Egan asks why autobiographers use patterns -- such as myths of paradise and paradise lost, the journey, conversion, and confession -- taken from fiction to express personal experiences. She suggests that these stages of the written life derive from psychological imperatives that determine how the self and the world are perceived. She examines the autobiographical works of Rousseau, Wordsworth, George Moore, and Thomas Carlyle and the writings of William Hale White, De Quincey, and John Stuart Mill.

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