A Semi-Comprehensive Look at Semi-Autobiographical Novels

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In early 2016, I wrote about semi-autobiographical novels. Now that nearly 10 years have passed, I suppose it would be semi-okay to write about those books again — mentioning semi-autobiographical novels I’ve read since then or had read before then but didn’t mention in that previous post. So, with this semi-decent first paragraph nearly done, here goes:

As I wrote in ’16, semi-autobiographical novels “can be the best of both worlds for authors and their readers. That mix of memoir and fiction takes facts and embellishes them and/or dramatizes them and/or smooths them into more coherent form. A partly autobiographical approach also allows authors to potentially pen very heartfelt books — after all, they lived the emotions — and perhaps provides those writers with some mental therapy, too.” I also wrote that a semi-autobiographical novel is often, but of course not always, a debut novel — at least partly because that kind of book might be easier to write; the author can use aspects of her or his own past.

Back here in late 2025, I just read The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje, whose 2011 coming-of-age novel was inspired to an extent by the author’s life and a ship voyage he took as a boy from his native Sri Lanka to rejoin his mother in England after his parents had separated several years earlier. A boy named…hmm…Michael. The Cat’s Table is another compelling book by The English Patient author, who went on to live in Canada.

Another semi-autobiographical/coming-of-age novel (those two things often go together) is Betty Smith’s 1943 bestseller A Tree Grows in Brooklyn — about a brainy girl (Francie) growing up in an impoverished urban family.

Then there’s Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, who loosely based her classic 1868-69 novel on herself and her three sisters.

A few decades earlier, Mary Shelley’s apocalyptic 1826 novel The Last Man featured three principal characters based on herself, her late husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their friend and fellow writer Lord Byron.

Aldous Huxley also used famous people as models for characters in his 1928 novel Point Counter Point — including himself, Nancy Cunard, D.H. Lawrence, and Katherine Mansfield.

The characters in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) are somewhat modeled on the author’s father (attorney Atticus Finch in the novel), herself (Scout in the book) and Lee’s childhood friend Truman Capote (fictionally named Dill).

Kurt Vonnegut’s horrific World War II experiences were fuel for his sci-fi-infused 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five, and Jack Kerouac’s travel experiences provided fodder for his On the Road (1957).

Some of the semi-autobiographical novels mentioned in my 2016 post include James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle, Charles Bukowski’s Hollywood, Willa Cather’s My Antonia, Colette’s The Vagabond, Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, E.L. Doctorow’s World’s Fair, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The House of the Dead, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Jack London’s Martin Eden, W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, Herman Melville’s Typee, L.M. Montgomery’s Emily trilogy, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

Misty the cat says: “When Christmas-tree lights reflect off the window, it’s a pane in the grass.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — which contains a tale of two meetings — is here.

93 thoughts on “A Semi-Comprehensive Look at Semi-Autobiographical Novels”

  1. Howdy, Dave!

    — Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic? —

    Examples are easy. They include these fruits of varying vintages:
    — Pierre Boulle’s The Bridge Over the River Kwai,
    — Richard Brautigan’s So the Wind Won’t Blow It All Away,
    — Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises,
    — Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums* and
    — Jerzy Kosinski’s The Hermit of 69th Street.

    Thoughts are harder. For example, the first thing I think whenever I think of The Hermit of 69th Street is: “I think this thing is the longest suicide note in the history of the world.”

    It breaks your heart.

    Happy New Year, anyway.

    J.J. McGrath (Alias MugRuith1)

    *On the Road is great; The Dharma Bums is greater.

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    • Thank you, J.J., for that excellent list! I just put “The Darma Bums” on my list, if my local library has it. “The Hermit of 69th Street” sounds very intense. “The Bridge Over the River Kwai” — one of those novels better known for its movie version! I wasn’t a huge fan of “The Sun Also Rises,” but did love Hemingway’s later “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

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      • — Thank you, J.J., for that excellent list! —

        Ditto! And yours is a wee bit more fulsome than mine! I do not play the New Year’s Resolutions game, but I do hope to read Joseph Heller’s Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man in the semiautobiographical area during the next 12 months.

        — I just put “The Dharma Bums” on my list, if my local library has it. —

        Nice!

        — “The Hermit of 69th Street” sounds very intense. —

        Indeed. With footnotes. Can you imagine Being There with footnotes?

        — “The Bridge Over the River Kwai” — one of those novels better known for its movie version! —

        As a committed whistler in my eighth decade, I do appreciate that film’s theme song. Alec Guinness, Sessue Hayakawa and William Holden all are pretty good, too.

        — I wasn’t a huge fan of “The Sun Also Rises,” but did love Hemingway’s later “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” —

        Sounds about right . . .

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        • Thanks for the follow-up comment, J.J.!

          I had no idea Joseph Heller wrote a book of that title.

          Footnotes in a novel? (The Hermit of 69th Street.) Unusual. Shades of Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

          Wishing you a great 2026!

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          • — I had no idea Joseph Heller wrote a book of that title. —

            Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man was published posthumously in 2000, so we were most likely distracted by the cacophony of the Dot-Com Crash as it reverberated throughout Silicon Alley and points south.

            — Footnotes in a novel? (The Hermit of 69th Street.) Unusual. —

            If Jorge Luis Borges employs footnotes in a short story, then Borges is just being Borges. If Jerzy Kosinski employs footnotes in a novel, then something is rotten in the state of Poland. Personally, I read Kosinski’s extensive use of them in The Hermit of 69th Street as a preemptive strike against anyone who might accuse him of plagiarism — again. Palpable is the paranoia permeating the piece.

            — Shades of Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. —

            Thanks again for recommending that one (either here or at the Huffy Post)! Happily, I read Diaz’s footnotes not as Kosinskiesque but as Borgesian. ¡Ningún problema!

            — Wishing you a great 2026! —

            Ditto!

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  2. Happy impending New Year, Dave!

    So, you mentioned Bukowski. I believe his book Ham on Rye is semi autobiographical.

    Fear and Loathing (Hunter Thompson) is also semi autobiographical.

    Let’s not forget David Copperfield by the great Dickens, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce!

    HNY!! 🥳🕊🥂

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  3. Hi Dave, it is interesting how many authors write books which include elements of their lives. I’ve read a few of the books you’ve mentioned here but I’m struggling to think of examples. Boy: Stories of Childhood by Roald Dahl is autobiographical. Commando by South African Denys Reitz is also largely autobiographical. All Quiet on the Western Front is semi autobiographical. Rider Haggard’s books also included experiences from his life. I can’t think of others at the moment.

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  4. I want to try this! I wrote a memoir and it’s great for people who really like memoirs, but I think sometimes it’s more powerful if you write it in story format. They will see the story for what it is rather than seeing it as the author telling their story.

    Like Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women which is an autobiography.

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  6. Interesting isn’t it? I believe quite a number of authors would write about themselves, even though it might be unconsciously. Or maybe using other people whom you know, but using them in a slightly different way. I certainly have done that. Anyway, just a thought.

    Saying ‘hi’ to Misty, you’re a very good author, we all know that… more about what’s going on soon, I imagine. So, Happy New Year – there will be a ‘bong’ twelve times – will you be able to see that?

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    • Thank you, Chris! I agree! Authors can place semi-autobiographical elements in their writing subconsciously, and many use disguised or somewhat-disguised people they know as characters.

      Misty appreciates the kind praise, and, as I also mentioned in another reply here (to Dan Antion), Misty will watch the New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square and then swat it, which is not easy to do through a TV screen…

      Happy New Year, too, to you and yours — including Luna the cat! 🙂

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  7. Hi Dave!

    This is a very interesting post! I tend to find that if a novel is semi-autobiographical it seems to have a stronger impact! I’m not sure if that makes any sense!!! ☺ The book feels more authentic.

    As always, you have listed some great books, although I have not read any of them!! ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ is certainly on my list, however.

    Thanks Dave for giving me lots of books to think about over the holidays!!

    With all good wishes,

    Sharon

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  8. Look Homeward Angel by Wolfe and Prince Of Tides by Conroy. I’m sure there are quite a few novels by other authors; however, I got stuck in the south and I can’t get out. Yikes. Happy Holidays to you and yours Dave. Susi

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    • Thank you, Susi! Two excellent examples! And getting “stuck in the south” — 😂 — is not a bad thing, especially given that it’s warmer than the north in late December. 🙂

      Happy Holidays to you and yours, too!

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  9. I’ve noticed writing that draws on the author’s lived experience is more authentic than purely fictional writing. It’s inevitable that we writers incorporate elements from our own lives into our invented stories. The trick is to create an engaging plot enhanced by personal experience, even when we don’t cross the line into autobiographical fiction.

    Think about the future academics who will write theses and articles about which parts of our books are based on our real lives. (Assuming we achieve posthumous fame, of course!) 😀

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    • Thank you, Audrey! It makes total sense that an author’s lived experience is more authentic than purely fictional writing, and melding the two together as seamlessly as possible can obviously have very nice results.

      And, yes, studying how much of a novel is semi-autobiographical is catnip for literary scholars. 🙂

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  10. Such an interesting topic, and I suspect that many authors’ books are semi-autobiographical, but they just don’t make that fact widely known. I believe that many of Adriana Trigiani’s novels are semi-autobiographical, in that they are based on family stories.

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  11. Great topic, a comprehensive list and some good chatter, Dave. You picked off the ones I thought I might add, but I enjoyed thinking about the ones I hadn’t thought of (and the ones I haven’t read). I hope Misty has New Year’s Eve plans figure out.

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    • Thank you, Dan! Definitely lots of semi-autobiographical novels, and I was glad to see many mentioned in the comments section. 🙂

      Ha! 😂 (Misty’s New Year’s Eve plans.) He’ll watch the ball drop in Times Square and then swat it. Not easy to do through a TV screen…

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  12. Excellent post Dave. i need to go away and think re this, seeing as you’ve pinched all the best ones!!! Apart from the book written about a certain cat…..Misty I think the name is. Of course we know Misty really wrote it…ahem..

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    • Thank you, Shehanne! I did name too many novels. 🙂

      Ha! 😂 Your Misty mention. 🙂 He was originally going to name his part-fiction memoir “A Cat Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” but his combination perch/scratch pole was not manufactured there…

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      • Nah you never named too many, It is a great post. Since |I can’t think of any to add to the discussiion what I will say is I think that probably most writers bring something, a memory, a person, a place, a whatever, to a story. It is not semi autobiographical like the ones you’ve mentioned but there’s bits of themselves that they do bring.

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        • You’re absolutely right, Shehanne, that even when novels are not semi-autobiographical per se all of them have some direct or indirect parts of the authors brought to them. After all, the content is of course emerging from the authors’ brains and keyboarding fingers.

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  13. What a terrific, generous list, Dave—and beautifully framed. You capture exactly why semi-autobiographical novels resonate so deeply: that alchemy of lived emotion and crafted story. The Cat’s Table is a perfect recent example, and I love how you connect it back to that idea of memory shaped into meaning.

    One that comes to mind for me is Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle (blurring the line almost beyond recognition), and on a quieter note, Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, which feel intensely personal even as they resist clear autobiography. These books often linger longest because, as you say, the authors have truly lived the feelings—and we sense it on every page.
    Many thanks, dear Dave for always sharing such insightful posts. 😃💕

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    • Thank you, Carolyn! Glad you liked the post — and I appreciate your comment and the examples in it! Plus the elegantly expressed line “that alchemy of lived emotion and crafted story” and your description of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels as “intensely personal even as they resist clear autobiography.” I’ve only read one Ferrante book: the pre-Neapolitan “The Lost Daughter.”

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      • Thank you, Dave! That idea of lived experience transforming on the page is very close to my heart; in Molly Marple Mystery, I drew on many of my own experiences and let them evolve into story. The Lost Daughter is such a haunting entry point to Ferrante — intimate and elusive all at once. Your post was a joy to read.

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  14. A great topic as usual Dave; I must have read at least half of the books you mention above, and the other half I’ll get to. ‘Go Tell It On the Mountain’ has been on my list for a while; time I did something about that. Off the top of my head I can think of ‘Big Brother’ by our favourite, Lionel Shriver, and Orwell’s ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’, which I read a very long time ago. Aside from those I’ll have to sleep on it and see what I can come up with. In common with many other authors I weave incidents from my own life into my writing, which as you note can serve as therapy. Many thanks for the post and if I think of any more I’ll be back. 🙂

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    • Thank you, Laura! Great that you weave autobiographical content into your books, as many authors do.

      “Go Tell It on the Mountain” is an excellent (debut) novel, and “Big Brother” is of course memorable — complete with that surprise ending we’ve previously discussed. I haven’t read the Orwell book you mentioned.

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      • It was his first full-length book, and he actually went and lived in both places in the manner of a homeless person. It’s usually described as semi-autobiographical, I think because he wasn’t living that way all the time. Rather he’d go of on a ‘tramping’ journey for a while, then go back to normal, then off on a tramp again – but the book reads like a continuous action. It’s a long time since I read it, but it’s Orwell going all the way in realistic research.

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  16. Another wonderful topic, Dave. I always appreciate how your posts open doors to reflection rather than closing them with conclusions. Your discussion made me think of Lucy Maud Montgomery, who drew deeply from her lived experience without ever writing straight autobiography. Emily of New Moon in particular feels like a quietly personal work and not a record of events, but an expression of an inner life shaped by place, imagination, loss, and the longing to write. Even Anne of Green Gables, though not autobiographical in circumstance, carries emotional truths that feel lived rather than invented.

    What stays with me about semi-autobiographical novels is not the accuracy of facts, but the authenticity of feeling. When writers reshape their own experiences into story, they often give us something truer than memoir. A way of understanding how a life felt rather than simply how it unfolded. And of course, I have to leave one of my most favourite LMM quotes: Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?” Looking forward to many conversations waiting for us in 2026!!!

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    • Thank you, Rebecca! L.M. Montgomery’s three “Emily” novels offer a perfect blend of fact and fiction. A reader can tell that the books are partly based on “lived experience,” as you note. And, yes, novels such as “Anne of Green Gables” can feel a little autobiographical even if they’re not quite. For one thing, I’m sure Montgomery was quite a brainy, precocious teen in her time — as was Anne Shirley.

      Your comment’s two paragraphs are both eloquent and I love that Montgomery quote you cited! I can just picture Anne saying it. 🙂

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  17. Wow! Love this post, Dave! An author friend introduced me recently to the term “auto fiction” – autobiographical fiction – a term I’d never heard before but you’ve provided excellent examples. Always learning from you. Many thanks! 🥰

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  18. Louis Golding’s Magnolia Street, partly because, with one of my cousins, i’m working on a handwritten memoir of 1930 – 39, describing life during the Depression – Unlike Golding’s opposite sides of Magnolia street, the Judaeo-Christian, UK born or European refugees of our family’s neighbourhood lived next door to each other. Other side of the family lived in Leeds.

    Chilling, intense, unforgettable, Frost in May is an autobiographical novel in which the nuns of the convent school to which nine year old ‘ convert’ Nanda is sent to know that they must break her will. ‘No character is any good in this world unless that will has been broken completely. ‘

    According to the author, Antonia White, the nuns of the Convent of the Five Wounds – near London, did their best to break hers.

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    • Thank you, Esther, for those really interesting examples! The memoir you’re working on sounds fascinating, and “Frost in May” indeed sounds chilling. Some aspects of organized religion are very disturbing. 😦

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  19. I’ve read some of the semi-autobiographical novels that you’ve mentioned. I agree that they can be very heartfelt stories. My semi-autobiographical, second novel was, indeed, therapeutic as well as self-revelatory for me, especially as it covered a period of my life that I had buried until then. I cannot speak for other authors of the genre, but I found it challenging to write since I had to create characters that were far removed from the real-life individuals and who could not be easily identified to avoid any controversy.

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