Autobiography Car

[Margit Szermer]

Theword "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English periodical The Monthly Review, when he suggested the word as a hybrid, but condemned it as "pedantic". However, its next recorded use was in its present sense, by Robert Southey in 1809.[2] Despite only being named early in the nineteenth century, first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity. Roy Pascal differentiates autobiography from the periodic self-reflective mode of journal or diary writing by noting that "[autobiography] is a review of a life from a particular moment in time, while the diary, however reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time".[3] Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's life from the moment of composition. While biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and viewpoints, autobiography may be based entirely on the writer's memory. The memoir form is closely associated with autobiography but it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on the self and more on others during the autobiographer's review of their own life.[3]

Spiritual autobiography is an account of an author's struggle or journey towards God, followed by conversion a religious conversion, often interrupted by moments of regression. The author re-frames their life as a demonstration of divine intention through encounters with the Divine. The earliest example of a spiritual autobiography is Augustine's Confessions though the tradition has expanded to include other religious traditions in works such as Mohandas Gandhi's An Autobiography and 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.

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 the author's 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 Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, also known as Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. In the work, Caesar describes the battles that took place during the nine years that he spent fighting local armies in the Gallic Wars. His second memoir, Commentarii de Bello Civili (or Commentaries on the Civil War) is an account of the events that took place between 49 and 48 BC in the civil war against Gnaeus Pompeius and the Senate.

The term "fictional autobiography" signifies novels about a fictional character written as though the character were writing their own autobiography, meaning that the character is the first-person narrator and that the novel addresses both internal and external experiences of the character. Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders is an early example. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is another such classic, and J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is a well-known modern example of fictional autobiography. Charlotte Bront'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.

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.

One of the first autobiographies written in an Indian language was Ardhakathānaka, written by Banarasidas, who was a Shrimal Jain businessman and poet of Mughal India.[8] The poetic autobiography Ardhakathānaka (The Half Story), was composed in Braj Bhasa, an early dialect of Hindi linked with the region around Mathura.In his autobiography, he describes his transition from an unruly youth, to a religious realization by the time the work was composed.[9] The work also is notable for many details of life in Mughal times.

The earliest known autobiography written in English is the Book of Margery Kempe, written in 1438.[10] 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.[11]

Possibly the first publicly available autobiography written in English was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in 1630[12] 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.[13]

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, 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.[15] An English example is William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris (1823), a painful examination of the writer's love-life.

The difference between a memoir vs. autobiographies is that a memoir is a subset of an autobiography. Both a memoir and an autobiography tell the tale of a life, but an autobiography captures the whole story while a memoir describes a mere chapter. An autobiography walks the reader through a chronology of life, while a memoir moves back and forth through time as needed to illustrate the point. While an autobiography truly is a life story, a memoir can focus on certain aspects or time periods to tell a specific story.

I have been aware, as I write this autobiography, of a feeling of boredom with the project. My efforts to make what I write interesting seem pitiful. My hands are tied, I feel. I cannot write about myself as I write about the people I have written about as a journalist. To these people I have been a kind of amanuensis: they have dictated their stories to me and I have retold them. They have posed for me and I have drawn their portraits. No one is dictating to me or posing for me now.

A German Editor having written to me for an account of the development of mymind and character with some sketch of my autobiography, I have thought thatthe attempt would amuse me, and might possibly interest my children or theirchildren. I know that it would have interested me greatly to have read even soshort and dull a sketch of the mind of my grandfather, written by himself, andwhat he thought and did, and how he worked. I have attempted to write thefollowing account of myself, as if I were a dead man in another world lookingback at my own life. Nor have I found this difficult, for life is nearly overwith me. I have taken no pains about my style of writing.

I was born at Shrewsbury on February 12th, 1809, and my earliest recollectiongoes back only to when I was a few months over four years old, when we went tonear Abergele for sea-bathing, and I recollect some events and places therewith some little distinctness.

My mother died in July 1817, when I was a little over eight years old, and itis odd that I can remember hardly anything about her except her death-bed, herblack velvet gown, and her curiously constructed work-table. In the spring ofthis same year I was sent to a day-school in Shrewsbury, where I stayed a year.I have been told that I was much slower in learning than my younger sisterCatherine, and I believe that I was in many ways a naughty boy.

I had a strong taste for angling, and would sit for any number of hours on thebank of a river or pond watching the float; when at Maer (The house of hisuncle, Josiah Wedgwood.) I was told that I could kill the worms with salt andwater, and from that day I never spitted a living worm, though at the expenseprobably of some loss of success.

Once as a very little boy whilst at the day school, or before that time, Iacted cruelly, for I beat a puppy, I believe, simply from enjoying the sense ofpower; but the beating could not have been severe, for the puppy did not howl,of which I feel sure, as the spot was near the house. This act lay heavily onmy conscience, as is shown by my remembering the exact spot where the crime wascommitted. It probably lay all the heavier from my love of dogs being then, andfor a long time afterwards, a passion. Dogs seemed to know this, for I was anadept in robbing their love from their masters.

I have heard my father and elder sister say that I had, as a very young boy, astrong taste for long solitary walks; but what I thought about I know not. Ioften became quite absorbed, and once, whilst returning to school on the summitof the old fortifications round Shrewsbury, which had been converted into apublic foot-path with no parapet on one side, I walked off and fell to theground, but the height was only seven or eight feet. Nevertheless the number ofthoughts which passed through my mind during this very short, but sudden andwholly unexpected fall, was astonishing, and seem hardly compatible with whatphysiologists have, I believe, proved about each thought requiring quite anappreciable amount of time.

As I was doing no good at school, my father wisely took me away at a ratherearlier age than usual, and sent me (Oct. 1825) to Edinburgh University with mybrother, where I stayed for two years or sessions. My brother was completinghis medical studies, though I do not believe he ever really intended topractise, and I was sent there to commence them. But soon after this period Ibecame convinced from various small circumstances that my father would leave meproperty enough to subsist on with some comfort, though I never imagined that Ishould be so rich a man as I am; but my belief was sufficient to check anystrenuous efforts to learn medicine.

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