Persons and Places was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in three volumes: The Background of My Life (1944), The Middle Span (1945), and My Host the World (1953, posthumous). Together they constitute one of the most remarkable autobiographies of the twentieth century — the story of a man who lived among the most important thinkers and institutions of his time while maintaining the perspective of a permanent guest.
Santayana was born in Madrid in 1863, grew up partly in Ávila and partly in Boston, was educated at Harvard (where he studied under William James and became a colleague of Josiah Royce), taught philosophy there for twenty-three years, and then resigned in 1912 to live in Europe for the remaining forty years of his life. The memoir traces this unusual trajectory with the philosophical observer’s characteristic combination of engagement and detachment.
The Harvard sections are especially valuable as portraits of American intellectual life in its golden age — James, Royce, Charles Eliot Norton, and their students appear as living characters rather than historical monuments. Santayana’s portraits of his colleagues are affectionate but unsparing: James is brilliant but undisciplined; Royce is earnest but humorless; the Harvard students are energetic but philistine. His own position — a Catholic atheist, a Spanish Bostonian, a philosopher who regarded philosophy as a form of literature — is rendered with the self-knowledge that made him both a great thinker and a great writer.
Collecting Persons and Places
First editions (Scribner’s, New York, 1944–1953): Three volumes, cloth bindings.
Market values:
- Complete set of three first editions in jackets: $100–$300
- Individual volumes: $25–$80 each
- One-volume editions: $15–$30