Peculiar People

“Anyone requiring the perfect bedside book need look no further . . . a now-rediscovered masterpiece of character-painting, anecdote and understated wit.” —Smithsonian Magazine

Augustus John Cuthbert Hare (1834–1903) was a Victorian writer who had clung, so to speak, to the edges of fame. He was born into the maddest of upper-class English families and survived one of the cruelest of childhoods to write monumental travel guides to the Continent and a six-volume autobiography, The Story of My Life. That autobiography is now extremely rare and growing rarer—since every day copies of it, even in libraries, crumble into dust. This is a one-volume condensation of this remarkable work, containing what the editors consider to be the highlights of Augustus Hare's harrowing tale, beginning with his birth, shortly following which his lackadaisical parents gave him to a relative, assuring her that if she wanted more children she should let them know, because they had others.

“How can you not like a memoir entitled Peculiar People, especially when its author proves no less peculiar than the assortment of English oddities he memorializes?” —Patricia T. O’Connor, The New York Times Book Review

“This is a charmingly illustrated volume . . . Hare was probably a prig, a snob, and probably a crashing bore, but this book is riveting.” —The New Yorker

“A born storyteller, Hare vividly describes his travels and the unusual people he met as well as shares his favorite supernatural tales.” —Publishers Weekly