An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~180,000 words · 848 passages
Cite this work
- APAMahatma Gandhi. (n.d.). An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mahatma-gandhi/an-autobiography-the-story-of-my-experiments-with-truth
- MLAMahatma Gandhi. "An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mahatma-gandhi/an-autobiography-the-story-of-my-experiments-with-truth.
- ChicagoMahatma Gandhi. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mahatma-gandhi/an-autobiography-the-story-of-my-experiments-with-truth.
What it is about
Gandhi's account of his life down to the 1920s: childhood, the studies in London, the South African years, and the forming of what he would later call satyagraha.
Context and history
He wrote it in Gujarati and it appeared in instalments in his own weekly between 1925 and 1929; the English is a translation by his secretary Mahadev Desai, revised by Gandhi himself. The title is not modesty: he insists that he is not writing an autobiography but the story of some experiments, and that what he reports are attempts of his own, not prescriptions. It stops before the episodes that made him famous everywhere, which surprises readers who come looking for them.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
The first edition of Gandhiji’s Autobiography was published in two volumes, Vol. I in 1927 and Vol. II in 1929. The original in Gujarati which was priced at Re. 1/- has run through five editions,. nearly 50,000 copies have been sold. The price of the English translation (only issued in library edition) was prohibitive for the Indian reader, and a cheap edition has long been needed. It is now being issued in one volume. The translation, as it appeared serially in Young India, had, it may be noted, the benefit of, Gandhiji’s revision. It has now undergone careful revision, and from the point of ‘View of language, it has had the benefit of careful revision by a revered friend, who, among many other things, has the reputation of being an eminent English scholar. Before undertaking the task, he made it a condition that his name should on no account be given out. I accept the condition. It is needless to say it heightens my sense of gratitude to him. Chapters XXIX — XLIII of Part V were translated by my friend and colleague Pyarelal during my absence in Bardoli at the time of the Bardoli Agrarian Inquiry by the Broomfield Committee 1940 MAHADEV DESAI iii Chapter CONTENTS TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE (Mahadev Desai) INTRODUCTION PART I BIRTH AND PARENTAGE > > CHILDHOOD . . . s CHILD MARRIAGE . . k PLAYING THE HUSBAND . . 5 AT THE HIGH SCHOOL A TRAGEDY : A TRAGEDY (Contd.) . STEALING AND ATONEMENT MY FATHER’S DEATH AND MY DOUBLE SHAME 5 PREPARATION FOR ENGLAND OUTCASTE . . ` IN LONDON AT LAST MY CHOICE CHANGES EXPERIMENTS IN DIETETICS SHYNESS MY SHIELD ACQUAINTANCE WITH RELIGIONS fass qs Ua NARAYAN HEMCHANDRA THE GREAT EXHIBITION ‘CALLED ’— BUT THEN ? MY HELPLESSNESS PART IL RAYCHANDBHAI HOW I BEGAN LIFE . THE FIRST SHOCK i PREPARING FOR SOUTH AFRICA . ARRIVAL IN NATAL . y Page iii xiii oan vi SOME EXPERIENCES . ON THE WAY TO PRETORIA MORE HARDSHIPS CHRISTIAN CONTACTS . SEEKING TOUCH WITH INDIANS . WHAT IT IS TO BE A ‘COOLIE’ PREPARATION