The Story of My Boyhood and Youth

In this moving memoir of an unusual childhood, John Muir recalls his younger days in East Lothian with a startling clarity, depicting a wild boy whose quiet individuality and determination were already emerging.

Born in mid nineteenth-century Scotland, Muir was eleven when his fanatically religious father took the family to build a new life in America's vast wilderness.

Muir charts their pioneering years in Wisconsin, where his battles for survival powerfully anticipate the extraordinary career which was to follow.

They reveal a free spirit who perceived bonds between man and nature that were subtle and far reaching for both.