In the essay that follows, Georgi-Findlay examines the American frontier experience from the perspective of a Native American woman—Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins—using her Life among the Piutes to discuss the role of gender in such areas as assimilation, Native American/white relations, literary style, and sexual and political power.

In the essay that follows, Ruoff contends that Native American autobiographies became more intensely focused on Native American-white political relations, and more self-reflectively literary, over the course of the nineteenth century.

In the following essay, Folkenflik studies the treatment of alterity and the self in autobiographical narratives from St. Augustine to Jean-Paul Sartre, with primary reference to several Victorian autobiographers.

In the following essay, Davis identifies the major stylistic and formal limitations of Victorian autobiography, particularly highlighting the genre's strict adherence to linearity and its inability to bridge ancient and modern conceptions of the self.

In the following essay, Gagnier evaluates the extent to which nineteenth-century working-class writers of autobiography adopted bourgeois gender ideology in their works.

In the following essay, Cox describes the development of autobiographical writing in American literature—from Benjamin Franklin through Henry David Thoreau and Henry Adams to Gertrude Stein—as a reflection of American political life.

In the following essay, Dolan discusses the influence of autobiographical writings—particularly Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return (1934), Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast (1964), and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Crack-Up (1945)—in establishing popular views of American expatriate writers in Paris during the 1920s.

In the following excerpt from her book-length study of Victorian working women's writing, Swindells explores the various literary modes adapted by nineteenth-century women autobiographers (from romance and melodrama to religious discourse), and describes these writers' interest in the advancement of women's rights through their literary pursuits.

In the following excerpt, Peterson defines Victorian autobiography as principally a hermeneutic and interpretive, rather than a representative, genre and surveys its literary origins in the spiritual autobiographies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

In the following essay, Spengemann and Lundquist relate American autobiographical writings to the development of the American cultural myth that "in its most general form, describes human history as a pilgrimage from imperfection to perfection. "

In the following essay, Cooke discusses the autobiographical writings of Richard Wright, Malcolm X, and Eldridge Cleaver, three African American writers who have made "evolutionary contributions to the form of western autobiography. "

In the excerpt below, Peterson explores the structure and subject matter of women's autobiographies and notes the differences between women's and men's writings.

In the following essay, Krupat defines Native American autobiography as "original bicultural composite composition"—texts written during the transition from oral to written literature, and produced through the collaboration of members of two distinct cultures—in order to distinguish these works from traditional Western autobiography.

In the following essay, Sayre assesses the relevance of autobiographical writings to the discipline of American Studies.

In the following essay, Bataille and Sands discuss the movement toward the ethnographic study of Native American life, which included a new focus on the female experience.

In the following essay, Hackett emphasizes the didactic and socially critical functions of narrative in British working-class autobiography of the nineteenth century.

In the essay below, Gordon compares the autobiographies of Abigail Scott Duniway and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and argues that both suffragists used their autobiographies to further their political goals.

In the following excerpt, Krupat investigates how the concept of the "self" operates in Native American autobiographies. The critic analyzes William Apes' writings in particular in order to support his contention that the "Native American self" can be described as an "I-am-We experience . . . where such a phrase indicates that I understand myself as a self only in relation to the coherent and bounded whole of which I am a part. "

In the following excerpt Brumble considers two contrasting Native American autobiographies—Two Leggings: The Making of a Crow Warrior and Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins' Life among the Piutes—and examines the contexts in which each were composed, edited, and published.

In the essay below, Padilla explores Mexican women's accounts of life in California before it became part of the United States.

In the following essay, Danahay focuses on the tension between the monologic and dialogic (and likewise the unitary and social) qualities of language illustrated in the autobiographical works of John Stuart Mill, Edmund Gosse, and Matthew Arnold.

In the following excerpt, Schlissel discusses the historical relevance of diaries written by nineteenth-century women pioneers, examining in particular what the diaries reveal about frontier gender roles.

In the excerpt below, Sands argues for the importance of Native American women's narratives of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing in particular on Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins' Life among the Piutes (1883).

In the following essay, Stone identifies major works of American autobiography, offers a definition of the genre, and discusses some leading critical approaches to the subject.

In the following essay, Danahay discusses the masculine, bourgeois ideals of individual autonomy constructed in the autobiographical works of Matthew Arnold, John Stuart Mill, and Edmund Gosse, comparing these with the feminine, communal subjectivity of Margaret Oliphant's Autobiography.

In the following essay, Bailey focuses on autobio graphical works by John Updike, Philip Roth, and Tobias Wolff in a discussion of a late twentieth-century trend toward merging fiction and autobiography.

In the following excerpt, Jelinek surveys autobiographical writings by English women of the nineteenth century, concluding with a summary of their contributions to the genre.

In the essay below, Valman considers the Evangelical Revival and argues that the publication of alleged autobiographies by Jewish women who had converted to Christianity was a means the Evangelicals used to attempt to convert Jews.

In the excerpt that follows, Peyer provides a historical account of Native American autobiography, with primary consideration of its political implications.

In the following excerpt from his introduction to his anthology, Krupat reviews the historical trends and the major issues involved in Native American autobiography.

In the following essay, Schlissel discusses the usefulness of diaries in the study of the impact of Western migration on nineteenth-century women.

In the following excerpt, Winston argues that nineteenth-century women autobiographers were more self-conscious and conciliatory than women of the twentieth century.

In the following excerpt, originally written in 1955, Jackson examines the complex issue of the authenticity of Black Hawk's memoirs.

With due allowance for Williams' infirmities, haste, and pleasure in writing it, the Autobiography is still a baffling performance. It seems to proceed by fits and starts, as if Williams kept losing interest or the pathway as he recreated his past…. Williams' narrative rambles along, stopping to admire the intense blue of monkshood here, the facade of Rheims Cathedral there, to retail a piece of gossip or a childhood escapade, or to insert excerpts from Charles Olson's essay on P...