WByron's Memoirs, written between 1818 and 1821 but never published and destroyed soon after his death, recounted at full-length his life, loves and opinions. He gave the manuscript to the poet Thomas Moore, who in turn sold it to John Murray with the intention that it should eventually be published. On Lord Byron's death in 1824, Moore, Murray, John Cam Hobhouse, and other friends who were concerned for his reputation gathered together and burned the original manuscript and the only known copy of it, in what has been called the greatest literary crime in history.
WThe Colossus of Maroussi is an impressionist travelogue by American writer Henry Miller that was first published in 1941 by Colt Press of San Francisco. Set in pre-war Greece of 1939, it is ostensibly an exploration of the "Colossus" of the title, George Katsimbalis, a poet and raconteur. The work is frequently heralded as Miller's best.
WEric & Us is a 1974 memoir by Jacintha Buddicom recalling her childhood friendship with Eric Blair, the real name of author George Orwell. Buddicom first met Blair when he was eleven and he became very close to her family. Their friendship lasted until Blair became a policeman in Burma and the two lost touch. Blair and Buddicom never saw one another again and did not resume contact until 1949, shortly before Orwell's death from tuberculosis.
WFlight to Arras is a memoir by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Written in 1942, it recounts his role in the Armée de l'Air as pilot of a reconnaissance plane during the Battle of France in 1940.
WJourney Continued: An Autobiography is the second part of Alan Paton's autobiography, the first being Towards the Mountain.
WLoved Ones is a 1985 collection of pen portraits by Diana Mitford. It was published by Sidgwick & Jackson. In 2008, three of the portraits were republished in the collection, The Pursuit of Laughter.
WMemoir is an autobiographical account of the childhood of Irish writer John McGahern. It was published in 2005, and the writer died in 2006. It recalls, amongst other things, his formative years in Leitrim, Ireland, the death of his beloved mother, Susan, and his relationship with his dark and enigmatic father. Themes from his childhood experiences run throughout his canon of fiction.
WA Memoir of Jane Austen is a biography of the novelist Jane Austen (1775–1817) published in 1869 by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh. A second edition was published in 1871 which included previously unpublished Jane Austen writings. A family project, the biography was written by James Edward Austen-Leigh but owed much to the recollections of Jane Austen's many relatives. However, it was the decisions of her sister, Cassandra Austen, to destroy many of Jane's letters after her death that shaped the material available for the biography.
WMemoirs of My Life and Writings (1796) is an account of the historian Edward Gibbon's life, compiled after his death by his friend Lord Sheffield from six fragmentary autobiographical works Gibbon wrote during his last years. Lord Sheffield's editing has been praised for its ingenuity and taste, but blamed for its unscholarly aggressiveness. Since 1896 several other editions of the work have appeared, more in accordance with modern standards. Gibbon's Memoirs are considered one of the first autobiographies in the modern sense of the word, and have a secure place in the canon of English literature.
WA Moveable Feast is a 1964 memoir by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling expat journalist and writer in Paris during the 1920s. It was published posthumously. The book details Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Richardson and his associations with other cultural figures of the Lost Generation in Interwar France.
WMy Dark Places: An L.A. Crime Memoir is a 1996 book, part investigative journalism and part memoir, by American crime-fiction writer James Ellroy. Ellroy's mother Geneva was murdered in 1958, when he was 10 years old, and the killer was never identified. The book is Ellroy's account of his attempt to solve the mystery by hiring a retired Los Angeles County homicide detective to investigate the crime. Ellroy also explores how being directly affected by a crime shaped his life - often for the worse - and led him to write crime novels. The book is dedicated to his mother.
WMy Past and Thoughts is an extensive autobiography by Alexander Herzen, which he started in the early 1850s and continued to expand and revise throughout his later life. Serialized in Polyarnaya Zvezda, the book in its full form came out as a separate edition after its author's death. In Herzen's lifetime the major parts of the book were translated into English (1855), German (1855) and French (1860-1862). Providing the panoramic view on the social and political life in Russian Empire as well as the European West of the mid-19th century, this seminal, even if in many ways controversial, work is considered to be the classic of Russian memoirist literature.
WThe Oak and the Calf, subtitled Sketches of Literary Life in the Soviet Union, is a memoir by Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, about his attempts to publish work in his own country. Solzhenitsyn began writing the memoir in April 1967, when he was 49 years old, and added supplements in 1971, 1973, and 1974. The work was first published in Russian in 1975 under the title Бодался телёнок с дубом. It has been translated into English by Harry Willetts.
WOver The Long High Wall is a 1972 autobiographical work by the British writer J.B. Priestley.
WUnder the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy is a 1996 memoir by American author Frances Mayes. It was adapted by director Audrey Wells for the 2003 film Under the Tuscan Sun. The book, published by Random House, was a New York Times bestseller for more than two and a half years, and was a New York Times Notable Book of 1997. It includes several chapters of recipes, and describes how she bought and restored an abandoned villa in the Tuscan countryside. As of 2016, Under the Tuscan Sun was translated into 54 languages.