Much of what is known of Graham Greene's life, character, and reading is found in his essays. As he himself points out, almost half of Ways of Escape (1980), the second volume of his autobiography, is made up of his introductions to the collected edition of his books being published by the Bodley Head. A Sort of Life (1971), Greene's account of his youth, is less indebted to the essays. However, the book's most compelling section-the story of his experiments with Russian roulette-first appeared twenty-five years earlier as the essay "The Revolver in the Corner Cupboard," and what is perhaps Greene's most famous essay, "The Lost Childhood," remains an essential supplement to A Sort of Life since it gives a fuller description of his childhood reading than he provides in the autobiography (both essays are collected in The Lost Childhood, and Other Essays, 1951).

Born in Berkhamsted, England, in 1904, Greene was...