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50-411: “Sketches” suggests the mode of composition of this work. De Quincey did not deliberately plan and forthwith compose his autobiography . Rather he began by contributing reminiscent articles to periodicals, a practice which he continued until he had written and published about 30 essays. In 1853, he collected these articles, revised, enlarged and polished them with his customary diligence, and gave them to

100-434: A disruption. He wrote that some "may say it was sinful of me to allow myself to occupy a chair of lies even for one hour". In the introduction to the 1961 translation by R. S. Pine-Coffin he suggests that this harsh interpretation of Augustine's own past is intentional so that his audience sees him as a sinner blessed with God's mercy instead of as a holy figurehead. Considering the fact that the sins Augustine describes are of

150-502: A ghostwriter, are routinely published. Some celebrities, such as Naomi Campbell , admit to not having read their "autobiographies". Some sensationalist autobiographies such as James Frey's A Million Little Pieces have been publicly exposed as having embellished or fictionalized significant details of the authors' lives. Autobiography has become an increasingly popular and widely accessible form. A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey (1979) has become an Australian literary classic. With

200-506: A method to improve the Biblical exegesis in presence of particularly difficult passages. Readers shall believe all the Scripture is inspired by God and that each author wrote nothing in which he did not believe personally, or that he believed to be false. Readers must distinguish philologically, and keep separate, their own interpretations, the written message and the originally intended meaning of

250-416: A prayer to God. For example, both books VIII and IX begin with "you have broken the chains that bound me; I will sacrifice in your honor". Because Augustine begins each book with a prayer, Albert C. Outler, a professor of theology at Southern Methodist University, argues that Confessions is a "pilgrimage of grace… [a] retrac[ing] [of] the crucial turnings of the way by which [Augustine] had come. And since he

300-504: A rather common nature (e.g. the theft of pears when a young boy), these examples might also enable the reader to identify with the author and thus make it easier to follow in Augustine's footsteps on his personal road to conversion. This identification is an element of the protreptic and paraenetic character of the Confessions . Due to the nature of Confessions , it is clear that Augustine

350-517: 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 's Black Elk Speaks . Deliverance from Error by Al-Ghazali

400-405: A series of moments in time". 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

450-511: 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

500-884: Is William Hazlitt 's Liber Amoris (1823), a painful examination of the writer's love-life. With the rise of education, cheap newspapers and cheap printing, modern concepts of fame and celebrity began to develop, and the beneficiaries of this were not slow to cash in on this by producing autobiographies. It became the expectation—rather than the exception—that those in the public eye should write about themselves—not only writers such as Charles Dickens (who also incorporated autobiographical elements in his novels) and Anthony Trollope , but also politicians (e.g. Henry Brooks Adams ), philosophers (e.g. John Stuart Mill ), churchmen such as Cardinal Newman , and entertainers such as P. T. Barnum . Increasingly, in accordance with romantic taste, these accounts also began to deal, amongst other topics, with aspects of childhood and upbringing—far removed from

550-899: 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 Brontë '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. The historian Flavius Josephus introduces his autobiography Josephi Vita ( c.  99 ) with self-praise, which

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600-419: 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

650-473: Is considered one of the great masterpieces of western literature. Peter Abelard 's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum is in the spirit of Augustine's Confessions , an outstanding autobiographical document of its period. In the 15th century, Leonor López de Córdoba , a Spanish noblewoman, wrote her Memorias , which may be the first autobiography in Castillian . Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur , who founded

700-429: Is followed by a justification of his actions as a Jewish rebel commander of Galilee. The 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 would not be read aloud in privacy. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) applied the title Confessions to his autobiographical work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau used

750-488: Is the most complete record of any single person from the 4th and 5th centuries. It is a significant theological work, featuring spiritual meditations and insights. In the work, Augustine writes about how he regrets having led a sinful and immoral life. He discusses his regrets for following the Manichaean religion and believing in astrology . He writes about his friend Nebridius's role in helping to persuade him that astrology

800-505: Is thought to be divisible into books which symbolize various aspects of the Trinity and trinitarian belief. Confessions was not only meant to encourage conversion, but it offered guidelines for how to convert. Augustine extrapolates from his own experiences to fit others' journeys. Augustine recognizes that God has always protected and guided him. This is reflected in the structure of the work. Augustine begins each book within Confessions with

850-531: The Mughal dynasty of South Asia kept a journal Bāburnāma ( Chagatai / Persian : بابر نامہ ; literally: "Book of Babur" or "Letters of Babur" ) which was written between 1493 and 1529. One of the first great autobiographies of the Renaissance is that of the sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), written between 1556 and 1558, and entitled by him simply Vita ( Italian : Life ). He declares at

900-563: 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 . Leonor López de Córdoba (1362–1420) wrote what is supposed to be the first autobiography in Spanish. The English Civil War (1642–1651) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including works by Sir Edmund Ludlow and Sir John Reresby . French examples from

950-532: The Manichean faith. Confessions thus constitutes an appeal to encourage conversion. Confessions is one of the most influential works in not only the history of Christian theology, but philosophy in general. Kierkegaard and his Existentialist philosophy were substantially influenced by Augustine's contemplation of the nature of his soul. Ludwig Wittgenstein considered the book to be possibly "the most serious book ever written", discussing or mentioning it in

1000-544: The Sunday mornings when he went with his family to a “church having all things ancient and venerable, and the proportions majestic,” and of his stay at “Oxford, ancient mother, hoary with ancestral honors.” The appeal of the whole series is strong, and most readers that return to these Sketches frequently to commune with the strange elfin spirit of De Quincey, to pass under the spell of the “organ music” of his rhetoric, to feel something of that “mighty and essential solitude” which, in

1050-456: The anti-sex and anti-marriage Manichaeism in attempts to seek sexual morality; and his subsequent return to Christianity due to his embracement of Skepticism and the New Academy movement (developing the view that sex is good, and that virginity is better, comparing the former to silver and the latter to gold; Augustine's views subsequently strongly influenced Western theology ). Confessions

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1100-406: The author had in mind when he wrote a biblical book, but he has the duty to do his best to approach that original meaning and intention without contradicting the letter of the written text. The interpretation must stay "within the truth" (XII.25) and not outside it. Much of the information about Augustine comes directly from his own writing. Augustine's Confessions provide significant insight into

1150-471: The autobiographer's review of their own life. Autobiographical works are by nature subjective. The inability—or unwillingness—of the author to accurately recall memories has in certain cases resulted in misleading or incorrect information. Some sociologists and psychologists have noted that autobiography offers the author the ability to recreate history. Spiritual autobiography is an account of an author's struggle or journey towards God, followed by conversion

1200-499: The critical and commercial success in the United States of such memoirs as Angela’s Ashes and The Color of Water , more and more people have been encouraged to try their hand at this genre. Maggie Nelson 's book The Argonauts is one of the recent autobiographies. Maggie Nelson calls it autotheory —a combination of autobiography and critical theory. A genre where the "claim for truth" overlaps with fictional elements though

1250-481: 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. Possibly

1300-572: The first publicly available autobiography written in English was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in 1630 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

1350-418: The first thirty-three years of his life. Augustine does not paint himself as a holy man, but as a sinner. The sins that Augustine confesses are of many different severities and of many different natures, such as lust/adultery, stealing, and lies. For example, in the second chapter of Book IX Augustine references his choice to wait three weeks until the autumn break to leave his position of teaching without causing

1400-574: The genre at the start of the first century AD with his Tristia ) and was an influential model for Christian writers throughout the Middle Ages . Henry Chadwick wrote that Confessions will "always rank among the great masterpieces of western literature". The work is not a complete autobiography, as it was written during Augustine's early 40s and he lived long afterwards, producing another important work, The City of God . Nonetheless, it does provide an unbroken record of his development of thought and

1450-469: The messenger and author (in Latin : intentio ). Disagreements may arise "either as to the truth of the message itself or as to the messenger's meaning" (XII.23). The truthfulness of the message itself is granted by God who inspired it to the extensor and who made possible the transmission and spread of the content across centuries and among believers. In principle, the reader isn't capable of ascertaining what

1500-480: The next three hundred years conformed to them. Another autobiography of the period is De vita propria , by the Italian mathematician, physician and astrologer Gerolamo Cardano (1574). 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 . The poetic autobiography Ardhakathānaka (The Half Story),

1550-467: The outward events of his life, and thus have attained a brevity and a form such as David Hume attained in his autobiographic sketch. De Quincey did not do this, and, in consequence, his spirit is communicated. Apart from their value as a revelation of De Quincey's soul, the Autobiographic Sketches are remarkable from a purely literary point of view. To be sure, they exhibit both the defects and

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1600-438: The principles of "Cellinian" autobiography. From the 17th century onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertines , serving a public taste for titillation, have been frequently published. Typically pseudonymous , they were (and are) largely works of fiction written by ghostwriters . So-called "autobiographies" of modern professional athletes and media celebrities—and to a lesser extent about politicians—generally written by

1650-546: The public under the title Autobiographic Sketches . However, Sketches does not contain all of De Quincey's autobiographical work: it must be supplemented by a large amount of his other reminiscent composition, particularly by the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater , by The English Mail-Coach , and by that noteworthy series of papers included under the general title, Suspiria de Profundis . In truth, all of these compositions might, with entire propriety, be included under

1700-471: The same period include the memoirs of Cardinal de Retz (1614–1679) and the Duc de Saint-Simon . 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

1750-551: 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. Augustine's was arguably the first Western autobiography ever written, and became an influential model for Christian writers throughout the Middle Ages . It tells of the hedonistic lifestyle Augustine lived for a time within his youth, associating with young men who boasted of their sexual exploits; his following and leaving of

1800-400: The start: "No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem great achievements, if he cares for truth and goodness, ought to write the story of his own life in his own hand; but no one should venture on such a splendid undertaking before he is over forty." These criteria for autobiography generally persisted until recent times, and most serious autobiographies of

1850-451: The time of writing unless he was actually present at the events recounted. Other notable English autobiographies of the 17th century include those of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1643, published 1764) and John Bunyan ( Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners , 1666). Jarena Lee (1783–1864) was the first African American woman to have a published biography in the United States. Following

1900-484: The title The Confessions of Saint Augustine in order to distinguish the book from other books with similar titles. Its original title was Confessions in Thirteen Books , and it was composed to be read out loud with each book being a complete unit. Confessions is generally considered one of Augustine's most important texts. It is widely seen as the first Western autobiography ever written ( Ovid had invented

1950-402: The title Autobiographic Sketches . As a matter of fact, the autobiography of De Quincey, more than that of almost anyone else, is fragmentary — a succession of sketches loosely connected and widely scattered. De Quincey lived from early childhood in a dream world ; the record of his successive dreams constitutes his true inner autobiography. De Quincey might have written an objective account of

2000-430: 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. An English example

2050-400: The virtues of De Quincey's style. At one time, the author's “impassioned prose” flows swiftly; at another, almost uninteresting narrative is becalmed in sluggish prose. In general, however, the style is of high quality and the narrative compelling. De Quincey's account of his visit “about an hour after high noon” to the chamber where his little sister lay dead is memorable, as is his account of

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2100-497: The words of the author, “stretches out a sceptre of fascination.” Autobiography An autobiography , sometimes informally called an autobio , is a self-written biography of one's own life. The word "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

2150-457: The work still purports to be autobiographical is autofiction . Confessions (Augustine) Confessions ( Latin : Confessiones ) is an autobiographical work by Augustine of Hippo , consisting of 13 books written in Latin between AD 397 and 400. The work outlines Augustine's sinful youth and his conversion to Christianity . Modern English translations of it are sometimes published under

2200-565: 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. 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. Following in

2250-432: Was in its present sense, by Robert Southey in 1809. 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

2300-412: Was no longer a threat to most Christians as was the case two centuries earlier. Instead, a Christian's struggles were usually internal. Augustine clearly presents his struggle with worldly desires such as lust. Augustine's conversion was quickly followed by his ordination as a priest in 391 AD and then appointment as bishop in 395 AD. Such rapid ascension certainly raised criticism of Augustine. Confessions

2350-602: Was not only incorrect but evil, and Saint Ambrose 's role in his conversion to Christianity. The first nine books are autobiographical and the last four are commentary and significantly more philosophical. He shows intense sorrow for his sexual sins and writes on the importance of sexual morality. The books were written as prayers to God, thus the title, based on the Psalms of David ; and it begins with "For Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee." The work

2400-430: Was not only writing for himself but that the work was intended for public consumption. Augustine's potential audience included baptized Christians, catechumens, and those of other faiths. Peter Brown , in his book The Body and Society , writes that Confessions targeted "those with similar experience to Augustine's own." Furthermore, with his background in Manichean practices, Augustine had a unique connection to those of

2450-403: Was sure that it was God's grace that had been his prime mover in that way, it was a spontaneous expression of his heart that cast his self-recollection into the form of a sustained prayer to God." Not only does Confessions glorify God but it also suggests God’s help in Augustine's path to redemption. Written after the legalization of Christianity, Confessions dated from an era where martyrdom

2500-590: Was written between 397–398 AD, suggesting self-justification as a possible motivation for the work. With the words "I wish to act in truth, making my confession both in my heart before you and in this book before the many who will read it" in Book X Chapter 1, Augustine both confesses his sins and glorifies God through humility in His grace, the two meanings that define "confessions", in order to reconcile his imperfections not only to his critics but also to God. St. Augustine suggested

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