Excerpt from Personal Narratives: With Reflections and Remarks

Of all the varieties of literary works for public inspection, that which is called Autobiography, is almost invariably the most difficult of successful or satisfactory performance. This arises from several special considerations and causes, some of them relating to the author himself, some to his relatives and friends, and others to the public, whose attention to the work, is, by the act of publication invited. As regards the Author, there is the liability to the objection, of his not having occupied such a prominent or influential position in society, or not having been the actor in any important or uncommon events, relating either to general or special affairs, or interests, such as to warrant a call for public attention to the narratives submitted. Again, there is the liability and danger of even undesigned exaggeration in composing them, and of attaching undue importance to the events they disclose, or the effects which these are described, or are supposed to have produced. There is, also, the imperative demand for frankness, candour, and the whole unalloyed truth, as regards not only the principal facts, but the attending or connecting incidents of the narratives, so as to exhibit their true character on all points, and free of all such embellishments in description, as would suggest or warrant a charge of egotism or vanity.

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