Classic American Autobiographies

by William L. Andrews (Editor), Mary Rowlandson, Benjamin Franklin

Includes:
A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Old Times on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
Four Autobiographical Narratives of Zitkala-Sa

Genres: History, Autobiography, Classics, Nonfiction, School, American History

464 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 1, 1992

About the author

William Leake Andrews (1948-) is an American Professor Emeritus of English at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a scholar of early African-American literature. Wikipedia

Reviews

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grabbed this on an impulse at an international bookstore because it was a very cheap paperback and I’ve never read any of the autobiographies enclosed. The book itself as a whole is well edited and organized with a great introduction and afterword by two experts in the autobiography as a literary genre. I was surprised by some of the things I saw in here, like how incredibly boring and sober Franklin’s was. It’s hard to believe that this guy would be called a revolutionary, considering how Puritanical he writes. It’s also hard to take such a person so seriously about temperance and modesty in one’s daily life when we all know now that he was a pretty wild philanderer. Douglass’ narrative of freedom from slavery is much more exciting and moving. Any doubts one might have about just how bad slavery was are thrown away by his accounts of physical, mental, and emotional violence committed daily against America’s slaves. Mark Twain is just as funny as every when recounting his teenage years, and Zitkala-Sa’s story is both vindicating and interesting to read. I quite agree with the writer of the afterword about the best 20th century additions to this list of classic American autobiographies: Malcolm X, Richard Wright, Frank McCourt, etc.

[Abraham Ray]

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http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11498156