SOURCE: Tracy, Robert. “Stranger Than Truth: Fictional Autobiography and Autobiographical Fiction.” Dickens Studies Annual 15 (1986): 275-89.

In the following essay, Tracy compares Charles Dickens's novel David Copperfield and Anthony Trollope's An Autobiography in order to suggest generic affinities and distinctions between autobiographical fiction and autobiography.

… Il me semblait que j'étais moi-même ce dont parlait l'ouvrage … le sujet du livre se détachait de moi, j'étais libre de m'y appliquer ou non …

Proust, Du coté de chez Swann

The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life or of the work …

W. B. Yeats, “The Choice”

The two passages, from Proust and from Yeats, which I have prefixed as epigraphs, suggest to me a direction to take in considering the nature of literary autobiography, and its relationship to a writer's use of his own experiences in fiction. Proust, to be sure, is thinking of...