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-[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/{{PAGENAMEE}}] [Apr 2007]+An '''autobiography''', from the [[Greek language|Greek]] ''autos'', 'self', ''bios'', 'life' and ''graphein'', 'write', is a [[biography]] written by the subject or composed conjointly with a collaborative writer (styled "as told to" or "with"). The term was first used by the poet [[Robert Southey]] in 1809 in the English periodical [[Quarterly Review]], but the form goes back to antiquity. Biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and viewpoints; an autobiography however may be based entirely on the writer's memory. Closely associated with autobiography (and sometimes difficult to precisely distinguish from it) is the form of [[memoir]].
 +==Nature of autobiography==
 +===The classical period: Apologia, oration, confession===
 +In antiquity such works were typically entitled ''[[Wiktionary:apology|apologia]],'' implying as much self-justification as self-documentation. [[John Henry Newman]]'s autobiography (first published in 1864) is entitled ''[[Apologia Pro Vita Sua]]'' in reference to this tradition.
 + 
 +The [[pagan]] [[rhetor]] [[Libanius]] (c. 314-394) framed his life memoir (''Oration I'' begun in 374) as one of his [[oration]]s, not of a public kind, but of a literary kind that could be read aloud in privacy.
 + 
 +[[Augustine of Hippo|Augustine]] (354-430) applied the title ''[[Confessions (St. Augustine)|Confessions]]'' to his autobiographical work, and [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]] used the same title in the 18th century, initiating the chain of confessional and sometimes racy and highly self-critical, autobiographies of the [[Romanticism|Romantic]] era and beyond.
 + 
 +In the spirit of Augustine's ''Confessions'' is the 11th-century ''[[Historia Calamitatum]]'' of [[Peter Abelard]], outstanding as an autobiographical document of its period.
 + 
 +===Early autobiographies===
 + 
 +[[Babur|Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur]] has the distinction of being the only known founder of a leading dynasty who kept a journal. '''Bāburnāma''' ([[Chagatai language|Chagatai]]/; literally: ''"Book of Babur"'' or ''"Letters of Babur"'') in which the journal was written between 1493 - 1529. '''Babur''' who founded the [[List of Mughal emperors|Mughal dynasty]] of [[South Asia]]. He was a direct descendant of [[Timur]] through his father, and a descendant also of [[Genghis Khan]] through his mother.
 + 
 +One of the first great autobiographies of the [[Renaissance]] is that of the sculptor and goldsmith [[Benvenuto Cellini]] (1500-1571), written between 1556 and 1558, and entitled by him simply ''Vita'' ([[Italian language|Italian]]: ''Life''). He declares at the start: 'No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem great achievements, if he cares for truth and goodness, ought to write the story of his own life in his own hand; but no one should venture on such a splendid undertaking before he is over forty'. These criteria for autobiography generally persisted until recent times, and most serious autobiographies of the next three hundred years conformed to them.
 + 
 +Another autobiography of the period is ''De vita propria'', by the Italian physician and astrologer [[Gerolamo Cardano]] (1574).
 + 
 +The earliest known autobiography in English is the early 15th-century ''Booke of [[Margery Kempe]]'', describing among other things her pilgrimage to the [[Holy Land]] and visit to [[Rome]]. The book remained in manuscript and was not published until 1936.
 + 
 +Notable English autobiographies of the seventeenth century include those of [[Lord Herbert of Cherbury]] (1643, published 1764) and [[John Bunyan]] (''Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners'', (1666)).
 + 
 +===Memoir===
 +A memoir is slightly different in character from an autobiography. While an autobiography typically focuses on the "life and times" of the writer, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on his or her own memories, feelings and emotions. Memoirs have often been written by politicians or military leaders as a way to record and publish an account of their public exploits. The [[English Civil War]] (1642-1651) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including works by Sir [[Edmund Ludlow]] and Sir [[John Reresby]]. French examples from the same period include the memoirs of [[Cardinal de Retz]] (1614-1679) and the [[Duc de Saint-Simon]] (1675-1755).
 + 
 +===18th and 19th centuries===
 +Notable 18th-century autobiographies in English include those of [[Edward Gibbon]] and [[Benjamin Franklin]]. Following the trend of [[Romanticism]], which greatly emphasised the role and the nature of the individual, and in the footsteps of [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]]'s ''[[Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Confessions]]'', a more intimate form of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion. An English example is [[William Hazlitt]]'s ''[[Liber Amoris]]'' (1823), a painful examination of the writer's love-life.
 + 
 +With the rise of education, cheap newspapers and cheap printing, modern concepts of fame and celebrity began to develop, and the beneficiaries of this were not slow to cash in on this by producing autobiographies. It became the expectation - rather than the exception - that those in the public eye should write about themselves - not only writers such as [[Charles Dickens]] (who also incorporated autobiographical elements in his novels) and [[Anthony Trollope]], but politicians (e.g. [[Henry Brooks Adams]]), philosophers (e.g. [[John Stuart Mill]]), churchmen such as [[Cardinal Newman]], and entertainers such as [[P. T. Barnum]]. Increasingly, in accordance with romantic taste, these accounts also began to deal, amongst other topics, with aspects of childhood and upbringing - far removed from the principles of 'Cellinian' autobiography.
 + 
 +==Versions of the autobiography form==
 + 
 +===Diary===
 +Diaries were originally written for personal reference, but the successful publication of the diaries of the English 17th-century [[civil servant]] and bon viveur [[Samuel Pepys]] in 1825 (transcribed from his manuscript in [[shorthand]]) drew attention to the possibilities of the diary as a form of autobiography in its own right. From the 20th century onwards, diary publication became a popular vehicle for politicians seeking vindication. Notable British examples have included the diaries of [[Richard Crossman]] and [[Tony Benn]].
 + 
 +===Autobiographies as critiques of totalitarianism===
 +Victims and opponents of totalitarian regimes have been able to present striking critiques of these regimes by autobiographical accounts of their oppression. Amongst the most renowned of such works are the writings of [[Primo Levi]], one of many personal accounts of the [[Shoah]]. Similarly, there are many works detailing atrocities and malevolence of [[Communist]] regimes (e.g. [[Nadezhda Mandelstam]]'s ''Hope against Hope'').
 + 
 +===Sensationalist and celebrity 'autobiographies'===
 +From the seventeenth century onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertines, serving a public taste for titillation, have been frequently published. Typically [[pseudonym]]ous, they were (and are) largely works of fiction written by [[ghostwriter]]s. A well-known example is [[Daniel Defoe]]'s 'fictional autobiography' (see below) ''[[Moll Flanders]]''.
 + 
 +So-called "autobiographies", generally written by a [[ghostwriter]], are routinely published on the lives of modern professional athletes and media celebrities—and to a lesser extent about politicians. Some celebrities, such as [[Naomi Campbell]], admit to not having read their "autobiographies."
 + 
 +===Autobiographies of the non-famous===
 +By the 1940s, the American [[James Thurber]] was able to write of Cellini's strictures of fame and age for autobiographers, 'Nowadays, nobody who has a typewriter pays any attention to the old master's quaint rules'.
 + 
 +Until recent years, few people without some genuine claim to fame wrote or published autobiographies for the general public. But with the critical and commercial success in the United States of such memoirs as ''[[Angela's Ashes]]'' and ''[[The Color of Water]]'' more and more people have been encouraged to try their hand at this genre. This trend has also encouraged [[Fake memoirs|fake autobiographies]], particularly those associated with '' '[[misery lit]]' '', where the writer has allegedly suffered from [[dysfunctional family]], social problems or [[political repression]].
 + 
 +===Fictional autobiography===
 +:''[[fictional autobiography]]''
 +The term "fictional autobiography" has been coined to define novels about a fictional character written as though the character were writing their own biography, of which Defoe's ''Moll Flanders'', mentioned above, is an early example. Dickens's ''[[David Copperfield (novel)|David Copperfield]]'' is a classic, and [[J. D. Salinger]]'s ''[[Catcher in the Rye]]'' a well-known modern example, of fictional autobiography. [[Charlotte Bronte]]'s ''[[Jane Eyre]]'' is another example of fictional autobiography, as noted on the front page of the original version. The term may also apply to works of fiction purporting to be autobiographies of real characters, e.g. [[Stephen Marlowe]]'s ''The Death and Life of [[Miguel de Cervantes]]'' (1996).
 + 
 +==References==
 +*''Autobiography'' in [[Encyclopædia Britannica|Encyclopaedia Britannica]], (1963 edition).
 + 
 +==Books about autobiography==
 +*Barros, Carolyn A. ''Autobiography: Narrative of Transformation''. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1998.
 +*Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. ''The Turning Key: Autobiography and the Subjective Impulse Since 1800''. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.
 +*Lejeune, Philippe, ''On autobiography'', Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1988.
 +*Olney, James: ''Memory & Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing''. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.
 +*Pascal, Roy. ''Design and Truth in Autobiography''. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960.
 +*Pei-Yi Wu, ''The Confucian's Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
 +*Reynolds, Dwight F., editor ''Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
 + 
 +== See also ==
 +* [[Alphabiography]]
 +* [[Autobiographical songs]]
 +* [[Autobiographical novel]]
 +* [[Autobiographical comics]]
 +* [[Biography]]
 +* [[Diary]]
 +* [[Fake memoirs]]
 +* [[Family history]]
 +* [[Historical document]]
 +* [[List of autobiographies]]
 +* [[memoir]]
 +*[[Semi-autobiographical]]
 +*[[Autobiographical novel]]
 +{{GFDL}}

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An autobiography, from the Greek autos, 'self', bios, 'life' and graphein, 'write', is a biography written by the subject or composed conjointly with a collaborative writer (styled "as told to" or "with"). The term was first used by the poet Robert Southey in 1809 in the English periodical Quarterly Review, but the form goes back to antiquity. Biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and viewpoints; an autobiography however may be based entirely on the writer's memory. Closely associated with autobiography (and sometimes difficult to precisely distinguish from it) is the form of memoir.

Contents

Nature of autobiography

The classical period: Apologia, oration, confession

In antiquity such works were typically entitled apologia, implying as much self-justification as self-documentation. John Henry Newman's autobiography (first published in 1864) is entitled Apologia Pro Vita Sua in reference to this tradition.

The pagan rhetor Libanius (c. 314-394) framed his life memoir (Oration I begun in 374) as one of his orations, not of a public kind, but of a literary kind that could be read aloud in privacy.

Augustine (354-430) applied the title Confessions to his autobiographical work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau used the same title in the 18th century, initiating the chain of confessional and sometimes racy and highly self-critical, autobiographies of the Romantic era and beyond.

In the spirit of Augustine's Confessions is the 11th-century Historia Calamitatum of Peter Abelard, outstanding as an autobiographical document of its period.

Early autobiographies

Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur has the distinction of being the only known founder of a leading dynasty who kept a journal. Bāburnāma (Chagatai/; literally: "Book of Babur" or "Letters of Babur") in which the journal was written between 1493 - 1529. Babur who founded the Mughal dynasty of South Asia. He was a direct descendant of Timur through his father, and a descendant also of Genghis Khan through his mother.

One of the first great autobiographies of the Renaissance is that of the sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), written between 1556 and 1558, and entitled by him simply Vita (Italian: Life). He declares at the start: 'No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem great achievements, if he cares for truth and goodness, ought to write the story of his own life in his own hand; but no one should venture on such a splendid undertaking before he is over forty'. These criteria for autobiography generally persisted until recent times, and most serious autobiographies of the next three hundred years conformed to them.

Another autobiography of the period is De vita propria, by the Italian physician and astrologer Gerolamo Cardano (1574).

The earliest known autobiography in English is the early 15th-century Booke of Margery Kempe, describing among other things her pilgrimage to the Holy Land and visit to Rome. The book remained in manuscript and was not published until 1936.

Notable English autobiographies of the seventeenth century include those of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1643, published 1764) and John Bunyan (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, (1666)).

Memoir

A memoir is slightly different in character from an autobiography. While an autobiography typically focuses on the "life and times" of the writer, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on his or her own memories, feelings and emotions. Memoirs have often been written by politicians or military leaders as a way to record and publish an account of their public exploits. The English Civil War (1642-1651) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including works by Sir Edmund Ludlow and Sir John Reresby. French examples from the same period include the memoirs of Cardinal de Retz (1614-1679) and the Duc de Saint-Simon (1675-1755).

18th and 19th centuries

Notable 18th-century autobiographies in English include those of Edward Gibbon and Benjamin Franklin. Following the trend of Romanticism, which greatly emphasised the role and the nature of the individual, and in the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a more intimate form of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion. An English example is William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris (1823), a painful examination of the writer's love-life.

With the rise of education, cheap newspapers and cheap printing, modern concepts of fame and celebrity began to develop, and the beneficiaries of this were not slow to cash in on this by producing autobiographies. It became the expectation - rather than the exception - that those in the public eye should write about themselves - not only writers such as Charles Dickens (who also incorporated autobiographical elements in his novels) and Anthony Trollope, but politicians (e.g. Henry Brooks Adams), philosophers (e.g. John Stuart Mill), churchmen such as Cardinal Newman, and entertainers such as P. T. Barnum. Increasingly, in accordance with romantic taste, these accounts also began to deal, amongst other topics, with aspects of childhood and upbringing - far removed from the principles of 'Cellinian' autobiography.

Versions of the autobiography form

Diary

Diaries were originally written for personal reference, but the successful publication of the diaries of the English 17th-century civil servant and bon viveur Samuel Pepys in 1825 (transcribed from his manuscript in shorthand) drew attention to the possibilities of the diary as a form of autobiography in its own right. From the 20th century onwards, diary publication became a popular vehicle for politicians seeking vindication. Notable British examples have included the diaries of Richard Crossman and Tony Benn.

Autobiographies as critiques of totalitarianism

Victims and opponents of totalitarian regimes have been able to present striking critiques of these regimes by autobiographical accounts of their oppression. Amongst the most renowned of such works are the writings of Primo Levi, one of many personal accounts of the Shoah. Similarly, there are many works detailing atrocities and malevolence of Communist regimes (e.g. Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope against Hope).

Sensationalist and celebrity 'autobiographies'

From the seventeenth century onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertines, serving a public taste for titillation, have been frequently published. Typically pseudonymous, they were (and are) largely works of fiction written by ghostwriters. A well-known example is Daniel Defoe's 'fictional autobiography' (see below) Moll Flanders.

So-called "autobiographies", generally written by a ghostwriter, are routinely published on the lives of modern professional athletes and media celebrities—and to a lesser extent about politicians. Some celebrities, such as Naomi Campbell, admit to not having read their "autobiographies."

Autobiographies of the non-famous

By the 1940s, the American James Thurber was able to write of Cellini's strictures of fame and age for autobiographers, 'Nowadays, nobody who has a typewriter pays any attention to the old master's quaint rules'.

Until recent years, few people without some genuine claim to fame wrote or published autobiographies for the general public. But with the critical and commercial success in the United States of such memoirs as Angela's Ashes and The Color of Water more and more people have been encouraged to try their hand at this genre. This trend has also encouraged fake autobiographies, particularly those associated with 'misery lit' , where the writer has allegedly suffered from dysfunctional family, social problems or political repression.

Fictional autobiography

fictional autobiography

The term "fictional autobiography" has been coined to define novels about a fictional character written as though the character were writing their own biography, of which Defoe's Moll Flanders, mentioned above, is an early example. Dickens's David Copperfield is a classic, and J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye a well-known modern example, of fictional autobiography. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is another example of fictional autobiography, as noted on the front page of the original version. The term may also apply to works of fiction purporting to be autobiographies of real characters, e.g. Stephen Marlowe's The Death and Life of Miguel de Cervantes (1996).

References

Books about autobiography

  • Barros, Carolyn A. Autobiography: Narrative of Transformation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1998.
  • Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. The Turning Key: Autobiography and the Subjective Impulse Since 1800. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.
  • Lejeune, Philippe, On autobiography, Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1988.
  • Olney, James: Memory & Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.
  • Pascal, Roy. Design and Truth in Autobiography. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960.
  • Pei-Yi Wu, The Confucian's Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
  • Reynolds, Dwight F., editor Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Autobiography" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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