First of all our own, and then we ask old people to tell us what they remember. Our memory is like that burning scrap of paper. Now it's so far down it's like a tiny star in the dark depths. Can you see it? It's going down and down. And as it burns it will light up the sides of the well. So let's light a scrap of paper, and drop it down into that well. Does all this looking down make you dizzy? It does me. But you will never reach the beginning, because behind every beginning there’s always another 'Once upon a time'. That gets us quickly back into the past, and from there into the distant past. But say it again, slowly, and in the end you'll be able to imagine it. Grandfather's grandfather's grandfather's grandfather. They are there, and you know it.Īnd that's how it is with 'Once upon a time'. But even when you can't see them any more, the mirrors still go on. You will see a great long line of shiny mirrors, each one smaller than the one before, stretching away into the distance, getting fainter and fainter, so that you never see the last. Have you ever tried standing between two mirrors? You should. Behind every 'Once upon a time' there is always another. And so it goes on, further and further back. After all, we say: 'They are old.' But they too had grandfathers and grandmothers, and they, too, could say: 'Once upon a time'. Your father and mother were also small once, and so was your grandfather, and your grandmother, a much longer time ago, but you know that too. You won't remember that, but you know it’s true. Do you remember? Your own history might begin like this: 'Once upon a time there was a small boy' - or a small girl - 'and that small boy was me.' But before that you were a baby in a cradle. Once you were so small that, even standing on tiptoes, you could barely reach your mother's hand. Read an excerpt from A Little History of the World:Īll stories begin with 'Once upon a time.' And that's just what this story is all about: what happened, once upon a time. She tells Liane Hansen more about her grandfather and his books.
Leonie Gombrich, granddaughter of the author, wrote an introduction to the new edition. This fall, the first English edition of the book was published by Yale University Press.
Then, before Gombrich died in 2001 - at the age of 92 - he began to update and translate the original.
Yet for many years, Little History was not translated into English. The book tells the story of human kind from the stone age to the atomic bomb and has been translated into 17 languages.Ī more popular work for young people, The Story of Art, was published in 1950 and sold 6 million copies for the author. The late Sir Ernst Gombrich wrote A Little History of the World in 1936, in German. Sir Ernst Gombrich reads to his grandchildren, Carl and Leonie, in a 1972 photograph.
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