Autobiography genre definition english language

Self-written biography

For information of autobiographies on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Autobiography.For other uses, see Autobiography (disambiguation).

An autobiography,^[a] sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written biography of one's own life.

Autobiography genre definition english language

Definition

The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the EnglishperiodicalThe 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 mo