Hello and welcome to a Sunday Morning Meet-Up in which I discuss Books to Read: A is for
Autobiography. An autobiography is a self-written account
of the life of oneself. 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 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 a series of moments in time". Autobiography thus takes stock of
the auto-biographer’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 the auto-biographer's
review of his or her 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 a religious conversion, often interrupted by moments of regression. The
author re-frames his or her life as a demonstration of divine intention through encounters with
the Divine. The earliest example of a spiritual autobiography is Augustine's Confessions.
Confessions is the name of the autobiographical work, consisting of 13 books, by Saint Augustine
of Hippo, written in Latin between 397 and 400 AD. The work outlines Saint Augustine's
sinful youth and his conversion to Christianity. Modern English translations of it are sometimes
published under 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, and was 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 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 and I might add not always
for the good.
Professor Henry Chadwick wrote that Confessions will "always rank among the great masterpieces
of western literature." I have to admit that it is not one of my favourites,
as I found it difficult to read. Augustine had 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. The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau was
two distinct works, each part consisting of six books. Rousseau provides an account of
the experiences that shaped his personality and ideas.
Rousseau's work is notable as one of the first major autobiographies. Prior to the Confessions,
the two great autobiographies were Augustine's own Confessions and Saint Teresa's Life of
Herself. However, both of these works focused on the religious experiences of their authors;
the Confessions was one of the first autobiographies in which an individual wrote of his own life
mainly in terms of his worldly experiences and personal feelings. Rousseau recognized
the unique nature of his work; it opens with the famous words: "I have resolved on an enterprise
which has no precedent and which, once complete, will have no imitator. My purpose is to display
to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray will be
myself." The Confessions is noted for its detailed
account of Rousseau's more humiliating and shameful moments. For instance, Rousseau recounts
an incident when, while a servant, he covered up his theft of a ribbon by framing a young
girl—who was working in the house—for the crime. In addition, Rousseau explains
the manner in which he disposes of the five children he had with Thérèse Levasseur.
Rousseau’s example was soon followed: not long after publication, many other writers
(such as Goethe, Wordsworth, Stendhal, De Quincey, Casanova and Alfieri) wrote their
own similarly-styled autobiographies. Anthony Trollope wrote a famous Autobiography.
Trollope's Autobiography offers a fascinating insight into his literary life and opinions.
After a miserable childhood and misspent youth, Trollope turned his life around at the age
of twenty-six. By 1860 the 'hobbledehoy' had become both a senior civil servant and a best-selling
novelist. He worked for the Post Office for many years and stood unsuccessfully for Parliament.
Best-known for the two series of novels grouped loosely around the clerical and political
professions, the Barsetshire and Palliser series, in his Autobiography Trollope frankly
describes his writing habits. His apparent preoccupation with contracts, deadlines, and
earnings, and his account of the remorseless regularity with which he produced his daily
quota of words, has divided opinion ever since. Trollope’s common-sense approach to his
writing is typical of the realistic method he chose to adopt in his novels.
This purports to be the only autobiography by a major Victorian novelist, however, it
has been argued that the biography produced under the name of Florence Emily Hardy was,
in fact, Thomas Hardy’s autobiography. One of the literary world's great deceptions
was perpetrated when Thomas Hardy wrote his Life in secret for publication after his death
as an official biography. Since the true circumstances of its composition have been known The Early
Life and Later Years of Thomas Hardy, published over the name of Florence Emily Hardy, has
frequently been referred to as Hardy's autobiography. This is the copy that I own. But this is not
the whole truth: Florence altered much of what Hardy meant to appear in his 'biography'.
Through careful examination of pre- publication texts, Michael Millgate has retrieved the
text as it stood at the time of Hardy's final revision. For the first time The Life and
Work of Thomas Hardy can be read as a true work of autobiography - an addition to the
Hardy canon.
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 his or her own memories, feelings and emotions. A typical example of
this is Casanova’s Memoirs. 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 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. And now for a quick recap and I’ll be back
on Thursday with my November Mid-Month Wrap-Up.