J. R. Ackerley (1896-1967) was for many years the literary editor of the BBC magazine The Listener. His works include three memoirs, Hindoo Holiday, My Dog Tulip, and My Father and Myself, and a novel, We Think the World of You (all available as New York Review Books).
Books
We Think the World of You
“Boy meets dog, boy loses dog, boy gets dog. The book is both breezy and sad…Ackerley’s appeal lies in his graceful, ironic style: His books are candid confessions of a good friend, full of small, hilarious surprises.” —Peter Terzian, Out
My Dog Tulip
Ackerley has written a book that is a profound and subtle meditation on the strangeness abiding at the heart of all relationships.
“This is one of the greatest masterpieces of animal literature.” —Christopher Isherwood
Hindoo Holiday
Hindoo Holiday is an intimate and very funny account of an exceedingly strange place, and one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century travel literature.
My Father and Myself
Ackerley’s pursuit of his father is also an exploration of the self, making My Father and Myself a pioneering record, at once sexually explicit and emotionally charged, of life as a gay man.