Memoirs from Beyond the Grave: 1768-1800

Written over the course of four decades Fran&#231;ois-Ren&#233;&#160;de Chateaubriand&#146;s epic autobiography has drawn the&#160;admiration of Baudelaire Flaubert Proust Barthes and&#160;Sebald. Here in the first books of his massive <i>Memoirs</i>&#160;spanning the years 1768 to 1800 Chateaubriand looks&#160;back on the already bygone world of his youth. He&#160;recounts the history of his aristocratic family and the first&#160;rumblings of the French Revolution. He recalls playing&#160;games on the beaches of Saint-Malo wandering in the&#160;woods near his father&#146;s castle in Combourg hunting with&#160;King Louis XVI at Versailles witnessing the first heads&#160;carried on pikes through the streets of Paris meeting&#160;with George Washington in Philadelphia and falling&#160;hopelessly in love with a young woman named Charlotte&#160;in the small Suffolk town of Bungay. The volume ends&#160;with Chateaubriand&#146;s return to France after seven years&#160;of exile in England.<br><br> In this new edition (the first unabridged English&#160;translation of any portion of the Memoirs to be published&#160;in more than a century) Chateaubriand emerges as a&#160;writer of great wit and clarity a self deprecating egotist&#160;whose meditations on the meaning of history memory&#160;and morality are leavened with a mixture of high whimsy&#160;and memorable gloom.