Includes bibliographical references and index.

The self has a history. In the West, the idea of the soul entered Christianity with the Church Fathers, notably Augustine. During the Renaissance the idea of the individual attained preeminence, as in the works of Montaigne. In the seventeenth century, philosophers such as Descartes formulated notions of selfhood that did not require a divine foundation. in the next century, thinkers such as Hume grew skeptical of the self's very existence. Ideas of the self have changed markedly since the Romantic period and most scholars today regard it as at best a mental construct. Self-expression also has a history. First-person genres such as diaries and memoirs have long provided an outlet for self-expression and since the seventeenth century novels have competed with them in providing a way for writers to speak about themselves. However, memoirs survived and continue to thrive, while the diary has found a new incarnation in the personal blog.