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autobiography

Definition of autobiography

Examples of autobiography in a sentence.

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'autobiography.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

auto- + biography , perhaps after German Autobiographie

1797, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing autobiography

• semi - autobiography

Dictionary Entries Near autobiography

autobiographist

Cite this Entry

“Autobiography.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autobiography. Accessed 28 Apr. 2024.

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Autobiography

Definition of autobiography.

Autobiography is one type of biography , which tells the life story of its author, meaning it is a written record of the author’s life. Rather than being written by somebody else, an autobiography comes through the person’s own pen, in his own words. Some autobiographies are written in the form of a fictional tale; as novels or stories that closely mirror events from the author’s real life. Such stories include Charles Dickens ’ David Copperfield  and J.D Salinger’s The Catcher in The Rye . In writing about personal experience, one discovers himself. Therefore, it is not merely a collection of anecdotes – it is a revelation to the readers about the author’s self-discovery.

Difference between Autobiography and Memoir

In an autobiography, the author attempts to capture important elements of his life. He not only deals with his career, and growth as a person, he also uses emotions and facts related to family life, relationships, education, travels, sexuality, and any types of inner struggles. A memoir is a record of memories and particular events that have taken place in the author’s life. In fact, it is the telling of a story or an event from his life; an account that does not tell the full record of a life.

Six Types of Autobiography

There are six types of autobiographies:

• Autobiography: A personal account that a person writes himself/herself.
• Memoir : An account of one’s memory.
• Reflective Essay : One’s thoughts about something.
• Confession: An account of one’s wrong or right doings.
• Monologue : An address of one’s thoughts to some audience or interlocuters.
• Biography : An account of the life of other persons written by someone else.

Importance of Autobiography

Autobiography is a significant genre in literature. Its significance or importance lies in authenticity, veracity, and personal testimonies. The reason is that people write about challenges they encounter in their life and the ways to tackle them. This shows the veracity and authenticity that is required of a piece of writing to make it eloquent, persuasive, and convincing.

Examples of Autobiography in Literature

Example #1:  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.” Adopting the individual point of view of each of his children, Grass narrates what his children think about him as their father and a writer. Though it is really an experimental approach, due to Grass’ linguistic creativity and dexterity, it gains an enthralling momentum.

Example #2:  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. In her childhood, a writer sent her a letter and prophesied, “Someday you will write a great story out of your own head that will be a comfort and help to many.”

In this book, Keller mentions prominent historical personalities, such as Alexander Graham Bell, whom she met at the age of six, and with whom she remained friends for several years. Keller paid a visit to John Greenleaf Whittier , a famous American poet, and shared correspondence with other eminent figures, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Mrs. Grover Cleveland. Generally, Keller’s autobiography is about overcoming great obstacles through hard work and pain.

Example #3:  Self Portraits: Fictions by Frederic Tuten

In his autobiography, “Self Portraits: Fictions ,” Frederic Tuten has combined the fringes of romantic life with reality. Like postmodern writers, such as Jorge Luis Borges, and Italo Calvino, the stories of Tuten skip between truth and imagination, time and place, without warning. He has done the same with his autobiography, where readers are eager to move through fanciful stories about train rides, circus bears, and secrets to a happy marriage; all of which give readers glimpses of the real man.

Example #4:  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.” Bernhard, in fact, has taken a few things too seriously. Rather, he has viewed his life as a farcical theatrical drama unfolding around him. Although Bernhard is happy with the lifestyle and prestige of being an author, his blasé attitude and scathing wit make this recollection more charmingly dissident and hilarious.

Example #5:  The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin

“The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin ” is written by one of the founding fathers of the United States. This book reveals Franklin’s youth, his ideas, and his days of adversity and prosperity. He is one of the best examples of living the American dream – sharing the idea that one can gain financial independence, and reach a prosperous life through hard work.

Through autobiography, authors can speak directly to their readers, and to their descendants. The function of the autobiography is to leave a legacy for its readers. By writing an autobiography, the individual shares his triumphs and defeats, and lessons learned, allowing readers to relate and feel motivated by inspirational stories. Life stories bridge the gap between peoples of differing ages and backgrounds, forging connections between old and new generations.

Synonyms of Autobiography

The following words are close synonyms of autobiography such as life story, personal account, personal history, diary, journal, biography, or memoir.

Related posts:

• The Autobiography of Malcolm X

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autobiography

What is autobiography definition, usage, and literary examples, autobiography definition.

An  autobiography  (awe-tow-bye-AWE-gruh-fee) is a self-written  biography . The author writes about all or a portion of their own life to share their experience, frame it in a larger cultural or historical context, and/or inform and entertain the reader.

Autobiographies have been a popular literary genre for centuries. The first Western autobiography is attributed to Saint Augustine of Hippo for his 13-book work titled  Confessions , written between 397 and 400 CE. Some autobiographies are a straightforward narrative that recollects a linear chain of events as they unfolded. The genre has expanded and evolved to include different approaches to the form.

The word  autobiography  comes from the Ancient Greek  auto  (“self”) +  bios  (“life”) +  graphein  (“to write”) = “a self-written life.” It is also known as autography .

The History of Autobiography

Scholars regard Augustine’s  Confessions  as the first Western autobiography. Other autobiographical works from antiquity include Jewish historian Flavius Josephus’s  Vita  (circa 99 CE) and Greek scholar Libanius’s  Oration I  (374 CE). Works of this kind were called apologias, which essentially means “in my defense.” Writers approached these works not as acts of self-documentation but as self-defense. They represented a way to explain and provide rationale for their life, work, and escapades. There was also less focus on their emotional lives.

The Book of Margery Kempe , written in 1438 by an English Christian mystic, is the earliest known autobiography in English. (Though it didn’t see full publication until the 20th century.) Other early English-language biographies of note include:

• Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s 1764 memoirs
• John Bunyan’s  Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners  in 1666
• Jarena Lee’s  The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee  (the first autobiography of an African American woman)

Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s  Confessions was published in 1782. It paved the way for the more thoughtful, emotionally centered autobiographies seen today. Autobiography as a literary genre emerged a few years later, when British scholar William Taylor first used the term to describe a self-written biography. He did so disparagingly, suggesting the form was  pedantic . In 1809, English Romantic poet Robert Southey used the term more seriously to describe self-written biographies.

Starting in the 20th century, more young people started writing autobiographies. Perhaps the most famous example is Anne Frank’s  The Diary of a Young Girl , about her time hiding from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic. The 21st century saw an increase in autobiographical essay collections and memoirs by younger celebrities, including:

• Anna Kendrick
• Mindy Kaling
• Gabourey Sidibe
• Mike Birbiglia
• Lena Dunham
• Chelsea Handler

Autobiographies are not immune to controversy. One notable scandal involved author James Frey’s  A Million Little Pieces . Originally billed as a memoir, evidence later emerged that Frey invented key parts of the story. This example underscores how easily authors can cross over into autofiction—fictional autobiography—and how seriously readers take authors’ responsibility to accurately and honestly market their books.

Types of Autobiographies

There are a few different types of self-written works that qualify as autobiography.

Standard Autobiographies

In the most traditional form, authors recount their life or specific formative events from their life. This approach often utilizes a chronological format of events, but it doesn’t necessarily have to. An author’s approach might include a framing device such as flashbacks, in which they move from the present to the past as they remember their lives. For example, Broadway star Patti LuPone’s self-titled autobiography begins on the opening night of  Gypsy  in 2004 before moving back in time to LuPone’s childhood. An author could take a more stream-of-consciousness style, in which one memory links to another by a common theme. Irish writer Seán O’Casey narrates his six-volume  Autobiographies  in this manner

This is a type of autobiography that is narrower in scope and focus. It places greater emphasis on particular memories, thoughts, and feelings. A standard autobiography can certainly cover some of this same ground—most do—but the memoir is more interested in individual events or defined portions of the author’s life and the emotions and lessons behind them.

Henry David Thoreau is a notable memoirist. In Walden , he reflects on his time spent living in solitude in the woods of Massachusetts and what he learned about life and nature throughout this experience. Another example is  The Year of Magical Thinking  by Joan Didion, which relates the death of her husband and its impact on her life and work. Another is  Wild  by Cheryl Strayed, wherein Strayed remembers her time hiking the Pacific Crest Trail during a period of great change in her life.

Autofiction

The fictionalized autobiography, or autofiction, is another type of autobiography. The author presents their story not as fact but as fiction. This method gives them considerable space to take creative license with events and characters, thereby blurring the lines between reality and fiction. The overall goal is less about the author wanting to obscure facts and make things up and more a matter of taking another tactic to delve into their experiences in service of self-discovery.  Taipei  by Tao Lin is a work of autofiction. The central character, Paul, mirrors Lin’s own life and experiences, from the literary world of New York City to his ancestral roots in Taiwan.

Spiritual Autobiographies

These autobiographies center on the author’s religious or spiritual awakening and the subsequent journey their faith has taken them on. Common elements include struggles and doubt, a life-altering conversion, periods of regression, and sharing the “message.” These all act as endorsements of the author’s faith. Augustine’s  Confessions , Paramahansa Yogananda’s  Autobiography of a Yogi , and Augusten Burroughs’s  Toil & Trouble: A Memoir  are all spiritual autobiographies.

Autobiography vs. Biography

Both autobiographies and  biographies  are records of real lives, but there is one major distinction. A person other than the book’s subject writes a biography, while the subject themselves writes an autobiography. In this way, an autobiography is essentially a biography of the self. The biographer’s job is typically more involved, entailing detailed research into the life of the subject. The autobiographer, however, is usually not burdened by this because they lived through the events they write about. They may need only to confirm dates and stories to accurately relate the pertinent details.

The Function of Autobiography

An autobiography allows the author to tell the true story of their own life. This is the reason why autobiographies have always been written by famous people. History tends to remember notable individuals for just one significant contribution or event and, even then, the public’s perception of it may be inaccurate. Writing an autobiography allows the author to share the real story and put it into the larger context of their life and times.

Most readers pick up an autobiography expecting some degree of subjectivity from the author. After all, the events chronicled happened to the author, so the writing will of course have a biased  perspective . There are advantages to this subjectivity, though. The reader gets the real story directly from the person who lived it, unvarnished by others’ opinions or erroneous historical data.

One way this subjectivity is problematic is that the author may not possess the ability to see the story they’re telling from other perspectives. For example, they may not acknowledge any hurt they caused others, dangerous behaviors they engaged in, or the “other side” of a controversial event in which there are equally valid opposing viewpoints and experiences. Any of these deficiencies can result in a somewhat skewed narrative.

Writers Known for Autobiography & Autobiography Books

• Maya Angelou,  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ,  Gather Together in My Name
• Jung Chang,  Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
• Isak Dinesen,  Out of Africa ,  Shadows on the Grass
• Carrie Fisher,  Wishful Drinking ,  Shockaholic
• Anne Frank,  The Diary of a Young Girl
• Ernest Hemingway,  A Moveable Feast
• Karl Ove Knausgård,  My Struggle
• Frank McCourt,  Angela’s Ashes
• Anaïs Nin,  The Diaries of Anaïs Nin
• Marcel Proust,  Remembrance of Things Past
• Patti Smith,  Just Kids ,  M Train
• Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain
• Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
• Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
• Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
• Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography 

Examples of Autobiographies

1. Maya Angelou,  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Angelou’s autobiography is the first installment in a seven-volume series chronicling the life of the legendary poet, teacher, actress, director, dancer, and civil rights activist. Given all those roles, it’s easy to see why Angelou’s life story makes for interesting reading.

This volume centers primarily on her early life in Stamps, Arkansas, and the devastating effects of a childhood rape. It also explores racism in the American South. It discuses the important role reading plays in helping young Maya deal with the sexual assault and pervasive prejudice in her environment.

2. Helen Keller,  The Story of My Life

Keller’s autobiography details her first 20 years, starting with the childhood illness that caused her blindness and deafness. She discusses the obstacles she had to overcome and the life-changing relationship she shared with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, who helped her learn to read and write. Keller also documents her friendships with several famous figures of her day, including Alexander Graham Bell, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and First Lady Frances Cleveland.

3. Vinh Chung,  Where the Wind Leads

Chung’s autobiography recalls the harrowing story of a Vietnamese refugee and his journey to make the American Dream his own. Born in South Vietnam, Chung comes of age in a changing political climate that eventually compels his family to flee the country. Their voyage takes them through the South China Sea, run-ins with pirates, resettlement in Arkansas, and Chung’s graduation from Harvard Medical School.

How to Write an Autobiography

Autobiography is a truly universal art form and is accessible to anyone, whether you're in high school or 100 years old. Exploring the process of writing an autobiography deserves an article in itself, but the process should include these steps:

• Determine your "why." What lessons do you want to impart via your story, and why are they worth sharing with a broader audience?
• Draft an autobiographical outline. It should include information about your upbringing, impactful moments throughout your life, stories of failure and success, and meaningful mentors.
• Begin with the easiest sections. Getting started is often the greatest hurdle, so begin by writing the chapters that feel most accessible or enjoyable.
• Write your first draft. Once you write the first chapters, it will feel easier to write the rest. Capitalize on your momentum and write a full draft.
• Step away. As with anything, stepping away from your work will help foster fresh perspectives when you return.
• Edit and re-write your draft. Your first draft will probably benefit from thorough revisions, as will your second draft, and maybe your third. Continue to edit and revise until it feels right.
• Ask for help. Bring in a trusted family member or friend or professional editor to help with final edits.

Further Resources on Autobiography

ThoughtCo. shares some  important points to consider before writing an autobiography .

The Living Handbook of Narratology delves into the  history of the autobiography .

MasterClass breaks autobiography writing down into  eight basic steps .

Pen & the Pad looks at the  advantages and disadvantages of the autobiography .

Lifehack has a list of  15 autobiographies everyone should read at least once .

Related Terms

• Frame Story
• Point of View

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Princeton University Library

His 414: life-writing and history: diaries, memoirs and autobiographies.

• Where to Begin

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• Finding Autobiographies in the Library
• Finding and Retrieving Memoirs in Special Collections
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• Last Updated: Dec 15, 2023 4:16 PM
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Autobiography: A Very Short Introduction

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Throughout history, individuals have recorded their own lives and experiences. These personal writings provide an understanding of the ways in which lives have been lived, and the most fundamental accounts of what it means to be a self in the world. Autobiography: A Very Short Introduction defines what is meant by ‘autobiography’, and considers its relationship with similar literary forms such as memoirs, journals, letters, and diaries. Analysing the core themes in autobiographical writing, including confession, conversion, testimony, romanticism, and the journeying self, this VSI discusses the autobiographical consciousness (and the roles played by time, memory, and identity), and considers the relationship between psychoanalysis and autobiography. It also explores the themes of self-portraiture, photography, and performance.

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autobiography

[ aw-t uh -bahy- og -r uh -fee , -bee- , aw-toh- ]

• a history of a person's life written or told by that person.

/ ˌɔːtəʊbaɪˈɒɡrəfɪ; ˌɔːtəbaɪ- /

• an account of a person's life written or otherwise recorded by that person
• A literary work about the writer's own life. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa are autobiographical.

Discover More

Derived forms.

• ˌautobiˈographer , noun

Other Words From

• auto·bi·ogra·pher noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of autobiography 1

Example Sentences

In so doing, she gave us an autobiography that has held up for more than a century.

His handwritten autobiography reawakens in Lee a longing to know her motherland.

His elocution, perfected on stage and evident in television and film, make X’s autobiography an easy yet informative listen.

The book is not so much an autobiography of Hastings — or even Netflix’s origin story.

By contrast, Shing-Tung Yau says in his autobiography that the Calabi-Yau manifold was given its name by other people eight years after he proved its existence, which Eugenio Calabi had conjectured some 20 years before that.

Glow: The Autobiography of Rick JamesRick James David Ritz (Atria Books) Where to begin?

Hulanicki was the subject of a 2009 documentary, Beyond Biba, based on her 2007 autobiography From A to Biba.

And it was also during the phase of the higher autobiography.

“Nighttime was the worst,” Bennett wrote in his autobiography.

Then I picked up a book that shredded my facile preconceptions—Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young.

No; her parents had but small place in that dramatic autobiography that Daphne was now constructing for herself.

His collected works, with autobiography, were published in 1865 under the editorship of Charles Hawkins.

But there is one point about the book that deserves some considering, its credibility as autobiography.

I thought you were anxious for leisure to complete your autobiography.

The smallest fragment of a genuine autobiography seems to me valuable for the student of past epochs.

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What is an Autobiography? Definition, Elements, and Writing Tips

POSTED ON Oct 1, 2023

Written by Audrey Hirschberger

What is an autobiography, and how do you define autobiography, exactly? If you’re hoping to write an autobiography, it’s an important thing to know. After all, you wouldn’t want to mislabel your book.

What sets an autobiography apart from a memoir or a biography? And what type of writing is most similar to an autobiography? Should you even write one? How? Today we will be discussing all things autobiographical, so you can learn what an autobiography is, what sets it apart, and how to write one of your own – should you so choose. 

But before we get into writing tips, we must first define autobiography. So what is an autobiography, precisely? 

Need A Nonfiction Book Outline?

This Guide to Autobiographies Contains Information On:

What is an autobiography: autobiography meaning defined.

What is an autobiography? It’s a firsthand recounting of an author’s own life. So, if you were to write an autobiography, you would be writing a true retelling of your own life events. 

Autobiography cannot be bound to only one type of work. What an autobiography is has more to do with the contents than the format. For example, autobiographical works can include letters, diaries, journals, or books – and may not have even been meant for publication. 

An autobiography is what many celebrities, government officials, and important social figures sit down to write at the end of their lives or distinguished careers. 

Of course, the work doesn’t have to cover your whole life. You can absolutely write an autobiography in your 20s or 30s if you’ve lived through events worth sharing!

If an autobiography doesn’t cover the entire lifespan of the author, it can start to get confused with another genre of writing. So what’s an autobiography most similar to? And how can you tell it apart from other genres of writing? Let’s dive into the details. 

What type of writing is most similar to an autobiography?

A memoir is undoubtedly what type of writing is most similar to an autobiography. So what is the difference between an autobiography vs memoir ?

Simply put, a memoir is a book that an author writes about their own life with the intention of communicating a lesson or message to the reader. It doesn’t need to be written in chronological order, and only contains pieces of the author’s life story. 

An autobiography, on the other hand, is the author’s life story from birth to present, and it’s much less concerned with theme than it is with communicating a “highlight reel” of the author’s biggest life events. 

In addition to memoirs, there is also some confusion between autobiography vs biography . A biography is a true story about someone’s life, but it is not about the author’s life. 

Is an autobiography always nonfiction?

When many people define autobiography, they say it is a true or “nonfiction” telling of an author’s life – but that’s not always the case.

There is actually such a thing as autobiographical fiction .

Autobiographical fiction refers to a story that is based on fact and inspired by the author’s actual experiences…but has made-up characters or events. Any element in the story can be embellished upon or fabricated. 

Even the information in a standard “nonfiction” autobiography should be taken with a grain of salt. After all, anything written from the author’s perspective may contain certain biases, distortions, or unconscious omissions within the text. 

So if being nonfiction isn’t a defining characteristic of an autobiography, what is an autobiography defined by? 

The key elements of an autobiography

What’s an autobiography like from cover to cover? It should contain these key elements:

• A personal narrative : It is a firsthand account of the author's life experiences.
• A chronological structure : An autobiography typically follows a chronological order, tracing the author's life from birth to present.
• Reflection and insight : The book should contain the author's reflections, insights, and emotions about key life events.
• Key life events : The book should highlight significant events, milestones, and challenges in the author's life.
• Setting and context : There should be descriptions of the time period, cultural background, and environment to help the reader understand the author’s life.
• Authenticity : The author should be honest and sincere in presenting their life story.
• A personal perspective : An autobiography is written from the author's unique point of view.
• A strong conclusion : The ending of the book should reflect on the author's current state or outlook.

Famous Autobiography Examples

Now that you know what an autobiography is, let’s look at some famous autobiography examples .

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947)

Perhaps no autobiography is more famous than The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Her diary chronicles her profound thoughts, dreams, and fears as she hides with her family in the walls during the Holocaust. 

Anne's words resonate with the enduring spirit of hope amid unimaginable darkness.

The Autobiography of Ben Franklin by Benjamin Franklin (1909)

Benjamin Franklin's autobiography follows Franklin’s life from humble origins to one of America's greatest forefathers. While originally intended as a collection of anecdotes for his son, this autobiography has become one of the most famous works of American literature. 

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela (1994)

Long Walk to Freedom narrates Nelson Mandela's epic odyssey from South African prisoner to revered statesman. This masterpiece of an autobiography is a portrait of resilience against the backdrop of apartheid – and his words are a bastion for courage and human rights. 

Now you know what an autobiography is, and some examples of successful autobiographies, so it’s time to discuss what goes into actually writing one. 

Who Should Write an Autobiography?

Celebrity autobiographies are popular for a reason – the people who wrote them were already popular. 

The main purpose of an autobiography is to portray the life experiences and achievements of the author. If you haven’t made any massive achievements that people are already aware of, an autobiography might not be for you. Instead, you should learn how to write a memoir . 

After all, what’s an autobiography worth if no one reads it?

If you have made an important contribution to society, or have amassed a massive following of fans, then writing an autobiography could be a fabulous idea.

An autobiography is what allows you to claim your rightful place in history. It provides a legacy for your life, helps you to better understand your life’s journey, and can even be deeply therapeutic to write. 

But then comes the next problem: how to write an autobiography.

Tips on Writing Your Own Autobiography 

While memoirs are the books that teach life lessons, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give your autobiography meaning. The best autobiographies paint a vivid tapestry of personal growth and introspection. 

You don’t just want to tell the reader about your life – you want them to feel like they are living it with you.

And it’s not just about painting a picture with your prose. A lot of thought should go into everything from autobiography titles to page count. To get started, here are five tips for writing an autobiography:

• Know your audience : Understand who will read your autobiography and speak to them while writing.
• Be candid and authentic : A life seen through rose-colored glasses isn’t relatable. You should include your failures as well as your triumphs, and humanize yourself so your story resonates with your reader.
• Do your research : Of course you know what happened in your life, but how many details do you actually remember? You may need to sift through photos, archives, and diaries – and interview people close to you. Consider adding the photos to your book. 
• Identify key themes : Identify key events and life lessons that have shaped you. Reflect on how these themes have evolved over time.
• Edit and edit again : Write freely first, then edit rigorously. Seek feedback from trusted individuals and consider professional editing to ensure clarity and coherence in your narrative. NO ONE writes perfectly the first time. 

So there you have it, you are well on your way to understanding (and writing) an autobiography. 

If you'd still like more guidance for writing your autobiography, you can check out our free autobiography template . We can’t wait for you to share your life story with the world. 

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What Is an Autobiography?

What to Consider Before You Start to Write

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Your life story, or autobiography , should contain the basic framework that any essay should have, with four basic elements. Begin with an introduction that includes a thesis statement , followed by a body containing at least several paragraphs , if not several chapters. To complete the autobiography, you'll need a strong conclusion , all the while crafting an interesting narrative with a theme.

Did You Know?

The word autobiography  literally means SELF (auto), LIFE (bio), WRITING (graph). Or, in other words, an autobiography is the story of someone's life written or otherwise told by that person.

When writing your autobiography, find out what makes your family or your experience unique and build a narrative around that. Doing some research and taking detailed notes can help you discover the essence of what your narrative should be and craft a story that others will want to read.

Research Your Background

Just like the biography of a famous person, your autobiography should include things like the time and place of your birth, an overview of your personality, your likes and dislikes, and the special events that shaped your life. Your first step is to gather background detail. Some things to consider:

• What is interesting about the region where you were born?
• How does your family history relate to the history of that region?
• Did your family come to that region for a reason?

It might be tempting to start your story with "I was born in Dayton, Ohio...," but that is not really where your story begins. It's better to start with an experience. You may wish to start with something like why you were born where you were and how your family's experience led to your birth. If your narrative centers more around a pivotal moment in your life, give the reader a glimpse into that moment. Think about how your favorite movie or novel begins, and look for inspiration from other stories when thinking about how to start your own.

Think About Your Childhood

You may not have had the most interesting childhood in the world, but everyone has had a few memorable experiences. Highlight the best parts when you can. If you live in a big city, for instance, you should realize that many people who grew up in the country have never ridden a subway, walked to school, ridden in a taxi, or walked to a store a few blocks away.

On the other hand, if you grew up in the country you should consider that many people who grew up in the suburbs or inner city have never eaten food straight from a garden, camped in their backyards, fed chickens on a working farm, watched their parents canning food, or been to a county fair or a small-town festival.

Something about your childhood will always seem unique to others. You just have to step outside your life for a moment and address the readers as if they knew nothing about your region and culture. Pick moments that will best illustrate the goal of your narrative, and symbolism within your life.

Consider Your Culture

Your culture is your overall way of life , including the customs that come from your family's values and beliefs. Culture includes the holidays you observe, the customs you practice, the foods you eat, the clothes you wear, the games you play, the special phrases you use, the language you speak, and the rituals you practice.

As you write your autobiography, think about the ways that your family celebrated or observed certain days, events, and months, and tell your audience about special moments. Consider these questions:

• What was the most special gift you ever received? What was the event or occasion surrounding that gift?
• Is there a certain food that you identify with a certain day of the year?
• Is there an outfit that you wear only during a special event?

Think honestly about your experiences, too. Don't just focus on the best parts of your memories; think about the details within those times. While Christmas morning may be a magical memory, you might also consider the scene around you. Include details like your mother making breakfast, your father spilling his coffee, someone upset over relatives coming into town, and other small details like that. Understanding the full experience of positives and negatives helps you paint a better picture for the reader and lead to a stronger and more interesting narrative. Learn to tie together all the interesting elements of your life story and craft them into an engaging essay.

Establish the Theme

Once you have taken a look at your own life from an outsider’s point of view, you will be able to select the most interesting elements from your notes to establish a theme. What was the most interesting thing you came up with in your research? Was it the history of your family and your region? Here is an example of how you can turn that into a theme:

"Today, the plains and low hills of southeastern Ohio make the perfect setting for large cracker box-shaped farmhouses surrounded by miles of corn rows. Many of the farming families in this region descended from the Irish settlers who came rolling in on covered wagons in the 1830s to find work building canals and railways. My ancestors were among those settlers."

A little bit of research can make your own personal story come to life as a part of history, and historical details can help a reader better understand your unique situation. In the body of your narrative, you can explain how your family’s favorite meals, holiday celebrations, and work habits relate to Ohio history.

One Day as a Theme

You also can take an ordinary day in your life and turn it into a theme. Think about the routines you followed as a child and as an adult. Even a mundane activity like household chores can be a source of inspiration.

For example, if you grew up on a farm, you know the difference between the smell of hay and wheat, and certainly that of pig manure and cow manure—because you had to shovel one or all of these at some point. City people probably don’t even know there is a difference. Describing the subtle differences of each and comparing the scents to other scents can help the reader imagine the situation more clearly.

If you grew up in the city, you how the personality of the city changes from day to night because you probably had to walk to most places. You know the electricity-charged atmosphere of the daylight hours when the streets bustle with people and the mystery of the night when the shops are closed and the streets are quiet.

Think about the smells and sounds you experienced as you went through an ordinary day and explain how that day relates to your life experience in your county or your city:

"Most people don’t think of spiders when they bite into a tomato, but I do. Growing up in southern Ohio, I spent many summer afternoons picking baskets of tomatoes that would be canned or frozen and preserved for cold winter’s dinners. I loved the results of my labors, but I’ll never forget the sight of the enormous, black and white, scary-looking spiders that lived in the plants and created zigzag designs on their webs. In fact, those spiders, with their artistic web creations, inspired my interest in bugs and shaped my career in science."

One Event as a Theme

Perhaps one event or one day of your life made such a big impact that it could be used as a theme. The end or beginning of the life of another can affect our thoughts and actions for a long time:

"I was 12 years old when my mother passed away. By the time I was 15, I had become an expert in dodging bill collectors, recycling hand-me-down jeans, and stretching a single meal’s worth of ground beef into two family dinners. Although I was a child when I lost my mother, I was never able to mourn or to let myself become too absorbed in thoughts of personal loss. The fortitude I developed at a young age was the driving force that would see me through many other challenges."

Writing the Essay

Whether you determine that your life story is best summed up by a single event, a single characteristic, or a single day, you can use that one element as a theme . You will define this theme in your  introductory paragraph .

Create an outline with several events or activities that relate back to your central theme and turn those into subtopics (body paragraphs) of your story. Finally, tie up all your experiences in a summary that restates and explains the overriding theme of your life. 

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Meaning of autobiography in English

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• multi-volume

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Autobiography/Biography/Memoirs

What is an autobiography, what is a biography, what is a memoir.

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines autobiography as  "An account of a person's life given by himself or herself, especially one published in book form. Also: the process of writing such an account; these considered as a literary genre". 

An autobiographical essay is a short account of some aspect of the writer's life. It may include a brief description of the writer's experiences,hobbies,interests and some memorable events. Another term for an autobiographical essay is narrative essay. Since the autobiographical form is a first hand account of a person's life presented in its original form without interpretation or commentary from other writers, it is considered a primary source.

For additional information on this literary genre refer to Purdue's Online Writing Lab: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/685/04/

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a biography is defined as 

"The process of recording the events and circumstances of another person's life, esp. for publication (latterly in any of various written, recorded, or visual media); the documenting of individual life histories (and, later, other forms of thematic historical narrative), considered as a genre of writing or social history".

Since a biography is an account of a person's life written by someone else, it is considered to be a secondary source.

The OED defines memoir as  "autobiographical observations; reminiscences".

Autobiographies and memoirs are similar in that they both are written in the first person and both are personal and talk about the author's life. The difference is while autobiographies detail in chronological sequence the author's life from birth to death, memoirs are concerened with emotional truths and focus on random aspects of the author's life such as feelings or attitudes that stand out because they have had such an impact on the person's life. The line between autobiographies and memoirs is fuzzy that they are often used interchangeably.

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Is an autobiography a primary source?

An autobiography is a primary source. Authors of autobiographies are direct witnesses of the events and time described in the narration. Even though autobiographies are usually written after these events happened, they are still categorized as primary sources given the first-hand information, like letters or photographs, they provide.

➡️  What is a primary source?

➡️  What is a secondary source?

➡️  Is a letter a primary source?

For example, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank documents her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944 and is one of the world’s most famous autobiographies. This book, although edited, provides direct evidence of Anne Frank's experiences and is, therefore, considered a primary source.

On the other hand, fictional autobiographies are not primary sources in the same sense as legitimate autobiographies. These would be secondary sources when compared to real autobiographies. However, if your research was about fictional biographies and the focus was on their literary interpretation, then they could be primary sources.

How to cite an autobiography

The citation style used will determine the exact citation format. This is how you would cite a 1993 edition of the Anne Frank autobiography in APA:

Frank, A. (1993). Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (B. M. Mooyaart, Trans.). Bantam; Reissue edition.

Instead of worrying about the correct format of your citation in any given citation style, you can use a reference manager like Paperpile to automatically and correctly generate your citation for you.

Collect your sources and keep them tidily organized in your Paperpile library. Switch between thousands of citation styles and cite your references directly in Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and LaTeX:

Frequently Asked Questions about autobiographies as primary sources

No, an autobiography is a primary source. Authors of autobiographies are direct witnesses of the events and time described in the narration.

Yes, a Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela is a primary source.

Yes, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin is a primary source.

Yes, the Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi is a primary source.

Yes, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou is a primary source.

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Biographical Resources: A Research Guide: Introduction

Introduction.

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We purchase access to new online versions of major biographical reference sources as they become available. Many important biographical resources are available in print and on microfilm. This guide combines online titles with the selected microform and print biography titles in the Olin and Africana reference collections. Online databases are available to Cornell users only.

Biography is a branch of the study of history. The reliability of biographical sources varies widely and is subject to the usual vagaries of historical studies: lack of accurate information, too much or conflicting information, too little information, psychological theorizing, etc. But a well-written biographical article in a reliable reference book or database can be a source of both pleasure and enlightenment. Enjoy!

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Primary vs. Secondary Sources: Primary vs. Secondary Sources

Primary sources.

Primary sources are materials that are eyewitness accounts or as close to the original source as possible.

Qualitative data:

• What people say. They are usually Speeches , Interviews and Conversations, and they may be captured in Videos, Audio Recordings, or transcribed into text.
• What people write.  These include Autobiographies, Memoirs, Personal Journals and Diaries, Letters, Emails, Blogs, Twitter Feeds and other forms of Social Media.
• Images and Videos.
• Government Documents-- U.S . and rest of the world.
• Laws, Court Cases and Decisions, Treaties.
• Newspapers.

Quantitative data:

• Statistics and Data .
• Polls and Public Opinions .

Please note that a book is simply a format.  You can find both primary and secondary sources published in book form.

Secondary Sources

Secondary sources are interpretations and analyses based on primary sources.

For example, an autobiography is a primary source while a biography is a secondary source.

Typical secondary sources include:

• Scholarly Journal Articles.  Use these and books exclusively for writing Literature Reviews.
• Encyclopedias.
• Dictionaries.
• Documentaries.

Please note that a book is simply a format.  You can find primary and secondary sources published in book form.

When Secondary Sources Become Primary Sources

Often secondary and primary sources are relative concepts.  Typical secondary sources may be primary sources depending on the research topic.

• Intellectual history topics. For example, although scholarly journal articles are usually considered secondary sources, if one's topic is the history of human rights, then journal articles on human rights will be primary sources in this instance.  Similarly, research on the thinking of a scholar will include her published journal articles as primary sources.  
• Historical topics. Magazine articles are secondary sources, but for someone researching the view of judicial punishment in the 1920s, magazines from that time period are primary sources.  Indeed, any older publication, such as those prior to the 20th century, is very often automatically considered a primary source.  
• Newspapers may be either primary or secondary. Most articles in newspapers are secondary, but reporters may be considered as witnesses to an event.  Any topic on the media coverage of an event or phenomenon would treat newspapers as a primary source.  There are so many articles and types of articles in newspapers that newspapers can often be considered either primary or secondary.
• Last Updated: Aug 11, 2023 3:44 PM
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Autobiography as Testimony

• First Online: 20 April 2023

Cite this chapter

• Katherine Stone 3 &
• Roger Woods 4  

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Stone and Woods understand all autobiographical material as a form of testimony and examine how it is mediated both by its authors and its consumers. The chapter offers guidance on how those who gather and use autobiography as testimony can deal with the ethical risks of voyeurism, co-option, and failing to do justice to survivors as individuals.

The authors present analytical approaches to autobiography as testimony that take us beyond the conclusion that its value resides primarily in the insight in gives us into the subjective experience of history. They also ask whether perpetrator autobiography can be accommodated within existing analytical approaches, and they conclude that it presents in extreme form the challenges faced when assessing any form of autobiography as testimony.

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This collaborative production of autobiography is, of course, not new. For instance, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) resulted from the collaboration with the human rights activist and journalist Alex Haley. On collaborative autobiography, see Lejeune ( 1989 ), Eakin ( 1999 ) and Couser ( 2001 ). What is new is the intercultural dimension of the collaboration in ‘hybrid testimony’, as well as the explicit framing of the testimony for the western market.

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Stone, K., Woods, R. (2023). Autobiography as Testimony. In: Jones, S., Woods, R. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Testimony and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13794-5_8

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THE RULEBREAKER: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters, by Susan Page

Much of the material in “The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters” has been told before, with persuasive narrative control, by the late television journalist herself in her dishy 2008 memoir, “Audition.” Don’t let that stop the reader of this thorough, compassionate biography by Susan Page: It’s a valuable document, sobering where “Audition” aimed for sassy.

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She told of her fearful mother, and of the mentally disabled older sister to whose welfare she felt yoked. She wrote of the three unsatisfying marriages, and of her strained relationship with the daughter she adopted as an infant.

She breezily acknowledged the ease she felt throughout her life with complicated men of elastic ethics like Roy Cohn and Donald Trump. She leaned into her reputation as a “pushy cookie.”

Page, the Washington bureau chief of USA Today, who has also written books about Barbara Bush and Nancy Pelosi, tells many of the same stories. (“Audition” is an outsize presence in the endnotes.) But in placing the emphasis on all the rule-breaking Barbara Jill Walters had to do over her long life — she died in 2022 at 93 — the biographer pays respect to a toughness easy to undervalue today, when the collective memory may see only the well-connected woman with the instantly recognizable (thanks to Gilda Radner’s “SNL” impression) speech impediment.

There was no one like her — not Diane, not Katie, not Judy, not Connie, not Gwen, not Christiane. Not Ellen. Not Oprah. Having created her niche, Walters fought all her life to protect it. Because no one else would. Would that be the case today? Discuss.

“At age 35,” Page writes, “she had finally found her place, a space that bridged journalism and entertainment and promotion. Traditionalists viewed the combination with consternation. She ignored their doubts as she redefined their industry. She saw herself as a journalist, albeit of a new and evolving sort. In some ways, she would make herself a leader in the news business by changing what, exactly, that could include.”

Walters broke rules to save her father from debt and jail. She broke rules to secure on-air status — and pay — equal to that of the often hostile men around her. Walters broke rules to land scoops, gain access and bag interviews.

The account of the driven competition she felt with her fellow TV journalist Diane Sawyer is both fun and silly/sad in its evocation of a catty rumble: Isn’t such competition the everyday reality of the bookers working for the famous men who currently host late-night talk shows? Aren’t those late-night hybrids now the closest thing we have to influential news interviews — except, perhaps, on the women-talking daytime show “The View,” invented in large part by Barbara Walters?

Walters didn’t break rules to get the first on-air interview with Monica Lewinsky — she just worked her tuchis off, from the day the news of an affair broke to the night of March 3, 1999 — watched by 74 million Americans.

Walters was nearly 70 and famous; Lewinsky was a private 25-year-old woman whose affair with her married boss had thrown a country into hypocritical hysterics. The process of establishing trust could not be rushed.

The older woman asked the younger woman a chain of tough questions about sex and intimacy and character and judgment that no human should have to endure on national television. The younger woman answered with a dignity currently out of fashion both in celebrity self-presentation and on the floor of the U.S. Congress.

In the quarter-century since that extraordinary event — the essence of a Barbara Walters Interview — Lewinsky has demonstrated an inspiring power to live on her own terms and not on the assumptions of others. The achievement required rules to be broken, and has come with a price.

Barbara Walters knew what that was like.

THE RULEBREAKER : The Life and Times of Barbara Walters | By Susan Page | Simon & Schuster | 444 pp. | $30.99

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How RPA vendors aim to remain relevant in a world of AI agents

What’s the next big thing in enterprise automation? If you ask the tech giants, it’s agents — driven by generative AI.

There’s no universally accepted definition of agent , but these days the term is used to describe generative AI-powered tools that can perform complex tasks through human-like interactions across software and web platforms.

For example, an agent could create an itinerary by filling in a customer’s info on airlines’ and hotel chains’ websites. Or an agent could order the least expensive ride-hailing service to a location by automatically comparing prices across apps.

Vendors sense opportunity. ChatGPT maker OpenAI is reportedly deep into developing AI agent systems. And Google demoed a slew of agent-like products at its annual Cloud Next conference in early April.

“Companies should start preparing for wide-scale adoption of autonomous agents today,” analysts at Boston Consulting Group wrote recently in a report — citing experts who estimate that autonomous agents will go mainstream in three to five years.

Old-school automation

So where does that leave RPA?

Robotic process automation (RPA) came into vogue over a decade ago as enterprises turned to the tech to bolster their digital transformation efforts while reducing costs. Like an agent, RPA drives workflow automation. But it’s a much more rigid form, based on “if-then” preset rules for processes that can be broken down into strictly defined, discretized steps.

“RPA can mimic human actions, such as clicking, typing or copying and pasting, to perform tasks faster and more accurately than humans,” Saikat Ray, VP analyst at Gartner, explained to TechCrunch in an interview. “However, RPA bots have limitations when it comes to handling complex, creative or dynamic tasks that require natural language processing or reasoning skills.”

This rigidity makes RPA expensive to build — and considerably limits its applicability.

A 2022 survey from Robocorp, an RPA vendor, finds that of the organizations that say they’ve adopted RPA, 69% experience broken automation workflows at least once a week — many of which take hours to fix. Entire businesses have been made out of helping enterprises manage their RPA installations and prevent them from breaking.

RPA vendors aren’t naive. They’re well aware of the challenges — and believe that generative AI could solve many of them without hastening their platforms’ demise. In RPA vendors’ minds, RPA and generative AI-powered agents can peacefully co-exist — and perhaps one day even grow to complement each other.

Generative AI automation

UiPath, one of the larger players in the RPA market with an estimated 10,000+ customers, including Uber, Xerox and CrowdStrike, recently announced new generative AI features focused on document and message processing, as well as taking automated actions to deliver what UiPath CEO Bob Enslin calls “one-click digital transformation.”

“These features provide customers generative AI models that are trained for their specific tasks,” Enslin told TechCrunch. “Our generative AI powers workloads such as text completion for emails, categorization, image detection, language translation, the ability to filter out personally identifiable information [and] quickly answering any people-topic-related questions based off of knowledge from internal data.”

One of UiPath’s more recent explorations in the generative AI domain is Clipboard AI, which combines UiPath’s platform with third-party models from OpenAI, Google and others to — as Enslin puts it — “bring the power of automation to anyone that has to copy/paste.” Clipboard AI lets users highlight data from a form, and — leveraging generative AI to figure out the right places for the copied data to go — point it to another form, app, spreadsheet or database.

Image Credits: UiPath

“UiPath sees the need to bring action and AI together; this is where value is created,” Enslin said. “We believe the best performance will come from those that combine generative AI and human judgment — what we call human-in-the-loop — across end-to-end processes.”

Automation Anywhere, UiPath’s main rival, is also attempting to fold generative AI into its RPA technologies.

Last year, Automation Anywhere launched generative AI-powered tools to create workflows from natural language, summarize content, extract data from documents and — perhaps most significantly — adapt to changes in apps that would normally cause an RPA automation to fail.

“[Our generative AI models are] developed on top of [open] large language models and trained with anonymized metadata from more than 150 million automation processes across thousands of enterprise applications,” Peter White, SVP of enterprise AI and automation at Automation Anywhere, told TechCrunch. “We continue to build custom machine learning models for specific tasks within our platform and are also now building customized models on top of foundational generative AI models using our automation datasets.”

Next-gen RPA

Ray notes it’s important to be cognizant of generative AI’s limitations — namely biases and hallucinations — as it powers a growing number of RPA capabilities. But, risks aside, he believes generative AI stands to add value to RPA by transforming the way these platforms work and “creating new possibilities for automation.”

“Generative AI is a powerful technology that can enhance the capabilities of RPA platforms enabling them to understand and generate natural language, automate content creation, improve decision-making and even generate code,” Ray said. “By integrating generative AI models, RPA platforms can offer more value to their customers, increase their productivity and efficiency and expand their use cases and applications.”

Craig Le Clair, principal analyst at Forrester, sees RPA platforms as being ripe for expansion to support autonomous agents and generative AI as their use cases grow. In fact, he anticipates RPA platforms morphing into all-around toolsets for automation — toolsets that help deploy RPA in addition to related generative AI technologies.

“RPA platforms have the architecture to manage thousands of task automations and this bodes well for central management of AI agents,” he said. “Thousands of companies are well established with RPA platforms and will be open to using them for generative AI-infused agents. RPA has grown in part thanks to its ability to integrate easily with existing work patterns, through UI integration, and this will remain valuable for more intelligent agents going forward.”

UiPath is already beginning to take steps in this direction with a new capability, Context Grounding, that entered preview earlier in the month. As Enslin explained it to me, Context Grounding is designed to improve the accuracy of generative AI models — both first- and third-party — by converting business data those models might draw on into an “optimized” format that’s easier to index and search.

“Context Grounding extracts information from company-specific datasets, like a knowledge base or internal policies and procedures, to create more accurate and insightful responses,” Enslin said.

If there’s anything holding RPA vendors back, it’s the ever-present temptation to lock customers in, Le Clair said. He stressed the need for platforms to “remain agnostic” and offer tools that can be configured to work with a range of current — and future — enterprise systems and workflows.

To that, Enslin pledged that UiPath will remain “open, flexible and responsible.”

“The future of AI will require a combination of specialized AI with generative AI,” he continued. “We want customers to be able to confidently use all kinds of AI.”

White didn’t commit to neutrality exactly. But he emphasized that Automation Anywhere’s roadmap is being heavily shaped by customer feedback.

“What we hear from every customer, across every industry, is that their ability to incorporate automation in many more use cases has increased exponentially with generative AI,” he said. “With generative AI infused into intelligent automation technologies like RPA, we see the potential for organizations to reduce operating costs and increase productivity. Companies who fail to adopt these technologies will struggle to compete against others who embrace generative AI and automation.”