Editing Autobiography (section)

== History ==

=== The classical period: Apologia, oration, confession ===
In antiquity such works were typically entitled ''[[apologia]]'', purporting to be self-justification rather than self-documentation. The title of [[John Henry Newman]]'s 1864 Christian confessional work ''[[Apologia Pro Vita Sua]]'' refers to this tradition.

The historian [[Flavius Josephus]] introduces his autobiography ''Josephi Vita''  ({{Circa|99}}) with self-praise, which is followed by a justification of his actions as a Jewish rebel commander of Galilee.<ref>Steve Mason, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary. Life of Josephus : translation and commentary, Volume 9</ref>

The [[rhetor]] [[Libanius]] ({{Circa|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 would not be read aloud in privacy.

[[Augustine of Hippo]] (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 [[Romantic era]] and beyond.  Augustine's was arguably the first Western autobiography ever written, and became an influential model for Christian writers throughout the [[Middle Ages]]. It tells of the [[hedonistic]] lifestyle Augustine lived for a time within his youth, associating with young men who boasted of their sexual exploits; his following and leaving of the anti-sex and anti-marriage [[Manichaeism]] in attempts to seek sexual morality; and his subsequent return to [[Christianity]] due to his embracement of [[philosophical scepticism|Skepticism]] and the [[New Academy]] movement (developing the view that sex is good, and that virginity is better, comparing the former to silver and the latter to gold; Augustine's views subsequently strongly influenced Western theology<ref>Fiorenza and Galvin (1991), p. 317</ref>). ''Confessions'' is considered one of the great masterpieces of western literature.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Chadwick|first1=Henry|title=Confessions|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780199537822|pages=4 (ix)|date=2008-08-14}}</ref>

[[Peter Abelard]]'s 12th-century ''[[Historia Calamitatum]]'' is in the spirit of Augustine's ''Confessions'', an outstanding autobiographical document of its period.

=== Early autobiographies ===
[[File:Baburnama.jpg|thumb|right|upright|A scene from the ''[[Baburnama]]'']]

In the 15th century, [[Leonor López de Córdoba]], a Spanish noblewoman, wrote her ''Memorias'', which may be the first autobiography in [[Spanish language|Castillian]].

[[Babur|Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur]], who founded the [[Mughal Empire|Mughal dynasty]] of [[South Asia]] kept a journal ''[[Baburnama|Bāburnāma]]'' ([[Chagatai language|Chagatai]]/{{langx|fa|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]] 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."<ref>Benvenuto Cellini, tr. George Bull, ''The Autobiography'', London 1966 p.&nbsp;15.</ref> 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 mathematician, physician and astrologer [[Gerolamo Cardano]] (1574).

One of the first autobiographies written in an [[Languages of India|Indian language]] was ''Ardhakathānaka'', written by [[Banarasidas]], who was a [[Shrimal Jain]] businessman and poet of [[Mughal India]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Vanina |first=Eugenia |date=1995 |title=The "Ardhakathanaka" by Banarasi Das: A Socio-Cultural Study |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25183003 |journal=Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=211–224 |doi=10.1017/S1356186300015352 |jstor=25183003 |s2cid=164014497 |issn=1356-1863}}</ref> The poetic autobiography ''Ardhakathānaka'' (The Half Story), was composed in [[Braj Bhasa]], an early dialect of [[Hindi]] linked with the region around [[Mathura, Uttar Pradesh|Mathura]].In his autobiography, he describes his transition from an unruly youth, to a religious realization by the time the work was composed.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Orsini |first1=Francesca |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P0SlCgAAQBAJ |title=Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature and Performance in North India |last2=Schofield |first2=Katherine Butler |date=2015-10-05 |publisher=Open Book Publishers |isbn=978-1-78374-102-1 |language=ar}}</ref> The work also is notable for many details of life in Mughal times.

The earliest known autobiography written in English is the [[The Book of Margery Kempe|''Book of Margery Kempe'']], written in 1438.<ref name="Kempe, Margery, approximately 1373- 1985">{{Cite book|title=The book of Margery Kempe|last=Kempe, Margery, approximately 1373-|date=1985|publisher=Penguin|isbn=0140432515|location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England|oclc=13462336|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/bookofmargeryke000kemp}}</ref> Following in the earlier tradition of a life story told as an act of Christian witness, the book describes [[Margery Kempe]]'s pilgrimages to the [[Holy Land]] and [[Rome]], her attempts to negotiate a celibate marriage with her husband, and most of all her religious experiences as a Christian mystic. Extracts from the book were published in the early sixteenth century but the whole text was published for the first time only in 1936.<ref name="Kempe, Margery, approximately 1373- 1985"/>

Possibly the first publicly available autobiography written in English was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in 1630<ref>''The True Travels, Adventures and Observations of Captain John Smith into Europe, Aisa, Africa and America from Anno Domini 1593 to 1629''</ref> which was regarded by many as not much more than a collection of tall tales told by someone of doubtful veracity. This changed with the publication of Philip Barbour's definitive biography in 1964 which, amongst other things, established independent factual bases for many of Smith's "tall tales", many of which could not have been known by Smith at the time of writing unless he was actually present at the events recounted.<ref>Barbour, Philip L. (1964). ''The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith'', Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.</ref>

Other notable English autobiographies of the 17th century include those of [[Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury|Lord Herbert of Cherbury]] (1643, published 1764) and [[John Bunyan]] (''[[Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners]]'', 1666).

[[Jarena Lee]] (1783–1864) was the first African American woman to have a published biography in the United States.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jrirQL5L0xgC|title=Doers of the Word: African-American Women Speakers and Writers in the North (1830-1880)|last=Peterson|first=Carla L.|date=1998|publisher=Rutgers University Press|isbn=9780813525143|language=en}}</ref>

=== 18th and 19th centuries ===
[[File:Memoirs of Franklin.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Cover of the first English edition of [[Benjamin Franklin]]'s autobiography, 1793]]

Following the trend of [[Romanticism]], which greatly emphasized the role and the nature of the individual, and in the footsteps of [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]]'s ''[[Confessions (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)|Confessions]]'', a more intimate form of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion. [[Stendhal]]'s autobiographical writings of the 1830s, ''[[The Life of Henry Brulard]]'' and ''[[Memoirs of an Egotist]]'', are both avowedly influenced by Rousseau.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/stendhal0000wood|url-access=registration|title=Stendhal|last=Wood|first=Michael|date=1971|publisher=Cornell University Press|isbn=978-0801491245|location=Ithaca, NY|page=[https://archive.org/details/stendhal0000wood/page/97 97]}}<!--|access-date=July 21, 2015 --></ref> 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 also politicians (e.g. [[Henry Brooks Adams]]), philosophers (e.g. [[John Stuart Mill]]), churchmen such as [[John Henry Newman|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.
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=== 20th and 21st centuries ===
From the 17th century onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed [[libertine]]s, 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. 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".<ref>{{Cite web |date=2014-12-08 |title=YouTube star takes online break as she admits novel was 'not written alone' |url=http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/08/zoella-bestselling-girl-online-written-siobhan-curham-zoe-sugg |access-date=2022-05-03 |website=the Guardian |language=en}}</ref> Some sensationalist autobiographies such as James Frey's ''[[A Million Little Pieces]]'' have been publicly exposed as having embellished or fictionalized significant details of the authors' lives.

Autobiography has become an increasingly popular and widely accessible form. ''[[A Fortunate Life]]'' by [[Albert Facey]] (1979) has become an Australian literary classic.<ref>about-australia.com.au, 2010</ref> 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. [[Maggie Nelson]]'s book ''The Argonauts'' is one of the recent autobiographies. [[Maggie Nelson]] calls it [[autotheory]]—a combination of autobiography and critical theory.<ref>{{Cite journal | doi=10.1080/0969725X.2018.1435401|title = Theory and the Everyday| journal=[[Angelaki]]| volume=23| pages=199–203|year = 2018|last1 = Pearl|first1 = Monica B.|s2cid = 149385079|url = https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/theory-and-the-everyday(73371c35-f38e-4bc1-bf71-896308d51c27).html}}</ref>

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