An Autobiographical Study. The International Psycho-Analytical Library. Edited by Ernest Jones. No. 26. Authorized Translation by James Strachey.

FREUD, Sigmund.

Published by London: Published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1935

About this Item

First British edition, first impression, review copy, in the scarce dust jacket. This edition contains new material by Freud, including alterations to the text, additional footnotes, and a postscript. "Two themes run through these pages: the story of my life and the history of psychoanalysis. They are intimately interwoven" (p. 131). Freud wrote this personal study in 1925, following a commission from Die Medizin der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen, a series which aimed to provide a contemporary survey of the field of medicine through the autobiographies of its leading practitioners. In 1927, an English translation by James Strachey was published in New York by Brentano. Freud had previously provided psychological analysis to Strachey and his wife Alix: "During the first weeks of their analysis Freud asked James and Alix to translate some of his recent works into English, a request which signalled the beginning of one of the most heroic undertakings in the history of psychoanalysis" (ODNB). This revised edition of Strachey's translation was published seven years later in 1935. In the postscript, Freud complains that the earlier Brentano publication "was injudiciously brought out in the same volume as another essay of mine which gave its title, The Problem of Lay-Analyses, to the whole book and so obscured the present work" (p. 131). Leonard Woolf wrote that "the greatest pleasure that I got from publishing the Psycho-Analytical Library was the relationship which it established between us and Freud. He was not only a genius, but also, unlike many geniuses, an extraordinarily nice man" (Woolf, p. 166). This copy has a Hogarth Press slip loosely inserted. Woolmer 367. Leonard Woolf, Downhill All the Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919-1939, 1967. Octavo. Half-tone portrait frontispiece, leaf of publishers' advertisements at rear. Original green diagonal-grain cloth, spine lettered and ruled in gilt. With dust jacket. Top corners bumped, cloth clean and bright, light worming to inner hinges but holding firm, endleaves gently browned, occasional neat pencil annotations demonstrating close reading to contents; jacket unclipped, spine panel faded, a handful of nicks to extremities, else jacket bright and notably well-preserved: a near-fine copy in fine jacket.

Seller Inventory # 175773

Bibliographic Details

• Title: An Autobiographical Study. The International Psycho-Analytical Library. Edited by Ernest Jones. No. 26. Authorized Translation by James Strachey.
• Publisher: London: Published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1935
• Edition: 1st Edition