Augustine of Hippo

The Confessions is the first autobiography in the Western tradition to treat the inner life as the real subject — not what he did, but what he wanted, why he wanted it, and how the wanting itself had to be re-formed. He stole pears as a boy not because he was hungry but because the theft tasted like freedom; thirty years later, he still thought about it. He died with the Vandals at the gates of his city.