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- There are 6 types of autobiography that you can choose, depending upon what you want to include in your autobiography.
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There are different types of autobiography such as memoir, autobiography, and personal essay. Learn how to write each type of writing in detail with this guide.
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- Overview
- The emergence of autobiography
- Types of autobiography
autobiography, the biography of oneself narrated by oneself. Autobiographical works can take many forms, from the intimate writings made during life that were not necessarily intended for publication (including letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, and reminiscences) to a formal book-length autobiography.
Formal autobiographies offer a special kind of biographical truth: a life, reshaped by recollection, with all of recollection’s conscious and unconscious omissions and distortions. The novelist Graham Greene said that, for this reason, an autobiography is only “a sort of life” and used the phrase as the title for his own autobiography (1971).
There are but few and scattered examples of autobiographical literature in antiquity and the Middle Ages. In the 2nd century bce the Chinese classical historian Sima Qian included a brief account of himself in the Shiji (“Historical Records”). It may be stretching a point to include, from the 1st century bce, the letters of Cicero (or, in the early Christian era, the letters of Saint Paul), and Julius Caesar’s Commentaries tell little about Caesar, though they present a masterly picture of the conquest of Gaul and the operations of the Roman military machine at its most efficient. But Saint Augustine’s Confessions, written about 400 ce, stands out as unique: though Augustine put Christianity at the centre of his narrative and considered his description of his own life to be merely incidental, he produced a powerful personal account, stretching from youth to adulthood, of his religious conversion.
Confessions has much in common with what came to be known as autobiography in its modern, Western sense, which can be considered to have emerged in Europe during the Renaissance, in the 15th century. One of the first examples was produced in England by Margery Kempe, a religious mystic of Norfolk. In her old age Kempe dictated an account of her bustling, far-faring life, which, however concerned with religious experience, reveals her personality. One of the first full-scale formal autobiographies was written a generation later by a celebrated humanist publicist of the age, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, after he was elevated to the papacy, in 1458, as Pius II. In the first book of his autobiography—misleadingly named Commentarii, in evident imitation of Caesar—Pius II traces his career up to becoming pope; the succeeding 11 books (and a fragment of a 12th, which breaks off a few months before his death in 1464) present a panorama of the age.
An autobiography may be placed into one of four very broad types: thematic, religious, intellectual, and fictionalized. The first grouping includes books with such diverse purposes as The Americanization of Edward Bok (1920) and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1925, 1927). Religious autobiography claims a number of great works, ranging from Augustine and Kempe to the autobiographical chapters of Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus and John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Apologia in the 19th century. That century and the early 20th saw the creation of several intellectual autobiographies, including the severely analytical Autobiography of the philosopher John Stuart Mill and The Education of Henry Adams. Finally, somewhat analogous to the novel as biography is the autobiography thinly disguised as, or transformed into, the novel. This group includes such works as Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh (1903), James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), George Santayana’s The Last Puritan (1935), and the novels of Thomas Wolfe. Yet in all of these works can be detected elements of all four types; the most outstanding autobiographies often ride roughshod over these distinctions.
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- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Nov 21, 2023 · There are many different types of autobiography. These types differ in form, content, and structure, but all fall broadly under the umbrella of autobiography.
- The difference between a biography and an autobiography is the writer. An autobiography is written by an individual about their own life, while a b...
- Although the term ''autobiography'' did not enter English until 1797, earlier works are now considered autobiographies. The most common and compell...
- An example of an autobiography is Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela. This work, like most autobiographies, describes its writer's life while a...
- The Box: Tales from the Darkroom by Gunter Grass. A noble laureate and novelist, Gunter Grass, has shown a new perspective of self-examination by mixing up his quilt of fictionalized approach in his autobiographical book, “The Box: Tales from the Darkroom.”
- The Story of My Life by Helen Keller. In her autobiography, The Story of My Life, Helen Keller recounts her first twenty years, beginning with the events of the childhood illness that left her deaf and blind.
- Self Portraits: Fictions by Frederic Tuten. In his autobiography, “Self Portraits: Fictions,” Frederic Tuten has combined the fringes of romantic life with reality.
- My Prizes by Thomas Bernhard. Reliving the success of his literary career through the lens of the many prizes he has received, Thomas Bernhard presents a sarcastic commentary in his autobiography, “My Prizes.”
Types of Autobiography There are many types of autobiographies. Authors must decide what purpose they have for writing about their lives, and then they can choose the format that would best tell their story.
Feb 16, 2021 · In this blog, you will learn about each type of autobiography with examples. If you are assigned to write an autobiography, you may have many questions in your mind. Read on to learn about the basic types and how to write an autobiography that deserves a high grade.
Sep 26, 2023 · Types of Autobiographies. While the traditional autobiography is a comprehensive account of the author’s life, there are several sub-genres and formats that offer different approaches to the autobiographical narrative. These include memoirs, diaries, and letters, each with its own unique characteristics and focus.
