My Life and Loves

My Life and Loves is the autobiography of the Ireland-born, naturalized-American writer and editor Frank Harris (1856–1931). As published privately by Harris between 1922 and 1927, and by Jack Kahane's Obelisk Press in 1931, the work consisted of four volumes, illustrated with many drawings and photographs of nude women. The book gives a graphic account of Harris's sexual adventures and relates gossip about the sexual activities - or failings - of celebrities of the day.

The work was banned in both the United States and Britain for a span of 40 years. At one time it was sold in Paris for more than $100.^[1]

Additional volume

In the early 1950s, Harris's widow Nellie sold about a hundred pages of his writings on further autobiographical matters to Kahane's son Maurice Girodias for a million French francs (a few thousand dollars at that time). Girodias gave the task of producing something publishable from them to Alexander Trocchi, and described the result as having only 20% of its content derived from the nominal source material. It was published by Girodias's Olympia Press in 1954 as My Life and Loves: Fifth Volume.^[2]

John Gallagher edited My Life and Loves, Complete and unexpurgated; five volumes in one, published by Grove Press in 1963; he described the Trocchi version as "apparently not authentic". James Campbell, comparing the two editions' fifth volumes, does however argue that Girodias's 20% figure was too low.^[2]

References

1. ^ The People's Almanac Presents The Book of Lists. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell. 1978. p. 326. ISBN 0-553-11150-7. 
2. ^ ^{a b} James Campbell, Exiled in Paris Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett and Others on the Left Bank, pp. 146-147