Antonia Fraser. (2015). My History: A Memoir of Growing Up. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Antonia Fraser. 2015. My History: A Memoir of Growing Up. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Antonia Fraser, My History: A Memoir of Growing Up. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2015.

Antonia Fraser. My History: A Memoir of Growing Up. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2015.

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20. • value: Chick Lit
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26. • value: books for women
27. • value: Literary gifts
28. • value: inspirational books for women
29. • value: biographies of famous people
30. • value: literary biographies
31. • value: memoir books
32. • value: autobiography books
33. • value: biographies of women
34. • value: about women
35. • value: lady caroline lamb antonia fraser

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Fraser, Antonia
   • bioText: ANTONIA FRASER is the author of many internationally bestselling historical works, including Love and Louis XIV, Marie Antoinette, which was made into a film by Sofia Coppola, The Wives of Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scots, and Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot. Her most recent book, Must You Go, is a memoir of her relationship with and marriage to the playwright and actor Harold Pinter. She has received the Wolfson Prize for History, the 2000 Norton Medlicott Medal of Britain's Historical Association, and the Franco-British Society's Enid McLeod Literary Prize. She has been President of English PEN, chairman of the Society of Authors, and chairman of the Crime Writers' Association. She was made a Dame of the British Empire for services to Literature in 2011.
   • name: Antonia Fraser

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Anchor

publishDate

2015-10-13T00:00:00-04:00

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title

My History

fullDescription

The acclaimed New York Times bestselling author shares vivid memories of her childhood and recalls the experiences that set her on the path to a writing life.
     Ever since she received Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall as a Christmas present in 1936, Antonia Fraser's deep love of history has been a constant in her remarkable life. The book made such an impression that it inspired her to write Mary, Queen of Scots thirty years later.
     Born into British aristocracy, the author's idyllic early childhood was interrupted by a wartime evacuation to North Oxford. The relocation had profound effects on her life, not the least of which was her education at a Catholic convent and her eventual conversion from the Protestant faith to Catholicism. Her memories of holidays spent at Dunsany Castle and Pakenham Hall, a stint as "Miss Tony" selling hats in a London department store, and her early days working in publishing are all told in her singular, irresistible voice.
     My History is a heartfelt memoir that is also a love letter to a British way of life that has all but disappeared. Anglophiles, history lovers, and Downton Abbey fans are sure to be enthralled.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Liesl Schillinger, New York Times Book Review
   • content: "With the emergence of this second memoir, Fraser appears reconciled to the task of revelation -- made easier here because it is not the history of a woman's love affair with a man, but the history of a writer's love affair with her vocation, and her nostalgia for the childhood 'wonderland' that engendered it. Drawing from letters, journals, memories and conversations, she carves a frieze of her past ... In My History, skillfully wielding her well-honed biographer's tools, Fraser shows what it felt like to be Antonia Pakenham, eliciting warm fellow feeling even in readers themselves who are nothing like a dame."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Wendy Smith, Washington Post
   • content: "Fraser's early years provide material as vivid and character-rich as her popular histories ... Amiable and engaging as personal reminiscence, My History is also a sharp, unpretentious study of a writer in the making."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Moira Hodgson, Wall Street Journal
   • content: "Reading My History, I felt I was sitting at Ms. Fraser's dinner table in London, listening to the reminiscences and anecdotes of a grande dame, delivered with an even tone and a gracious smile."
4. • premium: False
   • source: The Times (London)
   • content: "My History is a hugely enjoyable squishy romp, the literary equivalent of a big crumbling meringue at a society wedding."
5. • premium: False
   • source: The Spectator
   • content: "A delight from start to finish. Antonia Fraser is warm, amusing, intelligent, generous and original."
6. • premium: False
   • source: The Telegraph
   • content: "Fraser's previous volume of memoir, Must You Go?, an account of her life with Harold Pinter, was acclaimed as a moving love story. In this second instalment, she stands unabashed and alone--wise, self-deprecating and always entertaining."
7. • premium: False
   • source: Financial Times
   • content: "Engaging and elegiac."
8. • premium: False
   • source: The Scotsman
   • content: "Antonia Fraser's memoir about her early life is sheer delight."
9. • premium: False
   • source: Booklist
   • content: "This autobiographical journey is distinguished by Fraser's contagious enthusiasm for all things historical, including her own remarkable past."
10. • premium: False
    • source: Publishers Weekly
    • content: "A witty, perambulating memoir of youth and early adulthood ... Nuanced and emotionally oblique in a most English fashion, [My History] offers a textured glimpse into a bygone era."
11. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      June 8, 2015
      Eminent British historian and novelist Fraser (Perilous Question, Jemina Shore mysteries, etc.) devotes much of this witty, perambulating memoir of youth and early adulthood to the unlikely yet enduring bond of her curiously matched parents, who both became loyal Labour leaders, Catholic converts, and devotees of socialist causes. Fraser was the first of eight children; her mother was a college-educated daughter of a middle-class Oxford doctor. An early reader, she grew passionately attached to the “sheer vitality” of storytelling and a “primitive identification” with tragic heroines like Queen Matilda and Mary, Queen of Scots, the latter of whom would later feature in her first book. Fraser moved to a town near Oxford during the Blitz and attended a mostly boys’ school called the Dragon. She was headstrong, taking a gap year before reading history at Oxford and engineering her own social debut in 1950. Her first job, as assistant at the publishing house of Weidenfeld and Nicholson, brought her into contact with the likes of Sonia Orwell (George Orwell’s wife), novelist Angus Wilson, and photographer Cecil Beaton; her first marriage, to older Tory MP Hugh Fraser, followed a very brief courtship, and they had six children in 10 years. Her resolve to write a biography of Mary, Queen of Scots, resulted from a burst of competition with her mother. This memoir, nuanced and emotionally oblique in a most English fashion, offers a textured glimpse into a bygone era.

12. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      August 1, 2015
      Prolific fiction and nonfiction writer Fraser recounts her lifelong love affair with history in this engaging memoir. Set mostly during her formative years in the 1930s and 1940s, her book chronicles her less-than-orthodox upbringing as the oldest of eight children born to eccentric aristocrats devoted to social reform, her wartime experiences as an evacuee attending a boys prep school, her family's conversion to Catholicism, and a host of other experiences and events that informed her literary imagination and ignited her passion for history. After her Oxford University years, the leap to the sometimes glamorous world of publishing, where she made numerous literary and social contacts, was a natural one. Culminating with the publication of her first book, the best-selling Mary Queen of Scots, this autobiographical journey is distinguished by Fraser's contagious enthusiasm for all things historical, including her own remarkable past.High Demand Backstory: Fraser's books on British history remain popular with public-library-going readers, so requests for her memoir may be strong.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

13. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      August 1, 2015
      

      Fraser (Mary Queen of Scots; Marie Antoinette: The Journey) has loved history since first reading H.E. Marshall's Our Island Story at age four. In this memoir, she traces her early years as the eldest of eight in a wealthy Anglo-Irish family, headed by her Labor minister father, the Earl of Longford, and socialist mother. In reaction to her busy parents' early neglect, Fraser turned to reading and flights of imagination. Not taking herself too seriously, she approaches childhood visits to eccentric relatives and playing "rugger" at the Dragon School with a self-deprecating humor. She admits that parties and boys interested her more than her studies at Oxford University. Despite a reputation as a beautiful socialite married to a Tory minister, Fraser began a long, successful writing career with the best-selling biography Mary Queen of Scots. VERDICT Readers seeking spicy tidbits about Fraser's relationship with second husband Harold Pinter will not find them here. This prequel to her autobiography, Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter, while at times bogged down in detail, will amuse and delight memoir lovers interested in upper-class British life of the mid-20th century. [See Prepub Alert, 4/27/15.]--Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo

      Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

14. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      May 15, 2015
      

      Wolfson Prize-winning and best-selling historian Fraser recounts her early years, starting with how the receipt of H.E. Marshall's Our Island Story as a Christmas gift in 1936 ignited her interest in history. Her memories range from holidays at Dunsany Castle to selling hats postwar, but her wartime evacuation to North Oxford proves key--for one thing, it was there that she studied at a Catholic convent and decided to convert.

      Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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The acclaimed New York Times bestselling author shares vivid memories of her childhood and recalls the experiences that set her on the path to a writing life.
     Ever since she received Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall as a Christmas present in 1936, Antonia Fraser's deep love of history has been a constant in her remarkable life. The book made such an impression that it inspired her to write Mary, Queen of Scots thirty years later.
     Born into British aristocracy, the author's idyllic early childhood was interrupted by a wartime evacuation to North Oxford. The relocation had profound effects on her life, not the least of which was her education at a Catholic convent and her eventual conversion from the Protestant faith to Catholicism. Her memories of holidays spent at Dunsany Castle and Pakenham Hall, a stint as "Miss Tony" selling hats in a London department store, and...

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