Life writing is the recording of selves, memories, and experiences, whether one's own or another's. This applies to many genres and practices, under which can be found autobiography, biography, memoir, diaries, letters, testimonies, autoethnography, personal essays and, more recently, digital forms such as blogs and email.
Life writing can also be linked with genealogical study: when recording one's life it is common to become curious about the lives of others that have affected one over time and, if they have not recorded their own life, to start doing it for them.
The continued popularity of the biographic form can be seen with the recent publication of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, an updated version of a 19th-century publication, containing 50,113 biographic articles about 54,922 people who have significantly affected and shaped Britain.
Read more about Life Writing: Why Life Writing?, Academic Study, Famous Examples of Life Writing
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or writing:
“The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimony to her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of the illusion which men thought they thought their existence.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“In writing these Tales ... at long intervals, I have kept the book-unity always in mind ... with reference to its effect as part of a whole.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)