Biography & Autobiography Books

SHELLEY: AN ESSAY The Church, which was once the mother of poets no less than of saints, during the last two centuries has relinquished to aliens the chief glories of poetry, if the chief glories of holiness she has preserved for her own.  The palm and the laurel, Dominic and Dante, sanctity and song, grew together in her soil: she has retained the palm, but forgone the laurel.  Poetry in its widest... more...

INTRODUCTION BY FIELD-MARSHAL SIR EVELYN WOOD, V.C. I regard John Denton French as the man who for the last twelve years has been the driving force of tactical instruction in the British Army. He made use of all the best ideas of the Generals who preceded him in the Aldershot Command, and he was, I think, instrumental in causing the appointment of Horace Smith-Dorrien and Douglas Haig to succeed in... more...

PREFACE Students of Ralegh's career cannot complain of a dearth of materials. For thirty-seven years he lived in the full glare of publicity. The social and political literature of more than a generation abounds in allusions to him. He appears and reappears continually in the correspondence of Burleigh, Robert Cecil, Christopher Hatton, Essex, Anthony Bacon, Henry Sidney, Richard Boyle, Ralph... more...

CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD. Sir Walter Scott was the first literary man of a great riding, sporting, and fighting clan. Indeed, his father—a Writer to the Signet, or Edinburgh solicitor—was the first of his race to adopt a town life and a sedentary profession. Sir Walter was the lineal descendant—six generations removed—of that Walter Scott commemorated in The Lay of the Last... more...

LIFE TILL MARRIAGE Scott's own 'autobiographic fragment,' printed in Lockhart's first volume, has made other accounts of his youth mostly superfluous, even to a day which persists in knowing better about everything and everybody than it or they knew about themselves. No one ever recorded his genealogy more minutely, with greater pride, or with a more saving sense of humour than Sir... more...

CHAPTER I. EARLY YEARS; 1738-1772. Of the great modern philosophers, that one of whom least is known, is William Herschel. We may appropriate the words which escaped him when the barren region of the sky near the body of Scorpio was passing slowly through the field of his great reflector, during one of his sweeps, to express our own sense of absence of light and knowledge: Hier ist wahrhaftig ein Loch... more...

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...

My Dear Mr. Beaumont, Seneca has well said, "The three main points in the question of benefits, are, first, a judicious choice in the object; secondly, in the matter of our benevolence; and thirdly, in the manner of expressing it." Of the first, it would not be becoming in me to speak; of the second, you are the rightful judge; of the third, I beg leave thus publicly to state, that not only in... more...

THIS ARMY OF OURS Since Alexander of Macedon descended upon the plains of India, there can never have been so strange and heterogeneous an army as this, and a doctor must speak with the tongues of men and angels to arrive at an even approximate understanding of their varied ailments. The first division that came with Jan Smuts from the snows of Kilimanjaro to the torrid delta of the Rufigi contained... more...

INTERVIEWFRANCES BATSON1213 Scovel St.Nashville, Tennessee "I dunno jes how ole I ez. I wuz baw'n 'yer in Nashville, durin' slabery. I must be way pas' 90 fer I member de Yankee soldiers well. De chilluns called dem de 'blue mans.' Mah white folks wuz named Crockett. Dr. Crockett wuz our marster but I don't member 'im mahse'f. He d'ed w'en I... more...