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Women autobiographies, a generic term for life narratives, histories, memoirs, testimonios and hagiographies , has emerged as a genre, consequent to the postmodernist thrust on the identity and the attendant politics surrounding it. Primarily aimed at communicating the subordinated predicament of women, the writings claim the agency. Based on memory, experience and identity, women narrators reproduce the cultural modes of self-narrating, simultaneously critiquing the status quo. When it comes to the personal lives of the women, there is nothing personal about women's personal lives: the personal is political too. Women, writing the autobiography is a means of finding the agency. It is, therefore, worth exploring as to what compels women write autobiographies. Ahead of their Times : Essays on Women Autobiography in India is an attempt in this direction. The work focuses on select women autobiographies covering those autobiographies written from 1876, the first woman autobiography ever written, to the ones writ