Mein Leben (Wagner)

King Ludwig II of Bavaria asked him to write the memoir in a letter dated 28 May 1865: You would cause me inexpressible happiness if you were to give me an account of your intellectual and spiritual development and of the external events of your life as well.

[2] The book is amongst the most readable of Wagner's prose writings, generally free of the complex syntax that is typical of his theoretical works.

However, [t]he subjective quality [...] emerges most clearly [...] in the casual and sometimes condescending tone [Wagner] adopts towards contemporaries [...], and it is present in the attacks on other composers of the age, above all on Meyerbeer.

Cosima herself was worried about some of the revelations in Mein Leben – in a letter to the King she wrote: Had I not constantly begged him to say everything, however painful it might be, there is quite a lot he would not have set down.

[5] An extra copy of volumes 1 to 3 struck off by the Basel printer was acquired by the American collector Mrs. Burrell in 1892, and she was so surprised by what she read that she suspected it of being a forgery.

This showed a vulture (German: Geier) holding a shield with the constellation of The Plough (Wagen); thus referring both to Wagner's natural father Carl and to his beloved stepfather, Ludwig Geyer.