Childhood

This autobiographical narrative is the opening of Alexander Herzen's My Past and Thoughts (Byloe i dumy), the Childhood, Youth and Exile material covering 1812 to the late 1830s. Herzen begins with his nurse's memories of Napoleon's occupation and the burning of Moscow, then describes a solitary boyhood in his father's house, lessons, servants, and his friendship with his cousin Nick Ogarev. He moves through Moscow University, the circle's political reading, arrest for suspected radicalism, imprisonment, and exile to Perm, Vyatka, and Vladimir. Written in the 1850s, it is a memoir of a Russian gentry childhood that becomes a record of police, provincial officialdom, and the making of a dissident.

Bound in orange cloth decorated in dark green and gold. Dark green endleaves. Green slipcase.