In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method, that attempts to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind, the term was coined by William James in 1890 in his "The Principles of Psychology", and in 1918 the novelist May Sinclair, Sinclair was the pseudonym of Mary Amelia St. Clair (24 August 1863 – 14 November 1946), a popular British writer who wrote about how many novels, short stories and poetry?
Stream of consciousness (narrative mode) In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind. The term was coined by William James in 1890 in his "The Principles of Psychology", and in 1918 the novelist May Sinclair (1863–1946) first applied the term stream of consciousness, in a literary context, when discussing Dorothy Richardson's (1873–1957) novels. "Pointed Roofs" (1915), the first work in Richardson's series of 13 semi-autobiographical novels titled "Pilgrimage", is the first complete stream of consciousness novel published in English. However, in 1934, Richardson comments that "Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf & D.R. ... were all using 'the new method', though very differently, simultaneously".
Autobiography An autobiography (from the Greek, αὐτός-"autos" self + βίος-"bios" life + γράφειν-"graphein" to write) is a self-written account of the life of a person. The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English periodical "The Monthly Review", when he suggested the word as a hybrid, but condemned it as "pedantic". However, its next recorded use was in its present sense, by Robert Southey in 1809. Despite only being named early in the nineteenth century, first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity. Roy Pascal differentiates autobiography from the periodic self-reflective mode of journal or diary writing by noting that "[autobiography] is a review of a life from a particular moment in time, while the diary, however reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time". Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's life from the moment of composition. While biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and viewpoints, autobiography may be based entirely on the writer's memory. The memoir form is closely associated with autobiography but it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on the self and more on others during the autobiographer's review of his or her life.