My Father and Myself

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). »

W.H. Auden (1907–1973) was born in North Yorkshire, England, the son of a doctor. He studied at Oxford and published his first book, Poems, in 1930, immediately establishing himself as one of the outstanding voices of his generation. Auden emigrated to New York in 1939, where he became a US citizen and converted to Anglicanism. He wrote essays, critical studies, plays, and opera librettos for such composers as Benjamin Britten, Igor Stravinsky, and Hans Werner Henze, as well as the poems for which he is most famous. »

By J.R. Ackerley
Introduction by W.H. Auden

When his father died, J. R. Ackerley was shocked to discover that he had led a secret life. And after Ackerley himself died, he left a surprise of his own—this coolly considered, unsparingly honest account of his quest to find out the whole truth about the man who had always eluded him in life. But 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. This witty, sorrowful, and beautiful book is a classic of twentieth-century memoir.

Reviews

J.R. Ackerley's humor is unique; his truth is stranger—and funnier—than fiction. My Father and Myself is a cross between Dickens's David Copperfield, Rousseau's Confessions, and the new pornography.
— Donald Windham

Also see:

Hindoo Holiday
By J.R. Ackerley
Introduction by Eliot Weinberger

Hindoo Holiday is an intimate and very funny account of an exceedingly strange place, and one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century travel literature.

We Think the World of You
By J.R. Ackerley
Introduction by P.N. Furbank

This powerful short novel, with its extraordinary mixture of acute social realism and dark fantasy, was described by J. R. Ackerley himself as "a fairy tale for adults."

My Dog Tulip
By J.R. Ackerley
Introduction by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

Ackerley has written a book that is a profound and subtle meditation on the strangeness abiding at the heart of all relationships.

Format: Paperback
Retail Price: $14.95
Price: $11.21 (25% off)

Sep 30, 1999
280 pages
ISBN: 0940322129
9780940322127
Biography & Memoir
NYRB Classics

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