Happy birthday, bad boy Frank Harris

There's just something intriguing about this bad boy of letters. This is a reprint of a previously publish profile of a man whose birthday happens to fall on Valentine's Day.

 It is the birthday of journalist and raconteur Frank Harris (1856), who served as editor of the Saturday Review, cultivated friendships with Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw (about whom he wrote biographies), and worked as a cowboy in the American west. He is probably best remembered, however, for his sexually explicit and highly exaggerated memoir My Life and Loves (1931). It was known for its racy drawings, nude photographs, and gossipy details about public figures such as Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thomas Carlyle, George Meredith, Cecil Rhodes, and Wilde.

He was born in Ireland of Welsh parents, sent to boarding school in Wales, ran away from school at age 13 and went to America, where he supported himself with a series of odd jobs, including as a construction worker on the Brooklyn Bridge. He went to Chicago and worked in the meat packing industry, then went west and became a cowboy. He earned a law degree at the University of Kansas and settled down to practice law.

That didn't last long though, and he returned to England, then traveled throughout  Europe. He worked as a foreign correspondent for American newspapers, then became editor of several London papers before settling in at the Saturday Review. Beginning in 1908, Harris started writing novels and other books. Among them were The Bomb (1908), The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story (1909), and The Yellow Ticket and Other Stories (1920).

In 1914, Harris came back to America. He became editor of Pearson's Magazine, which had a slightly socialist bent to it. Once, during World War I, an issue of the magazine was banned at the U.S. Post Office because of its political content. However, the magazine continued to survive during the war years, despite the dim view many took of the leftist press at the time. Harris became an American citizen in 1921.

In 1922, Harris went to Germany to arrange to privately publish his racy memoir. He published four volumes from 1922 to 1927. For 40 years, it was banned in Britain and the United States. However, in Paris, it once sold for a much as $100. In 1931,  notorious Obelisk Press in Paris (the same one that later published risque volumes by Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin) produced a four-volume edition of Harris' memoir.

Happy birthday, Thomas Carlyle

It is the birthday of Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle (1795), who is best known for his three-volume work, The French Revolution: A History (1837), a sweeping history of the revolution from 1789 to 1795. It is considered to be one of the most authoritative accounts of the earliest part of the revolution. Carlyle wrote it because his friend, British philosopher John Stuart Mill, was too busy. Mill had a contract to produce the book but was immersed in other projects so he suggested that Carlyle write it. Carlyle actually wrote the first volume of the book twice. He had sent his only manuscript to Mill but Mill's maid mistakenly burned it. So, Carlyle rewrote it, producing a book that he said came "direct and flamingly from the heart."

Thomas Carlyle wrote on French Revolution

Thomas Carlyle

It is the birthday of Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle (1795), who is best known for his three-volume work, The French Revolution: A History (1837), a book he wrote because his friend, British philosopher John Stuart Mill, was too busy. Mill had a contract to produce the book but was immersed in other projects so he suggested that Carlyle write it.

The result is a sweeping history of the revolution from 1789 to 1795. It is considered to be one of the most authoritative accounts of the earliest part of the revolution. Mill supplied Carlyle with a library of material about the revolution. The book had its mishaps in getting completed, though. Carlyle labored furiously on the first volume and sent his only manuscript to Mill. However, Mill's maid mistakenly burned it, thinking it was trash. So, Carlyle rewrote it, producing a book that he said came "direct and flamingly from the heart."

The book was very different in style from other histories, which tend to be dispassionate and detached from the events. Carlyle's poetical prose style and his use present tense, first person plural involve the reader as close observer and nearly participant as the events unfold. The technique has been both praised and severely criticized.

The first volume was an immediate success and it helped establish Carlyle's literary reputation. It was a triumph of enthusiastic storytelling combined with detailed accounts of historical fact and philosophical discourse. So dramatic was his approach and accurate in its details that it inspired Charles Dickens to use it as his primary reference in writing A Tale of Two Cities.

Carlyle produced numerous other works, including Signs of the Times (1829), Sartor Resartus (1831), Chartism (1840), On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History (1841), Past and Present (1843), The Life of John Sterling (1851), History of Friedrich II of Prussia (1858), and Reminiscences of my Irish Journey in 1849 (1882).