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Everyone has a story of their life. Whether you hold an exciting career or consider yourself just average, no one else shares the same experiences and perceptions. Unlike a biography, which is a story of someone's life written by a different person, an autobiography is a way to tell your story to the world. more »
If friends have ever told you that you should write a book about your life, maybe it's finally time to take their advice and put all those reminiscences down on paper. The good news is that even if no one has heard of you outside your own community, you've still had unique experiences and insights that readers--including future... more »
What would you do if you found an autobiography written by your great-great grandfather? Just think how exciting that would be! An autobiography is a narrative of a person's entire life, and such a story can become quite lengthy. Because people find the task daunting, they tend to put it off year after year. But you can write a... more »
Writing an autobiography is a common assignment issued by school teachers. The assignment helps children learn about their history and clarify their future goals. However, a child may not know how to start writing her autobiography, so here are some tips to help her along the way. more »
Your autobiography is the history of your life. You should make every effort to fill it with as much detail as possible. While adding specific and concrete detail to the actual text of your autobiography is important, there are other items that you can add that will provide readers with a full picture of your life. Read on to learn how. more »
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Have you ever thought it would be neat to write about yourself? Well why not try writing an autobiography? Even if it's not for others to read,... more »
Since the days of Imperial Rome, ghostwriters have made their mark on written works—nonfiction, fiction and autobiography. Balzac, Samuel Johnson... more »
An autobiography is a non-fiction book that describes the life and experiences of the author. Autobiographies can lead to greater insight into the... more »
An autobiography is the story of one's life told by that person from his or her viewpoint. Typically, an autobiography should only be written if... more »
Learning how to write an autobiography can be challenging and rewarding. Breaking it down into steps can be helpful if you don't know where to... more »
An autobiography (from the Greek, 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 by the poet Robert Southey in 1809 in the English periodical, the Quarterly Review, but the form goes back to antiquity. Biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and viewpoints; an autobiography however may be based entirely on the writers memory. Closely associated with autobiography (and sometimes difficult to precisely distinguish from it) is the form of memoir.
See List of autobiographies and :Category:Autobiographies for examples. Also see main article Memoir.
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 Newmans autobiography (first published in 1864) is entitled Apologia Pro Vita Sua in reference to this tradition.
The pagan rhetor Libanius (c. 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 could be read aloud in privacy.
Augustine (354–430) applied the title 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.
In the spirit of Augustines Confessions is the 11th-century Historia Calamitatum of Peter Abelard, outstanding as an autobiographical document of its period.
Early autobiographies
Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur,who founded the Mughal dynasty of South Asia kept a journal Bāburnāma (Chagatai/; literally: "Book of Babur" or "Letters of Babur") which was written between 1493 and 1529.
One of the fi read more at » http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiography
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