The Life Of Peter The Great Author:Henry Ketcham The Life Of Peter The Great. PREFACE. THE author or compiler of the following Biographical Memoir has done little more than bring together and arraage the scattered fragments of histories, lives, anecdotes, and notices, in manuscript or in print, of one of the most extraordinary characters that ever appeared on the great theater of the worl... more »d, in any age or country a being full of contradiotions, yet consistent in all that he did a promoter of literatur, yet without education himself, the civilizer of his people....« less