Our offering includes memoirs, or collections of memories that individuals have written about moments or events, both public or private, that took place in their lives. While the assertions made in these works are generally taken to be factual, the biases or perspectives of the authors are often present. Historically, memoirs have been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobiography, how…
The sixteen essays of the collection cover a wide range. The first eleven consists of personal memories (and portraits) of family and friends. Indeed, apart from his exuberant and very candid letters, Memories and Portraits is the nearest thing to an autobiography published by Stevenson. The very first essay is about his memories as a Scot of his first contacts with England (“The Foreigner…
Venice has long borne in the imagination of the world a distinctive position, something of the character of a great enchantress, a magician of the seas. Her growth between the water and the sky; her great palaces, solid and splendid, built, so to speak, on nothing; the wonderful glory of light and reflection about her; the glimmer of incessant brightness and movement; the absence of all those h…
Writing Self, Writing Empire examines the life, career, and writings of the Mughal state secretary, or munshi, Chandar Bhan Brahman (d. ca. 1670), one of the great Indo-Persian poets and prose stylists of early modern South Asia. Chandar Bhan’s life spanned the reigns of four emperors: Akbar (1556–1605), Jahangir (1605–1627), Shah Jahan (1628–1658), and Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir (1658–1707…