Autobiographies

by Kathleen Raine

Kathleen Raine was one of the most eminent literary figures of the twentieth century-as poet, scholar, and editor. During her long and distinguished career she knew many of the leading writers and artists among her contemporaries. However, Autobiographies is an illuminating attempt to chart the inner course of her life. It opens with a magical evocation of childhood in a remote Northumbrian hamlet during the First World War. The close-knit community she knew, while growing up far from the modern world, was to remain an enduring image for her of Paradise, lost and ever after sought for. While studying science at Cambridge, as a contemporary of William Empson, Humphrey Jennings, Jacob Bronowski, and Malcolm Lowry, she moved uneasily in the prevailing atmosphere of positivist science and socialist excitement, before finding the path of her spiritual quest lay in a very different direction. In the final part of her story she describes her friendship with Elias Canetti, and her important and intense relationship with Gavin Maxwell. Kathleen Raine's reputation has never stood higher than at present, and this collected edition of her autobiographies, as well as being the perfect introduction to her workas a whole, takes its place as an illustrious successor to the autobiographies of W. B. Yeats and Edwin Muir.

386 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 1991

About the author

Kathleen Jessie Raine CBE was an English poet, critic and scholar, writing in particular on William Blake, W.B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor. Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founding member of the Temenos Academy.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book thought at the end I found myself, well...shocked by it. I loved her writing. It was a very well written and interesting story of a life - in some ways normal - in some ways extraordinary. The beauty and clarity with which she wrote was wonderful. The way in which she sees the world and her life, very interesting. The last part of the book - taken up a lot with her “friendship” with Gavin - was an interesting thing - because as she wrote about this relationship it was still so fraught with pain and misery and confusion for her - that though she writes beautifully - she can only capture the lostness and mystery of what was going on. Fascinating.