Pack My Bag

A luminous autobiography by one of England's most original, delightful, writers.In 1938 Henry Green, then thirty-three, dreaded the coming war and decided to "e;put down what comes to mind before one is killed."e; Pack My Bag was published in England in 1940. When he wrote it, Green had already published three of his nine novels and his style"e;a gathering web of insinuations"e;was fully developed.Pack My Bag is a marvelously quirky, clear-eyed memoir: a mother who shot at mangle wurzels (turnips) bowled across the lawn for her by the servants; the stately home packed with wounded World War I soldiers; the miseries of Eton, oddities of Oxford, and work in the family factorythe making of a brilliantly original novelist. "e;We have inherited the greatest orchestra, the English language, to conduct,"e; Green once wrote. "e;The means are there; things are going on in life all the time around us."e; His use of language and his account of things that went on in his life inform this delightful and idiosyncratic autobiography, which begins: "e;I was born a mouthbreather with a silver spoon."e;