ABSTRACT
This chapter establishes an autobiography on different forms appropriate to the nature and achievements of different men. Autobiography as the story of a man's theoretical understanding of the world is perhaps new as J. S. Mill or Henry Adams understand it, though it links on to the purpose of Augustine and Franklin. In a number of autobiographies innovations of method indicate a significant scepticism about the traditional form, particularly in regard to the focus of the author. Wandering attentively through their childhood, recalling events and persons that are important only because of their complex effects on the child, the authors, first see themselves as a complex process of becoming in which the past always resounds in the present. Autobiography has become a significant and ubiquitous element of modern culture. All manner of people feel impelled to write their life-story, and there is a most grateful market for these works.
