Britney Spears memoir set for 24 October release

Britney Spears will publish a highly anticipated memoir this fall, some two years after a court freed her from a strict conservatorship many deemed abusive and exploitative.

The magnetic pop star's book "The Woman In Me" is set for publication on 24 October, after Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, acquired it.

Spears lived nearly 14 years under a controversial legal arrangement that barred her from managing her own life and finances, a period in which she was largely governed by her father, Jamie.

A Los Angeles judge in November 2021 dissolved the conservatorship. In one chilling accusation, the singer said under the arrangement she was prevented from having a contraceptive IUD removed despite her desire for more children.

The 41-year-old has described being forced to work and tour and said her phone was tapped.

Spears rocketed to fame in her teens on hits like "…Baby One More Time," becoming one of the world's reigning pop stars at the turn of the millennium.

But she suffered a highly publicized 2007 breakdown, which included attacking a paparazzo's car at a gas station.

The conservatorship began in 2008. It didn't formally end until November 2021, after the pop phenom's father Jamie Spears was removed from his position in charge of her finances and estate at a hearing in September.

"I just want my life back," she told the court in 2021.

Since gaining her freedom, Spears has married her boyfriend Sam Asghari and collaborated on a song with Elton John.

Her forthcoming memoir is "a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope," her publisher said in a statement.

"Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears's groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love — and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last. "