PRH to publish Prince memoir this autumn

Century and Arrow will publish Prince’s memoir, featuring never-before-seen photos, later this year in an exclusive partnership with the late singer’s estate. 

The Beautiful Ones will be published on 29th October 2019. Originally acquired from Prince in 2016, this newly envisioned memoir will also feature original scrapbooks and lyric sheets written in Prince’s own hand, and the early pages of the memoir Prince began writing before his death, framed by an introduction from Dan Piepenbring, the writer handpicked by Prince to collaborate on this project. 

World rights were acquired by Chris Jackson from Esther Newberg and Dan Kirschen at ICM Partners. The memoir is being published in an “exclusive partnership and in collaboration with the Prince Estate”, said the publisher. The seven-time Grammy Award winner died on 21st April 2016 at his Paisley Park home. 

“The Beautiful Ones is the deeply personal account of how Prince Rogers Nelson became the Prince we know: the real-time story of a kid absorbing the world around him and creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and the fame that would come to define him,” said PRH. “The book will span from Prince’s childhood to his early years as a musician to the cusp of international stardom, using Prince’s own writings, a scrapbook of his personal photos, and the original handwritten lyric sheets for many of his most iconic songs, which he kept at Paisley Park.”

Chris Jackson, publisher and editor-in-chief of the One World imprint of Random House, said: “Prince is a towering figure in global culture and his music has been the soundtrack for untold numbers of people—including me—for more than a generation; his creative genius has provided the musical landscape of our lives. His death was an unfathomable loss, but this book—full of writing from his own hand and images that he carefully preserved at Paisley Park—is a beautiful tribute to his life. It’s also much more than that: it’s a genuinely moving and energizing literary work, full of Prince’s ideas and vision, his voice and image. It’s a treasure not just for Prince fans but for anyone who wants to see one of our greatest creative artists and original minds at work on his greatest creation: himself.”