title: "Song of ourselves": a quantitative history of American autobiographies.
abstract: This article highlights the major descriptive findings of an exploratory, quantitative study of American autobiographies published before 1945. Of particular importance for gerontology, age-cohort distributions of autobiographers are graphed, demonstrating that the genre itself has been created predominantly by men and women aged 55 and over. This study suggests that these writers offer scholars a virtually untapped resource for the historical phenomenology of aging.
authors.affiliation: Department of Family and Community Medicine, Eastern Virginia Medical School, Norfolk 23501, USA.
authors.forename: J S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Levin
authors.forename: T R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Cole
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D001325:Autobiographies as Topic; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D005853:Geriatrics / Q000266:history*; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D014481:United States