ABSTRACT
Most autobiographies are a series of memoirs. If they were merely a chronological
list of events remembered, they would probably never get into print. There are the
predictable authors of autobiography – the celebrities, who have led an extraordi-
nary life – but there are also many written by people who have lived a life which is
very ordinary. What makes their stories reach publication, and become eminently
readable, is the way that the writers have recognised themselves, and the way they
felt and reacted, in the most ordinary as well as in extraordinary circumstances.
