A Collection

of

Childhood Memoirs

Cavendish Rare Books

Barbara Grigor-Taylor

19 Chesthunte Road

London N17 7PU

tel/fax: 0208 808 4595

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Childhood Memoirs

Formed over the last thirty years, this collection of 188 titles is notable as the early years of these writers span two centuries during which the world changed so dramatically. Much was gained in that time with developments in science and industry, travel, social awareness, education and opportunites,but much was lost, with metropolitan congestion, environmental changes, restructuring of family life and world wars. As historian Eric Hobshawn wrote, his autobiography was for "those too young to have lived through much of the most extraordinary century in history, but who want to know what it was like; and those old enough to have passed through some of its passions, disillusions and dreams." Even many of the fine, independent publishing houses that issued these books are gone. Their names will be remembered fondly; and the childhood record of their authors, many then or now famous, will give insight, enjoyment and cause for reflection.

All books are First Editions, published in London, octavo and in fine condition unless noted. Dustwrappers are abbreviated as d.w. The large majority of dustwrappers are in fine condition, a few are minimally chipped or rubbed, and the very few worn ones are noted.

Adams, Richard. The Days Gone By. An Autobiography. Hutchinson, 1990.

Green cloth with d.w., pp. xiv+398, indexed, with plates from photos. From his birth in 1920 to the end of W.W II. A Berkshire boyhood in the real Watership Down.

Alexander, Tania. An Estonian Childhood. Heinemann, 1989.

Reprint, illustrated wrappers, pp. xviii+168, with half-tones. Life under both the Tsars and the Bolsheviks. Writing"reminiscent of Turgenev."

Allinson, Francesca. A Childhood. Published by Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1937.

Blue cloth, sl. soiled, pp. 187, wood-engravings by Enid Marx. Memoir in the guise of a novel.

Angelou, Maya. I know why the caged bird sings. New York: Random House, [1993].

Black cloth with d.w., pp. vi+282, with d.w. portrait. Poet's early life with grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas.

Annesley, Mabel M. As the Sight is Bent. An Unfinished Autobiography. Museum Press, 1964.

Green cloth with d.w., pp. 157, indexed, with 35 wood-engravings by the Author. Published posthumously, snippets of her girlhood in late Victorian Ulster to 1959.

Asquith, Cynthia. Haply I May Remember. James Barrie, 1950.

Third impr., blue cloth with d.w., pp. xviii+237, plates from photos. Lady Cynthia's writing is no ordinary pot-pourri of society memoirs" but of a world that perished in 1914-18.

Athill, Diana. Yesterday Morning. A Very

English Childhood. Granta Books, 2002.

Blue cloth with d.w.; pp. vi+169, illus. from photos. Her earliest memories, in their Norfolk country house in the 1920s.

Avery, Valerie. London Morning. William Kimber, 1964.

Beige cloth with d.w., pp. 159, with d.w. drawings.

Childhood on the Old Kent Road in the early 1940s and through the war.

Baillie, Eileen. The Shabby Paradise. The

Autobiography of a Decade. Hutchinson, 1958.

Ochre cloth with blue titles, sl. rubbed, pp. 223, illus. by Dick Hart. Childhood of the daughter of the vicar of St. Michael-and-All-Angels, Bromley-by-Bow, Docklands.

Bartlett, Sir Basil. Jam Tomorrow. Some Early Reminiscences. Introduction by Beverley Nichols. Paul Elek, 1978.

Red cloth with d.w., pp. 124, illus. from drawings.

Actor, writer, producer and his distinguished, eccentric family.

Bates, H.E. The Vanished World. An Autobiography. Volume One. Michael Joseph, 1969.

Green cloth with d.w., pp. 189, with line drawings by John Ward. From childhood in the Nene Valley to his first year at school in 1908, to 1926 and his first novel "The Two Sisters."

Beckwith, Lillian. About My Father's Business. Hutchinson, 1971.

Green cloth with d.w., pp. 192, illus. from drawings. Between the wars Cheshire childhood in her father's grocery. As funny as "The Hills is Lonely."

Betts, P.Y. People Who Say Goodbye. Memories of Childhood. Souvenir Press, 1989.

Brown cloth with d.w., pp. 218, with d.w. portrait. Satirist for 'Punch,' born 1909 in Wandsworth, and her very amusing story.

Bogarde, Dirk. Great Meadow. Viking, 1992.

Green cloth with d.w., pp. 207, illus. with photos and drawings. Continuation of his first memoir - "A Postillion Struck by Lightning."This being his years in a remote cottage on the Sussex Downs 1927-1934.

Boland, Bridget. At My Mother's Knee. The Bodley Head, 1978.

Lavender cloth with d.w., pp. 138, illus. from photos. Screenwriter (Gaslight), playwright (The Prisoner) in 1920s France & England, with an extraordinary cast of eccentrics.

Bolton, Ruthie. Gal. A true life. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994.

Tan cloth with d.w., pp. xii+275, with d.w portrait. A difficult African-American childhood in Charleston, South Carolina in the 1960s, published under a pseudonym.

Boston, L[ucy] M. Perverse and Foolish. A Memoir of Childhood and Youth. The Bodley Head, 1979.

Green cloth with d.w., pp. 140, plates from photos. From a strict Wesleyan home in 1885 to nursing at the front in W.W. I by the author of "The Children of Green Knowe."

Boston, L[ucy} M. Memory in a House. The Bodley Head, 1973.

Orange cloth with d.w., pp. iv+142, plates from photos. The novelist's restoration of the twelfth-century Manor at Hemingford Grey and associated memoirs.

Brooks, Gladys. Gramercy Park. Memories of a New York Girlhood. J.M. Dent, 1958.

Green cloth with d.w., pp. 220. Turn-of-the-century life of the future wife of Van Wyck Brooks.

Buchan, Alice. A Scrap Screen. Hamish Hamilton, 1979.

Orange cloth with d.w., pp. x+182, illus. from photo.

The "lost domain of childhood" of daughter of John Buchan and a descendent of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

Burn, James Dawson. The Autobiography of a Beggar Boy. Europa Publications, 1978.

New Edition, red cloth with d.w., pp. vi+205, indexed. Story of the illegitimate son of itinerant beggars, first published 1855, one of the few working men's autobiographies to become popular.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson. The One I Knew Best of All. Frederick Warne, 1974.

Facsimile reprint of the the 1893 first edition, orange cloth with d.w., pp. xvi+292, with the original illustrations. Childhood of the author of "The Secret Garden" in England and America.

Burnett, John (Ed.) Destiny Obscured. Autobiographies of childhood, education and family from the 1820s to the 1920s. Allen Lane, 1982.

White cloth with d.w., pp. 345. A compilation from mostly working people with little formal eduction, all previously unpublished.

Burnham, Dorothy. Through Dooms of Love. Chatto & Windus, 1969.

Pink cloth with d.w., pp. 223, with d.w. portrait.

A 1920s South-East London girlhood of poverty, courage and endurance.

Butts, Mary. The Crystal Cabinet. My Childhood at Salterns. Methuen & Co., 1937.

Yellow cloth with d.w., pp. viii+279, with d.w. portrait. The novelist's 18th c. family home on the "still unravaged shores" of Poole Harbour which housed the famous Blake collection now in the Tate.

Byrne, M. St. Clare. Common or Garden Child. A Not-unfaithful Record. Faber and Faber, 1942.

Grey cloth with d.w., pp. 187. Her Edwardian London childhood musings.

Cameron, Archie. Bare Feet and Tackety Boots. A Boyhood on Rhum. Ayrshire: Luath Press, 1988.

Illustrated wrappers, pp. viii+164, with map and cover portrait. By the last survivor of those born on Rhum, playground for the Gentry, before W.W. I.

Campbell, Harriet Charlotte Beaujolois. A Journey to Florence in 1817. Geoffrey Bles, 1952.

New impr., red cloth with chipped d.w., pp. 175, with frontis. portrait. The diary of the then 14-year old daughter of the Lady-in-Waiting to the Princess of Wales.

Candlin, Enid Saunders. The Breach in the

Wall. A Memoir of Old China. Cassell, 1974.

Brown cloth with d.w., pp. viii+340, indexed. Childhood in Shanghai to the Sino-Japanese war 1937, by a tea merchant's daughter.

Carr, Emily. The Book of Small. Oxford University Press, 1943.

Tan cloth with d.w., pp. vi+164, with d.w. portrait. The artist's earliest memories and childhood in British Columbia.

Carr, Emily. Growing Pains. The Autobiography of Emily Carr. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1946.

Tan cloth with d.w., pp. xviii+381, plates from photos and the author's drawings and paintings, many in colour. Rare and fine memoir of the extraordinary west coast Canadian artist and author of "Klee Wyck."

Casson, Sir Hugh and Joyce Grenfell. Nanny Says. Dennis Dobson, 1974.

Fifth impr., 12mo, illus. boards with d.w, pp. (56), with line drawings by Sir Hugh. A collection of sayings beloved to the nanny.

Chesterton, G.K. Autobiography. Hutchinson, 1936.

Black cloth, a little rubbed and worn, pp. 348, indexed, with half-tone plates. From his birth in 1875 to date, from Kensington to Fleet Street and portly old age.

Chiang Yee. A Chinese Childhood. Methuen & Co., 1940.

Black cloth, pp. xii+305, with colour plates and line drawings by the author. Artist, diarist, traveller, born in Imperial Kiangsi before the 1912 Revolution.

Chorley, Katharine. Manchester Made Them. Faber and Faber, 1950.

Second impr., blue cloth, with d.w., pp. 288. Historian's early life in North-country society before W.W. I.

Churchill, Randolph S. Twenty-One Years. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1965.

Red cloth with torn d.w., pp. 135, illus. from photos.
The son of Sir Winston and Lady Churchill, "born 28 May, 1911 at 33 Eccleston Square of poor but honest parents."

Churchill, Winston S. My Early Life. A Roving Commission. Thornton Butterworth, 1930.

Second impr., red cloth gilt, spine faded and a little soiled, pp. 392, indexed, plates from photos and paintings. From his birth in 1874 to entry to the House of Commons.

Clive, Mary. Christmas with the Savages. Macmillan & Co., 1964.

Reprint, red cloth with d.w., pp. viii+177, drawings by Philip Gough. Lady Mary's recreation of her Edwardian childhood Christmases at Tamerlane Hall.

Cogill, Burgess. When God was an Atheist Sailor. Memories of a Childhood at Sea, 1902-1910. New York: W.W. Norton, 1990.

Blue cloth with d.w, pp. 190, map and plates from photos. World voyages aboard her father's five-masted schooner 'Snow & Burgess' out of San Francisco.

Colette. My Mother's House. Sido. Secker and Warburg, 1969.

New edition, grey cloth with d.w., pp. xx+219. Her childhood and her mother, Sidonie. First English edtion published 1953

Cousens, Dorothy. Victorian Childhood. New York: Vantage Press, 1978.

Brown cloth with d.w., pp. vi+73. Childhood and coming-of-age of an Italian-born Englishwoman.

Crohan, Tomas O. The Islandman. O.U.P., 1983.

Reprint, illustrated wrappers, pp. xvi+245, map and half-tones. Classic memoir of childhood and manhood on Great Blasket Island 1856-1937. First published 1937.

Dahl, Roald. Boy. Jonathan Cape, 1984.

Blue cloth with d.w., pp. 160, illus. from photos. Born in Wales in 1916 of Norwegain parents, his childhood was as bizarre as his fiction.

Davis-Goff, Annabel. Walled Gardens. Scenes from an Anglo-Irish Childhood. Barrie & Jenkins, 1990.

Green cloth with d.w., pp. xii+255, plates from photos. Post-W.W. II life in Waterford and Ballinacourty.

de la Mare, Walter. Early One Morning in the Spring. Chapters on Children and on Childhood as it is revealed in particular in Early Memories and in Early Writings. Faber& Faber, 1935.

Red cloth gilt, upper corner bumped, pp. xx+605, indexed, plates from paintings & photos. An early life as enchanting as his poetry and tales.

Devas, Nicolette. Two Flamboyant Fathers. Collins, 1966.

Blue cloth with d.w., pp. 287, indexed, plates from photos. Girlhood of the sister of Caitlin Thomas, their hard-drinking Irish father, and the author's life in Augustus John's circle from Salisbury Plain to the New Forest.

Dewes, Simon. A Suffolk Childhood. Suffolk: Barbara Hopkinson, 1985.

Reprint, illustrated wrappers, pp. 216, illus. by J.S. Goodall. Born in West Hadleigh 1909 to a family with East Anglian family connections spanning 700 years.

Douglas-Hume, Margaret. A Spencer Childhood. Suffolk: John Catt, 1994.

Illustrated wrappers, pp. iv+58. Lady Margaret Spencer, born 1906, and her early life at Althorp.

du Maurier, Angela. Old Maids Remember. Peter Davies, 1966.

Black cloth with d.w., pp. x+190, plates from photos. Daphne's sister on their lives, separate and together.

Dunne, Sean. In My Father's House. Dublin: Anna Livia Press, 1991.

Illustrated wrappers, pp. vi+118. Hard and hilarious 1950s and 60s childhood in Cork.

Elias, Eileen. On Sundays We Wore White. W.H. Allen, 1978.

Grey cloth with d.w., pp. 263, illus. from drawings.

An ordinary childhood in an ordinary South London suburb 1910-1920, middle class and conventional.

Fairfax-Lucy, Nora. Hebridean Childhood. Glasgow: Molendinar Press, 1981.

Brown cloth with d.w., pp. 127, with photo portrait and colour plates from paintings by Mary Clare Foa. Lady Fairfax-Lucy was born 1895 at Calgary Bay on the family estate on Mull. From her childhood to nursing in W.W. I.

Farjeon, Eleanor. A Nursery in the Nineties. Oxford Univ. Press, 1960.

New Issue, green cloth with d.w., pp. 534, plates from photos. First published 1933, her early life to 1903.

Fen, Elisaveta. A Girl Grew Up in Russia. Readers Union, 1972.

Reprint, first published 1970, red cloth with d.w., pp. 317, with frontis. portrait. The Russian equivalent of Edwardian comfort, in Bielorussia where her father was provincial governor; from age 11 to 1917.

Fen, Elisaveta. A Russian Childhood. Methuen & Co., 1961.

Maroon cloth with d.w., pp. 287, with d.w. portrait. In her well-to-do Russian family before the Revolution.

Foley, Winifred. A Child in the Forest. B.B.C., 1974.

Green cloth with d.w., pp. 254, with d.w. portrait. Her 1920s childhood as a miner's daughter in the Forest of Dean, with the beauty of the forest and the poverty of the village. A portion was first read on the B.B.C.

Foley, Winifred. A Child in the Forest. Century Publishing, 1985.

First Illustrated Edition, 4to, brown cloth with d.w., pp. 192, with drawings & decorations in colour and black & white by Tricia Newell.

Fraser, Eugenie. The House by the Dvina. A Russian Childhood. Mainstream Publishing, 1984.

Brown cloth with d.w., pp. vi+281, plates from photos. Life before, during and immediately after the Revolution, and escape to Scotland.

Fraser, Eugenie. The Dvina Remains. Mainstream Publishing, 1996.

Green cloth with d.w., pp. 160, plates from photos. Sequel to "The House by the Dvina,"the author's first journey to Russia and Archangel in 50 years, and the fate of family left behind.

Fremantle, Anne. Three-Cornered Heart. Collins, 1971.

White cloth with stained d.w., pp. iv+316, plates from photos. Lives of the author (born 1914) and her mother, from the Governor's Palace, Madras to coming-of-age in London, Italy, Oxford, and return to India.

Galvin, Patrick. Song for a Poor Boy. Dublin: Raven Arts Press, 1990.

Illustrated wrappers, pp. 111. In the 1930s, childhood in a tenement close to the Lee, Cork.

Gamble, Rose. Chelsea Child. B.B.C., 1979.

Brown cloth with d.w., pp. 204, with d.w. photo. On her family of seven living in one room in 1920s Chelsea.

Garcia, Celine Fremaux. Remembering Louisiana, 1850-1871. Georgia: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1987.

Red cloth with d.w., pp. xxxix+277. Daughter of French immigrants' life during and after the Civil War, here first published.

Garnett, Eve. First Affections. Some autobiographical chapters of early childhood. Frederick Muller, 1982.

Blue cloth with d.w., lower cover stained; pp. viii+174, frontis. portrait. The golden way of life in Worcester and Devon, shattered by W.W. I, by the author of "The Family from One End Street."

Gay, Peter. My German Question. Growing Up in Nazi Berlin. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1998.

Illustrated wrappers, pp. xiv+208, plates from photos. Youth of an assimilated Jew 1933-39 and refuge in Cuba.

Gershon, Karen. A Lesser Child. An Autobiography. Peter Owen, 1994.

First English Edition, blue cloth with d.w., pp. 198, with frontis. and d.w. portrait. "Vivid re-creation of the period leading up to the Holocaust"and her evacuation to England in 1938.

Glasser, Ralph. Growing Up in the Gorbals. Chatto & Windus, 1986.

Red cloth with d.w., pp. viii+207, with d.w. portrait. The son of immigrant Russian Jews between the wars in an area now "swept off the map" of Glasgow.

Godden, Jon and Rumer. Two Under the Indian Sun. Macmillan, 1966.

Brown cloth with d.w., pp. 199, plates from photos. The sisters left London in 1914 to live five glorious years in Bengal. A "wonderful evocation" of India by these novelists.

Gorky, Maxim. My Apprenticeship. My Universities. Moscow: Progress, n.d. (c.1973).

Yellow cloth with d.w., pp. 485, plates from paintings. Concluding his autobiographical trilogy, the first book being 'Childhood.'

Green, Julian. Memories of Happy Days. J.M. Dent, 1946.

Reprint, black cloth with worn d.w., pp. viii+216, frontis. portrait. French-American novelist born in Paris 1900, his childhood and youth there until the 1940s.

Gregory, Anne. Me and Nu: Childhood at Coole. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1970.

Blue cloth with d.w., bumped at head of spine; pp. 128, with line drawings by Joyce Dennys. By the granddaughter of Lady Gregory, cornerstone of the Irish Literary Revival, at Coole Park, Co. Galway.

Grenfell, Joyce. Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure. Macmillan, 1976.

Green cloth with d.w., pp. 295, indexed, plates from photos. The niece of Nancy Astor, her childhood and early years, through the war, tours and shows, hilarious and hectic.

Grenfell, Joyce. In Pleasant Places. Macmillan, 1979.

Tan cloth with d.w., pp. 304, indexed, plates from photos . The second volume of her autobiography, much linked to her worldwide career, much to her personal friends and pleasures.

Gross, John. A Double Thread. A Childhood in Mile End - and beyond. Chatto & Windus, 2001.

Red cloth with d.w., pp. viii+190, with d.w. portrait. Yiddish life in Mile End, London E3 from the 1920s to the 40s, by the theatre critic of the Sunday Telegraph and former editor of the T.L.S.

Hancock, Norman. An Innocent Grows Up. J.M. Dent, 1947.

Tan cloth with illus. d.w., pp. viii+181, with double-page colour lithograph title-page by John Piper. The son of a draper, a 'plain' man in a small Somerset town.

Harding, Bertita. Mosaic in the Fountain. George Harrap, 1951.

Red cloth with sl. chipped d.w., pp. 296. From her early life near Budapest to Pancho Villa's Mexico.

Harris, Mollie. A Kind of Magic. An Oxfordshire Childhood in the 1920s. O.U.P., 1983.

Reprint, printed wrappers, pp. 222, illus. by John Ward. A poor, large but happy family in Ducklington in the 1920s.

Harrison, Rosina. Rose: My Life in Service. Cassell, 1975.

Green cloth with d.w., pp. xii+268, indexed, plates from photos. Quite a jolly time, it seems, for this Yorkshire lass as lady's maid to Lady Astor.

Hay, Mary. I saw a ship a' sailing. National Maritime Museum, H.M.S.O., 1981.

Blue cloth with d.w., pp. x+102, plates from photos. Late 19th c. childhood aboard the fully-rigged ship 'Ladye Doris', round the Horn to Australia with father/ ship's Captain.