My Life and Loves

Long banned in the United States and England, My Life and Loves is one of the most notorious autobiographies ever written. Famous for its erotic passages, it is also one of the richest and most entertaining views ever of fin-de-siecle literary and social life. In this unexpurgated chronicle, we come to see Frank Harris (1855-1931) in all his glory. This is the tale of one of the great editors of his day, a man of vision, vanity, and ambition who gave many writers, including H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Stephen Crane, their early opportunities and recognition. There are also Harris’s startlingly candid and often controversial observations of the great voices in the literature and politics of the day, men such as Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Lord Randolph Churchill, and the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) to name only a few. And throughout are Harris’s zestful if infamous descriptions of his sexual experiences, passages that have earned this one-of-a-kind book its lasting reputation.