American Lives: An Anthology of Autobiographical WritingRobert F. Sayre American Lives is a groundbreaking book, the first historically organized anthology of American autobiographical writing, bringing us fifty-five voices from throughout the nation's history, from Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Jonathan Edwards, and Richard Wright to Quaker preacher Elizabeth Ashbridge, con man Stephen Burroughs, and circus impresario P.T. Barnum. Representing canonical and non-canonical writers, slaves and slave-owners, generals and conscientious objectors, scientists, immigrants, and Native Americans, the pieces in this collection make up a rich gathering of American "songs of ourselves." Robert F. Sayre frames the selections with an overview of theory and criticism of autobiography and with commentary on the relation between history and many kinds of autobiographical texts--travel narratives, stories of captivity, diaries of sexual liberation, religious conversions, accounts of political disillusionment, and discoveries of ethnic identity. With each selection Sayre also includes an extensive headnote providing valuable critical and biographical information. A scholarly and popular landmark, American Lives is a book for general readers and for teachers, students, and every American scholar. |
Contents
Explorers Governors Pilgrims | 19 |
The General Historie of Virginia | 27 |
Ulysses S Grant from Personal Memoirs | 28 |
to her Children | 39 |
Mary Rowlandson from A True History of the Captivity | 46 |
Great Awakenings | 69 |
Sarah Kemble Knight The Journal of Madam Knight | 77 |
Elizabeth Ashbridge Some Account of the Fore Part of the Life | 99 |
of Ulysses S Grant | 409 |
Frederick Douglass from Life and Times of Frederick Douglass | 418 |
Lucy Larcom Mountain Friends | 426 |
Andrew Carnegie How I Served My Apprenticeship | 435 |
Lives in Progress 19001935 | 443 |
Jack London What Life Means to Me | 451 |
Randolph Bourne The Handicapped | 459 |
Mary Antin Initiation | 472 |
Itinerant Minister in South Carolina | 151 |
and Pretenders 17761837 | 173 |
Colonel Ethan Allens Captivity | 181 |
Autobiography of John Adams and Discourses on Davila | 191 |
of the Revolution | 227 |
Stephen Burroughs from Memoirs of Stephen Burroughs | 238 |
Black Hawk from Life of MAKATAIMESHEKIAKIAK | 261 |
SelfLiberators 18361865 | 273 |
Jarena Lee The Life and Religious Experience | 281 |
Ralph Waldo Emerson from The American Scholar | 299 |
Lewis Clarke from Leaves from a Slaves | 312 |
Margaret Fuller from Mariana | 321 |
from Fannys Portfolio | 329 |
P T Barnum from The Life of P T Barnum | 338 |
Abraham Lincoln To Jesse W Fell Enclosing | 350 |
Survivors and SelfTeachers 18651915 | 367 |
Warren Lee Goss from The Soldiers Story | 375 |
Mary Boykin Chesnut from Diary during the War | 394 |
John Muir The World and the University | 483 |
W E B Du Bois The Shadow of Years | 493 |
Roderick Seidenberg I Refuse to Serve | 504 |
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Love and Marriage and The Breakdown | 515 |
Experimental Lives 19201960 | 535 |
F Scott Fitzgerald The CrackUp | 545 |
Gertrude Stein from The Gradual Making of The Making of Americans | 558 |
James Agee from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men | 564 |
Richard Wright from The God That Failed | 571 |
Dorothy Day Having a Baby and Love Overflows | 582 |
Anaïs Nin from The Diary of Anaïs Nin | 597 |
Quests for Identity 1960 | 609 |
James Baldwin The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American | 621 |
Allen Ginsberg Kaddish | 627 |
N Scott Momaday from The Way to Rainy Mountain and The Names | 647 |
Annie Dillard from An American Childhood | 691 |
A Reading List of Other American Autobiographies | 711 |