Literary narratives have both the ability and obligation to portray those with disabilities as rounded individuals with complex identities. This thesis demonstrates the evolving cultural attitudes toward autism, beginning with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Daniel Keyes’s Flowers for Algernon (1966), both written before the formal autism diagnosis. These novels explore the ways in which individuals on the spectrum are challenged in verbal communication and have been cast as outsiders by their respective societies. Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (2003) facilitated change as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) became prominent in the consciousness of a wider public. The text represents the previously misunderstood experiences and intentions of an individual on the spectrum and inspired the growing body of autism narratives to include adult novels in which individuals with autism experience empathy, love, or romance. The most recent novels in the genre of autism narratives include Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project (2006), and more recently Helen Hoang’s The Kiss Quotient (2018), which seek to create a new, rounded autistic identity. I argue that the rewriting of both the medical and popular discourse of autism through fictional texts demonstrates the power of literature and its profound effects on both the construction and public perception of autistic identity. Despite the progress that has been made in the development of narratives of autism, autistic identities are nevertheless still often restricted to representations by neurotypical authors who wield the profound power and responsibility of shaping cultural perceptions through diverse literatures.