My Life as an Author

Among the many literary men and women of my acquaintance there are some (for it is not possible to enumerate all) of whom I should like to make some mention; and, _place aux dâm...

Of my earliest MS., written soon after my seventh birthday, I have no copy, and only a very confused memory: but I remember that my good mother treasured for years and showed to...

And this may well be a fitting place wherein to record the origin, progress, and after long years the full completion of what is manifestly my chief authorial work in life, "Pro...

Having often been asked to put on record my few and far-between experiences of spiritualism, as on several occasions I have verbally related them, I have hitherto neglected or d...

In a short and simple way, then, and without any desire ostentatiously to "chronicle small beer," as Iago sneers it, I suppose it proper to state very briefly when and where I w...

A few last words as to sundry life-experiences. Whether we notice it or not, we are guided and guarded and led on through many changes and chances to the gates of death in a mar...

It is only fair and right that I make special mention of some friendships of many years, connected more or less with literary matters. Among such names in the past occurs one, i...

In such a record of personals as this, it is fortunate both for the author and his readers if he has never been one of those literary lions who are merely histrionic creatures o...

In 1839, Rickerby was again my publisher; the new book being "A Modern Pyramid; to Commemorate a Septuagint of Worthies." In this volume, commencing with Abel, and ending with F...

Soon after leaving Oxford, and when some attempts to help my speech seemed to be partially successful, my father wished me to take orders, which also from religious motives was...

A vast volume is before me containing my first American journal, which I sent over piecemeal in letters and newspaper clippings to Albury, where my wife and daughters arranged t...

In a recent page I have alluded to sundry "fads and fancies of the day," some of greater and others of lesser import, and I have been mixed up in two or three of them. For examp...

After the long interval of five-and-twenty years, filled up with many more such volumes and fly-leaves, I called again by pressing invitation on my American constituency, and fo...

Throughout my lengthened spell of life I never was anything of a zealous politician. Well acquainted, as I have been, with many men of all manner of opinions, and having had muc...

In 1829 I was entered as a commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, and went through the usual course of lectures with fair success. As a family we have all favoured Oxford rather tha...

When I returned in the autumn of 1855 from my principal continental tour, wherein for three months I had conducted my whole family of eleven (servants inclusive) all through the...

Sundry of my short lyrics have gained a great popularity: in particular "Never give up," whereof there are extant--or were--no fewer than eight musical settings. Of this ballad,...

My next book, published by Bentley in 1841, is in some sort a psychological curiosity,--its title being "An Author's Mind, the Book of Title-pages;" and when I add that it conta...

I have another vast volume before me, recounting my English and Scotch Reading Tours, with full details of innumerable home kindnesses and hospitalities, from Ventnor in the Sou...

Authorship reaps honour in these latter days quite as much as it did in the classic times of Augustus with Virgil and Horace for his intimates, and of Petrarch crowned at the Ca...

A word or two about autographs, surely a topic suitable to this book: in fact, I have sometimes preferred to spell it authorgraphs: most public men are troubled nowadays with th...

My several royal poems, some twenty in number, may deserve a short and special notice; though it is far from my intention to detail any gracious condescensions of a private natu...

There is an extinct pamphlet, now before me, published by Routledge in 1860, entitled "The Rifle Movement Foreshown in Prose and Verse from 1848 to the Present Time,"--from my p...

Amongst other memorabilia in no particular order, let me set down a few visits, longer than a mere call, to sundry persons and places of note. As these, for instance. Annually d...

One of the apparent calamities of my life (overruled, as I have long since seen, for good) was the before-mentioned affliction of a very bad impediment of speech, which blighted...

In the course of my Oxford career I tried for two Newdigate Prize poems, "The Suttees" and the "African Desert," won respectively by Claughton, now Bishop of St. Albans, and Ric...

In connection with the above, I will here print for the first time a paper written long ago on the now rife subject of a cure for Irish misery; at all events partially. Ireland...

I wrote "Stephan Langton, a Story of the Time of King John," because, 1st, I had little to do in the country; 2dly, I wished to give some special literary lift to Albury and its...

I took my family to these Northern Isles of the Sea in 1859, sailing from Aberdeen in a once-a-week steamer; some of our passengers were notable, as Dasent of the Norse Tales (s...

I have something of interest to say about the first laying of the electric telegraph across the Atlantic. Sir Culling Eardley invited a number of savants, among them Wheatstone...

The origin of the "Crock of Gold" is so well given in a preface, written by Mr. Butler of Philadelphia, for his American edition of my works in 1851, that I choose here to repro...

The best of my unpublished MSS. of any size or consequence is perhaps my translation of Book Alpha of the Iliad, quite literal and in its original metre of hexameters: hitherto...

I have often been asked to prepare an autobiography, but my objections to the task have ever been many and various. To one urgent appeal I sent this sonnet of refusal, which exp...

With the exception of "Rough Rhymes," my first Continental Journal as aforesaid, and a song or two, and a few juvenile poems, my first appearance in print, the creator of a real...

My most literary antiquarianism was an article I wrote for the _Quarterly Review_ on Coins, accepted by Lockhart and inserted in one of the Nos. for 1843; he protested that "I c...

A lecture which I gave at the Royal Aquarium on September 28, 1883, on the Art of Human Flight, attracted at the time a good deal of newspaper notice; my friend Colonel Fred. Bu...

But there are many other sorts of peril in human life to which I may briefly advert, as we all have had some experiences of the same. Who does not know of his special financial...

A page or two about my connection with the Royal Society may have some small interest. When my father (who had long been a Fellow) died in 1844, I wished to give to the Society...

My lamented son, Henry de Beauvoir, active and athletic, was killed in South Africa by the most unlikely accident of being jolted off the front seat in a rutty road and crushed...

Carlyle somewhere gives utterance to a truism, which the present scribe at least can most gratefully countersign, that "it takes a great deal of providence to bring a man to thr...

It has several times happened to me, as doubtless to others of my brethren, to find that I have been personated, certainly to my considerable discredit. Take these instances. Wh...

Ever since Schiller wrote his famous song about a poet's heritage (ay, and long before that, as it will be long years hence), authorship has been noted for anything rather than...

As to my several efforts in print to hinder cruelty to animals, beside and beyond what a reader may already find in my published books, let me chiefly mention these two fly-leav...

"Æsop Smith's Rides and Reveries" is one of the books which, really written by me from beginning to end, is nominally only edited. It is a volume of self-experiences, to be read...

Among my many fly-leaves, scattered by thousands from time to time in handbills or in newspapers all over the world, those in which I have praised Protestantism and denounced th...

One of my latest publications is that of my "Trilogy of Plays," with twelve dramatic scenes,--issued by Allen & Co., of Waterloo Place. The first of the three, "Alfred," was put...

I gave a second lecture, one on Luther, at the same place, and on the like solicitation of Mr. Le Fevre, President of the Balloon Society; the date being November 9, 1883.

On the three-hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare at Stratford-on-Avon I contributed an ode, to be found in my extant book of poems. Among the notabilia of the feastings and cel...

My American Ballads, perhaps after "Proverbial Philosophy," the chief cause of my Transatlantic popularities, had their origin at Albury. The first of these and the most famous,...

Literary Friends--Mrs. Somerville, Miss Granville, Mrs. Jameson, Mrs. Beecher Stowe, Ouida, Miss Braddon, Mrs. Carter Hall, Mrs. Grote, Lady Wilde, Miss Mackay, Rogers, Carlyle,...

English and Scotch Readings, very rapid, from Isle of Wight to Peterhead--My Entrepreneur D.: his Experiences: I Failed with Him, but Succeeded Alone--Specimen of Readings--Loca...

Some Spiritist Experiences--Not a Spiritualist, but an Honest Recorder of Facts--Alexis--Howell--Vernon's Mesmerised Child--Mrs. Cora Tappan--Chauncey Townsend's Book--Spirit-Dr...

First American Visit--Too Temperate for 1851; not Temperate enough for 1876--Grand Dinner at Baltimore, and Great Speech--The Astor Dinner--"Amice Davis"--Mayor Kingsland and th...

Second American Visit--Extreme Gold--Talmage--Bryant--Cooper--"Immortality" at the Tabernacle--Lotus Club--Lord Rosebery--Dr. Levis--Mr. Pettit's Portrait--The Listers at Hamilt...

Some Older Friendships--Nightingale, and Farley Heath--Walter Hawkins--His Tomb--Anchor--Anagrams--Christmas Largesse--Sham Antiques--Joseph Durham--Alice's Statue--"Sir Joe" an...

Infancy and Schooldays--Parentage--Germany and Guernsey, America and Canada--Winsor's Patent Gaslights--King George III.'s Blessing--My Father's Dream--Second Sight--Heredity--F...

Origin of "Proverbial Philosophy"--M'Neile and Stebbing--N.P. Willis--Harrison Ainsworth--Hatchard's--Moxon's--Cassell's--A Prophecy--My Father's Letter and Gift--Sixty Times--P...