Subject: Autobiography
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The Summing Up W. Somerset Maugham
Autobiographical without being an autobiography, confessional without disclosing his private self, The Summing Up, written when Maugham was sixty-four, is an inimitable expression of a personal credo. It is not only a classic avowal of a professional author's ideas about style, literarture, art, drama and philosophy…Read More »
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A Backward Glance Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, vividly reflects on her public and private life in this stunning memoir. With richness and delicacy, it describes the sophisticated New York society in which Wharton spent her youth, and chronicles her travels throughout Europe and her literary success as an …Read More »
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The World I Live In Helen Keller
Helen Keller's most personal and intellectually adventurous work—one that transforms our appreciation of her extraordinary achievements. Here this preternaturally gifted deaf and blind young woman closely describes her sensations and the workings of her imagination, while making the pro-vocative argument that the wh…Read More »
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The True Story of My Life Hans Christian Andersen
Autobiographical novel of one of the greatest children's writers that has ever lived: Hans Christian Andersen. Most famous for his versions of classic fairytales, such as The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, Thumbelina and The Snow Queen. "My life is a lovely story, happy and full of incident. If, when I was a boy…Read More »
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The Road to Wigan Pier George Orwell
An unflinching look at unemployment and life among the working classes in Britain during the Great Depression, The Road to Wigan Pier offers an in-depth examination of socio-economic conditions in the coal-mining communities of England’s industrial areas, including detailed analysis of workers’ wages, living conditi…Read More »
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The Story of My Life Helen Keller
Helen Keller overcame the seemingly insurmountable obstacles of deafness and blindness to become an icon of perseverance, respected and honored by readers, historians, and activists. Her autobiography The Story of My Life, is still read today for its ability to motivate and reassure readers. Helen began working on…Read More »
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Walden Henry David Thoreau
In 1845 Henry David Thoreau left his pencil-manufacturing business and began building a cabin on the shore of Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. This lyrical yet practical-minded book is at once a record of the 26 months Thoreau spent in withdrawal from society – an account of the daily minutiae of building, …Read More »
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John Barleycorn Jack London
A classic biography of Jack London as a drunk; it is most likely the first thoughtful analysis on alcoholism in Amreican literture. The novel is packed full with London's notorious adventures including his well known drinking career via the character known as John Barleycorn - a term even now given to alcohol just l…Read More »
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Autobiography of a Yogi Paramahansa Yogananda
This acclaimed autobiography presents a fascinating portrait of one of the great spiritual figures of our time. With engaging candor, eloquence, and wit, Paramahansa Yogananda narrates the inspiring chronicle of his life: the experiences of his remarkable childhood, encounters with many saints and sages during his y…Read More »
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The Genius Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser heavily invested himself in The Genius, an autobiographical novel first published in 1915. Thoroughly immersed in the turn-of-the-century art scene, The Genius explores the multiple conflicts between art and business, art and marriage, and between traditional and modern views of sexual morality. Des…Read More »
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The Road Jack London
In this entertaining collection of tales and autobiographical essays, London relates the days he spent on the road. Each story details an aspect of the hobo's life – from catching a train to cadging a meal. The wealth of experiences and the necessity of having to lie for a living brought depth London's subsequent s…Read More »
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The Mirror of the Sea Joseph Conrad
Although Joseph Conrad achieved acclaim as one of the masters of English-language fiction, his own life story is as fascinating and engaging as Heart of Darkness or Lord Jim. The volume The Mirror of the Sea is a collection of several autobiographical sketches, remembrances and essays that Conrad originally publishe…Read More »
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Twelve Years a Slave Solomon Northup
The story of Solomon Northup is a bizarre and incredible one. Born a free black in New York State in 1808, he was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841, and spent most of the next 12 years as a slave on a Louisiana cotton plantation. His years in this condition of servitude were filled with abuse, apprehension, and…Read More »
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
Perhaps Joyce's most personal work, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man depicts the intellectual awakening of one of literature's most memorable young heroes, Stephen Dedalus. Through a series of brilliant epiphanies that parallel the development of his own aesthetic consciousness, Joyce evokes Stephen's youth…Read More »
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Boyhood Leo Tolstoy
In the 1850s Tolstoy also began his literary career with an autobiographical trilogy: Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. This, the second novel in the trilogy, tells of the early part of his life, when he was living happily with his family in the countryside. It also portrays his first love affair with Sonya and the tra…Read More »
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Margaret Ogilvy J. M. Barrie
Barrie's autobiography of his mother, published after her death, and which tells a lot of Barrie's early emotional life. Barrie descibes how strong minded and intelligent she was and how she wanted everything done done her way.
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Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence
Called the most widely-read English novel of the twentieth century, D. H. Lawrence’s largely autobiographical Sons and Lovers tells the story of Paul Morel, a young artist growing into manhood in a British working-class community near the Nottingham coalfields. His mother Gertrude, unhappily married to Paul’s hard…Read More »
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Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
When Emma Rouault marries Charles Bovary she imagines she will pass into the life of luxury and passion that she reads about in sentimental novels and women's magazines. But Charles is a dull country doctor, and provincial life is very different from the romantic excitement for which she yearns. In her quest to real…Read More »
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The Longest Journey E. M. Forster
Trilling described The Longest Journey as "perhaps the most brilliant, the most dramatic, and the most passionate" of E.M. Forster's works. Certainly it's the most autobiographical – but its form confuses many. Full of sudden death, hopeless love, and quaintly doomed relationships – and yet for all that, it's an e…Read More »
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The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton Daniel Defoe
The narrative describes the life of an Englishman, stolen from a well-to-do family as a child and raised by Gypsies who eventually makes his way to sea. One half of the book concerns Singleton's crossing of Africa and the later half concerns his life as a pirate. Defoe's description of piracy focuses for the most p…Read More »
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My Bondage and My Freedom Frederick Douglass
My Bondage and My Freedom is an autobiographical slave narrative written by Frederick Douglass and published in 1855. It is the second of three autobiographies written by Douglass, and is mainly an expansion of his first (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass), discussing in greater detail his transition from …Read More »
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Four Weeks in the Trenches Fritz Kreisler
Fritz Kreisler - one of the greatest violinists of hist time, if not of all time, recounts his experiences during World War I as an Austrian soldier. Four Weeks in the Trenches is a brief record of his fighting on the Eastern front in the great war, first published in 1915 after he was honorably discharged when woun…Read More »
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The Diary of a U-boat Commander Stephen King-Hall
The diary of a World War One U-Boat commander. As well as being a fascinating glimpse of life on the German U-boats during the intense submarine blockade, this also reminds us there were humans involved - on both sides of the action - as we read too of the intimate thoughts and intense love of a man longing for his …Read More »
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The Golden Age Kenneth Grahame
Imagine The Wind in the Willows with real children in place of Kenneth Grahame's storybook animals, and you'll get a picture of The Golden Age. Thoughtful short stories about five endearing and creative siblings growing up in late Victorian England, the charming vignettes gently probe differences between childre…Read More »
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Childhood Leo Tolstoy
The artistic work of Leo Tolstoy has been described as "nothing less than one tremendous diary kept for over fifty years." This particular "diary" begins with Tolstoy's first published work, which was written when he was only 23. A semi-autobiographical work, it recounts two days in the childhood of 10-year-old …Read More »
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The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass
Born into a family of slaves, Frederick Douglass educated himself through sheer determination. His unconquered will to triumph over his circumstances makes his one of America's best and most unlikely success stories. Douglass' own account of his journey from slave to one of America's great statesmen, writers, and or…Read More »
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The Autobiography of Charles Darwin Charles Darwin
The Autobiography of Charles Darwin is a work on the life of Charles Darwin, written by the man himself. This biographical work about one of the most important naturalists in history is key in understanding the events in his life which lead him to make some of the most important evolutionary discoveries, which hold …Read More »