An autobiography (from the Greek Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical ancient Greek literature and the New Testament of, αὐτός-autos self + βίος-bios life + γράφειν-graphein to write) is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.

Origin of the term

The word autobiography was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of periodical A periodical publication, or just periodical, is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar examples are the newspaper, often published daily, or weekly; or the magazine, typically published weekly, monthly or as a quarterly. Other examples would be a newsletter, a literary journal or learned journal,, the Monthly Review, when he suggested the word as a hybrid but condemned it as 'pedantic'; but its next recorded use was in its present sense by Robert Southey Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843. Although his fame tends to be eclipsed by that of his contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey's verse enjoys enduring popularity in 1809.^[1] The form of autobiography however 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 As a literary genre, a memoir , forms a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable in modern parlance. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir, as listed here. The author of a memoir may be referred to as a memoirist.

See also: List of autobiographies and Category:Autobiographies This category contains autobiographies. An autobiography is a biography written by its subject for examples.

Autobiography through the ages

The classical period: Apologia, oration, confession

In antiquity such works were typically entitled apologia, implying as an example of much self-justification as self-documentation. John Henry Newman The Venerable John Henry Newman, C.O. , was a British Roman Catholic priest, cardinal and poet. Formerly a priest in the Church of England, Newman was received into the Roman Catholic Church in October 1845. In his early life, he was a major figure in the Oxford Movement to bring the Church of England back to its Catholic roots. Eventually his's autobiography (first published in 1864) is entitled Apologia Pro Vita Sua Apologia Pro Vita Sua is the classic defence of the religious opinions of John Henry Newman, published in 1864 in response to what he saw as an unwarranted attack on himself, the Catholic priesthood, and Roman Catholic doctrine by Charles Kingsley. The work quickly became a bestseller and has remained in print to this day. The work was in reference to this tradition.

The pagan Paganism is a blanket term used to refer to various polytheistic, non-Abrahamic religious traditions. Its exact definition may vary. It is primarily used in a historical context, referring to Greco-Roman polytheism as well as the polytheistic traditions of Europe before Christianization. In a wider sense, extended to contemporary religions, it rhetor Rhetoric is the art of using language to communicate effectively. It involves three audience appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos, as well as the five canons of rhetoric: invention or discovery, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Along with grammar and logic or dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. From ancient Libanius Libanius was a Greek-speaking teacher of rhetoric of the Sophist school. During the rise of Christian hegemony in the later Roman Empire, he remained unconverted and regarded himself as a Hellene in religious matters (c. 314–394) framed his life memoir (Oration I begun in 374) as one of his orations In public speaking, as in any form of communication, there are five basic elements, often expressed as "who is saying what to whom using what medium with what effects?" The purpose of public speaking can range from simply transmitting information, to motivating people to act, to simply telling a story. Good orators should be able to, not of a public kind, but of a literary kind that could be read aloud in privacy.

Augustine Augustine of Hippo (November 13, 354 – August 28, 430), also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, or St. Austin was Bishop of Hippo Regius. He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province. His writings were very influential in the development of Western Christianity (354–430) applied the title Confessions Confessions is the name of an autobiographical work, consisting of 13 books, by St. Augustine of Hippo, written between AD 397 and AD 398. Modern English translations of it are sometimes published under the title The Confessions of St. Augustine in order to distinguish the book from other books with similar titles, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau's to his autobiographical work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a major Genevois philosopher, writer, and composer of the 18th-century Enlightenment. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of modern political and educational thought used the same title in the 18th century, initiating the chain of confessional and sometimes racy and highly self-critical, autobiographies of the Romantic Romanticism or Romantic Era is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution. In part, it was a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the era and beyond.

In the spirit of Augustine's Confessions is the 11th-century Historia Calamitatum Historia Calamitatum , also known as Abaelardi ad Amicum Suum Consolatoria, is an autobiographical work in Latin by Peter Abelard, one of medieval France's most important intellectuals and a pioneer of scholastic philosophy. It is one of the first autobiographical works in medieval Western Europe, written in the form of a letter. It is clearly of Peter Abelard Peter Abelard (1079 – April 21, 1142) was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician. The story of his affair with and love for Héloïse has become legendary. The Chambers Biographical Dictionary describes him as "the keenest thinker and boldest theologian of the 12th Century", outstanding as an autobiographical document of its period.

Early autobiographies

In the 15th century, a spanish noble woman named Leonor López de Córdoba Leonor López de Córdoba wrote what is supposed to be the first autobiography in Castilian, named Memorias by one of its editors, after being banished from the Castilian Court where she was an advisor and confidant of Queen Catalina of Lancaster wrote her Memorias, which are considered to be the first autobiography in Castillian Countries where Spanish has official status. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 25% or more of the population. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 10-20% of the population. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 5-9.9% of the population.

Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur Zahir ud-din Muhammad Babur was a Muslim conqueror from Central Asia who, following a series of setbacks, finally succeeded in laying the basis for the Mughal dynasty of India. He was a direct descendant of Timur through his father, and a descendant also of Genghis Khan through his mother. Babur identified his lineage as Timurid and Chaghatay-,who founded the Mughal dynasty The Mughal Empire , or Mogul Empire in former English usage, was an Indian-Islamic imperial power that ruled a large portion of the Indian subcontinent which began in 1526, invaded and ruled most of South Asia by the late 17th and early 18th centuries by forming alliance with Indian Maharaja, and ended in the mid-19th century. The Mughal Emperors of South Asia South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries on the west and the east. Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian Plate, which rises above sea level as the Indian subcontinent south of the kept a journal Bāburnāma Bāburnāma is the name given to the memoirs of Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur (1483-1530), founder of the Mughal Empire and a great-great-great-grandson of Timur. It is an autobiographical work, originally written in the Chagatai language, known to Babur as "Turki" (meaning Turkic), the spoken language of the Andijan-Timurids. Because (Chagatai The Chagatai language is an extinct Turkic language which was once widely spoken in Central Asia, and remained the shared literary language there until the early twentieth century. It was also spoken by the Mughal rulers in India/Persian Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq, Bahrain, and Oman. New Persian, which usually is called also by the names of Farsi, Parsi, Dari or Parsi-ye-Dari (Dari Persian), can be classified linguistically: بابر نامہ; literally: "Book of Babur" or "Letters of Babur") which was written between 1493 and 1529.

One of the first great autobiographies of the Renaissance The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historic era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform across Europe, this is a general use of the is that of the sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini Benvenuto Cellini was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, painter, soldier and musician , who also wrote a famous autobiography. He was one of the most important artists of Mannerism (1500–1571), written between 1556 and 1558, and entitled by him simply Vita (Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken as a native language by about 62 million people in Italy, San Marino and parts of Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia and France. It is spoken as a first language by many Italian citizens and immigrants abroad, for a total of approximately 70 million native speakers. In addition, it: 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."^[2] 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 Gerolamo Cardano or Girolamo Cardano was an Italian Renaissance mathematician, physician, astrologer and gambler (1574).

The earliest known autobiography in English is the early 15th-century Booke of Margery Kempe Margery Kempe is known for writing The Book of Margery Kempe, a work considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language. This book chronicles, to some extent, her extensive pilgrimages to various holy sites in Europe and Asia, describing among other things her pilgrimage to the Holy Land The Holy Land , generally refers to the geographical region of the Levant called Land of Canaan or Land of Israel in the Bible, and constitutes the Promised land. The Holy Land has significant religious importance for Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Bahá'í Faith. Part of its sanctity stems from the religious significance of Jerusalem, the and visit to Rome Rome (English pronunciation: /ˈroʊm/; Italian: Roma listen , pronounced [ˈroːma]; Latin: Rōma) is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality (central area), with over 2.7 million residents in 1,285.3 km2 (496.3 sq mi). While the population of the urban area was estimated by Eurostat to have been 3.46. 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 Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury was a British soldier, diplomat, historian, poet and religious philosopher (1643, published 1764) and John Bunyan John Bunyan was an English Christian writer and preacher, famous for writing Pilgrim's Progress. Though he was a Reformed Baptist, in the Church of England, he is remembered with a Lesser Festival on 30 August and on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on August 29 (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 1666).

Memoirs

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. One early example is that of Leonor López de Córdoba Leonor López de Córdoba wrote what is supposed to be the first autobiography in Castilian, named Memorias by one of its editors, after being banished from the Castilian Court where she was an advisor and confidant of Queen Catalina of Lancaster (1362–1420) who wrote what is supposed to be the first autobiography in Spanish. The English Civil War The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists. The first (1642–46) and second (1648–49) civil wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third war (1649–51) saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II (1642–1651) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including works by Sir Edmund Ludlow Edmund Ludlow was an English parliamentarian, best known for his involvement in the execution of Charles I, and for his Memoirs, which were published posthumously in a rewritten form and which have become a major source for historians of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. After service in the English Civil Wars, Ludlow was elected a Member of the 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 Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon , French soldier, diplomatist and writer of memoirs, was born in Paris (Hôtel Selvois, 6 rue Taranne, today at 175 Bd. Saint-Germain). The dukedom-peerage granted to his father, Claude de Saint-Simon (1608-1693), is a central fact in his history (1675–1756).

18th and 19th centuries

Notable 18th-century autobiographies in English include those of Edward Gibbon Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. The Decline and Fall is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its open denigration of organised religion and Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for. Following the trend of Romanticism Romanticism or Romantic Era is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution. In part, it was a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the, which greatly emphasised the role and the nature of the individual, and in the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a major Genevois philosopher, writer, and composer of the 18th-century Enlightenment. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of modern political and educational thought's Confessions Confessions is an autobiographical book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In modern times, it is often published with the title The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in order to distinguish it from St. Augustine of Hippo's Confessions, the book from which Jean-Jacques Rousseau took the title for his own book[citation needed]. Covering the first fifty-, a more intimate form of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion. An English example is William Hazlitt William Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell, but his work is currently little-read and mostly out of print'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 Charles John Huffam Dickens was the most popular English novelist of the Victorian era, and he remains popular, responsible for some of English literature's most iconic characters (who also incorporated autobiographical elements in his novels) and Anthony Trollope Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire. He also wrote penetrating novels on political, social, and gender issues, and on other topical, but politicians (e.g. Henry Brooks Adams Henry Brooks Adams was an American journalist, historian, academic and novelist. He is best-known for his autobiographical book, The Education of Henry Adams. He was a member of the Adams political family), 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.

Nature of autobiography

Autobiographical works are by nature subjective. The inability—or unwillingness—of the author to accurately recall memories has in certain cases resulted in misleading or incorrect information. Some sociologists and psychologists have noted that autobiography offers the author the ability to recreate history.^[3]

Versions of the autobiography form

Autobiographies as critiques of totalitarianism

Victims and opponents of totalitarian regimes have been able to present striking critiques of these regimes through autobiographical accounts of their oppression. Among the more 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 17th 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.

So-called "autobiographies" of modern professional athletes and media celebrities—and to a lesser extent about politicians, generally written by a ghostwriter, are routinely published. Some celebrities, such as Naomi Campbell, admit to not having read their "autobiographies".^{[citation needed]}

Autobiographies of the non-famous

Until recent years, few people without some genuine claim to fame wrote or published autobiographies for the general public. With the critical and commercial success in the United States of such memoirs as Angela’s Ashes and The Color of Water, however, more and more people have been encouraged to try their hand at this genre.

Fake autobiographies

This trend has also encouraged fake autobiographies, particularly those associated with 'misery lit,' where the writer has allegedly suffered from being a part of a dysfunctional family, or from social problems, or political repression.

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 Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, is an early example. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is another such classic, and J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye is a well-known modern example of fictional autobiography. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is yet 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., Robert Nye's Memoirs of Lord Byron.

See also

• Alphabiography
• Autobiographical comics
• Autobiographical novel
• Autobiographical songs
• Biography
• Diary
• Fake memoirs
• Family history
• Historical document
• List of autobiographies

References

1. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, Autobiography
2. ^ Benvenuto Cellini, tr. George Bull, The Autobiography, London 1966 p. 15.
3. ^ Berghegger, Scott. (2005). "Sublime Inauthenticity: How critical is truth in autobiography?" Student Pulse. http://studentpulse.com/articles/31/sublime-inauthenticity-how-critical-is-truth-in-autobiography

Further reading

• Barros, Carolyn A. (1998). Autobiography: Narrative of Transformation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Buckley, Jerome Hamilton (1994). The Turning Key: Autobiography and the Subjective Impulse Since 1800. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Lejeune, Philippe (1988). On Autobiography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Olney, James (1998). Memory & Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Pascal, Roy (1960). Design and Truth in Autobiography. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Reynolds, Dwight F., ed (2001). Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Wu, Pey-Yi (1990). The Confucian's Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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