Pack My Bag (1940) by Henry Green

Book Review by Chris Hopkins. Henry Green (1905-1973) was the pen name of Henry Yorke, a contemporary of writers such as Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, Anthony Powell and Evelyn Waugh. All of these novelists and many other writers and critics have thought Green one of the greatest fiction-writers of his time, but he never commanded … Continue reading →

The Days of My Life (1926) by Henry Rider Haggard (Volume I)

Book Review by Sue Roe: Rider Haggard was prompted to write his autobiography by a rather bizarre occurrence: A while ago, it may have been a year or more, the telephone in this House rang and down the mysterious wire… came an excited inquiry from a London press agency, as to whether I were dead. … Continue reading →

Something of Myself (1937) by Rudyard Kipling

Book Review by George S: Kipling began writing this autobiography in August 1935, and worked on it intermittently during the five months before his death in January 1936. The finished chapters are fascinating, but tantalisingly incomplete; after his death they were edited for publication by his strong-minded wife, Carrie, who organised the material, and maybe … Continue reading →

I Find Four People (1935) by Pamela Frankau

Book Review by George S: This is Pamela Frankau’s autobiography, a version of her life so far, published in 1935, when she was twenty-seven. (I read a Penguin edition, which came in 1938.) The four people that she finds are her former selves. Each section recounts the adventures of one of these, in the third … Continue reading →

Gallipoli Memories (1929) by Compton Mackenzie

Book Review by George S. We’ve been reading fiction by Compton Mackenzie this month, but I deviated from the brief slightly by reading an example of his non-fiction. He published Gallipoli Memories in 1929, fourteen years after his participation in the unsuccessful military campaign. He tells us that he had spent years pursuing ‘that elusive … Continue reading →

Confessions and Impressions by Ethel Mannin (1930)

This book has a fair amount in common with Beverley Nichols’ autobiography-but-really-about-other -people Twenty-Five. Just shows the appetite for celebrity gossip has existed for many years! Nichols was himself a literary celebrity and appears in Mannin’s book. She rated his ‘genius’ over Noel Coward! (For an academic article in which I analyse Nichols at great … Continue reading →

Sinabada by Elinor Mordaunt (1937)

Elinor Mordaunt was born Evelyn May Clowes in 1872 in Cotgrave, near Nottingham. She died in 1942. Another quite prolific popular novelist, Mordaunt doesn’t have an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, though she is in the Orlando database of Women’s Writing (alas we are not subscribers to that). We read four of her novels and the … Continue reading →

The Autobiography of Howard Spring (1972)

Review by George Simmers (see his Great War Fiction blog here). Be warned:  this book’s title doesn’t describe its contents. This is nothing like a full autobiography, but is a collection of Spring’s three volumes of pleasant discursive memoirs, which ramble from topic to topic, without overmuch regard for chronological order or completeness. Interesting subjects … Continue reading →

Beverley Nichols’ first autobiography: Twenty-Five (1926)

I’ve posted before about Beverley Nichols (1898- 1983), a prolific writer of novels, journalism, political tracts, plays, children’s fiction, books about houses, gardens and cats – you name it, he wrote it. My interest was started by finding a copy of his early novel Crazy Pavements (1927), a surprising, dark and funny book. I wanted … Continue reading →