WHAT YOU have in your hands is the first of the four parts of François-René de Chateaubriand’s Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe—a behemoth of history, mythography, and autobiography which, in the two-volume Pléiade edition of 1946, runs to over two thousand pages.
This edition, annotated by Maurice Levaillant and Georges Moulinier, was my first source, though I have also consulted the text and notes of the Flammarion edition (1982) compiled by Levaillant, the Gallimard Quarto edition (1997) compiled by Jean-Paul Clément, and the G.P. Putnam edition of 1903, translated into English by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, with annotations by Teixeira de Mattos and Edmond Biré.
As a reader, I owe a great debt to Paul Auster, whose novel The Book of Illusions first introduced me to Chateaubriand. As a translator, I am especially grateful to Rosanna Warren, Edwin Frank, William Boyle, Jane Eblen Keller, and my father, Stevan Edward Shakespeare. Their encouragement has meant the world to me.
My deepest thanks go to Oona, who has listened to every word.
—A.A.