Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography

A privileged entrance into the mind of a Victorian gentleman whose lineage stretches back to political martyrdom. George William Erskine Russell opens his memoir with the shadow of his ancestor William Lord Russell, executed in 1683 for his pursuit of liberty, a weight that hangs over every page. Born into the comfortable world of late Victorian England, Russell recounts his childhood amid the corridors of London society and the green quiet of the countryside, writing with unaffected clarity about the education, religious instruction, and social expectations that shaped a generation. His is not a dramatic life but a civilized one, observed with the particular attention of a man who understands that the world he describes is passing away. For readers drawn to the intimate satisfactions of well-crafted autobiography, Russell offers glimpses into a vanished England through eyes that loved it precisely because they knew it so completely.