Early Stages (Lively Arts Series)

From the foreword:
. . . This new edition of 'Early Stages' is ostensibly the same as the 1939 edition except for a few minor cuts and revisions. The Impetus which originally gave me the idea of writing this book was my wish to describe the Terry family (my relations on my mother's side) while the impact of their remarkable personalities was still comparatively fresh in my memory, though none of them were still alive by 1936, the year in which I started work on the book. These passages, I hope, may still stand as something of my own individual record of their remarkable charm and talents.
In this new edition I have added four short excerpts of mine which I wrote for another book: Hallam Fordham's 'Photobiography' of me, published by John Lehmann in 1952 and now out of print. The first of these excerpts I have included as a Preface -- and the others as a Coda. These bring my story another thirteen years forward and seem to me to follow smoothly on the original narrative. --John Gielgud, 1987