Prince’s unfinished memoir The Beautiful Ones to be published in October

The Beautiful Ones, a memoir that Prince started not long before his death in 2016, will be released in October as a "newly envisioned" book featuring rare photographs and handwritten lyrics, according to publisher Random House.

Famously private and often inscrutable, the singer, who died of an accidental opioid overdose at the age of 57, had announced the project just weeks before he was found dead at his Paisley Park estate in Chanhassen, Minnesota. "We're starting right at the beginning – my first memory – and hopefully we can move all the way to the Super Bowl," Prince, who played the halftime show in 2007, told a small crowd at a mini-concert to celebrate news of the book in March 2016.

“The good people of Random House have made me an offer that I can’t refuse,” he added. “You all still read books, right?”

Prince had enlisted writer Dan Piepenbring, an editor at the Paris Review, as a collaborator on the autobiography, calling him “not a yes man at all”.

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The re-envisioned version, a partnership with the Prince estate, will feature the “early pages” of the memoir, along with an introduction by Piepenbring, who briefly collaborated with the singer at “a time when Prince was thinking deeply about how to reveal more of himself and his ideas to the world, while retaining the mystery and mystique he’d so carefully cultivated”, the publisher said.

The book was originally acquired by Random House nonfiction imprint Spiegel & Grau, which closed this year, and will now be released by the larger company. Editor Chris Jackson said of Prince: "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."

Along with the lyrics and “never-before-seen photos”, The Beautiful Ones will include original scrapbook material from the singer, including the original handwritten treatment for Purple Rain, the 1984 film and album, and other behind-the-scenes material that was preserved at Paisley Park. – New York Times