This personal memoir by Frank Harris held the attention of select readers from France & England to the United States. Was banned in USA and Britain after publication.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Harris was a very intelligent man - excellent material on 1880-1930,
By Rerevisionist (Manchester, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: My Life and Loves (Five Volumes in One) (Hardcover)
Harris was born 1855; died 1931. He was famous as an editor (and helped publish H G Wells) - as famous as Whistler, said Wells. He wrote about twenty books.This large book was published in five volumes originally, starting in 1925 - with censorship difficulties as with Lady Chatterley's Lover. I suspect this was to try to make money: like Wilde he was somewhat isolated in Europe. It's much more interesting than most people would guess from the reputation: it includes much material on middlebrow people like Maeterlinck, Kipling; and political stuff on Bismarck, Russo-Turkish War, Rhodes, Jameson Raid, Boer War, Congo atrocities etc, Boer War, First World War, and people like Meredith and Wilde and Wells and Shaw; plenty on Shakespeare; and accounts of visits to America, Greece, Germany, Africa, Japan, China and other places. Erotic encounters are interlarded here and there and include a negress called Sophy and Indian, Japanese, Chinese, and young, women. He states [as an introduction, just before printing a letter from a lesbian] that he has no experience in perversions, being wholly taken up with normal desires. The whole writing style is different, mainly because there's no established vocabulary - 'my powerful instrument' type of thing. It's hard to tell how much is actually true. Some editions have footnotes of instances when Harris' meetings or exchanges with anyone of significance have been challenged. Some incidents are known to me to appear elsewhere, and could have been copied, as in e.g. Whistler's comment on looking at Beardsley's drawings, or an apparently face to face statement by Wilde on how he learnt drama technique by studying French plays. Did he really talk to Bismarck? On the other hand, when Harris gives supposedly verbatim conversations with Carlyle and Dowden and Mallock, or recounts his experiences with Alfred Russel Wallace or Bret Harte or Bunsen, one feels these people aren't from the common point of view stellar enough to warrant invention. Much on Christ, Shakespeare. Also on literary influences post-Dickens and pre-say 1900; his modern style makes it easy to miss the fact that the authors he talks of, e.g. Carlyle, Browning, were living to him. Harris is unusually cosmopolitan - he lists John Hay, an American of Pike County Ballads, Whitman, Emerson, and others; and also Henry George and radical journalists, like Harden in Germany whom I've not heard of before. He actually knew and met Alfred Russel Wallace of evolution theory, and comments on 'Forty-five Years of Registration Statistics.' 'proving vaccination.. useless and dangerous'. He met Ehrlich, of STD (VD then) fame. Harris complimented a German scientist for not patenting his inventions, unlike Alfred Nobel. He said, of the Belgian Congo atrocities, Britain 'could have stopped it with a word'. The First World War & war against Russia was 'for money'.. 'series of diabolical crimes.. committed during the last half-century almost without protest..' A very interesting an lively book, full of independent judgments.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Greatest Autobiography ever Written,
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This review is from: My Life and Loves (Five Volumes in One) (Hardcover)
Any reader considering purchasing this book MUST procure all five volumes -- it really is imcomplete otherwise. This book is a true of literature. It should be read and studies in schools across the country. One theme in particular controls the author's task -- his "loves." The author notes, correctly I think, that our sexual life (and the time spent thinking about it) occupies such a dominant position in our lives that more attention should be given to it in the writing of an autobiography. I think he is absolutely right. And make no mistake, his exposition of it in his book is very, very sexually explicit. But there is such a beautiful and sincere candor in the way he describes his past loves. The explicitly sexual details are often followed with profound truths of human nature generally. Another theme also captures the author's task in writing this book -- it reads sort of like a guide to the young. Here he is in the forward to the five-volume set: "I have missed indescribable pleasures because the power to enjoy and to give delight is keenest early in life, while the understanding of both how to give and how to receive pleasure comes much later, when the faculties are already on the decline." So the author would like to equip his young readers with the knowledge and tools necessary to best maximize their own sense of pleasure in the art of love. The book is also of interest for its account of certain literary figures of the age. Frank Harris was a man of letters, and moved in many literary circles. What makes this book fascinating is that the author is not afraid to note the character flaws of some of the big names of literature, such as Bernard Shaw, John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, and many others. Frank Harris lived a complete life in every sense of the word, and it would have been a real treat to know him personally. This is indeed the greatest autobiography ever written. I read all 1,300 pages in about three days, and then spent the next seven going back and re-reading favorite passages of mine.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Banned in Countries around the world!,
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This review is from: My Life and Loves (Five Volumes in One) (Hardcover)
Frank Harris (February 14, 1856 - August 27, 1931) was a British-born, naturalized-American author, editor, journalist and publisher, who was friendly with many well-known figures of his day. Though he attracted much attention during his life for his irascible, aggressive personality, editorship of famous periodicals, and friendship with the talented and famous, he is remembered mainly for his multiple-volume memoir My Life and Loves, which was banned in countries around the world for its sexual explicitness.
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