Biography
Austin Stevens was born in Pretoria, South Africa and became interested in snakes at the age of 12. By the time he finished school, his reptile collection included some of the most exotic and venomous species in the world.
His mother lost a lung in a car accident as a girl, was often ill, and died when Stevens was in his thirties; his father owned a small typewriter repair business. He traces his adventurous streak back to his grandfather from Bristol, England—also named Austin James Stevens—part founder of the AJS Motorbike Corporation, but later took the boat to Africa.
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Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)
“There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)