Don Giovanni," but only a painfully pathetic record of Mozart's misery, his despair, and his terror. It is indeed a stupendous piece of art, and much of it surpassingly beautiful; but the absorbing interest of it will always be that it is a "human document," an autobiographical fragment, the ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... "The Free and Regenerated Palladium," but since the conversion of Miss Vaughan, they have been withdrawn from circulation, except among ecclesiastics of the Roman Church, and up to the present I have failed to obtain copies. For the autobiographical portions of this organ, I am indebted to the notices which have appeared in the Revue Mensuelle. They contain an account of two apparitions on the part of the demon Asmodeus, accompanied by phenomena of levitation and fortified by arguments ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... 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 ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... writer; so that after a perusal of his works we know him in all his strength and weakness, as we can know only an amiable and communicative egotist; moreover, besides losing no opportunity for self-expression, both in and out of season, Heine published a good deal of frankly autobiographical matter, and wrote memoirs, only fragments of which have come down to us, but of which more than has yet appeared will perhaps ultimately be made accessible. Heine's life, then, is to us for the most part an open book. Nevertheless, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... originality and vigor, we must go back to classic times. But literature, that is, literature which is an end in itself and not a means to something else, did not exist in America before Irving. Some foreshadowings (the autobiographical fragment of Franklin was not published till 1817) of its coming may be traced, but there can be no question that his writings were the first that bore the national literary stamp, that he first made the ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 recognized several ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... poets, we are not without specimens of pastoral verse composed in the less important dialect. Sa de Miranda has been mentioned above. Ribeiro too, better known for his romance, left a series of five autobiographical eclogues[68] dating from about 1516-24, and consequently earlier than Garcilaso's. They are composed, like some of Sa de Miranda's, in the short measures more natural to the language than the terza rima and intricate ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... 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 ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... 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 of his ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... 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 ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is made in the following pages to submit to historical treatment the vast and varied mass of printed matter which Cardan left as his contribution to letters and science, except in the case of those works which are, in purpose or incidentally, autobiographical, or of those which furnish in themselves effective contributions towards the framing of an estimate of the genius and character of the writer. Neither has it seemed worth while to offer to the public another biography ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... 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." With Portrait. Boston. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... 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. I had intended, but my heart failed me, to pursue experience to the ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... American Miss Grammont 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 ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... that 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 stated ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... obtained in 1601 the living of Halsted in Suffolk, and married in 1603. In an autobiographical sketch of "Some Specialities in the Life of Joseph Hall," he thus tells us himself the ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... 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 Stevenson do his very best—let him adopt all the artificial ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... 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
... not 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 description contained in one of those charming ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... "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 the not ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... large measure only an expansion of the mediaeval and other lore that he enthusiastically collected in his youth and early manhood. George Eliot's earlier novels are filled with the scenes and characters of her early life; and Dickens's best novel, "David Copperfield," is largely autobiographical. An author's best work—that which possesses the greatest degree of interest and vitality—is generally that which springs from the treasure of his deepest experience, and is the fullest expression of ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... Spaniard than of a native of the coast of ancient Armorica. M. Rio was then a young man, and probably in Paris for the first time, at the beginning of the literary career of which he has furnished so interesting a sketch in the autobiographical volumes which form the conclusion of his "Histoire de l'Art Chretien." Five and twenty years later, while passing my second winter in Rome, I heard of M. Rio's arrival there, and of the unbounded satisfaction he expressed at finding himself in the one place ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Autobiographical Recollections. Edited, with a Prefatory Essay on Leslie as an Artist, and Selections from his Correspondence, by TOM TAYLOR, ESQ. With fine ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... jolly Dame's. Several manuscripts contain verses designed to serve as a connexion; but they are evidently not Chaucer's, and it is unnecessary to give them here. Of this Prologue, which may fairly be regarded as a distinct autobiographical tale, Tyrwhitt says: "The extraordinary length of it, as well as the vein of pleasantry that runs through it, is very suitable to the character of the speaker. The greatest part must have been of Chaucer's own invention, though one may plainly see that he had ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Rouge', his greatest novel, he 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; 'Clio' (1900) ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... continuation of "Wilhelm Meister," the beautiful idyl of "Hermann and Dorothea," and the "Roman Elegies." In the last period, between Schiller's death in 1805 and his own, appeared "Faust," "Elective Affinities," his autobiographical "Dichtung und Wahrheit" ("Poetry and Truth"), his "Italian Journey," much scientific work, and a series of treatises on ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... 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
... 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, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... said Mr. Snell; "I don't doubt you know; but as for me, I for one never happened to hear of anything that Uncle Capen did but whitewash and saw wood. Now what sort of an autobiographical sermon could you make out of ...
— The New Minister's Great Opportunity - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... this important correspondence of the two great musicians will be found in the following extract from an autobiographical sketch written by Wagner in 1851. It has been frequently quoted, but cannot be quoted too often, describing, as it does, the beginning and the development of a friendship which is unique in the history ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... 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 and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 Agrippa—name ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... longer 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 years at Hope End that Elizabeth Barrett was first attacked by serious illness. 'At fifteen,' she says in her autobiographical letter, already quoted in part, 'I nearly died;' and this may be connected with a statement by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, to the effect that 'one day, when Elizabeth was about fifteen, the young girl, impatient for her ride, tried to saddle her pony alone, in a field, and fell with ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... the 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 ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... an amount of Beauty—as distinct from mere prettiness—there is to discover in even the rough local people may be seen from the pictures of the Russian painter Verestchagin, engravings from which are given in his autobiographical sketches entitled "Vassili Verestchagin." This great painter evidently succeeded in getting inside the wild peoples he loved; and his pictures reveal to us beauties we might without them never have known. In ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... 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 ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... my main contention. But before I conclude I may—since I am here—say a little more in the autobiographical vein, and with a view to your discussion to show how I reconcile this fundamental scepticism with the very positive beliefs about world-wide issues I possess, and the very definite distinction I make between ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... than any prince upon earth. His natural spirits gave him 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 scenes where ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... especially those now living who 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 ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... 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
... autobiographical sketch Mrs. Marsh started up in a fury, and brought her whip down on the table with ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Through 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
... by his sojourn in 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" are in ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... but not autobiographical. Like the discourses in Herodotus and Plutarch, it is the voice of the dead speaking through the sympathetic genius of the living after long generations. The strong, stern Calvinist of 1636 in Aberdeen was ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... habit of plotting his groups of poems symmetrically by opening with a prologue-poem sounding the right key, and rounding the theme with an epilogue, did not tend to prove it intentional. It is an open secret that the last poem in "Men and Women," for instance, is an epilogue of autobiographical interest, gathering up the foregoing strains of his lyre, for a few last chords, in so intimate a way that the actual fall of the fingers may be felt, the pausing smile seen, as the performer turns towards the one who inspired "One Word More." The appropriateness of "Transcendentalism" ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... the story of her childhood and tried to interpret her own personality in her autobiographical story, 'The One I Knew Best of All.' She has pictured a little English girl in a comfortable Manchester home, leading a humdrum, well-regulated existence, with brothers and sisters, nurse and governess. But an alert imagination added interest ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... monk; but when it is said in the text that he "got the Tao," or doctrine, I think that expression implies more than his conversion, and is equivalent to his becoming an Arhat. His name in Pali is Angulimala. That he did become an Arhat is clear from his autobiographical poem in the "Songs of ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... face to face with the interminable controversies upon the autobiographical significance of Shakespeare's Sonnets. As volumes upon the subject have been written, it is not possible even adequately to review the various theories here. The controversialists may be broadly divided into those ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... instructions of Sir Walter Scott's last will, I had made some progress in a narrative of his personal history, before there was discovered, in an old cabinet at Abbotsford, an autobiographical fragment, composed by him in 1808—shortly after the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... all his troubles, an intimacy with the men of Science and Letters of his day, and with them formed the nucleus of the Royal Society. Some of the principal incidents of his life are briefly detailed in the following autobiographical memoranda, entitled ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... Squatters Dream, which is understood to be partly autobiographical, he has minutely recorded the varying fortunes of pastoral life in the colonies. But the bitterness of failure never caused him to forget the happiness of his young enthusiasm, or to speak ill of a pursuit so much identified ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... Paris. She died in 1850, in her eighty-fifth year, preserving her 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
... of Bishop Newton, his Works were published, with an autobiographical Memoir, in two volumes quarto. The prelate, speaking, in this Memoir, of Johnson's Lives of the Poets, having observed, that "candour was much hurt and offended at the malevolence that predominated in every part," the Doctor, in a conversation with Dr. Adams, master of Pembroke College, Oxford, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... second year (1813) of Leslie's residence in London, Washington Allston's health became seriously affected, and he resolved to visit Bristol. Coleridge, who was affectionately attached to Allston, followed him thither. "The house was so full," writes Leslie, in his autobiographical recollections, "that the poet was obliged to share a double-bedded room with me. We were kept up late in consequence of the critical condition of Allston, and when we retired Coleridge, seeing a copy of Knickerbocker's History of New York which I had brought ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... really fight Big Ben Brain or Bryan in Hyde Park, or is it all a fantasy of the artist's imagining? We shall never know. Borrow called his Lavengro 'An Autobiography' at one stage of its inception, although he wished to repudiate the autobiographical nature of his story at another. Dr. Knapp in his anxiety to prove that Borrow wrote his own memoirs in Lavengro and Romany Rye tells us that he had no creative faculty—an absurd proposition. But I think ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... beautiful young 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 ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... reputation, as a writer, in the matter of this particular comedy, is no less apparent from the very unusual personal explanation he offered for it, soon after the brief run of the play was over. For no man was more shy of autobiographical revelations. His biographers are continually reduced to gleaning stray hints, here and there, concerning his private life. [5] And therefore we can measure by this emergence from a habitual personal reticence the soreness with which he now published work unworthy of his genius. "Mr Garrick," ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... with his usual 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... 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 boy giant's gentleness ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Hoare, Esqrs.," appear to have executed for a time the office of master-workers at the Mint. A Sir Richard Hoare was Lord Mayor in 1713; and another of the same family, sheriff in 1740-41 and Lord Mayor in 1745, distinguished himself by his preparations to defend London against the Pretender. In an autobiographical record still extant of the shrievalty of the first of these gentlemen, the writer says:—"After being regaled with sack and walnuts, I returned to my own house in Fleet Street, in my private capacity, to my great consolation and comfort." This Richard Hoare, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... are familiar with Edgar Allan Poe's admirable and entrancing narrative just mentioned, are aware that it is written in autobiographical form, the facts for the most part being furnished by Pym in the shape of journal or diary entries, which are edited by Mr. Poe. For such readers it will be but a waste of time to peruse the present chapter, brief though it is. And let me further say to any chance reader of mine who has never ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... me pretty conclusive evidence; against it, however, must be set the passage on the Civil War in the autobiographical poem Ad Posteros ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... of foreign lands are everywhere connected with the most pleasing and the most grateful remembrances." In 1873 Lady Bowring published a 'Memorial Volume of Sacred Poetry,' containing many of his popular hymns; and in 1877 his 'Autobiographical Recollections' were published, with a memoir ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... written from Ravenna in 1820, Byron, in answer to a request for contributions to a proposed memoir, introduces into his notes much autobiographical matter. In reference to a joint visit to Newstead, he writes: "Matthews and myself had travelled down from London together, talking all the way incessantly upon one single topic. When we got to Loughborough, I know not what chasm had made us diverge for a moment to some other subject, at which he ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Colonel Benton himself believed a serious mistake had been made. He had been commissioned colonel in the war of 1812, but though of unquestioned bravery, and deeply read in military science, it had never been his fortune to engage in battle, or to see the face of an enemy. Yet in the autobiographical sketch which precedes his "Thirty Years' View," he complacently assured himself that his appointment as Lieutenant- general over Scott and Taylor "could not have wounded professional honor," as at the time of his retiring from the army ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... for 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 ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... emigrados. His more pressing needs were satisfied by Antonio Herniz, a friend with whom he had made the journey from Lisbon; but the remittances from home came promptly and regularly, and Espronceda must have been one of the most favored among the refugees of Somers Town. If we may take as autobiographical a statement in "Un Recuerdo," he was entertained for a time at the country seat of Lord Ruthven, an old companion-in-arms of his father's. Ruthven is not a fictitious name, as a glance into the peerage will show. During all this time he was improving his acquaintance with Shakespeare, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... reflection that the fund from which these Memoirs are drawn must soon be running low, whereas the resources of fiction are comparatively inexhaustible. In the meantime one result, already perceptible, will be that the novel will tend more and more to imitate the personal memoir, by reverting to the autobiographical form which, since Defoe's day, has always been fiction's most effective disguise, permitting the author to efface himself completely, while it gives the whole composition an air of dramatic vigour. It will have been observed that the most vivid modern ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... talented son. From 1879 to 1881 he studied with Nicholas 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 ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... Amour," autobiographical novel by Albert Savarus; a sort of "ferocious" Sormano. Represented as a young Sicilian girl, fourteen years old, in the services of the Gandolphinis, political refugees at Gersau, Switzerland, in 1823. So devoted as to pretend dumbness on occasion, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... called "Heretics" because it merely criticised current philosophies without offering any alternative philosophy. This book is an attempt to answer the challenge. It is unavoidably affirmative and therefore unavoidably autobiographical. The writer has been driven back upon somewhat the same difficulty as that which beset Newman in writing his Apologia; he has been forced to be egotistical only in order to be sincere. While everything else may be different ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... 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, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... 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 ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... 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 scope of an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... 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 book scarcely less value ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... on at the end of ten days. However, I have many difficulties in fulfilling my design. How am I to say all that has to be said in a reasonable compass? And then as to the materials of my narrative; I have no autobiographical notes to consult, no written explanations of particular treatises or of tracts which at the time gave offence, hardly any minutes of definite transactions or conversations, and few contemporary memoranda, I fear, of the feelings or motives under which, from time to time I acted. ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... I must have related an extraordinary rigmarole. He shook his head, saying 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 I made myself quite intelligible by stopping short and crying: 'I am so ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that every word was distinctly heard by Barboza; yet he made no sign, but went on swaying from side to side as if no mocking word had reached him, then launched out in one of his most atrocious decimas, autobiographical and philosophical. In the first stanza he mentions that he had slain eleven men, but using a poet's license he states the fact in a roundabout way, saying that he slew six men, and then five more, making ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... 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 by far the most substantive ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... 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 nothing ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... 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
... 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 ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... 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 and sock! On the contrary, so foreign was the occupation to his leaning, that ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... of two brothers in that same distant land, 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 ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... reads it, one 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 she burnt them; and ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... other Autobiographical Tracts, not included in the recent Publication of the Camden Society edited by Mr. Halliwell, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... materials, and the poet's autobiographical sketches prefixed to his works, a competent biographer will, doubtless, be found among Sir Walter's personal acquaintance. Mr. Allan Cunningham's "Account" is, perhaps, the most characteristic that has yet appeared: it is full of truth, nature, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... 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 the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... climax of irritation is reached when, having troubled to write down autobiographical details, having wrestled with your modesty and overthrown it, having posted your letter and prepaid it, the —— editor rejects your contribution without thanks. This hard fate overtook me—moi qui vous parle—not very ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... well known. Mr. Miller did not confine his newspaper to topics of local or passing interest. In its columns he made public his geological observations and researches; and most of his works originally appeared in the form of articles in that newspaper. It was in 1840, the year at which the autobiographical memoir closes, that the name of Hugh Miller first became widely known beyond ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... 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 chairman of gatherings ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... dominating figures. The scene in the first book of "Tiger Lilies" of a band of friends gathered on the balcony of John Sterling's house — a palace of art reared by Lanier's imagination in the mountains of East Tennessee — is strictly autobiographical. As they watch the sunset over the valley, the rich notes of violin, flute, and piano blend with the beauty of nature; the future of music is the theme and poetry the comment. The various characters of that immature romance ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... in or near the town, Nexo, from which his final name is derived. There, too, he was a shoemaker's apprentice, like Pelle in the second part of the book, which resembles many great novels in being largely autobiographical. Later, he gained his livelihood as a bricklayer, until he somehow managed to get to one of the most renowned of our "people's high-schools," where he studied so effectually that he was enabled to become a teacher, first at a provincial ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... of Mrs. Stanton's 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 ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... This autobiographical digression may give some idea of the reflections I was led to make in anticipation of Lambert's arrival. I was then twelve years old. I felt sympathy from the first for the boy whose temperament had some points of likeness to my own. I was at last to have a companion in daydreams ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... that the poem is too autobiographical and that real experience are alien things that should never influence one, but it was wrung out of me, a cry of pain, the cry of Marsyas, not the song of Apollo. Still, there are some good things in it. I feel as if I had ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Augustine, with his intimate self-analysis and intense self-reproach, and the less well-known De Vita Propria Liber by Cardan. This latter is a serious attempt at scientific self-examination. Recently, attention has been directed to the accumulation of autobiographical and biographical materials which are interpreted from the point of view of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. The study Der Fall Otto Weininger by Dr. Ferdinand Probst is a representative monograph of this type. The outstanding example of this method ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... more detail than those which are further off.' Some, again, breathe a fine spirit of optimism, as 'Picturesqueness is the birthright of the bargee'; others are jubilant, as 'Paint firm and be jolly'; and many are purely autobiographical, such as No. 97, 'Few of us understand what it is that we mean by Art.' Nor is Mr. Quilter's manner less interesting than his matter. He tells us that at this festive season of the year, with Christmas and roast beef looming before us, 'Similes drawn from eating and its results ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde |
