Autobiography definition and examples

An autobiography is an account of a person's life written or otherwise recorded by that person. Adjective: autobiographical.

Many scholars regard the Confessions (c. 398) by Augustine of Hippo (354–430) as the first autobiography.

The term fictional autobiography (or pseudoautobiography) refers to novels that employ first-personnarrators who recount the events of their lives as if they actually happened. Well-known examples include David Copperfield (1850) by Charles Dickens and Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951).

Some critics believe that all autobiographies are in some ways fictional. Patricia Meyer Spacks has observed that "people do make themselves up. . . . To read an autobiography is to encounter a self as an imaginative being" ( The Female Imagination, 1975).

For the distinction between a memoir and an autobiographical composition, see memoir as well as the examples and observations below. 

Etymology

From the Greek, "self" + "life" + "write"

Exam

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autobiographynoun

There is one meaning in OED's entry for the noun autobiography. See ‘Meaning & use’ for definition, usage, and quotation evidence.

About 6occurrences per million words in modern written English

1790	0.064
1800	0.054
1810	0.069
1820	0.24
1830	0.52
1840	0.95
1850	1.2
1860	1.5
1870	1.7
1880	2.0
1890	2.3
1900	2.4
1910	2.7
1920	3.1
1930	3.7
1940	4.2
1950	4.4
1960	4.7
1970	5.1
1980	5.9
1990	6.3
2000	6.5
2010	6.2

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Earliest known use

late 1700s

The earliest known use of the noun autobiography is in the late 1700s.

OED's earliest evidence for autobiography is from 1797, in the writing of William Taylor, reviewer and translator.

Nearby entries

1. autobasidium, n.1895–
2. autobio, n.1856–
3. autobiog, n.1829–
4. autobiographal, adj.1845–
5. autobiographer, n.1807–
6. autobiographic, adj.1818–
7. autobiographical, adj.1
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   Meaning of autobiography in English

   Critics often applaud rock autobiographies that go at least partially ' against type'.

   From the Cambridge English Corpus

   First, rock autobiographies typically disclose previously uncirculated or private stories from an ' insider' point of view.

   From the Cambridge English Corpus

   On a more general level, this book points to the perennial difficulties that confront historians who try to incorporate autobiographies in their studies.

   From the Cambridge English Corpus

   Indeed, this process shapes one of the criteria by which they judge rock autobiographies.

   From the Cambridge English Corpus

   Even where less tendentious autobiographies are involved, a lifetime's reading is a heterogeneous business that must often defy the powers of an autobiographer's memory.

   From the Cambridge English Corpus

   Her evidence is drawn from a huge variety of plays, letters, prose fictions, biographies, autobiographies, and journalism.

   From the Cambridge English Corpus

   However, a careful comparison of the two autobiographies, and of how the au