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• Introduction

The emergence of autobiography

Types of autobiography.

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autobiography

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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).

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.

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autobiography noun

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Earlier version

• autobiography in OED Second Edition (1989)

What does the noun autobiography mean?

There is one meaning in OED's entry for the noun autobiography . See ‘Meaning & use’ for definition, usage, and quotation evidence.

How common is the noun autobiography ?

How is the noun autobiography pronounced?

British english, u.s. english, where does the noun autobiography come from.

Earliest known use

The earliest known use of the noun autobiography is in the late 1700s.

OED's earliest evidence for autobiography is from 1797, in the writing of William Taylor, reviewer and translator.

autobiography is formed within English, by compounding; perhaps modelled on a German lexical item.

Etymons: auto- comb. form 1 , biography n.

Nearby entries

• autobasidium, n. 1895–
• autobio, n. 1856–
• autobiog, n. 1829–
• autobiographal, adj. 1845–
• autobiographer, n. 1807–
• autobiographic, adj. 1818–
• autobiographical, adj. 1807–
• autobiographically, adv. 1822–
• autobiographical novel, n. 1832–
• autobiographist, n. 1820–
• autobiography, n. 1797–
• autobiopic, n. 1977–
• auto body, n. 1904–
• auto-boot, n. 1981–
• auto-boot, v. 1984–
• auto-booting, adj. 1983–
• autobox, n. 1977–
• autobracketing, n. 1985–
• auto-burglar, n. 1884
• autocade, n. 1924–
• auto camp, n. 1904–

Meaning & use

The next dissertation concerns Diaries, and Self-biography . We are doubtful whether the latter word be legitimate: it is not very usual in English to employ hybrid words partly Saxon and partly Greek: yet autobiography would have seemed pedantic.

This very amusing and unique specimen of autobiography .

Geology (as Sir C. Lyell has so happily expressed it) is ‘the autobiography of the earth’.

We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography .

The autobiography in your letter..has pleased me a good deal.

Dent's will be pleased to hear that my Welsh book, a sort of provincial autobiography , is coming on well.

An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.

The Cockney beauty's autobiography ..has become a surprise hit, debuting at number four in the best-seller lists.

• story 1533– With possessive adjective or genitive. A person's account of the events of his or her life or a part of it. Cf. life story , n. , and also sense 8.
• autography 1661– = autobiography , n. rare .
• memoirs 1676– In plural . Autobiographical observations; reminiscences. Frequently modified by a possessive.
• idiography a1734 Autobiography; writing about oneself. Obsolete . rare .
• self-biography 1796– An account of the life of an individual written by himself or herself; an autobiography. Also: the genre comprising such work.
• autobiography 1797– An account of a person's life given by himself or herself, esp. one published in book form. Also: the process of writing such an account; these…
• reminiscence 1797– Chiefly in plural . A recollection or memory of a past fact or experience recounted to others; spec. (usually in plural ) a person's collective…
• autobiog 1829– = autobiography , n.
• autobio 1856– = autobiography , n.
• auto 1881– = autobiography , n.
• curriculum vitae 1902– A course; spec. a regular course of study or training, as at a school or university. (The recognized term in the Scottish Universities.) curriculum …
• biodata 1947– ( plural ) biographical details, esp. summarizing a person's educational and employment history, academic career, etc.; (with singular agreement) =…
• vita 1949– A biography, the history of a life; spec. = curriculum vitae n. at curriculum , n.
• c.v. 1971– = curriculum vitae n. at curriculum , n.

Pronunciation

• ð th ee
• ɬ rhingy ll

Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence <petal> /ˈpɛtl/ but <petally> /ˈpɛtl̩i/.

• a trap, bath
• ɑː start, palm, bath
• ɔː thought, force
• ᵻ (/ɪ/-/ə/)
• ᵿ (/ʊ/-/ə/)

Other symbols

• The symbol ˈ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with primary stress.
• The symbol ˌ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with secondary stress.
• Round brackets ( ) in a transcription indicate that the symbol within the brackets is optional.

View the pronunciation model here .

* /d/ also represents a 'tapped' /t/ as in <bitter>

Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence <petal> /ˈpɛd(ə)l/ but <petally> /ˈpɛdl̩i/.

• i fleece, happ y
• æ trap, bath
• ɑ lot, palm, cloth, thought
• ɔ cloth, thought
• ɔr north, force
• ə strut, comm a
• ər nurse, lett er
• ɛ(ə)r square
• æ̃ sal on

Simple Text Respell

Simple text respell breaks words into syllables, separated by a hyphen. The syllable which carries the primary stress is written in capital letters. This key covers both British and U.S. English Simple Text Respell.

b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w and z have their standard English values

• arr carry (British only)
• a(ng) gratin
• o lot (British only)
• orr sorry (British only)
• o(ng) salon

autobiography typically occurs about six times per million words in modern written English.

autobiography is in frequency band 5, which contains words occurring between 1 and 10 times per million words in modern written English. More about OED's frequency bands

Frequency of autobiography, n. , 1790–2010

* Occurrences per million words in written English

Historical frequency series are derived from Google Books Ngrams (version 2), a data set based on the Google Books corpus of several million books printed in English between 1500 and 2010.

The overall frequency for a given word is calculated by summing frequencies for the main form of the word, any plural or inflected forms, and any major spelling variations.

For sets of homographs (distinct entries that share the same word-form, e.g. mole , n.¹, mole , n.², mole , n.³, etc.), we have estimated the frequency of each homograph entry as a fraction of the total Ngrams frequency for the word-form. This may result in inaccuracies.

Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the Google Books corpus.

Frequency of autobiography, n. , 2017–2023

Modern frequency series are derived from a corpus of 20 billion words, covering the period from 2017 to the present. The corpus is mainly compiled from online news sources, and covers all major varieties of World English.

Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the corpus.

Compounds & derived words

• autobiog , n. 1829– = autobiography, n.
• autobiographal , adj. 1845– = autobiographical, adj.
• autobio , n. 1856– = autobiography, n.
• auto , n.³ 1881– = autobiography, n.

Entry history for autobiography, n.

autobiography, n. was revised in June 2011.

autobiography, n. was last modified in June 2024.

oed.com is a living text, updated every three months. Modifications may include:

• further revisions to definitions, pronunciation, etymology, headwords, variant spellings, quotations, and dates;
• new senses, phrases, and quotations.

Revisions and additions of this kind were last incorporated into autobiography, n. in June 2024.

Earlier versions of this entry were published in:

OED First Edition (1885)

• Find out more

OED Second Edition (1989)

• View autobiography in OED Second Edition

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Citation details

Factsheet for autobiography, n., browse entry.

HIS 414: Life-writing and History: Diaries, Memoirs and Autobiographies

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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.

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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.

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.

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Autobiography

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Introduction

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) began his life in poverty and obscurity, and yet he became perhaps the most famous man in the Euro-American world of the eighteenth century: a printer, a successful and wealthy businessman, inventor, scientist, writer, politician, civic leader, and diplomat. The Autobiography , addressed to his son, is the story of how such humble beginnings led to such a grand life. In living that life and writing so well about it, Franklin helped establish a way of life that Americans recognized with pride as distinctively their own. America was the sort of place where, for the first time in human history, a person could start life with nothing except talent and a drive to better himself and succeed. This was the essential justice of the American way of life: rewards came to those who earned them. Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln were two nineteenth-century examples of this success, as were Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower in the twentieth century. So important was Franklin for establishing this way of life that he is sometimes referred to as the “First American.” When in his Autobiography Franklin spoke of his posterity, we should understand him to be speaking to all those Americans who were to come after him.

The excerpts included here focus on Franklin’s moral teaching and outlook, since that was the key, he said, to the way of life he pioneered. The material also includes a few anecdotes that provide some perspective on how Franklin lived and acted. Franklin was often criticized as being too utilitarian in his outlook, too set on moneymaking, for example, in a common and mean way. This criticism neglected to take into account Franklin’s own report that he exerted such extraordinary discipline over himself in pursuing a plan of self-improvement so that he would have time to read and learn. For example, the money and time he saved by being a vegetarian early in life he spent on books and reading. It was his unrelenting thirst to learn that shaped his life. Franklin’s learning resulted in useful inventions and civic projects, but his Autobiography makes clear that he sought understanding for its own sake. His critics also failed to consider that the unprecedented justice the American way of life aimed to achieve—rewards commensurate with individual merit—required that the unbought grace of aristocratic life not dominate America. Those born equal must make something of themselves with nothing but their own talent and industry (a favorite word of Franklin’s). The self-made are sometimes rough-hewn.

Source: Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin , ed. Frank Woodworth Pine (New York: Henry Holt, 1916), https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm . An annotated version is available at https://anthologydev.lib.virginia.edu/work/Franklin/ franklin-autobiography .

DEAR SON: I have ever had pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes of my ancestors. You may remember the inquiries I made among the remains of my relations when you were with me in England, and the journey I undertook for that purpose. Imagining it may be equally agreeable to you to know the circumstances of my life, many of which you are yet unacquainted with, and expecting the enjoyment of a week’s uninterrupted leisure in my present country retirement, I sit down to write them for you. To which I have besides some other inducements. Having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, and having gone so far through life with a considerable share of felicity, the conducing means I made use of, which with the blessing of God so well succeeded, my posterity may like to know, as they may find some of them suitable to their own situations, and therefore fit to be imitated.

That felicity, when I reflected on it, has induced me sometimes to say, that were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of the first. So I might, besides correcting the faults, change some sinister accidents and events of it for others more favorable. But though this were denied, I should still accept the offer. Since such a repetition is not to be expected, the next thing most like living one’s life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing.

Hereby, too, I shall indulge the inclination so natural in old men, to be talking of themselves and their own past actions; and I shall indulge it without being tiresome to others, who, through respect to age, might conceive themselves obliged to give me a hearing, since this may be read or not as anyone pleases. And, lastly (I may as well confess it, since my denial of it will be believed by nobody), perhaps I shall a good deal gratify my own vanity. Indeed, I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory words, “Without vanity I may say,” etc., but some vain thing immediately followed. Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life.

And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all humility to acknowledge that I owe the mentioned happiness of my past life to His kind providence, which lead me to the means I used and gave them success. My belief of this induces me to hope, though I must not presume, that the same goodness will still be exercised toward me, in continuing that happiness, or enabling me to bear a fatal reverse, which I may experience as others have done; the complexion of my future fortune being known to Him only in whose power it is to bless to us even our afflictions. . . .

. . .[L]iving near the water, I was much in and about it, learnt early to swim well, and to manage boats; and when in a boat or canoe with other boys, I was commonly allowed to govern, especially in any case of difficulty; and upon other occasions I was generally a leader among the boys, and sometimes led them into scrapes, of which I will mention one instance, as it shows an early projecting public spirit, though not then justly conducted.

There was a salt marsh that bounded part of the mill-pond, on the edge of which, at high water, we used to stand to fish for minnows. By much trampling, we had made it a mere quagmire. My proposal was to build a wharf there fit for us to stand upon, and I showed my comrades a large heap of stones, which were intended for a new house near the marsh, and which would very well suit our purpose. Accordingly, in the evening, when the workmen were gone, I assembled a number of my playfellows, and working with them diligently like so many emmets, 1 sometimes two or three to a stone, we brought them all away and built our little wharf. The next morning the workmen were surprised at missing the stones, which were found in our wharf. Inquiry was made after the removers; we were discovered and complained of; several of us were corrected by our fathers; and, though I pleaded the usefulness of the work, mine convinced me that nothing was useful which was not honest. . . .

I have been the more particular in this description of my journey [from Boston to Philadelphia], 2 and shall be so of my first entry into that city, that you may in your mind compare such unlikely beginnings with the figure I have since made there. I was in my working dress, my best clothes being to come round by sea. I was dirty from my journey; my pockets were stuffed out with shirts and stockings, and I knew no soul nor where to look for lodging. I was fatigued with traveling, rowing, and want of rest, I was very hungry; and my whole stock of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar, and about a shilling in copper. The latter I gave the people of the boat for my passage, who at first refused it, on account of my rowing; but I insisted on their taking it. A man being sometimes more generous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps through fear of being thought to have but little.

Then I walked up the street, gazing about till near the market-house I met a boy with bread. I had made many a meal on bread, and, inquiring where he got it, I went immediately to the baker’s he directed me to, in Second-street, and asked for biscuit . . .I bade him give me three-penny worth of any sort. He gave me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I was surprised at the quantity, but took it, and, having no room in my pockets, walked off with a roll under each arm, and eating the other. Thus I went up Market-street as far as Fourth-street, passing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife’s father; when she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance. Then I turned and went down Chestnut-street and part of Walnut-street, eating my roll all the way, and, coming round, found myself again at Market-street wharf, near the boat I came in, to which I went for a draught of the river water; and, being filled with one of my rolls, gave the other two to a woman and her child that came down the river in the boat with us, and were waiting to go farther.

Thus refreshed, I walked again up the street, which by this time had many clean-dressed people in it, who were all walking the same way. I joined them, and thereby was led into the great meeting-house of the Quakers near the market. I sat down among them, and, after looking round awhile and hearing nothing said, being very drowsy through labor and want of rest the preceding night, I fell fast asleep, and continued so till the meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to rouse me. This was, therefore, the first house I was in, or slept in, in Philadelphia. . . .

. . . My always keeping good hours, and giving little trouble in the family, made her [Franklin’s landlady in London, England, where Franklin traveled in 1724 on business and found himself stranded] unwilling to part with me, so that, when I talked of a lodging I had heard of, nearer my business, for two shillings a week, which, intent as I now was on saving money, made some difference, she bid me not think of it, for she would abate me two shillings a week for the future; so I remained with her at one shilling and sixpence as long as I stayed in London.

In a garret of her house there lived a maiden lady of seventy, in the most retired manner, of whom my landlady gave me this account: that she was a Roman Catholic, had been sent abroad when young, and lodged in a nunnery with an intent of becoming a nun; but, the country not agreeing with her, she returned to England, where, there being no nunnery, she had vowed to lead the life of a nun, as near as might be done in those circumstances. Accordingly, she had given all her estate to charitable uses, reserving only twelve pounds a year to live on, and out of this sum she still gave a great deal in charity, living herself on water-gruel only, and using no fire but to boil it. She had lived many years in that garret, being permitted to remain there gratis by successive Catholic tenants of the house below, as they deemed it a blessing to have her there. A priest visited her to confess her every day. “I have asked her,” says my landlady, “how she, as she lived, could possibly find so much employment for a confessor?” “Oh,” said she, “it is impossible to avoid vain thoughts.” I was permitted once to visit her. She was cheerful and polite, and conversed pleasantly. The room was clean, but had no other furniture than a mattress, a table with a crucifix and book, a stool which she gave me to sit on, and a picture over the chimney of Saint Veronica displaying her handkerchief, with the miraculous figure of Christ’s bleeding face on it, which she explained to me with great seriousness. She looked pale, but was never sick; and I give it as another instance on how small an income, life and health may be supported. . . .

Before I enter upon my public appearance in business [in Philadelphia, to which Franklin returned after about eighteen months in England], it may be well to let you know the then state of my mind with regard to my principles and morals, that you may see how far those influenced the future events of my life. My parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the Dissenting way. 3 But I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hands; 4 they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle’s Lectures. 5 It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist. My arguments perverted some others, particularly Collins and Ralph; 6 but, each of them having afterwards wronged me greatly without the least compunction, and recollecting Keith’s 7 conduct toward me (who was another free-thinker), and my own toward Vernon and Miss Read, 8 which at times gave me great trouble, I began to suspect that this doctrine, though it might be true, was not very useful. . . . My London pamphlet 9 which … from the attributes of God, his infinite wisdom, goodness, and power, concluded that nothing could possibly be wrong in the world, and that vice and virtue were empty distinctions, no such things existing, appeared now not so clever a performance as I once thought it; and I doubted whether some error had not insinuated itself unperceived into my argument, so as to infect all that followed, as is common in metaphysical reasonings. . . .

I now opened a little stationer’s shop. . . .In order to secure my credit and character as a tradesman, I took care not only to be in reality industrious and frugal, but to avoid all appearances to the contrary. I dressed plainly; I was seen at no places of idle diversion. I never went out a fishing or shooting; a book, indeed, sometimes debauched me from my work, but that was seldom, snug, and gave no scandal; and, to show that I was not above my business, I sometimes brought home the paper I purchased at the stores through the streets on a wheelbarrow. Thus being esteemed an industrious, thriving young man, and paying duly for what I bought, the merchants who imported stationery solicited my custom; others proposed supplying me with books, and I went on swimmingly. . . .

And now [1731] I set on foot my first project of a public nature, that for a subscription library. I drew up the proposals, got them put into form by our great scrivener, Brockden, and, by the help of my friends in the Junto, procured fifty subscribers of forty shillings each to begin with, and ten shillings a year for fifty years, the term our company was to continue. We afterward obtained a charter, the company being increased to one hundred: this was the mother of all the North American subscription libraries, now so numerous. It is become a great thing itself, and continually increasing. These libraries have improved the general conversation of the Americans, made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries, and perhaps have contributed in some degree to the stand so generally made throughout the colonies in defense of their privileges. . . .

It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wished to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined. While my care was employed in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct. For this purpose I therefore contrived the following method. . . .

. . .I included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurred to me as necessary or desirable, and annexed to each a short precept, which fully expressed the extent I gave to its meaning.

These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:

• Temperance Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
• Silence Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
• Order Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
• Resolution Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
• Frugality Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
• Industry Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
• Sincerity Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
• Justice Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
• Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
• Cleanliness Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
• Tranquility Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
• Chastity Rarely use venery 10 but for health or offspring; never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
• Humility Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judged it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time; and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on, till I should have gone through the thirteen; and, as the previous acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain others, I arranged them with that view, as they stand above. Temperance first, as it tends to procure that coolness and clearness of head, which is so necessary where constant vigilance was to be kept up, and guard maintained against the unremitting attraction of ancient habits, and the force of perpetual temptations. This being acquired and established, Silence would be more easy; and my desire being to gain knowledge at the same time that I improved in virtue, and considering that in conversation it was obtained rather by the use of the ears than of the tongue, and therefore wishing to break a habit I was getting into of prattling, punning, and joking, which only made me acceptable to trifling company, I gave Silence the second place. This and the next, Order, I expected would allow me more time for attending to my project and my studies. Resolution, once become habitual, would keep me firm in my endeavors to obtain all the subsequent virtues; Frugality and Industry freeing me from my remaining debt, and producing affluence and independence, would make more easy the practice of Sincerity and Justice, etc., etc. Conceiving then, that, agreeably to the advice of Pythagoras in his Golden Verses, 11 daily examination would be necessary, I contrived the following method for conducting that examination.

I made a little book, in which . . .I might mark, by a little black spot, every fault I found upon examination to have been committed respecting that virtue upon that day. . . .

I entered upon the execution of this plan for self-examination, and continued it with occasional intermissions for some time. I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined; but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish. . . .After a while I went through one course only in a year, and afterward only one in several years, till at length I omitted them entirely, being employed in voyages and business abroad, with a multiplicity of affairs that interfered; but I always carried my little book with me. . . .

It may be well my posterity should be informed that to this little artifice, with the blessing of God, their ancestor owed the constant felicity of his life, down to his 79th year, in which this is written. What reverses may attend the remainder is in the hand of Providence; but, if they arrive, the reflection on past happiness enjoyed ought to help his bearing them with more resignation. To Temperance he ascribes his long-continued health, and what is still left to him of a good constitution; to Industry and Frugality, the early easiness of his circumstances and acquisition of his fortune, with all that knowledge that enabled him to be a useful citizen, and obtained for him some degree of reputation among the learned; to Sincerity and Justice, the confidence of his country, and the honorable employs it conferred upon him; and to the joint influence of the whole mass of the virtues, even in the imperfect state he was able to acquire them, all that evenness of temper, and that cheerfulness in conversation, which makes his company still sought for, and agreeable even to his younger acquaintance. I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the example and reap the benefit.

It will be remarked that, though my scheme was not wholly without religion, there was in it no mark of any of the distinguishing tenets of any particular sect. I had purposely avoided them; for, being fully persuaded of the utility and excellency of my method, and that it might be serviceable to people in all religions, and intending some time or other to publish it, I would not have anything in it that should prejudice anyone, of any sect, against it. I purposed writing a little comment on each virtue, in which I would have shown the advantages of possessing it, and the mischiefs attending its opposite vice; and I should have called my book The Art of Virtue, because it would have shown the means and manner of obtaining virtue, which would have distinguished it from the mere exhortation to be good, that does not instruct and indicate the means, but is like the apostle’s man of verbal charity, who only without showing to the naked and hungry how or where they might get clothes or victuals, exhorted them to be fed and clothed.—James 2: 15, 16.

But it so happened that my intention of writing and publishing this comment was never fulfilled. I did, indeed, from time to time, put down short hints of the sentiments, reasonings, etc., to be made use of in it, some of which I have still by me; but the necessary close attention to private business in the earlier part of my life, and public business since, have occasioned my postponing it; for, it being connected in my mind with a great and extensive project, that required the whole man to execute, and which an unforeseen succession of employs prevented my attending to, it has hitherto remained unfinished.

In this piece it was my design to explain and enforce this doctrine, that vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because they are hurtful, the nature of man alone considered; that it was, therefore, everyone’s interest to be virtuous who wished to be happy even in this world; and I should, from this circumstance (there being always in the world a number of rich merchants, nobility, states, and princes, who have need of honest instruments for the management of their affairs, and such being so rare), have endeavored to convince young persons that no qualities were so likely to make a poor man’s fortune as those of probity and integrity.

My list of virtues contained at first but twelve; but a Quaker friend having kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my pride showed itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any point, but was overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinced me by mentioning several instances; I determined endeavoring to cure myself, if I could, of this vice or folly among the rest, and I added Humility to my list, giving an extensive meaning to the word.

I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the appearance of it. I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. . . . When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appeared or seemed to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.

And this mode, which I at first put on with some violence to natural inclination, became at length so easy, and so habitual to me, that perhaps for these fifty years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape me. And to this habit (after my character of integrity) I think it principally owing that I had early so much weight with my fellow citizens when I proposed new institutions, or alterations in the old, and so much influence in public councils when I became a member; for I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and yet I generally carried my points.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.

Having mentioned a great and extensive project which I had conceived, it seems proper that some account should be here given of that project and its object. Its first rise in my mind appears in the following little paper, accidentally preserved, viz.:

Observations on my reading history, in Library, May 19, 1731.

That the great affairs of the world, the wars, revolutions, etc., are carried on and effected by parties.

That the view of these parties is their present general interest, or what they take to be such.

That the different views of these different parties occasion all confusion.

That while a party is carrying on a general design, each man has his particular private interest in view.

That as soon as a party has gained its general point, each member becomes intent upon his particular interest; which, thwarting others, breaks that party into divisions, and occasions more confusion.

That few in public affairs act from a mere view of the good of their country, whatever they may pretend; and, though their actings bring real good to their country, yet men primarily considered that their own and their country’s interest was united, and did not act from a principle of benevolence.

That fewer still, in public affairs, act with a view to the good of mankind.

There seems to me at present to be great occasion for raising a United Party for Virtue, by forming the virtuous and good men of all nations into a regular body, to be governed by suitable good and wise rules, which good and wise men may probably be more unanimous in their obedience to, than common people are to common laws.

I at present think that whoever attempts this aright, and is well qualified, cannot fail of pleasing God, and of meeting with success.

Revolving this project in my mind, as to be undertaken hereafter, when my circumstances should afford me the necessary leisure, I put down from time to time, on pieces of paper, such thoughts as occurred to me respecting it. Most of these are lost; but I find one purporting to be the substance of an intended creed, containing, as I thought, the essentials of every known religion, and being free of everything that might shock the professors of any religion. It is expressed in these words, viz.:

That there is oneGod, who made all things. That he governs the world by his providence. That he ought to be worshiped by adoration, prayer, and thanksgiving. But that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man. That the soul is immortal. And that God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice, either here or hereafter.

My ideas at that time were, that the sect should be begun and spread at first among young and single men only; that each person to be initiated should not only declare his assent to such creed, but should have exercised himself with the thirteen weeks’ examination and practice of the virtues, as in the beforementioned model; that the existence of such a society should be kept a secret, till it was become considerable, to prevent solicitations for the admission of improper persons, but that the members should each of them search among his acquaintance for ingenuous, well-disposed youths, to whom, with prudent caution, the scheme should be gradually communicated; that the members should engage to afford their advice, assistance, and support to each other in promoting one another’s interests, business, and advancement in life; that, for distinction, we should be called The Society of the Free and Easy: free, as being, by the general practice and habit of the virtues, free from the dominion of vice; and particularly by the practice of industry and frugality, free from debt, which exposes a man to confinement, and a species of slavery to his creditors.

This is as much as I can now recollect of the project, except that I communicated it in part to two young men, who adopted it with some enthusiasm; but my then narrow circumstances, and the necessity I was under of sticking close to my business, occasioned my postponing the further prosecution of it at that time; and my multifarious occupations, public and private, induced me to continue postponing, so that it has been omitted till I have no longer strength or activity left sufficient for such an enterprise; though I am still of opinion that it was a practicable scheme, and might have been very useful, by forming a great number of good citizens; and I was not discouraged by the seeming magnitude of the undertaking, as I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, makes the execution of that same plan his sole study and business. . . .

Some may think these trifling matters 12 not worth minding or relating; but when they consider that though dust blown into the eyes of a single person, or into a single shop on a windy day, is but of small importance, yet the great number of the instances in a populous city, and its frequent repetitions give it weight and consequence, perhaps they will not censure very severely those who bestow some attention to affairs of this seemingly low nature. Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day. Thus, if you teach a poor young man to shave himself, and keep his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than in giving him a thousand guineas. The money may be soon spent, the regret only remaining of having foolishly consumed it; but in the other case, he escapes the frequent vexation of waiting for barbers, and of their sometimes dirty fingers, offensive breaths, and dull razors; he shaves when most convenient to him, and enjoys daily the pleasure of its being done with a good instrument. With these sentiments I have hazarded the few preceding pages, hoping they may afford hints which some time or other may be useful to a city I love, having lived many years in it very happily, and perhaps to some of our towns in America. . . .

In 1754, war with France being again apprehended, a congress of commissioners from the different colonies was, by an order of the Lords of Trade, 13 to be assembled at Albany, there to confer with the chiefs of the Six Nations 14 concerning the means of defending both their country and ours. . . .

In our way thither, 15 I projected and drew a plan for the union of all the colonies under one government, so far as might be necessary for defense, and other important general purposes. As we passed through New York, I had there shown my project to Mr. James Alexander and Mr. Kennedy, 16 two gentlemen of great knowledge in public affairs, and, being fortified by their approbation, I ventured to lay it before the Congress. It then appeared that several of the commissioners had formed plans of the same kind. A previous question was first taken, whether a union should be established, which passed in the affirmative unanimously. A committee was then appointed, one member from each colony, to consider the several plans and report. Mine happened to be preferred, and, with a few amendments, was accordingly reported.

By this plan the general government was to be administered by a president-general, appointed and supported by the crown, and a grand council was to be chosen by the representatives of the people of the several colonies, met in their respective assemblies. The debates upon it in Congress went on daily, hand in hand with the Indian business. Many objections and difficulties were started, but at length they were all overcome, and the plan was unanimously agreed to, and copies ordered to be transmitted to the Board of Trade and to the assemblies of the several provinces. Its fate was singular; the assemblies did not adopt it, as they all thought there was too much prerogative in it, and in England it was judged to have too much of the democratic. The Board of Trade therefore did not approve of it, nor recommend it for the approbation of his majesty; but another scheme was formed, supposed to answer the same purpose better, whereby the governors of the provinces, with some members of their respective councils, were to meet and order the raising of troops, building of forts, etc., and to draw on the treasury of Great Britain for the expense, which was afterward to be refunded by an act of Parliament laying a tax on America. My plan, with my reasons in support of it, is to be found among my political papers that are printed. 17

Being the winter following in Boston, I had much conversation with Governor Shirley upon both the plans. Part of what passed between us on the occasion may also be seen among those papers. The different and contrary reasons of dislike to my plan makes me suspect that it was really the true medium; and I am still of opinion it would have been happy for both sides the water if it had been adopted. The colonies, so united, would have been sufficiently strong to have defended themselves; there would then have been no need of troops from England; of course, the subsequent pretense for taxing America, and the bloody contest it occasioned, would have been avoided. 18 But such mistakes are not new; history is full of the errors of states and princes. . . .

We had for our chaplain a zealous Presbyterian minister, Mr. Beatty, who complained to me that the men did not generally attend his prayers and exhortations. 19 When they enlisted, they were promised, besides pay and provisions, a gill of rum a day, which was punctually served out to them, half in the morning, and the other half in the evening; and I observed they were as punctual in attending to receive it; upon which I said to Mr. Beatty, “It is, perhaps, below the dignity of your profession to act as steward of the rum, but if you were to deal it out and only just after prayers, you would have them all about you.” He liked the thought, undertook the office, and, with the help of a few hands to measure out the liquor, executed it to satisfaction, and never were prayers more generally and more punctually attended; so that I thought this method preferable to the punishment inflicted by some military laws for non-attendance on divine service. . . .

• 2. Franklin left Boston for Philadelphia in 1723, a few months short of his seventeenth birthday, to escape an unpleasant apprenticeship to his brother.
• 3. Dissenters were people in England who separated from the Church of England. The Pilgrims and Puritans who settled in Massachusetts were Dissenters.
• 4. Generally speaking, Deists acknowledged belief in God but did not believe that God intervened in human affairs, and so were skeptical of scripture.
• 5. Lectures endowed by Robert Boyle (1627–1691), a British chemist, to examine the relationship between Christianity and natural science.
• 6. Two friends of Franklin’s.
• 7. A governor of Philadelphia who misled Franklin, leading to his stranding in London.
• 8. Franklin received money due to Samuel Vernon and used it for his own purposes, although he eventually repaid Vernon with interest. Franklin courted and made some promises to Deborah Read before his ill-fated trip to London, but while in London forgot his “engagements with Miss Read” and wrote her only one letter. Franklin and Read later married.
• 9. While in London, Franklin, who was then nineteen, wrote and published A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain. It is available at https://founders.archives. gov/documents/Franklin/01-01-02-0028#BNFN-01-01-02-0028-fn-0003-ptr.
• 10. Sexual indulgence.
• 11. Pythagoras (c.570—c.495 BCE) was a Greek philosopher. The Golden Verses, a collection of moral exhortations, are traditionally attributed to him, although they first appeared long after his death.
• 12. Franklin referred to a plan for cleaning city streets, which he had just described in a passage of the Autobiography omitted from this excerpt.
• 13. The Lords or Commissioners of Trade and Plantations provided advice on the colonies to the British king and his advisers.
• 14. The Iroquois confederacy of Native American tribes in north-central New York.
• 15. Franklin was one of the commissioners from Pennsylvania.
• 16. James Alexander (1691–1756) was a public official and member of the American Philosophical Society; Archibald Kennedy (1685–1763) was a public official in New York who had written a pamphlet encouraging good relations with Native Americans.
• 17. Albany Plan of Union, July 10, 1754, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/ Franklin/01-05-02-0104.
• 18. Franklin wrote this passage of his Autobiography in 1788.
• 19. Franklin described an episode when he was in charge of some troops defending Pennsylvania.

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the history and evolution of the genre of autobiography: a critical study

2013, Galaxy International Multidisciplinary Research Journal

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Philippa Kelly

• ‘On the Genre of Autobiography: Typology and Evolution’, The Delhi University Journal of the Humanities and the Social Sciences, Vol. 2, pp 76-86

Professor Rosy Singh

In this paper I explore autobiography, a subgenre of literary writing at the intersection of other disciplines like history and anthropology. Most theoreticians classify autobiography as literary nonfiction; others who refuse to take these self-explorations at face value derisively refer to them as fiction. The most intriguing signifier of an autobiography is the first-person 'I', the subject as well as the object of the autobiographical narrative. This 'I' is however all the time in a flux and, by definition, the story of a Being written by the person himself-on a daily basis as a diary, in retrospect as memoirs, scattered in the works in a disguised manner or recorded as oral history-is full of contradictions and complexities. The genre is traditionally rooted in the West in the Catholic tradition of confessions. Like the genre of novel, autobiography too is not indigenous to the Indian literary landscape. I refer to Saint Augustine's Confessions, Günter Grass' Peeling the Onion, Gandhi's The Story of my Experiments with Truth and autobiographies of Dalit writers Omprakash Valmiki (Joothan), Baby Kamble (The Prisons we Broke) and Vasant Kamble (Growing up Untouchable in India) in order to trace the evolution of this genre and also to compare the typology of these texts which are otherwise very different in terms of content. The intricate relationship of autobiography to memory is also discussed.

Charles Ivan Armstrong

This paper is focused on the reconsideration of the limits and advances of the genre of autobiography. Given the recent boom in autobiography and personal narratives this timely topic poses a great challenge to current literary and cultural studies. Autobiography frequently takes the form of a disturbance, upsetting the expectations and classifications of both general public and literary critics. What presuppositions does the genre of autobiography build upon, and how should we respond when more strictly literary genres integrate autobiographical elements? This paper will explore selected, representative examples of how autobiography and autobiographically inclined literary works have challenged pervading norms over the last two centuries. The use of autobiographical elements in literature has repeatedly been part of an estranging revitalization of more or less settled literary forms, in addition to contributing to the reimagining of nationality through the example of representative or marginal identities, such as in the case of W. B. Yeats. The examples will span from the Romanticism of William Wordsworth and Lord Byron, via the 19th century call for uncompromising “sincerity” and the ensuing experiments of Modernism, to more recent instances of confessionalism in writers such as Robert Lowell and Karl-Ove Knausgård. The borders and dialogue between life and writing will be in focus in this paper, and the degree to which critical terms text, context and paratext help us understand and clarify their complex interaction will be subject to discussion.

Memoria Y Civilizacion Anuario De Historia

James Amelang

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Svetlana Melnic

Radosław Piętka

Some thoughts on the different ways different academic disciplines-- above history and literary studies-- approach the subject of early modern autobiography. A revised Spanish version is also available in Chronica Nova, 32, 2006, pp. 143-157 (see Journal Articles).

Blackwell Companion to Late Antique Literature, edited by E. Watts and S. McGill

Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent

This article discusses the three related literary forms of autobiography, biography, and hagiography as they developed in late antiquity; their characteristics; methodological challenges; and current approaches to their classification and interpretation. Sections on autobiography and biography focus on Greek and Latin literature of the fourth to sixth centuries, while the section on hagiography primarily explores the Syriac tradition in order to provide a more holistic picture of late antique life-writing in the Mediterranean world and the Near East.

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Jaume Aurell

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Max Saunders

This essay approaches the large but surprisingly under-theorized topic of the relation between autobiography and fiction, concentrating on the period between 1880 and 1930, arguing for a new account of the relation between Modernism and life-writing. It introduces and analyses a key essay from 1906 by Stephen Reynolds, author of A Poor Man’s House, which, strikingly, coins the post-modern-sounding term ‘autobiografiction’. It argues that Reynolds’ central concept sheds light on the vexed theoretical question of the relation between autobiography and fiction, and in ways that reach further than either Reynolds or the essay’s few commentators have appreciated; in short, that ‘autobiografiction’ is potentially a much vaster topic than his essay countenances. The second section discusses the significance of the concept of ‘autobiografiction’ from the points of view of literary history and literary theory. It argues that Reynolds’ essay not only offers a powerful analysis of the literature of the previous quarter-century, but also suggests how the literature of the following decades – of Modernism – can be reconsidered in its light. Such attention enables a re-description of Modernism: instead of the conventional account of its quest for the impersonal, the movement can be seen as developing these fin-de-siècle experiments in fusing life-writing and fiction. Reynolds’ essay appears at a pivotal moment as Edwardian authors such as Edmund Gosse evince an anxious awareness of the radical potential of autobiografiction; and when Modernists such as Joyce and Proust embark on their most profound engagements with it: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and A la recherche du temps perdu. The essay goes on to argue that the issues raised by Reynolds enable a more sophisticated theoretical approach to the relation between autobiography and fiction, and explores the ambiguities which inhere in the term ‘autobiographical’ when applied to fictional works. Where Reynolds outlines the rationale for autobiografiction in fairly defensive terms, I argue for an appreciation of its radical potentialities. The study concludes by considering the trope, identified by Philippe Lejeune in Modernism, but here traced back to Aestheticism, that fiction constitutes a writer’s true autobiography. This is placed in a broader philosophical and aesthetic context of reading fiction as autobiography, and autobiography as fiction.

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What Is an Autobiography?

What to Consider Before You Start to Write

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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. 

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biography (n.)

1680s, "the histories of individual lives, as a branch of literature," probably from Medieval Latin biographia , from later Greek biographia "description of life" (which was not in classical Greek, bios alone being the word there for it), from Greek bios "life" (from PIE root *gwei- "to live") + graphia "record, account" (see -graphy ).

The meaning "a history of some one person's life" is from 1791. The meaning "life course of any living being" is by 1854. No one-word verb form has become common; biographise / biographize (1800), biography (1844), biograph (1849) have been tried.

Entries linking to biography

"a memoir of a person written by himself," 1797, from auto- + biography . Related: Autobiographical ; autobiographer ; autobiographic .

short for biography , attested from 1954. OED cites a 1925 private letter (published 1975) from Irish playwright Sean O'Casey. Earlier shortened forms were biog (1942), biograph (1865).

biographical

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Trends of biography

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Dictionary entries near biography

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Quick Summary

The Greek root word bio means ‘life.’ Some common English vocabulary words that come from this root word include bio logical, bio graphy, and amphi bi an. One easy word that is helpful in remembering bio is bio logy, or the study of ‘life.’

Living with 'Bio'

The Greek root word bio means ‘life,’ and gives rise mostly to words from the realm of the ‘life’ sciences.

We’ve all taken bio logy (or bio ) classes, in which you learn all about ‘life.’ Bio logical processes have to do with the way ‘living’ organisms function. Micro bio logists study small ‘life’ forms, such as bacteria, viruses, and other one-celled organisms.

Speaking of life forms, amphi bi ans, such as frogs and salamanders, can ‘live’ both in water and on land. Amphi bio us military vehicles, such as tanks, can also operate or ‘live’ in both water and on land.

A bio graphy (or bio ) is a book that tells all about the events in someone’s ‘life,’ written by an author other than the subject of the ‘life’ history. An auto bio graphy, on the other hand, is a history of a person’s ‘life’ written by that person.

The adjective aero bi c refers to the oxygen a ‘life’ form requires in order to ‘live.’ Aero bi cs are simply exercises which cause ‘living’ organisms, such as yourself, to breathe faster as your body consumes more oxygen. Anaero bi c exercise almost completely depletes the oxygen from a ‘living’ organism’s body, such as an all-out sprint which leaves you gasping for air!

Sym bio tic organisms ‘live’ together, each needing the other to survive. An example of a mutually beneficial sym bio sis or ‘living’ together is between the clownfish and the anemone (think “Finding Nemo”). In this relationship which increases survival rates, the clownfish gets a protective home, and the anemone gets cleaned by the clownfish.

And just where can living organisms live and thrive? Why, in a bio sphere of course, or those parts of the Earth that support and allow the existence of ‘life.’

You can now add the knowledge of this handy root word bio to your, well, knowledge bio , which will hopefully make the rest of your vocabulary ‘life’ a bit more livable!

• biology : study of ‘life’
• microbiology : study of very small ‘life’ forms
• amphibian : ‘life’ living in water and on land
• biography : a ‘life’ history
• symbiosis : two ‘life’ forms living together
• aerobic : pertaining to air for ‘life’ to exist
• anaerobic : lacking air for ‘life’ to exist
• biosphere : part of the Earth where organisms ‘live’

Related Rootcasts

The fascinating parts of words.

Morphology is the study of how words are put together by using morphemes, which include prefixes, roots, and suffixes. Parsing the different morphemes in a word reveals meaning and part of speech. For instance, the word “invention” includes the prefix in- + the root vent + the suffix -ion , from which is formed the noun “invention.”

Etymology: Word Origins

Etymology is that part of linguistics that studies word origins. English vocabulary words are formed from many different sources, especially Latin and Greek. By determining the origins of the morphemes in English words, one is better able to remember and determine the dictionary definitions of words.

A sym bio tic relationship is one in which two organisms, organizations, or people intimately depend on each other, both acting to benefit the relationship.

Biology is the scientific study of living things, such as plants and animals.

relating to or characteristic of animals of the class Amphibia

autobiography

a bio graphy of yourself

short for “ bio graphy”

biochemistry

the organic chemistry of compounds and processes occurring in organisms

biodegradable

capable of being decomposed by e.g. bacteria

break down naturally through the action of bio logical agents

biodiversity

the diversity of plant and animal life in a particular habitat (or in the world as a whole)

the branch of ethics that studies moral values in the bio medical sciences

biofeedback

a training program in which a person is given information about physiological processes (heart rate or blood pressure) that is not normally available with the goal of gaining conscious control of them

an account of the series of events making up a person's life

plant materials and animal waste used as fuel

physics as applied to bio logical problems

examination of tissues or liquids from the living body to determine the existence or cause of a disease

an inborn bio logical process that is cyclical in nature

the regions of the surface and atmosphere of the Earth (or other planet) where living organisms exist

macrobiotics

the theory of promoting health and longevity by means of diet (especially whole beans and grains)

a minute life form (especially a disease-causing bacterium)

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Finding Benjamin Franklin: A Resource Guide

Introduction.

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• The Autobiography in Print: Early Editions
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• Franklin's Life and Autobiography Online
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Chat with a librarian , Monday through Friday, 12-4pm Eastern Time (except Federal Holidays).

Author: Susan Garfinkel, Researcher Engagement and General Collections Division

Note: The earliest version of this Guide was created in 2006 by Kenneth Drexler, Mark Hall, Jurretta Heckscher, and Susan Garfinkel at the time of Franklin's 300th birthday. The Autobiography section was first added by Susan Garfinkel in 2010.

Created: Month 1, 2019

Last Updated: October 23, 2023

2006 marked the 300th anniversary of Benjamin Franklin's birth. While the resulting flurry of activity was nowhere more evident than in his adopted city of Philadelphia, Americans across the country—and admirers around the world—paused to consider the career of the multifaceted Dr. Franklin, oldest signer of the Declaration of Independence. From lightning rods to proverbs to the characteristic fur cap he wore in later years, Franklin combined an ethic of self-accomplishment through hard and honest work with a sophisticated wit and a practical benevolence that kept him much in the public eye. At the Library of Congress, Franklin's achievements were explored in an exhibit of original Franklin materials titled Benjamin Franklin: In His Own Words .

Born in Boston on January 17, 1706, as the youngest son of an immigrant father, Benjamin Franklin lived until April 17, 1790, three months past his 84th birthday. During his lifetime he witnessed dramatic changes in North American life—and contributed greatly to those changes, especially in the areas of communication, technological innovation, and politics. As a printer and postmaster, Franklin's early work to disseminate news and create communication networks among the British colonies contributed directly to their subsequent unification. With little formal education, Franklin founded scholarly societies, colleges, and libraries, but also formulated practical inventions such as bifocals and the freestanding Pennsylvania stove. Present at the signing of the Declaration, Benjamin Franklin also lived long enough to see the adoption of the United States Constitution, having served his new country as a representative to France in the interim. Despite his successes, Franklin continued to identify himself as an artisan throughout his life, reinforcing his lifelong commitment to doing good works in the world.

Given his background and interests, Franklin would no doubt have valued the expansive resources of the Internet. This Finding Franklin resource guide provides a starting point for researching Benjamin Franklin in a rapidly digitizing age, starting with the Library of Congress and moving outward to encompass additional materials. Many Library of Congress materials can be partially if not fully accessed on the World Wide Web, while many of the printed items in the Library's collections will also be available at local research libraries, or can be accessed through Interlibrary Loan. Sections of the guide therefore point to Library of Congress digital collections and other online resources , Library of Congress printed materials , and useful resources elsewhere on the web .

Benjamin Franklin's long and accomplished life can be approached through a wide variety of topics and understood from many perspectives. He served multiple roles in early American society, and continues to serve as a role model and an icon today. This guide also offers an extended examination of Franklin's Autobiography and resources available for its further study.

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• Last Updated: Aug 12, 2024 7:12 PM
• URL: https://guides.loc.gov/finding-benjamin-franklin

• Key Differences

Know the Differences & Comparisons

Difference between Biography and Autobiography

Both of these two presents the view of, what happened in the past where the author lived. These are non-fiction books, written in chronological order, tells a story about the person who made a significant contribution in a specific field. Many think that the two writing forms are one and the same thing, but there are noticeable difference between the two, that are presented in the given article.

Content: Biography Vs Autobiography

Comparison chart.

Definition of Biography

A biography also referred as ‘bio’ is a detailed account of a person’s life written or produced by another person. It gives an elaborate information regarding the birthplace, educational background, work, relationships and demise of the person concerned. It presents the subject’s intimate details about life, focusing on the highs and lows and analysing their whole personality.

A biography is usually in the written form but can also be made in other forms of a music composition or literature to film interpretation.

It is the recreation of the life of an individual composed of words by another person. The author collects every single detail about the subject and presents those facts in the biography, which are relevant and interesting, to engross the readers in the story.

Definition of Autobiography

An autobiography is the life sketch of a person written by that person himself or herself. The word auto means ‘self.’ Therefore, autobiography contains all the elements of a biography but composed or narrated by the author himself. He/She may write on their own or may hire ghostwriters to write for them.

An autobiography presents the narrator’s character sketch, the place where he is born and brought up, his education, work, life experiences, challenges, and achievements. This may include events and stories of his childhood, teenage, and adulthood.

Key Differences Between Biography and Autobiography

The difference between biography and autobiography are discussed in detail in the following points:

• Biography is a detailed account of a person’s life written by someone else, while an autobiography is written by the subject themselves.
• Biography can be written with (authorised) or without permission (unauthorised) from the person/heir’s concerned. Therefore, there are chances of factual mistakes in the information. On the other hand, autobiographies are self-written and therefore doesn’t require any authorization.
• Biographies contain information that is collected over a period of time from different sources and thus, it projects a different outlook to the readers. On the other hand, autobiographies are written by the subject themselves, therefore, the writer presents the facts and his thinking in his own way, thus providing an overall narrow and biased perspective to the readers.
• In an Autobiography, the author uses the first narrative like I, me, we, he, she, etc. This, in turn, makes an intimate connection between the author and the reader since the reader experience various aspects as if he/she is in that time period. As opposed a biography is from a third person’s view and is much less intimate.
• The purpose of writing a biography is to introduce and inform the readers about the person and his life whereas an autobiography is written in order to express, the life experiences and achievements of the narrator.

Video: Biography Vs Autobiography

There are several autobiographies which are worth mentioning like ‘The Story of My Life’ by Helen Keller, ‘An Autobiography’ by Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ by Anne Frank, ‘Memoirs of the Second World War’ by Winston Churchill, ‘Wings of Fire’ by A. P. J. Abdul Kalam and much more.

Examples of some famous biographies are- Tolstoy: A Russian Life by Rosamund Bartlett, His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis, Einstein: The Life and Times by Ronald William Clark, Biography of Walt Disney: The Inspirational Life Story of Walt Disney – The Man Behind “Disneyland” by Steve Walters, Princess Diana- A Biography Of The Princess Of Wales by Drew L. Crichton.

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May 7, 2023 at 6:47 am

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The 10 greatest wizards in franchise history.

• August 18, 2024

Around a week ago, I wrote about the five greatest teams in Washington Wizards history. The team was also previously known as the Washington Bullets and Baltimore Bullets (first two seasons were also spent in Chicago). It was pretty fun and inspired me to do something similar. Today, I’m ranking the ten greatest Wizards in franchise history. While this list certainly won’t be as legendary as a team like the Celtics, Warriors, or Knicks, the Wizards have had quite a few storied players come through the franchise.

With that being said, I would like to make one thing clear: these are the 10 greatest Wizards of all time, not the 10 greatest players to ever play for the Wizards. So with that in mind, shoutout to Michael Jordan , Moses Malone , Richard Hamilton , Ben Wallace , Jerry Stackhouse , and Russell Westbrook ; but they will not be in the top ten.

10. Caron Butler

Initially, I had trouble deciding whether number ten should go to Caron Butler or Walt Bellamy . However, I decided on Butler, since Bellamy’s time with the franchise came in the 1960s, and only spanned two years. Butler (along with Gilbert Arenas and Antawn Jamison ) made up the Wizards’ big three during the mid-2000s. This period marked one of the most exciting for Wizards fans during the century, as the team was competitive and seemed to have a legitimate path to the Eastern Conference Finals for a few years. Of course, LeBron James proved a difficult roadblock to stop, but the team got close!

Butler’s prime indisputably came during those mid-2000s with the Wizards. He was named an All-Star twice, and averaged 20.3 points and 6.7 rebounds during the 2007-08 season. While those Wizards sadly broke up, Butler continued to have a long NBA career with several teams before retiring. His short tenure and two All-Star selections are the reason he sits at number ten.

9. Bernard King

Bernard King proved to be one of the flashiest and best scorers in the NBA during his time in the league. The majority of his career was played in the 1980s, with the Nets, Warriors, Knicks, and Bullets. Unfortunately, injuries to his knee cost him three seasons of his career, including two in his prime. Coming off the 1984-85 season with the Knicks, King led the league in scoring, averaging 32.9 points per game. Over the next two years, he would play a total of just six games due to injury. In 1987, he signed as a free agent with the Bullets. King needed a few seasons to ramp back up to his previous levels of production, but he eventually got there in his fourth and final season with the Bullets. During the 1990-91 season, King was finally named an All-Star again, and averaged 28.4 points per game.

Unfortunately, the Bullets only made the playoffs during King’s first season with the team. He only spent four seasons with the Bullets, which is why he’s so low in the top ten. Even with the devastating knee injuries, King had an amazing career. However, it was divided pretty evenly among the four teams he played with, meaning that he can’t be higher on this list.

8. Chris Webber

Chris Webber is among the best power forwards to ever play the game of basketball. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Webber was an instrumental piece of the Bullets/Wizards and Sacramento Kings. He’s best known for his time with the Kings, as that’s where he spent his prime, racked up four All-Star appearances, and challenged Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal for Western Conference supremacy during their three-peat.

Even though the Kings may have been his peak, Webber’s time with the Wizards was what launched his career. In four years, Webber averaged 20.9 points, 9.7 rebounds, 4.4 assists, 1.6 steals, and 1.7 blocks per game while shooting 50.1% from the field. His best season with the Wizards came in 1996-97, where he earned his first All-Star appearance. Additionally, the 1996-97 season saw Webber lead the Wizards to the playoffs for the first time in a decade. He’s one of the greatest power forwards in the history of the game, but he’s not one of the greatest Wizards purely because of how short his tenure with the team was.

7. Earl Monroe

Earl Monroe ‘s time with the Bullets came towards the end of the 1960s, and the beginning of his career. He peaked early (which you can view as good or bad, since the peak came with the Bullets). During his first season in the NBA (1967-68), he won the league’s Rookie of the Year Award. Every season he played with the Bullets, he averaged over 20 points per game. Unfortunately, Monroe only played with the franchise for barely over four seasons, which is why he’s not higher on this list.

Monroe (like the player ahead of him on this list) came right before the 1970s, which was the Bullets decade of dominance. He helped lay the framework in place for the team that emerged and inspired with his game. However, given his short tenure, Monroe is only at number seven on the list of the greatest Wizards/Bullets.

6. Gus Johnson

Gus Johnson spent nine seasons with the franchise back when they were called the Baltimore Bullets. As a six-foot-six small/power forward playing in the 1960s and 1970s, Johnson dominated his competition. He averaged 18.2 points and 17.1 rebounds in his best season, and averaged a double-double for eight of his nine seasons with the Bullets. Johnson finished his career as a five time All-Star, with all five appearances coming during his time with the Bullets.

Johnson was the precursor to the Bullets decade(ish) of dominance during the 1970s. He helped lead the Bullets to a Finals appearance in 1971, and two playoff appearances before then. However, Johnson’s career only spanned 10 years. While it’s impressive that he spent so much of that time with the Bullets, his career was much shorter than many of the other players on this list. His contributions to the Bullets won’t be forgotten, but in terms of this list, his time in the league and the era he played in works against him.

5. Bradley Beal

Bradley Beal is the most recent player on this list to play for the Wizards. His time with the team spanned 11 seasons and virtually all of his prime. Beal’s tenure can seemingly be split up into halves. The first half was with John Wall (2013-2018), where the team was good and made the playoffs regularly. The other half was after (post 2018), when the Wizards reverted to their mediocre ways and only made the playoffs once. As Beal came into his prime, he put up amazing numbers for the Wizards, and showed he could do more than be Wall’s sidekick. Once known primarily for catch-and-shoot threes, Beal became a ball-dominant guard who took more threes, more shots off the dribble, and scored a lot. During the 2020-21 season, Beal almost lead the league in scoring, averaging 30.5 points per game.

The consensus around Beal was that he shouldn’t have stayed with the Wizards for as long as he did. He spent most of his prime with a team that simply didn’t win many games, and they didn’t have much to put around him in the way of talent. Still, even if there was financial incentives to stay, Beal should be commended for sticking with his team for as long as he did. Many other superstars at that point in league history would have quickly demanded a trade, and made it quite unpleasant for their team’s front office. For staying with the Wizards through thick and thin and doing so much to give back to his community, I have Beal at number five.

4. Gilbert Arenas

Arenas is this high up the list because of how electric his prime was, and the fact that he inspired hope in Wizards fans for a few years. Coming into the NBA, Arenas had no expectations from outsiders for his gameplay. It is why he wore the number zero: it’s the number of people who believed he would last in the NBA. After two promising years with the Warriors, Arenas won the league’s Most Improved Player Award, and signed with the Wizards in 2003. Arenas hit his prime in DC, earning All-Star honors for three straight years. During that three year span, he averaged 27.7 points, 5.7 assists, 4.3 rebounds, and 1.9 steals per game. Arenas led the team in win shares all three of those years, and despite their record always hovering slightly over .500, they made the playoffs.

Alongside Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler, the Wizards big three made it to the second round during the 2004-05 season, a team that I talked about more deeply here . While it was first-round exits for the next two years afterwards, Arenas gave Wizards fans hope and something to talk about. The future seemed bright. Then, a scandal turned the team upside down and flipped everyone’s career trajectories.

Arenas missed the majority of the next three seasons, at first due to suspension and then due to injury. He wasn’t the same player afterwards, and the Wizards traded him to the Orlando Magic in 2010. While Arenas’ star may not have shined for long in Washington, it sure shined bright when it did.

3. John Wall

Wall is the clear number three for the Wizards all-time list. He spent his entire prime with the team, and lifted them towards some of their greatest moments in modern history. As I mentioned in this list of the greatest Wizards teams of all time , the 2016-17 Wizards were one of the great teams that inspired Wizards fans and gave them hope, and Wall was leading the charge. During his five years as an All-Star for the Wizards, he averaged 19.9 points, 9.9 assists, 4.4 rebounds, and 1.8 steals. His greatest season was that 2016-17 season, where he averaged 23.1 points and 10.7 assists per game. Injuries devastated him and his late prime, and eventually the Wizards traded him to the Rockets for Russell Westbrook. Still, the #1 overall pick from the 2010 NBA Draft will always have a spot in the hearts of Wizards fans.

2. Elvin Hayes

At first I had Wall over Elvin Hayes , but then I quickly realized that was recency bias. Wall played for the Wizards in the last decade, and he was a key part of my fandom growing up. I never watched Hayes play a game live, as his playing career was well over before I was born. Still, Hayes’ accolades and accomplishments with the franchise far exceed Wall.

Hayes finished his career as a 12-time NBA All-Star, a six-time member of the All-NBA, and a three-time member of the All-NBA First team. He led the league in scoring his rookie season, led the league in rebounding twice, has career averages of 21.0 points and 12.5 rebounds per game, and helped lead the Wizards to their only championship in 1978. It’s not like that year was a fluke, though. All but one of the four finals appearances in franchise history happened when Hayes was on the team, with the other being a year before he arrived. Every year except for his last with the Bullets, the team made the playoffs. It’s clear why Hayes is a Hall-of-Famer, and as much as I love Wall, Hayes did a lot more in nine seasons with the franchise than Wall did in his nine healthy seasons with them.

The Greatest Wizards Player: Wes Unseld

Wes Unseld just has to be number one. He brought the franchise their only ever championship in 1978, and that was just the cherry on top of an already historic career. Unseld won Rookie of the Year and MVP in his first season out of Louisville. He averaged 10.8 points and 14 rebounds per game for his career, and spent the entirety of it (13 seasons) in Washington. Despite being undersized for a big man at six-foot-seven, Unseld rebounded with the top centers in the league. He carried the Bullets through their decade of dominance, accounting for all of their playoff appearances in the 1970s. For an entire career with the team, an NBA championship, and a legacy of excellence, the five time All-Star is the greatest player in franchise history.

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Word of the Day

What it means.

Tchotchke refers to a small object used for decoration. It's a synonym of knickknack and trinket .

// Their shelves were cluttered with tchotchkes from a lifetime of vacations.

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tchotchke in Context

"Dozens of vendors hawking art, food and tourist tchotchkes crowded the bridge’s Manhattan approaches ..." — Evan Simko-Bednarski, The New York Daily News , 3 Jan. 2024

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Did You Know?

Just as trinkets can dress up your shelves or coffee table, many words for "miscellaneous objects" or "nondescript junk" decorate our language. Knickknack , doodad , gewgaw , and whatnot are some of the more common ones. We also have gimcrack , bauble , and bibelot . While many such words are of unknown origin, we know that tchotchke comes from the Yiddish word tshatshke of the same meaning, and ultimately from a now-obsolete Polish word, czaczko . Tchotchke is a pretty popular word these days, but it wasn't commonly used in English until the 1970s.

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Fill in the blanks to complete a synonym of tchotchke meaning "something (such as a decorative object) considered novel, rare, or bizarre": c _ _ _ o.

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Seattle Mariners Make Some of the Most Random Baseball History Ever in Sunday Win

Brady farkas | aug 19, 2024.

• Seattle Mariners

The Seattle Mariners beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in lopsided fashion on Sunday afternoon at PNC Park. The 10-3 win halted the M's five-game losing streak and moved them to 64-61 on the season. Though scuffling, they remain on the fringes of the playoff race at 4.0 games back in the American League West.

Sundays' win was much-needed for the M's, who got an excellent pitching performance from George Kirby and got a balanced offensive attack, pounding out 13 hits in total. Seattle also hit three home runs (Cal Raleigh, Josh Rojas, Dominic Canzone) and made some of the weirdest and most random baseball history you've ever seen.

Per Alex Mayer, who is the lead stat man for @MarinersPR. He comes up with a wild and zany stat after every Mariners win, and this may be his best work yet.

The @Mariners are the first team in HISTORY to have 6+ players with an R last name (Robles, Rodríguez, Raleigh, Raley, Rojas, Rivas) score a R (run) in a game. And of course it’s against the Pirates. Arrrrrr!

The @Mariners are the first team in @MLB HISTORY to have 6+ players with an R last name (Robles, Rodríguez, Raleigh, Raley, Rojas, Rivas) score a R (run) in a game. And of course it’s against the Pirates. Arrrrrr! 🏴‍☠️ #TheMayerGWS — Alex Mayer (@alexmayer34) August 18, 2024

Does that stat mean anything? No. But is it nice to finally crack a smile after the hellish week that was? Yes.

The Mariners will be back in action on Monday night when they take on the Los Angeles Dodgers at 7:10 p.m. PT. Bryan Woo will be on the mound against right-hander Gavin Stone. Woo threw seven scoreless innings in his last outing against the Detroit Tigers.

The Dodgers currently lead the National League West and are looking for their first World Series since 2020.

RELATED SEATTLE MARINERS CONTENT:

NEW PODCAST IS OUT : The latest episode of the "Refuse to Lose" podcast is out as Brady Farkas talks   about the M's getting swept by the Tigers, why this is all so frustrating and much more. Furthermore, we talk about the Julio Rodriguez-ankle issue, Colt Emerson's big day, prospect rankings and the M's potentially big financial blow. Furthermore, ESPN MLB Insider Buster Olney joins the show to talk about the M's on "Sunday Night Baseball."  CLICK HERE:

M's HEADED to WILLIAMSPORT:  The Seattle Mariners will play in the Little League Classic in 2025.  CLICK HERE:

DOWN ON THE FARM : The Mariners may be struggling at the big-league level, but there was good news this week down on the farm with regards to top prospect Laz Montes.  CLICK HERE:

Follow Inside the Mariners on social media

Continue to follow our Inside the Mariners coverage on social media by liking us on  Facebook  and by following Teren Kowatsch and Brady Farkas on "X" @ Teren_Kowatsch  and @ wdevradiobrady . You can subscribe to the "Refuse to Lose" podcast by clicking  HERE:

BRADY FARKAS