Effe provides a much-needed historical perspective to the study of autofiction, a genre that has been dismissed as mere current fashion or postmodern posturing. In demonstrating that the autofictional has existed since the origin of the English novel, Effe paints a deeper, broader, and more historically-accurate portrayal of the field.

Chloe Green, Lecturer in English, Australian National University, Australia

A History of Autofiction is a timely and valuable book. Not only does it chime in with the recent upsurge of interest in this form of life writing, but by projecting the concept of autofiction back to the eighteenth century it generates a much richer, deeper and more nuanced pre-history for the field than has previously been attempted. Working in a chronological way through the 18th,19th and 20th centuries up to the present, Effe generates detailed close readings of representative works from each of these periods. When these are read in relation to each other, what emerges is a cumulative sense of how autofiction has emerged over the long term, thus taking a highly innovative approach to the book's historical handling of autofiction.

Hywel Dix, Bournemouth University, UK; Author of Autofiction and Cultural Memory