the features of autobiography

The 8 Main Features of Autobiography

An autobiography is an account of the life of a person who is written by herself. The work is personal, since the author is in charge of exposing the details of his life. It is a literary wording of life experiences.

The main function that the autobiography fulfills is the one to allow to see the vital experiences of the author from its own perspective. It is a literary genre that lies on the border between literature and history.

The definition that best fits the autobiography is that of the French writer Philippe Lejeune:"a retrospective narrative in prose that a real person makes of his own existence, while emphasizing his individual life. In particular on the history of his personality ".

One of the main features of autobiography is the author's identity. He is a character and narrator.

An autobiography will always be written in the first person, where the"I"abounds throughout the story. It tells the experiences and experiences of the author, his important events and also the tragic events.

We use what is known as the autobiographical pact, which is the contract between author and reader, where the author agrees that all his autobiography is truthful.

This pact is what allows one to distinguish between an autobiography and an autobiographical novel, where the facts are based on the life of the narrator, but do not have to be perfectly truthful.

Through an autobiography, the author literally writes his life and the changes that have occurred with his personality and his way of being through time. It is narrated in prose and we must take care of the details since it is a literary text

Main features of the autobiography

The autobiography must cover certain points.

You can include all the information that is considered important. It has to be personal, including essential information such as name, age, date of birth, place of residence, etc.

Within the personal information that is included it should be mentioned to the family that you have, the brothers and sisters, the people that mark the important things in your life.

In addition it should include the academic information that the author has received, place of studies, the achievements and prizes received...

It is a non-fiction writing

The autobiographical pact is established between the author and the reader, where everything that is related is true.

The writer in this work has absolute freedom in which he expresses his ideas or feelings about the events and how they influenced him.

It relates the life of the author

It can be considered a totally intimate confession in which the author narrates his most personal secrets.

It analyzes all the facts that happened during a life, and in many cases to put them in perspective of what it has lived.

The autobiography is characterized by the fact that the author, who is also a narrator, is at the same time the protagonist of the stories that are narrated. The writer is the center of the work as he is telling his own story.

Without fixed structure

The autobiography is characterized by not having a fixed structure. Each writer chooses his own structure, does not need to follow a chronological order to narrate the facts happened.

Formal or informal language

In the autobiography the writer can choose the language he wants to use. You can choose the type of language that best suits you to express yourself and tell your life.

You can choose the tone in which to write the biography:

• It can be a melodramatic tone where the events that happen to the author are unfortunate.
• A humorous tone where the story is presented from a laughing or comical point of view.
• An ironic tone, where an idea is expressed by saying the opposite, but so that the reader understands that it is an irony.
• Sarcastic tone, where the narrations reflect a lack of respect, where sarcasm is a cruel mockery.
• Heroic tone where the author has a strong personality and emerges from the dangers that arise.
• Nostalgic tone where pleasant experiences are evoked and remembered with a lost happiness.

Focuses on life

The autobiography is used to tell and narrate the whole life of the author. Unlike memories that focus more on a particular stage or event.

For this reason the autobiography is more complete, since it is not located in a limited period of time.

It is not a fixed rule, the author does not always remember all the moments of his life, in addition he can choose which to include in his work or not.

Draw conclusions and learnings

The autobiographies serve to draw conclusions from the lives of the people, they serve as an exercise of interiorization where they discover all the way that they have followed until arriving at the place where they are.

• ROSA, Nicolás. The Art of Oblivion: About the Autobiography . Puntosur, 1990.
• PANESI, Jorge. The price of the autobiography: Jacques Derrida, the circumcised. Orbis Tertius , 1996, vol. 1, paragraph 1.
• CABALLÉ, Anna. Ink daffodils: essays on autobiographical literature in Spanish . Megazul, 1995.
• ORBE, Juan Bautista. Autobiography and writing . Corregidor, 1994.
• Page 1 The autobiography and its related genres. Epos: Journal of Philology , 1989, no. 5, p. 439.
• OCAMPO, Victoria. Autobiography . South, 1981.
• GUASCH, Ana María. Visual Autobiographies: From File to Index . .

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How to write an Autobiography

A Complete Guide to Writing an Autobiography

A quick scan of the bestseller lists will quickly reveal that we are obsessed with the lives of other people.

Books by and about actors, politicians, and sports stars regularly top the charts as we seek to catch a glimpse into the lives of remarkable people.

While many of these books are written by professional writers after meticulous research ( biographies ), just as many are written by the person themselves (autobiographies) – albeit often with a ghostwriter’s help.

Today we are going to show you how to write an autobiography that tells a great life story.

WHAT IS AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY?

Autobiography is a subcategory of the biography genre and, strictly speaking, it’s a life story written by the subject themselves.

Autobiographies are sometimes confused with memoirs and it’s no surprise as the two share many features in common. For example, both are written in the first person and contain details of the subject’s life.

However, some clear distinctions can be made between the two.

For example, a memoir usually explores a specific period of a person’s life, whereas an autobiography tends to make an account of the person’s life from their earliest years right up to the time of writing.

Autobiographies aren’t just the preserve of the celebrities among us though, each of our lives is a story in and of itself. Whether or not it’s a good story will depend largely on the telling, which is what this article is all about.

A COMPLETE UNIT ON TEACHING BIOGRAPHIES

Teach your students to write AMAZING BIOGRAPHIES & AUTOBIOGRAPHIES using proven RESEARCH SKILLS and WRITING STRATEGIES .

• Understand the purpose of both forms of biography.
• Explore the language and perspective of both.
• Prompts and Challenges to engage students in writing a biography.
• Dedicated lessons for both forms of biography.
• Biographical Projects can expand students’ understanding of reading and writing a biography.
• A COMPLETE 82-PAGE UNIT – NO PREPARATION REQUIRED.

  WHAT ARE THE MAIN FEATURES OF AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY?

Once students have a good grasp of what an autobiography is, we need to ensure they are familiar with the main features of the genre before they begin writing.

Let’s take a look at some of the main technical elements of an autobiography:

Purpose of an Autobiography:

To give an account of the person’s life so far

Tense: Mostly written in the past tense, but usually ends in the present tense and sometimes shifts into the future tense at the very end.

Structure of an Autobiography:

●     Usually written in chronological order

●     Uses time connectives such as before, then, after that, finally, etc

●     Uses the names of real people and events

●     Is specific about times, dates, places, etc

●     Includes personal memories and specific details and descriptions

●     Reflects on how positive and negative experiences shaped the author

●     Gives an insight into the thoughts, feelings, and hopes of the author

●     May include some relevant photographs

●     Usually ends with a commentary on life, reflections on significant large events, and hopes and plans for the future.

When teaching these specific features, you may wish to compile a checklist with the students that they can subsequently use to assist them when writing their autobiography.

PRACTICAL ACTIVITY:

One great way to help your students to internalize the main features of the genre is to encourage them to read lots of autobiographies. Instruct the students to be conscious of the different features discussed above and to identify them in the autobiography as they read.

If you have compiled a checklist together, students can check off the features they come across as they read.

When they have finished reading, students should consider which features were well done in the book and which were missing or had room for improvement.

TIPS FOR WRITING A GREAT AUTOBIOGRAPHY

As we know, there is more to a genre of writing than just ticking off the main features from a checklist.

To write well takes time and practice, as well as familiarity with the features of the genre. Each genre of writing makes different demands on our skills as a writer and autobiography are no different.

Below, we will look at a step-by-step process for how students can best approach the task of writing their autobiography, along with some helpful hints and tips to polish things up.

Let’s get started!

 HOW TO START AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY WRITING TIPS:

Tip #1: brainstorm your autobiography.

The structure of an autobiography is somewhat obvious; it starts at the beginning of the subject’s life, works its way through the middle, and ends in the present day.

However, there’s a lot in a life. Some of it will be fascinating from a reader’s point of view and some of it not so much. Students will need to select which events, anecdotes, and incidents to include and which to leave out.

Before they begin this selection process in earnest, they need to dump out the possibilities onto the page through the process of brainstorming. Students should write down any ideas and sketches of memories that might be suitable onto the page.

While they needn’t write trivial memories that they know definitely won’t make the cut, they should not set the bar so high that they induce writer’s block.

They can remove the least interesting episodes when making the final selection later in the writing process. The main thing at this stage is the generation and accumulation of ideas.

TIP #2: CREATE AN OUTLINE OF YOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY

After students have selected the most compelling episodes from their brainstorming session, they’ll need to organize them into the form of an outline.

One good way to do this is to lay them out chronologically on a simple timeline. Looking at the episodes in such a visual way can help the students to construct a narrative that leads from the student’s earliest childhood right through to the present day.

Students need to note that an autobiography isn’t just the relating of a series of life events in chronological order. They’ll need to identify themes that link the events in their autobiography together.

Themes are the threads that we weave between the cause and effect of events to bring shape and meaning to a life. They touch on the motivation behind the actions the author takes and fuel the development growth of the person.

Some themes that might be identified in an outline for an autobiography might include:

●     Overcoming adversity

●     Adjusting to a new life

●     Dealing with loss

●     The importance of friendship

●     The futility of revenge

●     The redemptive power of forgiveness.

These themes are the big ideas of a person’s life story. They represent how the events shape the person who is now sitting writing their story. For students to gain these insights will require the necessary time and space for some reflection.

For this reason, autobiography writing works well as a project undertaken over a longer period such as several weeks.

TIP #3: DO THE BACKGROUND RESEARCH ON YOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Even though no one knows more about the topic of an autobiography than the author, research is still a necessary part of the writing process for autobiographies.

Using the outline they have created, students will need to flesh out some of the details of key events by speaking to others, especially when writing about their earliest experiences.

The most obvious resources will be parents and other family members who were privy to the joys of babyhood and their earliest childhood.

However, friends and ex-teachers make excellent sources of information too. They will enable the student to get a different perspective on something they remember, helping to create a more rounded view of past events.

For older and more advanced students, they may even wish to do some research regarding historical and cultural happenings in the wider society during the period they’re writing about. This will help to give depth and poignancy to their writing as they move up and down the ladder of abstraction from the personal to the universal and back again.

When students make the effort to draw parallels between their personal experiences and the world around them, they help to bridge the gap between author and reader creating a more intimate connection that enhances the experience for the reader.

TIP #4: FIND YOUR VOICE

Students need to be clear that autobiography is not mere personal history written dispassionately and subjectively.

For their autobiography to work, they’ll need to inject something of themselves into their writing. Readers of autobiography especially are interested in getting to know the inner workings of the writer.

There is a danger, however. Given that autobiographers are so close to their material, they must be careful not to allow their writing to denigrate into a sentimental vomit. To counter this danger, the student author needs to find a little perspective on their experiences, and following the previous tip regarding research will help greatly here.

A more daunting obstacle for the student can lie in the difficulties they face when trying to find their voice in their writing. This isn’t easy. It takes time and it takes lots of writing practice.

However, there are some simple, helpful strategies students can use to help them discover their authentic voice in their writing quickly.

1. Write to a close friend or family member

All writing is written to be read – with the possible exception of journals and diaries. The problem is that if the student is too conscious of the reader, they can find themselves playing to the audience and getting away from what it is they’re trying to express. Showboating can replace the honesty that is such a necessary part of good writing.

A useful trick to help students overcome this hurdle is to tell them to imagine they are writing their autobiography to an intimate friend or family member. Someone who makes them feel comfortable in their skin when they are around. Students should write like they’re writing to that person to who they can confide their deepest secrets. This will give their writing an honest and intimate tone that is very engaging for the reader.

2. Read the writing out loud

It’s no accident that we talk about the writer’s ‘voice’. We recognize the actual voice of people we know from its many qualities, from its timbre, tone, pacing, accent, word choice, etc. Writing is much the same in this regard.

One great way to help students detect whether their writing captures their authentic voice is to have them read it out loud, or listen to a recording of their work read out loud.

While we don’t necessarily write exactly as we speak – we have more time to craft what we say – we will still be able to recognize whether or not the writing sounds like us, or whether it’s filled with affectation.

As the student listens to their own words, encourage them to ask the following questions:

●     Does this sound like me?

●     Do the words sound natural in my voice?

●     Do I believe in the events related and how they were related?

Finding their real voice in their writing will help students imbue their writing with honesty and personality that readers love.

TIP #5: DRAFT, REDRAFT AND REFINE YOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY

In the first draft, the brushstrokes will be large and broad, sweeping through the key events. The main notes of the tune will be there but with sometimes too much ornamentation and, at other times, not enough. This is why redrafting is an essential part of the writing process.

Students should understand that every piece of writing needs redrafting, editing , and proofreading to be at its best. There are no masterpieces full-borne into the world in a single draft.

For many, the tightening-up of a piece will involve the merciless cutting out of dead words. But, for some, the redrafting and refining process will demand the adding of more description and detail.

For most, however, it’ll be a little from column A and a little from column B.

Often, it’s difficult for students to get the necessary perspective on their work to be able to spot structural, grammar , punctuation, and spelling errors. In these instances, it can be best to enrol the eyes of a friend or family member in the role of editor or critic.

One effective way of doing this in class is to organize the students into pairs of editing buddies who edit each other’s work in a reciprocal arrangement.

These ‘edit swaps’ can be continued through to the proofreading stage and the final, polished piece.

A COMPLETE UNIT ON TEACHING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

❤️The use of  FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE  is like  “SPECIAL EFFECTS FOR AUTHORS.”  It is a powerful tool to create  VIVID IMAGERY  through words. This  HUGE 110 PAGE UNIT  guides you through a complete understanding of  FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE  as both a  READER  and  WRITER covering.

A Final Thought

Employing the 5 tips above will go a long way to ensuring a well-written and engaging autobiography.

While autobiography is a nonfiction genre, it is clear that with its emphasis on narrative, it has much in common with other fictional genres. So, it’s important when teaching autobiography that students learn to recognize the important role of storytelling in this genre too.

As with all good story-telling, there are some necessary elements to include, including a plot of sorts, a cast of characters, and an exploration of some central themes. For this reason, teaching autobiography often works well after the students have completed a unit on fictional story writing.

When all is said and done, the best way a student can ensure their autobiography is worth a read is to ensure they find the story within their own life.

After all, we’re obsessed with the lives of other people.

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Learn the essential skills to writing an insightful personal narrative in our complete guide for students and teachers.

autobiography

What is autobiography definition, usage, and literary examples, autobiography definition.

An  autobiography  (awe-tow-bye-AWE-gruh-fee) is a self-written  biography . The author writes about all or a portion of their own life to share their experience, frame it in a larger cultural or historical context, and/or inform and entertain the reader.

Autobiographies have been a popular literary genre for centuries. The first Western autobiography is attributed to Saint Augustine of Hippo for his 13-book work titled  Confessions , written between 397 and 400 CE. Some autobiographies are a straightforward narrative that recollects a linear chain of events as they unfolded. The genre has expanded and evolved to include different approaches to the form.

The word  autobiography  comes from the Ancient Greek  auto  (“self”) +  bios  (“life”) +  graphein  (“to write”) = “a self-written life.” It is also known as autography .

The History of Autobiography

Scholars regard Augustine’s  Confessions  as the first Western autobiography. Other autobiographical works from antiquity include Jewish historian Flavius Josephus’s  Vita  (circa 99 CE) and Greek scholar Libanius’s  Oration I  (374 CE). Works of this kind were called apologias, which essentially means “in my defense.” Writers approached these works not as acts of self-documentation but as self-defense. They represented a way to explain and provide rationale for their life, work, and escapades. There was also less focus on their emotional lives.

The Book of Margery Kempe , written in 1438 by an English Christian mystic, is the earliest known autobiography in English. (Though it didn’t see full publication until the 20th century.) Other early English-language biographies of note include:

• Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s 1764 memoirs
• John Bunyan’s  Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners  in 1666
• Jarena Lee’s  The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee  (the first autobiography of an African American woman)

Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s  Confessions was published in 1782. It paved the way for the more thoughtful, emotionally centered autobiographies seen today. Autobiography as a literary genre emerged a few years later, when British scholar William Taylor first used the term to describe a self-written biography. He did so disparagingly, suggesting the form was  pedantic . In 1809, English Romantic poet Robert Southey used the term more seriously to describe self-written biographies.

Starting in the 20th century, more young people started writing autobiographies. Perhaps the most famous example is Anne Frank’s  The Diary of a Young Girl , about her time hiding from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic. The 21st century saw an increase in autobiographical essay collections and memoirs by younger celebrities, including:

• Anna Kendrick
• Mindy Kaling
• Gabourey Sidibe
• Mike Birbiglia
• Lena Dunham
• Chelsea Handler

Autobiographies are not immune to controversy. One notable scandal involved author James Frey’s  A Million Little Pieces . Originally billed as a memoir, evidence later emerged that Frey invented key parts of the story. This example underscores how easily authors can cross over into autofiction—fictional autobiography—and how seriously readers take authors’ responsibility to accurately and honestly market their books.

Types of Autobiographies

There are a few different types of self-written works that qualify as autobiography.

Standard Autobiographies

In the most traditional form, authors recount their life or specific formative events from their life. This approach often utilizes a chronological format of events, but it doesn’t necessarily have to. An author’s approach might include a framing device such as flashbacks, in which they move from the present to the past as they remember their lives. For example, Broadway star Patti LuPone’s self-titled autobiography begins on the opening night of  Gypsy  in 2004 before moving back in time to LuPone’s childhood. An author could take a more stream-of-consciousness style, in which one memory links to another by a common theme. Irish writer Seán O’Casey narrates his six-volume  Autobiographies  in this manner

This is a type of autobiography that is narrower in scope and focus. It places greater emphasis on particular memories, thoughts, and feelings. A standard autobiography can certainly cover some of this same ground—most do—but the memoir is more interested in individual events or defined portions of the author’s life and the emotions and lessons behind them.

Henry David Thoreau is a notable memoirist. In Walden , he reflects on his time spent living in solitude in the woods of Massachusetts and what he learned about life and nature throughout this experience. Another example is  The Year of Magical Thinking  by Joan Didion, which relates the death of her husband and its impact on her life and work. Another is  Wild  by Cheryl Strayed, wherein Strayed remembers her time hiking the Pacific Crest Trail during a period of great change in her life.

Autofiction

The fictionalized autobiography, or autofiction, is another type of autobiography. The author presents their story not as fact but as fiction. This method gives them considerable space to take creative license with events and characters, thereby blurring the lines between reality and fiction. The overall goal is less about the author wanting to obscure facts and make things up and more a matter of taking another tactic to delve into their experiences in service of self-discovery.  Taipei  by Tao Lin is a work of autofiction. The central character, Paul, mirrors Lin’s own life and experiences, from the literary world of New York City to his ancestral roots in Taiwan.

Spiritual Autobiographies

These autobiographies center on the author’s religious or spiritual awakening and the subsequent journey their faith has taken them on. Common elements include struggles and doubt, a life-altering conversion, periods of regression, and sharing the “message.” These all act as endorsements of the author’s faith. Augustine’s  Confessions , Paramahansa Yogananda’s  Autobiography of a Yogi , and Augusten Burroughs’s  Toil & Trouble: A Memoir  are all spiritual autobiographies.

Autobiography vs. Biography

Both autobiographies and  biographies  are records of real lives, but there is one major distinction. A person other than the book’s subject writes a biography, while the subject themselves writes an autobiography. In this way, an autobiography is essentially a biography of the self. The biographer’s job is typically more involved, entailing detailed research into the life of the subject. The autobiographer, however, is usually not burdened by this because they lived through the events they write about. They may need only to confirm dates and stories to accurately relate the pertinent details.

The Function of Autobiography

An autobiography allows the author to tell the true story of their own life. This is the reason why autobiographies have always been written by famous people. History tends to remember notable individuals for just one significant contribution or event and, even then, the public’s perception of it may be inaccurate. Writing an autobiography allows the author to share the real story and put it into the larger context of their life and times.

Most readers pick up an autobiography expecting some degree of subjectivity from the author. After all, the events chronicled happened to the author, so the writing will of course have a biased  perspective . There are advantages to this subjectivity, though. The reader gets the real story directly from the person who lived it, unvarnished by others’ opinions or erroneous historical data.

One way this subjectivity is problematic is that the author may not possess the ability to see the story they’re telling from other perspectives. For example, they may not acknowledge any hurt they caused others, dangerous behaviors they engaged in, or the “other side” of a controversial event in which there are equally valid opposing viewpoints and experiences. Any of these deficiencies can result in a somewhat skewed narrative.

Writers Known for Autobiography & Autobiography Books

• Maya Angelou,  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ,  Gather Together in My Name
• Jung Chang,  Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
• Isak Dinesen,  Out of Africa ,  Shadows on the Grass
• Carrie Fisher,  Wishful Drinking ,  Shockaholic
• Anne Frank,  The Diary of a Young Girl
• Ernest Hemingway,  A Moveable Feast
• Karl Ove Knausgård,  My Struggle
• Frank McCourt,  Angela’s Ashes
• Anaïs Nin,  The Diaries of Anaïs Nin
• Marcel Proust,  Remembrance of Things Past
• Patti Smith,  Just Kids ,  M Train
• Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain
• Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
• Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
• Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
• Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography 

Examples of Autobiographies

1. Maya Angelou,  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Angelou’s autobiography is the first installment in a seven-volume series chronicling the life of the legendary poet, teacher, actress, director, dancer, and civil rights activist. Given all those roles, it’s easy to see why Angelou’s life story makes for interesting reading.

This volume centers primarily on her early life in Stamps, Arkansas, and the devastating effects of a childhood rape. It also explores racism in the American South. It discuses the important role reading plays in helping young Maya deal with the sexual assault and pervasive prejudice in her environment.

2. Helen Keller,  The Story of My Life

Keller’s autobiography details her first 20 years, starting with the childhood illness that caused her blindness and deafness. She discusses the obstacles she had to overcome and the life-changing relationship she shared with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, who helped her learn to read and write. Keller also documents her friendships with several famous figures of her day, including Alexander Graham Bell, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and First Lady Frances Cleveland.

3. Vinh Chung,  Where the Wind Leads

Chung’s autobiography recalls the harrowing story of a Vietnamese refugee and his journey to make the American Dream his own. Born in South Vietnam, Chung comes of age in a changing political climate that eventually compels his family to flee the country. Their voyage takes them through the South China Sea, run-ins with pirates, resettlement in Arkansas, and Chung’s graduation from Harvard Medical School.

How to Write an Autobiography

Autobiography is a truly universal art form and is accessible to anyone, whether you're in high school or 100 years old. Exploring the process of writing an autobiography deserves an article in itself, but the process should include these steps:

• Determine your "why." What lessons do you want to impart via your story, and why are they worth sharing with a broader audience?
• Draft an autobiographical outline. It should include information about your upbringing, impactful moments throughout your life, stories of failure and success, and meaningful mentors.
• Begin with the easiest sections. Getting started is often the greatest hurdle, so begin by writing the chapters that feel most accessible or enjoyable.
• Write your first draft. Once you write the first chapters, it will feel easier to write the rest. Capitalize on your momentum and write a full draft.
• Step away. As with anything, stepping away from your work will help foster fresh perspectives when you return.
• Edit and re-write your draft. Your first draft will probably benefit from thorough revisions, as will your second draft, and maybe your third. Continue to edit and revise until it feels right.
• Ask for help. Bring in a trusted family member or friend or professional editor to help with final edits.

Further Resources on Autobiography

ThoughtCo. shares some  important points to consider before writing an autobiography .

The Living Handbook of Narratology delves into the  history of the autobiography .

MasterClass breaks autobiography writing down into  eight basic steps .

Pen & the Pad looks at the  advantages and disadvantages of the autobiography .

Lifehack has a list of  15 autobiographies everyone should read at least once .

Related Terms

• Frame Story
• Point of View

Autobiography

Definition of autobiography.

Autobiography is one type of biography , which tells the life story of its author, meaning it is a written record of the author’s life. Rather than being written by somebody else, an autobiography comes through the person’s own pen, in his own words. Some autobiographies are written in the form of a fictional tale; as novels or stories that closely mirror events from the author’s real life. Such stories include Charles Dickens ’ David Copperfield  and J.D Salinger’s The Catcher in The Rye . In writing about personal experience, one discovers himself. Therefore, it is not merely a collection of anecdotes – it is a revelation to the readers about the author’s self-discovery.

Difference between Autobiography and Memoir

In an autobiography, the author attempts to capture important elements of his life. He not only deals with his career, and growth as a person, he also uses emotions and facts related to family life, relationships, education, travels, sexuality, and any types of inner struggles. A memoir is a record of memories and particular events that have taken place in the author’s life. In fact, it is the telling of a story or an event from his life; an account that does not tell the full record of a life.

Six Types of Autobiography

There are six types of autobiographies:

• Autobiography: A personal account that a person writes himself/herself.
• Memoir : An account of one’s memory.
• Reflective Essay : One’s thoughts about something.
• Confession: An account of one’s wrong or right doings.
• Monologue : An address of one’s thoughts to some audience or interlocuters.
• Biography : An account of the life of other persons written by someone else.

Importance of Autobiography

Autobiography is a significant genre in literature. Its significance or importance lies in authenticity, veracity, and personal testimonies. The reason is that people write about challenges they encounter in their life and the ways to tackle them. This shows the veracity and authenticity that is required of a piece of writing to make it eloquent, persuasive, and convincing.

Examples of Autobiography in Literature

Example #1:  the box: tales from the darkroom by gunter grass.

A noble laureate and novelist, Gunter Grass , has shown a new perspective of self-examination by mixing up his quilt of fictionalized approach in his autobiographical book, “The Box: Tales from the Darkroom.” Adopting the individual point of view of each of his children, Grass narrates what his children think about him as their father and a writer. Though it is really an experimental approach, due to Grass’ linguistic creativity and dexterity, it gains an enthralling momentum.

Example #2:  The Story of My Life by Helen Keller

In her autobiography, The Story of My Life , Helen Keller recounts her first twenty years, beginning with the events of the childhood illness that left her deaf and blind. In her childhood, a writer sent her a letter and prophesied, “Someday you will write a great story out of your own head that will be a comfort and help to many.”

In this book, Keller mentions prominent historical personalities, such as Alexander Graham Bell, whom she met at the age of six, and with whom she remained friends for several years. Keller paid a visit to John Greenleaf Whittier , a famous American poet, and shared correspondence with other eminent figures, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Mrs. Grover Cleveland. Generally, Keller’s autobiography is about overcoming great obstacles through hard work and pain.

Example #3:  Self Portraits: Fictions by Frederic Tuten

In his autobiography, “Self Portraits: Fictions ,” Frederic Tuten has combined the fringes of romantic life with reality. Like postmodern writers, such as Jorge Luis Borges, and Italo Calvino, the stories of Tuten skip between truth and imagination, time and place, without warning. He has done the same with his autobiography, where readers are eager to move through fanciful stories about train rides, circus bears, and secrets to a happy marriage; all of which give readers glimpses of the real man.

Example #4:  My Prizes by Thomas Bernhard

Reliving the success of his literary career through the lens of the many prizes he has received, Thomas Bernhard presents a sarcastic commentary in his autobiography, “My Prizes.” Bernhard, in fact, has taken a few things too seriously. Rather, he has viewed his life as a farcical theatrical drama unfolding around him. Although Bernhard is happy with the lifestyle and prestige of being an author, his blasé attitude and scathing wit make this recollection more charmingly dissident and hilarious.

Example #5:  The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin

“The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin ” is written by one of the founding fathers of the United States. This book reveals Franklin’s youth, his ideas, and his days of adversity and prosperity. He is one of the best examples of living the American dream – sharing the idea that one can gain financial independence, and reach a prosperous life through hard work.

Through autobiography, authors can speak directly to their readers, and to their descendants. The function of the autobiography is to leave a legacy for its readers. By writing an autobiography, the individual shares his triumphs and defeats, and lessons learned, allowing readers to relate and feel motivated by inspirational stories. Life stories bridge the gap between peoples of differing ages and backgrounds, forging connections between old and new generations.

Synonyms of Autobiography

The following words are close synonyms of autobiography such as life story, personal account, personal history, diary, journal, biography, or memoir.

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• The Autobiography of Malcolm X

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Collaboration, information literacy, writing process, autobiography.

• © 2023 by Joseph M. Moxley - University of South Florida

Who are you? How have your experiences shaped your sense of what is important or possible? Realize the benefits of using writing to reflect on your life. Read exemplary autobiographies and write about a significant, unusual, or dramatic event in your life.

Autobiographies are stories that people write about themselves. These stories can be factual accounts of significant, unusual, or dramatic events. They can be remembrances of  famous   or interesting people. And sometimes, when people slip from fact into fiction, they can be fictional stories, what some writers call “faction.”

Why Write an Autobiography?

As we age, we invariably wonder who and what experiences shaped us. One of our most elemental impulses is to define and explore the self. We try to understand who we are and  who we can be by examining how we respond to different situations and people. Sometimes we wonder what other people think of us and wonder why we behave the way we do. Sometimes we are perplexed and feel inner discord because our self-images don’t fit with what other people or society seem to expect of us. When we feel the urge to make changes in our lives, we often find that reflecting on our experiences is a prerequisite for change. As Abraham H. Maslow remarks in his thought-provoking book on human development, Personality and Motivation, “One cannot choose wisely for a life unless he dares to listen to himself, his own self, at each moment of life.”

Not all autobiography is about expressive writing. As illustrated by the sample readings, people also tell stories about themselves to sell products or motivate people, to entertain, and to persuade people:

My role in society, or any artist or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all -John Lennon

In a very real sense, the writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself -Alfred Kazin

People write autobiographies for many reasons, and they employ a variety of media while addressing diverse audiences. For some, such as John Lennon, autobiography is a social process, a way of reflecting on our culture, while for others, such as Alfred Kazin, autobiographies are a deeply personal genre, a tool for internal reflection and personal growth.

Diverse Rhetorical Situations

The most common purpose in a brief autobiography or profile is to depict an important challenge or event in the author’s life. Writers of autobiographies may hope to entertain readers or to educate them. They may hope their story helps readers understand the lives of others who come from different backgrounds.

Alternatively, writers may seek self-understanding. They may tell personal stories about important moments in their lives. For example, they may author a cultural autobiography, which is an autobiography that examines how elements of the culture they were raised in—family, friends, church, schooling, community—helped to shape their identity, their sense of what is possible, and their perception of what is important. Some authors may assume a false voice, writing a fictional autobiography with an assumed persona.

Autobiographies usually employ a strong personal voice, using the first person; they often employ many of the techniques of story telling, including hooking the reader with a compelling introduction, dialog, showing rather than telling, and using rich description.

Typically autobiographers do not rely on secondary research (library or Internet research) or primary research (questionnaires, interviews, or ethnographies). Instead of focusing on the lives of others, external research, or reviews of others’ writing, autobiographers are focused inward, questioning who they are, who they can become, and why their world vision is what it is.

A college education can increase your ability to analyze experiences, to empathize with others, and to understand how cultural assumptions shape behavior. One of the primary reasons for becoming educated is to learn to evaluate your beliefs and to question how others may be trying to manipulate you. Perhaps more than any other medium, the blank page offers you the best opportunity to examine your assumptions and to explore the conflicts in your life.

Because autobiography involves reflecting about who you are and why you make decisions, you may not see immediately how autobiographies relate to typical academic writing, which generally focuses on subjects other than the self. On a practical level, however, autobiographical writing engages many of the same thinking strategies required by other forms of writing. For example, when writing an autobiography, you will probably explore causes and effects, hypothesize about developmental steps, and perhaps even persuade a reader about the rightness of your actions.

More importantly, on a broader level, we should note that all writing—all knowing—is to some degree autobiographical. Without personal relevance, much information can seem inane and trivial. Writers routinely draw on their personal experience to select topics. Most educators agree that we learn best when we relate new information to what we already know, and some experts in writing theory believe that expressive, autobiographical writing plays a part in all writing, including academic writing. Others argue that the personal voice should be present even in traditional academic discourse, that knowledge and argument are always personal.

Sampling of Rhetorical Situations

Rhetorical analysis of online readings.

Consider the context, audience, purpose, and media invoked by the following readings. Also examine how ideas are developed in these texts. Are assertions grounded in personal experience, interviews with authorities, questionnaires, Internet and library research, or empirical research? How does the writer’s choice of media influence the shape of content?

• In a first year seminar course at Sonoma State University, Suzanne Toczyski explores how her Polish-American upbringing shaped her identity [Suzanne Toczyski’s Cultural Autobiography].
• To help understand “Exceptional Human Experience,” people write and share autobiographies at the Exceptional Human Experience Network .
• Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin : Benjamin Franklin reflects on how to evolve as a person and on events in the new world.
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave : Frederick Douglass writes about the cruelties of American slavery.
• The Diary of Anne Frank , a German-Jewish teenager, wrote her diary while hiding from the Germans for 25 months during World War II. Frank’s diary has now been translated into 67 languages.
• Daily blogs are becoming exceedingly popular. People like Jason Aleksandr Kottke , a Web designer in California, have created daily online blogs that have attracted significant numbers of readers. Jason’s site also features a webcam that lets you watch him write. Jason has also archived his blogs over the past three years.

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How to Define Autobiography

Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms

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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-person narrators 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. 

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

Examples of Autobiographical Prose

• Imitating the Style of the Spectator , by Benjamin Franklin
• Langston Hughes on Harlem
• On the Street, by Emma Goldman
• Ritual in Maya Angelou's Caged Bird
• The Turbid Ebb and Flow of Misery, by Margaret Sanger
• Two Ways of Seeing a River, by Mark Twain

Examples and Observations of Autobiographical Compositions

• "An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing." (Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant , 1968)
• "Putting a life into words rescues it from confusion even when the words declare the omnipresence of confusion, since the art of declaring implies dominance." (Patricia Meyer Spacks, Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England . Harvard University Press, 1976)
• The Opening Lines of Zora Neale Hurston's Autobiography - "Like the dead-seeming, cold rocks, I have memories within that came out of the material that went to make me. Time and place have had their say. "So you will have to know something about the time and place where I came from, in order that you may interpret the incidents and directions of my life. "I was born in a Negro town. I do not mean by that the black back-side of an average town. Eatonville, Florida, is, and was at the time of my birth, a pure Negro town--charter, mayor, council, town marshal and all. It was not the first Negro community in America, but it was the first to be incorporated, the first attempt at organized self-government on the part of Negroes in America. "Eatonville is what you might call hitting a straight lick with a crooked stick. The town was not in the original plan. It is a by-product of something else. . . ." (Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road . J.B. Lippincott, 1942) - "There is a saying in the Black community that advises: 'If a person asks you where you're going, you tell him where you've been. That way you neither lie nor reveal your secrets.' Hurston had called herself the 'Queen of the Niggerati.' She also said, 'I like myself when I'm laughing.' Dust Tracks on a Road is written with royal humor and an imperious creativity. But then all creativity is imperious, and Zora Neale Hurston was certainly creative." (Maya Angelou, Foreword to Dust Tracks on a Road , rpt. HarperCollins, 1996)
• Autobiography and Truth "All autobiographies are lies. I do not mean unconscious, unintentional lies; I mean deliberate lies. No man is bad enough to tell the truth about himself during his lifetime, involving, as it must, the truth about his family and friends and colleagues. And no man is good enough to tell the truth in a document which he suppresses until there is nobody left alive to contradict him." (George Bernard Shaw, Sixteen Self Sketches , 1898)" " Autobiography is an unrivaled vehicle for telling the truth about other people." (attributed to Thomas Carlyle, Philip Guedalla, and others)
• Autobiography and Memoir - "An autobiography is the story of a life : the name implies that the writer will somehow attempt to capture all the essential elements of that life. A writer's autobiography, for example, is not expected to deal merely with the author's growth and career as a writer but also with the facts and emotions connected to family life, education, relationships, sexuality, travels, and inner struggles of all kinds. An autobiography is sometimes limited by dates (as in Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography to 1949 by Doris Lessing), but not obviously by theme. "Memoir, on the other hand, is a story from a life . It makes no pretense of replicating a whole life." (Judith Barrington, Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art . Eighth Mountain Press, 2002) - "Unlike autobiography , which moves in a dutiful line from birth to fame, memoir narrows the lens, focusing on a time in the writer's life that was unusually vivid, such as childhood or adolescence, or that was framed by war or travel or public service or some other special circumstance." (William Zinsser, "Introduction," Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir . Mariner Books, 1998)
• An "Epidemical Rage for Auto-Biography" "[I]f the populace of writers become thus querulous after fame (to which they have no pretensions) we shall expect to see an epidemical rage for auto-biography break out, more wide in its influence and more pernicious in its tendency than the strange madness of the Abderites, so accurately described by Lucian. London, like Abdera, will be peopled solely by 'men of genius'; and as the frosty season, the grand specific for such evils, is over, we tremble for the consequences. Symptoms of this dreadful malady (though somewhat less violent) have appeared amongst us before . . .." (Isaac D'Israeli, "Review of "The Memoirs of Percival Stockdale," 1809)|
• The Lighter Side of Autobiography - "The Confessions of St. Augustine are the first autobiography , and they have this to distinguish them from all other autobiographies, that they are addressed directly to God." (Arthur Symons, Figures of Several Centuries , 1916) - "I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography , I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and they're so smart, let them decide what it is or isn't." (Philip Roth, Deception , 1990) - "I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography ." (Steven Wright)

Pronunciation: o-toe-bi-OG-ra-fee

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What is an Autobiography? Definition, Elements, and Writing Tips

POSTED ON Oct 1, 2023

Written by Audrey Hirschberger

What is an autobiography, and how do you define autobiography, exactly? If you’re hoping to write an autobiography, it’s an important thing to know. After all, you wouldn’t want to mislabel your book.

What sets an autobiography apart from a memoir or a biography? And what type of writing is most similar to an autobiography? Should you even write one? How? Today we will be discussing all things autobiographical, so you can learn what an autobiography is, what sets it apart, and how to write one of your own – should you so choose. 

But before we get into writing tips, we must first define autobiography. So what is an autobiography, precisely? 

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This Guide to Autobiographies Contains Information On:

What is an autobiography: autobiography meaning defined.

What is an autobiography? It’s a firsthand recounting of an author’s own life. So, if you were to write an autobiography, you would be writing a true retelling of your own life events. 

Autobiography cannot be bound to only one type of work. What an autobiography is has more to do with the contents than the format. For example, autobiographical works can include letters, diaries, journals, or books – and may not have even been meant for publication. 

An autobiography is what many celebrities, government officials, and important social figures sit down to write at the end of their lives or distinguished careers. 

Of course, the work doesn’t have to cover your whole life. You can absolutely write an autobiography in your 20s or 30s if you’ve lived through events worth sharing!

If an autobiography doesn’t cover the entire lifespan of the author, it can start to get confused with another genre of writing. So what’s an autobiography most similar to? And how can you tell it apart from other genres of writing? Let’s dive into the details. 

What type of writing is most similar to an autobiography?

A memoir is undoubtedly what type of writing is most similar to an autobiography. So what is the difference between an autobiography vs memoir ?

Simply put, a memoir is a book that an author writes about their own life with the intention of communicating a lesson or message to the reader. It doesn’t need to be written in chronological order, and only contains pieces of the author’s life story. 

An autobiography, on the other hand, is the author’s life story from birth to present, and it’s much less concerned with theme than it is with communicating a “highlight reel” of the author’s biggest life events. 

In addition to memoirs, there is also some confusion between autobiography vs biography . A biography is a true story about someone’s life, but it is not about the author’s life. 

Is an autobiography always nonfiction?

When many people define autobiography, they say it is a true or “nonfiction” telling of an author’s life – but that’s not always the case.

There is actually such a thing as autobiographical fiction .

Autobiographical fiction refers to a story that is based on fact and inspired by the author’s actual experiences…but has made-up characters or events. Any element in the story can be embellished upon or fabricated. 

Even the information in a standard “nonfiction” autobiography should be taken with a grain of salt. After all, anything written from the author’s perspective may contain certain biases, distortions, or unconscious omissions within the text. 

So if being nonfiction isn’t a defining characteristic of an autobiography, what is an autobiography defined by? 

The key elements of an autobiography

What’s an autobiography like from cover to cover? It should contain these key elements:

• A personal narrative : It is a firsthand account of the author's life experiences.
• A chronological structure : An autobiography typically follows a chronological order, tracing the author's life from birth to present.
• Reflection and insight : The book should contain the author's reflections, insights, and emotions about key life events.
• Key life events : The book should highlight significant events, milestones, and challenges in the author's life.
• Setting and context : There should be descriptions of the time period, cultural background, and environment to help the reader understand the author’s life.
• Authenticity : The author should be honest and sincere in presenting their life story.
• A personal perspective : An autobiography is written from the author's unique point of view.
• A strong conclusion : The ending of the book should reflect on the author's current state or outlook.

Famous Autobiography Examples

Now that you know what an autobiography is, let’s look at some famous autobiography examples .

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947)

Perhaps no autobiography is more famous than The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Her diary chronicles her profound thoughts, dreams, and fears as she hides with her family in the walls during the Holocaust. 

Anne's words resonate with the enduring spirit of hope amid unimaginable darkness.

The Autobiography of Ben Franklin by Benjamin Franklin (1909)

Benjamin Franklin's autobiography follows Franklin’s life from humble origins to one of America's greatest forefathers. While originally intended as a collection of anecdotes for his son, this autobiography has become one of the most famous works of American literature. 

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela (1994)

Long Walk to Freedom narrates Nelson Mandela's epic odyssey from South African prisoner to revered statesman. This masterpiece of an autobiography is a portrait of resilience against the backdrop of apartheid – and his words are a bastion for courage and human rights. 

Now you know what an autobiography is, and some examples of successful autobiographies, so it’s time to discuss what goes into actually writing one. 

Who Should Write an Autobiography?

Celebrity autobiographies are popular for a reason – the people who wrote them were already popular. 

The main purpose of an autobiography is to portray the life experiences and achievements of the author. If you haven’t made any massive achievements that people are already aware of, an autobiography might not be for you. Instead, you should learn how to write a memoir . 

After all, what’s an autobiography worth if no one reads it?

If you have made an important contribution to society, or have amassed a massive following of fans, then writing an autobiography could be a fabulous idea.

An autobiography is what allows you to claim your rightful place in history. It provides a legacy for your life, helps you to better understand your life’s journey, and can even be deeply therapeutic to write. 

But then comes the next problem: how to write an autobiography.

Tips on Writing Your Own Autobiography 

While memoirs are the books that teach life lessons, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give your autobiography meaning. The best autobiographies paint a vivid tapestry of personal growth and introspection. 

You don’t just want to tell the reader about your life – you want them to feel like they are living it with you.

And it’s not just about painting a picture with your prose. A lot of thought should go into everything from autobiography titles to page count. To get started, here are five tips for writing an autobiography:

• Know your audience : Understand who will read your autobiography and speak to them while writing.
• Be candid and authentic : A life seen through rose-colored glasses isn’t relatable. You should include your failures as well as your triumphs, and humanize yourself so your story resonates with your reader.
• Do your research : Of course you know what happened in your life, but how many details do you actually remember? You may need to sift through photos, archives, and diaries – and interview people close to you. Consider adding the photos to your book. 
• Identify key themes : Identify key events and life lessons that have shaped you. Reflect on how these themes have evolved over time.
• Edit and edit again : Write freely first, then edit rigorously. Seek feedback from trusted individuals and consider professional editing to ensure clarity and coherence in your narrative. NO ONE writes perfectly the first time. 

So there you have it, you are well on your way to understanding (and writing) an autobiography. 

If you'd still like more guidance for writing your autobiography, you can check out our free autobiography template . We can’t wait for you to share your life story with the world. 

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His 414: life-writing and history: diaries, memoirs and autobiographies.

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• Finding Autobiographies in the Library
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Autobiography: A Very Short Introduction

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Throughout history, individuals have recorded their own lives and experiences. These personal writings provide an understanding of the ways in which lives have been lived, and the most fundamental accounts of what it means to be a self in the world. Autobiography: A Very Short Introduction defines what is meant by ‘autobiography’, and considers its relationship with similar literary forms such as memoirs, journals, letters, and diaries. Analysing the core themes in autobiographical writing, including confession, conversion, testimony, romanticism, and the journeying self, this VSI discusses the autobiographical consciousness (and the roles played by time, memory, and identity), and considers the relationship between psychoanalysis and autobiography. It also explores the themes of self-portraiture, photography, and performance.

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What is an Autobiography?

• Teaching Strategies, Tactics, and Methods

An autobiography is a literary genre that is a self-written account of a person’s life. It is often written by well-recognized or well-renowned people to inform readers of their thoughts and experiences, but anyone can write it.

Autobiographies can take many forms based on different types of writing – they can be based thematically, religiously, or written purely for personal reasons, for example.

The term ‘autobiography’ was first used in 1797 by William Taylor in the English periodical (magazine) The Monthly Review. However, it was used negatively and seen as formal and arrogant.

The word means self (auto), life (bio), and writing (graph).

But, they are the story of a person’s life written from the point of view of that person.

Memoirs and diaries are autobiographies but do not follow the same structure.

Who wrote the first autobiography?

Around the year 400A.D., Augustine, a Catholic Saint who was once Bishop of Hippo Regius, wrote what is considered one of the earliest autobiographies, which he called ‘Confessions.’

In it, he gives his account of his journey from apparent moral destitution to a return to Christianity and his spiritual roots. For many centuries and still today, it is considered a highly influential publication for the Western church.

What are the key features of an autobiography?

Autobiographies are written in the first person from the author’s point of view, using first-person pronouns such as I, me, and my.

They recount the events of the author’s life in chronological order, although they may sometimes use flashbacks for added effect. To describe these events, they will also use time connectives, such as:

Autobiographies are usually very personal because the writer is connected to the events they are writing about. They include personal thoughts, feelings, and opinions about the possibilities and often describe how the events in their childhood or early life influenced them as a person. They also use literary devices such as adjectives, similes, and metaphors to describe these events.

Dates, times, individuals, and specific places are also used to describe the events in an autobiography. Again, it helps to make the writing a more accurate reflection of the person’s life as it indeed was.

Autobiographies usually end with the writer talking about what their hopes and plans for the future are. They reflect on what happened in the past and how this has influenced the person they are.

What is the difference between an autobiography and a biography?

The main difference between an autobiography and a biography is that the same person writes an autobiography that the text is about. In contrast, a biography is an individual’s history written by someone else.

Autobiographies are more personal and are based on the person’s thoughts, feelings, and memories. Biographies are written from an outside perspective in the third person. They recount a more objective view of the person’s life, although the author may include their opinions too.

You can identify an autobiography from a biography by whether the writer uses I, me, my (first-person pronouns) or she, he, or they (third-person pronouns).

Autobiographies for Children’s Literature

Many famous autobiographies have been written in the past. Here is a selection that does great reading for primary school children:

• Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
• I am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World
• Rosa Parks: My Story
• Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl
• Jacky Daydream by Jacqueline Wilson
• My Life with the Chimpanzees by Jane Goodall
• Reaching for the Moon: The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson

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What is an Autobiography?

• Updated on  
• Sep 6, 2021

Are you fond of writing? Then, you might have considered writing an autobiography at some point in your writing journey. An autobiography is a firsthand account of the author’s own life that provides readers with an unparalleled degree of intimacy. Read the full blog to know how to write an autobiography, the difference between an autobiography and a biography, and look at some outstanding examples of autobiographies that everyone must read at least once in their lives.

This Blog Includes:

Autobiography vs. biography vs. memoir, what to include in an autobiography, place your story order, speak in the first person, define your characters, getting the facts right, the little elements, famous autobiographies to read, important tips on writing an autobiography, what is the appropriate length for an autobiography, how to write a short autobiography.

An autobiography is a non-fiction account of a person’s life written from their own perspective by the subject. Autobiographies are a subgenre of biographies, however, unlike a standard biography, which is usually written by someone other than the subject, an autobiography is written by the subject himself/herself. Autobiographies are personal stories written by individuals about themselves. These can be true accounts of noteworthy, unique, or dramatic events. They might be tributes to famous , interesting or inspiring people in society. 

Autobiographie, biographies and memoirs are frequently available in almost every library or bookshop we visit. As a result, the readers are always confused about the difference between each of them. However, we are here to inform you that they are not the same. 

You are not alone in scratching your head, unsure of what to put in your autobiography. After all, knowing what to include and exclude from your life narrative is an important aspect of how to write an autobiography. Do you pay attention to every detail? Is it true that everyone just wants to read long stories? Isn’t it possible that your autobiography will be too long?

The Movie Trailer Method is an excellent approach to think about how to write an autobiography. Focus on what would make the cut for a movie trailer of your life when deciding what to include in your autobiography:

• People with the most influence (like family, friends, mentors, coaches, etc.)
• Important events (like your origin story, vacations, graduations, life turning points, life lessons)
• Moments of emotion (When you were homeless, when you battled a life-threatening condition, or when you fell in love)
• Suspense or drama? (Did you get accepted to Harvard ? Was your first operation a success?)

How to Start Writing Your Autobiography?

It is crucial to consider the critical aspects of an autobiography while writing one since you want a story that is not only representative of your life, but also simple to read and engaging enough that the reader will not want to put the book down. So, what should you include on your list? Here is how you may start your autobiography:

While it may be tempting to repeat a tale in the order in which you remember it, bouncing back and forth in time can be extremely confusing. It’s possible that your ideas may come out jumbled when you start pulling them out, but you must put them in the right chronological sequence. Try to keep it in order, whether you’re starting from childhood – which is the most common starting point – or having a more focused picture of a certain era of your adult life.

People expect an autobiography to be written in the first person since it is about you. When discussing events, you might use ‘I,’ ‘Me,’ or ‘Mine,’ rather than she or he. If you’re sharing a story about a key person in your life, you’ll naturally refer to them as he or she.

Even if this is a non-fiction work, it is still important for the viewer to grasp how you fit into your family and who the people around you are. You’ll need to remember the events as well as bring your characters to life. Make sure to include essential facts about a character’s personality and how they contributed to your tale.

It’s critical to build your location in order to help the audience understand who shared your trip and how they influenced what occurred to you. Where were you while all of this was going on? From major information such as where you were born or raised to minor ones such as the mouth-watering and nostalgic aroma of the Sunday roast cooking in the kitchen as you were playing with your siblings.

When discussing how to write an autobiography, it’s occasionally the tiny details that make work come alive. Telling spontaneous stories is very appropriate. Include them if they are part of your recollection and history. People aren’t simply interested in reading about important events, rather they want to learn about the individuals and what they did. Who they are, what makes them tick; and don’t be afraid to relate a tale about your background, even if you think it’s trivial. Include it if you believe it is relevant.

Here is an exciting list of some of the best-written autobiographies written by famous writers from around the world: 

• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
• Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
• The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi
• The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• Chronicles, Vol 1 by Bob Dylan
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• Agatha Christie: An Autobiography by Agatha Christie
• Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
• A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Keep the following pro tips in mind now that you’re set and ready to write your draft copy:

• Allow yourself to be vulnerable. The finest autobiographies are full of defects, weaknesses, quirks, and missteps. Allow your readers to see the genuine ‘you’.
• Skip the sections that are boring. There’s no need to go into great detail about every meal, vehicle ride, or a tense trip to the supermarket. 
• Keep your autobiography focused on the characters. 
• Remember that this is YOUR tale to tell!
• Be (or don’t be) nice to others. Keep in mind that there may be consequences or reactions if you write about people in your narrative.
• Consider a theme to follow ! Many autobiographies are divided into sections based on a common theme. Themes run throughout the autobiography, connecting and uplifting each section.
• Create snippets for your tale (or vignette). Each vignette is a standalone tale with a beginning, middle, and conclusion. Each story builds on the previous one. Instead of informing the reader about the experience, each vignette should be presented in rich sensory language that shows the reader the experience. 
• Pick a tone! Your narrative (like most stories) will most likely contain a range of emotions, but pick one and stay with it.
• Engage the readers! Always consider how you might make each part, chapter, page, paragraph, and phrase more engaging. You want to speak the truth, but it’s up to you how you say it. Suspense, tension, and mystery should all be present. Allow drama to fester until it becomes unbearable. Don’t try to fix problems or relieve tension straight away.

There are no hard and fast rules about how long an autobiography should be, but a good starting point is between 200 and 400 pages. This can help you get your book officially published or promote your self-published book by keeping it in line with what most people expect from novels in general.

A short autobiography is written in the same way as a large autobiography. You just leave out more information from the narrative. You reduced everything down to the bare necessities. Alternatively, you might pick a segment of your life, like in a memoir. This usually entails minimizing the number of characters in your book, lowering the number of events and experiences, and compressing your tale to just a few key times in your life.

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10 characteristics of Autobiography and the differences with the biography and novel

We explain what autobiography is and what its general characteristics are. In addition, the differences with the biography, memory and novel.

What is an Autobiography?

The autobiography is  a story of a life or part of it, told by the person who lived it  and from their own perspective. It shows events that you consider important or fundamental in your life , be it from your childhood , adolescence or adulthood .

Autobiography  is considered a literary genre  , often located on the border between history and literature , since it narrates real events but does so from a subjective, authorial approach. It is also related to the biography , the chronicle , the private diary, and other confessional genres of writing .

At present  there is an important reading market for autobiography  , especially that of public personalities, celebrities or famous people in history. In their vital accounts they usually look for some kind of teaching, world view or intimate revelation.

Characteristics of an autobiography  :

Origin of the term.

The term was first used in English:  autobiography  ,  in early 19th century England  , in an article by the poet Robert Southey. However, other sources accuse the German philosopher Friedrich Schlegel of having used it in his essays in 1789.

Within the literary arts, the autobiographical genre, as well as the biographical one,  are among the written works of non-fiction  , at the opposite extreme to narrative fiction, with which it nevertheless shares prose. It is closer to journalistic genres , since it is based on a presumption of authenticity in what is reported by the autobiographer.

Objectivity

From an autobiography, as we have said,  a certain fidelity and authenticity of the events is expected  , although not so much with respect to the meticulous historical fidelity, as to its very personal approach to the events narrated. This means that the autobiography should not look for exactitudes and historical truths, but rather intimate, subjective truths that have served the author to narrate the relevant events of his own life journey.

In many autobiographies it is exaggerated or simply lies  , as is the famous case of  I need love  (1992) delirious autobiography of the actor Klaus Kinski.

As in contemporary literary works,  there is no length requirement  for autobiography. It can be as long as you like and can contain as many chapters as the author thinks best.

Differences with the biography

Differences with memory

Distinguishing between autobiography and books of memories or confessions is more complicated. Both genres are non-fiction and address the life of the author and narrator himself, but  the autobiography is usually more complete  , more encompassing within the author's life, while the memoirs are usually restricted to a specific moment or a specific event, without going beyond. Both terms are often used synonymously.

Similarities with the novel

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Microsoft 365 Life Hacks > Writing > What’s the difference between a biography and an autobiography?

What’s the difference between a biography and an autobiography?

If you’ve ever set foot in a bookstore, you’ve likely come across both autobiographies and biographies that tell about the lives of notable individuals. Let’s take a look at the most important differences between these non-fiction books.

What is a biography?

Typically written in the third person, a biography is a detailed story about a living or deceased person’s life. A third party writes this non-fiction account of someone’s life. Let’s say Person A is a famous singer who recently passed away. Person B researches and writes a fact-based story on the famous singer’s life from start to finish. Person B’s factual story of Person A’s life is a biography.

Types of biographies

Biographies don’t always take the same approach or follow the same structure. Some are more official, while others get more creative. Writers can choose from a few common biography types, including:

• Authorized biographies, which received the subject’s input and/or permission.
• Unauthorized biographies, which were written without the subject’s approval or input.
• Biographical novels, which were inspired by a real person’s life, but feature embellishments that may make the story more interesting.
• Group biographies, which focus on groups of people rather than a single person.

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Examples of biographies

Each biography is a window into someone’s life, offering unique insights and perspectives. From the struggles of historical figures to the triumphs of artistic icons, biographies are not just informative but can also be deeply inspiring. Here are a few examples:

• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is a biography that describes the life of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman whose cells were extremely important for medical research.
• Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie is a biography that describes Catherine the Great’s origins and rise to power as a Russian empress.
• Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera details the painter’s life and famous works.

What is an autobiography?

Usually written in the first person, an autobiography is when the author writes about their own life. This subjective account is unique because it allows the author to share details of their life that another writer might not have been able to uncover.

Types of autobiographies

There are two main types of autobiographies: complete autobiographies and memoirs. In a complete autobiography, the author begins their story with their roots or birth and ends the autobiography at their current age. In a memoir, the author writes about a specific period of their life. For example, a famous actor may begin a memoir by sharing their first role in a movie, rather than sharing details about the beginning of their life or their childhood.

Examples of autobiographies

Autobiographies offer a unique lens into the lives of their authors, providing firsthand accounts of their experiences, challenges, and triumphs. Here are a few examples of notable autobiographies:

• In Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, Yogananda provides a first-hand account of his life and spiritual growth.
• In The Story of My Life by Helen Keller, Keller shares her life from birth until she was 22. She shares how she learned to communicate despite being blind and deaf.
• In The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X, he shares his life from childhood through adulthood and how he impacted the civil rights movement.

In summary, a biography is a story of someone’s life, written by a different person, versus an autobiography where an author writes about their own life.

Why should you read biographies (or autobiographies)?

Biographies and autobiographies are a great way to get an in-depth look at the lives of politicians, musicians, historical figures, innovators, and more. If there’s a famous person that you admire, there’s likely a biography written about them or an autobiography that they wrote themselves that can teach you more about their accomplishments.

If you’re interested in writing a biography or autobiography, see how you can write, research, and organize a book using OneNote . Whether you’re just putting together your first draft or you’re still outlining your story , you can elevate your writing in real time with Microsoft Editor .

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Writing My Autobiography

A re you still writing?” he asked.

“I am,” I answered.

“What are you working on at the moment?”

“An autobiography,” I said.

“Interesting,” he replied. “Whose?”

The implication here, you will note, is that mine hasn’t been a life sufficiently interesting to merit an autobiography. The implication isn’t altogether foolish. Most autobiographies, at least the best autobiographies, have been written by people who have historical standing, or have known many important people, or have lived in significant times, or have noteworthy family connections or serious lessons to convey . I qualify on none of these grounds. Not that, roughly two years ago when I sat down to write my autobiography, I let that stop me.

An autobiography, to state the obvious, is at base a biography written by its own subject. But how is one to write it: as a matter of setting the record straight, as a form of confessional, as a mode of seeking justice, or as a justification of one’s life? “An autobiography,” wrote George Orwell, “is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.” Is this true? I prefer to think not.

Autobiography is a complex enterprise, calling for its author not only to know himself but to be honest in conveying that knowledge. “I could inform the dullest author how he might write an interesting book,” wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge. “Let him relate the events of his own life with Honesty, not disguising the feelings that accompanied them.” One of the nicest things about being a professor, it has been said, is that one gets to talk for fifty minutes without being interrupted. So one of the allurements of autobiography is that one gets to write hundreds of pages about that eminently fascinating character, oneself, even if in doing so one only establishes one’s insignificance.

The great autobiographies—of which there have not been all that many—have been wildly various. One of the first, that of the Renaissance sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, is marked by an almost unrelieved braggadocio: No artist was more perfect, no warrior more brave, no lover more pleasing than the author, or so he would have us believe. Edward Gibbon’s autobiography, though elegantly written, is disappointing in its brevity. That of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, heavily striking the confessional note, might have been told in a booth to a priest. Ben Franklin’s autobiography is full of advice on how the rest of us should live. John Stuart Mill’s is astounding in its account of its author’s prodigiously early education, which began with his learning Greek under his father’s instruction at the age of three. Then there is Henry Adams’s autobiography, suffused with disappointment over his feeling out of joint with his times and the world’s not recognizing his true value. In Making It , Norman Podhoretz wrote an autobiography informed by a single message, which he termed a “dirty little secret,” namely that there is nothing wrong with ambition and that success, despite what leftist intellectuals might claim, is nothing to be ashamed of.

Please note that all of these are books written by men. Might it be that women lack the vanity required to write—or should I say “indulge in”—the literary act of autobiography? In Mary Beard’s Emperor of Rome , I recently read that Agrippina the Younger, the mother of Nero, wrote her autobiography, which has not survived, and which Mary Beard counts as “one of the great losses of all classical literature.” I wish that Jane Austen had written an autobiography, and so too George Eliot and Willa Cather. Perhaps these three women, great writers all, were too sensibly modest for autobiography, that least modest of all literary forms.

A utobiography can be the making or breaking of writers who attempt it. John Stuart Mill’s autobiography has gone a long way toward humanizing a writer whose other writings tend toward the coldly formal. Harold Laski wrote that Mill’s “ Autobiography , in the end the most imperishable of his writings, is a record as noble as any in our literature of consistent devotion to the public good.”

If Mill’s autobiography humanized him, the autobiography of the novelist Anthony Trollope did for him something approaching the reverse. In An Autobiography , Trollope disdains the notion of an author’s needing inspiration to write well. He reports that “there was no day on which it was my positive duty to write for the publishers, as it was my duty to write reports for the Post Office,” where he had a regular job. “I was free to be idle if I pleased. But as I had made up my mind to undertake this second profession [that of novelist], I found it to be expedient to bind myself by certain self-imposed laws.” Trollope recounts—emphasis here on “counts”—that as a novelist he averages forty pages per week, at 250 words per page. He writes: “There are those who would be ashamed to subject themselves to such a taskmaster, and who think that the man who works with his imagination should allow himself to wait till inspiration moves him. When I have heard such doctrine preached, I have hardly been able to repress my scorn.” Trollope then mentions that on the day after he finished his novel Doctor Thorne , he began writing his next novel, The Bertrams . For a long spell the literati refused to forgive Trollope for shearing inspiration away from the creation of literary art, for comparing the job of the novelist to a job at the post office. Only the splendid quality of his many novels eventually won him forgiveness and proper recognition.

A serious biography takes up what the world thinks of its subject, what his friends and family think of him, and—if the information is available in letters, diaries, journals, or interviews—what he thinks of himself. An autobiography is ultimately about the last question: what the author thinks of himself. Yet how many of us have sufficient self-knowledge to give a convincing answer? In her splendid novel Memoirs of Hadrian , Marguerite Yourcenar has Hadrian note: “When I seek deep within me for knowledge of myself what I find is obscure, internal, unformulated, and as secret as any complicity.” The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the scrupulously examined one is rare indeed.

My own life has not provided the richest fodder for autobiography. For one thing, it has not featured much in the way of drama. For another, good fortune has allowed me the freedom to do with my life much as I have wished. I have given my autobiography the title Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life , with the subtitle Especially If You’ve Had a Lucky Life . Now well along in its closing chapter, mine, I contend, has been thus far—here I pause to touch wood—a most lucky life.

My title derives from the story of Croesus, who ruled the country of Lydia from circa 585–547 b.c. , and who is perhaps today best known for the phrase “rich as Croesus.” The vastly wealthy Croesus thought himself the luckiest man on earth and asked confirmation of this from Solon, the wise Athenian, who told him that in fact the luckiest man on earth was another Athenian who had two sons in that year’s Olympics. When Croesus asked who was second luckiest, Solon cited another Greek who had a most happy family life. Croesus was displeased but not convinced by Solon’s answers. Years later he was captured by the Persian Cyrus, divested of his kingdom and his wealth, and set on a pyre to be burned alive, before which he was heard to exclaim that Solon had been right. The moral of the story is, of course: Never say you have had a lucky life until you know how your life ends.

I have known serious sadness in my life. I have undergone a divorce. I have become a member of that most dolorous of clubs, parents who have buried one of their children. Yet I have had much to be grateful for. In the final paragraph of a book I wrote some years ago on the subject of ambition, I noted that “We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, or the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing.” In all these realms, I lucked out. I was born to intelligent, kindly parents; at a time that, though I was drafted into the army, allowed me to miss being called up to fight in any wars; and in the largely unmitigated prosperity enjoyed by the world’s most interesting country, the United States of America.

Writing is a form of discovery. Yet can even writing ferret out the quality and meaning of one’s own life? Alexis de Tocqueville, the endlessly quotable Tocqueville, wrote: “The fate of individuals is still more hidden than that of peoples,” and “the destinies of individuals are often as uncertain as those of nations.” Fate, destiny, those two great tricksters, who knows what they have in store for one, even in the final days of one’s life? I, for example, as late as the age of eighteen, had never heard the word “intellectual.” If you had asked me what a man of letters was, I would have said a guy who works at the post office. Yet I have been destined to function as an intellectual for the better part of my adult life, and have more than once been called a man of letters. Fate, destiny, go figure!

T he first question that arises in writing one’s autobiography is what to include and what to exclude. Take, for starters, sex. In his nearly seven-hundred-page autobiography, Journeys of the Mind , the historian of late antiquity Peter Brown waits until page 581 to mention, in the most glancing way, that he is married. Forty or so pages later, the name of a second wife is mentioned. Whether he had children with either of these wives, we never learn. But then, Brown’s is a purely intellectual autobiography, concerned all but exclusively with the development of the author’s mind and those who influenced that development.

My autobiography, though less than half the length of Brown’s, allowed no such luxury of reticence. Sex, especially when I was an adolescent, was a central subject, close to a preoccupation. After all, boys—as I frequently instructed my beautiful granddaughter Annabelle when she was growing up—are brutes. I came of age BP, or Before the Pill, and consummated sex, known in that day as “going all the way,” was not then a serious possibility. Too much was at risk—pregnancy, loss of reputation—for middle-class girls. My friends and I turned to prostitution.

Apart from occasionally picking up streetwalkers on some of Chicago’s darker streets, prostitution for the most part meant trips of sixty or so miles to the bordellos of Braidwood or Kankakee, Illinois. The sex, costing $3, was less than perfunctory. (“Don’t bother to take off your socks or that sweater,” one was instructed.) What was entailed was less sensual pleasure than a rite of passage, of becoming a man, of “losing your cherry,” a phrase I have only recently learned means forgoing one’s innocence. We usually went on these trips in groups of five or six in one or another of our fathers’ cars. Much joking on the way up and even more on the way back. Along Chicago’s Outer Drive, which we took home in those days, there was a Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer sign that read, “Have you had it lately?,” which always got a good laugh.

I like to think of myself as a shy pornographer, or, perhaps better, a sly pornographer. By this I mean that in my fiction and where necessary in my essays I do not shy away from the subject of sex, only from the need to describe it in any of its lurid details. So I have done in my autobiography. On the subject of sex in my first marriage (of two), for example, I say merely, “I did not want my money back.” But, then, all sex, if one comes to think about it, is essentially comic, except of course one’s own.

On the inclusion-exclusion question, the next subject I had to consider was money, or my personal finances. Financially I have nothing to brag about. In my autobiography I do, though, occasionally give the exact salaries—none of them spectacular—of the jobs I’ve held. With some hesitation (lest it seem boasting) I mention that a book I wrote on the subject of snobbery earned, with its paperback sale, roughly half-a-million dollars. I fail to mention those of my books that earned paltry royalties, or, as I came to think of them, peasantries. In my autobiography, I contented myself with noting my good fortune in being able to earn enough money doing pretty much what I wished to do and ending up having acquired enough money not to worry overmuch about financial matters. Like the man said, a lucky life.

If I deal glancingly in my autobiography with sex and personal finances, I tried to take a pass on politics. My own political development is of little interest. I started out in my political life a fairly standard liberal—which in those days meant despising Richard Nixon—and have ended up today contemptuous of both our political parties: Tweedledum and Tweedledumber, as the critic Dwight Macdonald referred to them. Forgive the self-congratulatory note, but in politics I prefer to think myself a member in good standing of that third American political party, never alas on the ballot, the anti-BS party.

Of course, sometimes one needs to have a politics, if only to fight off the politics of others. Ours is a time when politics seems to be swamping all else: art, education, journalism, culture generally. I have had the dubious distinction of having been “canceled,” for what were thought my political views, and I write about this experience in my autobiography. I was fired from the editorship of Phi Beta Kappa’s quarterly magazine, the American Scholar —a job I had held for more than twenty years—because of my ostensibly conservative, I suppose I ought to make that “right-wing,” politics. My chief cancellers were two academic feminists and an African-American historian-biographer, who sat on the senate, or governing board, of Phi Beta Kappa.

T he official version given out by Phi Beta Kappa for my cancellation—in those days still known as a firing—was that the magazine was losing subscribers and needed to seek younger readers. Neither assertion was true, but both currently appear in the Wikipedia entry under my name. The New York Times also printed this “official” but untrue version of my cancellation. In fact, I was canceled because I had failed to run anything in the magazine about academic feminism or race, both subjects that had already been done to death elsewhere and that I thought cliché-ridden and hence of little interest for a magazine I specifically tried to keep apolitical. During my twenty-two years at the American Scholar , the name of no current United States president was mentioned. If anything resembling a theme emerged during my editorship, it was the preservation of the tradition of the liberal arts, a subject on which I was able to acquire contributions from Jacques Barzun, Paul Kristeller, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Frederick Crews, and others.

That I was fired not for anything I had done but for things I had failed to do is an indication of how far we had come in the realm of political correctness. I take up this topic in my autobiography, one theme of which is the vast changes that have taken place in American culture over my lifetime. A notable example is an essay on homosexuality that I wrote and published in Harper’s in 1970, a mere fifty-three years ago. The essay made the points that we still did not know much about the origin of male homosexuality, that there was much hypocrisy concerning the subject, that homosexuals were living under considerable social pressure and prejudice, and that given a choice, most people would prefer that their children not be homosexual. This, as I say, was in 1970, before the gay liberation movement had got underway in earnest. The essay attracted a vast number of letters in opposition, and a man named Merle Miller, who claimed I was calling for genocide of homosexuals, wrote a book based on the essay. Gore Vidal, never known for his temperate reasoning, claimed my argument was ad Hitlerum . (Vidal, after contracting Epstein-Barr virus late in life, claimed that “Joseph Epstein gave it to me.”) I have never reprinted the essay in any of my collections because I felt that it would stir up too much strong feeling. For what it is worth, I also happen to be pleased by the greater tolerance accorded homosexuality in the half century since my essay was published.

The larger point is that today neither Harper’s nor any other mainstream magazine would dare to publish that essay. Yet a few years after the essay was published, I was offered a job teaching in the English Department of Northwestern University, and the year after that, I was appointed editor of the American Scholar. Today, of course, neither job would have been available to me.

Do these matters—my cancellation from the American Scholar , my unearned reputation as a homophobe—come under the heading of self-justification? Perhaps so. But then, what better, or at least more convenient, place to attempt to justify oneself than in one’s autobiography?

Many changes have taken place in my lifetime, some for the better, some for the worse, some whose value cannot yet be known. I note, for example, if not the death then the attenuation of the extended family (nephews, nieces, cousins) in American life. Whereas much of my parents’ social life revolved around an extensive cousinage, I today have grandnephews and grandnieces living on both coasts whom I have never met and probably never shall. I imagine some of them one day being notified of my death and responding, “Really? [Pause] What’s for dinner?”

I take up in my autobiography what Philip Rieff called, in his book of this title, the Triumph of the Therapeutic, a development that has altered child-rearing, artistic creation, and much else in our culture. Although the doctrines of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and others are no longer taken as gospel, their secondary influence has conquered much of modern culture. My parents’ generation did not hold with therapeutic culture, which contends that the essentials of life are the achievement of self-esteem and individual happiness, replacing honor, courage, kindness, and generosity.

In my autobiography, I note that when my mother was depressed by her knowledge that she was dying of cancer, a friend suggested that there were support groups for people with terminal diseases, one of which might be helpful. I imagined telling my mother about such groups, and her response: “Let me see,” she is likely to have said. “You want me to go into a room with strangers, where I will listen to their problems and then I’ll tell them mine, and this will make me feel better.” Pause. “Is this the kind of idiot I’ve raised as a son?”

T hen there is digital culture, the verdict on which is not yet in. Digital culture has changed the way we read, think, make social connections, do business, and so much more. I write in my autobiography that in its consequences digital culture is up there with the printing press and the automobile. Its influence is still far from fully fathomed.

One of my challenges in writing my autobiography was to avoid seeming to brag about my quite modest accomplishments. In the Rhetoric , Aristotle writes: “Speaking at length about oneself, making false claims, taking the credit for what another has done, these are signs of boastfulness.” I tried not to lapse into boasting. Yet at one point I quote Jacques Barzun, in a letter to me, claiming that as a writer I am in the direct line of William Hazlitt, though in some ways better, for my task—that of finding the proper language to establish both intimacy and critical distance—is in the current day more difficult than in Hazlitt’s. At least I deliberately neglected to mention that, in response to my being fired from the American Scholar, Daniel Patrick Moynihan flew an American flag at half-mast over the Capitol, a flag he sent to me as a souvenir. Quoting others about my accomplishments, is this anything other than boasting by other means? I hope so, though even now I’m not altogether sure.

I have a certain pride in these modest accomplishments. Setting out in life, I never thought I should publish some thirty-odd books or have the good luck to continue writing well into my eighties. The question for me as an autobiographer was how to express that pride without preening. The most efficient way, of course, is never to write an autobiography.

Why, then, did I write mine? Although I have earlier characterized writing as a form of discovery, I did not, in writing my autobiography, expect to discover many radically new things about my character or the general lineaments of my life. Nor did I think that my life bore any lessons that were important to others. I had, and still have, little to confess; I have no hidden desire to be spanked by an NFL linebacker in a nun’s habit. A writer, a mere scribbler, I have led a largely spectatorial life, standing on the sidelines, glass of wine in hand, watching the circus pass before me.

Still, I wrote my autobiography, based in a loose way on Wordsworth’s notion that poetry arises from “emotion recollected in tranquility.” Writing it gave me an opportunity to review my life at the end of my life in a tranquil manner. I was able to note certain trends, parallels, and phenomena that have marked my life and set my destiny.

The first of these, as I remarked earlier, was the fortunate time in which I was born, namely the tail end of the Great Depression—to be specific, in 1937. Because of the Depression, people were having fewer children, and often having them later. (My mother was twenty-seven, my father thirty at my birth.) Born when it was, my generation, though subject to the draft—not, in my experience of it, a bad thing—danced between the wars: We were too young for Korea, too old for Vietnam. We were also children during World War II, the last war the country fully supported, which gave us a love of our country. Ours was a low-population generation, untroubled by the vagaries of college admissions or the trauma of rejection by the school of one’s choice. Colleges, in fact, wanted us.

Or consider parents, another fateful phenomenon over which one has no choice. To be born to thoughtless, or disagreeable, or depressed, or deeply neurotic parents cannot but substantially affect all one’s days. Having a father who is hugely successful in the world can be as dampening to the spirit as having a father who is a failure. And yet about all this one has no say. I have given the chapter on my parents the title “A Winning Ticket in the Parents Lottery,” for my own parents, though neither went to college, were thoughtful, honorable, and in no way psychologically crushing. They gave my younger brother and me the freedom to develop on our own; they never told me what schools to attend, what work to seek, whom or when to marry. I knew I was never at the center of my parents’ lives, yet I also knew I could count on them when I needed their support, which more than once I did, and they did not fail to come through. As I say, a winning ticket.

As one writes about one’s own life, certain themes are likely to emerge that hadn’t previously stood out so emphatically. In my case, one persistent motif is that of older boys, then older men, who have supported or aided me in various ways. A boy nearly two years older than I named Jack Libby saw to it that I wasn’t bullied or pushed around in a neighborhood where I was the youngest kid on the block. In high school, a boy to whom I have given the name Jeremy Klein taught me a thing or two about gambling and corruption generally. Later in life, men eight, nine, ten, even twenty or more years older than I promoted my career: Hilton Kramer in promoting my candidacy for the editorship of the American Scholar , Irving Howe in helping me get a teaching job (without an advanced degree) at Northwestern, John Gross in publishing me regularly on important subjects in the Times Literary Supplement , Edward Shils in ways too numerous to mention. Something there was about me, evidently, that was highly protégéable.

I  haven’t yet seen the index for my autobiography, but my guess is that it could have been name-ier. I failed, for example, to include my brief but pleasing friendship with Sol Linowitz. Sol was the chairman of Xerox, and later served the Johnson administration as ambassador to the Organization of American States. He also happened to be a reader of mine, and on my various trips to Washington I was often his guest at the F Street Club, a political lunch club where he reserved a private room in which we told each other jokes, chiefly Jewish jokes. I might also have added my six years as a member of the National Council of the National Endowment for the Arts, whose members included the actors Robert Stack and Celeste Holm, the Balanchine dancer Arthur Mitchell, Robert Joffrey, the soprano Renée Fleming, the novelist Toni Morrison, the dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, the architect I. M. Pei, the painter Helen Frankenthaler, and other highly droppable names.

Confronting one’s regrets is another inescapable element in writing one’s autobiography. Ah, regrets: the red MG convertible one didn’t buy in one’s twenties, the elegant young Asian woman one should have asked to dinner, the year one failed to spend in Paris. The greater the number of one’s regrets, the grander their scope, the sadder, at its close, one’s life figures to be. I come out fairly well in the regrets ledger. I regret not having studied classics at university, and so today I cannot read ancient Greek. I regret not having been a better father to my sons. I regret not asking my mother more questions about her family and not telling my father what a good man I thought he was. As regrets go, these are not minor, yet neither have I found them to be crippling.

Then there is the matter of recognizing one’s quirks, or peculiar habits. A notable one of mine, acquired late in life, is to have become near to the reverse of a hypochondriac. I have not yet reached the stage of anosognosia, or the belief that one is well when one is ill—a stage, by the way, that Chekhov, himself a physician, seems to have attained. I take vitamins, get flu and Covid shots, and watch what I eat, but I try to steer clear of physicians. This tendency kicked in not long after my decades-long primary care physician retired. In his The Body: A Guide for Occupants , Bill Bryson defines good health as the health enjoyed by someone who hasn’t had a physical lately. The ancients made this point more directly, advising bene caca et declina medicos (translation on request) . For a variety of reasons, physicians of the current day are fond of sending patients for a multiplicity of tests: bone density tests, colonoscopies, biopsies, X-rays of all sorts, CT scans, MRIs, stopping only at SATs. I am not keen to discover ailments that don’t bother me. At the age of eighty-seven, I figure I am playing with house money, and I have no wish to upset the house by prodding my health in search of imperfections any more than is absolutely necessary.

The older one gets, unless one’s life is lived in pain or deepest regret, the more fortunate one feels. Not always, not everyone, I suppose. “The longer I live, the more I am inclined to the belief that this earth is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum,” said George Bernard Shaw, who lived to age ninety-four. Though the world seems to be in a hell of a shape just now, I nonetheless prefer to delay my exit for as long as I can. I like it here, continue to find much that is interesting and amusing, and have no wish to depart the planet.

Still, with advancing years I have found my interests narrowing. Not least among my waning interests is that in travel. I like my domestic routine too much to abandon it for foreign countries where the natives figure to be wearing Air Jordan shoes, Ralph Lauren shirts, and cargo pants. Magazines that I once looked forward to, many of which I have written for in the past, no longer contain much that I find worth reading. A former moviegoer, I haven’t been to a movie theater in at least a decade. The high price of concert and opera tickets has driven me away. The supposedly great American playwrights—Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, Edward Albee—have never seemed all that good to me, and I miss them not at all. If all this sounds like a complaint that the culture has deserted me, I don’t feel that it has. I can still listen to my beloved Mozart on discs, read Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Dickens, George Eliot, Willa Cather, and the other great novelists, watch the splendid movies of earlier days on Turner Classics and HBO—live, in other words, on the culture of the past.

“Vho needs dis?” Igor Stravinsky is supposed to have remarked when presented with some new phenomena of the avant-garde or other work in the realm of art without obvious benefit. “Vho needs dis?” is a question that occurred to me more than once or twice as I wrote my autobiography. All I can say is that those who read my autobiography will read of the life of a man lucky enough to have devoted the better part of his days to fitting words together into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into essays and stories on a wide variety of topics. Now in his autobiography all the sentences and paragraphs are about his own life. He hopes that these sentences are well made, these paragraphs have a point, and together they attain to a respectable truth quotient, containing no falsehoods whatsoever. He hopes that, on these modest grounds at least, his autobiography qualifies as worth reading.

Joseph Epstein  is author of  Gallimaufry , a collection of essays and reviews.

Image by  Museum Rotterdam on Wikimedia Commons , licensed via Creative Commons . Image cropped. 

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Lou Conter, last survivor of USS Arizona from Pearl Harbor attack, dies at 102

Audrey Mcavoy

Associated Press

FILE - Lou Conter, an Arizona crewman, attends ceremonies for the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 2016, in Honolulu. Conter, the last living survivor of the USS Arizona battleship that exploded and sank during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, died on Monday, April 1, 2024, following congestive heart failure, his daughter said. He was 102. (Craig T. Kojima/Honolulu Star-Advertiser via AP, Pool, File)

HONOLULU – Lou Conter, the last living survivor of the USS Arizona battleship that exploded and sank during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, has died. He was 102.

Conter passed away on Monday at his home in Grass Valley, California, following congestive heart failure, his daughter, Louann Daley said, adding she was beside him along with two of her brothers, James and Jeff.

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The Arizona lost 1,177 sailors and Marines in the 1941 attack that launched the United States into World War II. The battleship’s dead account for nearly half of those killed in the attack.

Conter was a quartermaster, standing on the main deck of the Arizona as Japanese planes flew overhead at 7:55 a.m. on Dec. 7 that year. Sailors were just beginning to hoist colors or raise the flag when the assault began.

Conter recalled how one bomb penetrated steel decks 13 minutes into the battle and set off more than 1 million pounds (450,000 kilograms) of gunpowder stored below.

The explosion lifted the battleship 30 to 40 feet (9 to 12 metes) out of the water, he said during a 2008 oral history interview stored at the Library of Congress. Everything was on fire from the mainmast forward, he said.

“Guys were running out of the fire and trying to jump over the sides,” Conter said. “Oil all over the sea was burning.”

His autobiography “The Lou Conter Story” recounts how he joined other survivors in tending to the injured, many of them blinded and badly burned. The sailors only abandoned ship when their senior surviving officer was sure they had rescued all those still alive.

The rusting wreckage of the Arizona still lies where it sank. More than 900 sailors and Marines remain entombed inside. Only 335 Arizona crew members survived.

Conter went to flight school after Pearl Harbor, earning his wings to fly PBY patrol bombers, which the Navy used to look for submarines and bomb enemy targets. He flew 200 combat missions in the Pacific with a “Black Cats” squadron, which conducted dive bombing at night in planes painted black.

In 1943, he and his crew where shot down in waters near New Guinea and had to avoid sharks. A sailor expressed doubt they would survive, to which Conter replied, “baloney.”

“Don’t ever panic in any situation. Survive is the first thing you tell them. Don’t panic or you’re dead,” he said. They were quiet and treaded water until another plane came hours later and dropped them a lifeboat.

In the late 1950s, he was made the Navy’s first SERE officer — an acronym for survival, evasion, resistance and escape. He spent the next decade training Navy pilots and crew on how to survive if they’re shot down in the jungle and captured as a prisoner of war. Some of his pupils used his lessons as POWs in Vietnam.

Conter retired in 1967 after 28 years in the Navy.

Conter was born in Ojibwa, Wisconsin, on Sept. 13, 1921. His family later moved to Colorado where he walked five miles (eight kilometers) one way to school outside Denver.

He enlisted in the Navy after he turned 18, getting $17 a month and a hammock for his bunk at boot camp.

Conter had been getting weaker and weaker in recent months and was hospitalized for 10 days in February, his daughter said. He had been in hospice since returning home.

He told his family he loved them, thanked them for being with him and taking care of him at home.

“I’m glad he’s at peace. I’m glad he didn’t suffer. I know when he transitioned over, he had so many people there waiting for him - his wife Val, who he loved dearly,” Daley said.

Conter is also survived by another son, Tony, and a stepson Ron Fudge, and many grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Funeral arrangements were pending. The family plans to bury him in Grass Valley, next to his late wife Valerie, who died in 2016 after they had been married for 45 years.

With Conter's death, there are now 19 survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack still living, according to Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors. About 87,000 military personnel were on Oahu on Dec. 7, according to a rough estimate compiled by military historian J. Michael Wenger.

In his later years, Conter became a fixture at annual remembrance ceremonies in Pearl Harbor that the Navy and the National Park Service jointly hosted on the anniversaries of the 1941 attack. When he lacked the strength to attend in person, he recorded video messages for those who gathered and watched remotely from his home in California.

In 2019, when he was 98, he said he liked going to remember those who lost their lives.

“It’s always good to come back and pay respect to them and give them the top honors that they deserve,” he said.

Though many treated the shrinking group of Pearl Harbor survivors as heroes, Conter refused the label .

“The 2,403 men that died are the heroes. And we’ve got to honor them ahead of everybody else. And I’ve said that every time, and I think it should be stressed,” Conter told The Associated Press in a 2022 interview at his California home.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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How the 2024 Solar Eclipse will confuse animals

Local 4 news at 5 -- april 1, 2024, whitmer signs bills to lift ban on paid surrogacy, neighborhood on detroit's west side wants fix for sinkholes, watch: local 4 news, first at 4 p.m. : apr 01, 2024.

2024 Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid: A Comprehensive Guide On Features, Specs, And Pricing

Quick links, what’s new for 2024, engine specifications and performance, interior technology and comfort, safety and reliability, 2024 porsche cayenne e-hybrid versus its competitors, how much does a 2024 porsche cayenne e-hybrid cost, fuel economy, is it worth buying a 2024 porsche cayenne e-hybrid.

The 2024 Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid may be your favorite auto you've ever driven. It drives like a Porsche, but it's expected to get around 46 MPGe, and it offers the spacious interior of a mid-size SUV. If you're looking for something to make your morning commute a little more fun, this could be the car of your dreams.

On the other hand, it's one of the skimpiest SUVs on the market when it comes to standard interior features, its off-roading capabilities are limited, and it's very expensive. Your mileage may vary based on how much value you place on the Porsche driving experience, as the Cayenne E-Hybrid is arguably the best SUV in the world at what it does, but what it does is very specialized.

2024 Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid

Expert opinion : The 2024 Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid, and its S and Turbo variants, are proof that a PHEV can be just as fun to drive as any conventional gas-powered sports car. It's everything you want in a Porsche, but with a spacious cabin, and two or three times as fuel-efficient as a 911. Standard features are a bit skimpy, though, and upgrades are expensive, so budget accordingly, or do without.

Make Porsche

Model Cayenne E-Hybrid

Engine/Motor 3.0L V6 hybrid, 4.0L V8 hybrid

Horsepower 348-591 HP

Torque 479 to 700 LB-FT

Drivetrain Front-engine, AWD

Transmission 8-Speed automatic

MSRP From $91,700

0-60 MPH 3.5 Seconds

Max towing capacity 6,613-7,700 Pounds

• It's a hybrid SUV that drives like a Porsche.
• Official EPA numbers have yet to be released, but earlier models averaged 46 MPGe.
• Hits 60 MPH in under four seconds.
• Bare-bones standard features and expensive upgrades mean the driver might be the only one who loves this SUV.
• Even the entry-level model will cost you at least six figures once taxes, delivery, and other associated costs are taken into account.
• The GLE 450e 4MATIC and Range Rover Autobiography are superior off-roaders and better values.

This guide provides comprehensive information provided by the manufacturer. HotCars sourced additional data for reliability (from J.D. Power), EPA gas mileage (Fueleconomy.gov), safety ratings (IIHS), and recalls (NHTSA). We evaluate five different metrics when determining a rating for each model. You can read our Methodology page for more information about how our rating system works.

Why The 2024 Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid Is A Better EV Than Before

The 2024 Porsche Cayenne is a mid-cycle refresh model, boasting subtly redesigned lines and a reconfigured interior. New features are few and far between, but it's easy to spot a number of cosmetic and ergonomic differences.

2024 Highlights

• Gear selector has been moved to the dashboard
• Driver controls have been given a more sprawling, intuitive layout
• 12.6 inch fully-digital instrument cluster
• Matrix LED headlights are now standard
• Electric motors have been upgraded from 100 kW to 130kW

Exterior Dimensions

The 2024 Porsche Cayenne sacrifices nothing, and gains everything, in its transition to hybrid. The most powerful model, the 4.0-liter V8-powered Turbo edition, cranks out an incredible 729 horsepower and hits zero-to-sixty in just 3.5 seconds. Impressive for any vehicle, awesome for an SUV. Even the 3.0-liter V6 models deliver more power than you'll need on a day-to-day basis, with even the entry-level Cayenne E-Hybrid shaving a tenth of a second off the standard Cayenne's acceleration time, reaching 60 MPH in just 4.6 seconds. The Cayenne E-Hybrid can even go thirty miles at a time on the battery alone.

Performance Specifications

Towing capabilities and payload capacity.

Every Cayenne E-Hybrid, from the entry-level to the Turbo, can pull at least three tons. The E-Hybrid and the S can dang near tow four tons. If you're looking for a luxury SUV that can pull a travel trailer without burning a hundred bucks in gas every single time you take it out of the driveway, the Cayenne E-Hybrid is hard to beat.

Off-Road Capability

All three variants of the 2024 Cayenne E-Hybrid are capable when it comes to off-roading, but that's not really what they're built for. The Cayenne simply lacks the imposing ground clearance and devoted terrain-management systems found in some of the SUV's larger competitors.

The all-wheel-drive and refined high-horsepower performance make for an SUV that can handle rain, sleet, and snow like few others, though. The Cayenne E-Hybrid isn't a poor choice for rough roads, it simply fares best on the blacktop.

The Porsche Cayenne S E-Hybrid Gets 500+HP And Upgrades That Make It The Sweet Spot In The Range

Best interior features of the 2024 porsche cayenne e-hybrid.

• Partial leather seating
• Available custom leather interior
• 8-way power-adjust front seats
• Available heated steering wheel with Race-Tex or leather wrap
• Available rear entertainment system

From the Taycan to the Porsche 911 , Porsche cabins are never sub-par , but they know that you're buying the vehicle for what's under the hood, not what's in the cabin. So, standard features can be a bit basic, and upgrades and packages can be very expensive.

Some of those upgrades are very much worth the expense, such as full ventilated seats for $1,700. Others, like the $13,150 custom Manufaktur leather interior, might have you feeling buyer's remorse just thinking about it.

As with the interior trim, the tech is good, but basic. The 12.6 inch instrument cluster is a nice touch, and the touchscreen is nice and responsive. But, again, upgrades like the Burmester 3D surround system, which will cost you an extra $7,000, may have you preferring to go aftermarket for your add-ons.

Interior Dimensions

No current version of the Porsche Cayenne has been crash tested by the IIHS, the NHTSA, or EuroNCAP. When Porsches are tested, they tend to do well, but it's rare that they're tested.

Driver Assistance Features

By now you're noticing a pattern. What you're buying in a Porsche is what's under the hood. Everything else is pretty rudimentary, and that includes the driver assistance features. That said, the InnoDrive package is worth the cost at just $2,750, adding adaptive cruise control and active lane keep assist, essentially automating the boring parts of highway driving.

• Available surround view
• Available remote parking
• Available Night vision assist
• Available InnoDrive
• Parking sensors

NHTSA 5-Star Safety Ratings

• Recalls (NHTSA): 1 (potential charge cable overheat)
• NHTSA Investigations: 0
• NHTSA Consumer Complaints: 0

2021 Porsche Cayenne Turbo S E-Hybrid Review: Challenging The Boring Family-Car Stereotype

Porsche is not, and has never been, one of the industry leaders for new car warranties . But, four years of full coverage and roadside assistance isn't bad, and you can buy two more years of protection if you like.

The luxury-hybrid segment is both still growing, and slowly dwindling, as more automakers start to shift their attention towards fully electric vehicles. So, while the Cayenne E-Hybrid doesn't have a lot of direct competitors, there are at least a few comparable vehicles out there. Namely, the 2024 Range Rover Autobiography, and the 2024 Mercedes-Benz GLE Class ' 450e 4MATIC trim.

How The 2024 Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid Compares To The 2024 Range Rover Autobiography

Standing at 8.6 inches above the ground and boasting an exclusive Terrain Response system, the Range Rover is hands down the luxury SUV you want if you plan on spending considerable time off-road. The Cayenne E-Hybrid and GLE Class PHEV are both off-road capable , but the Range Rover Autobiography is off-road oriented.

The Range Rover also packs a more generous suite of standard features at the entry level, including rear seat entertainment, Meridian signature sound, four-zone climate control and massage seats. The Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid may offer an unbeatable experience on the road, but once you start hitting dirt paths and gravel, you'll be far more comfortable in a Range Rover.

How The 2024 Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid Compares To The 2024 Mercedes-Benz GLE 450e 4MATIC

The GLE 450e 4MATIC starts at around $69,500, making it the most affordable option on this list. When you consider that the 450e's cabin is of a much higher quality throughout, and that upgrades like Burmester surround sound cost a fraction of what they would in the Cayenne E-Hybrid, the deal starts to sound even sweeter.

And again, we come back to the question of whether the Porsche driving experience is worth the Porsche price. A Mercedes-Benz is a fine vehicle, but it's not a Porsche. The Cayenne E-Hybrid delivers muscular-yet-refined performance in almost any condition, it drives like a Porsche . So, is that more important to you than creature comforts? And, if it's not, are you willing to pay another twenty or thirty thousand dollars on optional packages to bring the Cayenne's interior up to par with a GLE's?

The Cayenne E-Hybrid delivers a premium driving experience, and it's priced accordingly. You'll probably want to budget twice the MSRP, given the cost of optional packages, taxes, and delivery expenses.

10 Things We Love About The Porsche Cayenne Hybrid

Porsche has not released any official numbers on the Cayenne E-Hybrid's expected fuel economy as yet, and the EPA has yet to test the vehicle. But, earlier model years averaged around 46 MPGe, so the 2024 model should be expected to deliver comparable fuel economy until further notice.

If you want to drive a Porsche, and you want to drive a hybrid, and you need a practical daily driver, the 2024 Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid is worth it. If you just want a high-end hybrid SUV, if you want to go off-road, if you want a luxurious cabin without having to spend another thirty grand on upgrades and add-ons, then you might want to consider something like a Porsche 911 for the weekends, and shop around with the competition for your family car.

Only a Porsche drives like a Porsche. But, if you're looking for the best value luxury hybrid SUV, that's a GLE 450e 4MATIC. If you want something that will climb over broken roads and gravel without rattling your tailbone, the Range Rover Autobiography is the superior choice. So, the question of whether the Cayenne E-Hybrid is worth the premium expense, that comes down entirely to how important the Porsche driving experience is to you.

Sources: Porsche , Mercedes-Benz , FuelEconomy.gov , NHTSA , Land Rover

“The best frontman I ever saw. Nobody else came close”: The day David Lee Roth turned in the performance of a lifetime

With a heavyweight line-up including Ozzy Osbourne, AC/DC, Van Halen, Mötley Crüe and more, Monsters Of Rock 1984 is still revered in festival folklore

In 1997, 10 years before David Lee Roth rejoined Van Halen , the singer recalled in his autobiography Crazy From The Heat a nasty little episode that occurred some time around the early 80s, when he overheard a conversation between Eddie Van Halen, his brother Alex and an unnamed music-business figure. Roth wrote of this in the bluntest of terms: “I once heard somebody say to the Van Halens: ‘You guys play the music; the Jew sells it.’ Well, you’re fucking right.” 

Those words spoke volumes about the dynamic in the band during that era. And for British rock fans there was no greater exhibition of Roth’s showmanship than when Van Halen played at the Monsters Of Rock festival at Donington Park on August 18, 1984. 

When video footage of this performance resurfaced online in the summer of 2023, VH diehards proclaimed it “the Holy Grail”. A pro shoot from side-stage, it includes the whole set, except for a few minor cuts, plus backstage scenes from before and after. It captures all the raw power of the band; the heated atmosphere generated in the 65,000-strong audience; the element of chaos as a small number of delirious fans made it onto the stage to make a grab at their heroes. Above all else, it captures the wise-cracking, high-kicking David Lee Roth at the very top of his game. 

“As a frontman, Roth was untouchable that day,” says promoter Andy Copping, who saw the show as a 20-year-old, and has run the Download festival at Castle Donington for the past 20 years in his role as Executive President of UK Touring at Live Nation. “The way that Roth interacted with the audience was just brilliant. As the master of ceremonies, the orchestrator, he was the king.” 

But on that beautiful summer’s day, as Roth ruled that stage, there was unrest behind the scenes. Within Van Halen’s inner circle there was a growing sense that a split with the singer was inevitable, and for photographer Ross Halfin, working for the band at Donington and privy to what was going on backstage, the signs were clear. “It was always a bit weird with Van Halen,” Halfin says. “Roth was sort of separate from the rest of them. I didn’t notice this on the first tours I did with them, but I certainly did by 1984.” 

Van Halen had come a long way since they first toured in the UK in the late 70s, when Roth famously declared that Lewisham, in south London, was “the rock’n’roll capital of the world!”. But at Donington the party was coming to an end. A British audience was seeing Van Halen with David Lee Roth for the last time.

Forty years on, the Monsters Of Rock show of 1984 is still remembered as the best Monsters of them all. The bill was incredible, with AC/DC headlining over Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne and an impressive supporting bill featuring guitar hero Gary Moore , Californian rockers Y&T , German headbangers Accept, and, making their first appearance in the UK, the hottest new band out of Los Angeles, Mötley Crüe . 

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This was Monsters Of Rock in its classic form: one day, one stage, seven bands you had to see. At least that was the idea. 

Most of those 65,000 people got there in time to see Mötley Crüe, and as Tim McMillan from Kettering remembers it: “The Crüe were loud, dumb, crude, with this snotty arrogance – everything that Kerrang! had promised!” But some people arrived late, this writer included. Eighteen at the time, I was en route from Guildford to Donington with my mate Graham and 50 other denim-clad rock fans on a double-decker bus, which got hit by a passing car on the M1. Fortunately no one was seriously injured, but our bus was stuck on the hard shoulder for an hour, maybe two. By the time we walked on the grassy slopes of Donington Park, the Crüe were long gone and Accept were on stage, banging out their homoerotic anthem London Leatherboys . 

Andy Copping arrived even later. Having spent the early afternoon DJ-ing a rock set at a club named Lazers in his home town of Lincoln, he got to Donington just in time to see Y&T end their set with a hapless roadie dressed up as a sort of robotic knight in armour. “I was gutted to miss Mötley Crüe,” he says. “But there was no way I was going to miss Van Halen. I’d seen them in 1980 at Leicester De Montfort Hall, and it was completely life-changing for me.” 

The 1984 Monsters Of Rock, more than any other before, had been hyped up as a battle of the guitar heroes – principally Gary Moore, Eddie Van Halen and Angus Young. As Copping recalls: “Gary Moore was on fire that day.” Moore threw down the gauntlet with a blistering rendition of White Knuckles , his answer to Eddie’s Eruption , and an epic version of his signature ballad Parisienne Walkways in which he held one high note that seemed to last an eternity. 

The afternoon sky was a clear blue – save for the barrages of plastic beer bottles, most of them half-filled with piss, that flew overhead regularly as a form of entertainment between bands. 

In sweltering heat, Ozzy Osbourne took to the stage. With a band that featured another emerging guitar hero, Jake E Lee, successor to the late Randy Rhoads , and a set that included Crazy Train, Bark At The Moon and Black Sabbath classics Iron Man and Paranoid , a shirtless and wild-eyed and clapping Ozzy overran his allotted time in what Copping describes as “a monumental performance”. 

Ozzy was a hard act to follow, but Van Halen were not to be upstaged. They were on a high following their US No.1 hit Jump , and a multi-million-selling album, 1984 , that would also have made it to the top were it not for what turned out to be the biggest-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller , on which Eddie Van Halen had ripped it up with the solo in Beat It .

The Donington crowd was buzzing, heaving, as Van Halen’s set kicked off with an explosion of wild noise, Eddie bent over his ‘Frankenstein’ guitar, his fingers a blur, Alex Van Halen pounding the drums and Michael Anthony thumping his bass caveman-style. Eddie’s trousers were as loud as the noise – banana-yellow with black tiger stripes. But the real razzle-dazzle came from David Lee Roth as he danced out to centre stage wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a glittering coat over skintight gym-bunny pants and vest. Arms raised like a prize fighter stepping into the ring, Diamond Dave sparkled in the sunshine. 

Eddie’s guitar tech Rudy Leiren delivered the high-volume introduction. “Alright, Donington! Are you ready? For the first time in five years, the mighty Van Halen!” In all this excitement, Leiren had his timing a year out. The band’s last UK tour was in 1980. But no matter. The heavyweight champions of American rock were here again at last. With Leiren’s voice still echoing, Eddie cranked out the riff to Unchained . 

It was all too much for one young woman standing close to the stage beside Mark Blake, then a 19-year-old university student from London, now an author and Classic Rock contributor. He recalls watching as a teenage blonde was overwhelmed by the sheer force of David Lee Roth’s charisma. “She let out a scream and then just keeled over,” he says. “But she was back on her feet by the end of the song.” 

As the band tore into their second number, Hot For Teacher , they were flying, Roth throwing off his coat as they turned up the heat, Eddie breaking into a broad grin as they switched from frenetic all-out attack to teasing little breaks. But with the drum solo that followed, some momentum was lost – their first mistake, and not the last. 

“If anything, the show was too solo-heavy,” Andy Copping says. “Michael Anthony’s bass solo was just boring and pointless, and even Eddie’s solo didn’t connect with me the way I wanted it to.”

The latter lasted for more than 10 minutes, and felt like twice that. Everybody knew that Eddie was a genius. He didn’t need to labour the point. But even if they dropped the ball in these moments, the songs, and Roth’s star power, carried them to victory. Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love was a glaring omission, but there were two other zingers from the debut album in On Fire and Runnin’ With The Devil , the heavy hitters House Of Pain and Everybody Wants Some!! , the joyous Little Guitars , a playful version of Roy Orbison’s classic (Oh) Pretty Woman , and a sizzling Panama . The peak moment came as the sun was setting and Eddie got behind his keyboard for Jump , the track with which he beat the synth-pop bands at their own game.

In the spiritual home of heavy metal, all tribalism was forgotten as massed ranks of rockers bounced and jumped with carefree abandon. And it was Roth, of course, who jumped highest. “When he stood on the drum riser, we all knew what was coming,” Copping says. “He leaps up and does the fucking splits and hits the ground with his arms in the air. Magic!” 

The image of an airborne Roth would become burned into the collective memory of everyone who watched that Van Halen that day. Equally unforgettable were the raps he delivered between and during the songs. “Don’t stick your tongue out at me unless you’re gonna use it!” “If you throw something at me I’m gonna come down there and fuck your girlfriend!” And an old favourite: “Look at all the people here tonight!” Copping still remembers every word. “All those lines are completely embedded in my skull,” he says. “I would quote them like lines from The Young Ones or Fawlty Towers ! For me, Roth’s on-stage banter has never been equalled.” 

Van Halen’s set ended with their signature version of The Kinks ’ 1964 hit You Really Got Me , powered by the riff that pretty much invented heavy metal. Then the four band members joined hands as they bowed out, all smiles… 

When headliners AC/DC hit the stage, Donington was in darkness. There was a chill in the air, and some fans had lit fires using wooden pallets. The start was dramatic: Angus Young appearing on a platform high above the stage, soloing manically into opening song Guns For Hire . All the big numbers were rolled out, including Back In Black and Let There Be Rock, and the climax was a spectacular For Those About To Rock (We Salute You) ending with deafening cannon fire. 

But on our ride home in that dented bus, the talk was all about Van Halen. More specifically, David Lee Roth. So cool, so cocky, and so funny. The Muhammad Ali of rock.

Andy Copping travelled home that night with mixed feelings. “My expectations had been so high, I just felt a bit flat,” he remembers. Now, after watching the video of Van Halen’s performance, he says: “I enjoyed it more than I did on the day. I thought: this is fucking great!” But, with hindsight, he adds: “As sad as it is to say it, you were seeing Roth going: ‘I’m now superseding this band…’” 

For Ross Halfin, the video had the opposite effect. “At the time, when I was shooting the show, I thought they were great. And I saw the 1984 show twice in America and it was phenomenal. But when I watched the footage from Donington, I couldn’t believe how bad they were!” 

What Halfin remembers most clearly is what happened after Van Halen’s set, when things took an unpleasant turn. “During the show, Ed would smile at me and I’d smile back,” he says. “He had a really good smile. I went backstage afterwards to do some pictures. John Entwistle from The Who and Neal Schon from Journey were there. I was shooting them all together. And the first thing Edward said to me was: ‘What were you smiling at, you fucking fag?’ 

"I thought he was joking, but then he said it again with some venom. I started to react to it, and then Eddie Anderson, their security guy, stepped in between us. Michael Anthony said: ‘Hey, just ignore Ed, he’s been drinking.’ In the past, Edward had always been really friendly with me, so when he turned nasty it really threw me. But he was drunk, and it’s not fair to judge people when they’re like that.” 

In the video footage, Roth is seen laughing with Alex Van Halen just before show time. But, as Halfin claims: “That’s probably because Roth was stoned.” If that’s true, then the singer’s on-stage acrobatics were all the more impressive.

What Halfin says in conclusion is that the bad vibes from Eddie were symptomatic of a general sense of tension in and around the band. As he puts it: “Once you know the politics of a band, it’s very off-putting.”

It was on September 2, 1984, just two weeks after Donington, that Van Halen played for the last time before the split with Roth, at a Monsters Of Rock show in the German city of Nuremberg. With a certain irony, that performance ended with the band huddled together for an a-cappella version of Happy Trails, a sweet little tune by the so-called ‘singing cowboy’ Roy Rogers. ‘ Happy trails to you ,’ they crooned, ‘ until we meet again .’

Twenty-three years later, after Roth had finally made his peace with the Van Halens for a reunion tour, Copping did everything in his power to lure them back to Donington to headline Download. “On two occasions I had them confirmed,” he sighs. “I got so close, but it never happened. For me, that was the band that got away.”

What he’s left with are the memories of 1984. “People still say it was the best Monsters Of Rock ever,” he says. “And every time I think back to that day, I think of David Lee Roth. The best frontman I ever saw. Nobody else came close."

Freelance writer for Classic Rock since 2005, Paul Elliott has worked for leading music titles since 1985, including Sounds, Kerrang!, MOJO and Q . He is the author of several books including the first biography of Guns N’ Roses and the autobiography of bodyguard-to-the-stars Danny Francis. He has written liner notes for classic album reissues by artists such as Def Leppard, Thin Lizzy and Kiss, and currently works as content editor for Total Guitar . He lives in Bath - of which David Coverdale recently said: “How very Roman of you!”

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