ABSTRACT
The autobiographies of poets obviously seem likely to have a certain literary distinction, since they are written by men practised in verbal self-expression. Poets are not unique in being capable of delicate and imaginative experience of type; their autobiographies would be interesting only as exotic specimens. This chapter indicates the historic importance of the autobiographies of Wordsworth and Goethe, as the first to probe into the specific nature of their poetic activity and its peculiar function in their lives. Even in this century, when many imaginative writers have made the theme of their autobiographies the peculiarity of the artist's relation with the world, their story has been markedly different from James's, and in particular they themselves have been often much more wholly engaged, emotively, morally, socially. James's autobiography is significant in that it offers the fine essence of the artist's operation on reality, and of the operation of reality on the artist.
