George Dutton’s chapter examines the long Vietnamese biographical tradition and uses a particular scholar’s life and writings as a case study. Dutton argues that aside from a handful of prominent twentieth century figures, most Vietnamese historical figures’ lives are presented in a manner that is largely schematic or mythologized. He then explores the life and writings of the scholar Pham Dinh Ho (1768–1839), a man whose life spanned a complicated dynastic transition between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dutton explores Pham Dinh Ho from two distinct vantage points: as autobiographer and as biographer. Unlike most of his contemporaries, whose written output was primarily impersonal—works of philosophy, history, didacticism, or poetry—Pham Dinh Ho wrote regularly about more mundane elements of his life and experiences. While much of what Ho wrote in this vein is fragmentary, enough survives to offer a preliminary biography, which is sketched out here. While he wrote about himself, Ho also left a large amount of biographical writing, exemplifying aspects of the Vietnamese tradition of life writing. In piecing together autobiographical information from Pham Dinh Ho’s available writings, Dutton suggests strategies for producing more substantive and more personal biographical writings about other figures in earlier Vietnamese history.