Biography & Autobiography Books

                          DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS.                           SEPTEMBER & OCTOBER                                  1668 September 1st. Up and all the morning at the office busy, and after dinner to the office again busy till about four, and then I abroad (my wife being gone to Hales's about... more...

PREFACE Some excuse seems to be needed for venturing at this time to publish biographical sketches of the men of the Victorian era. Several have been written by men, like Lord Morley and Lord Bryce, having first-hand knowledge of their subjects, others by the best critics of the next generation, such as Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Clutton-Brock. With their critical ability I am not able to compete; but they... more...

I WOMAN AND MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME "Many things that among the Greeks are considered improper and unfitting," wrote Cornelius Nepos in the preface to his "Lives," "are permitted by our customs. Is there by chance a Roman who is ashamed to take his wife to a dinner away from home? Does it happen that the mistress of the house in any family does not enter the anterooms frequented by... more...

Phidias, one of the greatest sculptors the world has seen, and whose name has become, as it were, the synonym of his art, was born at Athens about 500 B.C. He belonged to a family of artists, none of whom indeed were distinguished in their profession, but their varied occupations furnished the atmosphere in which such a talent as that of Phidias could best be fostered and brought to maturity. His... 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...

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL. For its size and population Scotland has been remarkably prolific in the rearing of eminent statesmen, soldiers, and litterateurs. Viewed with respect to its relative importance as an item in the map of Europe, it has likewise a most chequered and eventful history—a history to which, in various essentials, no counterpart can be found elsewhere. Chiefly, however, has "the land... more...

PREFACE Books about Balzac would fill a fair-sized library. Criticisms on his novels abound, and his contemporaries have provided us with several amusing volumes dealing in a humorous spirit with his eccentricities, and conveying the impression that the author of "La Cousine Bette" and "Le Pere Goriot" was nothing more than an amiable buffoon. Nevertheless, by some strange anomaly,... more...

EDWARD MACDOWELL BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH EDWARD ALEXANDER MACDOWELL was born in New York City, U.S.A., on December 18th, 1861, of American parents descended from a Quaker family of Scotch-Irish extraction who emigrated to America about the middle of the 18th Century. He was their third son. As a boy he studied the pianoforte with Juan Buitrago, a South American, Pablo Desvernine, a Cuban, and for a short... more...

PREFACE TO THE LIVES I am aware that it is commonly held as a fact by most writers that sculpture, as well as painting, was naturally discovered originally by the people of Egypt, and also that there are others who attribute to the Chaldeans the first rough carvings of statues and the first reliefs. In like manner there are those who credit the Greeks with the invention of the brush and of colouring.... more...

INTRODUCTION To close the scene of all his actions heWas brought from Newgate to the fatal tree;And there his life resigned, his race is run,And Tyburn ends what wickedness begun. If there be a haunted spot in London it must surely be a few square yards that lie a little west of the Marble Arch, for in the long course of some six centuries over fifty thousand felons, traitors and martyrs took there a... more...