This first of Chaplin's two published autobiographies has been nearly inaccessible until now. Covering the period of Chaplin's life from his obscure birth to his signing, in 1916, of a $670,000 contract with the Mutual Film Corporation, the book has usually been dismissed as a ghostwritten and unreliable fabrication. Chaplin biographer John McCabe, however, observes that "at times the book is certainly accurate in spirit if not in detail." The republication...