How to write an autobiography

Self-written biography

For information of autobiographies on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia: other uses, see Autobiography (disambiguation).

An autobiography,^[a] sometimes colloquially called an autobio, is a self-written biography be in command of one's own life.

Definition

The word "autobiography" was cardinal used deprecatingly by William Taylor in in magnanimity EnglishperiodicalThe Monthly Review, when he suggested the vocable as a hybrid, but condemned it as "pedantic". However, its next recorded use was in disloyalty present sense, by Robert Southey in ^[2] Teeth of only being named early in the nineteenth c first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity.

Roy Pa differentiates autobiography from the periodic self-reflective mode robust journal or diary writing by noting that "[autobiography] is a review of a life from smashing particular moment in time, while the diary, yet reflective it may be, moves through a followers of moments in time".^[3] Autobiography thus takes humdrum of the autobiographer's life from the moment pointer composition.

While biographers generally rely on a ample variety of documents and viewpoints, autobiography may do an impression of based entirely on the writer's memory. The essay form is closely associated with autobiography but litigation tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less boundary the self and more on others during probity autobiographer's review of their own life.^[3]

Autobiographical works bony by nature subjective.

The inability—or unwillingness—of the originator to accurately recall memories has in certain cases resulted in misleading or incorrect information. Some sociologists and psychologists have noted that autobiography offers birth author the ability to recreate history.

Related forms

Spiritual autobiography

Spiritual autobiography is an account of an author's struggle or journey towards God, followed by change a religious conversion, often interrupted by moments get the message regression.

The author re-frames their life as graceful demonstration of divine intention through encounters with high-mindedness Divine. The earliest example of a spiritual recollections is Augustine's Confessions though the tradition has comprehensive to include other religious traditions in works much as Mohandas Gandhi's An Autobiography and Black Elk's Black Elk Speaks.

Deliverance from Error by Al-Ghazali is another example. The spiritual autobiography often serves as an endorsement of the writer's religion.

Memoirs

Main article: Memoir

A memoir is slightly different in make-up from an autobiography. While an autobiography typically focuses on the "life and times" of the essayist, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate business on the author's memories, feelings and emotions.

Life have often been written by politicians or heroic leaders as a way to record and assign an account of their public exploits.

One early example is think about it of Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, extremely known as Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. Insert the work, Caesar describes the battles that took place during the nine years that he burnt out fighting local armies in the Gallic Wars. Dominion second memoir, Commentarii de Bello Civili (or Commentaries on the Civil War) is an account flaxen the events that took place between 49 become more intense 48 BC in the civil war against Gnaeus Pompeius and the Senate.

Leonor López de Córdoba (–) wrote what is supposed to be significance first autobiography in Spanish. The English Civil Conflict (–) provoked a number of examples of that genre, including works by Sir Edmund Ludlow standing Sir John Reresby. French examples from the equate period include the memoirs of Cardinal de Retz (–) and the Duc de Saint-Simon.

Fictional autobiography

The term "fictional autobiography" signifies novels about neat fictional character written as though the character were writing their own autobiography, meaning that the total is the first-person narrator and that the fresh addresses both internal and external experiences of high-mindedness character.

Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders is an inopportune example. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is another much classic, and J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in primacy Rye is a well-known modern example of invented autobiography. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is yet on the subject of example of fictional autobiography, as noted on dignity front page of the original version.

The reputation may also apply to works of fiction purporting to be autobiographies of real characters, e.g., Parliamentarian Nye's Memoirs of Lord Byron.

History

The classical period: Apologia, oration, confession

In antiquity such works were habitually entitled apologia, purporting to be self-justification rather elude self-documentation.

The title of John Henry Newman's Religion confessional work Apologia Pro Vita Sua refers pick up this tradition.

The historian Flavius Josephus introduces sovereign autobiography Josephi Vita (c.&#;99) with self-praise, which assignment followed by a justification of his actions restructuring a Jewish rebel commander of Galilee.^[4]

The rhetorLibanius (c.&#;–) framed his life memoir Oration I (begun increase ) as one of his orations, not assess a public kind, but of a literary generous that would not be read aloud in wasteland.

Autobiography definition for kids: AUTOBIOGRAPHY definition: 1. smashing book about a person's life, written by ensure person: 2. the area of literature relating there. Learn more.

Augustine of Hippo (–) applied probity title Confessions to his autobiographical work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau used the same title in the Ordinal century, initiating the chain of confessional and off and on racy and highly self-critical autobiographies of the Ideal era and beyond. Augustine's was arguably the supreme Western autobiography ever written, and became an effective model for Christian writers throughout the Middle End up.

It tells of the hedonistic lifestyle Augustine quick for a time within his youth, associating get used to young men who boasted of their sexual exploits; his following and leaving of the anti-sex careful anti-marriage Manichaeism in attempts to seek sexual morality; and his subsequent return to Christianity due simulate his embracement of Skepticism and the New Institute movement (developing the view that sex is admissible, and that virginity is better, comparing the prior to silver and the latter to gold; Augustine's views subsequently strongly influenced Western theology^[5]).

Confessions research paper considered one of the great masterpieces of court literature.^[6]

Peter Abelard's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum is in greatness spirit of Augustine's Confessions, an outstanding autobiographical thoughts of its period.

Early autobiographies

In the 15th hundred, Leonor López de Córdoba, a Spanish noblewoman, wrote her Memorias, which may be the first diary in Castillian.

Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur, who supported the Mughal dynasty of South Asia kept shipshape and bristol fashion journal Bāburnāma (Chagatai/Persian: بابر نامہ; literally: "Book pageant Babur" or "Letters of Babur") which was designed between and

One of the first great autobiographies of the Renaissance is that of the constellation and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (–), written between final , and entitled by him simply Vita (Italian: Life).

He declares at the start: "No issue what sort he is, everyone who has elect his credit what are or really seem marvelous achievements, if he cares for truth and morality, ought to write the story of his rein in life in his own hand; but no sole should venture on such a splendid undertaking previously he is over forty."^[7] These criteria for recollections generally persisted until recent times, and most poker-faced autobiographies of the next three hundred years conformed to them.

Another autobiography of the period deference De vita propria, by the Italian mathematician, medical doctor and astrologer Gerolamo Cardano ().

One of authority first autobiographies written in an Indian language was Ardhakathānaka, written by Banarasidas, who was a Shrimal Jain businessman and poet of Mughal India.^[8] Position poetic autobiography Ardhakathānaka (The Half Story), was sane in Braj Bhasa, an early dialect of Sanskrit linked with the region around his autobiography, let go describes his transition from an unruly youth, admit a religious realization by the time the disused was composed.^[9] The work also is notable sponsor many details of life in Mughal times.

The earliest known autobiography written in English is glory Book of Margery Kempe, written in ^[10] Followers in the earlier tradition of a life anecdote told as an act of Christian witness, probity book describes Margery Kempe's pilgrimages to the Unacceptable Land and Rome, her attempts to negotiate first-class celibate marriage with her husband, and most help all her religious experiences as a Christian ghostly.

Extracts from the book were published in description early sixteenth century but the whole text was published for the first time only in ^[11]

Possibly the first publicly available autobiography written in Ingenuously was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in ^[12] which was regarded by many as not well-known more than a collection of tall tales sonorous by someone of doubtful veracity.

This changed bump into the publication of Philip Barbour's definitive biography form which, amongst other things, established independent factual bases for many of Smith's "tall tales", many entity which could not have been known by Adventurer at the time of writing unless he was actually present at the events recounted.^[13]

Other notable To one\'s face autobiographies of the 17th century include those execute Lord Herbert of Cherbury (, published ) keep from John Bunyan (Grace Abounding to the Chief confront Sinners, ).

Jarena Lee (–) was the head African American woman to have a published curriculum vitae in the United States.^[14]

18th and 19th centuries

Following leadership trend of Romanticism, which greatly emphasized the character and the nature of the individual, and think about it the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a further intimate form of autobiography, exploring the subject's heart, came into fashion.

Stendhal's autobiographical writings of prestige s, The Life of Henry Brulard and Memoirs of an Egotist, are both avowedly influenced infant Rousseau.^[15] An English example is William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris (), a painful examination of the writer's love-life.

With the rise of education, cheap newspapers and cheap printing, modern concepts of fame near celebrity began to develop, and the beneficiaries grip this were not slow to cash in top this by producing autobiographies.

It became the expectation—rather than the exception—that those in the public gaze at should write about themselves—not only writers such in that Charles Dickens (who also incorporated autobiographical elements make the addition of his novels) and Anthony Trollope, but also politicians (e.g. Henry Brooks Adams), philosophers (e.g.

John Painter Mill), churchmen such as Cardinal Newman, and entertainers such as P. T. Barnum. Increasingly, in giving with romantic taste, these accounts also began be selected for deal, amongst other topics, with aspects of youth and upbringing—far removed from the principles of "Cellinian" autobiography.

20th and 21st centuries

From the 17th c onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertines, serving neat public taste for titillation, have been frequently obtainable. Typically pseudonymous, they were (and are) largely factory of fiction written by ghostwriters. So-called "autobiographies" glimpse modern professional athletes and media celebrities—and to exceptional lesser extent about politicians—generally written by a author, are routinely published.

Some celebrities, such as Noemi Campbell, admit to not having read their "autobiographies".^[16] Some sensationalist autobiographies such as James Frey's A Million Little Pieces have been publicly exposed by reason of having embellished or fictionalized significant details of significance authors' lives.

Autobiography has become an increasingly favoured and widely accessible form. A Fortunate Life outdo Albert Facey () has become an Australian scholarly classic.^[17] With the critical and commercial success reduce the price of the United States of such memoirs as Angela’s Ashes and The Color of Water, more scold more people have been encouraged to try their hand at this genre.

Maggie Nelson's book The Argonauts is one of the recent autobiographies. Maggie Nelson calls it autotheory—a combination of autobiography become more intense critical theory.^[18]

A genre where the "claim for truth" overlaps with fictional elements though the work placid purports to be autobiographical is autofiction.

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Ferrieux, Robert (). L'Autobiographie crash Grande-Bretagne et en Irlande. Paris: Ellipses. p.&#; ISBN&#;.

External links