Ben Yagoda: A Brief History of Memoir-Bashing ... It's almost as old as the memoir itself.

Way, way back in the day, before memoirs lost its s, when all the memoirs that had ever been written could fit in a couple of modest bookcases, the form represented a brilliant innovation in genre. Or so it seemed to Samuel Johnson. Writing in 1759, he observed that the best kind of biography was one in which"the writer tells his own story." Such books benefited from their authors' total command of the subject, Johnson argued:

"Certainty of knowledge not only excludes mistake, but fortifies veracity. … [T]hat which is fully known cannot be falsified but with reluctance of understanding, and alarm of conscience." (Dr. Johnson, meet Mr. Frey.)

Notable autobiographies were written in the late 18th century (by Casanova, Rousseau, and Benjamin Franklin) and in the 19th (by John Stuart Mill, Ulysses S. Grant, and many, many hundreds of others), and along the way, the word autobiography was invented; the Oxford English Dictionary's first citation is from 1797. The first recorded instance of memoir-bashing—so familiar to contemporary readers—came the very next year, from the pen of the German philosopher Friedrich Schlegel:

Pure autobiographies are written either by neurotics who are fascinated by their own ego, as in Rousseau's case; or by authors of a robust artistic or adventurous self-love, such as Benvenuto Cellini; or by born historians who regard themselves only as material for historic art; or by women who also coquette with posterity; or by pedantic minds who want to bring even the most minute things in order before they die and cannot let themselves leave the world without commentaries.

In other words, memoir writers are egotists, exhibitionists, and/or self-indulgent narcissists. Now, where have I heard that before? The 1820s saw a memoir boom comparable to the one we have been experiencing for some 15 years, and it drew similar-caliber gunfire. In 1825, Henry Mackenzie waggishly defined autobiography as"the confession of a person to himself instead of the priest,—generally gets absolution too easily." Four years later, an anonymous author in Blackwood's Magazine opined that the form should be the province of people of"lofty reputation" or who have something of"historical importance to say"—not of the"vulgar" who try to"excite prurient interest that may command a sale."...