Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Lee, Laurie - Laurie Lee (essay date 1975)

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Laurie Lee (essay date 1975)

SOURCE: "Writing Autobiography," in I Can't Stay Long, Atheneum, 1976, pp. 49-53.

[In the essay below, originally written in 1975, Lee discusses the writing process particularly as it applies to autobiography.]

Autobiography can be the laying to rest of ghosts as well as an ordering of the mind. But for me it is also a celebration of living and an attempt to hoard its sensations.

In common with other writers I have written little that was not for the most part autobiographical. The spur for me is the fear of evaporation—erosion, amnesia, if you like—the fear that a whole decade may drift gently away and leave nothing but a salt-caked mud-flat.

A wasting memory is not only a destroyer; it can deny one's very existence. A day unremembered is like a soul unborn, worse than if it had never been. What indeed was that summer if it is not recalled? That journey? That act of love? To whom did it...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Gerard Previn Meyer (review date 6 September 1947)
   2. Fleming MacLiesh (review date 21 December 1947)
   3. Kingsley Amis (review date 17 June 1955)
   4. Geoffrey Brereton (review date 18 June 1955)
   5. The Times Literary Supplement (review date 1 July 1955)
   6. V. S. Pritchett (review date 8 April 1956)
   7. Samuel French Morse (review date December 1956)
   8. Michael Ramsbotham (review date 7 November 1959)
   9. T. S. Matthews (review date 27 March 1960)
   10. Max Cosman (review date 1 April 1960)
   11. William Maxwell (review date 16 April 1960)
   12. Peter Green (review date 23 April 1960)
   13. Edward Weeks (review date September 1969)
   14. Charles Causley (review date 26 September 1969)
   15. The Times Literary Supplement (review date 9 October 1969)
   16. Julian Mitchell (review date 12 October 1969)
   17. Ronald Blythe (review date 20 November 1975)
   18. Laurie Lee (essay date 1975)
   19. A. T. Tolley (essay date 1975)
   20. Laurie Lee with Nicole and Françoise Cavalerie (interview date January 1976)
   21. Sylvia Secker (review date 30 January 1976)
   22. Robert Nye (review date 6 April 1976)
   23. Derek Stanford (review date August 1983)
   24. Angela Huth (review date 8 December 1983)
   25. Brian Finney (essay date 1985)
   26. Michael Glover (review date September-October 1991)
   27. Valentine Cunningham (review date 18 October 1991)
   28. Hilary Corke (review date 26 October 1991)
   29. Albert Hoxie (review date 2 May 1993)
   30. Verlyn Klinkenborg (review date 25 July 1993)
   31. Bernard Knox (review date 22 December 1994)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright