The Tradition of Women's Autobiography

About the Book

In this ground-breaking literary history, Estelle Jelinek traces startling consistencies in the way women have written about their lives from an early Roman memoir to contemporary American autobiographies. In fact, Jelinek establishes a distinctive tradition of women’s autobiography that differs remarkably from men’s autobiography in content, narrative form, and projected self-image. For all those interested in literature, history, and women’s studies, The Tradition of Women’s Autobiography challenges us to reevaluate the art of autobiography, enriching and expanding the genre’s possibilities to include a women’s tradition whose respected place in the literary history of the genre is long overdue.

About the Author

Estelle Jelinek grew up in Philadelphia and studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the State University of New York, Buffalo, where she earned her Ph.D. in English in 1977. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (1975-76) in American autobiography and has taught literature at San Francisco State University and various other colleges in the Bay area. She is the editor of Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism (1980) and has published critical articles in such journals as Women's Studies International Forum, the Women’s Review of Books, and College English. She lives in Berkeley, California.