Title: Autobiography
First published: 1998
Description: In Autobiography: Narrative of Transformation, Carolyn A. Barros creates a primer for the study of autobiography, a genre many consider highly problematic. She focuses on autobiography as a "narrative of transformation" - a text that presents the "before" and "after" of an individual's life.

This study focuses primarily on autobiographies from the rich Victorian period. Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, as it self-consciously fictionalized the composition of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh's life narrative, provides a striking analogue and paradigm for introducing her study and methodological approach.

Barros's chapters on John Henry Cardinal Newman, John Stuart Mill, Charles Darwin, and Margaret Oliphant detail four very different types of autobiographical transformation - religious, philosophical, scientific, and literary - and establish benchmarks for considering autobiographies from antiquity to the present.
Subjects: History and criticism, Autobiography, Narration (Rhetoric), English prose literature, Biography, History, Newman, john henry, 1801-1890, Oliphant, mrs. (margaret), 1828-1897, Mill, john stuart, 1806-1873, English prose literature, history and criticism, Great britain, history, victoria, 1837-1901
Places: Great Britain
People: John Henry Newman (1801-1890), Charles Darwin (1809-1882), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), Oliphant Mrs. (1828-1897)
Time periods: 19th century, Victoria, 1837-1901
LC classification: PR788.A9 B37 1998