Autobiography: A Very Short Introduction

Description

Autobiography is one of the most popular of written forms. Laura Marcus defines what autobiographies are, considering their relationship with similar literary forms, and analysing the core themes in autobiographical writing. She also discusses how autobiography offers the most fundamental accounts of what it means to be a self in the world.

• Defines what autobiographies are, and considers their relationship with similar literary forms such as memoirs, journals, letters, diaries, and essays
• Discusses how this form of writing provides literary critics, philosophers, historians and psychologists with an understanding of the ways in which past lives have been lived
• Analyses how autobiography offers the most fundamental accounts of what it means to be a self in the world
• Considers the core themes in autobiographical writing, such as confession, romanticism, and family relationships
• Explores the ways in which fiction and autobiography have shaped each other
• Part of the Very Short Introductions series - over nine million copies sold worldwide

About the Author(s)

Laura Marcus, Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature and Fellow of New College, Oxford

Laura Marcus is Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature and Fellow of New College at Oxford. She is also a Fellow of the British Academy. Marcus has published widely on nineteenth and twentieth-century literature and culture, with books on autobiography, Virginia Woolf, modernist writing and literature and film. Her publications in the field of life-writing include Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice (Manchester Univerity Press, 1994), and numerous essays on autobiography and biography.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1:Confession, Conversion, Testimony
2:The Journeying Self
3:Autobiographical Consciousness
4:Autobiography and psychoanalysis
5:Family Histories and the Autobiography of Childhood
6:Public Selves
7:Self-portraiture, photography and performance
References
Further Reading
Index

Reviews

"Marcus's book is an excellent overview of autobiographical writing from diverse literatures and genres, paying particular attention to women writers and philosophical questions." - Philipp Reisner, Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies

"excellent VSI" - ANZ LitLovers LiBlog

"A useful and entertaining introduction to autobiography by its foremost theorist. Clear, comprehensive, and very clever. For students and scholars alike." - Zachary Leader, University of Roehampton