Biography & Autobiography Books

I. USES OF GREAT MEN. It is natural to believe in great men. If the companions of our childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their condition regal, it would not surprise us. All mythology opens with demigods, and the circumstance is high and poetic; that is, their genius is paramount. In the legends of the Gautama, the first men ate the earth, and found it deliciously sweet. Nature seems to exist... more...

INTRODUCTORY These laid the world away; poured out the redSweet wine of youth; gave up the years to beOf work and joy ...And those who would have been,Their sons, they gave, their immortality. Rupert Brooke. In deciding to publish some of the letters written by the late Lieutenant H. P. M. Jones during his twenty-seven months' service with the British Army, accompanying them with a memoir, I was... more...

EARLY YEARS AND SURROUNDINGS Irving's name stands as the first landmark in American letters. No other American writer has won the same sort of recognition abroad or esteem at home as became his early in life. And he has lost very little ground, so far as we can judge by the appeal to figures. The copyright on his works ran out long since, and a great many editions of Irving, cheap and costly,... more...

I Renounce the Clerical Profession, and Enter the MilitaryService—Therese Leaves for Naples, and I Go to Venice—I Am AppointedEnsign in the Army of My Native Country—I Embark for Corfu, and Land atOrsera to Take a Walk I had been careful, on my arrival in Bologna, to take up my quarters at a small inn, so as not to attract any notice, and as soon as I had dispatched my letters to Therese and the... more...

CHAPTER I. My flight from the North and escape into Virginia.—Revolutionary scene at Richmond.—The Union Convention passes the Ordinance of Secession.—Great excitement prevails in the South.   April 8th, 1861. Burlington, New Jersey.—The expedition sails to-day from New York. Its purpose is to reduce Fort Moultrie, Charleston harbor, and relieve Fort Sumter, invested by the Confederate forces.... more...

KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS FOR KING AND COUNTRY March in England is spring. Early in the month masses of snowdrops lined the paths in Hyde Park. The grass was green, the roads hard and dry under the eager feet of Kitchener's great army. For months they had been drilling, struggling with the intricacies of a new career, working and waiting. And now it was spring, and soon they would be off. Some had... more...

CHAPTER I Count Tiretta of Trevisa Abbe Coste—Lambertini, the Pope's Niece HerNick—Name for Tiretta The Aunt and Niece—Our Talk by theFireside—Punishment of Damien—Tiretta's Mistake Anger ofMadame***—Their Reconciliation—My Happiness with Mdlle. de la MeureSilvia's Daughter—Mdlle, de la Meure Marries My Despair and Jealousy—AChange far the Better In the beginning of... more...

CHAPTER I. OLIVER'S FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED: SEPT. 3, 1654-JUNE 26, 1657. Oliver's First Protectorate extended over three years and six months in all, or from December 16, 1653 to June 26, 1657. The first nine months of it, as far as to September 1654, have been already sketched; and what remains divides itself very distinctly into three Sections, as follows:— Section I:—From Sept.... more...

CHAPTER I THE VIRGINIA MADISONS James Madison was born on March 16, 1751, at Port Conway, Virginia; he died at Montpellier, in that State, on June 28, 1836. Mr. John Quincy Adams, recalling, perhaps, the death of his own father and of Jefferson on the same Fourth of July, and that of Monroe on a subsequent anniversary of that day, may possibly have seen a generous propriety in finding some equally... more...

CHAPTER 1. CHAUCER'S TIMES. The biography of Geoffrey Chaucer is no longer a mixture of unsifted facts, and of more or less hazardous conjectures. Many and wide as are the gaps in our knowledge concerning the course of his outer life, and doubtful as many important passages of it remain—in vexatious contrast with the certainty of other relatively insignificant data—we have at least become... more...