“CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER”
(THOMAS DE QUINCEY)
(ENGLISH WRITER)
(1785 – 1859)
“OUT OF AFRICA”
(KAREN BLIXEN)
(DANISH AUTHOR)
(1885 – 1962)
“CLAPTON: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY”
(ERIC CLAPTON)
(ENGLISH MUSICIAN)
(born 1945)
(an autobiography (from the greek, αὐτός-autos self + βίος-bios life + γράφειν-graphein to write) is a self-written account of the life of a person)
(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 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 the autobiographer’s review of his or her life)
XXX
**********************************************************************************************
**********************************************************************************************
********************************************
********************************************
**********************************************************************************************
********************************************
********************************************
**********************************************************************************************