From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when Igrew I should be

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I

grew I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and 【1】______

twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the conscience that I 【2】______

was outraging my true nature and that soon or later I should have to settle 【3】______

down and write books.

I was the child of three, but there was a gap of five years on the either 【4】______

side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For this and other reasons

I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeing mannerisms which 【5】______

made me unpopular throughout my schooldays. I had the lonely child's habit

of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginative persons, and 【6】______

I think from the very start my literal ambitions were mixed up with the 【7】______

feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with

words and a power of facing in unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a 【8】______

sort of private world which I could get my own back for my failure in 【9】______

everyday life. Therefore, the volume of serious—i. e. seriously intended— 【10】______

writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation.

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