autobiography
autobiographyin its modern form may be taken as writing that purposefully and self-consciously provides an account of the author's life and incorporates feeling and introspection as well as empirical detail. In this sense autobiographies are infrequent in English much before 1800 . Although there are examples of autobiography in a quasi-modern sense earlier than this (e.g. Bunyan's conversion narrative Grace Abounding , 1666 , and Margaret Cavendish 's ‘A True Relation’, 1655 – 6 ) it is not until the early 19th cent. that the genre becomes established in English writing: Gibbon 's Memoirs ( 1796 ) are a notable exception.
From 1800 onwards the introspective Protestantism of an earlier period and the Romantic movement's displeasure with the fact/feeling distinction of the Enlightenment provided for personal narratives of a largely new kind. They were characterized by a self-scrutiny and vivid sentiment...
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