Biography & Autobiography Books

MY COMMERCIAL ANTECEDENTS—HOW I GOT INTO PRISON. In the beginning of the year 1856 I commenced business on my own account, as a merchant in a Northern City. Previous to that time I had been engaged in an unsuccessful partnership, but I paid my creditors in full with the small capital advanced to me by my friends for the purpose of my new adventure. When I began operations, therefore, I was literally... more...

INTRODUCTION The famous Ultimatum had gone forth to the world. War had come at last. We, in Kimberley, were in for it—though happily unconscious of our destiny until it was revealed by the gradations of time. Nothing awful was anticipated. The future was veiled. The knowledge of what was to come was brought home to us by a gradual process that kept us permanently sane. Dull Kimberley was to be... more...

INTRODUCTION The "Historia Calamitatum" of Peter Abélard is one of those human documents, out of the very heart of the Middle Ages, that illuminates by the glow of its ardour a shadowy period that has been made even more dusky and incomprehensible by unsympathetic commentators and the ill-digested matter of "source-books." Like the "Confessions" of St. Augustine it is an... more...

CHAPTER I. Birth and Parentage.—Education.—Religious Convictions.—Prayers in the Tomb.—Union with the Church.—Labors for the Poor.—Marriage. The subject of this narrative was born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1823. Her maiden name was Mary Smith Kelsey. Her mother was a free colored woman, very light, and her father a white man—an Englishman of rank and culture. She was a very lovely child in... more...

YOUTH. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. * * * * *   "Aus Morgenduft gewebt und Sonnenklarheit  Der Dichtung Schleir aus der Hand der Wahrheit." GOETHE.             "The million stars which tremble  O'er the deep mind of dauntless infancy." TENNYSON.   "Wie leicht ward er dahin gefragen,     Was war dem Glücklichen zu schwer!  Wie tanzte vor des Lebens... more...

FOREWORD The "infant phenomenon" in literature is rarer than in more physical branches of art, but its productions are not likely to be of value outside the doting domestic circle. Even Pope who "lisped in numbers for the numbers came," did not add to our Anthology from his cradle, though he may therein have acquired his monotonous rocking-metre. Immaturity of mind and experience, so... more...

In the year 1887 he startled the town and made a Society sensation by means of an exceedingly original enterprise which any man of less audacious and prodigious power of work would have shrunk from in its very inception. For years this Titanic task was in hand. This was his celebrated 'artistic joke,' the name given by the 'Times' to a bold parody on a large scale of an average... more...

THE PICTURE H. Oh! is it you? I had something to shew you—I have got a picture here. Do you know any one it's like? S. No, Sir. H. Don't you think it like yourself? S. No: it's much handsomer than I can pretend to be. H. That's because you don't see yourself with the same eyes that others do. I don't think it handsomer, and the expression is hardly so fine as yours... more...

CHAPTER I Tells how a little girl lived in a lowly home, and played, and dreamed dreams, and how a dark shadow came into her life and made her unhappy; how when she grew older she went into a factory and learned to weave, and how in her spare minutes she taught herself many things, and worked amongst wild boys; and how she was sent to Africa. One cold day in December, in the city of Aberdeen, a baby... more...

CHAPTER 2.1. 1870. [With the year 1870 comes another turning-point in Huxley's career. From his return to England in 1850 till 1854 he had endured four years of hard struggle, of hope deferred; his reputation as a zoologist had been established before his arrival, and was more than confirmed by his personal energy and power. When at length settled in the professorship at Jermyn Street, he was so... more...