By Dhan Gopal MukerjiEdited by Akhil Gupta (NHC Fellow, 2000–01), Gordon H. Chang, and Purnima Mankekar A person of rare talent and broad appeal, Dhan Gopal Mukerji (1890-1936) holds the distinction of being the first South Asian immigrant to have a successful career in the United States as a man of letters. As the author … Continued
By Charles Caramello (NHC Fellow, 1984–85) Focusing on biographical portraiture, Charles Caramello argues that Henry James and Gertrude Stein performed biographical acts in two senses of the phrase: they wrote biography, but as a cover for autobiography. Constructing literary genealogies while creating original literary forms, they used their biographical portraits of precursors and contemporaries to … Continued
By Jeremy D. Popkin (NHC Fellow, 2000–01; 2012–13) Though history and autobiography both claim to tell true stories about the past, historians have traditionally rejected first-person accounts as subjective and therefore unreliable. What then, asks Jeremy D. Popkin in History, Historians, and Autobiography, are we to make of the ever-increasing number of professional historians who are … Continued
By James Olney (NHC Fellow, 1980–81) Memory and Narrative presents an elegant, authoritative account of how life-writing has changed over time to arrive at its present form. James Olney, one of the most distinguished scholars of autobiography, tells the story of an evolving literary form that originated in the autobiographical writings of St. Augustine, underwent … Continued
Edited by P. Gabrielle Foreman (NHC Fellow, 2003–04) and Reginald H. Pitts First published in 1859, Our Nig is an autobiographical narrative that stands as one of the most important accounts of the life of a black woman in the antebellum North. In the story of Frado, a spirited black girl who is abused and overworked as … Continued
Edited by John Sekora (NHC Fellow, 1982–83) and Darwin T. Turner
Edited and translated by Anthony Bale (NHC Fellow, 2012–13) The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1436-8) is the extraordinary account of a medieval wife, mother, and mystic. Known as the earliest autobiography written in the English language, Kempe's Book describes the dramatic transformation of its heroine from failed businesswoman and lustful young wife, to devout and chaste pilgrim. … Continued
Edited by Merrill D. Peterson (NHC Fellow, 1980–81) Now fully represented in this Library of America volume is the most comprehensive testimony of the writings of our third president and foremost spokesperson for democracy. Thomas Jefferson, a brilliant political thinker, is perhaps best known for the Declaration of Independence, but he was a man of … Continued
Edited by James L. W. West, III (NHC Fellow, 1981–82) and Arthur D. Casciato In "Waiting for Nothing" and Other Writings, the works of the depression-era writer Tom Kromer are collected for the first time into a volume that depicts with searing realism life on the bum in the 1930s and, with greater detachment, the powerless … Continued
Edited by Ezra Greenspan (NHC Fellow, 2011–12) Born a slave and kept functionally illiterate until he escaped at age nineteen, William Wells Brown refashioned himself first as an agent of the Underground Railroad and then as an antislavery activist and self-taught orator and author, eventually becoming a foundational figure of African American literature. The Library … Continued