Classic American Autobiographies

by William L. Andrews (editor)

The true diversity of the American experience comes to life in this superlative collection.

A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682), perhaps the first American bestseller, recounts this thirty-nine-year-old woman’s harrowing months as the captive of Narragansett Indians.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1771–1789), the most famous of all American autobiographies, gives a lively portrait of a chandler’s son who became a scientist, inventor, educator, diplomat, humorist—and a Founding Father of this land.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), the gripping slave narrative that helped change the course of American history, reveals the true nature of the black experience in slavery.

Old Times on the Mississippi (1875), Mark Twain’s unforgettable account of a riverboat pilot’s life, established his signature style and shows us the metamorphosis of a man into a writer.

Four Autobiographical Narratives (1900–1902), published in the Atlantic Monthly by Zitkala-Sa (Red Bird), also known as Gertrude Bonnin, provide us with a voice too seldom a Native American woman fighting for her culture in the white man’s world.

Edited and with an Introduction by William L. Andrews and a New Afterword

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