Autobiography

autobiography: see biography.

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autobiography

Biography of oneself narrated by oneself. Little autobiographical literature exists from antiquity and the Middle Ages; with a handful of exceptions, the form begins to appear only in the 15th century. Autobiographical works take many forms, from intimate writings made during life that are not necessarily intended for publication (including letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, and reminiscences) to the formal autobiography. Outstanding examples of the genre extend from St. Augustine's Confessions (c. AD 400) to Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory (1951).

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autobiography

an account of a person's life written or otherwise recorded by that person

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Autobiography 

a description of one’s own life; a literary genre similar to memoirs but differing from them in a greater emphasis on the author’s person and psychology.

Examples of autobiographies are Saint Augustine’s Confessions (397–398), P. Abélard’s Historia Calamitatum (1132–36), and B. Cellini’s The Life of Benvenuto (1558–66). The first Russian autobiography was The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum (1672–75). In modern literature J.-J. Rousseau and A. I. Herzen have created literary autobiographical confessions. Some works of L. N. Tolstoy, M. Gorky, K. G. Paustovskii, M. Proust, and other writers are autobiographical in character. The autobiographies of the revolutionary figures G. Garibaldi, P. A. Kropotkin, and A. Bebel have been translated into many languages.

The word “autobiography” may also refer to a brief chronological summary of the chief events of one’s life.