A memoir is a type of nonfiction writing that tells a story based on the author's personal experiences and memories. The information shared in a memoir is considered to be true. Although memoirs have been seen as a part of biography or autobiography since the late 1900s, they are different in how they are written. Memoirs usually focus on a specific time or event in a person's life, such as important moments or changes that happened. A biography or autobiography covers a person's entire life, while a memoir often focuses on one part of their life, job, or experience. The person who writes a memoir is called a memoirist or a memorialist.
Early memoirs
Memoirs have been written since ancient times, as shown by Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, also known as Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. In this work, Caesar describes the battles that took place during the nine years he spent fighting local armies in the Gallic Wars. His second memoir, Commentarii de Bello Civili (Commentaries on the Civil War), is an account of the events that occurred between 49 and 48 BC during the civil war against Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and the Roman Senate. The famous Libanius, a teacher of rhetoric who lived between about 314 and 394 AD, wrote his life memoir as one of his literary orations, which were meant to be read aloud in the privacy of his study. This kind of memoir reflects the idea in ancient Greece and Rome that memoirs were like "memos": unfinished and not published writings that a writer might use to help remember details for later use in a completed document.
The Sarashina Nikki, written during the Heian period, is an example of an early Japanese memoir. A genre of writing called Nikki Bungaku developed during this time. Themes such as court life, personal reflection, and emotional expression were often explored in Japanese memoirs; Sarashina Nikki is one of the most well-known examples.
During the Middle Ages, Geoffrey of Villehardouin, Jean de Joinville, and Philippe de Commines wrote memoirs. The genre also appeared near the end of the Renaissance in the works of Blaise de Montluc and Margaret of Valois—the latter being the first woman to write memoirs in a modern style. One of the earliest known examples of medieval memoir writing is Villehardouin's De la Conquête de Constantinople, which provides a firsthand account of the Fourth Crusade.
Other memoirs written before the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries include those by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, François de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac of France, and Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, who wrote his memoirs at his family's home in the castle of La Ferté-Vidame. While Saint-Simon was considered a skilled writer with strong narrative and character development abilities, his work as a memoirist was not widely recognized until after his death, which eventually led to his literary fame.
From the eighteenth century
From the second half of the 18th century through the middle of the 20th century, people who wrote memoirs were often well-known in their jobs, such as politicians, court officials, military leaders, and businesspeople. These writers shared their personal stories about their public experiences. An exception was Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 memoir Walden, which described his life in a cabin near Walden Pond over two years. Thoreau’s book focused on how people interact with nature and value independence. It became an important book in American literature, especially within the Transcendentalism movement.
In the 20th century, war memoirs became a separate type of writing. Examples from World War I include Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel and Frederic Manning’s Her Privates We. Memoirs about being imprisoned by Nazi Germany during the war include Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man, which describes his arrest as part of the Italian Resistance Movement and his time as a prisoner in Auschwitz, and Elie Wiesel’s Night, which details his life before and during his time in the Auschwitz, Buna Werke, and Buchenwald concentration camps.
Memoirs today
According to American journalist Carlos Lozada, political memoirs from the 21st century can be grouped into several types. Some are cleaned-up stories about politics before a campaign, mixing personal life with general ideas about government and praise for American values. Others are written after a campaign, usually by people who lost elections, and they describe what went wrong. Some are written by young politicians hoping to enter politics or older politicians trying to reshape their careers before their deaths are announced. Others are written by former workers who learned that being close to powerful people gives them interesting stories, or by journalists who feel they are part of the powerful people they write about.
Canadian scholar George Edgerton says that the late British historian George Peabody Gooch talked about how people often mix pride and sadness when trying to deal with the idea of death. He says this tradition is where modern political memoirs come from, in all their different forms. Cambridge University professor Andrew Gamble says the rarest but most valuable type of memoir is the political diary.
In the United Kingdom, the Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society is a journal that publishes stories about important scientists, whether or not they lived in the UK. These stories are important historical records and usually include a full list of the scientists’ published works. Often, the stories are written by younger scientists, sometimes former students or close colleagues of the scientists being written about. In many cases, the writer is also a member of the Royal Society. Notable scientists whose stories have been published in this journal include Albert Einstein, Alan Turing, Bertrand Russell, Claude Shannon, Ernst Mayr, and Erwin Schrödinger.
In the early 1990s, more people began writing memoirs because they realized that stories about their ancestors and themselves might be lost. At the same time, research showed that learning about family history helps people understand their place in the world, and reflecting on the past helps people accept their own history. The popularity of memoirs also grew because of social media, where people started sharing their personal stories with large groups of people.
With the invention of low-cost digital book production in the first decade of the 21st century, the memoir genre grew rapidly. Memoirs written to pass down personal legacies, rather than as works of art or history, are now seen as important family responsibilities.
The Association of Personal Historians was a group that helped people, families, and organizations record their life stories. It stopped operating in 2017.
Collections
Some groups aim to protect history by helping people share their personal experiences. For example, the Veterans History Project collects stories from individuals who have served in the U.S. military, particularly those who have experienced combat.
Terminology
Memoirs are often seen as true stories about people's lives, usually starting from their early years. The word "memoir" comes from the French term mémoire, which means "reminiscence" or "memory." Some types of life stories, called free memoirs, are not always strictly based on exact facts. A free memoir is a kind of nonfiction that may not follow the past exactly as it happened. This difference in how truth is shown separates a free memoir from a regular memoir. The word "free" in this case means "not literal or exact," just like the phrase "free translation."