Various encounters helped us transform what was originally just a response to a trendy 1980s phrase--Get A life!--into the pointed yet heterogeneous engagement with everyday practices that we believe this collection represents. Papers submitted for the session on the everyday uses of autobiography at the Modern Language Association's convention in 1992 enabled us to connect with scholars around the country.

These essays on the problems and functions of biography - particularly those of writers, thinkers and artists - investigate a subject of enduring importance for those interested in culture.

First Published in 1995. Autobiography is commonly understood in terms of giving readers insight into the private lives of unique individuals, but in recent years the autobiographical project has absorbed a wide variety of social concerns. The contributors to this book explore a range of the uses of autobiography from the nineteenth-century to the present day, and from Africa, USA, the Middle East, France, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The chapters draw on a number of approaches, including historical and literary methods to represent the autobiography's purpose of establishing communities of interest and social change.

This book promises to be the first of its kind: a philosophical investigation of autobiographical writing. All of us are autobiographers at least some of the time, and all of us crave certain kinds of recognition and confirmation from others, just as we fear blame and reproach from those who know us well. The philosophy of autobiography examines this fundamental story-telling process and its place in our lives. As such it straddles a number of long-standing philosophical questions, having to do with the meaning of life, the problems of autonomy and responsibility and authenticity, the nature of self-deception and bad faith, the structure of the self and its existence through time, the question of the reliability and meaning of memory, and the problem of understanding another person and imaginatively identifying with him. The contributors to the volume are mostly philosophers, but many of them have interests outside philosophy and have been informed by research findings from literary theory and from psychiatry. Some of the contributors are also literary theorists, and one of them has even published autobiographical work. Contributors also examine specific autobiographies and diaries, of philosophers and non-philosophers, as well as fictional works using an autobiographical format, in order to explore the philosophical implications and presuppositions of the genre. The result is a most useful and productive interdisciplinary exchange."

Birren has conducted more than twenty-five years of autobiography groups, where participants recall, write, and share their life stories. He offers "how-to" tips for organizing, complementing, and understanding oral history works. He finds that the exercise is rewarding for adults entering periods of transitions, such as the elderly population, and encourages the sharing of experiences with others on the same journey.

projects, and an extensive bibliography. --Book Jacket.

Twelve-year-old Francis gets a chance to go for a year to San Fernando to work as a servant-companion to old Mrs. Chandler, but he has never seen a town before or been away from the warmth of his family.