A funny, inspiring and heart-breaking diary that charts an energetic naturalist's battle with a degenerative disease.
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PRODUCT INFORMATION
Summary
A funny, inspiring and heart-breaking diary that charts an energetic naturalist's battle with a degenerative disease.
Description
A funny, inspiring and heart-breaking diary that charts an energetic naturalist's battle with a degenerative disease.The young naturalist W. N. P. Barbellion described this remarkably candid record of living with multiple sclerosis as 'a study in the nude'. It begins as an ambitious teenager's notes on the natural world, and then, following his diagnosis at the age of twenty-six, transforms into a deeply moving account of battling the disease. His prose is full of humour and fierce intelligence, and combines a passion for life with clear-sighted reflections on the nature of death.Barbellion selected and edited this manuscript himself in 1917, adding a fictional editor's note announcing his own demise. This Penguin Classics edition includes 'The Last Diary', which covers the period between submission of the manuscript and Barbellion's actual death in 1919.
Critic Reviews
His work has permanent value -- Arnold Bennett Letter to Barbellion's widow Among the most moving diaries ever created -- Ronald Blythe Each Returning Day: The Pleasure of Diaries A furious, sometimes ecstatic, volatile little book -- William Atkins Guardian His is the greatest diary a man has written -- Thomas Mallon A Book of One's Own: People and Their Diaries As great in its own right as anything which James Joyce was to write -- James Mildren Western Morning News
About the Author
W. N. P. Barbellion was the pseudonym of Bruce Frederick Cummings (1889-1919), an entomologist at the Natural History Museum in London. He selected W. N. P. as the initials of three of 'the most wretched figures in history'- Kaiser Wilhelm, Emperor Nero and Pontius Pilate. Barbellion was the name of his favourite pastry-shop on Gloucester Road.
Back Cover
'Yes, I am dead. I killed myself off at the end of my book, because it was high time' The young naturalist W. N. P. Barbellion described his furious, funny and tragic diary as 'a study in the nude'. Begun when he was a precocious teenager discovering the natural world, it turns into a remarkably candid account of battling Multiple Sclerosis in his twenties. By turns joyful and despairing, self-lacerating and shockingly witty, The Journal of a Disappointed Man combines a passionate love of life with a clear-eyed awareness of death. This edition includes H. G. Wells's original introduction, and Barbellion's 'The Last Diary', written between submitting his journal for publication and his death in 1919. 'Among the most moving diaries ever created' Ronald Blythe 'If I had a friend who found life tedious, who was maybe even suicidal, and I had the power to make him or her read one book, it would be the soul-stirring diary of Wilhelm Nero Pilate Barbellion' Noel Perrin
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