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. Here is a one-volume condensation of this remarkable work, containing what the editors consider to be the highlights of Augustus Hare's harrowing tale. ". . .