As Told by Herself offers the first systematic study of women's autobiographical writing about childhood. More than 175 works—primarily from English-speaking countries and France, as well as other European countries—are presented here in historical sequence, allowing Lorna Martens to discern and reveal patterns as they emerge and change over time. What do the authors divulge, conceal, and emphasize? How do they understand the experience of growing up as girls? How do they understand themselves as parts of family or social groups, and what role do other individuals play in their recollections? To what extent do they concern themselves with issues of memory, truth, and fictionalization?

Stopping just before second-wave feminism brought an explosion in women's childhood autobiographical writing, As Told by Herself explores the genre's roots and development from the mid-nineteenth century, and recovers many works that have been neglected or forgotten. The result illustrates how previous generations of women—in a variety of places and circumstances—understood themselves and their upbringing, and how they thought to present themselves to contemporary and future readers. 

Lorna Martens is a professor of German and comparative literature at the University of Virginia and is the author of several books, including The Promise of Memory: Childhood Recollection and Its Objects in Literary Modernism. 

Introduction
 
1.  Beginnings:  Women’s Childhood Autobiography Prior to World War I
Women’s Childhood Autobiography in France
Mother-Daughter Conflict
Remembering
The Self-Portrait
The Working-Class Woman
 Women’s Childhood Autobiography in England, the United States, Australia, and Ireland
"We"
The Study
Short Pieces
The Victim
Capturing the Child's Vision
The Inner Life of the Child
Mixing Genres
Women’s Childhood Autobiography Elsewhere around 1900
In sum

2.  The Interwar Years:   Memoirs and Semi-Memoirs
Memoirs
Semi-Memoirs
1935
“Splendor in the Grass”
Humor
Souvenirs
In sum

3.  The Interwar Years:  The Golden Age of Psychological Self-Portraiture
Self-portraits in the 1920s
How I Became What I Became
In Your Face
Self-Expression in the 1930s
Self-Assertion
The Child’s Vision
The Study
In sum
 
4.  Women’s Childhood Autobiography during World War II                   
Semi-Memoirs
Self-Focused Works
Self-Assertion
Remembering
The Family
Nest and the Challenges beyond It
In sum
 
5.   Women’s Childhood Autobiography from the End of the Second World War through the 1960s
Autobiographies of Abuse
Self-Focused Autobiographies
Bildungsroman
Relationships
The Child’s Perspective
A Stylistic Mix
In sum
 
Conclusion                                                                                                                         
 
Bibliography of Women’s Childhood Autobiographies to 1969
 
Notes