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Exploring the World of Autobiographies

This quiz delves into significant autobiographies and autobiographical works from various periods, testing knowledge about authors, titles, and the context of their writings.

#Autobiography #Literature #Renaissance #Fictional Autobiography #Historical Figures

1 One of the first great autobiographies of the Renaissance is that of the sculptor and goldsmith ________ (1500–1571), written between 1556 and 1558, and entitled by him simply Vita (Italian: Life).

2 ________' David Copperfield is another such classic, and J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye is a well-known modern example of fictional autobiography.

3 In the spirit of Augustine's Confessions is the 11th-century Historia Calamitatum of ________, outstanding as an autobiographical document of its period.

4 The English Civil War (1642–1651) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including works by Sir ________ and Sir John Reresby.

5 Notable 18th-century autobiographies in English include those of Edward Gibbon and ________.

6 Some celebrities, such as ________, admit to not having read their 'autobiographies'.

7 The term may also apply to works of fiction purporting to be autobiographies of real characters, e.g., Stephen Marlowe's The Death and Life of ________.

8 ________'s autobiography (first published in 1864) is entitled Apologia Pro Vita Sua in reference to this tradition.

9 Among the more renowned of such works are the writings of ________, one of many personal accounts of the Shoah.

10 Charlotte Bronte's ________ is yet another example of fictional autobiography, as noted on the front page of the original version.

💡 Interesting Facts

  • Speak, Mnemosyne was replaced by Speak, Memory as the title of Vladimir Nabokov's autobiography for fear that people could not pronounce it.
  • Toys in the Attic, a semi-autobiographical play by American playwright Lillian Hellman, won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play in 1960.
  • The Heart of a Woman, the fourth installment of Maya Angelou's six autobiographies, has been called her "most introspective".
  • New Fairy Tales (illustration pictured) of 1844 is the most autobiographical of Hans Christian Andersen's several fairy tale collections.
  • according to her autobiography Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, Marguerite Johnson changed her name to Maya Angelou because it sounded more exotic.
  • actor George Takei's autobiography To the Stars was featured on display for a month at the Bill Clinton Presidential Library.
  • the Texas politician Ray Farabee entitled his 2009 autobiography Making It Through the Night and Beyond because he unexpectedly survived his premature birth.
  • the autobiography of Italian sculptor Raffaello da Montelupo contains the only known contemporary reference to Michelangelo's natural left-handedness.
  • the autobiography has been called the oldest form of Egyptian literature.
  • in 1925, journalist and historian J. Marvin Hunter published a posthumous autobiography of John Wesley Hardin, an outlaw and gunfighter of the American Old West.
  • David Suzuki: The Autobiography is actually David Suzuki's second autobiography.
  • Terry Major-Ball, elder brother of the former British Prime Minister Sir John Major, wrote an "exquisitely funny" autobiography detailing his mishaps running the family's garden ornament business in the 1950s.
  • Ronald Reagan's autobiography, An American Life, reached number eight on The New York Times' bestsellers list.
  • Nancy Cartwright wrote an autobiography, later adapted into a one-woman play, called My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy.
  • Lance Armstrong's autobiography, It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life, headed the New York Times Best Seller list, and was the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 2000.
  • Honoré de Balzac's novel Louis Lambert contains many autobiographical elements relating to his time at an Oratorian school in Vendôme.
  • Sophia Collier used profits from her autobiography Soul Rush, which she wrote at age nineteen, to develop her own soft drink company.
  • Corona Schröter, an 18th century German singer, composed musical settings for several works by Friedrich Schiller, as well as two dramas, hundreds of arias and duets, and an autobiography given to Johann Wolfgang Goethe, but that all of these works are now lost.
  • Parteniy Pavlovich from Silistra, an 18th-century Bulgarian cleric and writer, is regarded as the author of the first autobiography in South Slavic literature.
  • Karl Wahl, in 1954, was the first former Nazi Gauleiter to publish his autobiography after having received permission from the denazification authorities to do so.
  • John C. Ostlund, a Wyoming state senator and 1978 gubernatorial nominee, lost his eyesight to diabetes and penned his autobiography to benefit the training of seeing-eye dogs.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche suggested the crest on the frontispiece of Richard Wagner's autobiography, Mein Leben, be composed of a vulture and the constellation The Plough.
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