ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in this book. This book explains the evolution of different forms of autobiographical practice and adhesion to this genre among historians, and examines how these differences express particular conceptions of history, historiographical principles, approaches and practices. The emergence and rapid spread of academic autobiography in last decades validate the idea that a recent need in the present opens a new organ of understanding the past. In a more basic theoretical level, taking Edward H. Carr's advice that we should "study the historian before you begin to study the facts", the author believes that the literary texts also serve as sources of knowledge about the training, positions and ideology that have influenced historians' scholarly choices. Thus, reading historians' autobiographies increases understanding not only of history but also, importantly, of writing of history.
