In this lively study of autobiography in the making, Susan K. Jackson looks at the ways in which Rousseau's earlier occasional work informed his later autobiographical masterpiece, "Confessions, " which some have credited with initiating autobiography in its modern form. Jackson's study begins with the premise that Confessions did not represent the first time that Rousseau became interested in writing the story of his own life, although Rousseau himself claimed it was. Rather, Jackson traces his preoccupation with autobiography, which she shows began as early as 1752, through many of his...