Autobiography examines the theory and practice of autobiographical writing from St. Augustine to the present. Linda Anderson offers a lucid discussion of: developments in autobiographical criticism in the last thirty years and the main theoretical issues and concepts in this area; the different forms of the genre, from confessions and narratives to memoirs and diaries; uses of the genre in their historical and cultural contexts; the major writers of the historical tradition of autobiography, including St. Augustine, Bunyan, Boswell, Rousseau, and Wordsworth as well as non-canonical texts by women; twentieth-century autobiography, including women's writing, black and postcolonial writing, photography, personal criticism, and testimonial writing; the ideological assumptions about the nature of self that underlie autobiographical texts. Combining theoretical discussion with thought-provoking readings of major texts, this is the ideal introduction to the study of a fascinating genre.