Autobiography is among the most popular of written forms. From Casanova to Benjamin Franklin towards the Kardashians, people throughout history have got recorded their own lives and encounters. These personal writings are central to the work of literary critics, philosophers, historians and psychologists, who’ve within autobiographies from across the centuries not merely an understanding of the ways in which lives have already been lived, but the most fundamental accounts of what this means to be always a personal in the globe.

In this Extremely Short Introduction Laura Marcus defines what we mean by ‘autobiography’, and considers its relationship with similar literary forms such as memoirs, journals, letters, diaries, and essays. Examining the core styles in autobiographical composing, such as for example confession, conversion and testimony; romanticism and the journeying self; Marcus discusses the autobiographical awareness (as well as the roles played by period, memory and identity), and considers the relationship between psychoanalysis and autobiography. Exploring the designs of self-portraiture and overall performance, Marcus also discusses the ways in which fiction and autobiography possess shaped each other.