ABSTRACT
Most autobiographers succeed better with their childhood than their later life, even their youth. When the child scarcely scrutinises himself, he comes to be and know himself through his awareness of others, of the outer world. The process of growth therefore takes a lively, concrete form, through observed things and people; the widening consciousness is this widening world. Later the autobiography moves into adult years, much of the childhood may seem superfluous, disconnected from the later man-like those photographs of chubby children in sailor suits that contrast rather painfully with the men of substance and importance they become. Clearly, not every childhood is so lucky, and autobiography is not limited to such lucky childhoods. A philosophy of life, expressed through the manner of writing to overlay the actual truth, while in Aksakoff and Moritz it is the truth of childhood that determines the philosophy.
