AUTHOR APPROVED SEEKING ENDORSEMENT BAAS Paperbacks Series Editors: Simon Newman and Carol R. Smith Published in association with the British Association for American Studies, this innovative series has become an indispensable collection in American Studies. Each volume tackles an important area and is written by an accepted academic expert within the discipline. Books selected for the series are clearly written introductions designed to offer students definitive short surveys of key topics in the field. American Autobiography Rachael McLennan An accessible guide to the major forms of autobiographical writing in America Designed for use on undergraduate and postgraduate courses, /American Autobiography/ offers readings of a broad selection of texts from the 17th to the 21st century. It introduces students to major practitioners of autobiographical writing in America, such as Benjamin Franklin, Henry Adams, and Gertrude Stein, Maxine Hong Kingston and Art Spiegelman, and to important autobiographical modes, such as the spiritual autobiography and the slave narrative. It also introduces theoretical debates and themes vital to the study of this fascinating and complex topic, including questions of genre and reference, representativeness in autobiography, the role of photography in autobiography, and autobiographies about illness. Rachael McLennan is a Lecturer in American Literature and Culture at the University of East Anglia. She is the author of /Developing Figures: Adolescence, America and Postwar Fiction/ (2009).