true life books

[sophie_1003]

whats the difference between memoirs and an autobiography?

[The Big Gill]

Memoirs usually relate to a specific period or occupation, e.g. war memoirs, reminiscences of a term in office, stage career etc.

[sophie_1003]

oh right... read a few memoirs e.g.) the Dave Pelzer trilogy and The Green Mile is written in a memoir style but I've never read an autobiography so hadn't cottoned on to what the difference was!

[jno]

the purpose of memoirs is usually to recount something from your point of view so that it's in the public record. Historians might make use of memoirs published by different generals, for instance, in writing war histories, because it gives them a range of points of view.

Autobiography is usually a much bigger project telling the whole of somebody's life - like a biography, only written in the first person - and often including a degree of self-analysis. But some books that get called 'memoirs' are not much different from this; a general's memoirs may actually recount his whole life. So there's no hard-and-fast distinction.