How to Use autobiography in a Sentence

Autobiography.

  • I read her autobiography last year.

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'autobiography.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Play Quordle: Guess all four words in a limited number of tries.  Each of your guesses must be a real 5-letter word.

Can you solve 4 words at once?

Word of the day.

See Definitions and Examples »

Get Word of the Day daily email!

AUTOBIOGRAPHY in a Sentence Examples: 21 Ways to Use Autobiography

Have you ever wondered what goes into writing an autobiography? An autobiography is a self-written account of one’s own life, detailing personal experiences, memories, and moments that have shaped the individual.

Table of Contents

7 Examples Of Autobiography Used In a Sentence For Kids

14 sentences with autobiography examples, how to use autobiography in sentences.

Autobiography is a noun that refers to a written account of a person’s life, written by that person themselves. To properly use autobiography in a sentence, follow these guidelines:

Introduce the Autobiography: Begin your sentence with a clear introduction that the text is an autobiography. For example, “In his autobiography,” or “Her autobiography details.”

Use Correct Punctuation: Place the title of the autobiography in italics or quotes, following the appropriate punctuation rules.

Proper Grammar: Ensure that your sentence is grammatically correct and clearly conveys the intended meaning.

Example: In her autobiography, “Becoming,” Michelle Obama shares her journey from a young girl in Chicago to becoming the First Lady of the United States.

By following these steps and tips, you can effectively use autobiography in a sentence to accurately convey the subject and context of a person’s life story.

Autobiographical sentences serve as powerful tools for self-reflection, self-expression, and storytelling. They offer a unique window into the author’s inner life, allowing readers to connect with the author’s journey and gain a deeper understanding of their perspectives and values. Through autobiography sentences, authors create a lasting record of their lives, leaving behind a legacy that can inspire, educate, and resonate with others for generations to come.

Related Posts

In front or infront: which is the correct spelling.

As an expert blogger with years of experience, I’ve delved…  Read More » In Front or Infront: Which Is the Correct Spelling?

Targeted vs. Targetted: Correct Spelling Explained in English (US) Usage

As per request or as per requested: understanding the correct usage.

  • Daily Crossword
  • Word Puzzle
  • Word Finder
  • Word of the Day
  • Synonym of the Day
  • Word of the Year
  • Language stories
  • All featured
  • Gender and sexuality
  • All pop culture
  • Writing hub
  • Grammar essentials
  • Commonly confused
  • All writing tips
  • Pop culture
  • Writing tips

Advertisement

autobiography

[ aw-t uh -bahy- og -r uh -fee , -bee- , aw-toh- ]

  • a history of a person's life written or told by that person.

/ ˌɔːtəʊbaɪˈɒɡrəfɪ; ˌɔːtəbaɪ- /

  • an account of a person's life written or otherwise recorded by that person
  • A literary work about the writer's own life. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa are autobiographical.

Discover More

Derived forms.

  • ˌautobiˈographer , noun

Other Words From

  • auto·bi·ogra·pher noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of autobiography 1

Example Sentences

In so doing, she gave us an autobiography that has held up for more than a century.

His handwritten autobiography reawakens in Lee a longing to know her motherland.

His elocution, perfected on stage and evident in television and film, make X’s autobiography an easy yet informative listen.

The book is not so much an autobiography of Hastings — or even Netflix’s origin story.

By contrast, Shing-Tung Yau says in his autobiography that the Calabi-Yau manifold was given its name by other people eight years after he proved its existence, which Eugenio Calabi had conjectured some 20 years before that.

Glow: The Autobiography of Rick JamesRick James David Ritz (Atria Books) Where to begin?

Hulanicki was the subject of a 2009 documentary, Beyond Biba, based on her 2007 autobiography From A to Biba.

And it was also during the phase of the higher autobiography.

“Nighttime was the worst,” Bennett wrote in his autobiography.

Then I picked up a book that shredded my facile preconceptions—Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young.

No; her parents had but small place in that dramatic autobiography that Daphne was now constructing for herself.

His collected works, with autobiography, were published in 1865 under the editorship of Charles Hawkins.

But there is one point about the book that deserves some considering, its credibility as autobiography.

I thought you were anxious for leisure to complete your autobiography.

The smallest fragment of a genuine autobiography seems to me valuable for the student of past epochs.

Related Words

Autobiography

Definition of autobiography, difference between autobiography and memoir, six types of autobiography, importance of autobiography, examples of autobiography in literature, example #1:  the box: tales from the darkroom by gunter grass, example #2:  the story of my life by helen keller, example #3:  self portraits: fictions by frederic tuten, example #4:  my prizes by thomas bernhard, example #5:  the autobiography of benjamin franklin by benjamin franklin, synonyms of autobiography, related posts:, post navigation.

  • Dictionaries home
  • American English
  • Collocations
  • German-English
  • Grammar home
  • Practical English Usage
  • Learn & Practise Grammar (Beta)
  • Word Lists home
  • My Word Lists
  • Recent additions
  • Resources home
  • Text Checker

Definition of autobiography noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

autobiography

  • In his autobiography, he recalls the poverty he grew up in.
  • in an/​the autobiography

Want to learn more?

Find out which words work together and produce more natural-sounding English with the Oxford Collocations Dictionary app. Try it for free as part of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary app.

autobiography meaning use in sentence

Are you ready to learn the facts of life? Then review these words from the Greek root bio , meaning "life" or "way of living."

Learn these list of words that contain the Greek root auto , meaning "self."

Practice this vocabulary list and explore words that contain the Greek roots graph ("write/writing") and gram ("written thing").

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement..

Looking to publish? Meet your dream editor, designer and marketer on Reedsy.

Find the perfect editor for your next book

1 million authors trust the professionals on Reedsy. Come meet them.

Blog • Perfecting your Craft

Posted on Jun 05, 2024

How to Write an Autobiography: The Story of Your Life

Anyone who’s lived a long, interesting life (as many of us have in one way or another!) may dream of someday turning their life into a book. However, the practicalities of how to write an autobiography can be daunting — especially to those who don’t have much writing experience.

If you feel ready to write your autobiography but aren’t sure where to start, this guide will take you from opening lines to (hopefully) publishing your autobiography for all the world to read.

1. Understand what an autobiography entails

When asked to picture an autobiography, you might think of a celebrity tell-all or political memoir. This isn’t inaccurate ; a memoir would definitely fall under the autobiography umbrella. But to be really precise, there are a few key differences between memoirs and autobiographies:

  • Memoirs tend to be more thematic and focus on a  central narrative (similar to a novel), whereas an autobiography is highly factual and reads more like “classic” nonfiction.
  • Memoirs focus on a specific period or theme in a person’s life, while autobiographies aim to give a complete, chronological picture.
  • Lastly, many memoirs are written while the writer is still young. An autobiography, though, should be written later in one’s life — at a point where one’s life story can be told comprehensively.

An autobiography is also different from a biography in that it is always narrated by the subject. Note that we’ve said “narrated” instead of “written” because, indeed, many autobiographies are created with the help of ghostwriters!

Ghostwritten autobiographies aren’t just for celebrities, either. People from all walks of life work with ghostwriters to record their stories or simply guide them through the process.

If that sounds like you, have a look through  our vetted ghostwriters on the Reedsy marketplace . You might just find your dream collaborator!

MEET GHOSTWRITERS

MEET GHOSTWRITERS

Find a ghost you can trust

Your mission? A fantastic book. Find the perfect writer to complete it on Reedsy.

Should you write a memoir or an autobiography?

In other words, if you’re still young (be honest here!), and/or if the book you want to write is more a series of vignettes revolving around a central theme, you may have a memoir on your hands. If that’s the case, check out our guide to how to write a memoir for more tailored advice.

But if you’ve already lived a long, interesting life — one that you feel prepared to share chronologically and completely — then an autobiography is the medium for you.

2. Outline your life's main “beats”

You might think you don’t need to be too picky about what to include in your autobiography since it’s supposed to be a “complete” account — and you’d be mostly right! That said, even in a fairly exhaustive autobiography, it’s still useful to identify the key “beats” before you begin.

What should you include in an autobiography?

While each person’s autobiography will be unique to them, readers expect certain “beats” to be covered. To get the ball rolling, here’s a list of classic autobiographical beats to hit:

  • 🐣 Your birth and family background – possibly including how your parents met, where they were living at the time of your birth, whether you have any siblings, etc.
  • 📚  Your early days at school – including the friends you made (whether long-lasting or not), your academic achievements (and failures), and any critical moments related to your future goals/actions.
  • 🧑🏽‍💻  Your first job – this is often enlightening for readers, particularly if it had some bearing on your later career; whether because you realized that you loved the work or, more likely, that you didn’t want to work your first job forever.
  • 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩  Your first relationship – similar to your first job, this is often a major stepping stone into adulthood and understanding your priorities.
  • Moving house;
  • Having children;
  • Getting promoted;
  • Receiving an award;
  • Traveling somewhere new;
  • Or discovering anything significant about yourself.
  • 💼  Your retirement – if applicable, this will likely be one of the last beats you cover; it might include why you decided to retire, how you are spending your time nowadays, and any plans for the future.

Remember that each beat you include should contribute to a holistic portrait of your life — whether it’s something that shaped your character or lends context to another parallel moment later on.

But not everything will be relevant. There’s no need to include random things that have no bearing on any other event or important element of your life; that said, the lucky thing about memory is that you likely won’t recall most of those things anyway!

Need some help outlining your autobiography? Check out our Biography Outline Template below — while not entirely chronological, it’s a great starting point for any aspiring autobiographical author.

FREE RESOURCE

FREE RESOURCE

Biography Outline Template

Craft a satisfying story arc for your biography with our free template.

3. Try to write in chronological order

Having come up with a solid outline, you should now feel (somewhat) prepared to start writing your autobiography… and, ideally, to start writing it in chronological order.

While many books can be drafted non-chronologically, an autobiography is not one of them. This is because each new chapter quite literally builds on the last; this is different even from a memoir, which often skips around in time and leaves out details. The best way to ensure you’re not missing anything is to write your autobiography as chronologically as possible!

How to start an autobiography

On the note of starting your autobiography, it’s pretty straightforward: begin either with your birth or slightly before, e.g., with your parents. Unlike a memoir, which can start in medias res ( in the middle of the action ), an autobiography should start ab ovo , or “from the egg.”

This is one of the biggest benefits of writing chronologically: you always know where to start, and indeed, what should come next. Here are two strong autobiography openings to give a sense of how yours might sound:

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb

When I was born, people in our village commiserated with my mother and nobody congratulated my father. I arrived at dawn as the last star blinked out… I was a girl in a land where rifles are fired in celebration of a son, while daughters are hidden away behind a curtain, their role in life simply to prepare food and give birth to children.

Iacocca: An Autobiography by Lee Iacocca and William Novak:

Nicola Iacocca, my father, arrived in this country in 1902 at the age of twelve — poor, alone, and scared. He used to say the only thing he was sure of when he got here was that the world was round. And that was only because another Italian boy named Christopher Columbus had preceded him by 410 years, almost to the day.

Though each opening takes a different tack — Yousafzai’s autobiography begins with her actual birth, while Iacocca’s begins even earlier, with his father’s arrival in America — both serve as effective starts to their respective books and set the tone for what’s to come.

autobiography meaning use in sentence

4. Include plenty of detail

In case we haven’t drilled down on this enough, let’s reiterate once more: an autobiography should be a complete overview of your life from beginning to end. That means that as you get into properly writing it, you should include as much detail as you can remember.

Taking one of our previous suggested beats — “your first job” — as an example, here are a few questions you might ask yourself to recount your memories in more detail:

  • How did you get your first job?
  • What made you want to work there?
  • What was the environment/atmosphere like — physically and emotionally?
  • What was your greatest accomplishment at this job? Your greatest failure?
  • What did you learn from working there? How did it affect your later career?

As you can probably tell from these questions, the natural corollary to the advice of “be detailed!” is to also be honest . Don’t shy away from your failures or regrets — an autobiography without mistakes is not an autobiography, but rather a puff piece.

Some of the cast of The Office

Examples of strong biographical detail

For those wondering how to inject detail into their writing, here are two examples from great autobiographies that do exactly that. Each takes a different approach to engage readers — perhaps you can pick up some descriptive techniques to suit your own life story.

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

There was no natural light in my cell; a single bulb burned overhead twenty-four hours a day. I did not have a wristwatch and I often thought it was the middle of the night when it was only late afternoon. I had nothing to read, nothing to write on or with, no one to talk to [...] After a time in solitary, I relished the company even of the insects in my cell, and found myself on the verge of initiating conversations with a cockroach.

This passage’s evocative details — the single lightbulb, Mandela’s loss of his internal clock — convey the crushing loneliness of solitary confinement, yet also add levity with the bit about cockroaches.

This give-and-take style may be useful if you, too, are writing an autobiography which includes difficult or traumatic elements. Don’t shy away from the hard parts, but don’t let solemnity overpower your personality and voice!

Becoming by Michelle Obama

When you’re little, a piano can look like it has a thousand keys. You’re staring at an expanse of black and white that stretches farther than two small arms can reach. [...] The keys on Robbie’s piano had a subtle unevenness of color and shape, places where bits of ivory had broken off over time, leaving them looking like a set of bad teeth.

This passage uses sensory details and an intimate tone to draw readers in, describing not just how the piano looks, but how it feels to play. All this makes for a very compelling narrative style — almost like that of a novel. If you want your autobiography to flow this way, try reading more nonfiction in this style (indeed, many memoirs read quite similarly).

📚 Looking for more examples of brilliant biographical writing? Check out this list of The 30 Best Biographies of All Time to inspire you.

5. Do research to fill in the gaps

No matter how carefully you rack your brains, you won’t be able to recall every detail of your life. That’s where research comes in! Here are a couple of things you can do to learn more about yourself and your past.

Interview friends and family

While you’ve likely retained the core of each important life memory, some details will still elude you. For these, you might call on friends, family members, and anyone else who was in your life at the time — interviewing them should help flesh things out in your autobiography.

You might try a few different interview strategies, depending on what you’re hoping to achieve:

  • Ask specific questions based on what you can’t remember/don’t know (e.g. “Whose wedding was that again?” or “Why did Dad quit that job in Pasadena?”);
  • Ask your subject to recount everything they can about an event (e.g. “Tell me how you remember our high school graduation”); or
  • Ask them if they have any key memories of you which they would like to talk about.

The first interview style will be the quickest, but the latter two might yield more interesting results. If you’re prioritizing thoroughness, we’d highly recommend calling up a few old friends or close family members, sitting down, and recording your interview for a few hours.

autobiography meaning use in sentence

Do “traditional" research if needed

Having written as much as you can, and interviewed other people to add their stories, you might still find yourself missing information. If applicable, this is where you could turn to “traditional” research — that is, looking up relevant records and documentation, or even taking a field trip or two to previous neighborhoods.

It’s up to you how far to go with this; just don’t go mad, and try to avoid any rabbit holes that tempt you to write an entirely new book. (Then again, that could always be your next project! Check out our post on how to write a nonfiction book to learn more.)

6. Give your draft a discerning edit

You’ve finally finished a detailed draft — congratulations! Even if you don’t do anything else with your autobiography, your friends and family will be wildly impressed, and your descendants will have a fascinatingly thorough record of your life.

But if you want to publish your autobiography — or even if you suspect it hasn’t turned out quite as expected — you’ll now need to enter the editing stage. There are a few different types of editing to consider for your autobiography, including:

  • Structural editing to heighten the impact of your key beats;
  • Line editing to improve the syntax, flow, and clarity of your sentences; and
  • Fact-checking and proofreading to ensure your book doesn’t contain any errors.

Again, it’s up to you how extensively you want to edit your autobiography. If you’re doing it yourself, we’d suggest going top-to-bottom — first structural editing, then line editing, then proofreading — to avoid unnecessary work. ( Check out this post on how to self-edit your book for key tips!)

And if this all feels overwhelming, you can always work with a professional editor to get your autobiography in tip-top shape . Autobiography and memoir specialists can help turn your work into an Iacocca-worthy masterpiece.

MEET EDITORS

MEET EDITORS

Polish your book with expert help

Sign up, meet 1500+ experienced editors, and find your perfect match.

7. Format and publish your autobiography

Now comes the really fun part, if you so choose it — formatting and publishing your autobiography for everyone to read!

Biography fans out there will know that auto/biographies often contain a selection of personal photos within the text. If you’re envisioning this, it will require specialty formatting; you’ll either need to intersperse photos throughout the text or format your book with a “photo section” in the middle (the more common option).

autobiography meaning use in sentence

You can do this with free book formatting tools like Reedsy Studio . Or if you’re not confident in your formatting abilities, consider hiring a professional typesetter to help !

As for publishing, many autobiographers choose to self-publish their books to get them out as quickly as possible, and to have more control over the process. However, if you’re interested in selling your autobiography to a publisher — a reasonable option if you are a businessperson, and especially if you already have a decent following — we’d suggest this post on how to write a non-fiction query letter to get you started.

Whatever path you take, whether you decide to publish it or not, writing the story of your life is an incredibly enlightening endeavor. If you're interested in novels instead, check out this advice from NYT bestselling author Caroline Leavitt ! We hope this guide has helped you on your journey; indeed, as autobiographical writing teaches us, the journey really is the greatest reward.

Continue reading

Recommended posts from the Reedsy Blog

autobiography meaning use in sentence

450+ Powerful Adjectives to Describe a Person (With Examples)

Want a handy list to help you bring your characters to life? Discover words that describe physical attributes, dispositions, and emotions.

autobiography meaning use in sentence

How to Plot a Novel Like a NYT Bestselling Author

Need to plot your novel? Follow these 7 steps from New York Times bestselling author Caroline Leavitt.

autobiography meaning use in sentence

What is the Climax of a Story? Examples & Tips

The climax is perhaps a story's most crucial moment, but many writers struggle to stick the landing. Let's see what makes for a great story climax.

autobiography meaning use in sentence

What is Tone in Literature? Definition & Examples

We show you, with supporting examples, how tone in literature influences readers' emotions and perceptions of a text.

autobiography meaning use in sentence

Writing Cozy Mysteries: 7 Essential Tips & Tropes

We show you how to write a compelling cozy mystery with advice from published authors and supporting examples from literature.

autobiography meaning use in sentence

Man vs Nature: The Most Compelling Conflict in Writing

What is man vs nature? Learn all about this timeless conflict with examples of man vs nature in books, television, and film.

Join a community of over 1 million authors

Reedsy is more than just a blog. Become a member today to discover how we can help you publish a beautiful book.

Reedsy | Default — Editors with Marker | 2024-05

Bring your publishing dreams to life

The world's best editors, designers, and marketers are on Reedsy. Come meet them.

Reedsy Marketplace UI

1 million authors trust the professionals on Reedsy. Come meet them.

Enter your email or get started with a social account:

What Is an Autobiography?

What to Consider Before You Start to Write

  • Writing Research Papers
  • Writing Essays
  • English Grammar
  • M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
  • B.A., History, Armstrong State University

Your life story, or autobiography , should contain the basic framework that any essay should have, with four basic elements. Begin with an introduction that includes a thesis statement , followed by a body containing at least several paragraphs , if not several chapters. To complete the autobiography, you'll need a strong conclusion , all the while crafting an interesting narrative with a theme.

Did You Know?

The word autobiography  literally means SELF (auto), LIFE (bio), WRITING (graph). Or, in other words, an autobiography is the story of someone's life written or otherwise told by that person.

When writing your autobiography, find out what makes your family or your experience unique and build a narrative around that. Doing some research and taking detailed notes can help you discover the essence of what your narrative should be and craft a story that others will want to read.

Research Your Background

Just like the biography of a famous person, your autobiography should include things like the time and place of your birth, an overview of your personality, your likes and dislikes, and the special events that shaped your life. Your first step is to gather background detail. Some things to consider:

  • What is interesting about the region where you were born?
  • How does your family history relate to the history of that region?
  • Did your family come to that region for a reason?

It might be tempting to start your story with "I was born in Dayton, Ohio...," but that is not really where your story begins. It's better to start with an experience. You may wish to start with something like why you were born where you were and how your family's experience led to your birth. If your narrative centers more around a pivotal moment in your life, give the reader a glimpse into that moment. Think about how your favorite movie or novel begins, and look for inspiration from other stories when thinking about how to start your own.

Think About Your Childhood

You may not have had the most interesting childhood in the world, but everyone has had a few memorable experiences. Highlight the best parts when you can. If you live in a big city, for instance, you should realize that many people who grew up in the country have never ridden a subway, walked to school, ridden in a taxi, or walked to a store a few blocks away.

On the other hand, if you grew up in the country you should consider that many people who grew up in the suburbs or inner city have never eaten food straight from a garden, camped in their backyards, fed chickens on a working farm, watched their parents canning food, or been to a county fair or a small-town festival.

Something about your childhood will always seem unique to others. You just have to step outside your life for a moment and address the readers as if they knew nothing about your region and culture. Pick moments that will best illustrate the goal of your narrative, and symbolism within your life.

Consider Your Culture

Your culture is your overall way of life , including the customs that come from your family's values and beliefs. Culture includes the holidays you observe, the customs you practice, the foods you eat, the clothes you wear, the games you play, the special phrases you use, the language you speak, and the rituals you practice.

As you write your autobiography, think about the ways that your family celebrated or observed certain days, events, and months, and tell your audience about special moments. Consider these questions:

  • What was the most special gift you ever received? What was the event or occasion surrounding that gift?
  • Is there a certain food that you identify with a certain day of the year?
  • Is there an outfit that you wear only during a special event?

Think honestly about your experiences, too. Don't just focus on the best parts of your memories; think about the details within those times. While Christmas morning may be a magical memory, you might also consider the scene around you. Include details like your mother making breakfast, your father spilling his coffee, someone upset over relatives coming into town, and other small details like that. Understanding the full experience of positives and negatives helps you paint a better picture for the reader and lead to a stronger and more interesting narrative. Learn to tie together all the interesting elements of your life story and craft them into an engaging essay.

Establish the Theme

Once you have taken a look at your own life from an outsider’s point of view, you will be able to select the most interesting elements from your notes to establish a theme. What was the most interesting thing you came up with in your research? Was it the history of your family and your region? Here is an example of how you can turn that into a theme:

"Today, the plains and low hills of southeastern Ohio make the perfect setting for large cracker box-shaped farmhouses surrounded by miles of corn rows. Many of the farming families in this region descended from the Irish settlers who came rolling in on covered wagons in the 1830s to find work building canals and railways. My ancestors were among those settlers."

A little bit of research can make your own personal story come to life as a part of history, and historical details can help a reader better understand your unique situation. In the body of your narrative, you can explain how your family’s favorite meals, holiday celebrations, and work habits relate to Ohio history.

One Day as a Theme

You also can take an ordinary day in your life and turn it into a theme. Think about the routines you followed as a child and as an adult. Even a mundane activity like household chores can be a source of inspiration.

For example, if you grew up on a farm, you know the difference between the smell of hay and wheat, and certainly that of pig manure and cow manure—because you had to shovel one or all of these at some point. City people probably don’t even know there is a difference. Describing the subtle differences of each and comparing the scents to other scents can help the reader imagine the situation more clearly.

If you grew up in the city, you how the personality of the city changes from day to night because you probably had to walk to most places. You know the electricity-charged atmosphere of the daylight hours when the streets bustle with people and the mystery of the night when the shops are closed and the streets are quiet.

Think about the smells and sounds you experienced as you went through an ordinary day and explain how that day relates to your life experience in your county or your city:

"Most people don’t think of spiders when they bite into a tomato, but I do. Growing up in southern Ohio, I spent many summer afternoons picking baskets of tomatoes that would be canned or frozen and preserved for cold winter’s dinners. I loved the results of my labors, but I’ll never forget the sight of the enormous, black and white, scary-looking spiders that lived in the plants and created zigzag designs on their webs. In fact, those spiders, with their artistic web creations, inspired my interest in bugs and shaped my career in science."

One Event as a Theme

Perhaps one event or one day of your life made such a big impact that it could be used as a theme. The end or beginning of the life of another can affect our thoughts and actions for a long time:

"I was 12 years old when my mother passed away. By the time I was 15, I had become an expert in dodging bill collectors, recycling hand-me-down jeans, and stretching a single meal’s worth of ground beef into two family dinners. Although I was a child when I lost my mother, I was never able to mourn or to let myself become too absorbed in thoughts of personal loss. The fortitude I developed at a young age was the driving force that would see me through many other challenges."

Writing the Essay

Whether you determine that your life story is best summed up by a single event, a single characteristic, or a single day, you can use that one element as a theme . You will define this theme in your  introductory paragraph .

Create an outline with several events or activities that relate back to your central theme and turn those into subtopics (body paragraphs) of your story. Finally, tie up all your experiences in a summary that restates and explains the overriding theme of your life. 

  • 4 Teaching Philosophy Statement Examples
  • How to Write a Personal Narrative
  • How to Write a Narrative Essay or Speech
  • Tips for Writing a "What I Did on Vacation" Essay
  • The Power of Literacy Narratives
  • Compose a Narrative Essay or Personal Statement
  • 7 Tips for Writing Personality Profiles That People Will Want to Read
  • FAQs About Writing Your Graduate Admissions Essay
  • Common Application Essay, Option 1: Share Your Story
  • Writing Prompts for 5th Grade
  • Engaging Writing Prompts for 3rd Graders
  • Memorable Graduation Speech Themes
  • What Are the Parts of a Short Story? (How to Write Them)
  • The Law School Applicant’s Guide to the Diversity Statement
  • How to Write Your Family History
  • 4th Grade Writing Prompts
What's the opposite of
Meaning of the word
Words that rhyme with
Sentences with the word
Translate to
Find Words Use * for blank tiles (max 2) Use * for blank spaces
Find the of
Pronounce the word in
Find Names    
Appearance
Use device theme  
Dark theme
Light theme
in a sentence ? Here are some examples. is written chastely, elegantly, self-critically and charitably.
While going through such varied sources, it is a great joy when one finds an or a biography or an unpublished piece of writing.
This will appeal most to those interested in the history of the Chattahoochee Valley.
In his he concludes, somewhat apologetically, that perhaps he preferred objects to people.
In his , My Life, he tells of his lifelong passion for golf both as a player and a commentator.
George is the survivor, the cat with nine lives, and he has an for every one of them.
In his he points to influences from punk, reggae, rock and pop with hip-hop, which really gave him his sense of direction.
It was reprinted by former LIFE editor Edward K. Thompson in his , along with the story behind it.
Nelson Mandela, for example, describes in his the depth of presence of Robben Island in the Xhosa language.
I want to say that Campion's An Angel at My Table is faithful to Frame's , specifically to the writerly vision of the writer's life.
Spanning four albums, this collection is an of her life over the past decade.
In his , he explains in detail why it did not become a worldwide business.
Every time you turn a page of his , you're going, you're kidding me, this happened?
Oskar has convinced Bruno to buy him a ream of blank white paper so that he can write out his .
It is in that episode that the larger implications of Schreiner's intricate weave of fiction and become apparent.
In his he accredits the story to Neil Collins, Bennett's Daily Telegraph counterpart.
The Times repeats, in summary, Said's false , as though it were factual.
Except for Lucy's , all the primary source materials I found are influenced by a dominant, cissexual perspective of people.
We must bear in mind that an reveals more about the mind set of its author than about factual occurrences.
In various passages from her , Hepburn, the daughter of a suffragist and birth-control crusader, sounds disconcertingly unliberated.
A vitrine contains parts of the original manuscripts for his 15,000 page novel and his 5,000-page .
Rather pettily, he made a point of correcting an error in his .
A pastiche of and post-modern plot twists, it was haunted by an off-putting tone of smug precociousness.
Note the dramatic narrative and implicit that emerge from this penetrating insight.
There is only one possible reason for a book such as this, the of a television personality.
Honesty, Amos says, is one of the advantages of committing her to CD rather than to paper.
By producing his , modest, unassuming Tom hopes he has scored a point.
The result is a literary in which the self revealed is simultaneously the self concealed.
He plainly confessed it in his , as did his ex-wife in her rather sympathetic memoir of their years together.
What gives to this its particular value is its inversion of insider-outsider positions.
Her CV, hand scrawled in a bi-tel across nine pages of A4 foolscap is a terribly poignant .
Well, you can wait for the or you can come with me to shop for formalwear.
It is not everyday that you find an so disarmingly direct and candid.
The translation represents Dante's as a prolepsis of the culminant visions in the Paradiso.
She wrote her , besides authoring books on the status of women, handicrafts and embroidery.
But if her is anything to go by, her success has come at a price.
She was so dismayed with the ghostwriter's draft of her 1998 that she rewrote it completely.
Like Jack, he contributed to the substantial body of Lindsay , a significant oeuvre in its own right.
An is an attempt to bring up all the facts, and to stick to them, faithfully and chronologically.
The golden girl of Tinseltown was due to appear at WestQuay's Waterstone's bookshop to sign copies of her new .
Ireland, in short, has no monopoly on the use of memoir, fiction, biography or as a political tool.
But one thing about now, as opposed to then, has been the rise of graphic novels, and comics biography and .
He re-read his father's and realised they shared many character traits.
Her opens with an epigraph by Virginia Woolf that firmly sets this metanarrative within a matriarchal tradition of storytelling.
Her , The Kindness of Strangers, published last year, is exceedingly short on personal detail.
His was serialized in magazines and on radio, bought by a major book club, and reprinted a number of times.
Finally, by facilitating self-discovery and personal growth, has therapeutic power.
It was published in 1937 so is probably unobtainable now, but it was a marvellous by a man who edited pulp magazines.
The covers the author's early years up to the threshold of university.
The film is not quite a confessional cry for help, but on some level it functions as scrambled .
But his does not mention the tax shelter advantages of his museum and foundation, which were hardly negligible.
He's got a book that just came out, an , in which he admits that he was a mainliner as a teen-ager.
In four volumes of and three books of journals he distilled much of the flavour of each decade of a remarkable century.
It is a unique record that pushes at the boundaries of and fiction.
Although he claims that his films should not be read as , he is a past master at transforming his life into art.
The blues sounded like , like ordinary people telling the story of their lives.
I'm always reluctant to do so because I don't want this blog to turn into by other means.
If all fiction is , then we must suggest that perhaps all autobiography is fiction.
It is part , part history, part psychological investigation of the Scottish character.
The details, he says, are pretty much straight , the sentiments also.
Indeed there is probably more fiction in than there is in fiction.
This is , and since when have we been worried about autobiography being indulgent?
He then adds in elements of , fragments of myth and history and a dose of magic realism.
Let's just say that by 30, I want to have had an international best-selling .
In a surprisingly candid , he reveals how his upbringing shaped his writing.
And members of the winning team will each receive a signed copy of his new .
In his Russell reports this sad interlude with agonized regret.
After my hit single I chose to take a year off to write my and produce this new album.
For now Ricky is busy attending book signings around the country to promote his Ricky.
Part of Harold Evans' , My paper chase, just out in paperback, describes his travels in America.
In this untypical but engaging sports , he portrays himself as a man of destiny, overcoming all obstacles in the way of England's Rugby World Cup victory.
I was intrigued to read in your that your relationship with your parents was starchy and formal, while you were close to your grandmother.
Since starting the whirlwind publicity tour to promote his , he has done his best to seem high-minded.
Like any example of oral history or the studies have both weaknesses as well as strengths.
He said he'd been working hard recently on his , which was now half finished.
It's curious that the Long Island Lolita is publishing her coincidentally with the Washington schoolteacher's release from the slammer.
Still, may be the land of the invented past but, when the person is interesting enough and the life is large enough, the compensations are considerable.
They're my particular way of writing my , the fragments of my day which make up an impression of my state of mind in a particular place.
A short is prefixed to the 1827 edition of Juvenal.
In sharp contrast to the , it tends to be prolix and muddled with excessive detail, and it often reads like a jumbled mix of fantastic stories.
After Lacroix, Man Ray spent about six years with the famed Parisian demi-mondaine Kiki de Montparnasse, to whom he devoted an entire chapter in his .
Gorgeously filmed and acted, Frida reveals the in Kahlo's art by occasionally punctuating the action with tableaux based on her paintings.
The assertive title boldly lettered on the gunmetal gray book spine makes this volume look like another tiresome by a former SAS trooper.
His memoir, in a translation that preserves the author's gorgeous, discursive style and his love of wordplay, is a social history embedded within an .
It is based on Barris's in which he claims to have led a double life as a CIA assassin, fronting game shows by day and murdering government targets by night.
Andrea described the whole scene very well in her , Talking Back to Presidents, Dictators, and Assorted Scoundrels.
Nobody writes an saying I was a loser, a failure and a fool.
Hulanicki was the subject of a 2009 documentary, Beyond Biba, based on her 2007 From A to Biba.
In his 'Still Me,' Reeves recounted how Williams helped save his life.
Her later works became even more experimental, blending elements of , history, myth, religion, and politics.
Its genre, fictional , goes back to Akkadian literature.
John Huston recalls in his , An Open Book, a time when he asked Mitchum to crawl across the grass on his elbows.
The splicing of vignettes and evokes moods wonderfully, but in later chapters, not pinned to Rembrandt, argument dissolves under the pressure.
Political anoraks who want to get ahead of the game should read Winning Back America, the former Vermont governor's recently published campaign .
In her she said curiosity had made her take the job, but 60 years on she admits she failed to let herself see the atrociousness of the regime she worked for.
I'm of another party, the one that says all is fiction.
Her art combines romantic and detached conceptualism.
The relation between and your writing is a complicated one.
Huston never publicly acknowledged that any of San Pietro was fake, not in his , not in any interview.
One wishes one of her many friends and admirers had advised her not to make her sound like a list of testimonials from famous people interspersed with anecdotes.
He penned pamphlets of protest, left his mark on Philadelphia's most significant free black institutions, and produced a moving spiritual .
After all, in her 1993 she disclosed one or two juicier titbits contained in the files, which she was allowed to see soon after the Wall came down.
His eagerly awaited is a solid good read about the life of a top international soccer star, although hardly the seminally honest account we were promised.
Along the way he offers a sort of of his bibliomania, which takes him across New England and the rest of the country searching for old books.
This image of a monastic, reclusive author, wilfully at odds with much of modernity, was confirmed by the posthumous appearance of Brown's .
Stiff cliched characters, unreal situations, and a bit too much .
The White House physician, who was not a psychiatrist, did describe Coolidge in his unpublished as being mentally unbalanced and mentally deranged.
It should not surprise anyone if it turns out that Jean Houston's is a piece of fiction, a heroic myth spun by her imagination out of the fabric of her desires.
In his early life, Oldfield used drugs including LSD, whose effects on his mental health he discussed in his .
At 13 Drew was using cocaine, and by the time she was 16 the rockily-rehabbed actress was co-authoring an about it all.
Smith was listed as the author of his , but a ghostwriter did most of the work.
At night, as creative author, the cognoscente sketched out the first draft of his expanded .
Six years later, she wrote her Prime Mimicker, chronicling her childhood and career as impressionist.
The aborigine's was also an autoethnography. It told much about the culture he grew up in.
They cover postmodernity, textuality, , masculinity, sexuality, postcoloniality, and post-theory.
Incorgnito Publishing Press has just signed martial artist and cult film legend Taimak to present his , Taimak, The Last Dragon.
The aborigine's contained much that was autoethnographic. How much more insightful into his culture than the views of a foreigner.
Following upon Patricia Cholakian's earlier work, the book frames Marguerite's life around a reading of her Heptameron as .
The Voice judge and Olympic ceremony hogger Jessie J will chat about her , Nice To Meet You.
McEwan had included a brief note at the end of Atonement, referring to Andrews's , among several other works.
In 1971, he published his , The Moon's a Balloon, which was well received, selling over five million copies.
In his , Rudolf Carnap describes Wittgenstein as the thinker who gave him the greatest inspiration.
In a fragment of dated 25 July 1894, Gladstone denounced the tax as.
Davies died at the age of 76 in 2015 and, as a tribute to his longstanding friend, Jon Gower republished Davies' in English.
Her , The Breakaway, was published in the summer of 2014 to significant critical acclaim.
The album's track titles are interwoven into the chapters of his Over the Top and Back released at the same time.
She released a second titled Keep Smiling in late 2007, this time with a very different tone than the previous.
Jenkins's , Time to Say Hello, was released on 28 January 2008, and was also serialised in The Mail on Sunday.
Much more than a methodical treatise, The Physiology of Taste is part , part theory, part axiology.
In his Slide Rule, Shute recalls writing the book twice over and rewriting large portions a third time.
Many elements of the novel follow events in Dickens's own life, and it is often considered his veiled .
Her publications, especially her The Life of Theresa of Jesus, had multiple effects.
As he relates in his , he examined the bronze powder made in Nuremberg which was the only place where it was made at the time.
According to Wainwright, in his Fellwanderer, he initially planned the series for his own interest rather than for publication.
And it was also during the phase of the higher .
Commando, the posthumously published of punk pioneer Johnny Ramone, is not a typical rock'n' roll confessional.
This is the of Nobel Peace Laureate Albert Schweitzer, published in commemoration of Schweitzer's 1949 visit to the United States.
But he has promised to return to the micro-blogging world once he has completed a follow-up to his Moab Is My Washpot.
However, he promised to return once he has finished a follow-up to his 1997 Moab Is My Washpot.
However, he has promised to return to the micro-blogging world once he has completed a follow-up to his , Moab Is My Washpot.
He covers the prehumans, the humans, chronicle, , Lucy the fossil, and Lucy the symbol.
Any interested in mobile living and yurts will find this an inspirational, revealing packed with insights and encouragement.
He also fronts his own game show, Alan Carr's Celebrity Ding Dong, has written his , and continues to perform as a stand-up.
Englund even co-wrote her bestselling 2009 , Cloris.
He made it clear to his publishers that this slim book was in no sense a full .
Lewis wrote a compellingly readable called Surprised by Joy.
He wrote his in Welsh, but said he lacked the necessary grasp of the language to employ it in his poems.
The whole novel is presented as if it were the he wrote between being forced to retire from the ministry and his eventual death.
For example, his Satyasanjeevani was meant for a women readership.
She escaped to the North in 1842 and became the first freedwoman to write her own .
Many of his novels contain elements of , and feature various locations in his native Scotland.
He had no patients according to his and his efforts as an ophthalmologist were a failure.
In 1962 Waugh began work on his , and that same year wrote his final fiction, the long short story Basil Seal Rides Again.
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, a spiritual was published in 1666, when he was still in jail.
Lynam, whose is called I Should Have Been At Work, lives in Chiswick, west London, with long-term partner Rose Diamond.
In September 2010, she published a second entitled Full Circle.
On the Fred Astaire theme, I enjoyed reading the star's , Steps In Time.
In an excerpt from his , he describes the reaction.
In 2002, MacArthur released her first entitled Taking on the World.
He has written an with the late Sky TV darts commentator Sid Waddell.
In 1971 she published her entertaining, and modest, tennis , A Game to Love.
He will also star as iconic war photographer Don McCullin in a film based on McCullin's , Unreasonable Behaviour.
A self-confessed bibliophile, this show felt like an but without any hint of sententiousness or showboating self-satisfaction.
Malala's father's story is glancingly told in her , which has been banned in Pakistan.
Andrews discovered her true parentage from her mother in 1950, although it was not publicly disclosed until her 2008 .
He then published Stone Alone, an based on scrapbooks and diaries he had been keeping since the band's early days.
Lewis also wrote an titled Surprised by Joy, which places special emphasis on his own conversion.
David Copperfield is regarded by many as a veiled of Dickens.
Who would have thought that we would end up working together when he became manager of Darlington, and that I would cowrite his ?
Scholars consider it as Dickens' veiled with the title character modeled after the author himself.
According to his , he and Shaw played cowboys in a silent film that was never released.
Much of what is known of Hooke's early life comes from an that he commenced in 1696 but never completed.
Septimius Severus does not mention her in his , though he later commemorated her with statues when he became Emperor.
Suetonius quotes Claudius' once and must have used it as a source numerous times.
Self-abasement was a Chaucerian inheritance that Shakespeare merged with the Plautine plaudite, and as such should not be mistaken for .
He wrote a boastful , recording all his great deeds.
His time there is documented in his , An Island To Oneself.
In 1997, his and art book, I Want To Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now, was published.
He remarked in his that his keenest interests were in religion and mathematics, and that only his wish to know more mathematics kept him from suicide.
According to his , Errol Flynn and he were firm friends and rented Rosalind Russell's house at 601 North Linden Drive as a bachelor pad.
According to his , as a young man Chesterton became fascinated with the occult and, along with his brother Cecil, experimented with Ouija boards.
The texts written by Caesar, an of the most important events of his public life, are the most complete primary source for the reconstruction of his biography.
Benn's , published in 2001, is called Dark Destroyer.
It is his lesbophilia that sets Proust's narrator apart from the author, that marks the novel as a novel rather than a perverse exercise in selective .
His Changeling was published in May 2007 by Virgin Books.
She began to write her , as she expected her life to end.
It was only later in that week I had the courage to venture into my bottom drawer and pull out the synopsis of his , together with the first couple of chapters.
And when I revealed this fact in my I'm Not The Only One he took my publisher Penguin to the High Court in Edinburgh seeking to injunct publication.
But that's just what he has done, in typically exuberant, no-holds-barred fashion by detailing his life story in a volume of entitled Kickups, Hiccups, Lockups.
He's had an amazing time, he assures me, although reading between the lines of his Funny Peculiar, his path to happiness hasn't always run smooth.
In his , the South African poet Roy Campbell recalled his youth in the Dargle Valley, near the city of Pietermaritzburg, where people spoke only Gaelic and Zulu.
The photographer Eric Hosking lost his left eye after attempting to photograph a tawny owl, which inspired the title of his 1970 , An Eye for a Bird.
Freddie Foreman, a friend of the Krays, claimed in his Respect that he shot Mitchell dead as a favour to the twins and disposed of his body at sea.
Contrary to some longstanding accounts, Stewart states in his 2012 that he was never signed to the club and that the club never called him back after his trials.
Christie's makes no reference to her disappearance.
In the autumn of 2003, Sting released his , Broken Music.
In it Bunting tells his but also traces the lineage of poetry in the North back to the Viking Skaldic tradition and the Celtic bards that they went to war with.
Make your story unputdownable whether it's your , the portrait of a lost industry or town, or a speculative fiction set on another world.
We do not know who is the author of this very interesting of an old and popular coleus.
But there is one point about the book that deserves some considering, its credibility as .
The charm of these essays is a frank note of tempered by a kindly humor and whimsicality peculiar to Lamb.
The plotless narrative, reading like , of a kid who ran away from a farm in East Texas to be a cowboy in Arizona.
The volume included his loges of several academicians, and the of his great-grandfather, the first Cassini.
In addition to writing an , she authored articles and a swimming instruction book for women.
I wasted myself on too nice points, laments Brea in his deep, honest, clear-eyed .
To take them as an attempt at would be a mistake.
Writing one's life story in the form of a personal memoir or an can have immense value for benefiting posterity.
This is a powerful book of love and sociology.
May they all get thwacked over the head with Coleen McLoughlin's .
Trajectory is Malcolm's in which he writes about growing up in India with Armenian parents and an English education.
The following account of this performance is abridged from his .
An , when confronted by a careful editor with documentary evidence, is usually found to be full of obviously inadvertent errors.
He had the training that a coloured youth receives at Hampton, which, indeed, the does explain.
Gareth wrote a fanfare for Owain Arwel Hughes' 70th birthday to coincide with the launch of Owain's .
The Australian rubbished the claim made in Tendulkar's Playing It My Way, and said he never contemplated the change in captaincy.
He sat down to write his new book which was, in a way, an .
The whole episode takes about three pages of his .
Smith, in his , laments the mortality among the settlers.
So wrote Trollope in the concluding chapter of his .
I will observe, in parenthesis, that Heine says that a true is almost an impossibility, and that man is bound to lie about himself.
She broke into the industry in 1973 with her Halfbreed.
Oprah natters to Mia Farrow about her What Falls Away, giving her account of her relationship with Woody Allen, surely one of Movieland's wackiest characters.
The irrepressible charisma and unnatural good health radiated by George Zoritch in the Goldfine-Geller movie permeates every page of this anecdotal .
Rugby men don't possess a sympathetic ear for smart alecks, and that is what our Gav is now perceived to be after his controversial .
Use * for blank tiles (max 2)
Use * for blank spaces

bottom_desktop desktop:[300x250]

go
Word Tools Finders & Helpers Apps More Synonyms


Copyright WordHippo © 2024

Cambridge Dictionary

  • Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Meaning of autobiography – Learner’s Dictionary

Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio

  • autobiographical

(Definition of autobiography from the Cambridge Learner's Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Translations of autobiography

Get a quick, free translation!

{{randomImageQuizHook.quizId}}

Word of the Day

microbusiness

a very small company, especially a family-owned company employing only a few people

Fakes and forgeries (Things that are not what they seem to be)

Fakes and forgeries (Things that are not what they seem to be)

autobiography meaning use in sentence

Learn more with +Plus

  • Recent and Recommended {{#preferredDictionaries}} {{name}} {{/preferredDictionaries}}
  • Definitions Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English English Learner’s Dictionary Essential British English Essential American English
  • Grammar and thesaurus Usage explanations of natural written and spoken English Grammar Thesaurus
  • Pronunciation British and American pronunciations with audio English Pronunciation
  • English–Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Simplified)–English
  • English–Chinese (Traditional) Chinese (Traditional)–English
  • English–Dutch Dutch–English
  • English–French French–English
  • English–German German–English
  • English–Indonesian Indonesian–English
  • English–Italian Italian–English
  • English–Japanese Japanese–English
  • English–Norwegian Norwegian–English
  • English–Polish Polish–English
  • English–Portuguese Portuguese–English
  • English–Spanish Spanish–English
  • English–Swedish Swedish–English
  • Dictionary +Plus Word Lists
  • autobiography
  • Translations
  • All translations

To add autobiography to a word list please sign up or log in.

Add autobiography to one of your lists below, or create a new one.

{{message}}

Something went wrong.

There was a problem sending your report.

Encyclopedia Britannica

  • Games & Quizzes
  • History & Society
  • Science & Tech
  • Biographies
  • Animals & Nature
  • Geography & Travel
  • Arts & Culture
  • On This Day
  • One Good Fact
  • New Articles
  • Lifestyles & Social Issues
  • Philosophy & Religion
  • Politics, Law & Government
  • World History
  • Health & Medicine
  • Browse Biographies
  • Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
  • Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
  • Environment
  • Fossils & Geologic Time
  • Entertainment & Pop Culture
  • Sports & Recreation
  • Visual Arts
  • Demystified
  • Image Galleries
  • Infographics
  • Top Questions
  • Britannica Kids
  • Saving Earth
  • Space Next 50
  • Student Center
  • Introduction

The emergence of autobiography

Types of autobiography.

Hear about “Autobiography of Mark Twain” and the Mark Twain Papers at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley

  • What kind of relationship did Franz Kafka have with his father?
  • What was Franz Kafka’s life like?
  • What did Franz Kafka write?
  • What did Winston Churchill do during World War II?
  • What was Winston Churchill’s family background?

Girl Reading On Turquoise Couch

autobiography

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

  • Literary Devices - Autobiography
  • Academia - Autobiography
  • The Canadian Encyclopedia - Autobiographical Writing in English
  • autobiography - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
  • autobiography - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
  • Table Of Contents

Hear about “Autobiography of Mark Twain” and the Mark Twain Papers at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley

autobiography , the biography of oneself narrated by oneself. Autobiographical works can take many forms, from the intimate writings made during life that were not necessarily intended for publication (including letters, diaries , journals , memoirs , and reminiscences) to a formal book-length autobiography.

Formal autobiographies offer a special kind of biographical truth: a life, reshaped by recollection, with all of recollection’s conscious and unconscious omissions and distortions. The novelist Graham Greene said that, for this reason, an autobiography is only “a sort of life” and used the phrase as the title for his own autobiography (1971).

Giorgio Vasari

There are but few and scattered examples of autobiographical literature in antiquity and the Middle Ages. In the 2nd century bce the Chinese classical historian Sima Qian included a brief account of himself in the Shiji (“Historical Records”). It may be stretching a point to include, from the 1st century bce , the letters of Cicero (or, in the early Christian era, the letters of Saint Paul ), and Julius Caesar ’s Commentaries tell little about Caesar, though they present a masterly picture of the conquest of Gaul and the operations of the Roman military machine at its most efficient. But Saint Augustine ’s Confessions , written about 400 ce , stands out as unique: though Augustine put Christianity at the centre of his narrative and considered his description of his own life to be merely incidental, he produced a powerful personal account, stretching from youth to adulthood, of his religious conversion.

Confessions has much in common with what came to be known as autobiography in its modern, Western sense, which can be considered to have emerged in Europe during the Renaissance , in the 15th century. One of the first examples was produced in England by Margery Kempe , a religious mystic of Norfolk. In her old age Kempe dictated an account of her bustling, far-faring life, which, however concerned with religious experience, reveals her personality. One of the first full-scale formal autobiographies was written a generation later by a celebrated humanist publicist of the age, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, after he was elevated to the papacy, in 1458, as Pius II . In the first book of his autobiography—misleadingly named Commentarii , in evident imitation of Caesar—Pius II traces his career up to becoming pope; the succeeding 11 books (and a fragment of a 12th, which breaks off a few months before his death in 1464) present a panorama of the age.

The autobiography of the Italian physician and astrologer Gironimo Cardano and the adventures of the goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini in Italy of the 16th century; the uninhibited autobiography of the English historian and diplomat Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in the early 17th; and Colley Cibber ’s Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian in the early 18th—these are representative examples of biographical literature from the Renaissance to the Age of Enlightenment. The latter period itself produced three works that are especially notable for their very different reflections of the spirit of the times as well as of the personalities of their authors: the urbane autobiography of Edward Gibbon , the great historian; the plainspoken, vigorous success story of an American who possessed all talents, Benjamin Franklin ; and the introspection of a revolutionary Swiss-born political and social theorist, the Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau —the latter leading to two autobiographical explorations in poetry during the Romantic period in England, William Wordsworth ’s Prelude and Lord Byron ’s Childe Harold , cantos III and IV.

An autobiography may be placed into one of four very broad types: thematic, religious, intellectual , and fictionalized. The first grouping includes books with such diverse purposes as The Americanization of Edward Bok (1920) and Adolf Hitler ’s Mein Kampf (1925, 1927). Religious autobiography claims a number of great works, ranging from Augustine and Kempe to the autobiographical chapters of Thomas Carlyle ’s Sartor Resartus and John Henry Cardinal Newman ’s Apologia in the 19th century. That century and the early 20th saw the creation of several intellectual autobiographies, including the severely analytical Autobiography of the philosopher John Stuart Mill and The Education of Henry Adams . Finally, somewhat analogous to the novel as biography is the autobiography thinly disguised as, or transformed into, the novel. This group includes such works as Samuel Butler ’s The Way of All Flesh (1903), James Joyce ’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), George Santayana ’s The Last Puritan (1935), and the novels of Thomas Wolfe . Yet in all of these works can be detected elements of all four types; the most outstanding autobiographies often ride roughshod over these distinctions.

flag-widget

Use "autobiography" in a sentence

Autobiography example sentences, autobiography.

1. Title of David Horowitz"s autobiography , in which he shows that a

2. She laughed at the autobiography he had concocted for Kazowskis, and repeated her amazement at his ability to construct plausible stories on short notice

3. in his autobiography , that initially, when sex energy is retained, the

4. him in my autobiography but I was not able to find out whether or not he would be pleased to see this small detail of his life in print

5. Beijing, he gave a copy of his autobiography to the guide, a lady who looked young and open minded, promising her, with the best of intentions, that he would write an article about his visit to China

6. autobiography , Soros on Soros, is told again and again that the main premise of his

7. Putting aside his seductive and well-written autobiography (Soros on Soros), we must look at his actions

8. In his post-war autobiography General Schwarzkopf paid tribute to the military forces of the international Persian Gulf coalition, and the success achieved by “all of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guard, National Guard and reserves who took part in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm” (Schwarzkopf, p

9. (The autobiography of a yogi, 1946)

10. In the jail, he spent his time writing his autobiography

11. In the introduction to his autobiography Gāndhiji writes that this ‘title has deeply pained me’ because:

12. There is also a provision to read Gāndhi books online including his Autobiography and more

13. “A Sailor's Tales” is an autobiography tracing the twists and turns in the life

14. In Michael Caine’s autobiography he writes about his theatrical initiation with the irascible Alwyn D

15. In his autobiography , David Hockney reckons he said something like that in a life drawing class at the RA during those years, so it might have been him… but then again it might not

16. Autograph collectors wave magazines with interviews or even copies of your brief autobiography

17. hacker type," recalls Torvalds in his 2001 autobiography Just for Fun

18. In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Alex Haley gives readers

19. You can read more on Anderson in her autobiography and in the 2009 book by Raymond Arsenault, The Sound Of Freedom: Marian Anderson, The Lincoln Memorial, And The Concert That Awakened America

20. “She’s trying to piss us off with her autobiography !” the woman said, leaning over the table

21. Proctor wrote in his autobiography that he was raised in Norfolk’s Huntersville neighborhood

22. In his autobiography , Proctor expressed gratitude to Sparks Melton, the liberal white pastor who arranged a full scholarship to a liberal white seminary

23. Proctor’s high moral standards were evident in his autobiography and in Rev

24. From Samuel Proctor’s autobiography , The Substance of Things Hoped For, I conclude that he grew up in the black middle class

25. In his autobiography , therefore, Proctor provided evidence that he aspired to achieve the higher, second stratum that he called the “heirs of the missions schools

26. You can find more information about the Boggs in her 1998 book, Living For Change: An Autobiography

27. Leakey’s 1983 book, One Life: An Autobiography , though thirty years old, delves somewhat into how it was done and highlights some of his health issues

28. I learned by writing my autobiography for Chapter 1, with the

29. This is an historic autobiography of a knucklehead growing up in the 50’s and 60’s

30. Searching in a drawer of her work desk, Ingrid took out an extra copy of the book Bateman held, plus a copy of her autobiography as a fighter pilot

31. For many of us, it is our own autobiography in verse

32. ” < From The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, Little, Brown and Co

33. He’s busy writing his autobiography and feels confident that it will make record sales

34. Ghost writing is where a book, usually an autobiography , comes out in a

35. ‘Wow,’ I said, ‘plenty to choose from here for an autobiography

36. Autobiography Project, Third Meeting

37. press is clearly stated even in the Fifth Dalai Lama’s autobiography

38. later autobiography , referring to him in passing only as his Junior

39. 126 His earlier autobiography

40. Lama claims in his most recent autobiography that just before the

41. parts of an autobiography that are a witness of God's power

42. Save that for your autobiography

43. Fortunately he was so much absorbed in autobiography that he didn't notice

44. Churchill and Roosevelt in his autobiography ?

45. exhilarating,”(18) he says in his autobiography

46. days,”(20) he also says in his autobiography

47. autobiography , because he was a small child detached from his parents

48. * I have based all the Dalai Lama’s biography of this chapter on his autobiography

49. the adventure that lay ahead was very thrilling,”(5) he says in his autobiography

50. he left the palace, as he says in his autobiography

51. A man who becomes totally silent loses boundaries, loses definitions, loses autobiography

52. [14] Frederick Douglass in his autobiography writes about the same sort of phenomenon that occurred in the slave owner

53. Oh no, I hear you cry, dear reader, not another celebrity autobiography , replete with tales of a

54. When would you have time to write an autobiography

55. I had read Lord Byron's autobiography and I felt privileged to hear the famous man tell

56. it not been for the fact that I had a love of autobiography film documentations, I probably

57. Rose’s new relationship with Saint Coletta developed at the same time that she was collaborating with ghostwriter Robert Coughlan on her autobiography , Times to Remember

58. In her enormously self-serving and revisionist autobiography , she asserted that she agreed to make the film only after Hitler promised to keep Goebbels at bay

59. My discussion of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will is based on Trimborn, Bach, and Brendon, cited above, but also in part on Riefenstahl’s own autobiography , Leni Riefenstahl: A Memoir (New York: St

60. (The first public person to come out in a big way with bipolar disorder was actress Patty Duke, in her 1987 autobiography and in a bold 1992 book just about her experience with the illness

61. It was a gift that seriously perplexed me once I was old enough to read Mingus’s autobiography , Beneath the Underdog

62. But passages of his autobiography portray an angry and disillusioned man

63. Marshall, Autobiography ,” The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2005, Nobelprize

64. Dorothea was led on to this bit of autobiography without any sense of making a revelation

65. I remember that when I’d read Bill Clinton’s autobiography , I couldn’t help thinking that when he was confessing to the hurt he’d caused his wife and daughter, he couldn’t seem to resist looking for forgiveness too, and even hugs from the reader

66. She also enjoyed both volumes of The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens

67. But in her autobiography , By Myself, Bacall wrote about how irritating it was with Marilyn, prompted by Natasha Lytess sitting just off camera, calling for take after take, “often as many as 15 or more

68. He reveals in his 1983 autobiography , Confessions of an Actor, that preparatory to beginning production on the movie, he was convinced he was going to fall in love with Marilyn

69. He points out in his autobiography , Time-bends, that he wrote the screenplay as a gift to her and as she read an early draft she would “laugh delightfully at some of the cowboys’ lines but seemed to withhold full commitment to playing Roslyn

70. I also referred to his autobiography , written with Ms

71. Guilaroff’s five decades in the motion picture business and intimate friendships with the biggest stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age made his memoirs the most eagerly awaited autobiography of its kind

72. But this is not to be a regular autobiography

73. "" Baruch responded in his autobiography ,

74. In fact, if a romantic lady should chance to come across my autobiography she woidd ■certainly turn up her nose

75. You could never have employed your leisure time more profitably, my ever precious Arkady Makarovitch, than in writing this autobiography ! You have given yourself, so to say, an unflinching account of your first stormy, perilous steps on the path of life

76. " But such an autobiography as yoiu-s might serve as material for a future work of art, for a future picture of a lawless epoch already passed

77. " The poor woman who had fallen into his hands found much that was obscure, especially when his autobiography almost passed into a complete dissertation on the fact that no one had been ever able to understand Stepan Trofimovitch, and that "men of genius are wasted in Russia

78. I will observe, in parenthesis, that Heine says that a true autobiography is almost an impossibility, and that man is bound to lie about himself

Synonyms for "autobiography"

"autobiography" definitions.

a biography of yourself

autobiography meaning use in sentence

  • Top1000 word
  • Top5000 word
  • Conjunction
  • Sentence into pic

Autobiography in a sentence

autobiography meaning use in sentence

  • 某某   2016-01-13 联网相关的政策
  • daughter  (227+70)
  • rule  (251+36)
  • single  (235+53)
  • choice  (212+53)
  • condition  (217+60)
  • letter  (186+73)
  • short  (245+92)
  • opportunity  (154+46)
  • likely  (156+54)
  • plant  (159+51)
  • available  (178+56)
  • hundred  (181+56)
  • realize  (150+16)
  • summer  (267+97)
  • period  (291+68)
  • energy  (262+54)
  • brother  (180+71)
  • chance  (187+71)
  • soon  (271+66)
  • listen  (241+51)

Biography in a Sentence  🔊

Definition of Biography

a person’s life story as told by another person

Examples of Biography in a sentence

It took me years to shape the president’s life story into an engaging biography.  🔊

Since the actress never asked you to write about her rise to stardom, your book isn’t an authorized biography.  🔊

The popular author will recount the singer’s upbringing in a biography.  🔊

In order for the writer to pen my biography, he’ll need to ask me numerous questions about my life.  🔊

Using my grandmother’s diaries, I was able to mesh her stories into a biography.  🔊

Other words in the Books and Reading Material category:

Most Searched Words (with Video)

Voracious: In a Sentence

Voracious: In a Sentence

Verbose: In a Sentence

Verbose: In a Sentence

Vainglorious: In a Sentence

Vainglorious: In a Sentence

Pseudonym: In a Sentence

Pseudonym: In a Sentence

Propinquity: In a Sentence

Propinquity: In a Sentence

Orotund: In a Sentence

Orotund: In a Sentence

Magnanimous: In a Sentence

Magnanimous: In a Sentence

Inquisitive: In a Sentence

Inquisitive: In a Sentence

Epoch: In a Sentence

Epoch: In a Sentence

Aberrant: In a Sentence

Aberrant: In a Sentence

Apprehensive: In a Sentence

Apprehensive: In a Sentence

Obdurate: In a Sentence

Obdurate: In a Sentence

Heresy: In a Sentence

Heresy: In a Sentence

Gambit: In a Sentence

Gambit: In a Sentence

Pneumonia: In a Sentence

Pneumonia: In a Sentence

Otiose: In a Sentence

Otiose: In a Sentence

  • Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Word of the day

Word of the Day: dignified

This word has appeared in 143 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?

An illustration of a student saying the word "dignified."

By The Learning Network

dignified \ ˌdɪgnəˈfaɪd \ adjective

1. having or expressing dignity, the quality of being worthy of esteem or respect, especially formality or stateliness in bearing or appearance 2. having or showing self-esteem

Listen to the pronunciation.

The word dignified has appeared in 143 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on April 2 in “ Japan’s New Royal Instagram Page Forgoes Flash for Formality ” by Kiuko Notoya and Mike Ives:

Anyone expecting the Japanese royal family’s new Instagram account to generate memes or showcase a new side of the world’s oldest continuous monarchy should lower their expectations. There is nothing flashy to see here, people. No behind-the-scenes levity or spontaneity. Just some royals politely posing for pictures in their usual, formal way. … Other people in Japan praised the page, saying that it made the royal family look dignified . “When I look at the smiling faces of their majesties the Emperor and Empress and Princess Aiko and their beautiful demeanor, I can feel my back straighten,” Mika Ahn, a television personality, said on Tuesday during a talk show on the channel Nippon TV.

Daily Word Challenge

Can you correctly use the word dignified in a sentence?

Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.

If you want a better idea of how dignified can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com . You can also visit this guide to learn how to use IPA symbols to show how different words are pronounced.

If you enjoy this daily challenge, try our vocabulary quizzes .

Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.

The Word of the Day is provided by Vocabulary.com . Learn more and see usage examples across a range of subjects in the Vocabulary.com Dictionary . See every Word of the Day in this column .

IMAGES

  1. How To Use "Autobiography" In A Sentence: Exploring The Word

    autobiography meaning use in sentence

  2. Sentence example of "autobiography"

    autobiography meaning use in sentence

  3. Autobiography: Paragraph and Sentence Structure

    autobiography meaning use in sentence

  4. How to Write an Autobiography in 3 Steps: Practical Tips and Examples

    autobiography meaning use in sentence

  5. How to Write an Autobiography: Structure, Tips, and Example Analyzed

    autobiography meaning use in sentence

  6. How to Write an Autobiography

    autobiography meaning use in sentence

VIDEO

  1. Daily words meaning use #englishlanguage #englishspoken #dailylife #english #trending #vocabulary

  2. pronunciation of Autobiography l how to say Autobiography meaning of Autobiography in Punjabi#shorts

  3. Biography & Autobiography| Meaning, Features & Difference explained in Tamil| Non Fiction| Literary

  4. A memoir is a sub-genre of the autobiography. As Wikipedia writes: A memoir (from French: mémoire

  5. A Mayfair Magician; a Romance of Criminal Science by George Griffith

  6. Autobiography in English Literature

COMMENTS

  1. Autobiography Definition & Meaning

    The meaning of AUTOBIOGRAPHY is the biography of a person narrated by that person : a usually written account of a person's life in their own words. How to use autobiography in a sentence.

  2. Examples of 'Autobiography' in a Sentence

    'Autobiography' in a sentence: I read her autobiography last year. While Robertson's autobiography doesn't go into the specifics of their breakup, which has been a point of conjecture for decades, much of the book centers on the friendship that made the band's bitter ending that much more heartbreaking. — Anna Tingley, Variety, 10 Aug. 2023

  3. Examples of "Autobiography" in a Sentence

    Kurakin was one of the best-educated Russians of his day, and his autobiography, carried down to 1709, is an historical document of the first importance. 2. 1. Jehangir tells us in his autobiography that before his father Akbar built the present fort, the town was defended by a citadel of great antiquity. 2.

  4. AUTOBIOGRAPHY in a Sentence Examples: 21 Ways to Use Autobiography

    Use Correct Punctuation: Place the title of the autobiography in italics or quotes, following the appropriate punctuation rules. Proper Grammar: Ensure that your sentence is grammatically correct and clearly conveys the intended meaning. Example: In her autobiography, "Becoming," Michelle Obama shares her journey from a young girl in ...

  5. AUTOBIOGRAPHY in a sentence

    Examples of AUTOBIOGRAPHY in a sentence, how to use it. 98 examples: Critics often applaud rock autobiographies that go at least partially ' against…

  6. AUTOBIOGRAPHY

    AUTOBIOGRAPHY definition: 1. a book about a person's life, written by that person: 2. the area of literature relating to…. Learn more.

  7. AUTOBIOGRAPHY Definition & Meaning

    Autobiography definition: a history of a person's life written or told by that person.. See examples of AUTOBIOGRAPHY used in a sentence.

  8. Autobiography Definition, Examples, and Writing Guide

    Autobiography Definition, Examples, and Writing Guide. As a firsthand account of the author's own life, an autobiography offers readers an unmatched level of intimacy. Learn how to write your first autobiography with examples from MasterClass instructors.

  9. Autobiography

    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 ...

  10. autobiography noun

    Definition of autobiography noun in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Meaning, pronunciation, picture, example sentences, grammar, usage notes, synonyms and more.

  11. Autobiography in Literature: Definition & Examples

    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.

  12. Autobiography

    autobiography: 1 n a biography of yourself Types: memoir an account of the author's personal experiences Type of: biography , life , life history , life story an account of the series of events making up a person's life

  13. Autobiography: In a Sentence

    Definition of Autobiography. the story of an individual's life written by that individual. Examples of Autobiography in a sentence. To learn about the deceased celebrity, you should read the autobiography he wrote about his life. It was interesting to listen to the actress share a memory she had included in her autobiography.

  14. Definition and Examples of 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 ...

  15. How to Write an Autobiography: The Story of Your Life

    4. Include plenty of detail. In case we haven't drilled down on this enough, let's reiterate once more: an autobiography should be a complete overview of your life from beginning to end. That means that as you get into properly writing it, you should include as much detail as you can remember.

  16. What Is an Autobiography? (And How to Write Yours)

    The word autobiography literally means SELF (auto), LIFE (bio), WRITING (graph). Or, in other words, an autobiography is the story of someone's life written or otherwise told by that person. When writing your autobiography, find out what makes your family or your experience unique and build a narrative around that.

  17. How to use "autobiography" in a sentence

    Sentence Examples. As you would expect from a historian of Molony's distinction, his autobiography is written chastely, elegantly, self-critically and charitably. While going through such varied sources, it is a great joy when one finds an autobiography or a biography or an unpublished piece of writing.

  18. AUTOBIOGRAPHY

    AUTOBIOGRAPHY definition: a book written by someone about their own life. Learn more.

  19. Autobiography

    autobiography, the biography of oneself narrated by oneself. Autobiographical works can take many forms, from the intimate writings made during life that were not necessarily intended for publication (including letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, and reminiscences) to a formal book-length autobiography. Formal autobiographies offer a special ...

  20. Autobiography in a sentence

    autobiography example sentences. autobiography. 1. Title of David Horowitz"s autobiography, in which he shows that a. 2. She laughed at the autobiography he had concocted for Kazowskis, and repeated her amazement at his ability to construct plausible stories on short notice. 3. in his autobiography, that initially, when sex energy is retained, the.

  21. Autobiography in a sentence (esp. good sentence like quote, proverb...)

    134+3 sentence examples: 1. In her autobiography she occasionally refers to her unhappy schooldays. 2. She has just written her autobiography. 3. The novel is a thinly disguised autobiography. 4. They published an extract from his autobiography. 5.

  22. Biography: In a Sentence

    Definition of Biography. a person's life story as told by another person. Examples of Biography in a sentence. It took me years to shape the president's life story into an engaging biography. 🔊. Since the actress never asked you to write about her rise to stardom, your book isn't an authorized biography. 🔊. The popular author will ...

  23. Word of the Day: dignified

    dignified \ ˌdɪgnəˈfaɪd \ adjective. 1. having or expressing dignity, the quality of being worthy of esteem or respect, especially formality or stateliness in bearing or appearance