18th and 19th Centuries: Ardhakathānaka Ardhakathānaka

mathematician, physician and astrologer Gerolamo Cardano (1574).
One of the first autobiographies written in an Indian language was Ardhakathānaka, written by Banarasidas, who
was a Shrimal Jain businessman and poet of Mughal India.[8] The poetic autobiography Ardhakathānaka (The Half
Story), was composed in Braj Bhasa, an early dialect of Hindi linked with the region around Mathura.In his autobi-
ography, he describes his transition from an unruly youth, to a religious realization by the time the work was com-
posed.[9] The work also is notable for many details of life in Mughal times.
The earliest known autobiography written in English is the Book of Margery Kempe, written in 1438.[10] Following in
the earlier tradition of a life story told as an act of Christian witness, the book describes Margery Kempe's pilgrim-
ages to the Holy Land and Rome, her attempts to negotiate a celibate marriage with her husband, and most of all
her religious experiences as a Christian mystic. Extracts from the book were published in the early sixteenth cen-
tury but the whole text was published for the first time only in 1936. [11]
Possibly the first publicly available autobiography written in English was Captain John Smith's autobiography pub-
lished in 1630[12] which was regarded by many as not much more than a collection of tall tales told by someone of
doubtful veracity. This changed with the publication of Philip Barbour's definitive biography in 1964 which, amongst
other things, established independent factual bases for many of Smith's "tall tales", many of which could not have
been known by Smith at the time of writing unless he was actually present at the events recounted. [13]
Other notable English autobiographies of the 17th century include those of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1643, pub-
lished 1764) and John Bunyan (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 1666).
Jarena Lee (1783–1864) was the first African American woman to have a published biography in the United
States.[14]
18th and 19th centuries
Cover of the first English edition of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography,

1793
Following the trend of Romanticism, which greatly emphasized the role and the nature of the individual, and in the
footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a more intimate form of autobiography, exploring the sub-
ject's emotions, came into fashion. Stendhal's autobiographical writings of the 1830s, The Life of Henry
Brulard and Memoirs of an Egotist, are both avowedly influenced by Rousseau.[15] An English example is William
Hazlitt's Liber Amoris (1823), a painful examination of the writer's love-life.
With the rise of education, cheap newspapers and cheap printing, modern concepts of fame and celebrity began to
develop, and the beneficiaries of this were not slow to cash in on this by producing autobiographies. It became the
expectation—rather than the exception—that those in the public eye should write about themselves—not only writ-
ers such as Charles Dickens (who also incorporated autobiographical elements in his novels) and Anthony
Trollope, but also politicians (e.g. Henry Brooks Adams), philosophers (e.g. John Stuart Mill), churchmen such
as Cardinal Newman, and entertainers such as P. T. Barnum. Increasingly, in accordance with romantic taste,
these accounts also began to deal, amongst other topics, with aspects of childhood and upbringing—far removed
from the principles of "Cellinian" autobiography.
20th and 21st centuries

From the 17th century onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertines, serving a public taste for titillation,
have been frequently published. Typically pseudonymous, they were (and are) largely works of fiction written
by ghostwriters. So-called "autobiographies" of modern professional athletes and media celebrities—and to a
lesser extent about politicians—generally written by a ghostwriter, are routinely published. Some celebrities, such
as Naomi Campbell, admit to not having read their "autobiographies".[16] Some sensationalist autobiographies such
as James Frey's A Million Little Pieces have been publicly exposed as having embellished or fictionalized signifi-
cant details of the authors' lives.
Autobiography has become an increasingly popular and widely accessible form. A Fortunate Life by Albert
Facey (1979) has become an Australian literary classic.[17] With the critical and commercial success in the United
States of such memoirs as Angela’s Ashes and The Color of Water, more and more people have been encour-
aged to try their hand at this genre. Maggie Nelson's book The Argonauts is one of the recent autobiogra-
phies. Maggie Nelson calls it autotheory—a combination of autobiography and critical theory.[18]
A genre where the "claim for truth" overlaps with fictional elements though the work still purports to be autobio-
graphical is autofiction.
See also
 Biography portal
 Category:Autobiographies
 Alphabiography
 Autobiographical comics
 Autobiographical memory

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mathematician, physician and astrologer Gerolamo Cardano (1574).

18th and 19th centuries

Cover of the first English edition of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography,

20th and 21st centuries

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