# Story of My Misfortunes (or: Historia Calamitatum)

An audiobook by Pierre Abélard, read by LibriVox volunteers (2 h 34 min, English).

Autobiographies from remote historical periods can be especially fascinating. Modes of self-presentation vary greatly across the centuries, as of course does the very concept of Self. Peter Abelard, the medieval philosopher and composer, here gives a concise but vivid survey of his notoriously calamitous life. The work is couched in the form of a letter to an afflicted friend. Abelard's abrasively competitive, often arrogant personality emerges at once in the brief Foreword, where he informs his correspondent: "(I)n comparing your sorrows with mine, you may discover that yours are in truth nought.. and so shall you come to bear them the more easily." (Summary by Martin Geeson)

[Listen](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/books/librivox/3508)
[Read the book](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/books/gutenberg/14268/read)