The Story of My Life: Recollections and Reflections

Terry, Ellen, 1848-1928Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.0
Word count
666K words
Chapters
67

Tags

English Originals General BiographyEntertainment Celebrities Legendary LivesStage LifeMemoirHeartwarming NarrativeSelf-ReflectionVictorian EraFemale Perspective

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Story of My Life: Recollections and Reflections by Ellen TerryAuthor: Terry, Ellen, 1848-1928,Language: English, Class: PN: Language and Literatures: Literature: General, Criticism, Collections, Release Date: May 1, 2004

Editor's review

This is the late-life memoir of the renowned British actress Ellen Terry, looking back in her own voice on her stage career and the people in her life, with observations on the art of acting and the theatrical figures of her day. Its value lies not in celebrity anecdote but in its portrait of how the late nineteenth-century British theatre actually worked—how actors trained and lived—and in showing how a professional woman arranged career and family under public scrutiny. The prose has a stage performer's candor and feeling, loosely structured yet vivid in scene. It will suit readers interested in theatre history, Victorian culture, or women's self-narration. Read it not as a systematic account but as a period profile told by a participant, to be set alongside other sources on British theatre history.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read by life stage: begin with the stage-career section, then return to the early-life and family chapters.
  2. Note names and plays as you go, and check backgrounds against reference works on British theatre history.
  3. Treat it as oral testimony rather than an authoritative biography, and watch for selective memory and emotional bias.
  4. Read two or three chapters at a time; memoirs reward slow reading and need not be finished in one go.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67

FAQ

Which stages of life does this memoir cover? It chiefly revisits the author's stage career, family life, and dealings with theatrical figures of her time, from the vantage point of old age. The narrative is not strictly chronological, so readers must piece together the timeline themselves.
Can I understand it without a background in theatre history? Yes, but you will miss much of the context. The book mentions numerous plays and contemporaries; prior familiarity with the nineteenth-century British stage will markedly increase what you get from it. A concise history of British theatre is a useful companion.
What views does the book offer on the art of acting? Drawing on personal experience, the author discusses actors' training, stage feeling, and professional circumstances, in a reflective rather than systematic vein. It is best used as a firsthand source for the acting ideas of the period, not as a guide to method.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Terry, Ellen, 1848-1928 Author · British · 1848–1928

Ellen Terry (1848–1928) was a celebrated British actress renowned on the stage for her Shakespearean roles. Her performing career was closely bound up with the nineteenth-century British theatre, and her stage presence won her a devoted audience. Two of her works are held in this collection: The Story of My Life: Recollections and Reflections and The Russian Ballet. The Story of My Life is a memoir that records her stage career and reflections on life, written in a warm, natural style with an actress's keen observation and emotional warmth; The Russian Ballet reflects her interest in and writing on the art of dance. Though different in subject, both works show her long-standing engagement with the performing arts. Public information on her early years and specific training is limited, and this introduction makes no conjecture on such matters. Her writing is distinguished not by theoretical construction but by personal experience and delicate feeling, offering a first-hand perspective on British theatre and performance of her time.