Encyclopedia of Life Writing: Autobiographical and Biographical Forms [2 vols., 1 ed.] 157958232X, 9781579582326

Table of contents :
Dedication
Contents
Editor’s Note
Board of Advisers
Contributors
Alphabetical List of Entries
Thematic List: Entries by Category
Encyclopedia of Life Writing
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
Index
Notes on Advisers and Contributors

Citation preview

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE WRITING Edited by Margaretta Jolly

Encyclopedia of Life Writing Autobiographical and Biographical Forms

Edited by Margaretta Jolly

ISBN 978-1-57958-232-6

,!7IB5H9-ficdcg! www.routledge.com  an informa business

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encyclopedia of

Life Writing Autobiographical and Biographical Forms

Volume 1

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encyclopedia of

Life Writing Autobiographical and Biographical Forms

Volume 1 A–K Editor Margaretta Jolly

FITZROY DEARBORN PUBLISHERS london · chicago

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Copyright © 2001 by fitzroy dearborn publishers All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. For information write to: fitzroy dearborn publishers 919 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 760 Chicago, Illinois 60611 USA or 310 Regent Street London w1b 3ax England

British Library and Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data are available ISBN 1–57958–232–x

First published in the USA and UK 2001 Typeset by Regent Typesetting, London Printed and bound by Edwards Brothers Cover design by Hybert Design Cover illustration: M.C. Escher’s Drawing Hands © 2001 Cordon Art B.V., Baarn, Holland. All rights reserved.

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To my parents

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CONTENTS

Editor’s Note Board of Advisers Contributors

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ix xiii xv

Alphabetical List of Entries

xix

Thematic List: Entries by Category

xxv

Encyclopedia of Life Writing, A–K

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EDITOR’S NOTE

Aims, Scope, and Selection of Entries The writing of lives is an ancient and ubiquitous practice. Biographies have been important as genealogical, religious, and didactic forms since the start of recorded literature. Autobiography, diaries, and personal letters have been widespread since the 18th century. But in the postmodern era the story of a life has seemed to demand explanation in a new way. As the individualism unleashed by capitalism cracks and reshapes in the fire of globalization and the communications revolution, a literature that foregrounds the shape of a single life and its span seems to focus the anxieties of the age. Life writing is now being explored in literary criticism, anthropology, sociology, psychology, history, theology, cultural studies, and even the biological sciences in order to explain an apparent dissolution of life into story. Just as busy is the investigation into our continuing need for stories that confirm or reinvent a reference to lived experience. The academic imagination has been galvanized by the challenges this has offered to its own epistemological traditions and by the democratizing of knowledge that life writing so charismatically represents. As the first encyclopedia to provide a map of the field across discipline and region, this book reflects the excitement and idealism that characterises its scholarship. But a word of warning must be offered to those who expect any final definition of its topic. While the conception of any encyclopedia involves a measure of foolhardy ambition, the hope of describing fully a subject of such celebrated ambiguity and disciplinary iconoclasm is certainly vain. In fact, it would not only be undesirable but also impossible to offer a final account of this immense and protean literature, that some might argue encompasses virtually all forms of narrative. This book rather aims to provide a guide to a fast-changing terrain, which adopts a historical and reflexive approach to definition. The term “life writing” itself, recorded in the 18th century, and gaining wide academic acceptance since the 1980s, has been chosen for the title because of its openness and inclusiveness across genre, and because it encompasses the writing of one’s own or another’s life. (Readers will also find the term “auto/biography” used frequently by contributors as a convenient way of indicating a scope that is both autobiographical and biographical.) On this basis, it is also appropriate to shelter under life writing’s umbrella several entries on life story originating outside of the written form, including testimony, artifacts, reminiscence, personal narrative, visual arts, photography, film, oral history, and so forth. Within these terms, the aims of the book are four-fold: to offer an overview of its central genres and themes; to provide international and historical perspective through accounts of life writing traditions and trends from around the world, from Classical times to the present; to summarise the significance of outstanding individual writers and works in the field; and to reflect the main social, political, religious, and academic contexts in ix

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editor’s note

which life writing is fertilized and analysed. A particularly important feature is the focus on life writing in popular and everyday genres and contexts – from celebrity and royal biography to working-class autobiography, letter writing, interviews, and gossip. There has also been a special effort to map non-Western interests in the field and to promote comparative approaches that give nuance to over-easy generalisations that can be made about autobiography as a Western genre. The entries on life writing in relation to world religions and religious contexts is one response to this. A variety of disciplinary approaches has also been encouraged – from an experimental psychologist on “Children’s Life Writing” to a literary critic on “Childhood and Life Writing”. In this regard, the entries should be read as critical essays as well as sources of reference, very often written with the personal engagement characteristic of the study of life writing. They reflect the rich diversity of terms in the debate, while a number of entries trace the course of the different disciplines that have led the enquiry into life writing, as well as examine the history of life-writing theory and criticism within and without the academy. The crucial influence of Women’s Studies, Cultural Studies, African-American, and Postcolonial Studies has also prompted the inclusion of entries on political contexts that have inspired life writing, for example “Disability and Life Writing”, “Lesbian and Gay Life Writing”, “Trauma”, and “Testimony”. The selection of entries was made by the editor in consultation with the Advisers (listed on page xiii) and the Commissioning Editor, Mark Hawkins-Dady. The entries were originally conceived of within five flexible working categories: (1) genres, (2) common themes in life writings, (3) contexts and criticism, (4) regional surveys, and (5) writers and works. It should be noted that in the latter category, there are more autobiographers than biographers, diary, letter or travel writers. This is in part because the study of autobiography is the most long-standing and sophisticated branch of analysis in the field; but in the case of biography, it is also for pragmatic reasons, to keep the criteria for inclusion the form and the skill in the writing – rather than the fame of the life recounted, which often governs perceptions of biography. An effort to balance the emphasis on autobiography, however, has guided the regional and historical surveys, which often cover biography and the less canonical genres of letter and diary writing. Finally, there are many aspects of this wide-ranging field, not to mention regions of the world, where lifewriting scholarship remains in its infancy, or has yet to emerge. In this respect and in general, it is hoped that the Encyclopedia will be read as an indication of, and inspiration for, work still to be done.

Arrangement of the Entries Entries appear in alphabetical order, and a complete list can be found in the “Alphabetical List of Entries” (p. xix). There are other means of access to the contents of the Encyclopedia, as follows: 1. Thematic List (p. xxv). This provides the reader with classifications of the entries, according to chronological, regional, and subject areas. The categories therefore often, and intentionally, overlap: for example, the 18th-century Afro-British slave writer Olaudah Equiano appears in the “18th Century”, “Africa and the Middle East”, “Britain and Ireland”, “United States and Canada”, “Social and Political Contexts”, and “Writers” categories.

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editor’s note

2. Cross References. At the end of many of the entries on topics and themes there are See also references to other relevant entries of a similar type. 3. Index (p. 983). This gives page numbers for proper names, titles, and selected key life-writing terms. This index is intended to be particularly useful for (a) locating coverage of individuals who do not have their own entries, and (b) locating titles of life-writing works when the author is not known or remembered by the reader.

Format within Entries All entries contain a signed descriptive and critical essay, and a list of “Further Reading”. Each entry on an individual writer also contains a biographical sketch of the entrant (primarily known facts rather than commentary) and a list of “Selected Writings” by that individual, which gives – in chronological order of publication – those works considered as life writings, including English translations where appropriate. Frequently there are more items in “Selected Writings” than are discussed in the accompanying essay. This is because the essayist’s aim was to highlight important or representative works, while the “Selected Writings” list was intended to be as reasonably comprehensive as possible within the generic boundaries. Dates attached to the titles of books and articles are generally their first known publications, usually in book form; occasionally dates are those of composition, normally indicated as such. In the essays, where an English-language translation is known to exist for a foreignlanguage work, this is given in parentheses after the date of the original work, in the following manner: … Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée (1958; Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter) Where no published translation has been located or verified, the essayist has very often provided – and especially for non-Western European languages – a literal translation, in square brackets and without italic, for example: … Istoriia moego znakomstva s Gogolem [1855; A History of My Acquaintance with Gogol] …

Acknowledgements This project has grown out of so many hands, minds, and hearts, that befitting acknowledgement would require another volume in itself. However, in the space available, I would like first to offer my thanks to the distinguished Board of Advisers who so kindly guided the book. The editor is extremely grateful for their insights and support for a project that in some ways was an unknown quantity. My special thanks must go to Craig Howes, Philippe Lejeune, and Julia Watson who consistently and generously supported a tome as capacious and capricious as Virginia Woolf said a diary should be. Zhao Baisheng added an invaluable contribution with his vision of auto/biography studies in China. Their humour and enthusiasm were very much appreciated. I would also like to thank the nearly 400 scholars who contributed to the book, whose imagination and

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patience with the collaborative process went far beyond the call of duty. My thanks also to the Mass-Observation Archive at the University of Sussex. This unique collection of life writings is run by a uniquely supportive group of women, whose Director, Dorothy Sheridan, not only offered help as an Adviser but took me on as Honorary Research Fellow for the duration of the Encyclopedia’s construction. The years of intellectual stimulation and practical help I have received from Dorothy and her colleagues are much treasured. I also offer thanks to the School of Cultural and Community Studies at the University of Sussex and the School of English at the University of Exeter, which provided me with warm and congenial academic environments within which to work. Working with Alistair Thomson at the Centre for Continuing Education was another delight at Sussex. Many thanks to him and to the Brighton Women’s Workers’ Educational Association, with whom I learned so much about life history work. I would also like to acknowledge Jenny Bourne Taylor and Treva Broughton, inspirational supervisors of my studies in the field, along with Julia Swindells, who started me off on the prickly trail of autobiography before I know what is was. I thank her for a timely prod regarding the politics of encyclopedia-making. Thanks must also be given to Lydia Fakundiny at Cornell University who found a moment at the very beginning of the project to encourage a young stranger. I owe heartfelt thanks to the freelance editorial staff whose work is so crucial to any book of this nature: Delia Gaze (editorial compilation); Martha Bremser, Delia Gaze, and Richard Shaw (copy editing); Caroline Howlett and Cathy Johns (research); Caroline Howlett and Alison Worthington (proofreading); Patrick Heenan (indexing); Nina Bunton and Helena Lyons (text preparation); as well as to Daniel Kirkpatrick at the FDP London office. Finally, an immeasurable thank-you to my Commissioning Editor, Mark Hawkins-Dady. His unfailing calm, humour, judgement, and above all his light-handed, scholarly touch have made this work a joy to do. Margaretta Jolly University of Exeter

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BOARD OF ADVISERS

Janet Altman University of Iowa

Françoise Lionnet University of California – Los Angeles

William L. Andrews University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

Laura Marcus University of Sussex

Gillian Beer Clare Hall, University of Cambridge

Brian Matthews Europe–Australia Institute, Victoria University

Rosi Braidotti University of Utrecht

James Olney Louisiana State University – Baton Rouge

Treva Broughton University of York

Alessandro Portelli University of Rome – La Sapienza

Jerome S. Bruner New York University

Dwight F. Reynolds University of California – Santa Barbara

Patrick Chabal King’s College, University of London

Shoichi Saeki University of Tokyo

A.O.J. Cockshut formerly University of Oxford

Minoli Salgado University of Sussex

Denise De Caries Narain University of Sussex Paul John Eakin Indiana University – Bloomington

Dorothy Sheridan Mass-Observation Archive, University of Sussex

James D. Fernández New York University

Michael Sheringham Royal Holloway, University of London

George Gömöri University of Cambridge

Sidonie Smith University of Michigan – Ann Arbor

Graham Good University of British Columbia, Vancouver

Verity Smith Honorary Research Fellow, Queen Mary, University of London

Jane Gary Harris University of Pittsburgh

Patricia M. Spacks University of Virginia – Charlottesville

Craig Howes Center for Biographical Research, University of Hawaii

Julia Swindells Homerton College, University of Cambridge

Maggie Humm University of North London

Alistair Thomson University of Sussex

Niels Lyhne Jensen Aarhus University

Julia Watson Ohio State University

Philippe Lejeune Université Paris-Nord

Zhao Baisheng Peking University xiii

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CONTRIBUTORS

Helen M. Buss Pierre Cachia Alex Calder Angus Calder Robert Carballo Brycchan Carey Kimberly K. Carter-Cram Lynn A. Casmier-Paz Jane Chamberlain Roopa Chauhan Gail Chester Julie Chiu Mary Marshall Clark John C. Clarke Albrecht Classen Christine Cloud A.O.J. Cockshut Julie F. Codell Ampie Coetzee Lesley Coia Richard Collins Christy Collis Kay Cook Kevin L. Cope Ian Copestake Rachel Cottam Judith Lütge Coullie G. Thomas Couser Sarah A. Cox Ralph J. Crane Cheryl Cowdy Crawford Sylvie Crinquand Ivan Crozier Christopher Cunneen Joan Curbet Rosamund Dalziell Martin A. Danahay Tony Davenport William De Genaro Odine de Guzman Paulo De Medeiros Charles De Paolo Massimiliano Demata Paul W. DePasquale G.N. Devy

Gabriel E. Abad Peter Abbs Edward A. Abramson Stephen M. Adams Timothy Dow Adams Tony E. Afejuku Doris Aichholzer Laurie Aikman Deborah Lee Ames Kristine J. Anderson Andrew J. Angyal A.B. Apana R. Victoria Arana Katherine A. Armstrong Katherine Ashley Jennifer Ashton Marina Balina John D. Barbour Andrew Barratt Justyna Beinek Alana Bell Edith J. Benkov Philip E. Bennett Betty Ann Bergland Josie Billington Abigail Burnham Bloom Lynn Z. Bloom Tonya Blowers Jens Kristian L. Boll Drummond Bone Mandakranta Bose Janet Bottoms David Boughey Anne L. Bower Michael P. Branch Bernard Bray Anette Bremer Mary F. Brewer Jens Brockmeier Bella Brodzki Ralph W. Buechler Pérette-Cécile Buffaria Rosemarie Buikema John J. Burke Jr Raymond L. Burt xv

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contributors

Dian Li Hilary Dickinson Mark Dinneen Risa Domb Lisa Dresdner David L. Dudley Ay¸se Durakba¸sa Isabel Durán Andrew R. Durkin Patricia Dutton Jennifer V. Ebbeler Grace Ebron Sarah M. Edwards Rainer Emig Susan Engel Michael Erben Wendy Everett J.K. Fairless Lydia Fakundiny Rena Feld John Ferns Ian Finseth Joachim Fischer James Fitzmaurice Jorge Fondebrider Richard Freadman Robert S. Freeman Traci Freeman Stacy Gillis Leigh Gilmore Rainer H. Goetz Vesna Goldsworthy George Gömöri Katherine R. Goodman Katie Gramich Johnnie Gratton Helena Grice Larry D. Griffin Margaret Morganroth Gullette Bonnie J. Gunzenhauser Garry L. Hagberg Seán Hand Michael Hanne Lynne Hapgood Barbara Harlow Jerry Harp Jane Gary Harris Jennifer Harrison Jason Haslam Evelyn J. Hawthorne Charlotte Heinritz Gabriele Helms María Henríquez Betancor Gregor Hens Jean-Pierre V.M. Hérubel H.P. Heseltine Nick Hewlett Kevin M. Hickey Jeremy Hicks Colin Hill

Lynda Hill Carole Hillenbrand Ruth Hoberman Janis Butler Holm Margaret Homberger Joy Hooton Julia Horne Alfred Hornung Louise K. Horowitz Mark Houlahan Craig Howes Robert Hubbard Nick Hubble David Huddart Cynthia Huff Eamonn Hughes Edward J. Hughes Celia Hunt Emilia V. Ilieva Susan Ireland Anna Iuso Ann Jefferson Carol Jenkins Niels Lyhne Jensen Mary Joannou Laurie R. Johnson Alison Jolly Margaretta Jolly Angela D. Jones Lawrence Jones Steven L. Jones Marlene Kadar Andrzej Karcz Eva C. Karpinski Joanne B. Karpinski Debra Kelly Lionel Kelly Michelle Keown Ian Ker David Kilpatrick Hilary Kilpatrick Patricia Grace King James Kirwan Mark Knight Wulf Koepke Sharon Krummel Peter Kulchyski Udaya Kumar Par Kumaraswami Ioanna Laliotou Jordan Lancaster Kristin M. Langellier Phyllis Lassner John Laudun Maria Lauret Benjamin Nicholas Lawrance Jid Lee A. Robert Lee Lim Beng Choo Clary Loisel

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contributors

Barbara Lounsberry Richard D. McGhee Lisa McNee Sue McPherson Laurent Mailhot Dominic Manganiello Marvin Howard Marcus Michael Mascuch Adeline Masquelier Andrew Maunder Sarah Meer Ildikó Melis Marsha Meskimmon John Milloy Irene Morra Fatma Moussa-Mahmoud Alun Munslow Sara E. Murphy Chris Murray Stefan Neuhaus Judie Newman Thengani H. Ngwenya Irina Novikova Amira Hassan Nowaira Jamey Nye George O’Brien Kathleen M. O’Connell Sybil Oldfield Barry N. Olshen Barbara Onslow Melek Ortabasi Norman Page Benjamin Paloff Ruth Panofsky Kenneth Paradis Pushpa Naidu Parekh Catherine N. Parke Adele Parker David Parker Margaret Parmenter Patrick Parrinder James Robert Payne Ann Pearson John D. Perivolaris Jason R. Peters Andrea Peterson Jan Pilditch Mary Ellen Pitts Kristina Popova David A. Powell Julian Preece C.A. Prettiman Luca Prono Jay Prosser Patrice J. Proulx Patrick J.M. Quinn Vincent Quinn Roland Racevskis Patricia Rae Paramjit Rai

Bryony Randall Pallavi Rastogi Deborah E. Reed-Danahay Verna Reid Dwight Fletcher Reynolds Velma Bourgeois Richmond Christopher Ringrose Daniel Sanjiv Roberts Clara Rocha Jennifer C. Rodgers Carl Rollyson José Romera Castillo J.P. Roos John R. Rosenberg Anna Rotkirch Anira Rowanchild Linda Haverty Rugg Anita Rupprecht Nirmala S. Salgado Valerie Sanders Richard K. Sanderson Angie Sandhu Natalie Sandomirsky Gerlinde Ulm Sanford Elizabeth D. Schafer Kay Schaffer Joseph Schaller Ulrich Schmid Steven Schneider William Todd Schultz Shlomit C. Schuster Eiji Sekine Dongfang Shao W. David Shaw Michael Sheringham Alvin F. Sherman Jr Kristi Siegel Catherine Silverstone James T. Simmons Myron Simon Urmilla Sinha Anne M. Skabarnicki Joseph T. Skerrett Jr Vieda Skultans Alexandra Smith Thomas R. Smith Verity Smith Alvin Snider Madeleine Sorapure Noel Stanley Blandine Stefanson Rebecca Steinitz Eugene Stelzig Malynne M. Sternstein Nongpath Sternstein Derrick Stone Paul D. Streufert Tridip Suhrud Debra Taylor Richard C. Taylor

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contributors

Bogusia Temple Judy Nolte Temple Harald Tersch Winfried Thielmann Roger K. Thomas Lynda M. Thompson Ann Thwaite D.J. Trela Susan Tridgell Alison Truelove Robin Valenza Sabine Vanacker Phiroze Vasunia Donald Phillip Verene Alex Vernon Sue Vice Andrés Villagrá Amber Vogel Karin Voth Harman Peter Wagstaff Wang Dun

George Wasserman C.W. Watson Julia Watson Diane Watt Barbara Frey Waxman Wendy Webster David N. Wells Marie Wells James Whitlark Gillian Whitlock John R. Whittaker Sonia Wichmann Caroline Elizabeth Wiebe Min Wild Kari J. Winter Tom Woodin Wu Pei-yi Michael W. Young Stephenie A. Young Ulises J. Zevallos Aguilar Zhao Baisheng

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ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ENTRIES

Australia: 18th- and 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Australia: 20th-Century Life Writing Australia: Indigenous Life Writing Australian Dictionary of Biography Authenticity Authority Autobiography: General Survey Autobiography and Biography: Their Relationship Autobiography and the Essay Autobiography and Poetry Autoethnography Autofiction Avvakum

VOLUME 1 Abélard, Peter and Héloïse Adams, Henry Addams, Jane Adolescence and Life Writing Africa: North Africa: East Africa: Southern Africa: West and Central (Francophone) Africa: Oral Life Stories Africa: European Exploration and Travel Writings Africa: Auto/biographical Fiction Africa: Autobiographical Poetry African American Life Writing Age and Life Writing Agee, James Agency Aksakov, Sergei Akutagawa, Ry®nosuke Alfieri, Vittorio American Civil War Writings Amiel, Henri-Frédéric Andersch, Alfred Angelou, Maya Anthropology and Life Writing Apartheid and Post-Apartheid Life Writings Apologias Arabic Autobiography Arabic Biography Arabic Travel Writing Archives Arenas, Reinaldo Arnim, Bettina Brentano-von Artifacts and Life Writing Asian American Life Writing Aubrey, John Augustine, Saint Aung San Suu Kyi Aurelius, Marcus Australia: 18th- and 19th-Century Auto/biography

Bâ, Amadou Hampâté Barnet, Miguel Barnum, P.T. Barrios de Chungara, Domitila Barthes, Roland Bashkirtseff, Marie Bashπ Beauvoir, Simone de Behan, Brendan Benjamin, Walter Bernhard, Thomas Bethlen, Miklós The Bible The Bildungsroman Biographical Dictionaries Biographie universelle; Dictionnaire de biographie française Biography: General Survey Biography and Fiction Biography and History Biography and Poetry Black Elk Blixen, Karen The Body and Life Writing Boswell, James Brandes, Georg Brazil Breytenbach, Breyten xix

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alphabetical list of entries

Britain: Medieval Life Writing Britain: Medieval Letters Britain: Renaissance Life Writing Britain: 17th-Century Life Writing Britain: Restoration and 18th-Century Auto/biography Britain: Restoration and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters Britain: Romanticism and Life Writing Britain: Travel, Exploration, and Imperialism Britain: 19th-Century Auto/biography Britain: 19th-Century Diaries Britain: 19th-Century Letters Britain: 20th-Century Auto/biography Britain: 20th-Century Diaries Britain: 20th-Century Letters Brittain, Vera Buddhism and Life Writing Bulgaria Bunyan, John Burney, Frances [Fanny] Business Auto/biography Byron, George, Lord Canada: Auto/biography to 1900 Canada: Diaries and Letters to 1900 Canada: 20th-Century Auto/biography Canada: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Canada: French Canadian Life Writing Canada: Aboriginal Life Writing Canetti, Elias Caribbean: Anglophone Caribbean: Francophone Carlyle, Thomas Carossa, Hans Carr, Emily Casanova, Giovanni Giacomo Case Histories Cavendish, Margaret [Duchess of Newcastle] Celebrity Autobiography Celebrity and Popular Biography Cellini, Benvenuto Censorship and Life Writing Charke, Charlotte Chateaubriand Chaudhuri, Nirad Chesnut, Mary Boykin Chesterfield, Earl of Chesterton, G.K. Childhood and Life Writing Children’s Life Writing China: to the 19th Century China: 19th Century to 1949 China: 1949 to the Present Christianity and Life Writing Churchill, Winston Cicero Classical Greece and Rome Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Colette

Collaborative Autobiography Collective Lives Computers and Life Writing Conduct Books Confessions Confucianism and Life Writing Conversations, Dialogues, and Table Talk Conversion and Turning Points Conway, Jill Ker Crèvecoeur, Michel-Guillaume Jean de Criminal Autobiography Criminal Biography Crisp, Quentin Criticism and Theory: 16th to 18th Centuries Criticism and Theory: Romanticism and the 19th Century Criticism and Theory: 1900 to 1950s Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Structuralism and Poststructuralism Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Feminism Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Postcolonialism Croce, Benedetto Czech and Slovak Life Writing Dante Alighieri Darwin, Charles Das, Kamala De Quincey, Thomas Denmark Déry, Tibor Diaries and Journals: General Survey Díaz del Castillo, Bernal Dictionary of American Biography Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire biographique du Canada Dictionary of National Biography Dictionary of New Zealand Biography Diderot, Denis Dillard, Annie Disability and Life Writing Döblin, Alfred Dolgorukaia, Natali’ia Dostoevskii, Fedor Douglass, Frederick Drama and Life Writing Du Bois, W.E.B. Duras, Marguerite Eckermann, Johann Edel, Leon Edmond, Lauris Edwards, Jonathan Elegies Ellmann, Richard Emerson, Ralph Waldo Epistolary Fiction Epistolary Poetry Epitaphs Equiano, Olaudah

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alphabetical list of entries

Erasmus, Desiderius Ethics Ethnicity, Race, and Life Writing Ethnography Evelyn, John Ewald, Johannes Exemplary and Model Lives Exploration Writings Facey, A.B. Family Relations and Life Writing Fatherhood and Life Writing Film Finland Fontane, Theodor Fontenelle, Bernard de Fox, George Frame, Janet France: Medieval Life Writing France: 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-Century Memoirs France: 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters France: 18th-Century Autobiography France: 19th-Century Auto/biography France: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters France: 20th-Century Auto/biography France: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Frank, Anne Franklin, Benjamin Freud, Sigmund Frisch, Max Froude, J.A. Gandhi, Mohandas [“Mahatma”] García Márquez, Gabriel Garibaldi, Giuseppe Gaskell, Elizabeth Gatheru, Mugo Gaulle, Charles de Gender and Life Writing Genealogy Germany, Austria, Switzerland: Medieval and Renaissance Life Writing Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 17th- and 18thCentury Auto/biography Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 17th- and 18thCentury Diaries and Letters Germany, Austria, Switzerland: Romanticism and Life Writing Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 19th-Century Auto/biography Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 20th-Century Life Writing al-Ghazƒl¡ Gibbon, Edward Gide, André Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Ginzburg, Evgeniia

Ginzburg, Lidiia Ginzburg, Natalia Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Goldman, Emma Goldoni, Carlo Goldschmidt, Meïr Gombrowicz, Witold Goncourt, Edmond and Jules Gordimer, Nadine Gor’kii, Maksim Gosse, Edmund Gossip Gottsched, Luise Goytisolo, Juan Gozzi, Carlo Gramsci, Antonio Graves, Robert Greece, Modern Green, Julien Grillparzer, Franz Grove, Frederick Philip Guevara, Ernesto [“Che”] Guo Moruo Hagiography Hakluyt, Richard Handbooks and Guides Havel, Václav Hazlitt, William Hebbel, Christian Friedrich Heiberg, Johanne Luise Heine, Heinrich Hellman, Lillian Herder, Johann Gottfried Herling-Grudzinski, ´ Gustaw Herzen, Aleksandr Hinduism and Life Writing Hispanic American Life Writing Historiography Hitler, Adolf Hoffman, Eva Holberg, Ludvig Holocaust Writings Horne, Donald Hu Shi Hughes, Langston Hume, David Hungary Hurston, Zora Neale Huxley, T.H. The I-Novel Identity Illness and Life Writing Immigration Writings, American Indian Subcontinent: Early Life Writing Indian Subcontinent: Autobiography to 1947 Indian Subcontinent: Auto/biography 1947 to the Present Individualism and Life Writing

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alphabetical list of entries

Indonesia and the Malay World Insanity and Life Writing Interviews Ireland Isherwood, Christopher Islam and Life Writing Israeli and Modern Hebrew Life Writing Italy: Medieval and Renaissance Life Writing Italy: 17th- and 18th-Century Auto/biography Italy: 17th- and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters Italy: 19th-Century Auto/biography Italy: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Italy: 20th-Century Auto/biography Italy: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Jacobs, Harriet James, Alice James, Henry Jameson, Anna Brownell Japan: Heian Period (800–1200) Japan: Medieval Period (1200–1600) Japan: Tokugawa / Edo Period (1600–1868) Japan: Kindai Period (1868–1945) Japan: Modern Period (1945 to the Present) Jesus, Carolina Maria de Jewish American Life Writing Johnson, Samuel Jørgensen, Johannes Journalism and Magazines Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor Judaism and Life Writing Jünger, Ernst Jung, C.G. Jung Chang Kafka, Franz Kallas, Aino Kassák, Lajos Kazantzakis, Nikos Kazin, Alfred Keats, John Keller, Helen Kempe, Margery Kepler, Johannes Kierkegaard, Søren Kilvert, Francis Kincaid, Jamaica Kingsley, Mary Kingston, Maxine Hong Kipling, Rudyard Korea Kuzwayo, Ellen

VOLUME 2 Latin America: 15th to 18th Centuries Latvia Leduc, Violette Leiris, Michel

Leonora Christina Leopardi, Giacomo Lesbian and Gay Life Writing Lessing, Doris Letters: General Survey Levi, Carlo Levi, Primo Lévi-Strauss, Claude Lewis, C.S. Liang Qichao Lionheart Gal Lister, Anne Literary Autobiography Literary Biography Lockhart, John Lorde, Audre Loss, Bereavement, and Life Writing Love, Sexuality, and Life Writing Loyola, Saint Ignatius of Lu Xun Luthuli, Chief Albert Luxemburg, Rosa McCarthy, Mary Malcolm X Malraux, André Mandela, Nelson Mandel’shtam, Nadezhda Mandel’shtam, Osip Mann, Heinrich Martin, Claire Martineau, Harriet Maximilian I Medical Autobiography Mehta, Ved Memoirs Memory Menchú, Rigoberta Mesonero Romanos, Ramón de Migration, Diaspora, and Life Writing Military Autobiography Mill, John Stuart Mi≠osz, Czes≠aw Mishima Yukio Mock and Parodic Life Writings Momaday, N. Scott Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley Montaigne, Michel de Moodie, Susanna Morgan, Sally Morris, Jan Motherhood and Life Writing Motivation Mphahlele, Es’kia [Ezekiel] Muir, Edwin Munby, Arthur and Hannah Cullwick Murasaki Shikibu Musical Autobiography Musical Biography

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alphabetical list of entries

Nabokov, Vladimir Naidu, Sarojini Naipaul, V.S. Narayan, R.K. Narrative National Identity and Life Writing Native American Life Writing Nature, the Environment, and Life Writing Nature Writings, American Nehru, Jawaharlal Neruda, Pablo Netherlands and Belgium (Flanders) Neue Deutsche Biographie New Biography New Zealand and Polynesia: 19th Century New Zealand and Polynesia: 20th Century New Zealand and Polynesia: Indigenous Life Writing Newman, John Henry Nexø, Martin Andersen Ngugi wa Thiong’o Niemcewicz, Julian Ursyn Nietzsche, Friedrich Nin, Anaïs Norway Obituaries O’Brien, George O’Casey, Sean Odinga, Oginga Oehlenschläger, Adam Old Age and Life Writing Oliphant, Margaret Ondaatje, Michael Oral History Orality Orwell, George Osborne, Dorothy Ouyang Xiu Päätalo, Kalle Park, Mungo Park, Ruth Pasek, Jan Pavese, Cesare Pedagogy and Life Writing Pellico, Silvio Pepys, Samuel Perec, Georges Pérez de Guzmán, Fernán Perón, Eva Personal Narrative Petrarch Pfalz, Liselotte von der The Philippines Philosophical Autobiography Philosophy and Life Writing Photography Picaresque Novel Pioneer and Captivity Writings, American

Plessen, Elisabeth Pliny the Younger Plutarch Poland Politics and Life Writing Poniatowska, Elena Porter, Hal Portugal: Autobiography Portugal: Diaries and Letters Prison Writings Proust, Marcel Psychology and Life Writing Reconciliation and Life Writing Recovery, Healing, and Life Writing Religious Autobiography Religious Biography Reminiscence and Life Story Repentance and Life Writing Revelation and Life Writing Rhys, Jean Richelieu, Cardinal, Duc de Rilke, Rainer Maria Rodríguez, Richard Rolland, Romain Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Rowlandson, Mary Roy, Gabrielle Royal Biography Ruskin, John Russia: to 1700 Russia: 18th Century Russia: 19th Century to Revolution Russia: Revolution to the Present al-Sa‘dƒw¡, Nawƒl Sahgal, Nayantara Saint-Denys Garneau, Hector de Saint-Simon Sancho, Ignatius Sand, George Sargeson, Frank Sarraute, Nathalie Sartre, Jean-Paul Sassoon, Siegfried Sayers, Peig Scandal Scholarship, Academia, and Autobiography Scholarship, Academia, and Biography Schweitzer, Albert Science and Life Writing Scientific Autobiography Scotland Seacole, Mary The Self Semprún, Jorge Seuse, Heinrich Sévigné, Madame de Sexuality and Life Writing Shame and Life Writing

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Shen Fu Shimazaki Tπson Shklovskii, Viktor Sima Qian Slave Narratives Social Class and Life Writing Sociology and Life Writing Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Sorabji, Cornelia Sound Recording and Life Writing Soyinka, Wole Spain: to 1700 Spain: 18th and 19th Centuries Spain: 20th Century Spanish America: 19th Century Spanish America: 20th-Century Autobiography Spanish America: Indigenous Life Writing Spiritual Autobiography Sporting Auto/biography Stanton, Elizabeth Cady Steedman, Carolyn Stein, Gertrude Stendhal Stevenson, Robert Louis Strachey, Lytton Strindberg, August Success and Life Writing Suetonius Suicide and Life Writing Suleri, Sara Survival and Life Writing Sweden Symons, A.J.A. Szász, Béla Széchenyi, István Tagore, Rabindranath Tƒhƒ Husayn Tawf¡q al-Hak¡m Television and Life Story Teresa of Avila, Saint Testimony Thailand Thompson, Flora Thoreau, Henry David Time Tocqueville, Alexis de Toller, Ernst Tolstoi, Lev Tone, Wolfe Torres Villaroel, Diego de Traill, Catharine Parr Trauma and Life Writing Travel Diaries, Journals, Log Books Travel Narratives Tsvetaeva, Marina Turkey Twain, Mark

United States: 16th- and 17th-Century Life Writing United States: 18th-Century Auto/biography United States: 18th-Century Diaries and Letters United States: 19th-Century Auto/biography United States: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters United States: 20th-Century Auto/biography United States: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Usƒma ibn Munqidh Varnhagen, Rahel Levin Vas, István Vasari, Giorgio Velluti, Donato Vico, Giambattista Vietnam War Writings Visual Arts and Life Writing Vivekananda, Swami Voltaire Wales Walpole, Horace Walton, Izaak War Diaries and Journals War Letters Washington, Booker T. Weiss, Peter Wells, H.G. Wesley, John Wharton, Edith White, Patrick Whitman, Walt Who’s Who Wieland, Christoph Martin Wiesel, Elie Wilde, Oscar Wolf, Christa Women’s Autobiographies Women’s Biographies Women’s Diaries and Journals Women’s Letters Woodforde, James Woolf, Virginia Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, William Working-Class Writings World War I Writings World War II Writings Wright, Richard Xie Bingying Yeats, W.B. Yu Dafu Yugoslavia and Former Yugoslav Territories Zorilla y Moral, José Zoshchenko, Mikhail Zuckmayer, Carl

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THEMATIC LIST Entries by Category

C HRONOLOGICAL Ancient, Classical, and Medieval Renaissance / Early Modern to c.1700 18th Century

19th Century 20th Century

R EGIONAL Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Low Countries Iberian and Hispanic World Italy Russia and Scandinavia South America and the Caribbean United States and Canada

Africa and the Middle East Asia: South, Southeast, and East Australasia Britain and Ireland Europe: Central, East, and Southeast France and the Francophone World

O THER Social and Political Contexts Themes in Life Writings Theory and Criticism Travel, Exploration, and Migration War Women’s Life Writing Writers

Age- and Life-Stages Biography Diaries Disciplines, Professions, Practices Genres and Types Letters and Epistolary Forms Popular and Everyday Forms Religious Contexts

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C HRONOLOGICAL Ancient, Classical, and Medieval Abélard, Peter and Héloïse Augustine, Saint Aurelius, Marcus The Bible Britain: Medieval Life Writing Britain: Medieval Letters China: to the 19th Century Cicero Classical Greece and Rome Confucianism and Life Writing Dante Alighieri France: Medieval Life Writing Germany, Austria, Switzerland: Medieval and Renaissance Life Writing al-Ghazƒl¡ Hagiography Indian Subcontinent: Early Life Writing Islam and Life Writing Italy: Medieval and Renaissance Life Writing Japan: Heian Period (800–1200) Japan: Medieval Period (1200–1600) Kempe, Margery Murasaki Shikibu Ouyang Xiu Pérez de Guzmán, Fernán Petrarch Pliny the Younger Plutarch Russia: to 1700 Seuse, Heinrich Sima Qian Spain: to 1700 Suetonius Usƒma ibn Munqidh Velluti, Donato Renaissance / Early Modern to c.1700 Aubrey, John Avvakum Bashπ Bethlen, Miklós Britain: Renaissance Life Writing Britain: 17th-Century Life Writing Britain: Restoration and 18th-Century Auto/biography Britain: Restoration and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters Bunyan, John Cavendish, Margaret [Duchess of Newcastle] Cellini, Benvenuto China: to the 19th Century Criticism and Theory: 16th to 18th Centuries Díaz del Castillo, Bernal Erasmus, Desiderius

Evelyn, John Fontenelle, Bernard de Fox, George France: 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-Century Memoirs France: 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters Germany, Austria, Switzerland: Medieval and Renaissance Life Writing Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 17th- and 18thCentury Auto/biography Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 17th- and 18thCentury Diaries and Letters Hagiography Hakluyt, Richard Indian Subcontinent: Early Life Writing Italy: Medieval and Renaissance Life Writing Italy: 17th- and 18th-Century Auto/biography Italy: 17th- and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters Japan: Tokugawa / Edo Period (1600–1868) Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor Kepler, Johannes Latin America: 15th to 18th Centuries Leonora Christina Lister, Anne Loyola, Saint Ignatius of Maximilian I Montaigne, Michel de Osborne, Dorothy Pasek, Jan Pepys, Samuel Pfalz, Liselotte von der Picaresque Novel Richelieu, Cardinal, Duc de Rowlandson, Mary Russia: to 1700 Sévigné, Madame de Slave Narratives Spain: to 1700 Teresa of Avila, Saint United States: 16th- and 17th-Century Life Writing Vasari, Giorgio Walton, Izaak 18th Century Apologias Australia: 18th- and 19th-Century Auto/biography Australia: 18th- and 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Boswell, James Britain: Restoration and 18th-Century Auto/biography Britain: Restoration and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters Britain: Romanticism and Life Writing

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Britain: Travel, Exploration, and Imperialism Burney, Frances [Fanny] Canada: Auto/biography to 1900 Canada: Diaries and Letters to 1900 Casanova, Giovanni Giacomo Charke, Charlotte Chateaubriand Chesterfield, Earl of Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Conduct Books Crèvecoeur, Michel-Guillaume Jean de Criticism and Theory: 16th to 18th Centuries Criticism and Theory: Romanticism and the 19th Century Diderot, Denis Dolgorukaia, Natali’ia Edwards, Jonathan Epistolary Fiction Equiano, Olaudah Ewald, Johannes Fontenelle, Bernard de France: 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-Century Memoirs France: 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters France: 18th-Century Autobiography Franklin, Benjamin Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 17th- and 18thCentury Auto/biography Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 17th- and 18thCentury Diaries and Letters Germany, Austria, Switzerland: Romanticism and Life Writing Gibbon, Edward Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Goldoni, Carlo Gottsched, Luise Gozzi, Carlo Herder, Johann Gottfried Holberg, Ludvig Hume, David Indian Subcontinent: Early Life Writing Italy: 17th- and 18th-Century Auto/biography Japan: Tokugawa / Edo Period (1600–1868) Johnson, Samuel Latin America: 15th to 18th Centuries Lister, Anne Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley Niemcewicz, Julian Ursyn Park, Mungo Pfalz, Liselotte von der Picaresque Novel Pioneer and Captivity Writings, American Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Russia: 18th Century Saint-Simon Sancho, Ignatius Shen Fu Slave Narratives Spain: 18th and 19th Centuries Tone, Wolfe

Torres Villaroel, Diego de United States: 18th-Century Auto/biography United States: 18th-Century Diaries and Letters Varnhagen, Rahel Levin Vico, Giambattista Voltaire Walpole, Horace Wesley, John Wieland, Christoph Martin Woodforde, James Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, William 19th Century Adams, Henry African American Life Writing Aksakov, Sergei Alfieri, Vittorio American Civil War Writings Amiel, Henri-Frédéric Arnim, Bettina Brentano-von Australia: 18th- and 19th-Century Auto/biography Australia: 18th- and 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Barnum, P.T. Bashkirtseff, Marie The Bildungsroman Biographie universelle; Dictionnaire de biographie française Black Elk Brandes, Georg Britain: Romanticism and Life Writing Britain: Travel, Exploration, and Imperialism Britain: 19th-Century Auto/biography Britain: 19th-Century Diaries Britain: 19th-Century Letters Burney, Frances [Fanny] Byron, George, Lord Canada: Auto/biography to 1900 Canada: Diaries and Letters to 1900 Carlyle, Thomas Carr, Emily Chateaubriand Chesnut, Mary Boykin China: 19th Century to 1949 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Colette Criticism and Theory: Romanticism and the 19th Century Darwin, Charles De Quincey, Thomas Dictionary of National Biography Dostoevskii, Fedor Douglass, Frederick Du Bois, W.E.B. Eckermann, Johann Emerson, Ralph Waldo Fontane, Theodor

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France: 19th-Century Auto/biography France: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Freud, Sigmund Froude, J.A. Garibaldi, Giuseppe Gaskell, Elizabeth Germany, Austria, Switzerland: Romanticism and Life Writing Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 19th-Century Auto/biography Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Goldschmidt, Meïr Goncourt, Edmond and Jules Gor’kii, Maksim Gosse, Edmund Grillparzer, Franz Hazlitt, William Hebbel, Christian Friedrich Heiberg, Johanne Luise Heine, Heinrich Herzen, Aleksandr Hume, David Huxley, T.H. Immigration Writings, American Indian Subcontinent: Autobiography to 1947 Israeli and Modern Hebrew Life Writing Italy: 19th-Century Auto/biography Italy: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Jacobs, Harriet James, Alice James, Henry Jameson, Anna Brownell Japan: Tokugawa / Edo Period (1600–1868) Japan: Kindai Period (1868–1945) Jørgensen, Johannes Keats, John Kierkegaard, Søren Kilvert, Francis Kingsley, Mary Kipling, Rudyard Leopardi, Giacomo Lockhart, John Luxemburg, Rosa Martineau, Harriet Mesonero Romanos, Ramón de Mill, John Stuart Moodie, Susanna Munby, Arthur and Hannah Cullwick Native American Life Writing Nature Writings, American New Zealand and Polynesia: 19th Century Newman, John Henry Niemcewicz, Julian Ursyn Nietzsche, Friedrich Oehlenschläger, Adam Oliphant, Margaret Park, Mungo

Pellico, Silvio Pioneer and Captivity Writings, American Ruskin, John Russia: 19th Century to Revolution Sand, George Seacole, Mary Shen Fu Slave Narratives Spain: 18th and 19th Centuries Spanish America: 19th Century Stanton, Elizabeth Cady Stendhal Stevenson, Robert Louis Strindberg, August Széchenyi, István Tagore, Rabindranath Thompson, Flora Thoreau, Henry David Tocqueville, Alexis de Tolstoi, Lev Traill, Catharine Parr Twain, Mark United States: 19th-Century Auto/biography United States: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Varnhagen, Rahel Levin Vivekananda, Swami Washington, Booker T. Wells, H.G. Whitman, Walt Who’s Who Wilde, Oscar Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, William Working-Class Writings Yeats, W.B. Zorilla y Moral, José 20th Century Adams, Henry Addams, Jane African American Life Writing Agee, James Akutagawa, Ry®nosuke Andersch, Alfred Angelou, Maya Apartheid and Post-Apartheid Life Writings Archives Arenas, Reinaldo Asian American Life Writing Aung San Suu Kyi Australia: 20th-Century Life Writing Australian Dictionary of Biography Autoethnography Autofiction Bâ, Amadou Hampâté Barnet, Miguel Barrios de Chungara, Domitila Barthes, Roland Beauvoir, Simone de

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Behan, Brendan Benjamin, Walter Bernhard, Thomas The Bildungsroman Biographie universelle; Dictionnaire de biographie française Black Elk Blixen, Karen Breytenbach, Breyten Britain: 20th-Century Auto/biography Britain: 20th-Century Diaries Britain: 20th-Century Letters Brittain, Vera Canada: 20th-Century Auto/biography Canada: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Canada: Aboriginal Life Writing Canetti, Elias Carossa, Hans Celebrity Autobiography Celebrity and Popular Biography Chaudhuri, Nirad Chesterton, G.K. Children’s Life Writing China: 19th Century to 1949 China: 1949 to the Present Churchill, Winston Colette Collaborative Autobiography Computers and Life Writing Conway, Jill Ker Crisp, Quentin Criticism and Theory: 1900 to 1950s Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Structuralism and Poststructuralism Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Feminism Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Postcolonialism Croce, Benedetto Das, Kamala Déry, Tibor Dictionary of American Biography Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire biographique du Canada Dictionary of National Biography Dictionary of New Zealand Biography Dillard, Annie Disability and Life Writing Döblin, Alfred Du Bois, W.E.B. Duras, Marguerite Edel, Leon Edmond, Lauris Ellmann, Richard Facey, A.B Film Frame, Janet France: 20th-Century Auto/biography France: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Frank, Anne Freud, Sigmund

Frisch, Max Gandhi, Mohandas [“Mahatma”] García Márquez, Gabriel Gatheru, Mugo Gaulle, Charles de Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 20th-Century Life Writing Gide, André Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Ginzburg, Evgeniia Ginzburg, Lidiia Ginzburg, Natalia Goldman, Emma Gombrowicz, Witold Gordimer, Nadine Gor’kii, Maksim Gosse, Edmund Goytisolo, Juan Gramsci, Antonio Graves, Robert Green, Julien Grove, Frederick Philip Guevara, Ernesto [“Che”] Guo Moruo Havel, Václav Hellman, Lillian Herling-Grudzinski, ´ Gustaw Hispanic American Life Writing Hitler, Adolf Hoffman, Eva Holocaust Writings Horne, Donald Hu Shi Hughes, Langston Hurston, Zora Neale The I-Novel Immigration Writings, American Indian Subcontinent: Autobiography to 1947 Indian Subcontinent: Auto/biography 1947 to the Present Isherwood, Christopher Israeli and Modern Hebrew Life Writing Italy: 20th-Century Auto/biography Italy: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters James, Henry Japan: Kindai Period (1868–1945) Japan: Modern Period (1945 to the Present) Jesus, Carolina Maria de Jewish American Life Writing Jørgensen, Johannes Jünger, Ernst Jung, C.G. Jung Chang Kafka, Franz Kallas, Aino Kassák, Lajos Kazantzakis, Nikos Kazin, Alfred Keller, Helen Kincaid, Jamaica

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Kingston, Maxine Hong Kipling, Rudyard Kuzwayo, Ellen Leduc, Violette Leiris, Michel Lesbian and Gay Life Writing Lessing, Doris Levi, Carlo Levi, Primo Lévi-Strauss, Claude Lewis, C.S. Liang Qichao Lionheart Gal Lorde, Audre Lu Xun Luthuli, Chief Albert Luxemburg, Rosa McCarthy, Mary Malcolm X Malraux, André Mandela, Nelson Mandel’shtam, Nadezhda Mandel’shtam, Osip Mann, Heinrich Martin, Claire Mehta, Ved Menchú, Rigoberta Mi≠osz, Czes≠aw Mishima Yukio Momaday, N. Scott Morgan, Sally Morris, Jan Mphahlele, Es’kia [Ezekiel] Muir, Edwin Nabokov, Vladimir Naidu, Sarojini Naipaul, V.S. Narayan, R.K. Native American Life Writing Nature Writings, American Nehru, Jawaharlal Neruda, Pablo Neue Deutsche Biographie New Biography New Zealand and Polynesia: 20th Century New Zealand and Polynesia: Indigenous Life Writing Nexø, Martin Andersen Ngugi wa Thiong’o Nin, Anaïs O’Brien, George O’Casey, Sean Odinga, Oginga Ondaatje, Michael Oral History Orwell, George Päätalo, Kalle Park, Ruth Pavese, Cesare Perec, Georges

Perón, Eva Personal Narrative Photography Plessen, Elisabeth Poniatowska, Elena Porter, Hal Proust, Marcel Rhys, Jean Rilke, Rainer Maria Rodríguez, Richard Rolland, Romain Roy, Gabrielle Russia: 19th Century to Revolution Russia: Revolution to the Present al-Sa‘dƒw¡, Nawƒl Sahgal, Nayantara Saint-Denys Garneau, Hector de Sargeson, Frank Sarraute, Nathalie Sartre, Jean-Paul Sassoon, Siegfried Sayers, Peig Scholarship, Academia, and Autobiography Scholarship, Academia, and Biography Schweitzer, Albert Semprún, Jorge Shimazaki Tπson Shklovskii, Viktor Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Sorabji, Cornelia Sound Recording and Life Writing Soyinka, Wole Spain: 20th Century Spanish America: 20th-Century Autobiography Spanish America: Indigenous Life Writing Sporting Auto/biography Steedman, Carolyn Stein, Gertrude Strachey, Lytton Strindberg, August Suleri, Sara Symons, A.J.A. Szász, Béla Tagore, Rabindranath Tƒhƒ Husayn Tawf¡q al-Hak¡m Television and Life Story Testimony Thompson, Flora Toller, Ernst Tsvetaeva, Marina United States: 20th-Century Auto/biography United States: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Vas, István Vietnam War Writings Washington, Booker T. Weiss, Peter Wells, H.G. Wharton, Edith White, Patrick

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Wright, Richard Xie Bingying Yeats, W.B. Yu Dafu Zoshchenko, Mikhail Zuckmayer, Carl

Who’s Who Wiesel, Elie Wolf, Christa Woolf, Virginia Working-Class Writings World War I Writings World War II Writings

R EGIONAL Africa and the Middle East Africa: North Africa: East Africa: Southern Africa: West and Central (Francophone) Africa: Oral Life Stories Africa: European Exploration and Travel Writings Africa: Auto/biographical Fiction Africa: Autobiographical Poetry Apartheid and Post-Apartheid Life Writings Arabic Autobiography Arabic Biography Arabic Travel Writing Augustine, Saint Bâ, Amadou Hampâté The Bible Blixen, Karen Breytenbach, Breyten Equiano, Olaudah Gatheru, Mugo al-Ghazƒl¡ Gordimer, Nadine Islam and Life Writing Israeli and Modern Hebrew Life Writing Kuzwayo, Ellen Luthuli, Chief Albert Mandela, Nelson Mphahlele, Es’kia [Ezekiel] Ngugi wa Thiong’o Odinga, Oginga al-Sa‘dƒw¡, Nawƒl Soyinka, Wole Tƒhƒ Husayn Tawf¡q al-Hak¡m Turkey Usƒma ibn Munqidh Asia: South, Southeast, and East Akutagawa, Ry®nosuke Aung San Suu Kyi Bashπ Buddhism and Life Writing Chaudhuri, Nirad China: to the 19th Century China: 19th Century to 1949 China: 1949 to the Present Confucianism and Life Writing

Das, Kamala Gandhi, Mohandas K. [“Mahatma”] Guo Moruo Hinduism and Life Writing Hu Shi The I-Novel Indian Subcontinent: Early Life Writing Indian Subcontinent: Autobiography to 1947 Indian Subcontinent: Auto/biography 1947 to the Present Indonesia and the Malay World Japan: Heian Period (800–1200) Japan: Medieval Period (1200–1600) Japan: Tokugawa / Edo Period (1600–1868) Japan: Kindai Period (1868–1945) Japan: Modern Period (1945 to the Present) Jung Chang Korea Liang Qichao Lu Xun Mehta, Ved Mishima Yukio Murasaki Shikibu Naidu, Sarojini Narayan, R.K. Nehru, Jawaharlal Ouyang Xiu The Philippines Sahgal, Nayantara Shen Fu Shimazaki Tπson Sima Qian Sorabji, Cornelia Suleri, Sara Tagore, Rabindranath Thailand Vivekananda, Swami Xie Bingying Yu Dafu Australasia Australia: 18th- and 19th-Century Auto/biography Australia: 18th- and 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Australia: 20th-Century Life Writing Australia: Indigenous Life Writing Australian Dictionary of Biography

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Conway, Jill Ker Dictionary of New Zealand Biography Edmond, Lauris Facey, A.B Frame, Janet Horne, Donald Morgan, Sally New Zealand and Polynesia: 19th Century New Zealand and Polynesia: 20th Century New Zealand and Polynesia: Indigenous Life Writing Park, Ruth Porter, Hal Sargeson, Frank White, Patrick Britain and Ireland Aubrey, John Behan, Brendan Boswell, James Britain: Medieval Life Writing Britain: Medieval Letters Britain: Renaissance Life Writing Britain: 17th-Century Life Writing Britain: Restoration and 18th-Century Auto/biography Britain: Restoration and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters Britain: Romanticism and Life Writing Britain: Travel, Exploration, and Imperialism Britain: 19th-Century Auto/biography Britain: 19th-Century Diaries Britain: 19th-Century Letters Britain: 20th-Century Auto/biography Britain: 20th-Century Diaries Britain: 20th-Century Letters Brittain, Vera Bunyan, John Burney, Frances [Fanny] Byron, George, Lord Canetti, Elias Carlyle, Thomas Cavendish, Margaret [Duchess of Newcastle] Charke, Charlotte Chaudhuri, Nirad Chesterfield, Earl of Chesterton, G.K. Churchill, Winston Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Crisp, Quentin Darwin, Charles De Quincey, Thomas Dictionary of National Biography Equiano, Olaudah Evelyn, John Fox, George Froude, J.A. Gaskell, Elizabeth Gibbon, Edward

Gosse, Edmund Graves, Robert Hakluyt, Richard Hazlitt, William Hume, David Huxley, T.H. Ireland Isherwood, Christopher James, Henry Jameson, Anna Brownell Johnson, Samuel Keats, John Kempe, Margery Kilvert, Francis Kingsley, Mary Kipling, Rudyard Lessing, Doris Lewis, C.S. Lister, Anne Lockhart, John Martineau, Harriet Mill, John Stuart Morris, Jan Muir, Edwin Munby, Arthur and Hannah Cullwick Naipaul, V.S. New Biography Newman, John Henry O’Brien, George O’Casey, Sean Oliphant, Margaret Orwell, George Osborne, Dorothy Park, Mungo Pepys, Samuel Picaresque Novel Rhys, Jean Rowlandson, Mary Ruskin, John Sancho, Ignatius Sassoon, Siegfried Sayers, Peig Scotland Steedman, Carolyn Stevenson, Robert Louis Strachey, Lytton Symons, A.J.A. Thompson, Flora Tone, Wolfe Wales Walpole, Horace Walton, Izaak Wells, H.G. Wesley, John Who’s Who Wilde, Oscar Woodforde, James Woolf, Virginia Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, William

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Bethlen, Miklós Bulgaria Canetti, Elias Classical Greece and Rome Czech and Slovak Life Writing Déry, Tibor Gombrowicz, Witold Greece, Modern Havel, Václav Herling-Grudzinski, ´ Gustaw Hoffman, Eva Hungary Kafka, Franz Kassák, Lajos Kazantzakis, Nikos Mi≠osz, Czes≠aw Niemcewicz, Julian Ursyn Pasek, Jan Poland Szász, Béla Széchenyi, István Turkey Vas, István Wiesel, Elie Yugoslavia and Former Yugoslav Territories

France: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters France: 20th-Century Auto/biography France: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Gaulle, Charles de Gide, André Goncourt, Edmond and Jules Green, Julien Leduc, Violette Leiris, Michel Lévi-Strauss, Claude Malraux, André Martin, Claire Montaigne, Michel de Perec, Georges Pfalz, Liselotte von der Proust, Marcel Richelieu, Cardinal, Duc de Rolland, Romain Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Roy, Gabrielle Saint-Denys Garneau, Hector de Saint-Simon Sand, George Sarraute, Nathalie Sartre, Jean-Paul Sévigné, Madame de Stendhal Tocqueville, Alexis de Voltaire Wiesel, Elie

France and the Francophone World

Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Low Countries

Abélard, Peter and Héloïse Africa: North Africa: West and Central (Francophone) Amiel, Henri-Frédéric Autofiction Bâ, Amadou Hampâté Barthes, Roland Bashkirtseff, Marie Beauvoir, Simone de Biographie universelle; Dictionnaire de biographie française Canada: French Canadian Life Writing Caribbean: Francophone Casanova, Giovanni Giacomo Chateaubriand Crèvecoeur, Michel-Guillaume Jean de Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire biographique du Canada Diderot, Denis Duras, Marguerite Fontenelle, Bernard de France: Medieval Life Writing France: 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-Century Memoirs France: 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters France: 18th-Century Autobiography France: 19th-Century Auto/biography

Amiel, Henri-Frédéric Andersch, Alfred Arnim, Bettina Brentano-von Benjamin, Walter Bernhard, Thomas The Bildungsroman Canetti, Elias Carossa, Hans Döblin, Alfred Eckermann, Johann Erasmus, Desiderius Fontane, Theodor Frank, Anne Freud, Sigmund Frisch, Max Germany, Austria, Switzerland: Medieval and Renaissance Life Writing Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 17th- and 18thCentury Auto/biography Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 17th- and 18thCentury Diaries and Letters Germany, Austria, Switzerland: Romanticism and Life Writing Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 19th-Century Auto/biography Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters

Working-Class Writings Yeats, W.B. Europe: East, Central, and Southeast

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Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 20th-Century Life Writing Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Gottsched, Luise Grillparzer, Franz Hebbel, Christian Friedrich Heine, Heinrich Herder, Johann Gottfried Hitler, Adolf Jünger, Ernst Jung, C.G. Kafka, Franz Kepler, Johannes Luxemburg, Rosa Mann, Heinrich Maximilian I Netherlands and Belgium (Flanders) Neue Deutsche Biographie Nietzsche, Friedrich Pfalz, Liselotte von der Plessen, Elisabeth Rilke, Rainer Maria Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Schweitzer, Albert Seuse, Heinrich Toller, Ernst Varnhagen, Rahel Levin Weiss, Peter Wieland, Christoph Martin Wolf, Christa Zuckmayer, Carl Iberian and Hispanic World Arenas, Reinaldo Barnet, Miguel Barrios de Chungara, Domitila Brazil Díaz del Castillo, Bernal García Márquez, Gabriel Goytisolo, Juan Guevara, Ernesto [“Che”] Hispanic American Life Writing Jesus, Carolina Maria de Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor Latin America: 15th to 18th Centuries Loyola, Saint Ignatius of Menchú, Rigoberta Mesonero Romanos, Ramón de Neruda, Pablo Pérez de Guzmán, Fernán Perón, Eva Picaresque Novel Poniatowska, Elena Portugal: Autobiography Portugal: Diaries and Letters Semprún, Jorge Spain: to 1700 Spain: 18th and 19th Centuries Spain: 20th Century

Spanish America: 19th Century Spanish America: 20th-Century Autobiography Spanish America: Indigenous Life Writing Teresa of Avila, Saint Testimony Torres Villaroel, Diego de Zorilla y Moral, José Italy Alfieri, Vittorio Aurelius, Marcus Casanova, Giovanni Giacomo Cellini, Benvenuto Cicero Classical Greece and Rome Croce, Benedetto Dante Alighieri Garibaldi, Giuseppe Ginzburg, Natalia Goldoni, Carlo Gozzi, Carlo Italy: Medieval and Renaissance Life Writing Italy: 17th- and 18th-Century Auto/biography Italy: 17th- and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters Italy: 19th-Century Auto/biography Italy: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Italy: 20th-Century Auto/biography Italy: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Leopardi, Giacomo Levi, Carlo Levi, Primo Pavese, Cesare Pellico, Silvio Petrarch Pliny the Younger Plutarch Suetonius Vasari, Giorgio Velluti, Donato Vico, Giambattista Russia and Scandinavia Aksakov, Sergei Avvakum Bashkirtseff, Marie Blixen, Karen Brandes, Georg Denmark Dolgorukaia, Natali’ia Dostoevskii, Fedor Ewald, Johannes Finland Ginzburg, Evgeniia Ginzburg, Lidiia Goldman, Emma Goldschmidt, Meïr Gor’kii, Maksim Heiberg, Johanne Luise

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Herzen, Aleksandr Holberg, Ludvig Jørgensen, Johannes Kallas, Aino Kierkegaard, Søren Latvia Leonora Christina Mandel’shtam, Nadezhda Mandel’shtam, Osip Nabokov, Vladimir Nexø, Martin Andersen Norway Oehlenschläger, Adam Päätalo, Kalle Russia: to 1700 Russia: 18th Century Russia: 19th Century to Revolution Russia: Revolution to the Present Shklovskii, Viktor Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Strindberg, August Sweden Tolstoi, Lev Tsvetaeva, Marina Zoshchenko, Mikhail South America and the Caribbean Arenas, Reinaldo Barnet, Miguel Barrios de Chungara, Domitila Brazil Caribbean: Anglophone Caribbean: Francophone Díaz del Castillo, Bernal García Márquez, Gabriel Guevara, Ernesto [“Che”] Jesus, Carolina Maria de Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor Kincaid, Jamaica Latin America: 15th to 18th Centuries Lionheart Gal Menchú, Rigoberta Naipaul, V.S. Neruda, Pablo Perón, Eva Poniatowska, Elena Seacole, Mary Spanish America: 19th Century Spanish America: 20th-Century Autobiography Spanish America: Indigenous Life Writing Testimony United States and Canada Adams, Henry Addams, Jane African American Life Writing Agee, James American Civil War Writings

Angelou, Maya Asian American Life Writing Barnum, P.T. Black Elk Canada: Auto/biography to 1900 Canada: Diaries and Letters to 1900 Canada: 20th-Century Auto/biography Canada: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Canada: French Canadian Life Writing Canada: Aboriginal Life Writing Carr, Emily Chesnut, Mary Boykin Crèvecoeur, Michel-Guillaume Jean de Dictionary of American Biography Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire biographique du Canada Dillard, Annie Douglass, Frederick Du Bois, W.E.B. Edel, Leon Edwards, Jonathan Ellmann, Richard Emerson, Ralph Waldo Equiano, Olaudah Franklin, Benjamin Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Goldman, Emma Green, Julien Grove, Frederick Philip Hellman, Lillian Hispanic American Life Writing Hoffman, Eva Hughes, Langston Hurston, Zora Neale Isherwood, Christopher Jacobs, Harriet James, Alice James, Henry Jameson, Anna Brownell Jewish American Life Writing Kazin, Alfred Keller, Helen Kincaid, Jamaica Kingston, Maxine Hong Lorde, Audre McCarthy, Mary Malcolm X Martin, Claire Momaday, N. Scott Moodie, Susanna Nabokov, Vladimir Native American Life Writing Nature Writings, American Nin, Anaïs Ondaatje, Michael Pioneer and Captivity Writings, American Rodríguez, Richard Rowlandson, Mary Roy, Gabrielle Saint-Denys Garneau, Hector de

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United States: 19th-Century Auto/biography United States: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters United States: 20th-Century Auto/biography United States: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Vietnam War Writings Washington, Booker T. Wharton, Edith Whitman, Walt Wiesel, Elie Wright, Richard

Slave Narratives Stanton, Elizabeth Cady Stein, Gertrude Suleri, Sara Thoreau, Henry David Traill, Catharine Parr Twain, Mark United States: 16th- and 17th-Century Life Writing United States: 18th-Century Auto/biography United States: 18th-Century Diaries and Letters

O THER Age- and Life-Stages Adolescence and Life Writing Age and Life Writing Childhood and Life Writing Children’s Life Writing Family Relations and Life Writing Fatherhood and Life Writing Genealogy Motherhood and Life Writing Old Age and Life Writing Biography Agee, James Arabic Biography Aubrey, John Australia: 18th- and 19th-Century Auto/biography Australian Dictionary of Biography The Bible Biographical Dictionaries Biographie universelle; Dictionnaire de biographie française Biography: General Survey Biography and Fiction Biography and History Biography and Poetry Boswell, James Brandes, Georg Carlyle, Thomas Chesterton, G.K. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Dictionary of American Biography Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire biographique du Canada Dictionary of National Biography Dictionary of New Zealand Biography Eckermann, Johann Edel, Leon Ellmann, Richard Emerson, Ralph Waldo Ethics Evelyn, John Exemplary and Model Lives

Fontenelle, Bernard de Freud, Sigmund Froude, J.A. Gaskell, Elizabeth Goncourt, Edmond and Jules Gor’kii, Maksim Gosse, Edmund Hu Shi Johnson, Samuel Kingston, Maxine Hong Liang Qichao Literary Biography Lockhart, John Musical Biography Neue Deutsche Biographie New Biography Oliphant, Margaret Ouyang Xiu Pérez de Guzmán, Fernán Plutarch Religious Biography Rolland, Romain Sahgal, Nayantara Sartre, Jean-Paul Sima Qian Strachey, Lytton Suetonius Symons, A.J.A. Vasari, Giorgio Walton, Izaak Who’s Who Women’s Biographies Woolf, Virginia Zoshchenko, Mikhail (Note: many of the broader regional entries also discuss biography) Diaries Amiel, Henri-Frédéric Australia: 18th- and 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Bashkirtseff, Marie Bashπ

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Britain: Restoration and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters Britain: 19th-Century Diaries Britain: 20th-Century Diaries Burney, Frances [Fanny] Byron, George, Lord Canada: Diaries and Letters to 1900 Canada: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Carossa, Hans Chesnut, Mary Boykin Diaries and Journals: General Survey Dostoevskii, Fedor Emerson, Ralph Waldo Evelyn, John Fox, George France: 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters France: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters France: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Frank, Anne Frisch, Max Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 17th- and 18thCentury Diaries and Letters Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Gide, André Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Ginzburg, Lidiia Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Gombrowicz, Witold Goncourt, Edmond and Jules Green, Julien Grillparzer, Franz Guevara, Ernesto [“Che”] Hebbel, Christian Friedrich Heine, Heinrich Herder, Johann Gottfried Herling-Grudzinski, ´ Gustaw Hu Shi Italy: 17th- and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters Italy: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Italy: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters James, Alice Japan: Heian Period (800–1200) Japan: Medieval Period (1200–1600) Jesus, Carolina Maria de Jünger, Ernst Kafka, Franz Kallas, Aino Kierkegaard, Søren Kilvert, Francis Leiris, Michel Lister, Anne Lorde, Audre Lu Xun Munby, Arthur and Hannah Cullwick Murasaki Shikibu Ngugi wa Thiong’o Nin, Anaïs Pepys, Samuel

Portugal: Diaries and Letters Rilke, Rainer Maria Rolland, Romain Ruskin, John Saint-Denys Garneau, Hector de Sand, George Sassoon, Siegfried Strindberg, August Széchenyi, István Thoreau, Henry David Tocqueville, Alexis de Tolstoi, Lev Travel Diaries, Journals, Log Books Tsvetaeva, Marina Twain, Mark United States: 18th-Century Diaries and Letters United States: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters United States: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters War Diaries and Journals Wesley, John Women’s Diaries and Journals Woodforde, James Woolf, Virginia Wordsworth, Dorothy Xie Bingying (Note: many of the broader regional entries also discuss diaries) Disciplines, Professions, Practices Anthropology and Life Writing Archives Autoethnography Business Auto/biography Case Histories Computers and Life Writing Ethnography Film Genealogy Hagiography Handbooks and Guides Historiography Interviews Journalism and Magazines Literary Autobiography Literary Biography Medical Autobiography Military Autobiography Musical Autobiography Obituaries Oral History Pedagogy and Life Writing Philosophical Autobiography Philosophy and Life Writing Photography Psychology and Life Writing Religious Autobiography Religious Biography Reminiscence and Life Story

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Scholarship, Academia, and Autobiography Scholarship, Academia, and Biography Science and Life Writing Scientific Autobiography Sociology and Life Writing Sporting Auto/biography Television and Life Story Visual Arts and Life Writing Genres and Types Africa: Auto/biographical Fiction Africa: Autobiographical Poetry Apologias Autobiography: General Survey Autobiography and Biography: Their Relationship Autobiography and the Essay Autobiography and Poetry Autoethnography Autofiction The Bildungsroman Biographical Dictionaries Biography: General Survey Biography and Fiction Biography and History Biography and Poetry Business Auto/biography Case Histories Celebrity Autobiography Celebrity and Popular Biography Children’s Life Writing Collaborative Autobiography Collective Lives Conduct Books Confessions Conversations, Dialogues, and Table Talk Criminal Autobiography Criminal Biography Diaries and Journals: General Survey Drama and Life Writing Elegies Epistolary Fiction Epistolary Poetry Epitaphs Ethnography Exemplary and Model Lives Exploration Writings Film Genealogy Gossip Hagiography Handbooks and Guides Holocaust Writings The I-Novel Immigration Writings, American Interviews Letters: General Survey Literary Autobiography Literary Biography Medical Autobiography

Memoirs Military Autobiography Mock and Parodic Life Writings Musical Autobiography Musical Biography Nature Writings, American New Biography Obituaries Personal Narrative Philosophical Autobiography Photography Picaresque Novel Pioneer and Captivity Writings, American Prison Writings Religious Autobiography Religious Biography Royal Biography Scandal Scientific Autobiography Slave Narratives Sound Recording and Life Writing Spiritual Autobiography Sporting Auto/biography Television and Life Story Testimony Travel Diaries, Journals, Log Books Travel Narratives Vietnam War Writings Visual Arts and Life Writing War Diaries and Journals Working-Class Writings World War I Writings World War II Writings Letters and Epistolary Forms Abélard, Peter and Héloïse Arnim, Bettina Brentano-von Australia: 18th- and 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Australia: 20th-Century Life Writing Britain: Medieval Letters Britain: Restoration and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters Britain: 19th-Century Letters Britain: 20th-Century Letters Byron, George, Lord Canada: Diaries and Letters to 1900 Canada: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Chesterfield, Earl of Cicero Computers and Life Writing Crèvecoeur, Michel-Guillaume Jean de Croce, Benedetto Diderot, Denis Dostoevskii, Fedor Epistolary Fiction Epistolary Poetry Erasmus, Desiderius Fontane, Theodor

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France: 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters France: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters France: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 17th- and 18thCentury Diaries and Letters Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Gide, André Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Gottsched, Luise Gramsci, Antonio Havel, Václav Hebbel, Christian Friedrich Herder, Johann Gottfried Holberg, Ludvig Italy: 17th- and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters Italy: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Italy: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Kafka, Franz Keats, John Kipling, Rudyard Letters: General Survey Lu Xun Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley Naidu, Sarojini Newman, John Henry Osborne, Dorothy Petrarch Pfalz, Liselotte von der Pliny the Younger Portugal: Diaries and Letters Rilke, Rainer Maria Saint-Denys Garneau, Hector de Sancho, Ignatius Sand, George Seuse, Heinrich Sévigné, Madame de Shklovskii, Viktor Strindberg, August Tagore, Rabindranath Tocqueville, Alexis de Tolstoi, Lev Traill, Catharine Parr Twain, Mark United States: 18th-Century Diaries and Letters United States: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters United States: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Varnhagen, Rahel Levin Vivekananda, Swami Voltaire Walpole, Horace War Letters Wesley, John Wieland, Christoph Martin Wilde, Oscar Women’s Letters Woolf, Virginia

(Note: many of the broader regional entries also discuss letters) Popular and Everyday Forms Africa: Oral Life Stories Amiel, Henri-Frédéric Artifacts and Life Writing Barnet, Miguel Barnum, P.T. Barrios de Chungara, Domitila Black Elk Business Auto/biography Case Histories Celebrity Autobiography Celebrity and Popular Biography Charke, Charlotte Children’s Life Writing Collaborative Autobiography Computers and Life Writing Conduct Books Conversations, Dialogues, and Table Talk Criminal Autobiography Criminal Biography Ethnography Exploration Writings Facey, A.B Film Frank, Anne Genealogy Gossip Handbooks and Guides Heiberg, Johanne Luise Hitler, Adolf Interviews James, Alice Jesus, Carolina Maria de Journalism and Magazines Jung Chang Keller, Helen Kilvert, Francis Kuzwayo, Ellen Lionheart Gal Medical Autobiography Menchú, Rigoberta Morgan, Sally Munby, Arthur and Hannah Cullwick Musical Autobiography Musical Biography Oral History Orality Päätalo, Kalle Pepys, Samuel Perón, Eva Personal Narrative Photography Pioneer and Captivity Writings, American Reminiscence and Life Story Royal Biography Sayers, Peig

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Scandal Social Class and Life Writing Sound Recording and Life Writing Spanish America: Indigenous Life Writing Sporting Auto/biography Survival and Life Writing Television and Life Story Testimony Thompson, Flora Trauma and Life Writing Visual Arts and Life Writing War Diaries and Journals War Letters Woodforde, James Working-Class Writings World War I Writings World War II Writings Xie Bingying See also “Diaries”, “Letters and Epistolary Forms”, and the various regional categories Religious Contexts Abélard, Peter and Héloïse Augustine, Saint Avvakum The Bible Buddhism and Life Writing Bunyan, John Christianity and Life Writing Confessions Confucianism and Life Writing Conversion and Turning Points Edwards, Jonathan Erasmus, Desiderius Exemplary and Model Lives Fox, George al-Ghazƒl¡ Hagiography Hinduism and Life Writing Islam and Life Writing Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor Judaism and Life Writing Kempe, Margery Kilvert, Francis Lewis, C.S. Loyola, Saint Ignatius of Newman, John Henry Religious Autobiography Religious Biography Repentance and Life Writing Revelation and Life Writing Seuse, Heinrich Spiritual Autobiography Teresa of Avila, Saint Vivekananda, Swami Wesley, John Woodforde, James

Social and Political Contexts Addams, Jane Agee, James American Civil War Writings Apartheid and Post-Apartheid Life Writings Archives Aung San Suu Kyi Aurelius, Marcus Barnet, Miguel Barrios de Chungara, Domitila Bethlen, Miklós Breytenbach, Breyten Brittain, Vera Censorship and Life Writing Chateaubriand Churchill, Winston Cicero Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Feminism Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Postcolonialism Déry, Tibor Díaz del Castillo, Bernal Disability and Life Writing Döblin, Alfred Douglass, Frederick Du Bois, W.E.B. Equiano, Olaudah Ethnicity, Race, and Life Writing Frank, Anne Franklin, Benjamin Gandhi, Mohandas (Mahatma) Garibaldi, Giuseppe Gatheru, Mugo Gaulle, Charles de Gender and Life Writing Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Ginzburg, Evgeniia Goldman, Emma Gramsci, Antonio Guevara, Ernesto [“Che”] Guo Moruo Havel, Václav Hitler, Adolf Holocaust Writings Hurston, Zora Neale Jacobs, Harriet Jesus, Carolina Maria de Keller, Helen Kuzwayo, Ellen Leonora Christina Lesbian and Gay Life Writing Levi, Carlo Levi, Primo Liang Qichao Luthuli, Chief Albert Luxemburg, Rosa Malcolm X Malraux, André Mandela, Nelson

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Mandel’shtam, Nadezhda Martineau, Harriet Maximilian I Menchú, Rigoberta Military Autobiography Morgan, Sally Mphahlele, Es’kia [Ezekiel] Naidu, Sarojini National Identity and Life Writing Nature, the Environment, and Life Writing Nature Writings, American Nehru, Jawaharlal Neruda, Pablo Ngugi wa Thiong’o Niemcewicz, Julian Ursyn Odinga, Oginga Orwell, George Ouyang Xiu Pasek, Jan Pellico, Silvio Perón, Eva Pioneer and Captivity Writings, American Plutarch Politics and Life Writing Poniatowska, Elena Prison Writings Richelieu, Cardinal, Duc de Royal Biography al-Sa‘dƒw¡, Nawƒl Saint-Simon Schweitzer, Albert Seacole, Mary Semprún, Jorge Sexuality and Life Writing Sima Qian Slave Narratives Social Class and Life Writing Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Sound Recording and Life Writing Soyinka, Wole Stanton, Elizabeth Cady Szász, Béla Széchenyi, István Tagore, Rabindranath Television and Life Story Testimony Tocqueville, Alexis de Toller, Ernst Tone, Wolfe Voltaire Washington, Booker T. Wiesel, Elie Wolf, Christa Working-Class Writings World War I Writings World War II Writings Xie Bingying

Themes in Life Writings Agency Age and Life Writing Apartheid and Post-Apartheid Life Writings Authenticity Authority The Body and Life Writing Buddhism and Life Writing Business Auto/biography Celebrity Autobiography Celebrity and Popular Biography Censorship and Life Writing Childhood and Life Writing Children’s Life Writing Christianity and Life Writing Confessions Confucianism and Life Writing Conversion and Turning Points Criminal Autobiography Criminal Biography Disability and Life Writing Ethics Ethnicity, Race, and Life Writing Exploration Writings Family Relations and Life Writing Fatherhood and Life Writing Gender and Life Writing Hinduism and Life Writing Holocaust Writings Identity Illness and Life Writing Immigration Writings, American Individualism and Life Writing Insanity and Life Writing Loss, Bereavement, and Life Writing Love, Sexuality, and Life Writing Medical Autobiography Memory Migration, Diaspora, and Life Writing Military Autobiography Motherhood and Life Writing Motivation Musical Autobiography Musical Biography Narrative National Identity and Life Writing Nature, the Environment, and Life Writing Nature Writings, American Old Age and Life Writing Oral History Orality Pedagogy and Life Writing Philosophical Autobiography Philosophy and Life Writing Pioneer and Captivity Writings, American Politics and Life Writing Prison Writings Psychology and Life Writing Reconciliation and Life Writing

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Recovery, Healing, and Life Writing Religious Autobiography Religious Biography Reminiscence and Life Story Repentance and Life Writing Revelation and Life Writing Royal Biography Scholarship, Academia, and Autobiography Scholarship, Academia, and Biography Science and Life Writing Scientific Autobiography The Self Sexuality and Life Writing Shame and Life Writing Slave Narratives Social Class and Life Writing Spiritual Autobiography Sporting Auto/biography Success and Life Writing Suicide and Life Writing Survival and Life Writing Time Travel Diaries, Journals, Log Books Travel Narratives Trauma and Life Writing Vietnam War Writings Visual Arts and Life Writing War Diaries and Journals War Letters Working-Class Writings World War I Writings World War II Writings Theory and Criticism Agency Authenticity Authority Autobiography: General Survey Autobiography and Biography: Their Relationship Autobiography and the Essay Autobiography and Poetry Biography: General Survey Biography and Fiction Biography and History Biography and Poetry The Body and Life Writing Criticism and Theory: 16th to 18th Centuries Criticism and Theory: Romanticism and the 19th Century Criticism and Theory: 1900 to 1950s Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Structuralism and Poststructuralism Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Feminism Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Postcolonialism Diaries and Journals: General Survey Ethics Gender and Life Writing Genealogy

Historiography Identity Letters: General Survey Memory Narrative New Biography Pedagogy and Life Writing Personal Narrative Psychology and Life Writing Reminiscence and Life Story Scholarship, Academia, and Autobiography Scholarship, Academia, and Biography Sociology and Life Writing The Self Time Travel, Exploration, and Migration Africa: European Exploration and Travel Writings Arabic Travel Writing Bashπ Blixen, Karen Britain: Travel, Exploration, and Imperialism Chateaubriand Chaudhuri, Nirad Crèvecoeur, Michel-Guillaume Jean de Díaz del Castillo, Bernal Döblin, Alfred Ethnicity, Race, and Life Writing Ethnography Exploration Writings Fontane, Theodor Garibaldi, Giuseppe Gide, André Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Hakluyt, Richard Heine, Heinrich Herder, Johann Gottfried Hoffman, Eva Immigration Writings, American Jameson, Anna Brownell Kazantzakis, Nikos Kingsley, Mary Kingston, Maxine Hong Kipling, Rudyard Levi, Carlo McCarthy, Mary Malraux, André Martineau, Harriet Mehta, Ved Migration, Diaspora, and Life Writing Moodie, Susanna Morris, Jan Naipaul, V.S. National Identity and Life Writing Nature, the Environment, and Life Writing Neruda, Pablo Niemcewicz, Julian Ursyn Park, Mungo Picaresque Novel

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Pioneer and Captivity Writings, American Sand, George Seacole, Mary Stevenson, Robert Louis Tagore, Rabindranath Tocqueville, Alexis de Traill, Catharine Parr Travel Diaries, Journals, Log Books Travel Narratives Twain, Mark Wharton, Edith Wordsworth, Dorothy War American Civil War Writings Chesnut, Mary Boykin Frank, Anne Garibaldi, Giuseppe Gaulle, Charles de Graves, Robert Guevara, Ernesto [“Che”] Herling-Grudzinski, ´ Gustaw Hitler, Adolf Holocaust Writings Jünger, Ernst Levi, Primo Military Autobiography Pasek, Jan Saint-Simon Sassoon, Siegfried Seacole, Mary Schweitzer, Albert Semprún, Jorge Testimony Vietnam War Writings War Diaries and Journals War Letters Wiesel, Elie World War I Writings World War II Writings Xie Bingying Women’s Life Writing (Abélard, Peter and) Héloïse Addams, Jane Angelou, Maya Arnim, Bettina Brentano-von Aung San Suu Kyi Barrios de Chungara, Domitila Bashkirtseff, Marie Beauvoir, Simone de Blixen, Karen Brittain, Vera Burney, Frances [Fanny] Carr, Emily Cavendish, Margaret [Duchess of Newcastle] Charke, Charlotte Chesnut, Mary Boykin

Colette Conway, Jill Ker Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Feminism Das, Kamala Dillard, Annie Dolgorukaia, Natali’ia Duras, Marguerite Edmond, Lauris Frame, Janet Frank, Anne Gender and Life Writing Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Ginzburg, Evgeniia Ginzburg, Lidiia Ginzburg, Natalia Goldman, Emma Gordimer, Nadine Gottsched, Luise Heiberg, Johanne Luise Hellman, Lillian Hoffman, Eva Hurston, Zora Neale Jacobs, Harriet James, Alice Jameson, Anna Brownell Jesus, Carolina Maria de Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor Jung Chang Kallas, Aino Keller, Helen Kempe, Margery Kincaid, Jamaica Kingsley, Mary Kingston, Maxine Hong Kuzwayo, Ellen Leduc, Violette Leonora Christina Lessing, Doris Lionheart Gal Lister, Anne Lorde, Audre Luxemburg, Rosa McCarthy, Mary Mandel’shtam, Nadezhda Martin, Claire Martineau, Harriet Menchú, Rigoberta Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley Moodie, Susanna Morgan, Sally Morris, Jan Motherhood and Life Writing (Munby, Arthur and) Hannah Cullwick Murasaki Shikibu Naidu, Sarojini Nin, Anaïs Oliphant, Margaret Osborne, Dorothy Park, Ruth Perón, Eva

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Pfalz, Liselotte von der Plessen, Elisabeth Poniatowska, Elena Rhys, Jean Rowlandson, Mary Roy, Gabrielle al-Sa‘dƒw¡, Nawƒl Sahgal, Nayantara Sand, George Sarraute, Nathalie Sayers, Peig Seacole, Mary Sévigné, Madame de Sorabji, Cornelia Stanton, Elizabeth Cady Steedman, Carolyn Stein, Gertrude Suleri, Sara Teresa of Avila, Saint Thompson, Flora Traill, Catharine Parr Tsvetaeva, Marina Varnhagen, Rahel Levin Wharton, Edith Wolf, Christa Women’s Autobiographies Women’s Biographies Women’s Diaries and Journals Women’s Letters Woolf, Virginia Wordsworth, Dorothy Xie Bingying Writers Abélard, Peter and Héloïse Adams, Henry Addams, Jane Agee, James Aksakov, Sergei Akutagawa, Ry®nosuke Alfieri, Vittorio Amiel, Henri-Frédéric Andersch, Alfred Angelou, Maya Arenas, Reinaldo Arnim, Bettina Brentano-von Aubrey, John Augustine, Saint Aung San Suu Kyi Aurelius, Marcus Avvakum Bâ, Amadou Hampâté Barnet, Miguel Barnum, P.T. Barrios de Chungara, Domitila Barthes, Roland Bashkirtseff, Marie Bashπ Beauvoir, Simone de

Behan, Brendan Benjamin, Walter Bernhard, Thomas Bethlen, Miklós Black Elk Blixen, Karen Boswell, James Brandes, Georg Breytenbach, Breyten Brittain, Vera Bunyan, John Burney, Frances [Fanny] Byron, George, Lord Canetti, Elias Carlyle, Thomas Carossa, Hans Carr, Emily Casanova, Giovanni Giacomo Cavendish, Margaret [Duchess of Newcastle] Cellini, Benvenuto Charke, Charlotte Chateaubriand Chaudhuri, Nirad Chesnut, Mary Boykin Chesterfield, Earl of Chesterton, G.K. Churchill, Winston Cicero Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Colette Conway, Jill Ker Crèvecoeur, Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crisp, Quentin Croce, Benedetto Dante Alighieri Darwin, Charles Das, Kamala De Quincey, Thomas Déry, Tibor Díaz del Castillo, Bernal Diderot, Denis Dillard, Annie Döblin, Alfred Dolgorukaia, Natali’ia Dostoevskii, Fedor Douglass, Frederick Du Bois, W.E.B. Duras, Marguerite Eckermann, Johann Edel, Leon Edmond, Lauris Edwards, Jonathan Ellmann, Richard Emerson, Ralph Waldo Equiano, Olaudah Erasmus, Desiderius Evelyn, John Ewald, Johannes Facey, A.B Fontane, Theodor

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Fontenelle, Bernard de Fox, George Frame, Janet Frank, Anne Franklin, Benjamin Freud, Sigmund Frisch, Max Froude, J.A. Gandhi, Mohandas (Mahatma) García Márquez, Gabriel Garibaldi, Giuseppe Gaskell, Elizabeth Gatheru, Mugo Gaulle, Charles de al-Ghazƒl¡ Gibbon, Edward Gide, André Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Ginzburg, Evgeniia Ginzburg, Lidiia Ginzburg, Natalia Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Goldman, Emma Goldoni, Carlo Goldschmidt, Meïr Gombrowicz, Witold Goncourt, Edmond and Jules Gordimer, Nadine Gor’kii, Maksim Gosse, Edmund Gottsched, Luise Goytisolo, Juan Gozzi, Carlo Gramsci, Antonio Graves, Robert Green, Julien Grillparzer, Franz Grove, Frederick Philip Guevara, Ernesto [“Che”] Guo Moruo Hakluyt, Richard Havel, Václav Hazlitt, William Hebbel, Christian Friedrich Heiberg, Johanne Luise Heine, Heinrich Hellman, Lillian Herder, Johann Gottfried Herling-Grudzinski, ´ Gustaw Herzen, Aleksandr Hitler, Adolf Hoffman, Eva Holberg, Ludvig Horne, Donald Hu Shi Hughes, Langston Hume, David Hurston, Zora Neale Huxley, T.H. Isherwood, Christopher

Jacobs, Harriet James, Alice James, Henry Jameson, Anna Brownell Jesus, Carolina Maria de Johnson, Samuel Jørgensen, Johannes Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor Jünger, Ernst Jung, C.G. Jung Chang Kafka, Franz Kallas, Aino Kassák, Lajos Kazantzakis, Nikos Kazin, Alfred Keats, John Keller, Helen Kempe, Margery Kepler, Johannes Kierkegaard, Søren Kilvert, Francis Kincaid, Jamaica Kingsley, Mary Kingston, Maxine Hong Kipling, Rudyard Kuzwayo, Ellen Leduc, Violette Leiris, Michel Leonora Christina Leopardi, Giacomo Lessing, Doris Levi, Carlo Levi, Primo Lévi-Strauss, Claude Lewis, C.S. Liang Qichao Lionheart Gal Lister, Anne Lockhart, John Lorde, Audre Loyola, Saint Ignatius of Lu Xun Luthuli, Chief Albert Luxemburg, Rosa McCarthy, Mary Malcolm X Malraux, André Mandela, Nelson Mandel’shtam, Nadezhda Mandel’shtam, Osip Mann, Heinrich Martin, Claire Martineau, Harriet Maximilian I Mehta, Ved Menchú, Rigoberta Mesonero Romanos, Ramón de Mill, John Stuart Mi≠osz, Czes≠aw

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Mishima Yukio Momaday, N. Scott Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley Montaigne, Michel de Moodie, Susanna Morgan, Sally Morris, Jan Mphahlele, Es’kia [Ezekiel] Muir, Edwin Munby, Arthur and Hannah Cullwick Murasaki Shikibu Nabokov, Vladimir Naidu, Sarojini Naipaul, V.S. Narayan, R.K. Nehru, Jawaharlal Newman, John Henry Nexø, Martin Andersen Ngugi wa Thiong’o Niemcewicz, Julian Ursyn Nietzsche, Friedrich Nin, Anaïs O’Brien, George O’Casey, Sean Odinga, Oginga Oehlenschläger, Adam Oliphant, Margaret Ondaatje, Michael Orwell, George Osborne, Dorothy Ouyang Xiu Päätalo, Kalle Park, Mungo Park, Ruth Pasek, Jan Pellico, Silvio Pepys, Samuel Pérez de Guzmán, Fernán Perec, Georges Perón, Eva Petrarch Pfalz, Liselotte von der Plessen, Elisabeth Pliny the Younger Plutarch Poniatowska, Elena Porter, Hal Proust, Marcel Rhys, Jean Richelieu, Cardinal, Duc de Rilke, Rainer Maria Rodríguez, Richard Rolland, Romain Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Rowlandson, Mary Roy, Gabrielle Ruskin, John al-Sa‘dƒw¡, Nawƒl Sahgal, Nayantara Saint-Denys Garneau, Hector de

Saint-Simon Sancho, Ignatius Sand, George Sargeson, Frank Sarraute, Nathalie Sartre, Jean-Paul Sassoon, Siegfried Sayers, Peig Schweitzer, Albert Seacole, Mary Semprún, Jorge Seuse, Heinrich Sévigné, Madame de Shen Fu Shimazaki Tπson Shklovskii, Viktor Sima Qian Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Sorabji, Cornelia Soyinka, Wole Stanton, Elizabeth Cady Steedman, Carolyn Stendhal Stevenson, Robert Louis Strachey, Lytton Strindberg, August Suetonius Suleri, Sara Symons, A.J.A. Szász, Béla Széchenyi, István Tagore, Rabindranath Tƒhƒ Husayn Tawf¡q al-Hak¡m Teresa of Avila, Saint Thompson, Flora Thoreau, Henry David Tocqueville, Alexis de Toller, Ernst Tolstoi, Lev Tone, Wolfe Torres Villaroel, Diego de Traill, Catharine Parr Tsvetaeva, Marina Twain, Mark Usƒma ibn Munqidh Varnhagen, Rahel Levin Vas, István Vasari, Giorgio Velluti, Donato Vico, Giambattista Vivekananda, Swami Voltaire Walpole, Horace Walton, Izaak Washington, Booker T. Weiss, Peter Wells, H.G. Wesley, John Wharton, Edith

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White, Patrick Whitman, Walt Wieland, Christoph Martin Wiesel, Elie Wilde, Oscar Wolf, Christa Woodforde, James Woolf, Virginia Wordsworth, Dorothy

Wordsworth, William Wright, Richard Xie Bingying Yeats, W.B. Yu Dafu Zorilla y Moral, José Zoshchenko, Mikhail Zuckmayer, Carl

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a Abélard, Peter

After the catastrophe both of them entered religious communities – Abélard chose this refuge and Héloïse, as always, obeyed his wish. He was at St Denis, St Gildas de Rhuys in Brittany, Cluny, and continued his philosophical and some theological writing; she excelled as prioress at Argenteuil and then as abbess at the Convent of the Paraclete, given to her by Abélard, whose students had built it for him. This story is revealed in their life writings, his initial letter to a friend, and then two exchanges of letters between them, “The Personal Letters” and the “Letters of Direction” which concern the Paraclete community and the religious life. Abélard’s Historia calamitatum (composed c.1133; The Story of My Misfortunes) is subtitled in the best manuscripts “Abélard’s letter of consolation to his friend”. It is an autobiography in which Abélard presents the “trials” of his life, the pain and horror, as an example that will comfort his friend; the writing is also an occasion for self-exploration and explanation of his actions. Like Augustine’s Confessions, the Historia is both personal and intellectually poised. Abélard surveys details of his life, but stresses Héloïse’s argument against marriage because it would interfere with the philosopher’s life and his career in the church, and the drastic shift in his fortunes, a loss of reputation more painful than physical misery. There is much about the challenges to his teaching at a Council at Soissons, and of his struggles in Brittany among violent and unsympathetic monks, who even tried to kill him. Such a life offers consolation to the nominal addressee; the Historia is also a philosopher’s formal defence. The “Personal Letters”, two ostensibly by each lover, are sharply contrasted in manner and have often been compared as examples of male and female discourse. Abélard’s are coolly logical, and he urges religious consolation, never losing his own self-concern. Héloïse’s are humble but relentlessly argumentative. Her passion is expressed, her lover’s appeal identified – a skill in composing verse and song and in manhood “grace of mind and body” – and it is affirmed that she has obeyed him before God in all things. Her longing for him is palpable. Her first letter comments upon Abélard’s letter of consolation, which came to her by chance, and she chides him for not having any contact with her. A discussion of proper forms of address shows them both applying dialectic. Abélard’s longest letter urges that the end of their lust has been a grace to lead them to Christ, and that Héloïse should relinquish her role of dedication to Abélard to become the bride of Christ. Interlaced with feelings about their love are Héloïse’s thanks to Abélard for the gift of the

1079–1142

French philosopher and letter writer

Héloïse

c.1100–1164

French abbess and letter writer The extent and nature of the correspondence between Peter Abélard and Héloïse continue to be the subjects of new research and great debate. On the one hand, computer-assisted stylistic analysis in the 1980s spawned controversial allegations that Abélard composed the four famous “Personal Letters” himself, although two are supposedly by Héloïse. On the other hand, the scholar Constant Mews has ascribed a further 113 letters to the pair, from the early stages of their relationship, and Bonnie Wheeler has brought together a collection of essays devoted exclusively to Héloïse. While it is likely that, at the beginning of the 21st century, we are going to have to re-envision our conceptions of Abélard and Héloïse in the light of this new research, we can at least represent here the content of the four central “Personal Letters” and the influence they have had to date. The “Personal Letters” letters tell a remarkable story of great intellect, intense passion, disputed marriage, sexual mutilation, suffering, separation, and, after some years, a new relationship of brother and sister in Christ, working for the formation of a religious community. Written after the lovers’ physical relationship ended with Abélard’s castration, they are models of both the public and the private styles in Latin composition. The selfanalysis and rhetorical skill are remarkable. This celebrated love affair of the Middle Ages has inspired admiration and imitation, and opposition, for centuries; and today’s historians and critics continue the debate, particularly with readings informed by gender theory. Abélard was the greatest Western logician of the 12th century, a much admired teacher who was influential in moving education from the monastery to the cathedral schools that led to the formation of universities, and an opponent of Bernard of Clairvaux. Héloïse, a brilliant young woman, was about 17 years old when she became the pupil of Abélard, who was in his 30s, by the arrangement of her uncle Fulbert, a canon at Notre Dame. She was already widely read in the classics, skilled in Latin and Greek, and perhaps Hebrew, and a master of dialectic – in fact a female counterpart to Abélard’s classical ideal of the philosopher as one who is set apart from and above human ties. 1

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Paraclete and a plea for his help in leading the community of nuns. The “Letters of Direction” amply fulfil this request, as Abélard establishes a Rule to assist Héloïse as abbess at the Paraclete and to devote herself to monasticism. A letter from the abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable, praises her exemplary achievement. Another of Abélard’s letters exalts women, particularly nuns, a form of praise of the new Héloïse, the final perfection of his direction. The letters, which Héloïse probably kept at the Paraclete, became public only when Jean de Meun translated them and included a version of Héloïse’s diatribe on marriage in his completion of the Roman de la Rose (1269–78; Romance of the Rose), one of the most influential medieval texts. Chaucer refers briefly to Héloïse, but Petrarch shows more interest. The Latin texts were published in France at the start of the 17th century and in England in the 18th century, which also saw Alexander Pope’s Eloisa to Abélard (1717), with a neoclassical romantic heroine. In this century the medieval loves have spawned novels – George Moore’s Héloïse and Abélard (1921) and Helen Waddell’s Peter Abelard (1933) – and a West End play, Ronald Millar’s Abélard and Héloïse (1970), as well as numerous biographical and critical studies centred on the life writings. Velma Bourgeois Richmond Biographies Peter Abélard was born in Le Pallet, near Nantes, Brittany, 1079, into a noble Breton family. His father was a knight in the service of the Count of Brittany. Studied under Roscelin de Compiègne at the age of 15. Héloïse was born into a noble French family, c.1100. Became the ward of her uncle, Fulbert, canon of Notre Dame in Paris. Abélard moved to Paris by 1100, and attended lectures by William de Champeaux, head of the cathedral school of Notre Dame. Won a debate with William, which led to his leaving Notre Dame and setting up his own school, first in Melun, 1102, then in Corbeil and SainteGeneviève, all near Paris. Went home to Brittany to settle the family estates after his parents decided to enter religious life, 1111. Studied theology under Anselm of Laon. Appointed lecturer at the cathedral school of Notre Dame, 1112 or 1113; pupils included John of Salisbury. Invited to lodge with Canon Fulbert of Notre Dame and to become tutor to Héloïse, who was then aged 17, 1117. Became her lover. Discovered by Fulbert and evicted; left with Héloïse for Brittany, where their son was born. Returned to Paris and married her secretly. Removed Héloïse to a convent at Argenteuil for safety. Castrated by Fulbert and some companions. Gave up his post at Notre Dame and retired to the abbey of Saint-Denis, near Paris, where he became a monk, c.1119. Ordered Héloïse to become a nun. Condemned for heresy at the Council of Soissons, 1121. Became a hermit at Nogentsur-Seine near Troyes. Built a monastic school there, the Paraclete, helped by his pupils. Wrote Sic et non, concerning faith and reason, c.1123. Elected abbot of St Gildas-de-Rhuys, Brittany, 1125. Gave the Paraclete to Héloïse and her community of nuns, c.1128. She was expelled from Argenteuil with the rest of her community when the convent was recovered by the abbot of Saint-Denis, 1129. Was offered Abélard’s hermitage of the Paraclete near Troyes and settled there with her community as abbess. Corresponded with Abélard, 1130–39. Abélard composed Historia calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes), c.1132. Moved to Mont-Sainte-Geneviève and taught large numbers of pupils, c.1135. Condemned for heresy at the Council of Sens, at the instigation of Bernard of Clairvaux, 1140. Retired to Cluny Abbey, then to the priory of Saint-Marcel, near Chalon-surSaône, Burgundy. Died at Saint-Marcel, 21 April 1142. Héloïse had Abélard’s remains buried at the Paraclete, 1142. She died at the Paraclete, 16 May 1164.

Selected Writings Historia calamitatum (composed c.1133); edited by Jacques Monfrin, 1959; as Abelard’s Letter of Consolation to a Friend, edited by

Joseph T. Muckle, in Medieval Studies, 12 (1950); as Historia calamitatum: The Story of My Misfortunes, translated by Henry Adams Bellows, 1922; as The Story of Abelard’s Adversities, translated by J.T. Muckle, 1954; in Abelard and Héloïse: The Story of His Misfortunes, and The Personal Letters, translated by Betty Radice, 1977 Epistolae; editions and selections as: The Letters of Abeillard and Heloisa, edited and translated by Joseph Berington, 2nd edition, 1788; Abaelardi et Heloissae epistolae, edited by Io. Caspar Orellius, 1841; Letters IX–XIV (in Latin), edited by Edmé Renno Smits, 1983; translations: The Letters of Abelard and Héloïse, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff, 1925; Eloïsa to Abelard, with the Letters of Héloïse to Abelard in the Version by John Hughes, 1713, edited by James E. Wellington, 1965; The Letters of Abelard and Héloïse, translated by Betty Radice, 1974; in Abelard and Héloïse: The Story of His Misfortunes, and The Personal Letters, translated by Betty Radice, 1977 Petri Abaelardi Abbatis Rugensis opera omnia, vol. 178 of Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, edited by J.-P. Migne, 1885

Further Reading Clanchy, M.T., Abelard: A Medieval Life, Oxford: Blackwell, 1997 Dronke, Peter, Abelard and Héloïse in Medieval Testimonies, Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 1976 Dronke, Peter, “‘Héloïse’ and ‘Excursus’: Did Abélard Write Héloïse’s Third Letter?” in Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua (+203) to Marguerite Porete (+1310), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984 Dronke, Peter, “Héloïse, Abélard, and Some Recent Discussions” in Intellectuals and Poets in Medieval Europe, Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1992 Gilson, Etienne, Héloïse et Abélard, Paris: Vrin, 1938; as Héloïse and Abelard, translated by L.K. Shook, Chicago: Regnery, 1951; London: Hollis and Carter, 1953 Kamuf, Peggy, Fictions of Feminine Desire: Disclosures of Héloïse, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982 Knowles, David, The Evolution of Medieval Thought, London: Longmans, and New York: Vintage, 1962; 2nd edition, edited by D.E. Luscombe and C.N.L. Brooke, London and New York: Longman, 1988 McLaughlin, Mary M., “Abélard as Autobiographer: The Motives and Meaning of his Story of Calamities”, Speculum, 42 (1967): 463–88 Mews, Constant J., Peter Abelard, Aldershot, Hampshire: Variorum, 1995 Mews, Constant J., The Lost Love Letters of Heloïse and Abélard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999 (includes translations by Mews and Neville Chiavaroli) Muckle, J.T. (editor), “The Personal Letters between Abélard and Héloïse”, Mediaeval Studies, 15 (1953): 68–73 Muckle, J.T., “Suo specialiter, sua singulariter”, Mediaeval Studies, 17 (1955): 241–53 Newman, Barbara, “Authority, Authenticity, and the Repression of Héloïse” in Virile Woman to Woman Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995 Robertson, D.W., Jr, Abelard and Héloïse, New York: Dial Press, 1972 Southern, R.W., “The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse” in Medieval Humanism and Other Studies, Oxford: Blackwell, 1970 Wheeler, Bonnie (editor), Listening to Heloïse: The Voice of a TwelfthCentury Woman, London: Macmillan, 2000

Adams, Henry

1838–1918

American historian, autobiographer, and biographer Henry Adams’s great-grandfather, who helped draft the Declaration of Independence, was the second president of the United States. His grandfather was the sixth. His father was minister to

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England during the civil war and largely responsible for keeping England, which was sympathetic with the confederacy, out of the conflict. But Henry Adams, who served as his father’s personal secretary during that time, lived in an embattled relation with his pedigree. He was a man at odds with his environment, seeing the dynamo – the coal-powered generator of electricity – as emblematic of an evolving world that wanted only, as R.P. Blackmur noted, “the aggregation of force in the form of wealth”, a world in which Adams could only feel an alien. In his reaction to this world Adams anticipated the postures of modernism. He looked on the world with irony and cynicism, at times with bitterness – perhaps even with a willing “acceptance of a fragmented self in a fragmented universe”, as Jackson Lears once put it (cited in Burich). The book for which he is principally remembered, and the text that has secured him a place among modern life-writers, is The Education of Henry Adams, a deeply insightful, ironic book of memoir, social criticism, political philosophy, religious and scientific reflection, and autobiography written in the third person – a point of view that lends the narrative voice a detached quality, a kind of authority that belongs more properly to the novel and to biography. First published privately in 1907, it was issued publicly in 1918, after Adams’s death, with the unauthorized subtitle “An Autobiography”. It was received to great acclaim from the start. “For mere stuff”, wrote an anonymous reviewer in The New Republic, “the book is incomparable”. The following year it was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and to this day it is regarded by some as one of the very few great books written in America before World War I. Adams himself conceived of it as a companion volume to his Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1904), in which he had attempted – again in the voice of an assumed persona – to show not what happened in the Middle Ages but what they felt like. He regarded the first as “a study of thirteenth-century unity” and the second as “a study of twentieth-century multiplicity”. The Education is not quite autobiography masquerading as biography, but it is an artfully contrived narrative that may be fruitfully compared to Adams’s letters, since they and the Education do not always agree on particulars. Part of the Education’s great appeal is its quotable nature, its glib and memorable style. Adams defined a schoolmaster as “a man employed to tell lies to little boys”. Professional men he treated with good-natured acerbity: “No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else”; like all public servants, he will first acquire “the habit of office” and then lose “the faculty of will”. English society of the 1860s “had no unity; one wandered about in it like a maggot in cheese”. The English and their food fared no better: “Every one, especially in young society, complained bitterly that Englishmen did not know a good dinner when they ate it, and could not order one if they were given carte blanche”, and some of them, like the poet and sculptor Thomas Woolner, could be courteous only by “supernatural effort”. Such scientists as Sir Charles Lyell (whom Adams knew personally) could apparently be as lax as theologians and “assume unity from the start”, so Adams himself could be “a Darwinian for fun”, for “[o]ne could not stop to chase doubts as though they were rabbits”. The tone was not entirely new. Benjamin Franklin in his Autobiography had always strategically placed his tongue in

3

his cheek. Adams was conscious of the precedent. He aligned his Education with Franklin’s Autobiography but also with the Confessions of both Augustine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and, by virtue of his mannequin image “on which the toilet of education is to be draped in order to show the fit or the misfit of the clothes”, with Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus. In addition to these specific predecessors, as Couser points out, Adams had before him the tradition of Old Testament prophets and the Puritan models of personal narrative. He also had the jeremiad; his in a “modernist version … urging lessons but not solutions” (O’Brien). The tendency among autobiographers to work by selection and exclusion was exaggerated in Adams, most notably in the twenty-year gap after 1871, a period that included his years as assistant professor of medieval history at Harvard, the publication of his nine-volume History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and the death by suicide of his wife, Marian Hooper. The anxiety occasioned by the force and variety of his inheritance alone might account for Adams’s self-deprecation and irony were it not for the fact that Adams felt acutely that things fall apart. His view of the civil war may serve as an example. Adams wrote of it wryly and with acid, remarking that: “the lesson in education was vital to these young men” of college age, whether New Englanders or Virginians, “who, within ten years, killed each other by scores in the act of testing their college conclusions”. The civil war prompted doubts of his own “on the facts of moral evolution”. He himself, “with Heaven knew how many Puritans and Patriots behind him”, had “an education that had cost a civil war”. As the title of the book implies, education is the point, autobiography the vehicle or host, and the author returns again and again to the point. Indeed, Adams’s view of life itself is that all experience should tend toward education, and education must, as Blackmur says, fit the mind with skills and tools “for intelligent reaction in a given context”. Adams complained that formal education was worthless: “Four years of Harvard College, if successful, resulted in an autobiographical blank, a mind on which only a water-mark had been stamped.” Looking back from the prospect of old age, Adams said that seventy years of education had “no moral and little incident”, adding that “the practical value” remained “to the end in doubt”. In short, the story of his education was a story of failure. Much ink has been spent on this, one critic remarking that Henry Adams’s definition of failure is written “in about the brightest and most intelligent style we shall ever read” (Cox). Another comments on those who “have felt that his thesis of failure would be contradicted by an account of success enough for several lifetimes” (Bishop). Blackmur comments astutely: The failure is not of knowledge or of feeling. It is the failure of the ability to react correctly or even intelligently to more than an abbreviated version of knowledge and feeling … It is the failure the mind comes to ultimately and all along when it is compelled to measure its knowledge in terms of its ignorance. Most failures we have the tact to ignore or give a kinder name. That is because we know by instinct at what a heavy discount to put most proffered examples of failure. There was no effort of imagination in them and only private agony, where for great failure we want the most unrelenting imagination and impersonal agony of

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knowledge searching the haven of objective form … A genuine failure comes hard and slow. Blackmur concludes aptly: “Failure is the appropriate end to the type of mind of which Adams is a pre-eminent example: the type which attempts through imagination to find the meaning or source of unity aside from the experience which it unites.” The source of unity was to come from within. “Adams, evidently frightened by the enormous increases in the use of energy in the nineteenth century and particularly by their extrapolation into the future, propose[d] that man must change: he must get back to thought’s controlling force” (Bishop). Adams saw with unmatched clarity the convulsion the world had undergone in the era of the dynamo, and he located his own success in his quest, as Bishop puts it, “for an adequate set of symbols” to unify the fragmented nature of modern life. Jason R. Peters Biography Henry Brooks Adams. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 16 February 1838. His grandfather, John Quincy Adams, and greatgrandfather, John Adams, were both US presidents. Studied at Harvard College (later Harvard University), Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1854– 58 (BA). Studied law at the University of Berlin, 1858–59. Lived in Dresden, 1859–60. Travelled to Italy, writing for the Boston Courier, 1860. Worked as private secretary to his father, Charles Francis Adams, when he served in Congress, representing Massachusetts, in Washington, DC, 1860–61, and when he was US ambassador to London, 1861–68. Lived in Washington, DC, and in London, contributing to various American periodicals, 1869. Editor of North American Review, Boston, 1870–76, and assistant professor of medieval history, Harvard University, 1870–77. Married Marian “Clover” Hooper, 1872. Settled in Washington, DC, 1877. Wrote two novels, Democracy (1880) and Esther (1884), and began work on the History of the United States (9 vols, 1889–91). Wife committed suicide, 1885. President, American Historical Association, 1894. In later life spent six months every year in France. Wrote Mont-SaintMichel and Chartres (1904), an influential study of the unity of religion and art in the Middle Ages, and The Education of Henry Adams (1907), for which he was awarded the Pulitzer prize, posthumously, in 1919. Died in Washington, DC, 27 March 1918.

Selected Writings The Life of Albert Gallatin (biographical study), 1879 John Randolph (biographical study), 1882, revised 1883; edited by Robert McColley, 1996 Memoirs of Marau, Last Queen of Tahiti, 1893; as Memoirs of Arii, 1902; as Tahiti: Memoirs of Arii Taimai, edited by Robert E. Spiller, 1947 The Education of Henry Adams, 1907; edited by Ernest Samuels, 1974; edited by Ira B. Nadel, 1999 The Life of George Cabot Lodge (biographical study), 1911 Letters to a Niece and Prayer to the Virgin of Chartres, edited by Mabel La Farge, 1920 Letters of Henry Adams (1858–1891), 1930 Letters, edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford, 2 vols, 1930–38 Henry Adams and His Friends (correspondence), 1947 Selected Letters, edited by Newton Arvin, 1951 The Letters of Henry Adams, edited by J.C. Levenson et al., 6 vols, 1982–88 The Correspondence of Henry James and Henry Adams 1877–1914, edited by George Monteiro, 1992 Henry Adams: Selected Letters, edited by Ernest Samuels, 1992 Also edited, with Clara Louise Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, 3 vols, 1908

Further Reading Adams, Henry, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, Washington DC: privately printed, 1904; revised and enlarged, 1912; London: Constable, 1913 Bishop, Ferman, Henry Adams, Boston: Twayne, 1979 Blackmur, R.P., Henry Adams, edited by Veronica A. Makowsky, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980 Burich, Keith R., “Henry Adams’ Annis Mirabilis: 1900 and the Making of a Modernist”, American Studies, 32/2 (1991): 103–16 Brogan, D.W., introduction to The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961 Contosta, David R., Henry Adams and the American Experiment, edited by Oscar Handlin, Boston: Little Brown, 1980 Couser, Thomas G., American Autobiography: The Prophetic Mode, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1979 Cox, James M., “Learning through Ignorance: The Education of Henry Adams”, Sewanee Review, 88 (1980): 198–227 F[rancis] H[ackett], “Henry Adams”, The New Republic, 17/214 (1918): 169–71 O’Brien, Michael, entry on Henry Adams in Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 47, Detroit: Gale Research, 1986 Pascal, Roy, Design and Truth in Autobiography, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960 Samuels, Ernest, introduction to The Education of Henry Adams, edited by Samuels, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973 Saveth, Edward N., introduction toThe Education of Henry Adams and Other Selected Writings, edited by Saveth, New York: Twayne, 1963 Sayre, Robert F., The Examined Self: Benjamin Franklin, Henry Adams, Henry James, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1964

Addams, Jane

1860–1935

American social worker, reformer, and autobiographer The pioneer social worker and social and political reformer Jane Addams described the development of her famous Chicago settlement house in her classic autobiography Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910). Addams’s autobiographical sequel, The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House (1930), describes the development of relationships between the Hull-House settlement and reform work and national and international reform and progressive political activity during the second and third decades of the 20th century. Twenty Years at Hull-House is a major text of the mainstream of American autobiography. As in Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (published complete in 1868), Ulysses S. Grant’s Personal Memoirs (1885–86), and The Education of Henry Adams (1907), Jane Addams blends personal history with an account of an important public life that explores the nature of individual achievement. Twenty Years at Hull-House is the great American autobiography of a life of social work, a field in which Addams played a seminal, founding role. It is also a central modern feminist text. Addams was imbued with a modern cast of mind and was interested in tracing connections between her personal history and her position in life at the top of her chosen field at the time she wrote Twenty Years. Growing up in a small town in northern Illinois during and after the Civil War, she greatly admired her father, a widower after his wife’s death between Jane’s second and seventh years. John Addams had been an active abolitionist, a friend and political ally of Abraham Lincoln, and an eight-term Whig and later Republican state senator. A veteran of the rough-and-tumble postbellum Illinois political

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scene remembered him as the only state legislator who had not only never accepted a bribe but had never been offered one: “bad men were instinctively afraid of him”, recalled his daughter. Jane Addams’s lifelong sense of high moral purpose and ongoing effort to realize her ideals through concrete action is traceable in part to the inspiration of her father. After graduating from Rockford College in Illinois in 1882 and a brief, unsatisfactory stint in medical school, Addams experienced some years of uncertainty about her future. In a general way, she always knew that she would live among and help the poor. A tour of England, including a visit to the destitute of the East End of London, and meetings with British reform theorists and activists helped to focus her plans. Influential, too, were her studies of positivist philosophy, prompted by the British follower of Auguste Comte, Frederic Harrison. A visit to Toynbee Hall, an East London settlement founded in 1884 by an Oxford University group stimulated by the ideas of John Ruskin and Lev Tolstoii, helped to crystallize Addams’s determination “to rent a house in a part of [Chicago] where many primitive and actual needs are found, in which young women who have been given over too exclusively to study, might restore a balance of activity along traditional lines and learn from life itself”. Addams’s friend and co-founder of HullHouse, Ellen Gates Starr, wrote in 1889 that for Addams settlement work “is more for the benefit of the people who do it than for the other class, that one gets as much as she gives”. Among the other mostly white, middle-class young women who joined Addams in the formation of Hull-House was Mary Rozet Smith, who became Addams’s companion throughout her life. The Hull-House settlement, which occupied the former country house of a well-to-do Chicago businessman, was located in what developed into a raw district of thousands of Italian, Greek, German, Russian, and other immigrants. Addams and her colleagues provided social services, childcare, boys’ clubs, care for unmarried mothers and battered women, and other benefits to a community subject to the extremely exploitative labour practices of late 19th-century entrepreneurs. In addition to direct social services, Hull-House engaged in political work to institute laws to control child labour, require school attendance, and limit the hours of work for women, as well as efforts for industrial safety and the recognition of labour unions. Following Ruskin and William Morris, Addams believed that there was an important link between art and social reform, and arts programmes, including the Hull-House Players drama group, were integral to her mission. While Twenty Years is laden with information essential to American social history, the autobiography is not only of interest in relation to its public character. Throughout, Addams’s unique voice is discernible: gently probing, striving to find connections between personal vision and public outcomes, and, if we listen closely, self-deprecating and witty. The soft intonation of her personal voice, heard behind and blended with her public tone, is ever present in Twenty Years, but it is heard more faintly, and sometimes not at all, in The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House. Yet this second autobiographical volume provides the essential story of the continued development of Hull-House and the way in which its programmes grew and connected with progressive political and social-reform activity in America and elsewhere. James Robert Payne

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Biography Laura Jane Addams. Born in Cedarville, near Freeport, Illinois, United States, 6 September 1860. Her father was John Huy Addams, a Quaker, prominent local businessman, and Republican politician. Mother died while she was an infant. Father remarried, 1868. Educated at Rockford Female Seminary, Illinois (later Rockford College for Women), 1877–81 (awarded degree 1882). Entered Women’s Medical College, Philadelphia, 1881, but abandoned medical studies after six months due to ill health. Travelled extensively in Europe, 1883–85 and 1887–89, and became influenced by the views of John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle. Visited Toynbee Hall settlement house in London, a philanthropic project for the underprivileged, with Starr, a close friend. Founded the pioneering Hull-House settlement in a poor neighbourhood of Chicago, in partnership with Ellen Gates Starr, financed partly by a legacy from her father, 1889. Initiated many educational and social-welfare projects at Hull-House, which served as a model for many subsequent settlement houses. Active in politics, women’s suffrage campaigns, and labour and social-reform movements in Chicago from 1890. Wrote and lectured widely on these issues, sponsored partly by the Carnegie Foundation. Member of mediation commission of Pullman railroad strike, 1894. Published Democracy and Social Ethics (1902), Newer Ideals of Peace (1907), and Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910). Member of Chicago School Board from 1905. Participated in founding of Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, 1908. First woman president of National Conference of Charities and Corrections (now National Conference on Social Welfare), 1909. First woman to be awarded honorary degree by Yale University, 1910. Vice-president, National-American Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1911–14. Pro-suffrage columnist for Ladies Home Journal, c.1910. Took part in the Progressive party’s presidential campaign for Theodore Roosevelt, 1912. Refused to support involvement of United States in World War I. Chairman of International Congress of Women, The Hague, 1915. First president of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1919–29. Awarded Nobel Peace Prize (with Nicholas Murray Butler), 1931. Died in Chicago, 21 May 1935.

Selected Writings Twenty Years at Hull-House, 1910; edited by Victoria Bissel Brown, 1999 The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House, September 1909 to September 1929, 1930 When I Was a Girl: The Stories of Five Famous Women as Told by Themselves, edited by Helen Ferris, 1930 (with others) What I Owe to My Father, edited by Sydney Strong, 1972

Further Reading Davis, Allen F., American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams, New York: Oxford University Press, 1973; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975 Davis, Allen F., Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–1914, New York: Oxford University Press, 1967 Harkavy, I. and J.L. Puckett, “Lessons from Hull-House for the Contemporary Urban University”, Social Service Review, 68/3 (1994): 299–321 Haslett, D.C., “Hull House and the Birth Control Movement: An Untold Story”, Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, 12/3 (1997): 261–77 Linn, James Weber, Jane Addams: A Biography, London and New York: Appleton Century, 1935 Lundblad, K.S., “Jane Addams and Social Reform: A Role Model for the 1990s”, Social Work, 40/5 (1995): 661–69 Rudnick, Lois, “A Feminist American Success Myth: Jane Addams’ Twenty Years at Hull-House” in Tradition and the Talents of Women, edited by Florence Howe, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991 Shapiro, B.Z., “Social Action, the Group and Society”, Social Work with Groups, 14/3–4 (1991): 7–21 Sullivan, M., “Social Work’s Legacy of Peace: Echoes from the Early 20th Century”, Social Work, 38/5 (1993): 513–20

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Adolescence and Life Writing Adolescence is usually conflated with the autobiographer’s childhood in life writings, both in retrospective accounts and in diaries written during adolescence, as well as in the meagre critical literature on the subject, little of which is devoted specifically to adolescence. The generic label “childhood”, as Richard Coe, the most sophisticated critic on the topic, uses it in When the Grass Was Taller (1984), applies to life writings that begin early in the author’s life – at birth, or during the pre-school or early school years – and extend to a variety of terminal points that indicate maturity. “Adolescence in life writing” is a term for the segment of these works that begins with the onset of puberty and ends when the subject arrives at maturity (itself another variable and debatable term). This is the period of life when the subject concentrates on growing up and coming of age – growing out and away from the family of nurture until some measure of independence and autonomy is reached. Thus this discussion of adolescence in autobiographies extracts this topic from the larger segment of the life span in which it is usually embedded. Life writings depict the development of the adolescent subject’s moral, sexual, social, religious, political, and economic sensibilities, in varying proportions, whether in imitation or defiance of one’s parents and culture. Other proofs of maturity that demarcate the end of adolescence (and often, the end of the book) are characterized by some form of motion, of fluid transition from one state to another: leaving home, perhaps never to return – unlike the epic, whose journeying hero always comes home – (Mary McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, 1957); a break with one’s parents (Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, 1976); departure for (or graduation from) college (Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time, 1967); enlistment in the military or embarkation on one’s chosen career (Alice Kaplan’s French Lessons, 1993); marriage (Russell Baker’s Growing Up, 1982); parenthood (Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1969); coming out sexually (Paul Monette’s Becoming a Man, 1992); or acknowledging an ethnic or racial heritage (Peter Balakian’s Black Dog of Fate, 1997). These do not necessarily happen concurrently or in a particular sequence, and may occur at a wide range of chronological ages. The stress and complexity of these maturing processes provide the adolescent’s coming-of-age with motifs, narrative structures, and a variety of tones and perspectives; in quality literature – popular perception notwithstanding – these are rarely sentimental. The extended treatment of adolescence in life writing is a relatively recent form in Western literature, for it could not exist until the culture acknowledged adolescence itself as a specific, definable, and necessary – however problematic – state of human development deserving of notice. Throughout medieval Europe and much of modern Africa, children and adolescents have been regarded as adults-in-training and undifferentiated members of clans or tribes until an initiation ceremony (or perhaps marriage) marked them as adults, not teenagers, a term so recent it has not been cited in the Oxford English Dictionary. Adolescent (including Freudian) psychology was – and remains – irrelevant in cultures where youths with “complexes” are treated as social misfits and are unlikely to survive. Religion and philosophy reinforced this sociologically based impatience with the young; in his Confessions (written c.397–400), St Augustine

set the pattern for the next 1400 years by treating his youthful self as the negation of everything he was later to become: “I am loth, indeed, to count [this] as part of the life I led in this world.” Only within the past 150 years has adolescence been treated as a distinctive life stage in life writing, primarily in cultures that value democracy, individuality, and equality: France and Britain, North America and Australia, the emerging Third World, and (surprisingly) Russia. The subject’s adolescent years have figured prominently in notable autobiographies spanning the subject’s entire life, such as Rousseau’s Confessions (1782–89), Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (1791), and Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845; this version, a notable coming-of-age work, expanded as his life continued). In most serial autobiographies, such as those by Douglass, Simone de Beauvoir, and Maya Angelou, the later volumes seldom attain the literary quality of those concerning the adolescent stage, perhaps because in the earliest volume the author has rehearsed the stories and obtained both the selfunderstanding and the distance from these more remote events to transmute uninformed life into informed art. It may also be that because conversations, characters, and significant details of the author’s adolescent life are less readily documented, they lend themselves to greater fictionalizing. Indeed, many of the best treatments of adolescence are written by novelists – for example, Hamlin Garland’s A Son of the Middle Border (1917), Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory (1951, 1966), McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, John Updike’s SelfConsciousness (1989), and Tobias Wolff ’s This Boy’s Life (1989). Adolescent diaries by thoughtful, introspective writers (most notably, Anne Frank, first published 1947) reveal the creation of a reflective, analytic self who establishes a separate, independent existence within the work even when it is impossible to do so in actual life. Adolescence as a life stage flourished in 20th-century life writing, and this is not surprising, given the era’s emphasis on adolescent psychology, education, and (a particularly Western) media glorification of teenage culture and sensibility. Many of these accounts of growing up are also tales of surmounting family hardships (Baker’s Growing Up), extreme living conditions (Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, 1996), racial discrimination (Richard Wright’s Black Boy, 1945), life-threatening illness (Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face, 1994), and dysfunctional families, particularly in the confessional 1990s (Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club: A Memoir, 1995). Others are more lyrical and idealized (Susan Allen Toth’s Blooming: A Small-Town Girlhood, 1981, and Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood, 1987). Adolescence in autobiography lends itself to varied theoretical and pragmatic readings, either as social polemics (Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 1860), or as arguments for or against a particular philosophy (Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory, 1982) or way of life (Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior). These autobiographers have re-created their own characters and made them larger than life, suffused with compressed and pungent meaning. Lynn Z. Bloom See also Childhood and Life Writing; Children’s Life Writing; Family Relations and Life Writing; Fatherhood and Life Writing; Motherhood and Life Writing

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Further Reading Adams, Timothy Dow, “Deafness and Deftness in CODA Autobiography: Ruth Sidransky’s In Silence and Lou Ann Walker’s A Loss for Words”, Biography, 20/2 (1997): 141–55 Bloom, Lynn Z., “Coming of Age in the Segregated South: Autobiographies of Twentieth-Century Childhoods, Black and White” in Home Ground: Southern Autobiography, edited by J. Bill Berry, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991 Challener, Daniel Delo, “The Autobiographies of Resilient Children: Brothers and Keepers, Hunger of Memory, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, This Boy’s Life, and The Woman Warrior” (dissertation), Provincetown, Rhode Island: Brown University, 1994 Coe, Richard N., When the Grass Was Taller: Autobiography and the Experience of Childhood, New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 1984 Figge, Susan G., “Father Books: Memoirs of the Children of Fascist Fathers” in Revealing Lives: Autobiography, Biography, and Gender, edited by Susan Groag Bell and Marilyn Yalom, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990 Foster, Frances Smith, “Parents and Children in Autobiography by Southern Afro-American Writers” in Home Ground: Southern Autobiography, edited by J. Bill Berry, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991 Greve, Janis, “Orphanhood and ‘Photo’-portraiture in Mary McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood” in American Women’s Autobiography: Fea(s)ts of Memory, edited by Margo Culley, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992 Haviland, J.M. and D.A. Kramer, “Affect-Cognition Relationships in Adolescent Diaries: The Case of Anne Frank”, Human Development, 34/3 (1991): 143–59 Hazlett, John Downton, My Generation: Collective Autobiography and Identity Politics, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998 Hirsch, Marianne, “Resisting Images: Rereading Adolescence” in Provoking Agents: Gender and Agency in Theory and Practice, edited by Judith Kegan Gardiner, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995 Jacobson, Marcia, Being a Boy Again: Autobiography and the American Boy Book, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994 Labovitz, Esther K., “The Female Bildungsroman in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Study: Dorothy Richardson, Simone de Beauvoir, Doris Lessing, Christa Wolf” (dissertation), New York: New York University, 1982 Lim, Shirley Geok-Lin, “The Tradition of Chinese American Women’s Life Stories: Thematics of Race and Gender in Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior” in American Women’s Autobiography: Fea(s)ts of Memory, edited by Margo Culley, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992 Litowitz, B. and R. Gundlach, “When Adolescents Write: Semiotic and Social Dimensions of Adolescents’ Personal Writing”, Adolescent Psychiatry, 14 (1987): 82–111 Maynes, M.J., “Adolescent Sexuality and Social Identity in French and German Lower-Class Autobiography”, Journal of Family History, 17/4 (1992): 397–418 Olney, James, “Parents and Children in Robert Penn Warren’s Autobiography” in Home Ground: Southern Autobiography, edited by J. Bill Berry, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991

Africa: North Various forms of life writing, including autobiographical novels, life stories, and to a lesser extent published diaries and correspondence, came to particular prominence in the Maghreb from the 1950s onwards, with the development of the independence movements, as the colony of Algeria and the protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia sought to liberate themselves from French colonial power. The identity of the individual, of the com-

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munity, and of the nation in the colonial and postcolonial contexts; debates concerning the language of expression and the relationship between language and identity; and questions of perception and representation of self and other were concerns shared by writers across these three countries, although with variations in emphasis resulting from the different experiences of colonial rule. It is therefore important to consider each country separately, taking into account the historical context, and stressing that the life writings considered here are written in French, a consequence of the school system introduced by the colonial power and necessitating a consideration of the influence of French language and literature. The question of the influence of Arabic literature in North Africa is a complex one, and although it is true to say that the question of the self is important in the development of modern Arabic literature (and that forms of life writing exist also in the classical Arabic tradition), there is little evidence of widespread Arabic literary influence. In addition to this, the influence of the region’s oral culture (including Berber and dialectal Arabic) is more important when considering literary forms of autobiographical discourse and its figures and modes of expression. The mixture of writers from Islamic, Jewish, and Christian cultures in North Africa adds to the diversity of life writing. There is remarkable vigour in this desire to speak of the self, although often in order to “represent”, in both meanings of the word, the wider social group, given the traditional conduct in Muslim society in which social identity is more valued than the individualism promoted in Western society. Several of these writers contributed to the development of autobiographical discourses in the second half of the 20th century, and the more experimental forms make an interesting parallel to the “new autobiography” in France. Algeria was colonized in 1830 and achieved independence after a bloody seven-year war in 1962. The French school system was put in place during the 1880s and 1890s, and from the 1920s onwards Algerians began writing and publishing in French. The writers of the period 1920–50 are usually considered, with the exceptions of the overtly nationalist Ali El Hammami and Malek Bennabi, to be culturally and politically assimilated and, while often expressing the need to maintain an Algerian identity, largely accepted the alliance with the colonizer seen as important in the evolution towards modernity. In addition, there is the work of Pied-noir writers (people of European origin in colonial Algeria), notably Louis Bertrand and Robert Randau, whose works contain a significant autobiographical element, with Bertrand also writing directly of his experiences in texts such as Mes années d’apprentissage [1938; My Apprenticeship Years]. More recently Marie Cardinal with Les Mots pour le dire (1975; The Words to Say It) and the publication of Albert Camus’s final manuscript, an autobiographical novel, Le Premier Homme (1994; The First Man) have revived interest in the Pied-noir experience. It was from 1945 onwards, under the impact of World War II, including the defeat of France in 1940, and the brutal repression of a demonstration in Sétif on 8 May 1945, that Algerians expressed the need to question in a new way their identity both individually and collectively. A founding text of life writing in this period is Mouloud Feraoun’s autobiographical novel Le Fils du pauvre [1950; The Poor Man’s Son], begun in 1939. It is however less overtly political than the work that would be produced by writers belonging to what the Tunisian Albert Memmi,

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one of the most important figures in North African literature and thought, would call the “Generation of 52” writing across the Maghreb. Often, but not always, taking the form of largely autobiographical novels, all of these works were produced in the awareness that the writer is a “witness” with a duty to be a “public” writer, and they are concerned with the effects of colonialism and the war of independence on individuals and on society. The most prominent names are Mohammed Dib, Mouloud Mammeri, Malek Haddad, and especially Kateb Yacine, whose Nedjma (1956), an “autobiography in the plural” as he called it, is an essential text in the development of more experimental forms of autobiographical discourse. Important writers who followed, from the 1960s onwards, are the controversial Rachid Boudjedra, Nabile Farès, Tahar Djaout, and Rachid Mimouni. These authors, although often not autobiographical in a direct or traditional sense, share a preoccupation with individual and collective identity and memory, and with the transformation of society under the impact of war and revolution, often expressing disillusionment. Feraoun remained an important figure in life writing until his assassination in 1962 and beyond, with the publication of his diary (1955–62) and his correspondence, Lettres à ses amis [1969; Letters to His Friends]. It was in the 1970s and 1980s that women writers came to prominence in the Maghreb, giving voice to the traditional “silence” of women in the public arena. Foremost among these is the Algerian Assia Djebar (b. 1936), who had deliberately turned away from self-reflection in her early novels of the 1950s and 1960s, yet who inaugurated what can be seen as a vast autobiographical project with Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement (1980; Women of Algiers in Their Apartment), a collection of short stories, with an important theoretical “postface” on the concept of the look and the other, and especially in L’Amour la fantasia (1985; Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade) and Vaste est la prison (1995; So Vast the Prison). Ces voix qui m’assiègent [1999; These Voices Which Besiege Me] is a further meditation on language, identity, and her personal itinerary in literature. In this last text she writes also on the autobiography of an earlier Kabyle Christian woman, Fadhma Aïth Mansour Amrouche, mother of the French-language poet Jean Amrouche and of the woman writer Taos Amrouche, the latter herself an author of several autobiographical novels. Fadhma Amrouche’s Histoire de ma vie (1968; My Life Story), written in 1946, was the first autobiographical text in French by an Algerian woman, and again a founding text of life writing in North Africa. Jean Déjeux documents in his invaluable study numerous published life stories “often dealing with the experience of the war of independence, political action, incarceration, and exile”, for example, Saïd Ferdi’s, Un enfant dans la guerre: Algérie 1954–1962 [1981; A Child in the War] and Hocine Aït Ahmed’s, Mémoires d’un combattant: l’esprit d’indépendance 1942–1952 [1983; Memoirs of a Fighter: The Spirit of Independence 1942–1952], together with details of published correspondence. An identifiable body of life writing beginning in the 1980s concerns the work of writers such as Azouz Begag and Mehdi Charef, who first gave voice to the young immigrant and second-generation immigrant North African populations of the inner cities of France, known as beurs, originally a slang term for “arabs” and adopted as an identity for a community caught between two cultures. Finally, a collection edited by the writer

Leïla Sebbar, Une Enfance algérienne [1997; An Algerian Childhood], brings together the childhood stories of writers and thinkers of different generations and of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian origin. Morocco became a French protectorate in 1912 and achieved independence in 1956. Since French became the language of political and administrative power, Moroccans realized that in order to take control of the country, the knowledge and practice of that language were necessary, and attendance in French schools increased, especially after 1945. It was in the 1950s that two writers rose to prominence: Ahmed Sefrioui, particularly with the story of his childhood, La Boîte à merveilles [1954; The Box of Wonders], and the controversial Driss Chraïbi, with his own work on a traumatized childhood and the figure of the father, Le Passé simple (1954; The Simple Past). In 1966 Abdellatif Laâbi launched the influential review Souffles which rallied together writers and thinkers from across the Maghreb. It was banned in 1972 and Laâbi was imprisoned for eight years; his correspondence from this period is published in Chroniques de la citadelle d’exil [1983; Chronicles from the Citadel of Exile]. In the 1960s and 1970s Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine continued the investigation into childhood with texts such as Moi l’aigre [1970; Me, the Bitter One]. Abdelkébir Khatibi, who had published theoretical texts in Souffles, wrote La Mémoire tatouée [1971; Tattooed Memory], “the autobiography of a decolonized man” as he called it, an important text of the more experimental writing in North African literature in French. The correspondence between Khatibi and the Egyptian writer Jacques Hassoun living in France is published under the title Le Même Livre [1985; The Same Book], as is a text that the author calls “a personal psychoanalysis”, Par-dessous l’épaule [1988; Over the Shoulder]. The work of the best-known Moroccan writer, Tahar Ben Jelloun, began to appear in 1973, and constantly treats questions of identity; with L’Ecrivain public [1983; The Public Writer] he shows how a child (reminiscent of the author himself) begins to invent stories. In 1983 a writer of a younger generation, Abdelhak Serhane, continued the Moroccan preoccupation with the traumas of childhood with Messaouda (1983). The Jewish identity in Morocco is treated by Edmond Amran El Maleh, especially in Mille Ans, un jour [1986; A Thousand Years, One Day]. Mention should also be made of the autobiography of Mohamed Choukri, Le Pain nu (For Bread Alone), translated from Arabic into French by Ben Jelloun and published in 1980. Tunisia became a French protectorate in 1881 and gained independence in 1956, the same year as Morocco. From the 1920s onwards French was widely taught and necessary in order to work in the administration of the country, and many Tunisian intellectuals acquired two cultures. A literature in French was largely begun by Jewish writers in the 1920s and 1930s. Notable among these was Ryvel (pseudonym of Raphaël Lévy), writing on life in the Jewish ghetto. It was with the autobiographical novel by Albert Memmi, again a Jewish writer and intellectual, La Statue de sel (1953; The Pillar of Salt) that Tunisia joined with Algeria and Morocco in the political thrust of the writing of the 1950s. Memmi remains an essential figure for North African literature and thought in French, and his whole body of work can be seen as a long meditation on self and the “other” in the contexts of colonialism and postcolonialism. There are fewer writers in French from Muslim backgrounds,

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but it is worth noting Hachemi Baccouche with his autobiographical novel Ma foi demeure [1958; My Faith Remains]. Abdelwahab Meddeb, who in common with Khatibi in Morocco has an interest in identity, memory, and language, was one of a new generation of writers, publishing the experimental Talismano (1979). Among woman writers, the work of Hélé Béji in L’Oeil du jour [1985; The Eye of the Day], a meditation on memory and on modern and traditional ways of life, is notable. As with all writers from the Maghreb, work on both the politics and the poetics of identity is in evidence. Debra Kelly Further Reading Autobiographies et récits de vie en Afrique, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1991 (essay collection) Chikhi, Beïda, Maghreb en textes: écriture, histoire, savoirs et symboliques: essai sur l’épreuve de modernité dans la littérature de langue française, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996 Déjeux, Jean, Maghreb littératures de langue française, Paris: Arcantère, 1993 Dunwoodie, Peter, Writing French Algeria, Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1998 Erickson, John, Islam and Postcolonial Narrative, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998 Geesey, Patricia, “Collective Autobiography: Algerian Women and History in Assia Djebar’s L’Amour, la fantasia”, Dalhousie French Studies, 35 (1996): 153–67 Hornung, Alfred and Ernstpeter Ruhe (editors), Postcolonialisme et autobiographie: Albert Memmi, Assia Djebar, Daniel Maximin, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998 Jack, Belinda, Francophone Literatures: An Introductory Survey, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996 Orlando, Valérie, Nomadic Voices of Exile: Feminine Identity in Francophone Literature of the Maghreb, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1999 Mathieu, Martine (editor), Littératures autobiographiques de la francophonie, Paris: CELFA /L’Harmattan, 1996 Segarra, Marta, Leur pesant de poudre: romancières francophones du Maghreb, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997

Africa: East Although East Africa is sometimes defined as including countries farther afield, this survey concentrates on Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, which have historically formed a triad and which constitute a region in which life writing exhibits several distinctive patterns. Exceptions to such patterns necessarily abound in this region, with its long and various histories and its diverse languages and ways of life. The achievement of Shaaban Robert is one such example: a Tanzanian considered to be the first significant modern writer in Swahili, he is author of Maisha yangu (1949; My Life), as well as the biography of a noted singer of tarab music, Wasifu wa Siti Binti Saad (1955; The Narrative of the Life of Siti Binti Saad). The patterns described here are intended to serve as starting points for the more intensive study that East African life writing rewards. Much life writing related to East Africa, and particularly that for which it is best known, has been defined by travel. There are narratives by and about long- and short-term travellers in the region: merchants, explorers, missionaries, settlers, and others. And there are counter-narratives, typically by the Africans affected, and often imposed upon, by their equivocal guests. The

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life writing of this region is generally marked, indeed often motivated, by this dichotomy. Early travellers’ records of life along the East African coast, where trading centres developed, range from Periplus Maris Erythraei (The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea), attributed to a Greek trader from Egypt in the first century ce, to the Rihl?t (Travels) of Ibn Batt?ta, dictated by this famous Moroccan pilgrim to Mecca in the early 14th century. There is an important cluster of contemporaneous accounts, some by eyewitnesses, of the experiences of Portuguese mariners who set their fleets down on the coast as they made their way to and from India in the late 1400s and early 1500s, e.g. Roteiro da Primeira Viagem de Vasco da Gama (A Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama) and Livro de Duarte Barbosa (The Book of Duarte Barbosa). But it was in the 19th century, as foreign explorers moved farther inland, that a formula for writing about East Africa, rooted in a Romantic responsiveness to nature, was most assiduously developed and exploited. The typical narrative of this period entwines the traveller’s life with the hazards and wonders of the East African landscape that he is describing, e.g.: the confirmation by Johann Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann, in the 1840s, that snow-capped mountains existed on the African equator, recorded in Krapf’s Reisen in Ostafrika (1860; Travels, Researches, and Missionary Labours During an Eighteen Years’ Residence in Eastern Africa); the first European ascent of Kilimanjaro, by Charles New, described in his Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa (1873); the first crossing of equatorial Africa from east to west by a European, recounted in Verney Lovett Cameron’s Across Africa (1877). Often, the figure and character of the traveller came – in rhetoric and in the public imagination – to dominate the East African landscape; and each “discovery” or “first” mattered as much for its connection to the traveller’s life as for its geological or cultural significance to the region. Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke, the first Europeans to reach Lake Tanganyika, epitomize this phenomenon. Speke, who pushed on to Lake Victoria, which he identified as a source of the Nile (while Burton favoured Lake Tanganyika), published his Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1863) and What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1864). Among Burton’s voluminous literary output were a series of articles entitled “Zanzibar; and Two Months in East Africa” (1858), which were published in Blackwood’s Magazine, and Lake Regions of Central Africa (1860), which exhibited his growing antagonism toward Speke. Though Speke has provoked some curiosity, in large part because of the mystery of his suicide or accidental death on the day before he was to debate Burton publicly, it is Burton who has proved most attractive to biographers (e.g. The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, 1893, by his wife, Isabel; The True Life of Capt. Sir Richard F. Burton, 1896, by his niece, Georgiana Stisted; Thomas Wright’s The Life of Sir Richard Burton, 1906; Byron Farwell’s Burton, 1963; Fawn M. Brodie’s The Devil Drives, 1967; and Edward Rice’s Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, 1990). They dominated the rhetorical scene, but men like Burton did not encompass life writing in its entirety in East Africa in the 19th century. Though it forms a relatively small category, life writing by women is noteworthy (e.g.: Sultan to Sultan, 1892, by May French Sheldon, a wealthy American who adopted the traditionally masculine role of independent explorer in Maasai

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country; and Letters from East Africa, 1901, by Gertrude Ward – the novelist Mrs Humphry Ward’s sister-in-law – who was a medical missionary in Tanzania). Women’s lives, it should be noted, were often also written into narratives by others (e.g.: Samuel White Baker’s wife, Florence, who travelled with him, shares the stage in his The Albert N’yanza, 1866; and oblique, but still vital and interesting, glimpses of the lives of a variety of East African women – leaders, servants, slaves, converts, and many others – can be derived from descriptions of individuals, though often unnamed, whom authors encountered). Emilie Ruete’s Memoiren einer arabischen Prinzessin (1886; Memoirs of an Arabian Princess) offers an unusual account – first published in Germany – by an East African woman, a daughter of the Sultan of Zanzibar. The explorer Henry Morton Stanley’s arrangement with Mutesa I (who figures importantly in Stanley’s Through the Dark Continent, 1878, as well as in Speke’s work) to accept missionaries into his kingdom opened the way for interconnected life stories of missionaries and their converts in Uganda. The Last Journals of Bishop Hannington (1888) – diary entries by the Anglican bishop who, along with his African companions, was abducted and killed in 1885 by representatives of Mutesa’s successor – include a poignant variety of life writing, the cartoons in which James Hannington depicted his travels for his children left at home. Albert B. Lloyd, who went to Uganda in 1894, describes his missionary work and travels in In Dwarf Land and Cannibal Country (1899) and Uganda to Khartoum (1906). In Apolo of the Pygmy Forest (1923) Lloyd tells the story of Apolo Kivebulaya, an African convert who ministered in western Uganda. Two more converts of the Church Missionary Society – Apolo Kagwa, the katikiro (or prime minister) of Buganda, and Ham Mukasa, his secretary – were invited to the coronation of King Edward VII of Britain. Mukasa’s Uganda’s Katikiro in England (1904) has been translated from the original Luganda and published in several editions, most recently in 1998. It is useful to mention here that the continuing and changing history of the traditional Ugandan kingdoms provided a theme for autobiography in the 20th century (for example, Prince Akiki K. Nyabongo’s The Story of an African Chief, 1935; Mutesa II’s The Desecration of My Kingdom, 1967; and Elizabeth of Toro’s African Princess, 1983). For Europeans and Americans the most pervasive images of East Africa and of lives led in East Africa are probably those created by writers who were tourists and settlers in the first half of the 20th century. In the mid-1930s, the novelist Ernest Hemingway travelled under the guidance of big-game hunter Philip Percival and shaped the real events of his safari for literary effect in Green Hills of Africa (1935). The image of the white adventurer in East Africa that Hemingway made fashionable, and which still endures, was not an entirely original one. Hemingway had modelled his own travels on those of Theodore Roosevelt who, after leaving the American presidency, had gone on safari in 1909, also guided by Percival, and written African Game Trails (1910). Game-hunting – with gun or camera – is a theme of numerous memoirs of this period. Winston Churchill’s My African Journey (1908) describes his travels in Kenya and Uganda; Martin Johnson’s Camera Trails in Africa (1924) is as remarkable for its depiction of his wife, Osa, a hunter whose avidity seems at odds with their naturalist enterprise, as it is for Martin’s lyrical renderings of the landscape; Osa Johnson’s I

Married Adventure (1940) also touches on this American couple’s film-making in East Africa; Philip Percival’s Hunting, Settling, and Remembering has been published in a limited edition (1997). Bror von Blixen-Finecke, Percival’s Danish partner in the safari business, produced a memoir, Nyama (1936; African Hunter), laden with the often bureaucratic details of the life of a big-game hunter. His wife, Karen Blixen – using her pseudonym Isak Dinesen – wrote Den afrikanske farm (1937; Out of Africa) and a sequel Skygger på graesset (1960; Shadows on the Grass), in which she related the now famous events attending the failure of her coffee plantation in Kenya’s Ngong Hills. Particularly since its reissue in the 1980s, Beryl Markham’s West with the Night (1942) – which describes Markham’s childhood in Kenya, her careers as an equestrian and an aviatrix, and the activities of the same settler community that Blixen lived within – has garnered admiration, and also controversy. Hemingway greatly admired Markham’s book; others contended that the book had been ghostwritten. The lives of the European explorers of the 19th century and the white hunters and settlers of the 20th are often most attractively described in narratives that evoke lost eras of adventure and romance. The significant and complex set of narratives that counter this view of colonialism’s impact is perhaps best represented by the wide range of life writing that surrounds the so-called Mau Mau Rebellion, the organized resistance to British rule in Kenya in the 1950s. Jomo Kenyatta, who became Kenya’s prime minister, and then its president, after the rebellion, early on connected life writing to political aims (for instance, his important study of the Kikuyu, Facing Mount Kenya, 1938, combines autobiography with ethnography). R. Mugo Gatheru’s Child of Two Worlds (1964) – which has been described as “somewhat derivative” of Facing Mount Kenya – is the autobiography of a Kenyan who was studying abroad during the Emergency, as it was called. Gatheru connects the story of his own education to the history of his country’s struggle for independence. Some accounts focus on women’s lives during Mau Mau (e.g. Muthoni Likimani’s Passbook Number F. 47927 (1985), named for the author’s own identity card; Wambui Waiyaki Otieno’s Mau Mau’s Daughter (1998), by a woman active in the Mau Mau movement). But this genre’s focus is typically a masculine one. Marshall S. Clough points out that “memoirs of the counterinsurgency” (e.g. William Baldwin’s Mau Mau Manhunt, 1957; Ian Henderson’s The Hunt for Kimathi, 1958, which concerns Dedan Kimathi, a leader of the rebellion; and Frank Kitson’s Gangs and CounterGangs, 1960) bear disturbing similarities to the memoirs of the big-game hunters. Autobiographies by the rebels themselves (e.g. Josiah Mwangi Kariuki’s Mau Mau Detainee, 1963; Karari Njama’s Mau Mau from Within, 1966; and Waruhiu Itote’s Mau Mau General, 1967) provide first-hand details of Mau Mau, from early experiences that shaped the authors’ attitudes toward the British to later experiences in the British detention camps. These Mau Mau memoirs typically attempt both to dispel gossip surrounding the rebels’ practices – the taking of oaths, for instance – and to place the rebellion in historical context. They are contemporary records of a modern political event, and they provide a local pattern for life writing. Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Githae Mugo co-wrote the play The Trial of Declan Kimathi (1976). Mau Mau Detainee served as a model for Detained (1981), the “prison diary” by Ngugi, whose co-

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authorship and production of a play in Kikuyu led to his imprisonment in Kenya in the late 1970s. Here are new patterns, but they are nonetheless shadowed and shaped by memories, still alive in East Africa, of “the great days before the Europeans came”, as Kariuki calls them. Amber Vogel Further Reading Clough, Marshall S., Mau Mau Memoirs: History, Memory, and Politics, Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1998 Freeman-Grenville, G.S.P., The East African Coast: Select Documents from the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Century, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962 Hibbert, Christopher, Africa Explored: Europeans in the Dark Continent, 1769–1889, London: Allen Lane, 1982; New York: Norton, 1983 Huxley, Elspeth (editor), Nine Faces of Kenya: An Anthology, London: Collins Harvill, 1990; New York: Viking Press, 1991 Ochieng’, William R., “Autobiography in Kenyan History”, Ufahamu, 14/2 (1985): 80–101 Olney, James, Tell Me Africa: An Approach to African Literature, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1973 Riesz, János and Ulla Schild (editors), Autobiographical Genres in Africa, Berlin: Reimer, 1996

Africa: Southern Southern African life writing is characterized by an engagement with the tumultuous history of colonialism and the violent struggle for liberation in the region, and it is unsurprising that dispossession, resistance, imprisonment, exile, and redemption are its recurring themes. While white explorers and settlers left early accounts of exploration and travel narratives, the central tradition of black life writing has characteristically taken the form of testimonials, protest writings, and prison memoirs. South Africa, with the longest period of European contact, has the longest history of writing in sub-Saharan Africa, and its literature is certainly the best known in the English-speaking West. This dominant literary history has subsumed the writing efforts of its neighbouring countries. The establishment of Fort Hare College in 1912 by members of the South African Native National Congress encouraged many black South African students who would later record their lives. Literary activity became more prolific in the 1950s when the educated elite began to write their personal experiences in response to independence movements, so that modern writing became closely linked with liberation efforts and independence throughout the region. Indeed, the first generation of black writers such as the South Africans Peter Abrahams (b. 1919) and Ezekiel Mphahlele (b. 1919) emerged around this time, and were teachers of those involved in nationalist politics. Likewise, the independence period brought an unprecedented quantity of writing from those who would otherwise have been unable to write under oppressive regimes. Southern African life writing emerged in a truly modern voice across the region, one that engages with the often violent history of colonialism, and liberation struggle, often in the language of its former colonizer. Early life writing in southern Africa was largely defined by travel and exploration, and the letters and diaries of European travellers and explorers who recorded their lives were numer-

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ous. The Letters of Lady Anne Barnard to Henry Dundas from the Cape and Elsewhere, 1793–1803 (1973) records Barnard’s correspondence with Henry Dundas, secretary for war and the colonies, and provides a glimpse of the first British occupation of the Cape region. Other early writings were by missionaries and hunters, seeking to promote colonial causes, with one notable exception: the missionary writings of Frances Colenso, a bishop’s wife, depict an anti-colonial stance in some 300 letters on life in Natal between 1865 and 1893 (collected in Colenso: Letters from Natal, edited by W. Rees, 1958). A wave of British and Irish settlers arrived in 1820 in South Africa as part of a scheme by the British government to ensure the colony’s survival and growth. These settlers were eager to record their new lives, and provided a start to South African literary production, resulting in, for example, Thomas Pringle’s African Sketches (1834), Jeremiah Goldswain’s Chronicle of Jeremiah Goldswain (1946, 1949), and the Revd H.H. Dugmore’s The Reminiscences of an Albany Settler (1871). These settler accounts often discussed the hardships of economic survival rather than political or racial views, while others, such as M.B. Hudson’s A Feature in South African Frontier Life … A Complete Record of the Kafir War (1852), present stereotypical relations between the European settlers and the natives. The late 18th and early 19th centuries brought an unprecedented number of explorers to South Africa, many of whom wrote about their travels, in such accounts as the Journals of Andrew Geddes Bain (1949) and the Diary of Henry Francis Fynn (1950). Life writings provide the reader with details of early life in the settlement and were often eyewitness accounts of historical events, such as George Mwase’s A Dialogue of Nyasaland: Record of Past Events, Environments and the Present Outlook within the Protectorate (1815), an account of a peasant uprising in colonial plantations, which includes a biography of the Revd John Chilembwe, its leader. Mwase’s work is believed to be the first extended writing in English by a Malawian author. The real efflorescence of life writing, apart from such accounts of settler life and colonial administrations, was not to take place until much later in the region, in the dying days of colonialism and in the emerging independent states. In South Africa, the special case of apartheid rule imposed by the Nationalist government provoked a profusion of autobiographies by ordinary citizens who framed their stories as testimony, including Naboth Mokgatle’s Autobiography of an Unknown South African (1971), Mark Mathabane’s Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa (1986), and Michael Dingake’s My Fight against Apartheid (1987). Black and white writers alike felt an obligation to illustrate the suffering of the black and coloured populations. The popularity of life writing to call attention to oppression and injustice naturally extended across the region; the experiences of ordinary Angolans under Portuguese rule were recorded by Don Barnett and Roy Harvey in The Revolution in Angola (1972). In an area plagued with political turmoil, it is unsurprising that biographies and autobiographies of the region’s political leaders abound, including the former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda’s own Zambia Shall Be Free (1962), Nelson Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom (1994), and Iain Christie’s Samora Machel: A Biography (1988) on the Mozambican leader. The autobiography of the Nobel Peace

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Prize winner and Zulu chief Albert Luthuli, Let My People Go (1962), was translated into eight languages and describes his message of non-violence in the struggle against apartheid. It is interesting to note that Kaunda’s, Luthuli’s, and Mandela’s life stories were written at the height of their careers. Publication of political autobiographies has proved to be a crucial step in the creation of a national consciousness, and of promoting a political leader as a national figure. The genre has also been useful as a means to communicate a leader’s political agenda in terms easily understood by the average citizen. Exiled writers were prolific producers of life writing. Authors whose work had been banned in their respective countries, somewhat ironically, found a wider and more receptive audience in the West. Bloke Modisane’s Blame Me on History (1963), along with Mary Benson’s A Far Cry: The Making of a South African (1989), Ezekiel Mphahlele’s Down Second Avenue (1959), and N. Chabani Manganyi’s Exiles and Homecomings (1983), are personal literatures of exile as well as political struggle. Bessie Head’s autobiographical writings in A Woman Alone (1990) detail her alienation and breakdown as a South African refugee in Botswana. Her psychological trauma is further documented in A Gesture of Belonging: Letters from Bessie Head 1965–1979 (1991). Perhaps it is Lewis Nkosi’s collection of autobiographical essays, Home and Exile (1965), that best illustrates the predicament of exiled writers when he writes, that “to be a black South African means to live in perpetual exile from oneself”. The emerging theme of South African autobiography of the late 20th century is alienation from the land, resulting in both a physical and emotional exile. A special mention should be made of the life writing produced by migrant workers, who have contributed important testimonial works that illustrate their difficulties in the workplace. The discovery of gold in the Transvaal region of South Africa, as well as the institutionalized forced-labour scheme in Angola and Mozambique, gave rise to protest accounts of the harsh working conditions and the collapse of family units. Alfred Qabula’s autobiography, A Working Life: Cruel Beyond Belief (1989), depicts his life as a factory worker turned cultural worker. Qabula’s work distinguishes itself: going beyond a mention of injustices perpetrated against black workers, it provides an examination of black oppression and viable ways to resolve it. Protest literature also appeared in verse: Benedict Wallet Vilakazi wrote Zulu poems that chronicle the plight of the migrant labourer. His early efforts represented a turn from traditional African verse, which previously treated topics such as religion extensively, and avoided controversial ones such as politics. Realism became the dominant style of creative expression among Southern African writers, and it could be argued that the modern African novel itself owes its roots to the life-writing process. It is a widely held belief that João Dias’s Godido (1952), a collection of autobiographical short stories published posthumously, inspired the birth of Mozambican prose writing, and paved the way for Luis Bernardo Honwana’s successful book Nos matamos o Cao-Tinhoso (1964; We Killed Mangy Dog and Other Mozambique Stories), which became the first Lusophone work published in the popular Heinemann’s African Series. The novels by the Zimbabweans Charles Mungoshi (Waiting for the Rain, 1975) and Tsitsi Dangarembga (Nervous Conditions, 1988) both include characters with autobiographi-

cal resemblances to their authors, the latter qualifying as a feminist Bildungsroman. The prominent novelist Ndabezinhle S. Sigogo wrote novels – USethi Ebukhweni Bakhe (1962) and Gudlindlu Mntanami (1967; Rub around the Hut, My Son, and Disappear) – in his native Ndebele using themes based on his own life. His principal objective was to present an alternative to rigid Ndebele traditions. The purpose of his writing was didactic – a way to adapt to new behavioural guidelines in a changing society. A highly creative style of life writing also manifested itself in poetry, as shown by Lusophone poets from Angola and Mozambique, including Orlando de Albuquerges in his Estrela perdida (1951; Lost Star) and Alberto Lacerda in Poemas (1955; Poems). And poetry influenced prose: the South Africans Ezekiel Mphahlele and Peter Abrahams are two writers whose use of poetic language resulted in highly metaphorical, imagistic, and lyrical autobiographies in Down Second Avenue (1959) and Tell Freedom (1954) respectively. Writing by political prisoners forms another distinctive subgenre in the troubled region. Ruth First’s 117 Days (1965) and The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs (1966) are two early and particularly literary examples by white Jewish anti-apartheid activists. Among other contributions are Hugh Lewin’s Bandiet: Seven Years in a South African Prison (1974), D.M. Zwelonke’s Robben Island (1973), Caesarina Kona Makhoere’s No Child’s Play: In Prison under Apartheid (1988), and Breyten Breytenbach’s autobiography, The True Confession of an Albino Terrorist (1984), written while incarcerated for several years. Important in this subgenre is Ellen Kuzwayo’s autobiography, Call Me Woman (1985), which depicts her life as a schoolteacher in Soweto and her subsequent imprisonment for political activism. Her work has often been compared to prison writing across the continent, including Wole Soyinka’s The Man Died (1972) and Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Detained (1981), whose testimonial writing style closely resembles her own. Life writing by women in the region has been especially encouraged in recent years. In Zimbabwe, the organization of publishers and writers, including the Mambo Press and the Zimbabwe Women Writers group, has encouraged the inclusion of women’s writing into the national literature. Wide support of this group enabled the publication of anthologies of their lives. Magazines and journals have also encouraged new writers, including Drum, Fighting Talk, New Age, Ngoma, and especially Staffrider, which specifically sought out the literary voices of young, inexperienced writers. Autobiographical sketches, collected life stories, and interviews with women have been compiled by researchers and academics, often white. These include Sibambene: The Voices of Women at Mboza (1987), which recounts the lives of illiterate rural black women in northeastern Natal; Lesley Lawson’s Working Women: A Portrait of South Africa’s Black Women Workers (1985); Caroline Kerfoot’s We Came to Town (1985); and Sue Gordon’s A Talent for Tomorrow: Life Stories of South African Servants (1985). These stories portray the doubly colonized status of southern African women, not only through race, but also gender, with a notable exception. Edited by Marjorie Shostak, an American anthropologist, Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman (1981) depicts the life of Nisa, who led an independent lifestyle among the !Kung of Botswana, a society that enjoyed a uniquely egalitarian structure. Collected life stories and autobiographical sketches have proven to be a particularly useful

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genre in capturing the life stories of those who traditionally have been unrepresented and voiceless. Grace Ebron See also Apartheid and Post-Apartheid Life Writings

Further Reading Adey, David et al., Companion to South African English Literature, Craighall, South Africa: Donker, 1986 Afekuju, Tony, “Language as Sensation: The Use of Poetic and Evocative Language in Five African Autobiographies” in The Language of African Literature, edited by Edmund Epstein and Robert Kole, Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1988 Chapman, Michael, Southern African Literatures, London and New York: Longman, 1996 Clayton, Cherry, “‘Post-Colonial, Post-Apartheid, Post-Feminist’: Family and State in Prison Narratives by South African Women” in On Shifting Sands: New Art and Literature from South Africa, edited by Kirsten Holst Petersen and Anna Rutherford, Sydney: Dangaroo Press, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1992 Coullie, Judith, “The Power to Name the Real: The Politics of the Worker Testimony in South Africa”, Research in African Literatures, 28/2 (1997): 132–44 Gerard, Albert S., African Language Literatures: An Introduction to the Literary History of Sub-Saharan Africa, London: Longman, and Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1981 Gerard, Albert S. (editor), European-Language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa, Budapest: Akad. Kiado, 1986 Gray, Stephen, Southern African Literature: An Introduction, London: Collings, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1979 Grohs, Gerhard, “Changing Social Functions of African Autobiographies with Special Reference to Political Autobiographies” in Genres autobiographiques en Afrique / Autobiographical genres in Africa, edited by Janos Riesz and Ulla Schild, Berlin: Reimer, 1996 Gunn, Janet Varner, “A Window of Opportunity: An Ethics of Reading Third World Autobiography”, College Literature, 19/3 (1992): 162–69 Jacobs, J.U., “Confession, Interrogation and Self-Interrogation in the New South African Prison Writing” in On Shifting Sands: New Art and Literature from South Africa, edited by Kirsten Holst Petersen and Anna Rutherford, Sydney: Dangaroo Press, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1992 Lovesey, Oliver, “The African Prison Diary as ‘National Allegory’” in Nationalism vs Internationalism: (Inter)national Dimensions of Literatures in English, edited by Wolfgang Zach and Ken L. Goodwin, Tübingen, Germany: Stauffenburg, 1996 Michael, Cheryl-Ann, “Gender and Iconography in Auto/biographies of Nelson and Winnie Mandela” in The Uses of Autobiography, edited by Julia Swindells, London and Bristol, Pennsylvania: Taylor and Francis, 1995 Ngwenya, Thengamehlo Harold, “Ideology and Form in South African Autobiographical Writing: A Study of the Autobiographies of Five South African Authors” (dissertation), abstract in Dissertation Abstracts International, 58/12 (1998): 4649 Olney, James, Tell Me Africa: An Approach to African Literature, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1973 Riesz, János and Ulla Schild (editors), Autobiographical Genres in Africa, Berlin: Reimer, 1996 Rosenblatt, R., “Black Autobiography: Life as the Death Weapon” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by James Olney, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Shava, Piniel Viriri, A People’s Voice: Black South African Writing in the Twentieth Century, London: Zed Books, and Athens: Ohio University Press, 1989 Veit-Wild, Flora, “‘An Outsider in My Own Biography’: From Public Voice to Fragmented Self in Zimbabwean Autobiographical Fiction” in Genres autobiographiques en Afrique / Autobiographical Genres in Africa, edited by Janos Riesz and Ulla Schild, Berlin: Reimer, 1996 Watts, Jane, Black Writers from South Africa: Towards a Discourse of Liberation, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1989

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Africa: West and Central (Francophone) Francophone West and Central Africa encompasses the 14 sovereign nations that were French colonies and the three formerly occupied by Belgian authorities. Since the colonial powers drew national boundaries in accordance with their own political and economic interests without regard to the history of the area, the inhabitants of any one nation belong to different ethnic groups speaking a variety of languages. Most of the 170 million inhabitants of the region neither read nor write, and communicate in their particular native tongues. Rivalry between indigenous languages is strong; French, though not understood by all, is the only common language. Under these circumstances it is a matter of controversy whether the literature of the area should be subdivided into national literatures. Opponents of this, such as Sembène Ousmane (Senegal) and Guy Ossito Midiohouan (Benin), contend that such a fragmentation would sanction European cultural domination, and that the cultures of the region rather form a single rich mosaic, as can be seen from the designs of textiles and pottery. An examination of life writing proves them right. In different parts of the region, African autobiographers accentuate equally the importance of community, and perceive ties between their personal memories and the collective memory. Because of this pervasive viewpoint Europeans and North Americans, conditioned by centuries of individualism in autobiography, sometimes question the validity of including African life writing in studies of autobiography. Some argue that autobiography, as a genre, does not exist in Africa, because the individual does not view himself or herself as separate from his or her extended family, present, past, and future; others think that for this very reason African writing is always autobiographical. Actually, both these representations are unsubstantiated, particularly since there is no single universally accepted definition of autobiography. One could require a declaration by the author that the work is autobiographical, or agree with the critic Philippe Lejeune who leaves it up to the reader to decide what is autobiographical: “I will call autobiographical all fiction in which the reader may have reasons – on the basis of resemblances which he sees – to suspect identity between the narrator and the author, even though the author may have denied this identity, or at least has failed to avow it” [my translation]. A chronological survey can best illustrate the evolution of sub-Saharan autobiographical writing in French. Except for an important filiation in Weltanschauung, it owes little to oral literature. It has no ties to early 20th-century French-language African life writing that was sponsored and edited by French teachers and administrators, and which uniformly reflected French values. Also French, rather than African in spirit, are the earliest autobiographical novels, Bakary Diallo’s Force-Bonté [1926; Strength-Goodness] and Ousmane Socé’s Karim (1935). To find the first elements of African autobiography in the region one must turn to the seminal work of a group of blacks in Paris, who in the 1930s and 1940s formulated Négritude. Their foremost spokesman was Léopold Sédar Senghor (b. 1906), whose poems were vehicles for his ideology. While an admirer of French culture and stylistically influenced by French poets, Senghor was deeply devoted to his own heritage. He sought to

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restore African dignity compromised by colonialism, to win recognition for African culture, and to prove that the distinct emotional contribution it made to humanity was no less important than Europe’s rational superiority. He published collections of poems (1945–61), mostly based on his personal history, summoning up the splendours of childhood in his native Joal and invoking the magic of Senegalese landscapes and sounds. Autobiographical details are also present in his other poems and in prose passages published in Liberté (5 vols, 1964–93), which he wrote as president of Senegal and member of the Académie Française. Partly inspired by Senghor’s viewpoint and lyricism was the earliest and most important avowed autobiography, L’Enfant noir (1953; The Dark Child) by the Guinean Camara Laye (1928–80). In two voices, that of the child protagonist speaking in the past tense, and that of the narrator in the present, Camara recalls his childhood and adolescence. The author in his twenties, cold and lonely in Paris, was primarily seeking consolation in memories. He wrote about the sense of belonging given to him by his village and his parents, about the latter’s magic powers symbolizing the continuity between generations, the communal harvest, and the solidarity among boys facing the fear and pain of initiation. He acknowledged that all these had made him what he was, yet, as his education progressed, he had moved away in ever-widening concentric circles from this security, finally leaving for France. He questions whether he had made the right choice by leaving, particularly in leaving before he had gained a full understanding of the secrets of his culture. The recurrence of this question indicates an additional motivation for writing this autobiography and for returning to the genre in his later, less successful, book Dramouss (1966; A Dream of Africa). Also introspective is the Senegalese writer Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s L’Aventure ambigüe (1962; Ambiguous Adventure), which traces the spiritual development of a boy raised in a deeply religious Islamic community and the conflict he faces when sent to France to complete his education. Written in the third person by a narrator who rarely intervenes, the novel is not presented as an autobiography. The only hint is the fact that the name of the hero Samba Diallo is Kane’s own name in his native language. However, in a recent interview Kane stated: “Ambiguous Adventure is the story of the first part of my life” (Orange Light, May–June 1999). He added that his Les Gardiens du temple [1982; The Guardians of the Temple] is to a certain extent an account of what followed, and that he hoped to complete this trilogy. As the ferment for independence increased in the 1950s, autobiographers expressed their eagerness to bear witness to colonial abuses and to encourage revolt. Relevant writings came from a variety of countries: from Cameroon there were Ferdinand Oyono’s Une vie de boy (1956; Houseboy) and Chemin d’Europe (1960; Road to Europe); from Mali came Mamadou Gologo’s Le Rescapé d’Ethylos [1963; The Survivor of Ethylos], and from the Côte d’Ivoire /Ivory Coast Aké Loba’s Kocoumbo, l’étudiant noir [1960; Kakoumbo, the Black Student] and Bernard Dadié’s Climbié (1956), followed by Dadié’s travel observations in Un Nègre à Paris [1959; A Negro in Paris] and Patron de New York (1965; One Way: Bernard Dadié Observes New York), and his journals from prison – to name just a few. Autobiographical writings abounded during this period,

probably because African writers were experimenting with a new undertaking: the creation of a written African literature in the form of novels, for which there was no precedent to follow or to rebel against. They did what beginning novelists often do: they relied on what they knew best, namely their own memories, thus fulfilling at the same time their needs to create and to be socially relevant. Independence in 1960 did not immediately change the tone of life writing; only later in the decade did autobiography, while still framed by the community, reveal concern with selfdefinition and a quest for personal freedom. By the mid-1970s male writers were moving away from autobiography, though there are two important recent life writings by men: Amadou Hampaté Bâ’s Amkoullel, l’enfant Peul [1991; Amkoullel, the Peuhl Child], from Mali, and Birago Diop’s five volumes of Mémoirs (1978–91) beginning with La Plume raboutée [1978; End to End Writings]. For the most part the genre was taken over by female writers, and flourished as it had among men 20 years earlier. The reasons usually given for this lag are social and cultural. Education was expensive, and even families that sent boys to school tended to keep girls at home as helpers and to train them in what they considered important for women, i.e. to be wives, mothers, and housekeepers. The delay is also attributed to the hold of tradition, according to which women were expected to be submissive and silent. Not allowed to speak, they could not conceive of publishing their words. When the Senegalese writer Nafissatou Diallo (1941–82) broke the silence with her autobiography De Tilène au Plateau: une enfance dakaroise (1975; A Dakar Childhood), she felt that she had to justify her undertaking by explaining that she meant to perpetuate the past for the younger generation. Except for this, her book parallels Camara Laye’s earlier L’Enfant noir. Both writers saw themselves as representative cases, and as the titles of their autobiographies indicate, both portrayed happy childhoods and expressed their love for their parents. Diallo’s world is also depicted in autobiographical poems by her compatriots Kiné Kirama-Fall and Ndèye Couba Diakhaté. Other auto/biographies of the time are of a political and historical nature: the Malian Aouta Kéita’s Femme d’Afrique [1975; African Woman] and the Ivoirian Henriette Diabaté’s La Marche des femmes sur Grand Bassam [1975; The Women’s March on Grand-Bassam] are the best known of these. The tone of women’s autobiographies changed rapidly, as can be seen in comparing Diallo’s autobiography with that by the Guinean Kesso Barry, Kesso – Princesse Peuhle [1988, Kesso: Peuhl Princess]. Like Diallo, Barry proclaimed that her purpose in writing was to preserve a part of the history of her country for young people, but Diallo’s modesty is gone, and this is a striptease that exposes intimate details of Barry’s life, including excision. Autobiographies still place the individual squarely within the societal framework, but the focus is increasingly personal. Writers are inspired by a love-hate relationship with tradition and by a growing feminist consciousness. From Senegal came Amica Sow Mbayé’s Mademoiselle [1984; Miss], Maïmouna Abdoulaye’s Un Cri du coeur [1990; A Cry from the Heart], Marie Ndiaye’s Quant au riche Avenir [1988; As for a Rich Future] and En Famille (1991; Among Family); from the Ivory Coast there were Simone Kaya’s Les Danseuses d’Impé-eya

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[1976; The Dancers of Impé-eya], Akissi Koumadio’s Un impossible amour [1983; An Impossible Love], Lydie Dooh-Bunya’s La Brise du jour [1973; The Morning Breeze], and from the Congo Ago Léonie’s Femme du Congo [Congolese Woman] published in 1991 – to name just a few. Short stories from Senegal by Mariama N’Doye-Mbengue appeared in 1991 and 1995, and poems by the Burkinabe Sandra Pierette Kanzié in 1987, and by the Congolese Marie Léontine Tsibinda in 1988. The best-known contemporary female autobiographer is the Senegalese Ken Bugul (b. 1948, real name Mariétou Mbaye) who was forced to assume this pseudonym, which means “nobody wants” in the Wolof language, because her book Le Baobab fou (1982; The Abandoned Baobab) was considered too scandalous for publication under her real name. She told about her search for identity, her unhappy childhood without a supportive family, her stay as a student in Belgium leading to disappointment, drugs, and prostitution, and her return to the baobab. Bugul followed this up with Riwan, ou, le chemin de sable [1999; Riwan or the Sandy Path], in which she described aspects of her life after her return to Africa, maintaining a deliberate ambiguity about herself, the narrator, and the protagonist. She claims to be all three, and thereby to portray the ambiguity inherent in life. Indicative of the difficulties of genre definition of this region are the novels of the Congolese Henri Lopes. When discussing the widely held opinion that his Le Chasseur d’Afriques [1990; The Hunter of Africas] is autobiographical, Lopes stated: I feel more at ease when I am writing with a character that resembles me somewhat … My “technique” is actually a very simple one … Starting with the rudiments of myself I create wholly imaginary characters and then slip inside them for the period during which I am writing. These characters are no longer me … Superficial readers detect the tone of my voice in some of my characters, they think they have discovered me. They forget that every real author is a liar. By Lejeune’s definition of autobiography, Lopes belongs in this survey, and so does Mariama Bâ’s celebrated Une si longue lettre (1979; So Long a Letter), notwithstanding this author’s assertion that the book is not autobiographical. Natalie Sandomirsky Further Reading Beaujour, Michel, Poetics of the Literary Self-Portrait, translated by Yara Milos, New York: New York University Press, 1991 Blair, Dorothy S., Senegalese Literature: A Critical History, Boston: Twayne, 1984 D’Almeida, Irène Assiba, Francophone African Women Writers: Destroying the Emptiness of Silence, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994 Eakin, Paul John, Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of SelfInvention, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985 Flannigan, Arthur, “African Discourse and the Autobiographical Novel: Mongo Beti’s Mission terminée”, French Review, 55/6 (May 1982): 835–45 Gunn, Janet Varner, “A Window of Opportunity: An Ethics of Reading Third World Autobiography”, College Literature, 19/3 (Oct 1992): 162–69 Lejeune, Philippe, Le Pacte autobiographique, Paris: Seuil, 1975 Lionnet, Françoise, Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-

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Portraiture, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1989 Lopes, Henri, “My Novels, My Characters, and Myself”, Research in African Literatures, 24/1 (1993): 81–86 Mathieu, Martine (editor), Littératures autobiographiques de la francophonie, Paris: CELFA /L’Harmattan, 1996 Olney, James, Tell Me Africa: An Approach to African Literature, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1973 Olney, James, “The Value of Autobiography for Comparative Studies: African vs Western Autobiography” in African-American Autobiography: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by William L. Andrews, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993 Ormerod, Beverley and Jean-Marie Volet, “Ecrits autobiographiques et engagement: le cas des Africaines d’expression française”, French Review, 69/3 (1996): 426–44 Riesz, János and Ulla Schild (editors), Autobiographical Genres in Africa, Berlin: Reimer, 1996 Schipper, Mineke, “Women and Literature In Africa” in Unheard Words: Women and Literature in Africa, the Arab World, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America, edited by Mineke Schipper, translated by Barbara Potter Fasting, London and New York: Allison and Busby, 1984 Smith, Sidonie, A Poetics of Women’s Autobiography: Marginality and the Fictions of Self-Representation, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987 Stringer, Susan, The Senegalese Novel by Women: Through Their Own Eyes, New York: Peter Lang, 1996 Volet, Jean-Marie, La Parole aux Africaines, ou, l’idée de pouvoir chez les romanciers d’expression française de l’Afrique sub-saharienne, Amsterdam and Atlanta, Georgia: Rodopi, 1993

Africa: Oral Life Stories Oral life story traditions have a unique place in the lives of the 700 million inhabitants of Africa. Oral tradition, as it is more popularly referred to in the scholarly literature, continues to form the basis for much contemporary knowledge, research, and cultural and political capital. Indeed the linguistic and cultural heterogeneity (with more than 1000 languages and dialects) of much of the continent is such that one can safely assert that oral history has a place of unrivalled supremacy in the cultural fabric of sub-Saharan African lives. Conversely, the hegemony of Arabic writing in North Africa for more than a millennium has significantly eroded the status of the oral tradition north of the Sahel. Oral traditions reach back centuries and take numerous forms, most commonly cosmologies, genealogies, king-lists, conflict, migration, and settlement narratives, and hero epics. Since their medium is largely one of verbal transmission, rendering traditions into a literary format is a central methodological concern. African languages ignore international boundaries, and, somewhat ironically, the arrival and entrenchment of European languages has partly served to deepen cultural awareness and dependency on oral traditions. An analysis of the scholarly debate on the value of oral life-story traditions can best illustrate the role they continue to play in African cultures. The main debate concerns the veracity of the oral narratives, methods employed to decipher stories of the past from those of the present, how to enlarge on the information supplied by the narratives, and concerns for cross-referencing evidence with other historical sources. Africanists are indebted to the scholar Jan Vansina for a coherent methodology that established the legitimacy of oral

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tradition as a source of historical knowledge about the precolonial past, a past for which there exists no written documentation. He dis-established the prejudiced, colonial stranglehold on oral traditions, characterized by Claude Lévi-Strauss, which had interpreted them only as myth and legend with no inherent cultural, historical value. Vansina cautioned the postcolonial generation of Africanists to scrutinize the performers (griots) of traditions, by uncovering whether or not they are specialists; to be sensitive to the frequency, time, and place of a performance; to be sensitive to intent, to mnemonic devices, to the ways that traditions are learned, to issues of authenticity, and to problems caused by improvization and chronologization. When interpreting the testimony, a researcher must approach the form and structure (episode, plot, setting, imagery, characters, symbols, genres) as they influence the expression of content; then one should analyse meaning on the literal and the intentional levels. Successive scholarly literature on oral tradition can be viewed as two debates: one surrounds the main evidential claims of Vansina’s cohort, while the other concerns specific ways of improving the reliability of sources collected, of verifying material via cross-referencing, and of eliminating inaccuracies in data collection. Vansina’s work on the Kuba people of the savanna of central Africa established a detailed historical map of the centuries before the European invasion based on hundreds of interviews. In Oral Tradition (1965) he states that oral traditions are documents of the precolonial past which can be read as pure and factual texts. The evidence he examined included memorized speech; group, personal and hearsay accounts; creation myths and chronologies; epics; and proverbs and sayings. He argued that unconscious statements could be just as informative as conscious statements about history. His later Oral Tradition as History (1985) significantly alters this position, a response to the criticisms of structural anthropologists. He accepted elements of the theories of Lévi-Strauss and others that argued that oral traditions were solely expressions of the present. His revised methodology held that oral traditions are documents of both the present and the past and are influenced by both. Oral traditions reflect both a process (of transmission) and a product (of historical messaging). Both process and product as a unit can be divided into two dimensions of knowledge, as news and interpretation: news has a contemporary relevance, such as an eyewitness account, while interpretation, including reminiscence and commentary, stretches deeper into the historical past. Feierman’s study, The Shambaa Kingdom (1974), illustrates how the methodologies of Vansina developed. He attempted to write Shambaa history in Shambala words via recorded oral traditions in a style he described as sympathetic, because it expressed a desire to understand the Shambaa Weltanschauung, and how the Shambaa organized their “environmental universe”. Despite this determination, Feierman maintains a distance from the oral testimony in order to elaborate on economic and social phenomena beyond the boundaries of Shambaa. The value of Feierman’s approach is its capacity to analyse the local and global by collecting two different types of oral data from one location. His methodology shows an awareness of five limitations of oral traditions – lacunae, lies, silences, corruption, and conflicting lineage accounts. Henige offers a thorough critique of the value of one particular form of oral traditions, namely king-lists and chronologies,

in The Chronology of Oral Tradition: Quest for a Chimera (1974). He holds that while there is value in oral traditions per se, a series of tests and cross-examination of chronologies reveals that as the most easily distorted form of time indicators in non-calendrical societies, they are themselves of little worth in, for instance, attempting to date the formation of African states. The greatest deficiency of oral tradition is that it yields inexact dating. Henige revisits a primary concern of structural anthropologists when he states that his underlying assumption is that one’s view of the past, including its duration, is more the product of the exigencies of the present than of a dispassionate desire to portray past events as they actually occurred. By exploring synchronisms, “telescoping of time”, and artificial lengthening, Henige argues that achronicity is one of the concomitants of an oral non-calendrical society. Scholars such as Webster maintain that precise dating of the pre-colonial history of a region for which no documentary sources exist is possible with solely oral testimony. This has been criticized as an optimistic vision of African chronology, and a more cautious, pessimistic approach is espoused by most Africanists. For the colonial and postcolonial period, however, individual life stories have revealed detailed and accurate landscapes of the African past that are supported by written documentation. The epic narrative of Baba of Karo is the most famous example of a branch of oral life-story traditions that include reconstructing the life of slave refugees (see Wright), the rural peasantry (see van Onselen), and women’s performance collectives (see Mirza and Strobel). Much of this creative reconstruction of the personal past is illustrative of the pervasive influence of feminist theory in contemporary Africanist scholarship (see especially Personal Narratives Group, Interpreting Women’s Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives). In The African Past Speaks, Joseph Miller et al. respond to some of the counter-charges made by structuralist and functionalist anthropologists that questioned the veracity of oral traditions. Miller explains that functional criticism allowed scholars to wedge open the peculiarities of individual traditions, whether cosmologies or genealogies or otherwise. This post-functionalist methodology can partly be categorized as concentrating as much on the oral historian who provides the narrative as on the completed artifact, the tale as told. The salient characteristics of oral traditions then emerge as products of the way people in oral cultures think and talk about the past, which in turn depend partly on the oral mode of communication employed. Emphasis falls here on listening and understanding, in addition to careful reconstruction of chains of transmission. Moreover, every “piece” of history requires confirmation from another source. Miller’s most important contribution is the concept of historical time as an “hourglass”. This metaphor refers to a narrator’s tendency to locate much of the information at his or her disposal in a single period of “origins” and then by-pass the succeeding “middle period”. Scholars instinctively want to emphasize this “middle period” because it is there that they find gradual increments of change which they feel they must place between “origins” and the recent past. Extended personal recollections expand the information available from the recent past, so that scholars who do not distinguish between oral traditions and personal reminiscences perceive clusterings of information at the beginning and the end of the past, with a near void in the intervening years. Miller et al. also employ the concept of “layering”.

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Oral life-story narrators structure their versions of the past in ways that often give it the appearance of a layered composite of elements originating at various times but all existing together in the heterogeneous institutions of the present. Metaphors and analogies continue to be important in explaining the value of oral life-story traditions. David Cohen turns to the traditional Luo servant figure of the “pim” to explain a further development in the methodology of oral narrative collection in “Doing Social History from Pim’s Doorway” (1985). The “pim” traditionally came into the Luo household from a considerable social and geographical distance, living with children of both sexes until adolescence. Boys departed from the compound earlier than girls, who often left directly for marriage. From this social and cultural role through which the essential social intelligence of Luo society is transmitted, and through which elderly Luo women protected themselves from “social death”, Cohen constructs a metaphor for conducting research into the role of oral traditions from the “bottom up”. As “pim’s” nurturing was an almost invisible crucible of Luo culture and society, its critical activity is neglected. Scholars have attended to the form and implication of “larger”, “masculine” structures and segmentary processes. Until recently the historical process of the development of Luo society had been seen as a process of repetitive, methodological budding, branching, and expansion of segments of patrilineal units, a steady segmentation process from a narrow base. But the recognition of the role of “pim” and comparable oral-traditional roles in other societies will substantially alter this view. Benjamin Nicholas Lawrance See also Oral History; Orality

Further Reading Baba of Caro and Mary F. Smith, Baba of Karo: A Woman of the Muslim Hausa, edited by M.G. Smith, London: Faber, 1954; New York: Philosophical Library, 1955; reprinted, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1987 Cohen, D.W., “Doing Social History from Pim’s Doorway” in Reliving the Past: The Worlds of Social History, edited by Olivier Zunz, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985 Curtin, Philip D. (editor), Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967 Curtin, Philip D., “Field Techniques for Collecting and Processing Oral Historical Data”, Journal of African History, 9/3 (1968): 368–80 Feierman, Steven, The Shambaa Kingdom: A History, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974 Goody, Jack, The Myth of the Bagre, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972 Goody, Jack, The Interface between the Written and the Oral, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987 Henige, David P., The Chronology of Oral Tradition: Quest for a Chimera, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974 Hofmeyr, Isabel, We Spend Our Years as a Tale That is Told: Oral Historical Narrative in a South African Chiefdom, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, and London: James Currey, 1994 Klein, M., “Studying the History of Those Who Would Rather Forget: Oral History and the Experience of Slavery”, History in Africa, 16 (1989): 209–17 Miller, Joseph C. (editor), The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History, Folkestone, Kent: Dawson, and Hamden, Connecticut: Archon, 1980 Mirza, Sarah and Margaret Strobel (editors and translators), Three Swahili Women: Life Histories from Mombasa, Kenya, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989 Niane, D.T., Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali, translated by G.D. Pickett, London: Longman, 1965

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Personal Narratives Group, Interpreting Women’s Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989 Riesz, János and Ulla Schild (editors), Autobiographical Genres in Africa, Berlin: Reimer, 1996 Roberts, R., “Reversible Social Processes, Historical Memory, and the Production of History”, History in Africa, 17 (1990): 341–49 van Onselen, Charles, The Seed is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper, 1894–1985, New York: Hill and Wang, and Cape Town: Philip, 1996 Vansina, Jan, Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology, translated by H.M. Wright, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and Chicago: Aldine, 1965 Vansina, Jan, Oral Tradition as History, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985 Webster, J.B. (editor), Chronology, Migration, and Drought in Interlacustrine Africa, New York: Africana, and London: Longman, 1979 Wright, Marcia, Strategies of Slaves and Women: Life-Stories from East / Central Africa, New York: Lillian Barber Press, and London: James Currey, 1993

Africa: European Exploration and Travel Writings French-Algerian writer Hélène Cixous’s comment that “the ‘Dark Continent’ is neither dark nor unexplorable” refutes the traditional idea of Africa as “other” that has made it a foil to European self-conceptions. Much like the “plot” of traditional male autobiography, the conflicts and conquests that constitute the traditional plot of travel narratives in so-called darkest Africa have been thought to reveal the sojourner’s true self, a self subsequently confirmed through public consumption of that self’s travel narrative. Europe’s Africa has produced travellers as rational, dominating, autonomous; at the same time, the continent has acted as a metaphor for the person(al) whose exploration and mapping constitute much of the excitement of “masculine” life writing. The reference in Herodotus’ Historiai (The Histories) to a three-year circumnavigation of Africa by “a Phoenician crew” under Egyptian King Neco (610–595 bce) documents the earliest known exploration of the continent. Hellenistic interest in what Herodotus knew as “Libya” is reiterated in the 2nd-century ce Geπgraphik÷’ hyph÷g÷sis (Guide to Geography) of Ptolemy, which places the Nile’s source in the Lunae Montes (Mountains of the Moon). The 14th-century Rihlah (Travels) of Ibn Batt®ta, the 16th-century Descrittione dell’Africa (A Geographical Historie of Africa) of Spanish traveller Leo Africanus, some accounts of Ethiopia, and records of coastal explorations (typically emphasizing commerce and navigation), subsequently provided Europe with its main literary access to sub-Saharan Africa until the 18th century. The continued strength of classical misconceptions is evident in these early accounts; in John Lok’s 1554 voyage to West Africa, for instance, Herodotus and Pliny are recalled in the declaration that “there are also people without heads … having their eyes and mouths in their breast”. The 18th century marks the start both of sustained firsthand accounts of interior Africa and of characterizations that would influence African travel literature (and European selfconceptions) into the 20th century. Forces influencing these characterizations included: a burgeoning slave trade justified by

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depictions of Africans as savages who would benefit from the constraints of slavery; the taxonomy of Carol von Linné [Carolus Linnaeus] (1707–78), which not only fixed Africans lower on the “natural” order of things than Europeans but also gave explorers increasing epistemological control of Africa’s flora, fauna, and peoples; Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s notion of the “noble savage” apparent in descriptions of African nobility (typically distinguished by more “European” physiognomies); and anti-slavery movements that argued not that Africans were equal to Europeans but that “improvement” would best occur through commercial intercourse. Perhaps most influential was the Enlightenment belief in universal reason (defined as “European” reason) which produced travellers unable to explain African cultural differences (such as an apparent disinterest in material wealth) in ways other than imputing a childish lack of direction and self-control. Despite fantastic descriptions, an openness to Africans as similar but different persists until the 18th century. For instance, the English title of Peter Kolb’s 1719 Caput Bonae Spei hodiernum includes “A Particular ACCOUNT of the several NATIONS of the HOTTENTOTS: Their Religion, Government, Laws, Customs, Ceremonies, and Opinions; Their Art of War, Professions, Language, [and] Genius” (1731 translation) – thus announcing its intention, writes Mary Louise Pratt, to understand Africans “in terms of the full array of categories through which Europeans recognize other societies as real and human”. But by the end of the 18th century, books like James Bruce’s Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (1790) and Mungo Park’s Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (1799) are the norm. These post-French-Revolution texts reveal an increasing emphasis on both the traveller and on the dehumanization of Africa whose underlying logic culminates in the “tabula rasa” assumed by Richard Burton (1821–90) in the title of his work, First Footsteps in East Africa (1856). The explorer’s hardships and triumphs become the themes of books not so much about Africa as about the superiority of Europeans as evidenced in each author. Somewhat ironically, it is poor Irish (Daniel Houghton) and Scotsmen (such as Bruce, Park, Walter Oudney, Hugh Clapperton, and Alexander Gordon Laing) who “represent” Britain in early 19th-century expeditions. Similarly, destitute Frenchman René Caillié took on the guise of a Muslim trader to become, in 1828, the winner of the French Geographical Society’s prize for the first European known to enter Timbuktu. Despite increasing heroization, the small size of early 19th-century enterprises provides an intimacy missing from the huge and well-financed expeditions of the mid-19th century. Nationalism helps the authors to maintain a sense of self; in 1820 the “more dead than alive” British traveller, George Francis Lyon, enters Tripoli singing “God Save the King”. In 1830 Richard Lander paddles the Niger singing “Rule Britannia”. In addition to geographical explorers, missionaries entered Africa. Probably because of the difficulty of religious conversion and the prestige of discovery, however, missionaries – like Scotsman David Livingstone (1813–73) in southern and central Africa – neglected the creation of mission stations for the lure of exploration. Nearly all 19th-century traveller-writers, however, justified their involvement, and wrote about themselves in Africa under the banners of supposed progress and bringing light to a “dark” continent.

The inception in Britain of the African Association (1788) – which evolved into the Geographical Society – as well as the increasingly lucrative business of selling African travel narratives produced larger expeditions. Africa became a place to “find” things – Livingstone himself (who had disappeared), or the sources of the Niger or Nile, or ancient cities. Africa became the arena in which men and, metonymically, nations competed to prove themselves. This (auto)biographical element is illustrated in the narratives of Richard Burton: their scope and detail bring a British order to a “humanitarianism” whose definition disallows the validation of other ways. The European traveller in Africa inscribes a standard against which “African” is judged and “European” is confirmed. After the division of Africa among European powers at the Berlin Conference in 1884–85 (the “Scramble for Africa”), literature increasingly addresses colonial concerns of control, infrastructure, and the salubriousness of a European presence. For many late 19th-century young men, the 18th century’s Europeanizing “Grand Tour” was replaced with African travel as the preferred means to full manhood. But the men were not alone. During the 1890s Mary Kingsley (1862–1900) made two trips to West Africa, and her recollection in Travels in West Africa (1897) showed not only that English etiquette, including “a good thick skirt”, could be maintained in “the African forest”, but that grit and courage were not the sole domains of men. More importantly, Kingsley proved herself a sympathetic ethnographer attuned to detail and to the lives of women. After Kingsley, and into the 20th century, women wrote as travellers (Mary Hall, Rosita Forbes, Dervla Murphy), expatriate entrepreneurs (Karen Blixen), colonialists (Anne Louise Dundas), anti-colonialists (early Isabelle Eberhardt), daring pilots (Beryl Markham), and reporters (Katherine Fannin). Kingsley was also precursor to the more eccentric travellers of the 20th century. As the continent became less “dark” to European eyes, and there was less, ostensibly, to be discovered, the nature of the travelling itself achieves greater prominence in many writings. The introduction into writings of camels, donkeys, bicycles, and even a wheelbarrow as modes of transport produced narratives whose diminished need to distance “European” from “African” indicates both a reduced individual (and national) hubris and comic relief from the often pedantic self-importance of 19th-century narratives. And discovery of self, especially hitherto unknown aspects, also increases. Following the murder of French priest Charles de Foucauld in the Sahara (1916), the austere spirituality of the desert drew travellers like Geoffrey Moorhouse who, in The Fearful Void (1974), is “a man … in search of himself”. After Joseph Conrad (notably the short story Heart of Darkness, 1902) and Sigmund Freud, Africa becomes more clearly a trope for the self and the plumbing of one’s depths in – to borrow the title of Graham Greene’s 1936 West African travel narrative – “a journey without maps”. But the 20th century also produced increasingly sensitive and critical travel narratives that not only attempted to explore African cultures in appreciation of their diversity and integrity – Geoffrey Gorer’s Africa Dances (1935) and Mark Hudson’s Our Grandmothers’ Drums (1989) – but also the injustices of both colonialism – André Gide’s Voyage au Congo (1929; Travels in the Congo) – and neocolonialism – Ryszard

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Kapus´cin´ski’s Jeszcze dzien Zycia (1987; Another Day of Life). Both developments indicate a diminishing degree of “masculinist” and Eurocentric assumptions. But although different from 19th-century narratives, so confident in the justice of their “civilizing mission”, 20th-century narratives continue to explore and produce identities of writer, nation, and European through conceptions of the Euro-African encounter, albeit increasingly less superior or judgmental in tone. Kevin M. Hickey Further Reading Blunt, Alison, Travel, Gender, and Imperialism: Mary Kingsley and West Africa, New York: Guilford Press, 1994 Hammond, Dorothy and Alta Jablow, The Africa that Never Was: Four Centuries of British Writing about Africa, New York: Twayne, 1970 Hammond, Dorothy and Alta Jablow, The Myth of Africa, New York: Library of Social Science, 1977 Hibbert, Christopher, Africa Explored: Europeans in the Dark Continent, 1769–1889, London: Allen Lane, 1982; New York: Norton, 1983 Howard, Cecil (editor), West African Explorers, introduced by J.H. Plum, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1951 Journal of African Travel Writing, 1996— Kamm, Josephine, Explorers into Africa, London: Gollancz, and New York: Crowell-Collier, 1970 MacKenzie, John M., The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation and British Imperialism, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1988 Miller, Christopher L., Blank Darkness: Africanist Discourse in French, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985 Moorehead, Alan, The White Nile, London: Hamilton, and New York: Harper and Row, 1960; revised 1971 Moorehead, Alan, The Blue Nile, London: Hamilton, and New York: Harper and Row, 1962; revised edition 1972 Mudimbe, V.Y., The Idea of Africa, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, and London: Currey, 1994 Perham, Margery and Jack Simmons (editors), African Discovery: An Anthology of Exploration, 2nd edition, London: Faber, 1957; Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1963 (first edition 1943) Place, James and Charles Richards (editors), East African Explorers, London: Oxford University Press, 1960; enlarged and revised edition, Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1967 Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London and New York: Routledge, 1992 Romero, Patricia W. (editor), Women’s Voices on Africa: A Century of Travel Writings, New York: Markus Weiner, 1992 Rotberg, Robert I. (editor), Africa and Its Explorers: Motives, Methods and Impact, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, and London: Oxford University Press, 1970 Stevenson, Catherine Barnes, Victorian Women Travel Writers in Africa, Boston: Twayne, 1982 Youngs, Tim, Travellers in Africa: British Travelogues, 1850–1900, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994

Africa: Auto/biographical Fiction Life writing, in all its guises, presents a complex knotting of truth and fiction that tests reader and critic alike. The critical term “auto/biographical novel” springs from that testing ground, and serves to describe novels so like autobiographies or biographies that they might be mistaken for the real thing. The key term, then, is verisimilitude, rather than mimesis. Novels do not imitate reality directly, as a performance genre might;

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rather, they present a convincing likeness of reality that relies on narrative structures rather than on referentiality (see Riffaterre). For some critics, this immediately disqualifies the term “auto/biographical novel”, since the pact established between reader and text affirms the fictionality of the novel, rather than the narrative’s veracity (see Lecarme and Lecarme-Tabone). For others, the borders between novel and autobiography are quite artificial; what matters is the author’s attempt to impose a personal order on chaotic experience (see Olney, 1972, and Eakin’s two books). In fact, a continuum seems to exist even for the intransigent few who see no place for the term auto/biographical fiction. This critical debate has largely bypassed African literatures. Yet the fact remains that readers perceive auto/biographical elements in an unusually large number of works of African fiction. The contest for narrative veracity that can oppose African novelists to the colonial document or to the Africanist specialist often tilts the balance in favour of the auto/biographical novel. In the context of this contest for the right to represent Africa, the auto/biographical narrative perspective underlines the importance of the author’s lived experience. Fictional responses to the colonial ethnographic document have purported to give a life story that sets the record straight. The classic novel by the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958), is a good example of this current of biographical fiction. It tells the story of the writer’s Igbo grandfather, who suffered and died tragically under the impact of colonialism. The francophone writer Paul Hazoumé’s historical novel Doguicimi (1938), which bears the name of the faithful female protagonist, also attempts to set the record straight on Dahomey (Benin) and its history, which is distorted in colonialist documents. Ethnography, history, and biography mingle in these works, blurring the line between fact and fiction. The pseudo-ethnographic novel has been so popular as a response to alienating European depictions of African societies that it would be a challenge to name all the novels that fit this model. Camara Laye’s auto/biographical L’Enfant noir (1953; The Dark Child) is a classic example. The strategy survived in later years as writers urged African youth not to assimilate to European cultures. Examples from this category in the francophone tradition are three novels by Senegalese writers, Ousmane Socé’s Karim (1935), Abdoulaye Sadji’s Maïmouna (1958), and Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s L’Aventure ambiguë (1961; Ambiguous Adventure). They all concern the horrors of assimilation and seek to dissuade young people from leaving their own culture by presenting auto/biographical accounts of the bitter failures of assimilation. These novels present yet another critical twist, since many of them are clearly fictional biographies. Others, however, bear such a close resemblance to the lives of the authors that critics have assumed that they are auto/biographical in the typical sense: that is, that they are mimetic, referential works that do not stray far from the “truth” of the writer’s own experience. Cheikh Hamidou Kane has admitted that his novel Ambiguous Adventure presents his own life story. Dambudzo Marechera’s Black Sunlight (1980) and The Black Insider (1990) are verifiably auto/biographical novels, as is most of his fiction. This is also true of Bessie Head’s fiction, especially the novel A Question of Power (1974). Ayi Kwei Armah’s Why Are We So Blest? (1972) tells the story of a young man remarkably similar to the

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author and his bitter encounter with the West. Although the novel is not strictly auto/biographical, many of the basic elements of the story do seem to be taken from the novelist’s life. This type of auto/biographically based novel is common: a few prominent examples include Mongo Beti’s Mission terminée (1957; Mission to Kala), Laye’s L’Enfant noir and Dramouss (1966; A Dream of Africa), Bernard Dadié’s Climbié (1956), Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy (1966), Henri Lopès’s Le Chercheur d’Afriques [1990; The Searcher of Africas], and Ken Bugul’s novels Cendres et braises [1994; Ashes and Embers] and Riwan, ou, le chemin de sable [1999; Riwan, or, The Sandy Path] are other examples of the auto/biographical novel that can be linked to the author’s life. The contest for the right to represent African realities continued after formal independence, which has had variegated effects on African literatures. In some cases, as in southern Africa, formal independence did not end colonial rule, for discriminatory policies continued within South African apartheid, as they did in Rhodesia until the conclusion of the war for liberation that led to the creation of Zimbabwe (1980). We might look to Mongane Wally Serote’s To Every Birth Its Blood (1981) or Miriam Tlali’s Muriel at Metropolitan (1975) for more clearly referential accounts of life under apartheid, while fictionalized auto/biographies such as J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986) and Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) give allegorical and poetic versions of life in South Africa. Alan Paton’s Too Late the Phalarope (1953) and Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter (1979), The Late Bourgeois World (1966), and A World of Strangers (1958) depict apartheid South Africa from a firstperson fictional perspective, as do many of André Brink’s novels. After formal independence, neocolonialism replaced colonialism, which led writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o to conclude that the struggle must continue on a narrative level. His Matigari (1987), an allegorical and collective biography of the people of Kenya, expresses his ideological stance towards neocolonialism. Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy (1985) is an example from Nigeria on a similar allegorical plane. Using a directly auto/biographical style, Nuruddin Farah criticizes the authoritarian state in Maps (1986), as well as the cruelties of patriarchal authority. Other writers choose to write auto/biographical fiction in order to depict patriarchal systems in a less allegorical style, focusing on polygamy or excision, as Mariama Bâ did in Une si longue lettre (1980; So Long a Letter), and as Mariama Barry has done in La Petite Peule [2000; The Little Fulani Girl]. The Nigerian novelist Buchi Emecheta has produced several auto/biographical novels, of which the clearest examples are perhaps Second-Class Citizen (1974), Double Yoke (1982), and Kehinde (1994). The biographical novel has also played a role here; Nawal al Sa‘dƒw¡’s Woman at Point Zero (originally 1975, translated 1983) is the classic example of a feminist biographical novel from Africa. al Sa‘dƒw¡’s novel, which was translated from Arabic, is indicative of the post-independence interest in the issue of language. Although all postcolonial writers face the issue, North African writers in particular have chosen to use auto/biographical fiction in order to create a new poetics that allows them to appropriate the language of the colonizer. Assia Djebar’s novels – L’Amour, la fantasia (1985; Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade), Ombre sultane (1987; A Sister to Scheherezade), Vaste est la prison (1995; So Vast the Prison),

and Le Blanc de l’Algérie [1995; The Erasure of Algeria] – offer the best example of this poetic appropriation of language in autobiographical fiction. Given this need to appropriate the language of the colonizer, it is no surprise that many African writers of the post-independence period have experimented with narrative strategies in writing auto/biographical fiction. Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions (1988) presents a narrative situation in which the author does not resemble the narrator, but the cousin she describes (see Veit-Wild). And Alex La Guma’s The Stone Country (1967) is regarded by many critics as an auto/biographical novel, even though it is narrated in the third person. The example of La Guma, who writes realist fiction, shows us how blurred the line is between fiction and reality in the African auto/biographical novel, and particularly so in the light of experimental fictions and postmodernist strategies. Lewis Nkosi’s Mating Birds (1983), a South African response to Albert Camus’s L’Etranger (1942; The Outsider), uses the postmodernist strategy of rewriting a canonical work. We can see other postmodernist fictions in the works of Coetzee and Marechera. Magical realism has been another response to the problem of depicting fictional realities. Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His Dead Palm-wine Tapster in the Dead’s Town (1952) and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1954) are classic examples of first-person narratives that employ this strategy to tell truths that cannot be shared in clearly referential narrative. Ben Okri’s The Famished Road (1991) is a more recent example of magical realism. Collectively, such postmodern works reiterate the dependence in so much African writing on fictional techniques to set the record straight about African life. Lisa McNee Further Reading Abbott, Porter H., “Autobiography, Autography, Fiction: Groundwork for a Taxonomy of Textual Categories”, New Literary History, 19/3 (1988): 597–615 Attwell, David, “On the Question of Autobiography: Interview with J.M. Coetzee”, Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, 3/1 (1991): 117–22 Buuck, David, “African Doppelgänger: Hybridity and Identity in the Work of Dambudzo Marechera”, Research in African Literatures, 28/2 (1997): 118–31 Eakin, Paul John, Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of SelfInvention, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985 Eakin, Paul John, How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1999 Flannigan, Arthur, “African Discourse and the Autobiographical Novel: Mongo Beti’s Mission terminée”, French Review, 55/6 (1982): 835–45 Ibrahim, Huma, “The Autobiographical Content in the Works of South African Women Writers: The Personal and the Political” in Biography East and West: Selected Conference Papers, edited by Carol Ramelb, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989 Koné, Amadou, “Tradition orale et écriture du roman autobiographique: L’exemple de Camara Laye” in Genres autobiographiques en afrique / Autobiographical Genres in Africa, edited by János Riesz and Ulla Schild, Berlin: Reimer, 1996 Lecarme, Jacques and Eliane Lecarme-Tabone, L’Autobiographie, Paris: Armand Colin, 1997 Lejeune, Philippe, On Autobiography, edited by Paul John Eakin, translated by Katherine Leary, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989 MacDermott, Doireann, Autobiographical and Biographical Writing in the Commonwealth, Barcelona: Editorial AUSA, 1985

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Mickelson, David, “The Bildungsroman in Africa: The Case of Mission terminée”, French Review, 59/3 (1986): 418–27 Mortimer, Mildred, “Assia Djebar’s Algerian Quartet: A Study in Fragmented Autobiography”, Research in African Literatures, 28/2 (1997): 102–17 Olney, James, Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972 Olney, James, Tell Me Africa: An Approach to African Literature, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1973 Olney, James, Memory and Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998 Riffaterre, Michael, Fictional Truth, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990 Schipper, Mineke, “‘Who Am I?’ Fact and Fiction in African FirstPerson Narrative”, Research in African Literatures, 16/1 (1985): 53–79 Smith, M. van Wyk, “Waiting for Silence; or, the Autobiography of Metafiction in Some Recent South African Novels”, Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, 3/1 (1991): 91–104 Ssensalo, Bede M., “The Black Pseudo-Autobiographical Novel: A Descendant of Black Autobiography” (dissertation), Los Angeles: University of California, 1978 Veit-Wild, Flora, “‘An Outsider in My Own Biography’: From Public Voice to Fragmented Self in Zimbabwean Autobiographical Fiction” in Genres autobiographiques en afrique / Autobiographical Genres in Africa, edited by János Riesz and Ulla Schild, Berlin: Reimer, 1996

Africa: Autobiographical Poetry African autobiographical poetry is heterogeneous and tends to reveal the fluidity of the autobiographical genre. The pioneers of the genre are the “vernacular” colonial and pre-independence poets who wrote poetry committed to the emancipation of Africa, politically, culturally, and morally, largely in the first half of the 20th century. It has been argued that they were only partly successful, because of their “incompetence and inexperience” (Nwoga, 1977), in adapting lessons learned from European poetry to their kind of poetry that had its roots in African oral tradition. More modern practitioners are mainly independence and postcolonial poets who have written since the 1950s, although some of them began writing much earlier. The modern poets set out to invent a new poetry whose vision, tone, high imaginative intensity, and artistic competence are striking, insightful, and original; they arrest the emotions. A survey of various “autobiographical” poems by pioneers – such as the Southern Africans B.W. Vilakazi, H.I.E. Dhlomo, and J.J.R. Jolobe, and the West Africans Dennis Osadebay, Michael Dei-Annang, Raphael Ernest Grail Armattoe, and Gladys Caseley-Hayford – and later practitioners – such as the Southern Africans Dennis Brutus and Arthur Nortje; the West Africans Wole Soyinka, John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo, Christopher Okigbo, Gabriel Okara, Kofi Awonoor, Lenrie Peters, Atukwei Okai, Leopold Sedar Senghor, and Bernard Dadié; the East African Taban lo Liyong; the Madagascans Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo and Jacques Rabemanajara; the Central African Tchicaya U Tam’si, and the North Africans Mohammed Dib, Malek Haddad, and Anna Geki – can be typologized as five sub-genres: tom-tom / childhood poetry, travel poetry, prison poetry, war poetry, and personal, “neurotic” poetry that ranges from the confessional to the less autobiographically inflected lyric.

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In tom-tom / childhood poetry – which was mainly the kind that the pioneers engaged in – there is admiration for the natural beauty of Africa that the colonizers, who were the masters at the time that the pioneers were writing, had spoiled and exploited. In this highly meditative and reflective poetry, the poets, now adults, look back to the life and world they knew before the coming of the whites and express their sense of loss and feelings of distress at the impoverishment and devastation of the once rich and great land. For example, Vilakazi’s Zulu Horizons (1973), Dennis Osadebay’s Africa Sings (1952), Michael DeiAnnang’s Cocoa Comes to Mampong and Some Occasional Verses (1970), and R.G. Armattoe’s Between the Forest and Sea: Collected Poems (undated) contain poems of various autobiographical hues, which express the personal pains and cries of the poets at the vicissitudes that had befallen their Africa. The nostalgia that modern poets such as the Francophones Senghor and Dadié clearly give vent to in their poems is not very apparent in the works of the pioneers, but Osadebay’s, Vilakazi’s, Annang’s, and Armattoe’s poetry is full of patriotic fervour, and their tom-tom poetry assumes a public voice. And even when one of them, the Nigerian Osadebay, seems to reject aspects of the African value systems in pursuit of European ones, as he suggests in the poem “Young Africa’s Explanation” (1952), he does so in the hope that this will bring about a regeneration that will help the restoration of the continent. The remarkable simplicity of diction in the poem has its roots in African oral poetry. As already indicated, modern writers also engage in this kind of autobiographical poetry. Senghor in Poèmes [1973; Poems], Dadié in Legendes et poèmes [1966 and 1973; Legends and Poems], and Rabéarivelo in Poèmes-presque-songes [1934; Poems-Almost-Dreams] and Traduit de la nuit [1935; Drawn from the Night] dwell so lovingly on their childhood that their tom-tom poetry, in which the homeland (in Senghor’s and Dadié’s poems in particular) is draped in the garland of négritude, and has a special autobiographical significance. (Rabéarivelo is also notable for having moved from writing in French to his native tongue, Malagasy, playing with bilingualism. He also left famous diaries written to just before his suicide in 1937.) Their evocation of their childhood of dreams and reverie is nostalgic politically as well as personally, retreating to a “sheltered innocence before Africa fell victim to the twin evils of colonialism and modernism” (see Nkosi). This element contrasts with the Anglophone modernist poet, the Gambian Lenrie Peters, who also dwells on childhood poetry, for instance in Katchikali (1971). Though the dreamlike setting of the title poem “Katchikali” recalls Dadié or Senghor, it lacks the négritude nostalgia of either poet. Peters is not particularly tied to things African and as he indicated in “One Long Jump” (from Satellites, 1967), the purity and joys of childhood are lost in one long jump through maturity to the grave. Peters thus does not necessarily blame the collapse of the world of his childhood on the birth of the new world of colonialism and modernism, but on the gain and loss of growing up, as discernible in William Wordsworth’s “Immortality Ode” (see Egudu, 1977). Peters can be likened to Gabriel Okara, who in The Fisherman’s Invocation (1978) expresses a sense of growing old and nostalgically wishes to reclaim the “artlessness and innocence of childhood” (see Goodwin). Peters and Okara also differ from the Rimbaudian Tchicaya’s U Tam’si’s Le Mauvais Sang (1955; Bad

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Blood) and A triche-coeur (1960; A Game of Cheat Heart) whose childhood imagination is acutely sensitive to the experiences of hostility, despair, self-pity, and alienation. In travel poetry, travel experiences are exploited to produce what can be defined as “autravographical” poetry in which the poet is inclined towards introspection, as evident, for example, in: John Pepper Clark’s verses in America, Their America (1964) and A Reed in the Tide (1965); Soyinka’s “Immigrant” poems and “Telephone Conversation” (Idanre and Other Poems, 1967); Brutus’s poems in Part 3 of A Simple Lust (1973); several of Arthur Nortje’s and Lenrie Peters’s poems in Dead Roots (1973) and Satellites and Katchikali, respectively; Okigbo’s “Heavensgate”, “Limits”, and “Distances” (Labyrinths, 1971); Senghor’s “New York” and several poems from Ethiopiques (1956); Awonoor’s Rediscovery (1964), Night of My Blood (1971), Ride Me, Memory (1973), and The House by the Sea (1978); Mohammed Dib’s “Printemps” [1961; “Spring”] of Ombre gardienne [1961; Guardian Shadow], and Malek Haddad’s “Début d’exil” [1966; “Beginning of Exile”] from Ecoute, je t’appele [1966; Listen as I Call on You]. The poetic journey often reflects a sense of exile, alienation, and loneliness. Generally, most of these poets, who are all men, composed their travel poems in foreign lands (especially Europe and America) in an attempt to respond to their homesickness and protest against their sad and unsalutary experiences abroad, where they went in quest of one form of education or another. But Dennis Brutus journeyed – to Europe and America in particular – simply to escape from the harsh conditions in his homeland of South Africa, and to report apartheid South Africa to the world. It is interesting to note that there is no significant quantity of travel poetry composed by African writers travelling within Africa, at least in written form. Other types of autobiographical poetry in which modern African poets reflect on their lives include prison poetry, autobiographical war poetry, and “neurotic” poetry. Brutus’s Letters to Martha (1968), Soyinka’s A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972), the second half of Awonoor’s The House by the Sea, and Anna Geki’s “Bonheurs interdits” [1963; “Forbidden Pleasures”] are notable exponents of the first type, while Clark’s Casualties (1970), U Tam’si’s Le Ventre [1964; The Belly], the “Massacre” sequence in Soyinka’s Idanre, and several of Okara’s obvious war poems in The Fisherman’s Invocation are important examples of the second. Taban lo Liyong’s Frantz Fanon’s Uneven Ribs (1971), Meditations (1978), and Another Nigger Dead: Poems (1972); Jacques Rabemanajara’s Antsa (1961); and Atukwei Okai’s Oath of the Fantomfrom and Other Poems (1971) and Lorgorligi Logarithms (1974) represent the last type. The prison poems of Brutus, Soyinka, Awoonor, and Geki are, in Soyinka’s words, a “map of the course trodden by the human mind” during their years of solitary confinement in their respective countries of South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, and Algeria, under oppressive and brutal governments. The forced introspection of imprisonment is turned to philosophical and autobiographical speculation on the relation between necessity and freedom. In the sub-genre of war poems, Clark, Soyinka, U Tam’si, and Okara are most successful in reflecting on themselves when they are talking about other people (and events). These are men intimately concerned with social and political life, and they do not portray their lives, as poets, as essentially different in

character from those of their fellow men; instead, they demonstrate that they experience what other people pass through, but more keenly, more passionately, and with less subjectivity and prejudice. With the “neurotic” poets we see the poet as a man or woman engaged in a special way with the world. He or she is the egocentric, zealous, ambitious, and “problematic” artist concerned with him- or herself as a lover, patriot, nationalist, magician, and poet-cantor. Taban lo Liyong, Rabemanajara, Rabéarivelo, and Atukwei Okai are typical examples of African poetic autobiographers who make their poetry the story of their ideas, opinions, viewpoints, music, self-drama, love, passions, and peculiar idiosyncracies. In contrast to the Angst-ridden stereotype of the post-Romantic poet of Western tradition, this kind of poetry is neither common nor popular in Africa. Finally, it needs stating here that all these well-known and significant African (autobiographical) poets, apart from the Algerian writer Anna Geki (included in the prison poetry type), are men. For a number of reasons – social, cultural, and political – women in general have yet to establish their reputation as serious African poets. However, emerging poets include: the matriarchal Mabel Segun – Nigeria’s first woman writer to be published – who is known mainly for her children’s books, short stories, and fiction, for example her autobiographical My Father’s Daughter and My Mother’s Daughter; Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie, Catherine Acholonu, Toyin Adewale, Chinyere Okafor, Angela Ajali-Nwosu, Chichi Layor, Chinwe Nneka Nzegwu, Lola Shoneyin, and Promise Okekwe. These poets, in varying degrees, write both private and socially focused poems on the themes of love, deculturation, and search for personal and group identities in a modern world (in the context of present-day Africa), where womanhood and motherhood have been debased and desecrated. They write elegies, lyrics, narrative, and witty poems in which they dwell on the past (which they do not romanticize – unlike the tom-tom poets) as well as the present with its political, social, and economic contradictions and paradoxes. They try to make poetry as relevant to their daily realities and experiences as possible. The esoteric metaphors and imageries of Soyinka, the latinate phrases and lines of Okigbo, the Hopkinsian syntax and mannerism of Clark-Bekederemo are generally not pursued in their poetry. In this light, they may be seen to signal an alternative tradition in African poetry written in English. Furthermore, apart from Mabel Segun perhaps, these writers may best be acclaimed as love poets, and they are unique in this regard because in the poems where they write about love, they do so with admirable ingenuity that is uncommon in African (autobiographical) poetry. Tony E. Afejuku Further Reading Afejuku, Tony E., “J.P. Clark’s Romantic Autotravography”, Literature Interpretation Theory, 4/2 (1993): 137–44 Aiyejina, Funso, “Mabel Segun: A Critical Review” in Nigerian Female Writers: A Critical Perspective, edited by Henrietta C. Otokunefor and Obiageli C. Nwodo, Lagos: Malthouse Press, 1989 Anozie, Sunday O., Christopher Okigbo: Creative Rhetoric, London: Evans, and New York: Africana, 1972 Anyidoho, Kofi, “Atukwei Okai and His Poetic Territory” in New West African Literature, edited by Kolawole Ogungbesan, London: Heinemann, 1979

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Cartey, Wilfred, Whispers from a Continent: The Literature of Contemporary Black Africa, London: Heinemann, and New York: Random House, 1969 Darthorne, O.R., The Black Mind: A History of African Literature, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, and London: Oxford University Press, 1974 Darthorne, O.R., African Literature in the Twentieth Century, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975 Egudu, R.N., Four Modern West African Poets, New York: NOK, 1974 Egudu, R.N., “Pictures of Pain: The Poetry of Dennis Brutus” in Aspects of South African Literature, edited by Christopher Heywood, London: Heinemann, and New York: Africana, 1976 Egudu, R.N., Modern African Poetry and the African Predicament, London: Macmillan, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1978 Goodwin, Ken L., Understanding African Poetry: A Study of Ten Poets, London: Heinemann, 1982 Izevbaye, D.S., “From Reality to the Dream: The Poetry of Christopher Okigbo” in The Critical Evaluation of African Literature, edited by Edgar Wright, London: Heinemann, 1973 Izevbaye, D.S., “Okigbo’s Portrait of the Artist as a Sunbird: A Reading of Heavensgate (1962)”, African Literature Today, 6 (1977): 1–13 Maduakor, Obi, “Female Voices in Poetry: Catherine Acholonu and Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie as Poets” in Nigerian Female Writers: A Critical Perspective, edited by Henrietta C. Otokunefor and Obiageli C. Nwodo, Lagos: Malthouse Press, 1989 Moore, Gerald, Twelve African Writers, London: Hutchinson, and Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980 Mortimer, Mildred P., “Algerian Poetry of French Expression”, African Literature Today, 6 (1977): 68–78 Nkosi, Lewis, Tasks and Masks: Themes and Styles of African Literature, London: Longman, 1981 Nwoga, Donatus I., “Obscurity and Commitment in Modern African Poetry”, African Literature Today, 6 (1977): 26–45 Nwoga, Donatus I., “Poetry as Revelation: Wole Soyinka” in Critical Perspectives on Wole Soyinka, edited by James Gibbs, London: Heinemann, and Washington DC: Three Continents Press, 1981 Reed, John, “Leopold Sedar Senghor’s Poetry” in A Celebration of Black and African Writing, edited by Bruce King and Kolawole Ogungbesan, Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1975 Tejàni, Bahadur, “Can the Prisoner Make a Poet? A Critical Discussion of Letter to Martha and Other Poems from a South African Prison by Dennis Brutus”, African Literature Today, 6 (1973): 130–44 Tighe, C., “In Detentio Preventione in Aeternum: Soyinka’s A Shuttle in the Crypt” in Critical Perspectives on Wole Soyinka, edited by James Gibbs, London: Heinemann, and Washington DC: Three Continents Press, 1981 Wake, Clive, “Tchicaya U Tam’si” in A Celebration of Black and African Writing, edited by Bruce King and Kolawole Ogungbesan, Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1975 Wake, Clive, “J.-J. Rabèarivelo: A Poet of Negritude” in The Critical Evaluation of African Literature, edited by Edgar Wright, London: Heinemann, 1973; Washington DC: Inscape, 1976 Wren, Robert M., J.P. Clark, Boston: Twayne, 1984

African American Life Writing African American life writing is most strongly represented by autobiography, but essayists and diarists have also contributed to the field. Since the 18th century, black writers have reacted to realities of African American history: minority status in a whitedominated nation, chattel slavery until the civil war, and ongoing economic and social repression. They have produced works that assert the humanity of all African Americans; that explore the difficulties of realizing a positive sense of self in a society so often predisposed to obliterating it; that protest

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against racism and oppression; and that express longing for the emotional, economic, and legal security promised by the Constitution and the “American Dream”. The Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, a Negro Man, published in 1760, marks the beginning of African American life writing. Hammon’s brief account also inaugurated a century in which slave narratives dominated African American literature. Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, published in 1789 (England) and 1791 (America), became the first bestselling slave narrative. Many others followed. Among the most important are the accounts of William Wells Brown, Henry Bibb, and James W.C. Pennington. Josiah Henson’s The Life of Josiah Henson (1849) attracted the attention of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who later used Henson as the model for Uncle Tom in her enormously influential novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The greatest of all slave narrators is Frederick Douglass, whose Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) and My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) set the standard for the genre. The Narrative, containing all the requisite formal elements of the slave narrative, and exhibiting unmatched stylistic excellence, is both utterly representative of its form and also its most accomplished performance – two facts that make it indispensable reading (see Olney). Slave narratives established many themes intrinsic to subsequent African American life writing. Through their gruesome detailing of abuses enacted against slaves, they attacked the slave system and called for its destruction. After the legal abolition of slavery, later black writers would carry on the slave narrators’ crusade by calling for an end to the “slavery” of segregation laws, economic exploitation, unequal justice, and the curtailment of civil rights. Slave narrators also epitomize the impulse of African Americans to “write themselves into existence”. Because literacy was considered a mark of humanity, these narratives were their authors’ bid to be recognized as fellow human beings with the same abilities, emotional lives, and aspirations as other Americans. Male slave narrators often presented themselves as successful American men within a tradition established by Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography. Drawing upon another archetype, these authors present themselves as self-sufficient heroes who escape slavery and run to freedom alone. Thus they claim a place among the mythic company of American frontiersmen, rugged individualists living free from society’s laws. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), Harriet Jacobs creates a different kind of narrator – the heroic female slave whose dedication to family outstrips even her desire for personal freedom. Jacobs details incredible suffering, including seven years hiding in a tiny attic room. Jacobs’s reluctance to escape until she has also secured her children’s freedom highlights the female slave’s connection to family, in contrast to the male slave narrator’s projection as heroic loner. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl also reveals the sexual exploitation of women slaves, which made slavery for women, as Jacobs asserts, much more terrible than it was for men. The end of the Civil War began a new era in African American life. Slavery was abolished and the Union preserved, but the freedoms promised during Reconstruction proved largely illusory. “Jim Crow” laws assured racial segregation

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and legalized blacks’ status as second-class citizens. Sharecropping in the South and exploitation of industrial workers in the North kept many in economic bondage. Two autobiographies exemplify strategies that black Americans used to negotiate these terrible years. The journalist, lecturer, and publisher Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s Crusade for Justice (published 1970) chronicles its author’s tireless efforts to combat lynching, inferior segregated schools, economic oppression, and limits on opportunities for women. Booker T. Washington’s famous autobiography Up from Slavery (1901) takes a different tack. Choosing to present his life as a black version of the American success story, Washington recounts his birth in slavery, his efforts to obtain an education, and, most importantly, his feat of creating Tuskegee Institute almost from nothing. Washington stresses that African Americans should learn trades, save their money, buy land, and make themselves economically indispensable to their communities. Civil rights, he argues, will come in time – when white America recognizes black Americans’ worthiness. Up from Slavery thus became the classic text of black accommodation to the status quo. It was, understandably, immensely popular among whites. African American autobiography during the first half of the 20th century was undertaken primarily by professional writers. Artists associated with the Harlem Renaissance, that flowering of black arts in the 1920s, produced works exhibiting a new sense of racial pride. Noteworthy among them are James Weldon Johnson’s Along This Way (1933) and Claude McKay’s A Long Way from Home (1937). Langston Hughes’s The Big Sea (1940) offers an ironic, detached view of Harlem in the 1920s, the decade in which, as Hughes put it, “The Negro was in Vogue”. Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road (1942) is memorable for Hurston’s engaging prose style, replete with the vivid verbal imagery Hurston learned during her years gathering Negro folklore throughout the South. African American autobiography in the 1940s was dominated by one text, Richard Wright’s Black Boy (1945). This searing portrayal of growing up in what Wright called “Southern Night” has garnered more critical attention than any other autobiography of the period and has loomed larger in the imagination of later writers. Some have approved its bleak depiction of black existence, while others have fought to fashion a different vision of African American life outside of Wright’s influence. As a description of an artist’s coming of age, Black Boy is a model of autobiographical self-fashioning. To create a version of his life that satisfies him as emotionally true, Wright freely creates and arranges scenes, fashions dialogue, and omits facts that do not accord with his vision. Black Boy reminds us that its author was also a fiction writer, who skilfully uses novelistic techniques to produce a disturbing autobiography. In the 1950s and 1960s, African American life underwent profound change, resulting from school desegregation and the gradual erosion of Jim Crow laws in the South, advances achieved through the legal efforts of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and nonviolent social protest organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference under the direction of Martin Luther King, Jr. Other segments of the black community became radicalized, as evidenced by the rise of groups such as the Nation of Islam and the Blank Panther Party. This social ferment brought forth many new autobiographies. Like the slave narra-

tives of an earlier century, these works called attention to the terrible conditions under which millions of African Americans lived – not in legalized slavery, but in the economic and social bondage of America’s southern towns and northern inner cities. Manchild in the Promised Land, Claude Brown’s 1965 bestseller, shocked and fascinated America, much as Black Boy had done 20 years earlier, with its unflinching depiction of blighted black lives. As with many of its predecessors, Manchild is also an American success story, marking Brown’s escape from a life ruled by drugs and crime to one of commitment to helping solve the problems of the black ghetto. Asserting black alienation and threatening coming racial revolution, Black nationalists alarmed America with their radical politics. Bobby Seale’s Seize the Time (1970) and H. Rap Brown’s Die, Nigger, Die (1969) typify many autobiographies of the era through their aggressive stance toward the white establishment. Anne Moody presents a somewhat different viewpoint in Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968), which chronicles her involvement with the civil rights movement in the South. Moody describes the unbearable tensions she endured while helping to register voters and organize the black community to fight racial oppression. She also records her ultimate rejection of nonviolence as a viable way of eliminating the nation’s racial injustices. The most important African American autobiography of the 1960s, however, is The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965). Like Douglass’s Narrative, Malcolm’s work skilfully accomplishes one of the requisites of great autobiography – that of tracing the growth of the autobiographical self. Using elements from spiritual autobiography, Malcolm portrays himself as “Homeboy”, “Detroit Red”, “Satan”, and finally, “Minister Malcolm X” as he goes from petty hustler to criminal, to prison inmate, to reborn believer and spokesman for the Nation of Islam. Malcolm’s death just as his autobiography was being completed gives special poignance to a life cut short before its protagonist was able to discover and realize another, and perhaps final, version of himself. The last decades of the 20th century have seen a new outpouring of African American literature, especially from women writers, who have also produced some important autobiographies, among them Maya Angelou’s multi-volume work beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970). Poet and novelist Audre Lorde wrote Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982), a fictionalized account of her early life. Angelou’s and Lorde’s works are typical of women’s narratives from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s in their candid treatment of issues relevant to women, including family relationships, sexual abuse, lesbianism, spirituality, and equal opportunity in a maledominated world. Although the full-length autobiography is by far the most common form of African American life writing, both the autobiographical essay and the journal /diary have some distinguished representatives. Besides producing two complete autobiographies – Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (1940) and his Autobiography (1968) – W.E.B. Du Bois penned several autobiographical essays, including pieces in his famous The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Black Power advocate Eldridge Cleaver collected his autobiographical essays in Soul on Ice (1968). Many critics today view James Baldwin as the finest essayist America pro-

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duced in the second half of the 20th century; among his best autobiographical pieces are “Notes of a Native Son” and “Stranger in the Village”, both in his essay collection Notes of a Native Son (1955). Also noteworthy is The Fire Next Time (1963), comprised of two autobiographical essays. In these pieces Baldwin recounts with exquisite sensitivity and thoughtfulness what it means to be a black writer, a black homosexual, and a black American. Like Du Bois in Dusk of Dawn, Baldwin is especially adept at setting his life as an individual black man within the larger historical and cultural contexts of his times. Among the writers whose diaries and journals offer insight into the daily lives of men and women who contributed in numerous ways to African American life, some few stand out. The diaries of Charlotte Forten Grimke, covering the years 1854 to 1892, chronicle a period of tumultuous change for all Americans. Of particular interest are her entries from 1862 and 1863, when she taught newly freed slaves on the sea islands of South Carolina. Novelist Charles Chesnutt also kept a journal during the years he conceived his goal of being a writer whose mission would be the uplift of white Americans through telling them the truth about the humanity of their black brothers and sisters. Among recent diarists, Audre Lorde should be noted for The Cancer Journals (1980), her recollections of how she coped with life-threatening breast cancer. African American life writing uses forms and themes found in both American and other national literatures. The spiritual autobiography, the story of a rise to fame and fortune from humble beginnings, the account of the artist’s coming of age and realization of his or her vocation – these are not uniquely African American. But blacks have contributed one new form to world literature. The classic slave narrative perhaps best summarizes the impulses behind African American life writing: to assert one’s full humanity and to call upon America to make good its promises to grant all citizens freedom to fashion and live lives of their own choosing. David L. Dudley Further Reading Andrews, William L., To Tell A Free Story: The First Century of AfroAmerican Autobiography, 1760–1865, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986 Andrews, William L., “African-American Autobiography Criticism: Retrospect and Prospect” in American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect, edited by Paul John Eakin, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991 Barton, Rebecca Chalmers, Witnesses for Freedom: Negro Americans in Autobiography, New York: Harper, 1948 Braxton, Joanne M., Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition within a Tradition, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989 Brignano, Russell C., Black Americans in Autobiography: An Annotated Bibliography of Autobiographies and Autobiographical Books Written Since the Civil War, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1974; revised, expanded edition, 1984 Butterfield, Stephen, Black Autobiography in America, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974 Davis, Charles T. and Henry Louis Gates, Jr (editors), The Slave’s Narrative, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985 Dudley, David L., My Father’s Shadow: Intergenerational Conflict in African-American Men’s Autobiography, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991 Lee, A. Robert, Designs of Blackness: Mappings in the Literature and Culture of Afro-America, London: Pluto Press, 1998 Olney, James, “‘I Was Born’: Slave Narratives, Their Status as

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Autobiography and as Literature” in The Slave’s Narrative, edited by Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985 Rosenblatt, Roger, “Black Autobiography: Life as the Death Weapon” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by James Olney, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Smith, Sidonie, Where I’m Bound: Patterns of Slavery and Freedom in Black American Autobiography, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1974 Stepto, Robert B., From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative, Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1979

Age and Life Writing “Age” may be viewed as implicit in all life writing, and some age factors become explicit in self writing by the longer lived. “Aging” – when not a euphemism for old age – could be another word for temporality in any narrative that represents a considerable extent of the life course. Yet auto/biography theorists outside humanistic gerontology and narrative psychology pay little attention to age. One reason may be that even to those familiar with gendering and racializing processes, aging and age remain naturalized. That “age” too is socially constructed, all across the life course, is the unfinished insight of the anti-essentialist revolution, despite the work of (among others) Philippe Ariès on childhood, Patricia Meyer Spacks on adolescence, the present author on the midlife, and Simone de Beauvoir on old age. Whatever happens to the body, people are “aged by culture” from their first socialization. More analytically, they are “aged” through discourses high and low (including the religious, mythical, medical, developmental, legal, demographic, philosophical, literary, conversational, and media-generated), the economic structures of the life course, the maturational processes, generational interaction, history, and custom. Despite the enormous mass of existing life writing, “not all of it is analyzable in the sense of yielding potentially valuable information about aging and the self” (in the words of Harry J. Berman). Some works can be re-analysed as historians teach us more about self-fashioning in various periods (David Troyansky on 19th-century judges), or as age critics reinterpret self writing (Kathleen Woodward on Freud and de Beauvoir, Dan McAdams on Karen Horney). One problem for age criticism is that not even autobiographers of later life have heretofore thought to tease apart the sources of their meanings of “age”. For what age of audience am I implicitly writing? What influences drive my beliefs about my own aging? Why these particular discursive choices (metaphors, genres)? As Florida Scott-Maxwell discovered, “I am so caught in my experience of age that it occurs to me only now that … anyone would have the right to ask, ‘By what road did you arrive where you are?’” But even she did not consider whether writing The Measure of My Days (1968) in London in the ageist mid-1960s had more to do with producing her new state of “hot conviction” than turning 82. Much life writing about formative experiences still centres on childhood or the stage of youth curiously known as “the coming of age”, without wondering: “why does my ‘latest self’ pick the particular earlier ages and age relationships that it does and ignore others?” What is the age politics of the genre I choose, or

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of my favoured age metaphors? When a 20th-century Western autobiographer focuses on a later stage of life (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Crack-Up”, 1936), or contrasts mid-life to an earlier stage (George Orwell’s “Such, Such Were the Joys”, 1952, or, more implicitly, Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, 1951), the effect is often that aging involves inevitable decline. Writing the biography of one’s mother is harder because this underexamined bias in life writing makes the subjectivity of older women less visible to younger people even in the same family. Narrative of decline forces out elegy, pastoral, tragedy, or other modes; it makes those aged by culture passive in the face of discourses and structures that intervention could change. Some contemporary American writers (many of them women allied with the positive-aging movement) rebut this decline by writing about conquering an age or stage that is felt to be particularly challenging: say, turning 50 or 60. Some endorse special behaviours – kayaking, fly-fishing, early retirement – held to be conducive to growth at such ages. Such writers reinforce “decadism” (the construction of age decades as a priori meaningful time units) or mid-life-as-crisis, rather than deconstructing them as the effects of a late 20th-century gendered North American culture spreading to men and to other developed countries. Recovery stories – from addiction or illness – may also be structured as progress narratives. With rare exceptions, writers are as tacit about having chosen to write a progress genre as a decline. The recent trend of describing a phase of middle or later life isolated from the rest of the life course (the slice-of-life approach) may correspond to the phenomenon of niche-marketing by age in book publishing and the growing Western emphasis on age grading as much as to increasing efforts to diminish middle-ageism and gerontophobia. Autobiography that foregrounds age more critically could be the ideal form for asking what counts as “age-related experience”, whether through a journal kept and re-read over the years, an exchange of letters between friends, or a personal essay. After participating in writing groups made up of people between 58 and 92, Ruth Ray has shown how they all learned to consider “generational differences on the evolving content and structure of their life stories”. Memoir as theory and cultural critique could elevate the subtextual, theorize the body, estrange the self-evident, contextualize spotty memories, weigh competing influences, and convey (as others have done for gender and race) the tremendous impact of age discourses on subjectivity and social relations. Only thinking though the self can unravel such questions, using memory as well as historical, psychological, narratological, economic, and sociological tools. The social lore about aging that people in different cultures acquire starting as early as childhood can probably be recovered through memory: e.g. their “implicit theories of the life course” (William McKinley Runyon), the attributes of each stage of life, resocialization into becoming or performing the next age the culture decrees. The age lore that contemporary children are learning could be observed and understood in historical context. Younger men as well as women would need to raise their consciousness about the age cues of their time and place. “Age-consciousness” would no longer mean internalizing age cues but identifying them and distancing oneself from the negative ones – as Barbara MacDonald’s Look Me in the Eye exemplifies. Age beliefs that are socially divisive and /or psychologically abusive

would become widely regarded as ethical issues for men and women of all ages, not just as concerns of “aging” feminists. Age is a component of any of our multiple identities as they change over time (race, gender, class, sexuality, political or spiritual formation, practising a skill or talent, parenting). To focus on one such “age identity” at a time can be useful. To move beyond this focus might require integrating a collection of one’s time- and culture-conscious histories. More generally, does life writing tend to overemphasize change at the expense of continuities? Is the current proliferation of memoirs a response in part to postindustrial pressures for adaptive change? Where might new metaphors come from? The need to understand age is urgent, and interest in the subject is growing. “Age Studies” is a new cross-disciplinary approach that, by merging feminist theory, literary and cultural studies, and critical gerontology, is providing interrogations of existing texts and practices, new concepts and directions. If auto/biography theorists learn to draw what they need from Age Studies, this alliance could eventually influence and inspire novelists, poets, and others concerned with the psyche in culture over time. Life writing becomes the privileged site where narrative self-consciousness and critical age-consciousness converge. A possible name for this form would be “age autobiography”. Margaret Morganroth Gullette See also Adolescence and Life Writing; Childhood and Life Writing; Old Age and Life Writing

Further Reading Birren, James E. et al., Aging and Biography: Explorations in Adult Development, New York: Springer, 1996 Cole, Thomas R., Robert Kastenbaum, and Ruth E. Ray (editors), Handbook of the Humanities and Aging, revised edition, New York: Springer, 2000 Gullette, Margaret Morganroth, Declining to Decline: Cultural Combat and the Politics of the Midlife, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997 Gullette, Margaret Morganroth, “Age Studies as Cultural Studies” in Handbook of the Humanities and Aging, revised edition, edited by Thomas R. Cole, Robert Kastenbaum, and Ruth E. Ray, New York: Springer, 2000 Kenyon, Gary M. and William L. Randall, Restorying Our Lives: Personal Growth through Autobiographical Reflection, New York: Praeger, 1997 McAdams, Dan P., “Image, Theme, and Character in the Life Story of Karen Horney” in Women Creating Lives: Identities, Resilience, and Resistance, edited by Carol E. Franz and Abigail J. Stewart, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1994 MacDonald, Barbara, Look Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging, and Ageism, San Francisco: Spinsters Ink, 1983 Myerhoff, Barbara, “The Journal as Activity and Genre” in Remembered Lives: The Work of Ritual, Storytelling, and Growing Older, edited by Marc Kaminsky, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992 Ray, Ruth E., Beyond Nostalgia: Aging and Life-Story Writing, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000 Ricoeur, Paul, “Narrative Time”, Critical Inquiry, 7/1 (Autumn 1980) Runyon, William McKinley, Life Histories and Psychobiography: Explorations in Theory and Method, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982 Waxman, Barbara Frey, To Live in the Center of the Moment: Literary Autobiographies of Aging, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997 Woodward, Kathleen, “Simone de Beauvoir: Aging and Its Discontents” in The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writings, edited by Shari Benstock, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988

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Woodward, Kathleen, Aging and Its Discontents: Freud and Other Fictions, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991 Woodward, Kathleen, “Telling Stories: Aging, Reminiscence, and the Life Review”, Journal of Aging and Identity, 2/3 (1997): 149–63.

Agee, James

1909–1955

American journalist, screenwriter, and documentary auto/biographer James Agee won the Pulitzer prize for his posthumously published autobiographical novel A Death in the Family (1957), a book that uses his characteristic blend of lyrical, elevated prose and prose-poetry to ruminate about his father’s death in a car accident, when the son was only six years old. In addition to this novel and another called The Morning Watch (1951), Agee published poetry in Permit Me Voyage (1934), other pieces of short fiction, a considerable body of journalistic writing including film reviews and film scripts, and Letters of James Agee to Father Flye (1962). Agee is most often remembered, however, for a book he had published much earlier, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), a nonfictional text ostensibly focused on three tenant-farmer families living in Alabama during the Depression. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men has been difficult for readers to classify since its publication. While the back cover of the revised edition carries the label “literature /sociology”, Agee’s masterwork has also been regarded as autobiography, memoir, essays, documentary, anti-documentary, case study, confessional, exposé, or a work of postmodern realism, and – because of his collaboration with Walker Evans, whose photographs of the families and their surroundings appear at the book’s beginning – as a photo-text. Reviewers of the first edition found Agee himself too much present in a book that they took to be another in a series of documentary studies of poverty before and during the Depression, analogous to Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives (1890), Dorothea Lange and Paul Taylor’s An American Exodus (1939), or Erskine Caldwell and Margaret BourkeWhite’s You Have Seen Their Faces (1937). Agee thought of his collaboration with Walker Evans as being a sort of mock-documentary, one that would have the opposite effect from You Have Seen Their Faces, which he reviled for its superior tone, sensationalism, exploitation of its subjects, and as celebrating the fame of the photographer and author. Some reviewers of the second edition of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men charged Agee with the same sort of egotism in thrusting himself so often into his text, Erling Larsen’s “Let Us Not Now Praise Ourselves” (1961) being a representative example. Agee responded to those who saw him as being too autobiographical, explaining that the people and places he wrote about were real: In a novel, a house or person has his meaning, his existence, entirely through the writer. Here, a house or a person has only the most limited of his meaning through me: his true meaning is much huger. It is that he exists, in actual being, as you do and as I do, and as no character of the imagination can possibly exist. Although Agee chose to use invented names for the three families he was writing about to protect their privacy, he makes

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it clear that neither the families nor himself are fictional characters. Ironically, only by inserting himself directly into the text as both writer and participant-observer can he demonstrate that the people he celebrates have their meaning outside of the way they are depicted through his perceptions. Finally, then, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is a sort of meta-biography or quest biography, comparable to such recent works as Ian Hamilton’s In Search of J. D. Salinger (1988) or Mark Harris’s Saul Bellow, Drumlin Woodchuck (1980), books that are about their authors’ attempts at writing about other lives. Agee’s book is as much the story of Agee’s attempt at writing about his experiences as it is about those experiences. Agee includes numerous autobiographical pieces within his study of the lives of the families he calls Ricketts, Woods, and Gudger, such as the narrative of his and Walker Evans’s first meeting with the three families and the story of himself as a child getting out of bed on a cold morning to perform his duties as an altar boy. For those who see these autobiographical set-pieces as intruding on the larger story, Agee responds, again within the text, by explaining that in the interests of accuracy and honesty he realizes that his portrait is necessarily relative, filtered through his own eyes. “For that reason and for others”, he continues, “I would do just as badly to simplify or eliminate myself from this picture as to simplify or invent character, places or atmospheres”. Timothy Dow Adams Biography James Rufus Agee. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, 27 November 1909. His father came from a farming background, his mother from a family with a strong interest in business, religion, and the arts. Educated at St Andrews School, Sewanee, Tennessee, 1919–24; and Knoxville High School, 1924–25. Studied at Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, 1925–28; Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1928–32 (BA), where he also edited the Harvard Advocate. Reporter and staff writer, Fortune, 1932–39. Married Olivia Saunders, 1933 (divorced 1937). Wrote a book of verse, Permit Me Voyage (1934). Commissioned by Fortune magazine to tour Alabama during the Depression with the photographer Walker Evans, 1936: the results were published as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). Married Alma Mailman, 1939 (later divorced): one son. Book reviewer, from 1939, and feature writer and film reviewer, 1941–48, Time magazine. Film columnist, Nation, 1942–48. Married Mia Fritsch, 1946: one daughter. Became a literary celebrity and was sought after as a scriptwriter by Hollywood: film scripts include The African Queen (1951) and The Night of the Hunter (1955). Awarded the Pulitzer prize, posthumously, for the novel A Death in the Family (1957). Died in New York, 16 May 1955.

Selected Writings (with Walker Evans) Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 1941; edited by John Hersey, 1988 The Morning Watch (autobiographical fiction), 1951 A Death in the Family (autobiographical fiction), 1957 Letters of James Agee to Father Flye, 1962, revised 1971

Further Reading Allister, Mark, “Seeing, Knowing, and Being: James Agee’s Let us Now Praise Famous Men”, Prose Studies, 9/3 (1986): 88–102 Bergreen, Laurence, James Agee: A Life, New York: Dutton, 1984 Cosgrove, Peter, “Snapshots of the Absolute: Mediamachia in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”, American Literature, 67/2 (June 1995): 329–57 Doty, Mark A., Tell Me Who I Am: James Agee’s Search for Selfhood, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981

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Kramer, Victor A., James Agee, Boston: Twayne, 1975 Larsen, Erling, “Let Us Not Now Praise Ourselves”, Carleton Miscellany, 2 (Winter 1961): 86–96 Lofaro, Michael A. (editor), James Agee: Reconsiderations, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992 Lowe, James, The Creative Process of James Agee, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994 Rabinowitz, Paula, “Voyeurism and Class Consciousness: James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”, Cultural Critique, 21 (Spring 1992): 143–70 Reed, T.V., “Unimagined Existence and the Fiction of the Real: Postmodernist Realism in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”, Representations, 24 (Fall 1988): 156–76 Spiegel, Alan, James Agee and the Legend of Himself: A Critical Study, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998

Agency The poststructuralist attack on the self in the 1960s and 1970s fell with particular force upon autobiography, in which a self appears to be doubly present, as narrator and protagonist. The surge of critical interest in autobiography in the 1980s and 1990s may be understood as an attempt – from many quarters and for different reasons – to preserve the subject as an agent, within and without texts. Poststructuralists dissolve agency in several ways. Michel Foucault sees selves as the effects of power relations created and maintained by multifarious cultural forces; he associates “author functions” with “legal and institutional systems that circumscribe, determine, and articulate the realm of discourses” (“What is an Author?”). For Roland Barthes, language speaks and acts through writers, who are “never more than the instance writing, just as I is nothing other than the instance saying I” (“The Death of the Author”). Paul de Man argues that the life discerned in autobiography is just as much a product of the writing as the cause of it; the act of writing produces a textual self that becomes identified, rightly or wrongly, with the anterior producer of the text. Jacques Derrida sees the proper name or signature of the writer as creating autobiography, but only when accepted as such by readers: “The ear of the other says me to me and constitutes the autos of my autobiography” (The Ear of the Other). Candace Lang maintains that questions about the reference of “I” mean that writing of any sort “can no longer be conceived as an act of singular authority, but must be understood as a process of collaboration between an individual consciousness and that Other which permeates it” (“Autobiography in the Aftermath of Romanticism”). Prompted by the effect of these questions on scholarly editorial practices, Jack Stillinger demonstrates that the notion of a single agent for all aspects of texts ignores the influence of others at every stage of literary production – from idea to publication. Running counter to arguments displacing the self as agent and referent of autobiography is the work of Philippe Lejeune and Paul John Eakin. Lejeune’s “autobiographical pact” between writer and reader stabilizes the autobiographical self in an identity of author, narrator, and protagonist, held in place by the quasi-legal force of the name on the title page. In the face of poststructuralist arguments about language’s nonreferentiality, Paul John Eakin holds that autobiography cannot but be referential, a position entailing the agency of the autobiographer. For

Eakin the act of writing autobiography is “an extension of a lifelong process of identity formation [which] mirrors experiential reality . . . in performance as well as in product. In this respect the making of autobiography belongs to the world of reference that is its subject” (Touching the World). Because it makes lived experience accessible and seems relatively unmediated by literary concerns, autobiographical writing can project a sense of a writer’s agency outside the text more directly than other forms of literature. Susan Stanford Friedman defines agency in political contexts as “the assumption of human subjectivities that create meanings and act in negotiation with the systemic conditions of the social order, however circumscribed” (Mappings). Autobiographies effectively reveal agency or the desire for agency because they show how meanings are created for people, how people create meanings for themselves, and how people engage the world around them. Thus, autobiography is well suited to support arguments on behalf of people who have been oppressed or traditionally silenced. A recurring issue in discussions of autobiographies by members of minority or oppressed groups is the degree of independence and control that autobiographers have over their own texts. For members of such groups, achieving full and free agency in the writing of one’s own life is often difficult, and their struggles to be agents parallel the group’s efforts to achieve its political goals. Sponsors and editors may insist that life stories conform to preexisting patterns for narratives of oppression. Cultural stereotypes may inhibit the telling of life stories altogether or severely restrict writers’ ability to interpret their own experience freely. Becoming an agent is a goal these writers work for, on their own behalf and on behalf of others. Resisting the association of agency with individualist ideology as well as masculine autonomy and power, feminist theorists have searched for new understandings of agency. The political scientist Susan Hekman argues that subjects act as agents when they create for themselves “distinctive combinations, that is, individual subjectivities” out of the hegemonic and nonhegemonic discourses around them; agency resides in the “piec[ing] together” of a subjectivity. She likens the process to the way that speakers of a language create unique, distinctive statements from commonly used materials (“Subjects and Agents: The Question for Feminism”). Such creative selection is also similar to the selecting and editing required to construct an autobiography. The literary critic Marianne Hirsch uses a concept of agency as selection in discussing the use of family photographs by four autobiographers. The philosopher Sandra Lee Bartky suggests that the debate over agency is a new version of the problem of free will versus determinism. If so, each way of understanding human action negates the other, and the debate is at an impasse. Bartky’s view suggests that understanding agency may finally be a matter of faith and therefore not amenable to rational discussion beyond a certain point. Reformulating the question of agency in writing as that of causation obviates this dilemma, allowing one to continue trying to understand writers’ actions. It also acknowledges the poststructuralists’ dispersal of self into various externalized functions while preserving the meaningfulness of writers’ actions in generating their own life stories. For example, when applied to autobiography, Aristotle’s causes – efficient, material, formal, and final – yield the following analysis. Autobiographers are the efficient cause of the text: they bring it about. Language and

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experience are material causes: they form the substance of the work. Ideas about the self, the life course, and genre are formal causes. Autobiography’s reason for being, its final cause, is the desire to communicate an understanding of one’s life. Positing several kinds of causation allows both self and discourse to be considered agents of autobiography’s production.

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Century, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993 Stillinger, Jack, Multiple Authorship and the Myth of Solitary Genius, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991 Taylor, Charles, “Agency and the Self”, part 1 of Human Agency and Language, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985

Thomas R. Smith See also The Self

Further Reading Andrews, William L., To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of AfroAmerican Autobiography, 1760–1865, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986 Barthes, Roland, “The Death of the Author” in Image – Music – Text, translated by Stephen Heath, New York: Hill and Wang, 1977 Bartky, Sandra Lee, “Agency: What’s the Problem?” in Provoking Agents: Gender and Agency in Theory and Practice, edited by Judith Kegan Gardiner, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995 Couser, G. Thomas, “Authority”, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 10 /1 (1995): 34–49 de Man, Paul, “Autobiography as De-facement”, MLN / Modern Language Notes, 94/5 (1979): 919–30; reprinted in The Rhetoric of Romanticism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984 Derrida, Jacques, The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation: Texts and Discussions with Jacques Derrida, edited by Claude Lévesque and Christie V. McDonald, translated by Peggy Kamuf, New York: Schocken Books, 1985 Eakin, Paul John, Touching the World: Reference in Autobiography, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992 Foucault, Michel, “What is an Author?” in Language, CounterMemory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, edited by Donald. F. Bouchard, translated by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977 Friedman, Susan Stanford, Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998 Gagnier, Regenia, Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain, 1832–1920, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991 Hekman, Susan, “Subjects and Agents: The Question for Feminism” in Provoking Agents: Gender and Agency in Theory and Practice, edited by Judith Kegan Gardiner, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995 Hirsch, Marianne, “Resisting Images: Rereading Adolescence” in Provoking Agents: Gender and Agency in Theory and Practice, edited by Judith Kegan Gardiner, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995 Lang, Candace, “Autobiography in the Aftermath of Romanticism”, Diacritics, 12/4 (1982): 2–16 Lejeune, Philippe, “The Autobiographical Pact” in On Autobiography, edited by Paul John Eakin, translated by Katherine Leary, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989 Lejeune, Philippe, “The Autobiographical Pact (bis)” in On Autobiography, edited by Paul John Eakin, translated by Katherine Leary, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989 McKay, Nellie Y., “The Narrative Self: Race, Politics, and Culture in Black American Women’s Autobiography” in Feminisms in the Academy, edited by Domna Stanton and Abigail J. Stewart, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995; reprinted in Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998 Pease, Donald E., “Author” in Critical Terms for Literary Study, 2nd edition, edited by Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995 Smith, Paul, Discerning the Subject, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988 Smith, Sidonie, “The Universal Subject, Female Embodiment, and the Consolidation of Autobiography” in Subjectivity, Identity, and the Body: Women’s Autobiographical Practices in the Twentieth

Aksakov, Sergei

1791–1859

Russian fiction writer and memoirist Although he had written some verse and theatre reviews in the 1820s and 1830s, Sergei Aksakov entered the major phase of his career as a writer only after 1845, first with the publication of a book on fishing (based on personal experience), then with works on hunting (also based on experience), and finally on works of a memoiristic nature. The most important of these, Semeinaia khronika (final version published 1856; Family Chronicle) had its origins in accounts within Aksakov’s family about his grandfather, who had settled with his serfs in the newly opened Orenburg area of the southern Urals in the latter part of the 18th century, and about other relatives of that period. In addition, Aksakov drew on his own memories of his parents to complete the story of the two generations preceding his own. (Family Chronicle concludes with the birth of Sergei himself, although the family name is altered to Bagrov.) Family Chronicle was followed by Vospominaniia (1856; literally “Reminiscences”, translated as A Russian Schoolboy) in which the actual names of Aksakov and his relatives were used, and Detskie gody Bagrova-vnuka (1858; literally “Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson”, translated as Years of Childhood ). In addition, Aksakov composed a number of memoirs dealing with various literary and theatrical figures he had known during his lifetime, including the poet Gavriil Derzhavin (1743–1816), the writer Nikolai Zagoskin (1789–1852), Nikolai Gogol’ (1809–1852), and others, as well as the literary and theatrical life of various periods earlier in the century. (Istoriia moego znakomstva s Gogolem, [1855; A History of My Acquaintance with Gogol] is probably the most important.) Although these works were not necessarily written in the order of the internal chronology of the events depicted and differ considerably in their generic affiliations, taken as a whole Aksakov’s narrative works provide a fascinating, if somewhat restricted, view of aspects of Russian social and literary life from the later 18th century to the middle decades of the 19th. In this respect, and in their frequent attention to the minutiae of the everyday family life of the Russian gentry in this period, they set the stage for such later work as the depictions of the Rostov and Bolkonskii families in Tolstoi’s War and Peace. Of Aksakov’s more important works, Family Chronicle is the closest to fiction. Although, in so far as can be determined, Aksakov does not radically alter the crucial events in his family’s history prior to his own birth, he does cast each chapter (deliberately termed a “fragment” of the Chronicle) in a given literary form, whether that is the foundation myth characteristic of the opening of chronicles (the first chapter); the Gothic tale, a typical genre of the late 18th century (the second chapter); or the sentimental romance and family novel (the three subsequent chapters). The self is portrayed in terms of the continuation of

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both familial and textual lineages. Years of Childhood in large part follows the pattern of a single genre, the childhood narrative, with its characteristic focus on the psychological and social development of the narrator’s consciousness. Perhaps most memorable are the introductory section of unconnected memories and the scene of the death of the narrator’s grandfather (the same character who dominates Family Chronicle), which functions as the moment when the child realizes the horror and finality of death. Aksakov’s most significant other autobiographical text is probably A Russian Schoolboy, which deals primarily with his schooldays at the gimnaziia in Kazan and then at the fledgling University of Kazan. In the course of the text, Aksakov matures from a timid child, fearful of separation from his beloved (and intensely protective) mother, to a young man on the threshold of departure for adult life in the distant capital of St Petersburg. Sergei Aksakov stands as the initiator in Russia of literature that presents the self not merely or primarily as a witness of significant events but as a dynamically developing personality, interesting precisely as a consequence of the very ordinariness and universality of its experience.

Family Chronicle, 1924, and Chronicles of a Russian Family, 1924; as A Family Chronicle, translated by Olga Shartse, 1984 Vospominaniia, 1856 (published with Semeinaia khronika); as A Russian Schoolboy, translated by J.D. Duff, 1917 Literaturnye i teatral’nye vospominaniia [Literary and Theatrical Reminiscences], 1856–58 Detskie gody Bagrova-vnuka, 1858; as Years of Childhood, translated by J.D. Duff, 1916, and by Alec Brown, 1960; in part in The Family Chronicle, translated by M.C. Beverley, 1924; as Childhood Years of Bagrov Grandson, translated by Olga Shartse, 1984 Sobranie sochinenii (collected works), 4 vols, 1955–56 Sobranie sochinenii (collected works), 5 vols, 1966

Further Reading Durkin, Andrew R., Sergei Aksakov and Russian Pastoral, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1983 Feuer, Kathryn B., “The Indoor Art of Sergei Aksakov,” Ulbandus Review, 2/1 (1979): 86–102 Leavitt, Marcus, “Aksakov’s Family Chronicle and the Oral Tradition,” Slavic and East European Journal, 32/2 (1988): 198–212 Lobanov, Mikhail, Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov, Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1987 Mashinskii, S.I., S.T. Aksakov: Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo, 2nd edition, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1973 (first edition 1961)

Andrew R. Durkin Biography Born in Ufa, Russia, 10 October 1791. His father was a wealthy landowner. Spent his earliest years primarily on the family estates in the region (Orenburg guberniia). Educated at home and later at the gymnasium in Kazan, continuing his studies at Kazan University when it was founded in 1804. Left for St Petersburg without graduating, 1807. Worked in government offices and participated in the theatrical and literary life of St Petersburg. Resigned from the civil service, 1811. Moved to Moscow, where he was active as an amateur in literary and theatrical life. Published first verse (anonymously), 1812. Enlisted in the militia, 1812. Married Ol’ga Semenovna Zaplatina, 1816: six sons and eight daughters. Lived mainly on his estate (Aksakovo) in the Orenburg region, 1816–26; thereafter in or near Moscow. Began to publish translations, theatre reviews, and articles, early 1820s. Hosted a weekly social and literary salon, and joined the Society of Lovers of the Russian Word. Served on the Moscow Censorship Committee, 1827–29 and 1830–32; dismissed for negligence in authorizing the publication of a “scurrilous” pamphlet on drunken policemen. Inspector, Grand Duke Constantine School of Surveying, 1833. Wrote the short story “Metel’” [1834; The Blizzard]. First director of the Geodetic Institute after its reorganization in 1835. Finally retired from the civil service in 1838. Managed family estates, to which he added Abramtsevo (near Sergiev Posad) in 1843; here he entertained, among many others, the writers Gogol, Turgenev, and Tolstoi. Despite failing eyesight, worked throughout the 1840s on his angling and hunting “notes” (published 1847–55), based largely on personal experience, then his family history, reminiscences of childhood and school years, and memoirs and biographies of the literary and theatrical figures he had known. Through two of his sons, Konstantin and Ivan, was associated with the Romantic nationalist Slavophile movement, in whose publications many of his works first appeared. Died at Abramtsevo, the family estate near Moscow, 12 May 1859.

Selected Writings Zapiski ob uzhen’e ryby [Notes on Angling], 1847, revised 1854; translated by Thomas P. Hodge in Notes on Fishing and Selected Fishing Prose and Poetry, 1997 Zapiski ruzheinogo okhotnika Orgenburgskoi gubernii, 1852; as Notes of a Provincial Wildfowler, edited and translated by Kevin Windle, 1998 Istoriia moega znakomstva s Gogolem [A History of My Acquaintance with Gogol], 1855 Semeinaia khronika, 1856, revised 1856; as A Russian Gentleman, translated by J.D. Duff, 1917; translated by M.C. Beverley as The

Akutagawa Ry®nosuke

1892–1927

Japanese fiction writer, critic, and autobiographer Akutagawa’s reputation, both inside and outside Japan, rests chiefly on the body of short stories – aloof, elusive, and intensely “literary” – that won him acclaim during his lifetime. Indeed, in the context of Japanese literary history he is distinguished, within his period, for the way in which his work ran counter to the prevailing tendency of fictional writing to take the form of autobiography, or, in many cases, for what was, in effect, autobiography that laid claim to the status of fiction. Shizenshugi (commonly translated as “naturalism” for want of a better term) was the creation of a number of provincial writers born in the 1870s who interpreted the critic Tsubouchi Shπyπ’s call for literature to consist of truth to life to mean the reproduction of their own, minimally disguised, everyday lives. As Kato Shuichi has remarked, “thus began an age when anybody could be a novelist”. Even writers such as Arishima Takeo, Tanizaki Jun’ichirπ, Miyamoto Yuriko, and Akutagawa’s mentor Natsume Sπseki, who were not associated with the trend, produced works that could either easily be connected to the details of their private lives, or of which the protagonists were as self-absorbed as those of the naturalists. Though naturalism was never a dominant taste among intellectuals of the period, and despite the fact that the reputations of its more purist practitioners have not worn well, the subsequent influence of the movement on Japanese letters has been profound. That tendency to maudlin egocentricity that characterizes the “Inovel” (watakushi shπsetsu), a form that arose in the wake of naturalism, has left a discernible mark on both high and popular Japanese art, and the presuppositions of the genre itself have led to a faith, within literary studies in Japan, in the biographical transparency of the literary text, and a corresponding readiness to conflate an author’s life and work, which would surprise the average Western scholar.

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As a schoolboy Akutagawa was an admirer of the naturalists, as well as various fin-de-siècle Western writers. Later, however, he turned away from naturalism, and his own work, up until 1922 at least, can be seen as a resolute rejection of the crudely autobiographical element then popular in literature. The stories that Akutagawa produced between 1916 and 1922, and on which his reputation now rests, are characterized by a detachment, self-consciousness, and irony that are the antithesis, at least at a surface level, of the confessional. There is a telling moment towards the denouement of Imogayu (1916; Yam Gruel) in which the previously impersonal narrator suddenly addresses us directly with the dry comment that his protagonist is in the process of losing that appetite “which had hitherto commanded our sympathy for him”. The variety of styles and forms Akutagawa employed, and the character of the sources on which he drew for his plots or settings – the weird and grotesque popular illustrated storybooks of the Edo period, collections of medieval Japanese tales and Chinese novels, folk tales, and children’s stories – also mark his oeuvre as rooted more in literature than in “life”. In Hπkyπnin no shi (1918; The Martyr), based upon early Christian writings, he went so far as to perpetrate a hoax: writing in a deliberately archaic style, supplying a bogus reference for the source, and allowing time, on its publication, for some scholarly discussion of the story’s provenance before claiming authorship. Even his best-known story Yabu no naka (1921; In a Grove), often taken as a meditation on the impossibility of absolute truth, is more easily read as an exploration of the nature of fictional realities, since the “facts” that its three incompatible accounts purport to describe have no existence aside from those accounts. Significantly the Faustian painter of Jigokuhen (1918; Hell Screen), who disastrously mingles art and life, is, nevertheless, a painter of mythological subjects. However, Akutagawa’s physical and mental deterioration after 1922 – he suffered from depression, insomnia, and hallucinations, and began to use opium in 1926 – coincided with a move towards the autobiographical. It is the intrusion of the personal into his later writings that now appears to be their weakness. Even the comparatively successful satire Kappa (1927) suffers, at this distance in time, from being too obviously a roman à clef. (Tokyo’s literary scene in the 1920s was as factional and self-absorbed as that of Paris during the same period.) Akutagawa’s obviously autobiographical texts are Haguruma (1927; Cogwheels), about his descent into what he perceived as madness, the unfinished Daidπji Shinsuke no hansei [1924; The Early Life of Daidπji Shinsuke], and the valedictory Aru ahπ no isshπ (1927; A Fool’s Life): they are all clearly intended as direct reflections of the author’s state of mind, though they retain a distance that the “I-novel” never attempted. Akutagawa committed suicide in the early hours of 24 July 1927. It was an event prefigured in the suicide of the poet Tok in Kappa, hinted at in several of the vignettes and reflections that make up A Fool’s Life, and directly referred to in the preface, dated 20 June 1927, to the latter work. Or, at least, it appears to be same event. Left with a brilliant body of work and the moving epitaph of A Fool’s Life it is tempting to feel that in encountering them we are also encountering the man who made them. But there is really no way of knowing whether Akutagawa’s suicide is in some way continuous with that oeuvre, or whether it represents an absolute break with it – a

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break that would be the measure of the distance between literature and life, between what can be communicated and what cannot. In A Fool’s Life a student is described quizzing the narrator: “But a desire for work and a desire for life, aren’t they the same?” He did not answer. Over the field of the red tufted weed, a volcano. The fiery mountain arousing in him an envy. But just why, he couldn’t say … If there is an objection that could be made to the tendency to conflate art and life – as such a tendency is embodied in the genre towards which Akutagawa’s later work appeared to be drifting, or in the critic’s belief in the biographical transparency of literature – it is that it may foster in the reader the illusion that everything about a life can be said. James Kirwan Biography Born Niihara Ry®nosuke in Tokyo, Japan, 1 March 1892. Adopted by his uncle and given the family name of Akutagawa. Studied English at Tokyo Imperial University, 1913–16. Member of the literary staff of the university magazine Shinshichπ [New Thought Tides], 1914 and 1916–17. Published his best-known story, Rashπmon, 1915. Taught English at the Naval Engineering College, Yokosuka, 1916–19. Married Tsukamoto Fumi, 1918: three sons. Literary staff member of the newspaper Osaka Mainichi Shimbun [The Osaka Daily], 1919. Travelled through China and Korea for the newspaper, March–July 1921. Had become addicted to opium by 1926. Wrote his masterpiece, the novella Kappa (1927). Committed suicide in Tokyo, 24 July 1927.

Selected Writings Daidπji Shinsuke no hansei [The Early Life of Daidπji Shinsuke] (autobiographical prose), 1924 Haguruma (autobiographical prose), 1927; as Cogwheels, translated by Cid Corman, 1987; translated by Seiji M. Lippit in The Essential Akutagawa, 1999 Aru ahπ no isshπ (autobiographical prose), 1927; as A Fool’s Life, translated by Will Petersen, 1970; translated by Seiji M. Lippit in The Essential Akutagawa, 1999 Posthumous Works of Ryunosuke Akutagawa, translated by Akio Inoue, 1961 The Essential Akutagawa: Rashomon, Hell Screen, Cogwheels, A Fool’s Life, and Other Short Fiction, edited and translated by Seiji M. Lippit, 1999

Further Reading Akutagawa Ry®nosuke, Kappa, translated by Geoffrey Bownas, London: Peter Owen, 1970; Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle, 1971 Healey, G.H., Introduction to Kappa, by Akutagawa, translated by Geoffrey Bownas, London: Peter Owen, 1970; Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle, 1971 Kato, Shuichi, A History of Japanese Literature, 3 vols, translated by David Chibbett, London: Macmillan, and Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 1979–83; abridged edition, edited by Don Sanderson, as A History of Japanese Literature: From Man’yoshu to Modern Times, Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library, 1997 Keene, Donald, Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era, New York: Holt Rinehart Winston, 1984 Yu Beongcheon, Akutagawa: An Introduction, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1972

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Alfieri, Vittorio

1749–1803

Italian playwright and autobiographer The Vita di Vittorio Alfieri da Asti (1806; Life of Vittorio Alfieri) is the first major modern autobiography written in Italian. The author, one of the most important writers of the 18th-century Italian theatre, relates the events of his early life from childhood until the last period before his death. Alfieri’s tragedies are stylistically very classical and his concept of life strict, so in a certain sense it is surprising to see that he wrote an autobiography that shows him as having all the attributes of a Romantic man. Like many other autobiographies published in the 19th century, it opens with an introduction by the author in which he presents his “autobiographical pact” (to use Philippe Lejeune’s term), stating the explicit reasons that induced him to write, and explaining the modalities of the composition of the text. As in all “classical” autobiographical pacts, Alfieri declares that he will not tell the whole truth, but that all that he does tell will be true. His stated reasons for writing are to leave a biography together with his theatrical work, so that no one will tell lies about him, and to try to make a study of the human animal – he does the same thing in his drama – through the description of the man he knows best: himself. As far as the method is concerned, Alfieri promises a text composed of five parts, corresponding to the five periods of human life: childhood, adolescence, youth, maturity, and old age. The importance he places on childhood, a fundamental element in defining “modern” autobiography, is significant. In fact, it is in his childhood that Alfieri searches for the roots of his identity, of his fears and passions, using a form of psychological research refined for his era. His autobiography is a continuous literary and psychological study of his moral and intellectual evolution, and of his literary conversion. All of Alfieri’s theories – elucidated in his 19 tragedies – on the inevitability, the power, and the logical contradictions of human passions are investigated and tested on himself via innovative and brilliant prose, beautiful neologisms, and new syntactical strategies which make the Vita still one of the most interesting autobiographies in the Italian corpus. One of the principal innovations of the Vita lies in the reasons the author gives for his writing: autobiography is an act of love directed towards himself, an act of vanity, and this is enough to justify the writing and publication of his own life story. Love for himself is the spring that induces him to give a true image of himself to others, to his “public”. Autobiography is for Alfieri a wholly legitimate exercise for everyone; in his case it is not his theatrical work that justifies his Vita, but the other way round. Finished just a few months before his death, the Vita is in reality the achievement of a long autobiographical experiment he had begun when he was young. He had read Le Véritable Mentor, ou, l’éducation de la noblesse by Caraccioli (1759) and the Mémoires d’un homme de qualité by the Abbé Prévost, which inspired him to write a journal during his first youthful travels (Alfieri speaks of it only in 1766, and unfortunately it was destroyed). Following this experiment Alfieri began to take long and detailed notes about the places, people, habits, and customs of the countries he visited. On these notes he based his Giornali, which are a real prelude to the autobiography. These journals were written in French in 1774–75, then in Italian in

1777, and, together with other autobiographical material – such as the Rendimento dei conti, best known as the Annali – converge to become the first manuscript of the autobiography (known as ms. laurenziano 13) written in two months in 1790. At the same time he was influenced by various autobiographical works: the Mémoires of Venetian dramatist Cerlo Goldoni (1787) and the Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782 and 1789) were familiar to him. But he made the ideological choice (very important in Italy during the 18th and 19th centuries) of writing his life in Italian, and this is why he was also under certain Italian influences, such as, for example, the Vita (1728) of sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini. The first manuscript of the Vita was read and perhaps also amended and completed between 1798 and 1803 (this is the version known as ms. laurenziano 24), two months before the death of the author. It is the only signed text and critics do not know how Alfieri amalgamated the different manuscripts. The first edition of the Vita (Florence: Piatti, 1806) was a huge success. It was not only read by a very large public, but also by a number of 19th-century Italian writers of memoirs, for whom Alfieri’s Vita became a model autobiography, and his linguistic choice an act of love for his country. Anna Iuso Biography Born in Asti, Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia (now part of Italy), 16 January 1749. Educated at the Royal Academy, Turin, 1759–66. Inherited a vast fortune at the age of 14. Served as an ensign, 1766. Abandoned military career to travel throughout Europe, 1767–72 (resigned commission in 1774). Devoted himself to literature after the success of his first play, Cleopatra (1775); wrote a series of dramas, including his masterpieces Saul (produced 1794) and Mirra (produced 1819). Began lifelong relationship with Luisa Stolberg, Countess of Albany, wife of Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie), 1777. Lived with Luisa after the prince’s death in 1788. Escaped from revolutionary Paris with her, 1792. Settled in Florence, leaving the city during the French occupation. Died in Florence, 8 October 1803.

Selected Writings Vita di Vittorio Alfieri da Asti scritta da sé medesimo, 1806; edited by Baldo Curato, 1942, Giampaolo Dossena, 1967, Vittore Branca, 1983, Anna Dolfi, 1987, and edited by Stefania De Stefanis Ciccone and Pär Larson, 1997; as Vita, scritta da esso, edited by Luigi Fassò, 2 vols, 1951; as Memoirs, translated anonymously, 1810, revised by E.R. Vincent, 1961; as The Autobiography of Vittorio Alfieri, translated by C. Edwards Lester, 1865, and by Henry McAnally, 1949 (republished as The Life of Vittorio Alfieri, 1953) Vita, giornali, lettere di Vittorio Alfieri, edited by Emilio Teza, 1861 Vita, rime e satire, edited by Luigi Fassò, 1949 Giornali e lettere scelte, edited by Walter Binni, 1949

Further Reading Betti, Franco, Vittorio Alfieri, Boston: Twayne, 1984 Buffaria, Pérette-Cécile, “Les Intermittences de la langue – bilinguisme et écriture autobiographique: deux examples divergents, Alfieri et Papini” in Miscellanea, edited by Gerald Parks, Trieste: University of Trieste School of Modern Languages, 1992 Cappuccio, C., “Vittorio Alfieri” in I classici italiani nella storia della critica, vol. 2, 2nd revised and enlarged edition, edited by Walter Binni, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1970 Dossena, Giampaolo, introduction to Alfieri’s Vita, Turin: Einaudi, 1967 Fubini, M., entry on Alfieri in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 2, edited by Alberto M. Ghisalberti, Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1961 Maier, Bruno, Alfieri, Palermo: Palumbo, 1957

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Megaro, Gaudens, Vittorio Alfieri: Forerunner of Italian Nationalism, New York: Columbia University Press, and London: King, 1930 Scrivano, Riccardo, Biografia e autobiografia: il modello alfieriano, Rome: Bulzoni, 1976

Algeria see Africa: North American Civil War Writings Lives were written in many ways during the American Civil War (1861–65): diaries, journals, letters, stories, biographies, autobiographies, and histories. Soldiers like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr (1842–1935) and Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914?) wrote often during and after the war. His hold on reality shaken, Holmes could not “keep home, parents and such at the same time as a reality – Can hardly indeed remember their existence”. He desperately resolved to shape meaning from absurdly chaotic experiences. Experience became mere fragments of sensation: “Trot to place where boy was shot at – then gallop to where the road bends to right – bang – whiz – ‘Halt’.” He wrote to compose himself as well as his message. In later years, he noted that facts “rapidly escaped the memory” of an intense sensation in battle, and that he needed, as when he was wounded, a fact around which his “thoughts could crystallize”. For Holmes and for Bierce, the product was both the writing and the life. Bierce wrote self-reconstructive essays, including one describing the battle at Shiloh that used fictional devices to shape chaotic experience. On the banks of the Tennessee River, desperate men fled like souls of the damned along the River Styx in Dante’s Divine Comedy: “black figures, ludicrously like the figures of demons in old allegorical prints of hell”. In the midst of horrific events, Bierce abruptly interjected a stabilizing point: “In subordination to the design of this narrative, the incidents related necessarily group themselves about my own personality as a center.” He and Holmes both made consciousness out of war’s accidents, but consciousness of themselves shaped the world as war. Civilians, witnessing baffling events, wrote for personal equilibrium. The diaries of two women, one in the South, the other in the North, are examples that recorded such struggles. Sarah Morgan (1842–1909) fled her home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for safety in Union-occupied New Orleans. As years passed and war continued, Morgan’s writing acquired desperate urgency. Her safety in an enemy city crippled writing as a “compromise between laziness and inclination”. Nevertheless, despite growing despair, she kept intact her sense of self by writing “a half way state of existence”. With two brothers’ deaths in combat at war’s end, sickness of soul dissolved her controlled composition into fragments of hopelessness. Morgan universalized her loss of identity as a cry of perplexity: “It is incomprehensible, this change.” Beneath a socially confident exterior, Maria Lydig Daly (1824–94), safely living in New York, wrote of insecurities about personal identity as doubts of national integrity. Uncertain of her country’s future happiness and having no children, she wrote despite political discouragements, military defeats, and biological infertility. When Union armies achieved victory,

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she discovered strength of purpose in her husband’s writing and in her own. In the aftermath of a Union victory, Daly wrote of her reconstructed identity: “Whilst my husband is with me and loves me, I am independent of the whole world.” Americans too easily found themselves in enemy territory. In 1865, shortly after escaping from a Union prison in the North, Confederate soldier Decimus et Ultimus Barziza (1838–82) wrote of his evolution through loss of national identity. He became indifferent “to future danger” and reckless “to the present”. He articulated the resolve of the defeated South to resist forever the conquering Northern power. Barziza acquired his defiance from captivity and escape: he could pass among Northerners by pretending to be one of them, and he learned to write for self-realization, “a favorite occupation” in prison. Susie King Taylor (b. 1848), an ex-slave serving as a laundress in the camps of her “colored” soldier husband in South Carolina, had, like Barziza, life-threatening adventures: “I expected every moment to be killed by a shell.” She delayed writing about her life until 1902, after her son had died in 1898: “It seemed very hard, when his father fought to protect the Union and our flag, and yet his boy was denied, under this same flag, a berth to carry him home to die, because he was a negro.” Taylor saw “the terrors of that war” and her subsequent experiences prompted her to ask, “was the war in vain?”. There were many retrospective accounts of the Civil War. William Watson, a Scotsman born in 1826, was living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when war began. In 1887 he wrote of his life in the Confederate army, confessing no clear reason to fight in a foreign war. He minimized the individual life in war: “The individual soldier is swallowed up in the midst of the turmoil, and … is supposed to see or know nothing.” Writing was an evasive reconstruction of history. Watson had neither “free will or control over his sentiments”. He grew insensitive to human, but not animal, suffering: “I felt more pity at seeing the poor horse shot down than at all the slaughter I had seen.” Watson, an “alien” in the war, was in turn alienated by it until he nearly lost his identity as a civilized being. John D. Billings (1842– 1933) wrote of life in the Union army. The title of his book illustrates the ways Billings, like Watson, diverted attention from life to writing: Hardtack and Coffee, or, The Unwritten Story of Army Life. He offered objects as emblems, and he avoided the troubling realities of emotions that were the material of diary writers like Holmes, Morgan, and Daly. Billings posited reality as matter shared by conqueror and conquered alike. His writing exhausted the burning anger expressed by Barziza and Taylor. Like Watson, he reserved feelings for horses and mules: “It was a sad sight to see these animals sacrificed.” He recorded scenes of humour at the expense of “negroes”, betraying little consciousness of his own complicity. Billings rarely allowed himself to appear at all. Thus the second part of his title, “the unwritten story”, was symptomatic of the feelings of many witnesses to the war, who turned from the written to the unwritten as a trope of incomprehension. Richard D. McGhee Further Reading Life Writings: Balfour, Emma, Vicksburg, a City under Siege: Diary of Emma Balfour, May 16, 1863–June 2, 1863, Vicksburg, Mississippi: Phillip C.Weinberger, 1983

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Barziza, Decimus et Ultimus, The Adventures of a Prisoner of War 1863–1864, edited by R. Henderson Shuffler, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1964 (first published as The Adventures of a Prisoner of War; and Life and Scenes in Federal Prisons: Johnson’s Island, Fort Delaware, and Point Lookout; by An Escaped Prisoner of Hood’s Texas Brigade, 1865) Bierce, Ambrose, “What I Saw at Shiloh” in Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War, edited by William McCann, Chicago: Gateway, 1956 Billings, John D., Hardtack and Coffee, or, The Unwritten Story of Army Life, illustrated by Charles W. Reed, with an introduction by William L. Shea, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993 (first edition, 1887) Boyd, Belle, Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison, edited by Curtis Carroll Davis, South Brunswick, New Jersey: Thomas Yoseloff, 1968 (first edition, 1865) Chesnut, Mary, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1981 Clifford, Deborah Pickman, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Biography of Julia Ward Howe, Boston: Little Brown, 1979 Daly, Maria Lydig, Diary of A Union Lady 1861–1865, edited by Harold Earl Hammond, New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1962 Famous Adventures and Prison Escapes of the Civil War, New York: Century, 1893 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr, Touched With Fire: Civil War Letters and Diary of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1861–1864, edited by Mark De Wolfe Howe, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1946 Jones, Katharine M. (editor), Heroines of Dixie: Confederate Women Tell Their Story of the War, Indianapolis; Bobbs-Merrill, 1955 Morgan Dawson, Sarah, The Civil War Diary of Sarah Morgan, edited by Charles East, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991 Pickett, George E., Soldier of the South: General Pickett’s War Letters to His Wife, edited by Arthur Crew Inman, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928 Preston, Madge, A Private War: The Letter and Diaries of Madge Preston 1862–67, edited by Virginia Walcott Beauchamp, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1987 Sherman, William Tecumseh, Home Letters of General Sherman, edited by M.A. De Wolfe Howe, New York: Scribner, 1909 Taylor, Susie King, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops Late 1st S.C. Volunteers, Boston: published privately, 1902; reprinted as Reminiscences of My Life in Camp, New York: Arno Press, 1968 Watson, William, Life in the Confederate Army: Being the Observations and Experiences of an Alien in the South During the American Civil War, with an introduction by Thomas W. Cutrer, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995 (original edition, 1887) Weller, Edwin, A Civil War Courtship: The Letters of Edwin Weller from Antietam to Atlanta, edited by William Walton, NewYork: Doubleday, 1980

Analysis Barton, George, Angels of the Battlefield: A History of the Labors of the Catholic Sisterhoods in the Late Civil War, Philadelphia: Catholic Art Publishing, 1897; 2nd edition, revised and enlarged, 1898 Catton, Bruce, The Centennial History of the Civil War, 3 vols, New York: Doubleday, 1961–65 Culpepper, Marilyn Mayer, Trials and Triumphs: Women of the American Civil War, East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1991 Donald, David Herbert, Lincoln, New York: Simon and Schuster, and London: Jonathan Cape, 1995 Garrison, Webb, Civil War Curiosities: Strange Stories, Oddities, Events, and Coincidences, Nashville, Tennessee: Rutledge Hill Press, 1994 Hoehling, A.A. and Mary Hoehling, The Last Days of the Confederacy, New York: The Fairfax Press, 1981 Kinchen, Oscar A., Women Who Spied for the Blue and the Gray, Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1972 Linderman, Gerald F., Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat

in the American Civil War, New York: Free Press, and London: Macmillan, 1987 Lowenfels, Walter (editor), Walt Whitman’s Civil War, New York: Knopf, 1960 Reynolds, David S., Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography, New York: Knopf, 1995 Toplin, Robert Brent (editor), Ken Burns’s The Civil War: Historians Respond, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996 Wiley, Bell Irvin, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1943; Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978 Wiley, Bell Irvin, The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952 Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, Yankee Saints and Southern Sinners, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985 Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, Honor and Violence in the Old South, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986

Amiel, Henri-Frédéric

1821–1881

Swiss scholar and diarist Henri Amiel kept his immense diary for 40–odd years. It is commonly called his Journal intime; that is, the normal French term for a personal diary, yet here the adjective seems to call for a literal English translation. For Amiel reveals a mind that is intensely inward-looking. External stimuli impinge strongly on him, and he ruminates over them, yet no reader can escape the impression that what matters is not so much what they are in themselves as what they signify to him. An overwhelming sense of incapacity for reaching a decision or taking action combines with an exceptional ability to engender emotion when confronted by experience. Amiel’s temperament is, moreover, racked by an acute and abiding moral dissatisfaction at what he perceives as ineradicable personal defects. Such a character, which some might call Hamletic, has affinities with Pascal’s portrayal of mankind abandoned in wretchedness by a Jansenist God; and Protestant writers, as early diaries testify, knew the type too. But the malaise of Amiel in the 19th century seems rather to reflect the incompatibilities of a Romantic mind, stirred by events as well as by reading, no less sensitive to all the arts than to the spectacle of nature, conscious that the penalty for superior mental powers is an unremitting and painful consciousness that the intellect will never encompass a superabundance of emotion. No two days were ever recorded in the same way by Amiel, yet his entry for one Monday, 16 August, reveals much that is typical. Unlike most diarists, who write up the day’s events just once, sometimes even a week or more later, Amiel was not content with a single entry. This is significant. The diary, one senses, was always there, offering surrogate companionship for a shy soul who was always lonely in a crowd. As early as ten o’clock in the morning on the first working day of the week, he could not resist beginning by noting “Languor, wretched condition, ennui and weariness”. The specific trigger of what was virtually Amiel’s constant cri de coeur is the book he has just been reading, Le Peintre de Salzbourg. That Charles Nodier’s epistolary novel, published in 1803 and with no particularly important place in the literary canon, should move Amiel so strongly appears typical of a certain lack of proportion in the diarist. Though he unhesitatingly identifies the cultural context,

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hearing, as he writes it, echoes of Goethe’s Werther and Chateaubriand’s René, this academic pigeon-holing of the work in a century-old tradition does not afford emotional shelter. Instead he cries out that there is too much of this unhealthy and melancholy literature, as if he cannot lay it aside, perhaps because it still strikes home. Thirteen hours later, at 11 o’clock at night, Amiel again picks up his diary. First he records the arrival of mail informing him that a friend will arrive shortly. Noting only that he has replied, he adds neither his reaction to the news, nor the smallest personal detail about his correspondent or the person mentioned in the letter. Next comes a cameo of Amiel’s professional life. Though duty has compelled him to subscribe to academic journals, he has not been able to bring himself to look at them as they arrive. Now a daunting pile confronts him. Typically he cannot find enough determination to do more than start looking through the material. He is, he says, beginning to get back into the role of a professor, a comment that nicely balances complacency and despair. Amiel turns next to landscape description, evoking a lake-side stroll in the moonlight after supper. But the idyll is interrupted by a choking fit. Reflecting on the dissipation of the sense of nullity that he felt earlier in the day, Amiel observes that society has provided some distraction, suggesting to him the necessity of forgetting the “pit” and the future if one is to enjoy the present. Instead of pursuing the point, he turns instead to woman’s place in society in a discussion in which he shows his abhorrence for any sort of superficiality. This final part of the day’s entry is to some extent interesting as a portrayal of the pressures and currents shaping attitudes in the more thoughtful parts of European society in an age of great change. Music critics will for their part pick out many other entries for insight into a mood of criticism that finds access to Romantic and later works in interpreting them as if they were programmatic depictions of varying moods. Yet though Amiel’s range of reference is wide, the major interest resides in an ever-anxious depiction of a self that eventually becomes almost mesmerizing. A partial edition of the Journal published by Edmond Scherer in 1884 brought Amiel to the attention of French readers and critics. They soon accorded him a high place among French post-Romantic introspectives. Mrs Humphry Ward’s translation introduced Amiel to the English reading public, and the review in Macmillan’s Magazine by her uncle Matthew Arnold, though not entirely favourable, undoubtedly fanned the flames of interest. Now that the long-awaited, formidably long complete edition of the Journal has been published (1976–94), Amiel is likely to be accorded an even higher status among the diarists of the 19th century. Christopher Smith Biography Born in Geneva, Switzerland, 27 September 1821. His parents were prosperous French Protestants whose ancestors had emigrated from France to Switzerland for religious reasons. Orphaned at the age of 12 in 1833. Separated from his two sisters, who were sent to boarding school, and brought up by his uncle. Attended the College or Public School of Geneva. Studied at the Academy of Geneva (later the University of Geneva), late 1830s; influenced by the teaching of the philologist Adolphe Pictet. Stayed for a short time in France, 1841. Lived in Italy, 1842. Contributed art reviews to Bibliothèque universelle de Genève, 1842. Moved to Germany, 1844. Studied at

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Berlin University, 1844–48. Travelled widely in Europe, visiting Scandinavia, 1845; The Netherlands, 1846; Vienna, Munich, and Tübingen, 1848. Started writing the journal for which he became best known, 1847. Returned to Geneva, 1848. Appointed professor of aesthetics and French literature, 1849, professor of moral philosophy, 1854, Academy of Geneva; remained in this position until his death. Had an intense love affair with “Philine”, described in his Journal intime. Wrote critical essays and several volumes of poetry. Died in Geneva, 11 May 1881.

Selected Writings Fragments d’un journal intime, edited by Edmond Scherer, 2 vols, 1883–84; as Amiel’s Journal, edited and translated by Mrs Humphry Ward, 1885 Berthe Vadier, et une correspondance inédite de H.-F. Amiel, edited by J. Carmagnola-Richard, 1925 Philine: fragments inédits du Journal intime, edited by Bernard Bouvier and Edmond Jaloux, 1927; as Philine: From the Unpublished Journals of Henri-Frédéric Amiel, translated by Van Wyck Brooks, 1930 La Jeunesse d’Henri-Frédéric Amiel: lettres à sa famille, ses amis, ses amies: pour servir d’introduction au Journal intime (1837–1849), edited by Bernard Bouvier, 1935; as The Private Journal of Henri Frédéric Amiel, translated by Van Wyck Brooks and Charles van Wyck Brooks, 1935 Journal intime de l’année 1866, edited by Léon Bopp, 1959 Journal intime: l’année 1857, edited by Georges Poulet, 1965 Journal intime année 1861: journal intime hiver 1874–1875, edited by Bernard Gagnebin, 1966 Journal intime, janvier–juin 1854, edited by Philippe M. Monnier, 1973 Journal intime, edited by Bernard Gagnebin and Philippe M. Monnier, 12 vols, 1976–94

Further Reading Amiel, H.F., Essais critiques, edited by Bernard Bouvier, Paris: Stock, 1932 Arnold, Matthew, “Amiel”, Macmillan’s Magazine, (September 1887); reprinted in Arnold’s The Last Word, edited by R.H. Super, Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1977 Merian-Genast, Ernst, H.-F. Amiel im Spiegel der europäischen Kritik, 1881–1931, Marburg: Elwer, 1931 Pfister, Susanne, Expansion et concentration dans la pensée d’Amiel, Bern and Frankfurt: Herbert Lang, 1991 Thibaudet, Albert, Intérieurs: Baudelaire, Fromenti, Amiel, Paris: PlonNourrit, 1924 Ward, Mrs Humphry, A Writer’s Recollections, London: Collins, 1918 (recalls how she first became interested in Amiel)

Andersch, Alfred

1914–1980

German fiction and prose writer, radio producer, and autobiographer Just as the life of the young Alfred Andersch was a series of concrete and existential reflexes to the Nazi dictatorship and its aftermath, so was his work – his short stories, novels, sketches, essays, radio plays, and radio essays – a series of reflections on individual possibilities and responsibilities of thought and action to what he termed the “total state”, thought and action revolving around ideas of freedom and resistance. In the tension between political constrictions and the personal mandates of physical and psychic survival, one’s identity, according to Andersch, is often forged in desperation, and his writing – much of it incognito autobiography – makes possible the full realization of this struggle for the self.

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Prior to his defining experience of World War II Andersch partook of the intellectual life of Weimar Germany through his veneration of the novelist Thomas Mann, and through involvement in a Communist youth organization, which led, subsequent to the Nazi takeover, to a three-month imprisonment at Dachau and to continued Gestapo surveillance. Until drafted in 1940 Andersch worked as an office clerk, but his identity sought sanctuary in the aesthetic cocoons of German neo-Romanticism (the writings of Rilke) and existentialism (the philosphy of Heidegger). With his own experience of war as a draftee, Andersch entered the labyrinthian search for a response to the individual confrontation with authority, dictatorship, and terror. Understanding freedom not as a philosophical idea but as an existential experience, Andersch concluded that, given his situation, only desertion would represent a real emancipation of the self from the death and destruction of ideology and power. In June 1944 he consequently surrendered to US forces at the Italian front. Andersch’s war experiences, which led him inexorably to his “honourable desertion”, were captured in his first literary success, the autobiographical novel-memoir Kirschen der Freiheit [1952; Cherries of Freedom]. With a quote from André Gide as subscription (“I base my hopes only on the deserters”), the work draws on two cultural traditions, which determined to a large extent its style, structure, and theme. First, the empiricism and pragmatism of liberal-democratic American society, with its frontier individualism and historical optimism, left their mark on Andersch. American literary life (Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway) functioned as models for a new, concise, objective realism, all very much evident in Kirschen. Second, the moralexistential thought of Jean-Paul Sartre provided Andersch with the philosophical fundamentals for the principle of desertion as a necessary act of existential freedom and as an ultimate and exemplary act of resistance. After the war, and during his productive and influential career as critic, essayist, journalist, and radio personality, Andersch founded two journals, Der Ruf [The Call] and Texte und Zeichen [Texts and Signs], participated in the establishment of the well-known writers’organization Gruppe 47, created and produced countless radio programmes, plays, and essays, and played a central role in the German literary life of the 1950s. Throughout, he sought to address issues of the individual in modern German society and of the aesthetic consciousness of the European avant-garde. His best-known work, the novel Sansibar, oder, der letzte Grund (1957; Flight to Afar), marked the beginning of his career as a freelance writer. But by posing the questions “What is worth fighting for?” and “What is worth escaping from?” it also recapitulated his autobiographical problematic of freedom and flight, its risks and costs. In the 1960s and 1970s Andersch continued to expand upon the themes of his earlier works. Comprehending identity as the realization of consciousness through moral action in the concrete, historical world, Andersch’s truths lay ultimately neither in personal, romantic subjectivity nor in public, ideological objectivity, but in the existential actions of individuals as they live their lives. Ralph W. Buechler

Biography Born in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, 4 February 1914. Educated at the Wittelsbacher Gymnasium, Munich, 1924–28. Worked for a publisher, 1928–30. Member of the youth organization of the Communist Party, 1932, and as a result spent three months in Dachau concentration camp, 1933. Office worker, Munich and Hamburg, 1933–40. Married Angelika Albert, 1935 (divorced 1943): one daughter. Served in the German army, 1940–41 and 1943–44: deserted on the Italian front and became a prisoner of war in the United States, where he worked on Der Ruf, a prisoners’ publication, 1945. Editorial assistant to Erich Kästner, Neue Zeitung, Munich, 1945–46; co-editor, Der Ruf, Munich, 1946–47. Co-founder, Gruppe 47, 1947. Founder and director of Abendstudio, Frankfurt Radio, 1948–50, and of “radioessays” for South German Radio, Stuttgart, 1955–58. Married Gisela Groneuer-Dichgans, 1950: two sons and one daughter. Founder and editor, Texte und Zeichen, 1955–57. Worked as a freelance writer after the success of his novel Sansibar, oder, der letzte Grund (1957; Flight to Afar). Moved to Switzerland, 1958, and became a Swiss citizen, 1973. Led an expedition to the Arctic, 1965. Died in Berzona, Ticino, Switzerland, 21 February 1980.

Selected Writings Kirschen der Freiheit, 1952

Further Reading Jendricke, Bernhard, Alfred Andersch mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1988 Kunz, Eleonore, “Das publizistische und literarische Wirken Alfred Anderschs von 1945 bis zum Ende der fünfziger Jahre” (dissertation), Leipzig: University of Leipzig, 1984 Liebe, Matthias, Alfred Andersch und sein Radio Essay, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1990 Reinhardt, Stephan, Alfred Andersch: eine Biographie, Zurich: Diogenes, 1990 Wehdeking, Volker, Alfred Andersch, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1983

Angelou, Maya

1928–

American autobiographer and poet Maya Angelou’s creative role as an autobiographer is what catapulted her to the fame and eminence she was never able to achieve as a singer in the late 1950s. With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1969 she embarked on what would become a five-volume serial autobiography delineating her growth as a person and an artist. Throughout these five selfexplorations, Angelou appears to the reader as a “phoenix-like heroine” (McPherson) who keeps rising from the ashes of a chaotic existence, first as a child and adolescent, and then as a young woman, always painfully aware of the impositions placed on her as a black female by the “tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power”, as she puts it, but always rejecting the black victim status in favour of a self-empowered and warrior self at the centre of her identity. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings covers the author’s formative years in rural Arkansas, marked by her abandonment by her divorcing parents, her witness of the humiliation of Southern blacks at school and outside, her rape at the age of eight by her mother’s lover, and her pregnancy at the early age of 16. The only positive force in the shaping of the young Maya (whose full name was Marguerite) is her grandmother, “Momma”. Indeed, the first part of the book is a hymn to this loving, protective, and nurturing mother figure whose spiritual power and pride at

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being black, notwithstanding her conservatism and inflexibility, give the young girl a sense of security and self-confidence that she will lose only as the “outsiders” come back into her life: her father first, who makes her question the worth of being female, and her beautiful but frivolous mother later. Out of this chaos of racism, sexism, rape, and self-imposed silence (traumatized by rape, young Maya stopped speaking for a year), a singing “caged bird” will emerge at the end of the book in the lifeaffirming scene of giving birth to her son – a scene that can be interpreted also as a devastating way to begin life as an adult. In Gather Together in My Name (1974), which covers her life from the ages of 16 to 19, Angelou reveals the many intimate secrets, mistakes, and feelings of a young woman who is trying to make it as an adult, but fails to achieve the American Dream. During these years of spiritual disintegration in urban California, Maya plays the most sordid and confusing roles while she works as a cook, waitress, dancer, prostitute, clothing seller, restaurant manager, and Madam. Still, Maya matures with these bitter experiences, and mitigates them with her youthful optimism and idealism (“I had no idea what I was going to make of my life, but I had given a promise and found my innocence”). Like so many American autobiographies of education, this volume is intended to be exemplary, and to serve as a warning for young people, as its author has explained: “if by my revelation I can encourage anybody to avoid some of the things I experienced … if I can encourage them to forgive themselves, it’s all worth it”. The symbolic change of names from Marguerite Johnson to Maya Angelou, so common in life writing in the genre of slave narratives, marks the girl’s passage into adulthood and the white world. The period covered in Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976) – stimulated again by Angelou’s eschewing of self-concealment or veiled confession – assembles together her initial experiences of marriage (to a white man), divorce, motherhood, and show business and follows her in the international tour of Porgy and Bess, which gains her a wider knowledge of the world and of herself. The fourth instalment, The Heart of a Woman (1981), takes us through one of the most formative periods of Angelou’s exciting life: her beginnings as a writer and an activist in New York. It portrays a more politicized and communal self, who changes her career and decides to become involved in the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s. The autobiographer now recounts a more public and historical chronicle of those tumultuous years in which Martin Luther King appointed her the northern coordinator of SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference); here, as Cudjoe writes, “superficial concerns about individual subject give way to the collective subjection of the group”. At the Harlem Writers Guild, the mother to a nowrebellious teenage son starts her writing career and finds the love of an African freedom fighter, whom she marries and follows to Africa. In Egypt, she will become the editor of the Arab Observer. The adult self is thus at its prime. Finally, in All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), Angelou gives her personal recollection of a historical time when Africans were leading their own countries independently after centuries of colonial rule (she is now an expatriate in Ghana, where she has joined a community of black Americans). In this vivid celebration of the sensuousness of Africa, Angelou also explores what it means to be an African American on the

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mother continent, where colour no longer matters, but where “Americanness” asserts itself in baffling ways. Nostalgically, Angelou finishes this journey into Africa – and into that part of every African American’s self that is still wedded to Africa – returning to the United States, only to face the painful truths about black betrayal. Placing Angelou in the tradition of black autobiography, we can see that she partakes of the general themes of white racism and of black reaction to this racism, and she constructs a life around the mythical patterns of journeys through chaos, quests of identity, and achievements. However, while many black autobiographers speak with a collective “I”, portraying themselves less as individuals than as “members of an oppressed social group” (as Butterfield puts it), Angelou speaks quite clearly as an individual who intimates the secrets of a unique life – inevitably influenced by issues of race, class, and gender. As FoxGenovese makes clear, the black woman’s self cannot be divorced from the history of that self or the history of the people among whom it took shape. Moreover, Angelou’s contribution to black autobiography is her “self-parody” and use of “comic irony” (McPherson) while celebrating a life in a prose full of lyricism, rhythmic language, and detailed portraiture. Angelou has written that while she speaks to the black experience, she is “always talking about the human condition” so that the universality of her books derives “from black life’s traditions seeming to mirror, with extraordinary intensity, the root uncertainty in the universe” (Kent). And so, the destination of her journey to an uncertain self-awareness is brilliantly revealed at the end of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: “I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn’t know what I was aware of”. Isabel Durán Biography Born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St Louis, Missouri, United States, 4 April 1928. Her father was a doorman and naval dietician; her mother worked in various jobs, including nursing. Moved with her parents to Long Beach, California, shortly after her birth. Was sent with her brother to live with her paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas, a poor rural area, after her parents’ early divorce: attended public schools there. Was raped while visiting her mother in St Louis, mid1930s: refused to speak for a year, after the man responsible was killed by her uncles, believing that she had caused his death by testifying at his trial. Moved with her brother to San Francisco, California, to live with her mother, now remarried and running a boarding house, 1940. Educated at George Washington High School, San Francisco. Had son a few months after graduating in 1945. Worked as a cook, waitress, and nightclub singer. Married Tosh Angelos, 1950 (later divorced). Studied dance with Martha Graham, Pearl Primus, and Ann Halprin; drama with Frank Silvera and Gene Frankel. Adopted the stage name Maya Angelou. Worked as a dancer and actress, touring Europe and Africa in Porgy and Bess, 1954–55. Lived in a houseboat commune in California, late 1950s. Moved to New York, 1958; joined the Harlem Writers Guild. Appeared in the off-Broadway plays Cabaret for Freedom (1960) and The Blacks (1961). Served as northern coordinator of Martin Luther King Jr’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Married Vusumzi Make, a South African dissident lawyer (later divorced), and moved with him to Cairo, Egypt, 1961: associate editor for the English-language newspaper Arab Observer, 1962–63. Moved to Accra, Ghana, 1963: assistant administrator at the School of Music and Drama, University of Ghana, 1963–66; writer for the Ghanian Times, 1963–65, and the Obanian Broadcasting Corporation, 1963–65; feature editor for African Review, 1965–66. Returned to the United States, 1966. Lecturer, University of California at Los Angeles,

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1966. Continued to pursue acting and writing careers, appearing in productions of Medea, 1966, Look Away, 1975, and in the television mini-series Roots, 1977. Writer-in-residence, University of Kansas, mid-1970s. Published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the first volume of her autobiography, 1969, and subsequently devoted herself to writing projects. Received a Pulitzer prize nomination in 1972 for Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie (1971), the first of several volumes of verse. Married Paul Du Feu, 1973 (divorced 1981): one son. Visiting professor, Wake Forest University, Wichita State University, and California State University, 1974. Directed the film All Day Long, 1974, and the plays And Still I Rise, 1976, and Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, 1988. Member, American Revolution Bicentennial Council, 1975–76, and National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year. Wrote The Heart of a Woman (1981). Reynolds Professor of American Studies, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, from 1981. Wrote and delivered a commemorative poem, “On the Pulse of Morning”, at the presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton, 1993.

Selected Writings I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (autobiography), 1969 Gather Together in My Name (autobiography), 1974 Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (autobiography), 1976 The Heart of a Woman (autobiography), 1981 All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (autobiography), 1986 Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now (autobiographical essays), 1993

Further Reading Andrews, William L. (editor), African American Autobiography: A Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993 Arensberg, Liliane K., “Death as Metaphor of Self in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”, CLA Journal, (1976): 273–91 Blackburn, Regina, “In Search of the Black Female Self: AfricanAmerican Women’s Autobiographies and Ethnicity” in Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism, edited by Estelle C. Jelinek, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980 Braxton, Joanne M., “A Song of Transcendence: Maya Angelou” in her Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition within a Tradition, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989 Butterfield, Stephen, Black Autobiography in America, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974 Cudjoe, Selwyn R., “Maya Angelou and the Autobiographical Statement” in Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation, edited by Mari Evans, New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1984 Davis, Carole Boyce, Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the Subject, London and New York: Routledge, 1994 Demetrakopulos, Stephanie A., “The Metaphysics of Matrilinearism in Women’s Autobiography” in Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism, edited by Estelle C. Jelinek, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980 Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, “My Statue, My Self: Autobiographical Writings of Afro-American Women” in The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writings, edited by Shari Benstock, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988 Gates, Henry Louis (editor), Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, New York: Meridian, 1990 Hagen, Lyman B., Heart of a Woman, Mind of a Writer, and Soul of a Poet: A Critical Analysis of the Writings of Maya Angelou, Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1996 Kent, George E., “Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Black Autobiographical Tradition” in African American Autobiography: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by William Andrews, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993 King, Sarah E., Maya Angelou: Greeting the Morning, Brookfield, Connecticut: Millbrook Press, 1994 Kinnamon, Kenneth, “Call and Response: Intertextuality in Two Autobiographical Works by Richard Wright and Maya Angelou” in Belief vs. Theory in Black American Literary Criticism, edited by

Joe Weixlmann and Chester J. Fontenot, Greenwood, Florida: Penkevill, 1986 Lee, A. Robert, “‘The Stance of Self-Representation’: Moderns and Contemporaries in Afro-American Autobiography” in First Person Singular: Studies in American Autobiography, edited by A. Robert Lee, New York: St Martin’s Press, and London: Vision Press, 1988 Lionnet, Françoise, “Con Artists and Storytellers: Maya Angelou’s Problematic Sense of Audience” in her Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1989 MacKethan, Lucinda H., “Mother Wit: Humor in Afro-American Women’s Autobiography”, Studies in American Humor, 4/1–2 (1985): 51–61 McPherson, Dolly A., Order Out of Chaos: The Autobiographical Works of Maya Angelou, New York: Peter Lang, 1990 O’Neale, Sandra, “Reconstruction of the Composite Self: New Images of Black Women in Maya Angelou’s Continuing Autobiography” in Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation, edited by Mari Evans, New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1984 Shapiro, Miles, Maya Angelou, New York: Chelsea House, 1994

Anthropology and Life Writing The essence of life writing is the representation of an individual self – in Western culture, historically, this happened first in relation to God (Saint Augustine’s Confessions and the Puritans), then in relation to a (tribal) community, and eventually in relation to oneself (Rousseau). The implicit or explicit extension of life writing from one to all human beings, i.e. the anthropological turn of life writing, is related to the emergence of the human subject from the medieval social order of the “chain of being” into a more autonomous existence. In the context of European culture the first manifestations of an independent individuality are recorded in the Renaissance with regard to individual acts of conquest (Columbus), individual religious beliefs (Martin Luther, Jean Calvin), individual political minds (Thomas More), and men and women of letters, who depict the dangers of self-realization (as Shakespeare does through his character Hamlet). Such conceptions of the individual figured prominently in the autobiographies of Italian Renaissance men, such as Girolamo Cardano’s De propria vita (written 1575/76) and Benvenuto Cellini’s Vita (written 1558–66). Michel de Montaigne’s Essais (1580–88) represent the first instance of the interrelation of life writing and anthropology in the Renaissance, historically coincidental with the etymological origin of the term anthropology as the study of the nature and essence of humankind (in the years 1585–95). Expressive of the era’s feeling about the instability of the emergent subject, Montaigne conceived of his three versions of the Essais as “a record of the essays of my life”. Despite all his criticism of the baseness of human nature he intended to present the individual as a whole, and saw his self-portrait as a reflection of all humankind according to his belief that “each man bears the entire form of man’s estate”. His early reflections on the cannibals as the barbarians of the New World, in which he defends a natural state of being, makes him a precursor of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Enlightenment project. The 18th century, the era of the Enlightenment, turned Montaigne’s isolated case of anthropological life writing into a full-scale epistemological quest. The focus was now on the nature of man as a combination of body and mind, counteract-

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ing their Cartesian separation. The increasing questioning of the existence of God led to the question of the origin of humankind and of universal anthropological features. Johann Gottfried Herder’s and Rousseau’s essays about the origin and universality of humankind entailed the discussion of primitive tribes in the New World and their natural states of being. The fields of physical and cultural anthropology hence received an ethnographic dimension and emphasized the importance of its literary rendition. The affinity of anthropology to travel writing and autobiography emerged in the second half of the 18th century, and continued into the 20th. Prior to the constitution of anthropology as a scientific field of research in the 19th century, and prior to anthropological autobiographies proper, the connection between anthropology and life writing originated in the ethnographic description of unknown and exotic people before eventually moving to include the discovery of the “other” in oneself, in the Romantic period. Part of the discourse on anthropology, particularly in France and Germany in the second half of the 18th century, was its relation to literary forms of representation, in which the exploration of an individual self served as a model for the exploration of universal human characteristics. The (auto)biographical novel Anton Reiser (1785–90) allowed its author, Karl Philipp Moritz, to continue his philosophical reflections about life in Beiträge zur Philosophie des Lebens in a fictional form that turns into a version of literary anthropology, a combination which Herder also favoured until the publication of Rousseau’s Confessions. The shocking details of Rousseau’s life in that work became the basis for a representation of the range of human behaviour. Rousseau’s project was not an apologia; rather, his own self served as a sounding board for all humankind. The beginning of the first volume of Confessions (1782) announces this project: “Je veux montrer à mes semblables un homme dans toute la vérité de la nature; et cet homme, ce sera moi. Moi seul. Je sens mon coeur et je connois les hommes”. With the ruthless description of his wayward behaviour he recognized the deviant within himself which – in the view of Claude Lévi-Strauss – was the beginning of ethnographic description as a source of enlightenment about one’s self. At the same time, such a ruthless self-revelation also contained the danger of self-alienation, which is the subject of Rousseau’s other autobiographical works, Rousseau juge de Jean Jacques: Dialogues (1780) and Reveries d’un promeneur solitaire (1782; The Reveries of a Solitary Walker), which foreshadow the modern / Freudian disintegration of the self. From a different perspective, with respect to the nascent American republic, Benjamin Franklin showed the anthropological side of his exemplary life as a success story, leaving out most of the adverse events. In its pragmatic-moralistic orientation, his Autobiography (published posthumously in 1791) moves from an individualistic account in Part 1 to a universal scheme (Part 2) encapsulated by the new American republic (Part 3). This correlation of the advancement of the human race and that of national history underpins a number of American autobiographies in the 19th century. Thus, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854) showed the exemplary American individual in the service of the true course of American democracy, in the same way in which Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Representative Men (1850) traced the history of humankind in a series of biographies, in accordance with his belief that all

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history was the biography of great men (inspired by Thomas Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History, 1841). Walt Whitman, in turn, celebrated the individual in the portion of Leaves of Grass (1855, first version), later entitled Song of Myself, by making the celebration of the subject have communal resonance, to include all races, classes, and genders. This combination of anthropology and race is a theme of African American slave narratives from the creation of the republic to the civil war (perhaps most famously, those mid19th-century works by Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs). German writers at the beginning of the 19th century reflected the virulent discussions of natural science and anthropology in their literary works. In continuation of Immanuel Kant’s and Herder’s considerations of a moral or pragmatic anthropology, and following on from Moritz’s Anton Reiser, Jean Paul thematized in his autobiographical works the interior reaches of physical experiences. The auto/biographical interaction of the writers was quite productive, as the relations between Moritz, Jean Paul, and Goethe show. Goethe, who had translated Benvenuto Cellini’s Vita into German (1796) from Thomas Nugent’s English version and written a biography of the German art historian Winckelmann (1805), felt that, in view of personal and national crises such as the Napoleonic wars, he had to order his life through writing and had to stress the pragmatic dimension of worldly affairs. Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811–33; Poetry and Truth) was the summation of his life studies, which always started with the physical world of science and anthropology, and moved by way of entelechy to spiritual refinement. Other reflections of Napoleonic and revolutionary times are the autobiographical works of Chateaubriand and Stendhal. Chateaubriand’s Mémoires d’outre-tombe (published 1849–50) record his flight from revolutionary France to four continents, with a special emphasis on his encounter with the Native Americans, who figure prominently in his fictional work. These encounters with non-European people provided the basis for his anthropological stance, which allowed him to adopt the rhetorical perspective of an individual who looks back over his life and his time from beyond the grave. Stendhal, on the other hand, identified with the revolutionary forces against a royalist France in Vie de Henri Brulard (written 1835–36, published 1890; Life of Henry Brulard), where he recorded his youth and his participation in Napoleon’s incursion into Italy. In the second half of the 19th century, the Renaissance idea of the individual as a full-blown subject gradually dissolved. This process had been prefigured in life writings by the Romantics, such as Stendhal, who referred to the composite of “Je” and “Moi”. Nietzsche and Freud, as well as Wilhelm Dilthey, announced a new development in the anthropological focus of life writing. Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo (written 1888; published 1908) is the apotheosis of a human being who puts himself in the place of God. It is a celebration of the superman. Freud, in turn, focused on the Id-quality of human beings in his Die Traumdeutung (1900; The Interpretation of Dreams), which included his own dream life. And Dilthey instituted the human sciences and the hermeneutic method when he declared biography to be the basis of all history, and had his son-in-law Georg Misch work on the Geschichte der Autobiographie (from 1907; A History of Autobiography in Antiquity). Dilthey’s concept of Geisteswissenschaften created an opposition between

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the human and natural sciences, also represented by the rise of psychology. Consequently, cultural anthropology and ethnography were to come to the fore. The emigration of German anthropologists like Franz Boas and Alfred Kroeber to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, and the serious academic interest in Native American languages and cultures reinforced the field trip as a major means of anthropological inquiry. These contacts with the peoples of study are always part of a mutual process of revelation in so far as the understanding of unknown customs is reflective of “white” terminology and “white” methods, and thus often reveals as much about the object of inquiry as the subject. Famous examples of this process are the “as-told-to” autobiographies, in which white ethnographers have written down the life of a tribe given to them – often by way of an interpreter – by a chief or elder. Black Elk Speaks, Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (1932) was recorded by the white ethnographer John Neihardt. American folklorist Zora Neale Hurston’s field trips to the Caribbean islands in search of her African heritage are one of the rare examples of non-white anthropological endeavours. An equally interesting, and theoretically appealing, ethnographic account of native people is Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques (1955), an autobiographical record of field trips to the Brazilian Indians in the Amazon region (1935–39), which became the basis for the social anthropologist’s kinship studies and his structural anthropology. At the same time the recognition of difference forced the anthropologist to redefine his own self. Similarly, Michel Leiris’s avant-gardist project of “the autobiographer as torero” was based on his field trips in Africa and his study of the rituals of possession among Ethiopians in the 1930s, a project that eventually turned into a ritualistic investigation of his own possessions and obsessions (L’Age d’homme, 1939; Manhood) in the tradition of Rousseau. This recognition of cross-cultural fertilization through the ethnographical encounter with tribal communities seems to be the position of modern anthropology as defined by the German philosophical anthropologist Arnold Gehlen, who regards the purpose of anthropological research as a process of selfencounter and self-discovery. This position has changed in the postmodern age. Postmodern anthropologists like James Clifford and George E. Marcus have argued that anthropological research is no more the self-discovery through the description of other customs in field trips, but instead the ethnographic description of the “other” in oneself, which might then take on a universal dimension. Gertrude Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography (1938), written in Paris after an extended visit to her home country which she had not seen in more than 30 years, is a case in point, although its pretensions are literary rather than ostensibly anthropological. In this book, the foreign and unfamiliar aspects of her native land are yet part of her own culture as an American citizen. This new kind of anthropological life writing is most often utilized by minority groups and by women, often from thirdworld countries. Exiled from or alienated within their own cultures or origins, these life writers recover their own heritage and self and seek to give a universal frame. Simultaneously, this form of anthropological life writing has an affinity – like Goethe’s autobiography – with a language of poetics, a combination which both Wolfgang Iser and James Clifford note

from the perspective of the literary critic and the postmodern anthropologist respectively. Postmodern anthropology and literary anthropology meet in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1976), where the autobiographical persona defines herself in contact with white Americans and her mother’s “talk-stories” about China. All of these experiences together with her discovery of herself as a writer constitute this poetic form of anthropology that Hong Kingston herself labels a “global novel”. Equally transnational and global are the autobiographical fictions of Caribbean and postcolonial writers like Michelle Cliff, Jamaica Kincaid, or Gloria Anzaldúa, who deconstruct the influence of colonial cultures to unearth the heritage of their native predecessors buried in the lands of their origin. Such a reconnection with the tribal past challenges the often superficial assumptions of Western cultures and their conceptions of human values worldwide. Telling lives remains the supreme art of anthropological endeavour. Alfred Hornung See also Autoethnography; Ethnography; Oral History; Orality

Further Reading Baker, Lee D., From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896–1954, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998 Benedict, Ruth, An Anthropologist at Work: Writings of Ruth Benedict, edited by Margaret Mead, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, and London: Secker and Warburg, 1959 Bloom, Harold (editor), Caribbean Women Writers, Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1997 Boas, Franz, A Franz Boas Reader: The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883–1911, edited by George W. Stocking, Jr, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982 Boas, Franz, The Mind of Primitive Man, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1983 (first edition, 1911) Bowman, Derek, Life into Autobiography: A Study of Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit, Bern: Herbert Lang, 1971 Carrithers, Michael, Steven Collins, and Steven Lukes (editors), The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985 Cavallin, Jean-Christophe, Chateaubriand et “l’Homme aux songes”: l’initiation à la poésie dans les Mémoires d’outre-tombe, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999 Cavallin, Jean-Christophe, Chateaubriand mythographe: autobiographie et allégorie dans les Mémoires d’outre-tombe, Paris: Champion, 2000 Cerroni-Long, E. L. (editor), Anthropological Theory in North America, Westport, Connecticut: Bergin and Garvey, 1999 Chateaubriand, François-René, Oeuvres complètes de Chateaubriand, Paris: Garnier, 1929 (reprint) Chateaubriand, François-René, Travels in America, translated by Richard Switzer, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1969 Chateaubriand, François-René, Voyage en Amérique, edited by Pierre Barberis, Paris: J.-C. Godefroy, 1982 Chinard, Gilbert, L’Exotisme américain dans l’oeuvre de Chateaubriand, Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1970 (first edition, 1918) Clifford, James and George E. Marcus (editors), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography: A School of American Research Advanced Seminar, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986 Clifford, James, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988 Clifford, James, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997 Conner, Tom, Chateaubriand’s Mémoires d’outre-tombe: A Portrait of the Artist as Exile, New York: Peter Lang, 1995 Daniel, E. Valentine and Jeffrey M. Peck (editors), Culture /

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Contexture: Explorations in Anthropology and Literary Studies, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996 De Mijolla, Elizabeth, Autobiographical Quests: Augustine, Montaigne, Rousseau, and Wordsworth, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994 DeMarrais, Kathleen Bennett (editor), Inside Stories: Qualitative Research Reflections, Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998 di Leonardo, Micaela (editor), Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991 Dilthey, Wilhelm, Introduction to the Human Sciences: An Attempt to Lay a Foundation for the Study of Society and History, translated by Ramon J. Betanzos, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988 Freud, Sigmund, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, edited by James Strachey, London: Hogarth Press, 1953 Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams, translated by James Strachey, New York: Science Editions, 1961; translated by Joyce Crick, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 (German edition, 1900) Gehlen, Arnold, Man, His Nature and Place in the World, translated from the German by Clare MacMillan and Karl Pillemer, New York: Columbia University Press, 1988 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, The Autobiography of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated by John Oxenford, New York: Horizon Press, 1969 Harrison, Ira E. and Faye V. Harrison (editors), African-American Pioneers in Anthropology, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999 Helm, June (editor), Pioneers of American Anthropology: The Uses of Biography, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966 Herder, Johann Gottfried, Werke, 2 vols, edited by Wolfgang Pross, Munich: Hanser, 1984–87 Herder, Johann Gottfried, Johann Gottfried Herder: Selected Early Works, 1764–1767: Addresses, Essays, and Drafts; Fragments on Recent German Literature, edited by Ernest A. Menze and Karl Menges, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992 Herder, Johann Gottfried, Against Pure Reason: Writings on Religion, Language, and History, translated from the German by Marcia J. Bunge, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993 Hurston, Zora Neale, Mules and Men, preface by Franz Boas, New York: Perennial Library, 1990 (first edition, 1935) Hurston, Zora Neale, Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings, New York: Library of America, 1995 Jaeger, Michael, Autobiographie und Geschichte: Wilhelm Dilthey, Georg Misch, Karl Löwith, Gottfried Benn, Alfred Döblin, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995 Jay, Martin, Cultural Semantics: Keywords of Our Time, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998 Jones, James T., Jack Kerouac’s Duluoz Legend: The Mythic Form of an Autobiographical Fiction, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999 Kant, Immanuel, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, translated from the German by Mary J. Gregor, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974 Kant, Immanuel, Immanuel Kants Menschenkunde, edited by Friedrich Christian Starke, Hildesheim and New York: Olms, 1976 Kremer-Marietti, Angèle, Wilhelm Dilthey et l’anthropologie historique, Paris: Seghers, 1971 Kroeber, Alfred Louis, Anthropology: Race, Language, Culture, Psychology, Prehistory, New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1948; selections as Anthropology: Culture Patterns & Processes, New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1963 Kroeber, Alfred Louis, The Nature of Culture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952 Kroeber, Alfred Louis (editor), Anthropology Today: An Encyclopedic Inventory, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953 Krupat, Arnold (editor), Native American Autobiography: An Anthology, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994 Leigh, David J., Circuitous Journeys: Modern Spiritual Autobiography, New York: Fordham University Press, 2000 Marcus, Laura (editor), Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of

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Dreams: New Interdisciplinary Essays, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999 Marin, Louis, L’Ecriture de soi: Ignace de Loyola, Montaigne, Stendhal, Roland Barthes, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999 Mead, Margaret, The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe, New York: Columbia University Press, 1932 Mead, Margaret and Ruth Leah Bunzel (editors), The Golden Age of American Anthropology, New York: Braziller, 1960 Mead, Margaret, Anthropology, a Human Science: Selected Papers, 1939–1960, Princeton, New Jersey: Van Nostrand, 1964 Misch, Georg, Lebensphilosophie und Phänomenologie: eine Auseinandersetzung der Diltheyschen Richtung mit Heidegger und Husserl, Leipzig: Teubner, 1931 Misch, Georg, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity, 2 vols, translated from the German by E.W. Dickes and the author, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950; Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1973 Montaigne, Michel de, The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne, edited and translated by Marvin Lowenthall, London: Routledge, 1935; reprinted, Boston: Godine, 1999 Montaigne, Michel de, The Complete Essays, translated by Michael Andrew Screech, London: Penguin, 1991 Moore, Jerry D., Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists, Walnut Creek, California: AltaMira Press, and London: Sage, 1997 Moritz, Karl Philipp, Die Schriften in dreissig Bänden, edited by Petra Nettelbeck and Uwe Nettelbeck, Nördlingen: F. Greno, 1986 Moritz, Karl Philipp, Anton Reiser: A Psychological Novel, translated by John Raymond Russell, Columbia, South Carolina: Camden House, 1996 Munzel, G. Felicitas, Kant’s Conception of Moral Character: The “Critical” Link of Morality, Anthropology, and Reflective Judgment, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999 Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, edited by Oscar Levy, Edinburgh and London: T.N. Foulis, 1909–13; reprinted, New York: Gordon Press, 1974 Olney, James, Memory & Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998 Reed-Danahay, Deborah, Auto/ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social, Oxford and New York: Berg, 1997 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Collected Writings of Rousseau, edited by Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly, Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1990— (translations) Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (Second Discourse); Polemics; and, Political Economy, edited by Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly, translated from the French by Judith R. Bush et al., Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1992 Rügemer, Werner, Philosophische Anthropologie und Epochenkrise: Studie über den Zusammenhang von allgemeiner Krise des Kapitalismus und anthropologischer Grundlegung der Philosophie am Beispiel Arnold Gehlens, Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1979 Singh, Amritjit, Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr, and Robert E. Hogan (editors), Memory, Narrative, and Identity: New Essays in Ethnic American Literatures, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994 Steinbuch, Thomas, A Commentary on Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo, Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1994 Stendhal, Oeuvres complètes de Stendhal, 25 vols, edited by Georges Eudes, Paris: Pierre Larrive, 1951–56 Stendhal, Oeuvres intimes, edited by Henri Martineau, Paris: Gallimard, 1955 Stendhal, The Life of Henry Brulard, translated by John Sturrock, New York: Penguin, 1995

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Apartheid and Post-Apartheid Life Writing Although racism pervaded South Africa before 1948 (as much life writing indicates), the Afrikaner Nationalist government’s policy of apartheid enshrined racist separation in increasingly draconian laws. During the apartheid period (1948–94) life writing, especially prose narratives in English, became an increasingly important weapon in the struggle. Autobiographies by Peter Abrahams (Tell Freedom, 1954), Trevor Huddlestone (Nought for Your Comfort, 1956), Albert Luthuli (Let My People Go, 1962), and Don Mattera (Memory is the Weapon, 1987; also published as Gone with the Twilight), as well as biographies such as Donald Woods’s of anti-apartheid campaigner Steve Biko (1978), kept South African racism on the agenda. For apartheid to work, “non-Europeans” had to be dehumanized, their history excised. Much life writing thus sought to contest apartheid’s obsession with group identity and the concomitant erasure of individuals. Although seemingly at odds with this aim, many writers focused on the typicality (rather than the distinctiveness) of their subjects’ experiences, thus broadening the scope of affirmation. This is evident in such texts as Ezekiel Mphahlele’s Down Second Avenue (1959), Z.K. Matthews’s Freedom for My People (1981), Ellen Kuzwayo’s Call Me Woman (1985), Mark Mathabane’s Kaffir Boy (1986), and the anonymous Thula Baba (1987). Moreover, life writing increasingly reinterpreted history and politics. Naboth Mokgatle’s The Autobiography of an Unknown South African (1971), Donald Woods’s Asking for Trouble (1987), Philip Kgosana’s Lest We Forget (1988), Mosiuoa Lekota’s Prison Letters to a Daughter (1991), and Maggie Resha’s ‘Mangoana Tsoara Thipa Ka Bohaleng (1991) all seek to correct authorized accounts. State repression under apartheid led to escalating violence and human rights violations. Experiences of banning and banishment are recounted by many auto/biographers, such as Helen Joseph (Side by Side, 1986), Frank Chikane (No Life of My Own, 1988), Winnie Mandela (Part of My Soul Went with Him, 1985, revised 1986), and Hilda Bernstein (The World That Was Ours, 1967). Because of its potential political impact, much life writing was banned, including most of the aforementioned texts and everything by banned or listed persons, such as Ruth First’s biography of Olive Schreiner, Bloke Modisane’s Blame Me on History (1963), and Mary Benson’s biography of Luthuli. Prison memoirs were also banned: Ruth First’s 117 Days (1965), Albie Sachs’s Jail Diary (1966), Quentin Jacobsen’s Solitary in Johannesburg (1974), Hugh Lewin’s Bandiet: Seven Years in a South African Prison (1981), Tim Jenkins’s Escape from Pretoria (1987), and Caesarina Kona Makoere’s No Child’s Play: In Prison under Apartheid (1988) are but a sample. Breyten Breytenbach’s The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (1984) is a notable exception; it escaped banning. As apartheid intensified, life writing reflected a growing democratization. Of the 143 (English and Afrikaans) autobiographies listed by Rowse Ushpol in 1958, 142 are by whites. (These racial labels reflect contemporary usage; earlier in the 20th century “racism” meant antagonism between Afrikaner and English whites.) In the 1950s only two black South Africans published their autobiographies (Abrahams and Mphahlele),

but by the 1980s life writing by black South Africans outnumbered that of whites by about four to three. Moreover, greater diversity in terms of the subjects’ class and gender occurred. Women subjects were increasingly common: prominent white women such as Sarah Gertrude Millin, Louwtjie Barnard (ex-wife of the heart surgeon Christiaan Barnard), the athlete Zola Budd, and the actresses Moira Lister and Barbara Kinghorn were joined by activists such as Helen Joseph, Frances Baard, Helen Suzman, Norma Kitson, Janet Levine, and Pauline Podbrey. The first black woman autobiographer was Noni Jabavu (The Ochre People, 1963). After Elsa Joubert’s semifictionalized biography of “Poppie Nongena” (Die Swerfjare van Poppie Nongena, 1978; Poppie Nongena), black women’s published life writing also multiplied, with texts such as Kuzwayo’s innovatively addressing a black readership. Collections of life stories devoted to women include Working Women (by Lesley Lawson, edited by Helene Perold, 1985), Vukani Makosikazi (edited by Jane Barrett et al. 1985), Sibambene: The Voices of Women at Mboza (edited by Hanlie Griesel 1987), Lives of Courage (by Diana Russell, 1989), Barbara Schreiner’s anthology of women’s prison writings, A Snake with Ice Water (1992), and de-individuated accounts such as Belinda Bozzoli’s Women of Phokeng (1991). Regarding class, the learned elite who were the subjects of earlier life writing were joined by members of the uneducated poor, such as The Story of Mboma (by Kathy Bond, 1979), The Sun Shall Rise for the Workers (by Mandlenkosi Makhoba, 1984), and A Working Life, Cruel beyond Belief (by Alfred Qabula, 1989). These testimonies also addressed the semiliterate masses, with some, such as We Came to Town (by Caroline Kerfoot, 1985), emerging from – and designed to be used in – literacy classes. Democratization is evident also in the published works of indigenous self-representational poetry: Trevor Cope’s collection (Izibongo, 1968) recorded the praise poems of Zulu royalty and chiefs, whereas Liz Gunner and Mafika Gwala’s text (Musho! Zulu Popular Praises, 1991) included those of ordinary Zulus. Publication aside, the diversified vernacular oral tradition was important throughout the apartheid period. These nonnarrative poems (izibongo in Zulu and Xhosa, and lithoko and lifela in Sotho), performed by the subject or other community members, generally blur the distinction between the autobiographical and the biographical, since authorship is rarely specified. Although they typically focus on the individual, the praises of heroic figures such as the historic Zulu leader Shaka were nevertheless instrumental in creating pride and a spirit of resistance in the oppressed. Praises are less common now (especially among the urban population) and narrative prose life writing (usually in English) has been increasing (with some evocative linguistic medleys such as Godfrey Moloi’s My Life, volume 1, 1987). English and print were the favoured media because of the greater potential audience and also because English was popularly perceived to be the language of liberation. As the range of authors and subjects broadened, forms of life writing diversified. In addition to conventional Westernstyle prose narratives, such as Richard Rive’s Writing Black (1981) and Frieda Matthews’s Reminiscences (1987), there are researcher-authored records, such as the aforementioned compilations and Carol Hermer’s anthropological The Diary of Maria Tholo (1980), Tim Keegan’s oral history (Facing the

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Storm, 1988), and Shula Marks’s edition of the correspondence of three women, entitled Not Either an Experimental Doll (1987). There are also the postmodernist experiments of Breyten Breytenbach and Lyndall Gordon (Shared Lives, 1992) and a small number of auto/biographical dramas (e.g. the musical adaptation of Nat Nakasa’s story of the boxer King Kong Dlamini, King Kong: An African Jazz Opera, edited by Harold Bloom, 1961; the cast’s adventures are recounted in Todd Matshikiza’s Chocolates for My Wife, 1961). Other plays include Stephen Gray’s Schreiner (1983) and Athol Fugard’s autobiographical Master Harold and the Boys (1982). The political context notwithstanding, some South Africans continued to produce apolitical life stories. Ulf Boberg (The Boberg Story, 1957), Ernie Duffield (Through My Binoculars, 1982), and Ruth Gordon (Alive, Alive, O!, 1984) – all white South Africans – give little indication of the socio-political context. Such insularity was not possible for everyone: Natie Ferriera (The Story of An Afrikaner: Die Revolusie van die Kinders?, 1980) and Riaan Malan (My Traitor’s Heart, 1990) are guilt-stricken. Numerous stories by activists record rejections of apartheid: there is Alan Paton’s Apartheid and the Archbishop (1973), Norma Kitson’s Where Sixpence Lives (1987), Pauline Podbrey’s White Girl in Search of the Party (1993), and Carl Niehaus’s Om Te Veg Vir Hoop (1993). Apart from biographies of Nationalist political leaders (usually in Afrikaans), texts supporting apartheid are scarce. A sample includes J. D’Oliviera’s on Vorster (1977), and homages to H.F. Verwoerd (by Marie van Heerden, 1984, and Gert Scholtz, 1974) and P.W. Botha (by Dirk and Johanna de Villiers, c.1984). Little known is Independence My Way (1976) by the “Bantustan” leader Kaizer Matanzima. The post-apartheid “new South Africa” is characterized by a desire for historical resolution, which finds its apotheosis in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Political transformation is, however, blunted by the lingering inequalities of apartheid, and life writing reflects both the continuities and the changes. Astonishingly (given the fact that there are five times more black South Africans than whites), life writing published since 1994 with white subjects outnumbers that with black subjects by roughly three to one, thus reversing the trend manifested in the last decade of apartheid. The reasons may include a lack of desire or need on the part of black South Africans to recall oppression or adjust to political liberation. Those in power may be too busy running the country (while the rest struggle to survive). Furthermore, the oral testimony of victims, published by white researchers, has dwindled, possibly because such work now seems patronizing or appropriative. (Notable exceptions are K. Limakatso Kendall’s edition Singing Away the Hunger on the life of Mpho ‘M’atsepo Nthunya (1996), Margaret McCord’s The Calling of Katie Makanya (1995), and Charles van Onselen’s award-winning biography, The Seed is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper (1996)). Most probably, however, the reversal indicates that testimony was indeed perceived as a crucial weapon in the struggle; liberation having been achieved, this need no longer exists. Since 1994, three broad categories of auto/biographical production are discernible, the first two continuing narrative traditions practised during apartheid. The group comprising personal memoirs includes texts such as Mary Holroyd’s Weigh-

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Less Forever (1997) and Kate Turkington’s There’s More to Life than Surface (1998), which barely discuss apartheid. Given that no black South Africans could be unaffected by racism, these apolitical accounts are all written by whites. The second group, comprising life stories that recover portions of history or experience suppressed by the apartheid regime, remains important in post-apartheid South Africa as the full extent of the state’s deception comes to light. Examples include the stories of activists such as Nelson Mandela (in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom (1994), numerous biographies, and Goodbye Bafana (1995) by Mandela’s jailor, James Gregory), Thabo Mbeki, Eddie Daniels, Ronnie Kasrils, and Joe Slovo (Slovo: The Unfinished Autobiography, 1995). Slovo’s daughter, Gillian, tries to make sense of her parents’ lives and her mother’s death in Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country (1997). Mamphela Ramphele’s A Life (1995) documents her involvement with Biko and the Black Consciousness movement. The third category responds to the demise of apartheid. Some texts represent attempts to reconcile the African and European worlds: whereas William Makgoba’s Mokoko: The Makgoba Affair (1997) and Wilfred Cibane’s Man of Two Worlds (1998) are not primarily concerned with personal transmutation (unsurprisingly, since the colonized have always been obliged to adapt to the hegemony), white South Africans such as Sarah Penny, Peggy Norton, Antjie Krog, Ian Player, Breyten Breytenbach, Nicki Arden, and Wilhelm Verwoerd (grandson of the architect of apartheid) interrogate alternative truths and negotiate self-transformation. Penny’s The Whiteness of Bones (1997) problematizes her racialized identity, and Arden recounts how, in training to become a sangoma (a traditional African healer and diviner), she resolves the conflict between contradictory value systems by capitulating to African traditions. Player reverses the cliché of the white man bringing enlightenment to Africa; gradually overcoming his “civilized” European norms, he absorbs the wisdom of his illiterate Zulu mentor. But political change has prompted many to seek accommodation in the “new” South Africa, and not all engage in profound self-scrutiny. The former prime minister F.W. de Klerk exonerates Nationalists as “products of [their] time and circumstances”. His narrative of the dismantling of apartheid (The Last Trek: A New Beginning, 1998) is, however, undermined by Jacques Pauw (Into the Heart of Darkness, 1997) and Eugene de Kock (Long Night’s Damage, 1998), who reveal secret governmental involvement in torture, murder, gun-running, fraud, and theft. De Kock’s book was apparently an attempt to publicize his Truth and Reconciliation Commission amnesty application. Two other narratives – by George Bizos (No One to Blame?, 1998) and Antije Krog (Country of My Skull, 1998) – also arose in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Whereas Bizos’s call for understanding for the perpetrators emerges from a position of difference from – and superiority to – Afrikaner Nationalists, Krog and Wilhelm Verwoerd (My Winds of Change, 1997) must negotiate shame and guilt to achieve self-reconciliation and the acceptance of their (reconstituted) Afrikaner identities. Judith Lütge Coullie

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Further Reading Brown, Duncan (editor), Oral Literature & Performance in Southern Africa, Oxford: James Currey, Cape Town: David Philip, and Athens: Ohio University Press, 1999 Chapman, Michael, Southern African Literatures, London and New York: Longman, 1996 Coullie, Judith Lütge, “Self, Life and Writing: A Study of Selected South African Autobiographical Texts” (dissertation), Durban: University of Natal, 1995 Coullie, Judith Lütge, “The Space between Frames: A New Discursive Practice in Ellen Kuzwayo’s Call Me Woman” in South African Feminisms: Writing, Theory, and Criticism, 1990–1994, edited by M.J. Daymond, New York: Garland, 1996 Coullie, Judith Lütge, “The Power to Name the Real: The Politics of the Worker Testimony in South Africa”, Research in African Literatures, 28/2 (1997): 132–44 Nuttall, Sarah and Carli Coetzee (editors), Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa, Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1998 Opland, Jeff, Xhosa Oral Poetry: Aspects of a Black South African Tradition, Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1980; Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983 “South African Autobiography”, special issue of Alter/Nation, 7/1 (2000) “South African Autobiography”, special issue of Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, 3/1 (1991) Ushpol, Rowse, A Select Bibliography of South African Autobiographies, Cape Town: University of Cape Town School of Librarianship, 1958

Apologias An apologia is a defence. Often anglicized as “apology”, this form of life writing may also be understood as a justification or as the elaboration or clarification of a problem or issue. In ancient Greece the term apologia referred to a kind of speech delivered for forensic purposes. The division of Plato’s Apologia (written 4th century bce; Apology of Socrates) into two main parts (excluding the farewell address) corresponds to the two principal speeches that the accused in Socrates’ position was to deliver: the speech of defence proper and, in the case of conviction, a speech proposing a counter-penalty. While Xenophon’s Apologia (4th century bce; Apology of Socrates to the Jury) makes mention of the latter speech, its primary focus is on Socrates’ innocence of the charges that Meletus had brought against him. In literary dictionaries and encyclopedias in English, the examples of the apologia that one is likely to find most often are Plato’s Apology of Socrates, Sir Philip Sidney’s Apology for Poetry (1595, also published as The Defence of Poesy), and John Henry Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864). Whether the focus is on an art form, a way of life, or an individual person’s decisions, the apologia carries with it the purpose of defence. In the case of autobiographical writing, the apologia can resemble confession, with its introspective focus and articulation of the writer’s convictions. Further, because of the apologia’s tendency to develop philosophical and theological themes, it can also at times bear family resemblances to such modes of dispute as polemic or even the philosophical dialogue. A related kind of writing is apologetics, the defence of a people or faith, as one finds in the Greek historian Josephus’ Against Apion (written 1st century ce) and the theologian Tertullian’s

Apologeticum (written 2nd century ce; Apology for the Christians). For further treatments of specifically religious and theological traditions of apologetics, one may find helpful entries in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The New Catholic Encyclopedia, The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, and The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia. Since apologias tend to arise from controversy, their focus is generally on answering an accusation or set of accusations. Even when the apologia is not addressed specifically to a jury, legal language can remain relevant to it. As Walter E. Houghton writes of Cardinal Newman in his Apologia, “he appealed to the British public as if to a jury and predicted that he would vanquish ‘not only my Accuser, but my judges’”. Writing on Spanish autobiography, James D. Fernandez also points out the significance of conflict in the apologia, in his definition of the form as “a verbal self-defense before one’s contemporaries”, thus emphasizing that the writing of an apologia “signals an intense engagement with the here and now”. Fernandez contrasts the here-and-now address of apology to the act of apostrophe, the direct address of someone who is absent, of an abstraction, or of God, and then goes on to point out that many works of autobiography employ both apology and apostrophe. In fact, many addresses of apostrophe would seem to have apologetic concerns, in that they are addresses that the writer means her or his contemporaries to overhear and to be persuaded by. One might discern something of the reverse dynamic occurring in certain apologias; while the address is directed most pointedly to the writer’s or speaker’s accuser, it is also meant to appeal to a wider audience, and for the sake of defending more than the speaker or writer alone. Thus, while Plato’s Apology for Socrates addresses itself most directly to the Athenian jury, it also addresses itself to “the Athenian public at large, and even other Greeks, if they are interested” (Slings), and it works as a defence not only of Socrates, but also of the philosophical way of life that Socrates represents. The writer and orator Apuleius in his Apologia (written 2nd century ce), in which he is responding to charges of sorcery, explicitly states his dual purpose of “clearing philosophy of the aspersions cast upon her by the uninstructed and of proving my own innocence”. Nevertheless, even within such a broad focus of argument, the here-and-now and particular will often still show. In the midst of defending certain tenets of his faith, the poet John Milton, in his Apology against a Pamphlet Called A Modest Confutation (1642), offers an explanation of how he spends his mornings. Before Apuleius takes up the charge of sorcery, he answers the charges that he cleans his teeth with powder, writes amatory verses, owns a mirror, and lives in a state of poverty. Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua works particularly well as an example of the complexity of the kinds of defence that can circulate through a single text. The work grew out of a dispute with Charles Kingsley over whether Newman recognized truth as a value in itself, and while Newman does defend his belief in the value of truth, he also defends, for example, his decision to become a Roman Catholic, as well as the legitimacy of the Roman Catholic Church. Further, the tension between the hereand-now circumstances that gave rise to the text and Newman’s concerns to make appeals beyond these circumstances shows in the revisions of the work and its title. The first edition (1864), which was composed of the pamphlets that Newman published on successive Thursdays from 21 April to 2 June 1864, along

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with an appendix, was entitled Apologia Pro Vita Sua: Being a Reply to a Pamphlet Entitled “What, Then, Does Dr Newman Mean?”. The second edition (1865) shifts the emphasis of the work in part by deleting the first two sections, which deal primarily with Kingsley’s charges, and changing the title to History of My Religious Opinions. The title of the fourth edition (1873) illustrates how effectively this personal and religious history carries with it the apologetic purposes that motivated its initial writing: Apologia Pro Vita Sua: Being a History of His Religious Opinions. Even with its emphasis on defence, the apologia allows for a variety of possibilities. For example, the accuser, the accusation, and the speaker can be fictitious, as in Robert Browning’s “Bishop Blougram’s Apology” (1855). While the bishop’s defence of his worldly and sybaritic way of life may be loosely based on Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman (1802–65), the apologetic monologue becomes an occasion for Browning to do what he does in many other poems, explore the ambiguities of the character’s thought and experience. French essayist Montaigne’s Apologie de Raimond Sebond (1580; Apology for Raymond Sebond) becomes an occasion for an extended meditation on the limits of human knowledge. In An Apology for the Life of Mr Colley Cibber, Comedian (1740), the writer, a major actor and playwright, not only defends himself against his many detractors, but also provides a rather intimate view of a part of the history of the British theatre. An Apology for the Life of James Fennel (1814) reads largely as a cautionary tale about the possible dangers of generosity and profligacy. Finally, lest anyone form the impression, from reading many of the works mentioned here, that the apologia is exclusively a domain of bitter conflict, vituperation, or narrowly defined philosophical and theological dispute, it may be advisable to read Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Apology for Idlers” (1881). Jerry Harp Further Reading Allen, Frank Charles, A Critical Edition of Robert Browning’s “Bishop Blougram’s Apology”, Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1976 Allen, R.E., Socrates and Legal Obligation, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980 Ashley, Leonard R.N., Colley Cibber, revised edition, Boston: Twayne, 1989 (first edition, 1965) Blehl, Vincent Ferrer, S.J. and Francis X. Connolly (editors), Newman’s Apologia: A Classic Reconsidered, New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1964 Brickhouse, Thomas C. and Nicholas D. Smith, Socrates on Trial, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989 Edwards, Mark, Martin Goodman, and Simon Price (editors), in association with Christopher Rowland, Apologetics in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999 Fernández, James D., Apology to Apostrophe: Autobiography and the Rhetoric of Self-Representation in Spain, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1992 Helmling, Steven, “‘Hippoclides Doesn’t Care”: Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua” in his The Esoteric Comedies of Carlyle, Newman, and Yeats, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988 Hopkins, Kenneth, “Colley Cibber” in The Poets Laureate, London: Bodley Head, 1954; New York: Library Publishers, 1955; revised edition, New York: Barnes and Noble, and Wakefield, Yorkshire: EP Publishing, 1973 Houghton, Walter E., The Art of Newman’s “Apologia”, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, and London: Milford, 1945

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Myers, William, “Autobiography and the Illative Sense” in his The Presence of Persons: Essays on Literature, Science, and Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century, Aldershot, Hampshire, and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate, 1998 Newman, John Henry, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, edited by David J. DeLaura, New York: Norton, 1968 Reeve, C.D.C., Socrates in the Apology: An Essay on Plato’s Apology of Socrates, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989 Slings, S.R. (editor), Plato’s Apology of Socrates: A Literary and Philosophical Study with a Running Commentary, edited and completed from the papers of the late E. DeStrycker, S.J., Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994 Xenophon, The Shorter Socratic Writings: Apology of Socrates to the Jury, Oeconomicus, and Symposium, edited and translated by Robert C. Bartlett, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996

Arabic Autobiography Autobiographical writing has a very long and rich history in Arabic letters, and it is possible to trace it back to the intensely personal poetry written in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times. Poetry, as the oldest, most revered, and best loved of Arabic literary genres, was the vehicle through which Arab poets not only expressed their personal passions, grievances, and contentions but also recorded their history. Such was the fascination of Arabs with poetry that poems were learned by heart and handed down orally from one generation to the next. This helped keep the personal stories of poets and the history of their societies vivid and alive in the minds of subsequent generations, long before the tradition of recording personal histories in autobiographies actually started. It is this tendency to juxtapose the personal and the public that was to become a salient feature of the tradition of autobiographical writing in Arabic. One of the earliest autobiographies in Arabic was written by the religious scholar, mystic, and philosopher al-Ghazƒl¡ (1058– 1111). He was born in a village near T®s in the Persian province of Khurasan and had a brilliant teaching career at the theological academy in Baghdad, but underwent a spiritual crisis that drove him suddenly to renounce his professorship and withdraw from the world. His spiritual development and search for truth are traced in his autobiographical work entitled al-Munqidh min al dalƒl (“The Deliverer from Error”). In this autobiography he records his struggle to keep his sanity under the burden of scepticism and the compulsion he felt to regain his faith. Doubt, according to him, was a disease that could be overcome only through God’s grace, His benign intervention, and the divine light He reveals out of His infinite mercy. It is hardly surprising, then, that this autobiography has often been compared to the Confessions of Augustine (written c.397–400). There is little doubt that al-Ghazƒl¡’s work has a distinct place in the history of Arabic autobiographical writing not only because it explores with forcefulness and forthrightness the intimate nature of the Sufi (mystic) experience but, more importantly, because the personal element in it is given far more weight and importance than the public. This is where it diverges from the mainstream Arabic autobiographical tradition, in which personal and public elements were often fairly well balanced. A prominent example of this balance can be found in the autobiography written by the Arab knight Usƒma ibn Munqidh

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(1095–1188) under the title Kitƒb al-i‘tibƒr (literally “Book of Learning”, translated as Memoirs of an Arab-Syrian Gentleman). It is a gallery of brilliant vignettes chronicling the long struggle against the Crusaders during the 12th century. Usƒma recounts his personal experiences and adventures side by side with descriptions of the political and social events of his time, in a simple, direct style, using the vernacular and moving away from the heavily ornate style of literary discourse prevalent during this era. Unlike al-Ghazƒl¡’s autobiography, Usƒma’s work is not pronouncedly philosophical. But if there is one predominant idea that runs throughout the work, it is the conviction, shared no doubt by a great many of his contemporaries, that human life is pre-ordained and pre-determined, that history is but the unfolding of Divine Will. Of great interest to the history of Arabic autobiographical writing is the book by the philosopher, sociologist, historian, traveller, and politician Ibn Khald®n (1332–1406) entitled alTa’r¡f bi-Ibn Khald›n [Introducing Ibn Khaldun; French translation as Voyage d’occident et d’orient]. Its significance stems from the fact that it brilliantly interweaves personal history with accounts of political and historical events. He gives details of his upbringing, the learned men who taught him, the letters he wrote, and the poems he composed while at the same time offering his perceptive observations on the traditions and customs of the lands he visited during his frequent travels from his native Tunisia to Spain, Morocco, Algeria, and then to Egypt where he was offered a professorship of jurisprudence. He was later appointed as chief judge but was expelled from the post on account of the conspiracies of those he referred to as “enemies” and “intriguers”. But beyond all this is his attempt to justify himself, explain his motives, and refute the charges frequently levelled at him that he fomented troubles and participated in rebellions. His autobiography was his attempt to vindicate himself by telling the truth as he himself saw it. With increased contact between the Arab world and the West in the 19th century there was a revival of interest in the art of autobiography, and writers tried to reconcile the imported Western forms with the indigenous classical models drawn from their Arab heritage. From the 19th century onwards autobiographies proliferated. A prominent example is the autobiography of ‘Al¡ Mubƒrak (1823–93), Egyptian educationalist, historian, and literary prose writer, who was one of the early Arab scholars to benefit from the educational missions to Europe, the system introduced by Mohammed Ali, the Albanian-born ruler of Egypt in the first half of the 19th century, to establish and strengthen cultural ties between Egypt and Europe. His autobiography, named al-Khitat al-Tawf¡qiyya [New Plans], was published between 1886 and 1889. It is a monumental work of 20 volumes that combines topographical details of Egypt with historical and personal accounts, written in a simple, factual style. The work, though firmly established within the Arabic tradition of autobiographical writing, bears the imprint of the contact with French literature. The most influential autobiographical work in modern Arabic letters, however, is no doubt al Ayyƒm by Tƒhƒ Husayn (1889–1973), the outstanding figure of the modernist movement in Arabic literature. It is perhaps one of the most popular works in modern Arabic literature if we judge by the number of reprints of the book. Its popularity is due in part to the great emotional impact of the author’s depiction of his early child-

hood in Upper Egypt and his valiant struggle with blindness. It has a great deal of ironic humour that saves it from descending into melodrama. It appeared in three parts, the first of which was published in book form in 1929 (An Egyptian Childhood) and is the record of his early education at the village school up to his departure to study at al-Azhar University in Cairo. The second part, published in 1932 (The Stream of Days), deals with his student days at Al-Azhar, and the third part was published in Beirut in 1967 under the title Memoirs (A Passage to France). Unlike the usual mix of the personal and the public found in most traditional Arabic autobiographies, Tƒhƒ Husayn’s work, though conscious of the social and political forces shaping the protagonist’s life, remains deeply entrenched in the private and the personal. Many Arab writers followed in the footsteps of Tƒhƒ Husayn and recorded their own life stories. Most notable among these is the Egyptian Ahmed Am¡n (1886–1954), who was given the honorary title of “father of the modern generation” and wrote about his experiences in Hayƒt¡ (1950–52; My Life: The Autobiography of an Egyptian Scholar, Writer, and Cultural Leader). The great Egyptian poet, critic, and biographer ‘Abbƒs Mahm®d al-‘Aqqƒd (1889–1964) wrote his autobiography in two parts, the first entitled Ana [meaning “I”] and the second entitled Hayat qalam [The Life of a Pen], both published in 1964. Yahyƒ Haqqi (1905–93), the renowned Egyptian novelist and critic, also recorded his life history in his autobiographical work Khallihƒ ‘alƒ Allƒh [1959; Leave It All to God]. Tawf¡q alHak¡m wrote his life story in Zahrat al-‘umr [1943; The Flower of Life] and Sijn al-‘umr (1964; The Prison of Life: An Autobiographical Essay). The writing and publication of women’s memoirs, journals, and autobiographies in Arabic is mainly a 20th-century phenomenon, brought about undoubtedly by the marked increase in the number of educated women in the Arab world and by the growing participation of women in public life. Many educated women found the directness of autobiography the best form in which to express their grievances against society. Hudƒ Sha‘rƒw¡ (1879–1947), one of the pioneers of the feminist movement in Egypt, who called for the liberation of women from the shackles of conventions and defied society by taking off her veil in public, recorded her life history in the mid-1940s in her book Mudhakkirƒti (not published until 1981; Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist 1879–1924). In it she tells of her aristocratic upbringing, the segregated life she led, her growing awareness of the constraints imposed on the women of her generation, and her determination to fight for their independence. Through the very act of writing this autobiography, Hudƒ Sha‘rƒw¡ was challenging the dominant patriarchy as well as the potent tradition, taken very much for granted in her society, that women should always observe silence, especially concerning their private lives. The last three decades of the 20th century have witnessed the proliferation of autobiographies written by Arab women throughout the Arab world. The Moroccan writer Leila Ab® Zayd wrote in 1993 about her childhood experiences in her book Ruju’ila al-tufulah (Return to Childhood: The Memoir of a Modern Moroccan Woman). The Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan in her autobiography Rihla Jabaleyya (1985; A Mountainous Journey: An Autobiography) described her childhood and her growing awareness of what it meant to be a woman in

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an Arab society. Moreover, with women’s increased participation in political life, many of them went through the trauma of political imprisonment on ideological grounds. The harrowing experience of incarceration was faithfully and poignantly recorded by the Egyptian writer Lat¡fa al-Zayyƒt in her autobiographical work Hamlat Taft¡sh (1992; The Search: Personal Papers) and by the Egyptian feminist writer Nawƒl al-Sa‘dƒw¡ in Mudhakkirƒt¡ f¡ sijn al-nisƒ (1983; Memoirs from the Women’s Prison). Amira Hassan Nowaira Further Reading al-Qƒd¡, W., “Biographical Dictionaries: Inner Structure and Cultural Significance” in The Book in the Islamic World: The Written Word and Communication in the Middle East, edited by George N. Atiyeh, Albany and Washington, DC: State University of New York Press / Library of Congress, 1995 Brugman, J., An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature in Egypt, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1984 Kramer, Martin (editor), Middle Eastern Lives: The Practice of Biography and Self-Narrative, Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1991 Malti-Douglas, Fedwa, Blindness & Autobiography: Al Ayyƒm of Tƒhƒ Husayn, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1988 Malti-Douglas, Fedwa, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo-Islamic Writing, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991 Meisami, Julie Scott, “An Anatomy of Misogyny”, Edebiyât, 6 (1995): 303–15 Meisami, Julie Scott and Paul Starkey (editors), The Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, 2 vols, London and New York: Routledge, 1998 Ostle, Robin, Ed De Moor, and Stefan Wild (editors), Writing the Self: Autobiographical Writing in Modern Arabic Literature, London: Saqi Books, 1997 Reynolds, Dwight (editor), “Arabic Autobiography”, special issue of Edebiyât, new series, 7/2 (1997) Reynolds, Dwight (editor), Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000 Reynolds, Dwight, “Shaykh ‘Abd al-Wahhƒb’s al-Sha‘rƒn¡’s 16thCentury Defense of Autobiography”, Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review, 4/1–2 (1997–98): 122–37 Rooke, Tetz, “In My Childhood”: A Study of Arabic Autobiography, Stockholm: Stockholm University, 1997 Rosenthal, Frantz, A History of Muslim Historiography, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1952 Shuiskii, Sergei A., “Some Observations on Modern Arabic Autobiography”, Journal of Arabic Literature, 13 (1982): 111–23 Toorawa, Shawkat M., “Language and Male Homosocial Desire in the Autobiography of Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi”, Edebiyât, 7/2 (1997): 235–49

Arabic Biography In the first decades of the 7th century ce the “dawn of Islam” as a da’wa or message to the Arabs and the world at large marked the birth of a new and vigorous nation soon to face the requirements of statehood. The necessary functions of clerks and interpreters gave rise to the need to teach their children “to read and write and shoot and ride” on the injunction of the Prophet Muhammad himself. The rich tradition of pre-Islamic poetry, narratives of famous wars, tribal feuds, and heroic exploits (the ayyƒm al-‘Arab) and

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their ansab (genealogy), their myths and proverbs had all been orally circulated and transmitted from one generation to the next. Recorded Arabic literature starts with Islam; the originally oral nature of the medium of transmission stamped all recorded information with the need to trace the chain of authority back through a number of informers to the original trustworthy source. Pre-Islamic biographical information orally transmitted by one rƒw¡ (narrator) after another was later incorporated in the work of historians and biographers. The family tree of every character of note was meticulously preserved, elaborated, and expounded by huffaz who were part genealogists and part wise men and bards. The practice continued in all works of Arabic / Islamic scholarship until the end of the Middle Ages. The art of biography was early described in Arabic as ’ilm (a science), i.e. a work of learning and scholarship. The general term was tarjama (interpretation), now more commonly used for translation. The verb tarjama li meant to write a biography, with the name of the subject following. Because one of the earliest biographies of the Prophet Muhammad, his companions, wives, and followers was the Tabaqƒt of Ibn Sa‘d (d. 845), tabaqƒt often came to be used to indicate works of biography. The term tabaqƒt (generations) was used by Ibn Sa‘d to indicate his system of classifying his material according to generation. In general trajim (pl.) were classified under tabaqƒt, wafayƒt (dates of death) generally of notables, with a subdivision of a‘mar (age by decade at time of death). There were also maghƒz¡ (military expeditions) of subjects, as well as manƒqib (virtues) of princes, noblemen, etc., a continuation of preIslamic culture. Most Muslim scholars engaged in historiography, and it has been estimated that more than half of Arabic literature consists of historical works, which do not stop with the annals of historians such as al-Tabar¡ (839–923) or Ibn al-Ath¡r (1160– 1233) or public and general collections such as the Mur›j aldhahab (Meadows of Gold) by geographer and historian alMa‘s®d¡ (c.896–956), but include for the greater part a host of biographies. Biographers also exceeded the mere presentation of biographical data, more often including incidents and public events to which their subjects were witnesses, participants, or simply contemporary. A 15th-century biography compilation of tabaqƒt (“Generations of Shafie Imams”) provides important historical information covering more than five centuries, including the great catastrophe of the Mogul invasion, akhbƒr (accounts) of Genghis Khan and his grandson Hulako, as well as events of the Crusades. The same could be said of the great biographical compilations, for example, the Wafayƒt al-a‘yƒn of Ibn Khillikƒn (d. 1282). Modern readers are often impressed by the wonderful variety of classifications adopted by historians in their biographical compilations: companions of the Prophet and his followers, readers and interpreters of the Qu’rƒn, the Faq¡hs of the four doctrines, muhaditheen (traditionists) and Ruwah (transmitters), the Fundamentalists, the Shi‘a and Mu‘tazilah (rejectionists), the Zuhhad (ascetic-hermits) and Sufies, artists and poets, linguists and grammarians, physicians, wise men and philosophers, judges, caliphs, princes and ministers, historians and genealogists, and biographies of women: an endless list. Biographical information on individuals was even used in works of geography: for example, Yƒq®t’s Mu‘jam al-buldƒn, and the books of akhbƒr of Mecca, Medina, Egypt, the

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Maghrib, and Andalus. A wealth of biographical information is included in the famous annals and histories mentioned above, for no branch of scholarship set out its findings without biographical material for reference, or simply to enlighten and entertain the reader. Arabic biography per se started with the establishment of Islam in Arabia in the 7th century, the death of the Prophet Muhammad (631ce), the conquest of the neighbouring territories of the ancient empires of Rome and Persia, and the infighting of different branches of his family and successors. Muslim historians started with recording the S¡ra (life course) of the Prophet some decades after his death. A s¡ra is basically a biography, but when the definite article is used “the s¡ra” means the life of the Prophet Muhammad, written down and supported by the ever-growing apparatus of narratives, pronouncements, and traditions (had¡th), testimonies and akhbƒr, and maghƒz¡. For almost a century after his death, qussƒs (storytellers) and narrators continued to compile and disseminate stories of his life. Even serious scholars collected information according to the old practice of oral transmission, guaranteed by the authority of isnƒd (the chain of reference), which regularly constituted the method of the s¡ra. The S¡ra of Ibn Hisham, written more than 100 years after the Prophet’s death, is still the most accessible and informative account. It was the main source used by Tƒhƒ Husayn for a literary life of the Prophet, ‘Ala Hamish al-S¡ra (1933), a fascinating work in which he admitted giving rein to his imagination, except for matters of faith (hamish is the margin of a page, used for notes; also the fringe). The figure of the Prophet that emerges from the S¡ra is contemplative, charismatic, and deeply humane, a man fond of women and perfume and proud of exceptional sexual prowess, but modest as to his original wealth and status: “I am only the son of a simple Arab woman who ate jerked meat!” The love that millions of Muslims feel for Muhammad has been fed by folk versions of the Sira narrated by itinerant bards. Al-S¡ra al-Muhammadia became part of the repertory of the folk sha‘ir narrating with a touch of acting in coffee shops, market squares, and before desert tents for centuries past, and now settled in regular troupes financed by ministries or agencies of culture in most Arab countries. Such folk recensions are actively discouraged and often banned outright by modern fundamentalist revivalists. The wives of the Prophet later named “Mothers of the Faithful” figure prominently in all traditional compilations of history/ biography. The first two volumes of the biographical dictionary Tabaqƒt (9 vols) of the aforementioned Ibn Sa‘d devoted to the Prophet give ample space to his wives. In fact the wives, particularly ‘$’isha, were recognized sources of isnƒd, though some later editors described the isnƒd of some of them as “weak”, that is, not entirely reliable. A number of them were later singled out for separate biographical studies, for all had important family and clan affiliations and the marriage contract often marked the sealing of a political alliance or pact of noninterference. The two wives most favoured by biographers to this day are Khadijah bint Khuwailed (d. 621), Mohammad’s first wife and staunch supporter, and ‘$’isha, daughter of Abu Bakr, his first convert and the first of his companions to succeed him. ‘$’isha was only 18 when he died, and has been described as “Muhammad’s Beloved”. Modern Muslim scholars have used the lives of these two women to demonstrate the honoured

position of women in Islam. ‘$’isha ‘Abd al-Rahmƒn (Bint alShƒti’, 1912–74) wrote a series of modern biographical studies in Nisa al-Nabi (Wives of the Prophet), devoting a volume to each of the principal wives. Muslim feminists also made ‘$’isha their own: Nabia Abbott wrote Aishah the Beloved of Mohammed (1942), breaking new ground. She stresses the important role of Khadijah in Muhammad’s career. A wealthy widow of noble family, Khadijah employed the dreamy Muhammad, 15 years her junior, on missions of trust. Impressed by his integrity, she sent a proposal of marriage to her handsome young agent. They were happily married, and she believed in his mission and protected him against the malice of Quraish. She was the only one of his wives to give him children, and he never took another wife in her lifetime. Khadijah’s ministering care of Muhammad when he was stricken after visions of the Angel of God and her support of him by consulting wise hermits have been widely elaborated in later studies and folk narratives. The romance of ‘$’isha, the child wife who came into the Prophet’s house as a little girl playing with her dolls, fired Nabia Abbott’s imagination. There has always been a wealth of information in classical Arabic sources on ‘$’isha, or ascribed to her. Her career as the Widow of the Prophet, trying to further the interest of her family, and leading troops against Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, has gained her a place in the gallery of cursed devils of the shi‘a. Modern Arabic literature is greatly influenced by works of biography written in modern European languages; the old sources are ransacked for information, but the biographical style is more along the lines of Thomas Carlyle, André Maurois, or Maksim Gork’ii. Deeply impressed by Carlyle, the poet and literary critic ‘Abbƒs Mahm®d al-‘Aqqƒd (1889–1964) wrote a series of biographies under the title ‘Abqariya (genius): the “Genius of Omar”, the “Genius of Abu Bakr”, and the “Genius of Khalid ibn al-Walid” (the great general of Islam). They have been very popular, repeatedly published in cheap editions and set for school reading. His last work of this kind, the “Genius of Jesus” (1952), is not so widely known. Fatma Moussa-Mahmoud Further Reading al-Qƒd¡, Wadƒd, “Biographical Dictionaries: Inner Structure and Cultural Significance” in The Book in the Islamic World: The Written Word and Communication in the Middle East, edited by George N. Atiyeh, Albany and Washington, DC: State University of New York Press / Library of Congress, 1995 Brugman, J., An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature in Egypt, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1984 Della Vida and Levi G., entry on S¡ra in Encyclopaedia of Islam, including bibliography of classical works, Leiden: E.J. Brill, and London: Luzac, 1960— Ibn al-Jauzi, A‘mar al-A‘yan [Ages of Notables], edited by M.M. Tanahi, Cairo: Maktabat al-Khangi, 1994 (includes a full bibliography of classical biographies in modern editions in Arabic) Kramer, Martin (editor), Middle Eastern Lives: The Practice of Biography and Self-Narrative, Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1991 Meisami, Julie Scott and Paul Starkey (editors), The Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, 2 vols, London and New York: Routledge, 1998 Roded, Ruth, Women in Islamic Biographical Collections: From Ibn Sa’d to Who’s Who, Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1994 Rosenthal, Frantz, A History of Muslim Historiography, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1952

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Arabic Travel Writing For the Arabs inhabiting the Arabian Peninsula in the first millennium ce, travelling was a way of life. They had to travel not only in search of water but also in order to trade with more prosperous neighbouring nations, hence the traditional annual journey north to Syria in the summer and south to Yemen in the winter. It is hardly surprising, then, that such a people should have a rich literary heritage dealing with their experiences while travelling to other lands, the references to which can still be found in the poetry they composed, recited, and handed down orally to later generations. It was after Islam and the expansion of Muslim domains that travelling became more closely associated with the love of learning and the spirit of scientific enquiry. Sciences such as geography, history, sociology, and astronomy were nurtured by the observations supplied by the ardent and dedicated Arab travellers. The earliest Arab travellers to leave written records of their journeys lived in the 9th century and were mostly linguists and geographers. One of these was al-Mas‘®d¡ (c.896–957). He was a historian and traveller, and he had no settled abode for most of his adult life. He was named “Herodotus of the Arabs”, travelling as he did as far as Syria, Iran, Armenia, the shores of the Caspian Sea, the Indus Valley, Ceylon, Oman in Arabia, and the east coast of Africa. He was the first Arab to combine history and scientific geography in a large-scale work, Mur›j aldhahab wa ma‘ƒdin al-Jawhar (literally “The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems”, translated as Meadows of Gold). In it he stresses the importance of travels to “learn the peculiarities of various nations and parts of the world” and devotes whole chapters to describing the history, geography, social life, and religious customs of non-Islamic lands, such as India, Greece, and Rome. The problem with al-Mas‘®d¡, however, was that he sometimes recounted what he learnt from the people he met on his travels uncritically. But he was genuinely interested in different social systems and in different religions, including Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, as well as Judaism and Christianity. Muhammad ibn al-Idr¡s¡ (1100–65/66), the Arab geographer and traveller, combined accounts of his travels with the sciences of geography and astronomy. He spent much of his early life travelling in North Africa, Spain, and many parts of western Europe, including Portugal, northern Spain, the French Atlantic coast, and southern England, visiting Asia Minor when he was barely 16 years old. Around 1145 he entered the service of Roger II of Sicily. This resulted in the completion of three major geographic works, the most important of which is the great work of descriptive geography known as Nuzhat al-mushtƒq f¡ ikhtirƒq al-ƒfƒq [The Pleasure Excursion of One Who is Eager to Traverse the Regions of the World], and also as Kitƒb Rujƒr, or al-Kitƒb ar-Rujƒr¡ [The Book of Roger] after his patron, the Sicilian king Roger II. In compiling it, al-Idr¡s¡ combined material from Arabic and Greek geographical works with information obtained through first-hand observation and eyewitness reports. It is recognized as a serious attempt to combine descriptive and astronomical geography and is particularly valuable for its data on such regions as the Mediterranean basin and the Balkans. Travel literature came to its peak with Ibn Batt®ta (1304– 68/69 or 1377), the greatest medieval Arab traveller and the author of one of the most famous travel books, the Rihlat

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(Travels). It describes his extensive travels, estimated at 75,000 miles, to almost all the Muslim countries and to regions as far afield as China and Sumatra, rightly earning him the title “the traveller of Islam”. Ibn Batt®ta embarked on his travelling career by going on the pilgrimage to Mecca. At first his purpose was to fulfil this religious duty and to study under famous scholars in the Near East (Egypt, Syria, and Hejaz). But he was seized by an irresistible passion for travel, and he decided to visit as many parts of the world as possible, vowing “never to travel any road a second time”. While his contemporaries travelled for practical reasons (such as trade, pilgrimage, and education), Ibn Batt®ta enjoyed travelling for its own sake, for the joy of learning about new countries and new peoples, and in the process making a living out of it. He enjoyed the generosity and benevolence of numerous sultans, rulers, governors, and high dignitaries in the countries he visited, thus securing an income that enabled him to continue his wanderings. His Rihla, as his book is commonly known, is an important social, cultural and political document. Because of its wealth of detail it is used as a source book for the history of the Muslim world. Ibn Batt®ta’s reliability is accepted in general, although there are a few instances of discrepancies that can be accounted for by lapses of memory rather than by wilful distortion on his part. The book is also interesting in that it reveals to the reader the reactions and opinions of an average middle-class Muslim of the 14th century. In modern times, travel writing has taken a very different shape. Gone is the link between travelling and geography and other sciences. Travel accounts and narratives became largely the domain of fiction writers recounting their experiences in foreign lands, especially Europe. From the beginning of the 19th century onwards, the Arab world looked to the West for knowledge, science, and progress. Since many Arabs travelled for the sake of studying at European institutions, they went home with countless impressions that they wished to record creatively, hence the proliferation of what came to be known as “travel fiction”. The most notable examples of this are the Egyptian writer Tawf¡q al-Hak¡m’s (c.1902–87) novel ‘Usf›r min al-sharq (1938; Bird of the East), the Lebanese writer Suhayl Idris’s (b. 1923) al-Hayy al-Lƒt¡n¡ (1954; The Latin Quarter), and the Sudanese novelist al Tayyib Sƒlih’s (b. 1929) Mawsim al-hijra ilƒ al-shimƒl (1965; Season of Migration to the North). Amira Hassan Nowaira Further Reading Batt®ta, Ibn, The Travels of Ibn Batt›ta, translated by H.A.R. Gibbs and C.F. Beckingham, Cambridge: Hakluyt Society and Cambridge University Press, 1958–71 (3 vols) and 1994 (vol. 4) Boullata, Issa J. (editor), Critical Perspectives on Modern Arabic Literature, Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1980 Brugman, J., An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature in Egypt, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1984 Dunn, Ross E., The Adventures of Ibn Batt›ta: A Muslim Traveller of the 14th Century, London: Croom Helm, 1986 Gibb, H.A.R., Arabic Literature: An Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926; revised edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963 Hourani, G.F., Arab Seafaring, revised by John Carwell, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995 (first edition, 1951) Ronart, Stephan and Nandy Ronart, Concise Encyclopaedia of Arabic Civilization: The Arab East, Amsterdam: Djambatan, 1959; New York: Praeger, 1960

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Archives In the case of famous men and women, and above all writers, their life writing is normally preserved in manuscript form by their families and by universities and research institutes. However, a number of institutions also archive life writings by ordinary people. They deal with diaries, letters, and autobiographies, but also other family writings, collections of poems, recipe-books, and other materials. Often these institutions are linked to universities, but sometimes they are independent, created exclusively to archive life writing. Most of the latter are in Europe and North America, where the tradition of archiving this kind of material started at the beginning of the 20th century. We can distinguish three “generations” of this type of institution: the first is linked to intellectual traditions engaged in the rebirth of a nation; the second is a consequence of fieldwork in history and sociology in the middle part of the 20th century, when these studies were concerned, above all, with specific social groups (women, workers, young people, and so on); the third is the generation of “archives of the self”, founded not to gather material for research in the social sciences, but to claim the right to archive autobiographical writings from both wellknown individuals and ordinary people. The method of collecting material varies according to the activities and the particular focus of an archive. Very often, an archive is also a centre for research. Historically, material has been collected through the gathering of ethnological data, the organization of autobiographical contests, the creation of a net of correspondents, or appeals to people (by radio and newspapers) to send in their personal writings. Although globally there are an enormous number of archives with a declared interest in life writing, particularly in North America and Australasia, there has been little organizational coordination or intellectual analysis of these as a group. There are, however, a number of European institutions that belong to a network and share an explicit identity as archives created explicitly to house life writing, and deserve extended comment here. It should be said, however, that archives elsewhere generally follow the pattern of “three generations” outlined above. Finland has pioneered the archiving of life writing in Europe. The State Archives contain collections of life writings produced by important families (the most ancient dating from 17th century) and from various professionals such as statesmen, politicians, businessmen, civil servants, clergymen, scientists, and successful artists. Literary studies of the Kalevala, the great Finnish epic poem, which carried considerable significance during the constitution of the Finnish nation, led to the collection of (oral) life histories, then to the gathering of life writing. The Folklore Archive of the Finnish Literature Society, for example, has been collecting the life histories of ordinary elderly men and women since at least 1923. Nevertheless, it is quite impossible to know how many of these texts it contains today, because a large part of this material, in an archive system concentrating on folklore, has been classified as being of literary origin, as “fiction” or booklore. In contrast, the Literature Archive of the Finnish Literature Society, the central archive for literary research in Finland, contains autobiographies of young writers produced in response to a competition held by the Otava publishing company in 1972. There are also other Finnish

archives that collect life writing: the National Board of Antiquities, whose oldest life-history materials (in the ethnological section) date from 1900, the Workers’ Archive, and the People’s Archives, where sociologists work on the life writings of ordinary people. These latter Finnish institutions collect life writing through autobiographical contests, a method originating in Poland, which owns the oldest and richest autobiographical archives in the world. After the studies that led to the publication of The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918–20), a study on Polish emigration in the United States (in collaboration with William I. Thomas at the University of Chicago) using the letters and autobiographies of emigrants, the sociologist Florian Znaniecki returned to Poland, where in 1921 he founded the Sociological Institute and organized the first autobiographical contest. The method, which consisted of asking people from specific social groups to submit their autobiographies and giving a prize to the “best one”, spread throughout the whole of Poland where the intelligentsia was committed to the reconstitution of a “national memory” following the regaining of Polish independence in 1918. Some of these texts, which were published regularly, were considered a sort of popular literature and enjoyed great success. Autobiographical contests were subsequently organized by universities and cultural institutes, but also by newspapers and radio stations. The materials obtained were kept by the organizing institutions, or were given to the archives. Today there are three archives of life writings in Poland: the oldest, the Pamietnikarstwo Polskie, contains more than 500,000 autobiographical texts; the more recent ones, Karta and the Archive of the Popular Polish Republic, both founded in 1980, held 4200 autobiographical texts by 1999. Additionally the National Library of Warsaw’s manuscript department contains life writings of ordinary people, as well as important historical figures, with the earliest dating back to the 15th century. In Britain, an original centre, created in 1937, is the Mass Observation project, founded by the anthropologist Tom Harrisson, the documentary maker Humphrey Jennings, and the surrealist poet Charles Madge, in order to develop a method of analysing English society from the inside. This project of “selfanthropology”, by which the theories of surrealist poetry were applied as a scientific method, was based on personal writings and on written observations of society produced by ordinary people. A panel of correspondents either answered open-ended questionnaires on specific matters, called directives, or submitted personal diaries which provided a particularly rich source of information on everyday life during World War II. The project was revived as an archive in 1981 at the University of Sussex, Brighton, and a new panel has been recording everyday life in Britain since 1981. It is, however, the only archive that works primarily with a panel of correspondents (currently 400–strong), whose identity is protected by the allocation of personal membership numbers which they attach to the texts they send. The “second generation” archives in Europe are found primarily in Germany, Austria, and Italy, all founded in the 1970s and 1980s. In Germany, the University of Bochum houses the Bochumer Auswandererbrief-Sammlung (5000 emigrants’ letters); another, the Archiv Kindheit-Jugend in Siegen, concentrates on the personal writings of young people:

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diaries, letters, and essays written for a contest organized in 1983, but also drawings, photos, and a very good library of childhood autobiographies, most of which are already published. Other centres include the Deutsches Gedächtnis of the University of Hagen (which contains chiefly oral histories, but also the Rössler-Archiv für Schuleraufsetzen, a collection of 80,000 essays and a number of short autobiographies written by young people between 1948 and 1956) and the Erzählarchiv in Tübingen, where there are several hundred unpublished autobiographies by minor writers and lesser literary “professionals”. These centres are normally linked to universities, but in Germany there is one significant exception: an archive created by a writer, Walter Kempowski. In 1979 he asked people, via newspapers and the radio, to send him their personal and family writings in order to give him “historical data” for his work. Following this, he wrote and published a large number of novels, and, most importantly, he received around 5000 autobiographical texts; he collected these and created in Hamburg the Kempowski-Archiv für unpublizierte [unpublished] Biographien. The activities of these bodies are varied: they often operate simultaneously as archives, research centres, publishers (of the texts they receive), and museums (see for example the Deutsches Gedächtnis, publisher of the review Bios: Zeitschrift für Biographieforschung und Oral History). In this sense, the most active are the Dokumentation lebensgeschichtlicher Aufzeichnungen in Vienna, which is also the source of an archive on the personal writings of women, the Frauennachlässe (which inspired a group of Czechoslovakian historians to create a similarly titled centre in Prague), and the Archivio della Scrittura Popolare in Trento, Italy. The Archivio’s researchers have so far concentrated on memories of World War I and have founded a Federation of Italian Life-Writing Archives, which organizes an annual symposium for Italian students of autobiographical writings. By 2001 this archive was to open a section that would contain correspondence received from famous historical, literary, and media figures. In such centres, often created to record history “from below”, and where material arrives spontaneously, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, literary historians, psychologists, and linguists can find rich data. In all the archives mentioned above (which, unless otherwise specified, contain several hundred texts) the authors are generally well known and all the texts are read and catalogued (title, length, contents, historical events the author has lived through, famous people he or she has met, places he or she lived in or travelled to, and so on). In the first and second “generations” of archives the works are also often published; in the third publication is rarer, but the rights always belong to the authors. Among the “third generation” of archives one can find a number of centres founded since the 1980s not by researchers, but by people interested in writing and conserving life writing, a genre considered as a creative democratic act that every individual has the capability of producing. These centres include: the Archivio Diaristico Nazionale in Italy (Pieve Santo Stefano; 4200 texts); the Association pour l’Autobiographie (cofounded by the autobiography theorist Philippe Lejeune, in Ambérieu en Bugey; more than 1000 texts) and Vivre et l’Ecrire (Orléans; hundreds of diaries and thousands of letters by young people, not catalogued) in France; the Tagebuch-Archiv

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(Emmendingen; 200 texts) in Germany; and the Arxiu Memoria Popular (La Roca del Vallés; fewer than 100 texts) in Spain. These archives are very varied, because they respond to different social needs: the Italian centre is a municipal institution, founded by journalist Saverino Tutino to give everyone the right to “make history”, and to obtain an “archive of the present” using the method of the autobiographical contest; the Association pour l’Autobiographie, on the other hand, is an association where members read the texts of the other members, meet regularly, publish a review, and refuse to institute any competition or publications, to stress that their organization focuses on meetings around the “autobiographical act and experience”. The German Tagebuch-Archiv archive is a communal institution, which local politicians encourage to gather the memories of ordinary people to rebuild a national history; it refuses the contest method and gives a number of public readings of the texts it receives. In contrast, the Spanish Arxiu Memoria Popular is built on the Italian model. In the United States and Canada, life-writing materials tend to exist rather more as sub-categories of large, general historical, sociological, literary, or folkloric collections, which have emerged on the lines of the second and third generations of the European archives. Notable centres include: the Library of Congress (Washington), as in the Congressional Archives; the Harry Ransom Centre at the University of Texas (Austin) which holds much on British literature that came on the market in the 1950s; Harvard University’s Houghton Library (Cambridge, Massachusetts), and the Widener as well; Yale University’s Bieneke Library; the Huntington Library in Pasedena, California; the Newberry in Chicago; the principal library at Berkeley, California; the Fales at New York University; the main library at the University of Indiana, which has huge collections in medieval and folklore studies; and the American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, Massachusetts), an extensive library of original editions of books published by American authors. For African American texts, the Schomburg Center in New York is an important source (the Schomberg Library of 19th-century black women writers series, edited by Henry Louis Gates, is a published archive in a sense). In Canada, there is the Library of Canada in Ottawa, and the Thomas Fischer Library, part of the Roberts Library complex at the University of Toronto. In Australia, the terms “life writing” and “life history” are generally not used in relation to archives. Collection managers instead use the term “personal papers” to cover a variety of material. Each state (and the federal government) has a major publicly funded library that also has a manuscripts section. The manuscripts section actively seeks out personal papers, and these often include diaries, letters, and other kinds of autobiographical writings. Most of these libraries also have important oral-history collections, the biggest and oldest such collection being that of the National Library of Australia. These state and federal institutions sometimes also fund projects specifically designed to gather what might be termed “life histories” (although this is not what the institutions call them). A notable example is the “Bringing Them Home Oral History Project”, funded by the commonwealth government, and organized by the National Library of Australia. The project arose out of the report of the “National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Children from Their Families”. Its aim is to collect and preserve a range of stories

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(with eventual publication of some material) from the Australian indigenous people and others involved in the process of child removals, and is seen as an important step in the process of reconciliation between the indigenous people and other Australians. This initiative reflects the broad trend, outlined earlier in this essay, in which archives are used to review the constitution of national identity, particularly appropriate in the postcolonial world. The principal remaining archival / manuscript collections containing personal papers are based in universities. Again, some universities also house oral-history projects to help build up the “life history” side of their collections (though again, this particular terminology is not current). One such collection is the Oral History Program in the University of New South Wales Archives, which not only collects interviews, but also uses survey-based work, where, through in-depth questionnaires, respondents essentially write their memoirs in reply to specific questions. The subjects are also encouraged to donate other material about their lives (including photographs, notebooks, journals, etc.). This kind of survey-based work, like much of that in Europe, arose out of fieldwork in the disciplines of history and sociology. The Australian War Memorial is a publicly funded national institution that includes a substantial research collection. It is a major resource for material on Australian military history, the armed forces, and the sociological aspects of war. Of relevance to life writing is its substantial collection of private records donated by veterans from all walks of life and socio-economic classes, including letters, postcards, diaries, manuscripts, and interviews. They cover the lives of soldiers not only in wartime, but also before and after war service. Finally, it is worth noting that there are also some important private collections, which have been established to document personal lives along with social movements. These include the Australian Gay and Lesbian Archives in Melbourne and the Jesse Street Women’s Library and Archive, which documents feminism in Australia. Anna Iuso Julia Horne (Australia sections) Further Reading American Library Association, Letters, Diaries and Lives: Women’s Special Collections and Archives, Dallas, Texas: Acts, 1989 Antonelli, Quinto and Anna Iuso (editors), Vite di carta, Naples: L’Ancora, 2000 Barkow, Ben (editor), Testaments to the Holocaust (microform), Woodbridge, Connecticut: Primary Source Media, 1998 (archives of the Weiner Library) Britton, Heather, “Writing for Posterity: Cultural Heritage Collections and Community Writing in South Australia”, Artwork Magazine, 21 (December 1993): 10–13 Buchanan, Heather, Guide to Women’s Sources at National Archives, Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand: National Archives, 1993 Buss, Helen and Marlene Kadar (editors), Working in Women’s Archives: Researching Women’s Private Literature and Archival Documents, Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001 Daniels, Maygene F. and Timothy Walch (editors), A Modern Archives Reader: Basic Readings on Archival Theory and Practise, Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Service, 1984 Dean, Joanna and David Fraser, Women’s Archives Guide: Manuscript Sources for the History of Women, Ottawa: National Archives of Canada, 1991

Dulczewski, Zigmunt, “Florian Znaniecki as the Originator of the Autobiographical Method in Sociology”, Sysyphus: Sociological Studies, 2 (1982): 75–86 Elder, Glen H., Eliza K. Pavalko and Elizabeth C. Clipp, Working with Archival Data: Studying Lives, Newbury Park, California: Sage, 1993 Fortunoff Video Archive, Guide to Yale University Library Holocaust Video Testimonies: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, New York: Garland, 1990 Friedlander, Saul, Archives of the Holocaust: An International Collection of Selected Documents, New York: Garland, 1989 Hämmerle, Christa, “Récits de vie à Vienne”, Cahiers de Sémiotique Textuelle, 20 (1991): 103–14 Heinritz, Charlotte, “Les Archives biographiques en Allemagne”, Cahiers de Sémiotique Textuelle, 20 (1991): 87–102 Hildenbrand, Suzanne, Women’s Collections: Libraries, Archives, and Consciousness, New York: Haworth Press, 1986 Iuso, Anna, “Les Archives du moi, ou, la passion autobiographique”, Terrain, 28 (March 1997): 125–38 Iuso, Anna, “Per una genealogia europea” in Vite di carta, edited by Quinto Antonelli and Iuso, Naples: L’Ancora, 2000 Lejeune, Philippe (editor), “Archives autobiographiques”, special issue of Cahiers de Sémiotique Textuelle, 20 (1991) Lichtman, Allan J., Your Family History: How to Use Oral History, Personal Family Archives, and Public Documents to Discover Your Heritage, New York: Vintage, 1978 McPaul, Christine, “Creative Acts: Archives, Artifacts and Australian Women’s Autobiographies”, Australian Literary Studies, 17/3 (1996): 304–09 Markiewicz-Lagneau, Janina, La Formation d’une pensée sociologique: la société polonaise de l’entre-deux-guerres, Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1982 Martin, Sylvia, “Reading Life Writing: Australian Women’s Letters and Diaries”, Hecate, 18/2 (1992): 126–37 Mellor, Doreen, “Bringing Them Together: The Partnerships Being Forged by the National Library’s ‘Bringing Them Home Oral History Project’”, National Library of Australia News, 10/9 (2000): 19–21 Peltonen, Ulla-Maija, “Biographische Sammlungen in Finnland”, Bios: Zeitschrift für Biographieforschung und Oral History, 1 (1988): 89–93 Peltonen, Ulla-Maija, “Working-Class Lore in Finnish Archives” in To Work, to Life or to Death: Studies in Working-Class Lore, edited by Flemming Hemmersam, Copenhagen: Selskabet til Forskning Arbejdebevaegelsens Historie [Society for Research in the History of the Labour Movement in Denmark], 1996 Poignant, Roslyn, “Wudayak / Baman (Life History) Photo Collection: Report on the Setting up of a Life History Photo Collection at the Djomi Museum, Marringrida”, Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2 (1992): 71–77 Powell, Graeme, “The Collecting of Personal and Private Papers in Australia”, Archives and Manuscripts: The Journal of the Australian Society of Archivists, 24/1 (1996): 62–77 Rawitsch, Mark Howland, Family Archives: History in Human Terms, Riverside, California: published by the author, 1976 Read, Janet and Kathleen Oakes, Women in Australian Society, 1901–45: A Guide to the Holdings of Australian Archives Relating to Women, 1901–45, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1977 Sheridan, Dorothy, “Writing to the Archive: Mass-Observation as Autobiography”, Sociology (special issue on autobiography), 27/1 (1993): 27–40 Sheridan, Dorothy, Brian Street, and David Bloome, Writing Ourselves: Literacy Practices and the Mass-Observation Project, London: Hampton Press, 1999 Somerville, Margaret, “Life (Hi)story Writing: The Relationship between Talk and Text”, Hecate, 17/1 (1991): 95–109 United States National Archives and Records Administration, Women’s Lives – Women’s Voices: Sources in Women’s History in the Records of the National Archives, Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1995 United States National Archives and Records Administration, Black Studies: A Select Catalog of National Archives Microfilm

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Publications, Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1996 Walch, Timothy, Our Family, Our Town: Essays on Family and Local History Sources in the National Archives, Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1987 Ward, Beverley, “The Edited Topical Life History: Its Value and Use as a Research Tool”, Education Research and Perspectives, 26/2 (1999): 45–60 Znaniecki, Florian, “The Importance of Memoirs for Sociological Studies”, Sysyphus: Sociological Studies, 2 (1982): 9–15

Arenas, Reinaldo

1943–1990

Cuban novelist, poet, and autobiographer Traditional autobiography often involves authors’ narrative subordination of their younger selves with the aim of recounting supposedly real experience in the past to explain their current situations. According to these terms, the Cuban Reinaldo Arenas’s swan song, Antes que anochezca (1992; Before Night Falls: A Memoir), finished shortly before his suicide, in anticipation of his imminent death from AIDS, might be considered a perverse text. Its narrative authority is shattered by situational dispersal, represented by a structure consisting of a series of interrelated but self-expository vignettes and liberal quotation from, or allusions to, his own or others’ texts. Grotesque exaggeration and caricature also help to undermine autobiographical authenticity in an inversion of the autobiographical grounding of much of Arenas’s fiction. If death is the spur to writing his autobiography, textuality promises Arenas a way of prolonging life beyond his own physical death as well as a space where the representation of oppressive figures in his life, particularly Fidel Castro, allows the opportunity for revenge through extreme condemnation, defamation, and ridicule. While Castroist Cuba is represented as the Inferno that Arenas directly blames for his own death, his reverent homage to one of his mentors, Virgilio Piñera, and his prayer to him at the beginning of the autobiography, asking for enough time to finish his final work, installs Piñera as a Caribbean Virgil. Piñera’s death in Cuba in 1979 as a disgraced writer and his subsequent revival in Arenas’s text perhaps rehearses Arenas’s own wish to be reborn as a literary point of reference for Cuban writers in the future, to whom he bequeaths his life /story. As an integral part of the account of his life as a child and adult, the book dwells on Arenas’s discovery, gleeful pursuit, and assertion of his homosexuality, an orientation that he claims is widespread even among the most stereotypical representatives of Cuban machismo. (As a full-length gay autobiography in a non-western context, the book is, however, still quite unusual.) The tone and style of his representation of Cuban homosexuality range among the picaresque, the Arcadian, the righteously angry, and the scandalously crude. Against the background of hypocritical Caribbean homophobia, of which the Cuban Revolution’s persecution of homosexuals, including Arenas, has been but one manifestation, Arenas’s literary shock tactics are unashamedly clear. But beyond these, homosexuality comes to represent one aspect of the freedom Arenas craves throughout the account of his life, and at whose denial, primarily by the

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Castro regime, he rages. It is interesting in this respect that the descriptions of his earliest sexual escapades, when he was about six years old, are juxtaposed with celebrations of the landscape and natural world of the Cuban countryside, where he spent his childhood. Such nostalgia for his roots is counterpointed with the defiantly rootless freedom afforded by his writing, the conditions for which are constituted painfully by internal exile, on the run from the Cuban authorities, or fairly high-profile dissidence abroad as part of the Cuban diaspora. Arenas associates such nostalgia and the painful freedom of his subsequent life with two women: his grandmother and his mother. To the first (an illiterate peasant woman but also a repository of folk culture, belief, and imaginative skills such as storytelling) he attributes his sense of life’s mystery and hidden possibilities, and to the second (who taught him the actual skills of reading and writing), his literacy. In fact, Arenas places women at the centre of Cuban life as those at the hub of family life, as the spur to his own development as a writer, and at the gates of popular and high culture. His father is absent from the beginning of Reinaldo’s life, having abandoned the writer’s mother before he was born. The matrilinearity of Arenas’s formation thus contests the patriarchal authority of Caribbean machismo and, as he presents it, the Cuban Revolution. The staging posts of Arenas’s personal history – from rural backwater, to the stultifying provincialism of the town of Holguín, to the cultural excitement and sexual promise of city life in Havana, and finally metropolitan life in the United States – do not form a progressive map towards freedom. In all these locations, any measure of freedom is delimited but also provoked into defiant existence by oppressive limitations. These are, respectively, machista rural values so prevalent that Arenas is wracked with guilt as a child for his first sexual escapades; the seeds of disillusionment, sown by the revolution he fervently supported after arriving in Holguín; the full brunt of state oppression suffered by him following his artistic acclaim and gay relationships in the capital; and the crassness of American life in general and Cuban American life in particular, as well as the physical ravages and social stigma attached to any AIDS sufferer. The very title of the autobiography communicates the ethos of struggling against crushing limitations: having to write before the darkness of nightfall when he was on the run and living in Havana’s Lenin Park, and snatching some semblance of life and agency from disease and imminent death. At all levels, Arenas’s text attempts to undermine authority and reclaim a true revolutionary freedom that might break the bounds imposed by not only political contingency but also the biological limits of the autobiographer’s life. John D. Perivolaris Biography Born in the province of Holguín, Cuba, 16 July 1943. His formal education was sketchy and he was largely self-taught. Researcher at José Martí National Library in Havana, 1963–68: befriended by Eliseo Diego, Cintio Vitier, and other intellectuals who worked there. Published Celestino antes del alba (Singing from the Well), the first of five semi-autobiographical novels, 1967. Editor of La Gaceta de Cuba, 1968–74. Had manuscripts confiscated and was denied access to employment. Imprisoned in El Morro, Havana, 1974–76. Left Cuba during the Mariel exodus in 1980. Published La vieja Rosa (Old Rosa), the first of a cycle of short novels, 1980. Professor of Cuban literature, University of Florida, 1980; Professor of literature, Cornell University,

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1985. Also published poetry, notably Leprosorio [1989; The Leper Colony]. Became terminally ill with AIDS. Committed suicide in New York, 7 December 1990.

Selected Writings Antes que anochezca, 1992; as Before Night Falls: A Memoir, translated by Dolores M. Koch, 1993

Further Reading Angvik, Birger, “Textual Constellations: AIDS and the Love of Writing in the Postmodern Era”, Journal of Latin American Studies, 7/2 (1998): 165–83 Ellis, Robert Richmond, “The Gay Lifewriting of Reinaldo Arenas: Antes que anochezca”, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 10/1 (1995): 126–44 Estévez, Abilio, “Between Nightfall and Vengeance: Remembering Reinaldo Arenas” in Bridges to Cuba / Puentes a Cuba, edited by Ruth Behar, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995 Reid, Alastair, “Troublemaker”, New York Review of Books, 40 (18 November 1993): 23–25 Soto, Francisco, Reinaldo Arenas: The Pentagonía, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994

Arnim, Bettina Brentano-von

1785–1859

German letter writer The life writing of Bettina [or Bettine] Brentano-von Arnim should not be read as an attempt to represent factual events. In the three epistolary texts in question – Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (1835; Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child), Die Günderode (1840; translated as Günderode or Correspondence of Fräulein Günderode and Bettine von Arnim), and Clemens Brentanos Frühlingskranz [1844; Clemens Brentano’s Spring Wreath] – Brentano-von Arnim reconstructs her relations to these friends and relatives in a way at once more greatly subjective and more greatly objective. Each text is based on actual correspondence between the author and the person named in the title, but in each case the epistolary material has been radically enhanced and /or altered. Literary critics have been most disturbed by the factual inaccuracies in Brentano-von Arnim’s Goethe text. The most notable example is a letter the author allegedly received from Goethe’s mother, one she dated after Frau Rath Goethe had died. However, this is a trivial error compared with the bemoaned misrepresentation of her relationship to the great poet. Brentano-von Arnim had met Goethe, written him admiring letters, and received a few responses in a distant tone. The relationship she portrays is one in which, for instance, she becomes the muse for poems he actually wrote for other occasions and to other people. While the actual correspondence is rather brief, her epistolary Goethe text is very lengthy. This, Brentano-von Arnim’s first publication, is the one with which she probably took the most liberties. However, it is unlikely that any of these objections would have unnerved Brentano-von Arnim in the slightest. For this late-Romantic author reality existed on a different plane from actuality, and her subjective representation of this relationship may be considered true for her perception of it. Brentano-von Arnim’s portrait of her admiration for the poet (who is not presented uncritically) and their imagined relationship charts the development of her own

interest in the aesthetic and literary ideals of Goethe, her own muse, to whom she wrote this monument. Die Günderode portrays the author’s friendship with the poet Karoline von Günderode (1780–1806), which lasted from 1804 until the poet’s suicide. Brentano-von Arnim characterizes the interchange in the relationship as occurring between friends with vastly different philosophies and views on aesthetics. Günderode argues for a view of life and authorship that resembles the prevailing one, while Bettina Brentano proposes one that integrates spontaneity into art and aesthetics into life. Hers is an essentially Romantic view of the inseparability of art and life, but without the characteristic Romantic attraction to the primacy of the Ideal. For Brentano-von Arnim failure to enhance daily reality suffocates life. This theme is further modulated in her third epistolary text, a correspondence with her brother, the Romantic poet Clemens Brentano (1778–1842). The early intimacy of their relationship is gradually destroyed as he recommends, even insists, that she adopt behaviour appropriate for a conventional young woman. They are his Romantic ideals of feminine behaviour, and she ultimately rejects them as stifling her aesthetic, personal, and social desires. Of the two, she is the one concerned to create a new reality and integrate her ideals into daily life. Read in their biographical order, rather than the order of publication, these texts present a view of Brentano-von Arnim’s development as one that occurred in and through these essential relationships. Although the concept of unique “personality” formed the core of her self-understanding, the conceptualization of her “self” and her development is exclusively a relational one. Throughout these texts, named after her correspondents, her growth is conditioned by their “personalities”. They represent simultaneously a portion of her “self” as well as the limits or options she ultimately rejects for the sake of her “self”. Thus, for all the subjectivity of the texts, Brentano-von Arnim has given us a more open view of the development of her personality, one which the reader must labour to interpret. According to reports Brentano-von Arnim spent many hours reworking these texts, polishing the “spontaneous” style. In addition to these biographical epistolary texts (some refer to them as novels), she wrote other epistolary or conversational texts with a greater political content: Dies Buch gehört dem König [1843; The King’s Book], and Gespräche mit Dämonen [1852; Conversations with Demons]. Since her death various portions of her actual correspondence have been published. Unfortunately, although much of her correspondence with Goethe is extant, very little of her original correspondence with Karoline von Günderode or with her brother Clemens has survived. Katherine R. Goodman Biography Born Catharina Elisabetha Ludovica Magdalena Brentano in the German city of Frankfurt-am-Main, 4 April 1785; sister of the Romantic poet Clemens Brentano. Brought up by her grandmother, the writer Sophie von La Roche, after her mother’s early death. Educated at a convent in Fritzlar, 1794–97, then in Offenbach, Frankfurt, and Marburg. Became a friend of Goethe, whom she met in 1807. Married the Romantic poet Ludwig Achim von Arnim, 1811: seven children. Spent some of her married life on their estate, Wiepersdorf. Moved to Berlin without her husband, 1817. Hosted a literary and political salon; associated with Ludwig Tieck, the Grimm brothers, the

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Humboldt brothers, Friedrich Jacobi, and F. Schleiermacher; was also acquainted with Beethoven, Franz Liszt, and Hans Christian Andersen. Began her literary career after her husband’s death in 1831. Oversaw the publication of a complete edition of his works. Died in Berlin, 20 January 1859.

Selected Writings Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde: seinem Denkmal, 1835; edited by Waldemar Oehlke, 1984; edited by Walter Schmitz and Sibylle von Steinsdorff, 1992; as Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child, translated in part by the author, 2 vols, 1837; book 3 translated as The Diary of a Child, 1838; translated by Wallace Smith Murray in German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, vol. 7, 1913 Die Günderode, 2 vols, 1840; edited by Elisabeth Bronfen, 1982; as Correspondence of Fraülein Günderode and Bettine von Arnim, translated by Margaret Fuller and Minna Wesselhöft, 1861 Dies Buch gehört dem König, 2 vols, 1843; edited by Ilse Staff, 1982 Clemens Brentanos Frühlingskranz: aus Jugendbriefen ihm geflochten, wie er selbst schriftlich verlangte, 1844 Gespräche mit Dämonen: des Königsbuches zweiter Band, 1852 Werke, edited by Heinz Härtl, 1986— Achim und Bettina in ihren Briefen: Briefwechsel Achim von Arnim und Bettina Brentano, edited by Werner Vordtriede, 2 vols, 1961 Der Briefwechsel Bettine von Arnims mit dem Brüdern Grimm 1838–1841, edited by Hartwig Schultz, 1985 Bettine von Arnims Briefwechsel mit ihren Söhnen, 1999— (vol. 1 edited by Wolfgang Bunzel and Ulrike Landfester)

Further Reading Bäumer, Konstanze, Bettina von Arnim, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995 Böttger, Fritz, Bettina von Arnim: zwischen Romantik und Revolution, Munich: Wilhelm Heyne, 1994 Daley, Margaretmary, Women of Letters: A Study of Self and Genre in the Personal Writing of Caroline Schlegel-Schelling, Rahel Levin Varnhagen, and Bettina von Arnim, Columbia, South Carolina: Camden House 1998 Drewitz, Ingeborg, Bettine von Arnim: Romantik, Revolution, Utopie: eine Biographie, Dusseldorf: Diederichs, 1969 Frederiksen, Elke P. and Katherine R. Goodman (editors), Bettina Brentano-von Arnim: Gender and Politics, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995 Goodman, Katherine, Dis/Closures: Women’s Autobiography in Germany between 1790 and 1914, New York: Peter Lang, 1986 Waldstein, Edith, Bettine von Arnim and the Politics of Romantic Conversation, Columbia, South Carolina: Camden House, 1988

Artifacts and Life Writing In a broad sense, any personal possession can be considered an auto/biographical artifact. Through the use of insignia, some possessions extend their biographical role by claiming affiliation between the biographical subject and a personally significant group – a clan, religious order, profession, school, military unit, sports team, etc. Some objects, however, embody a more selfaware and deliberate connection between subject and life narrative. The following account explores suggestively rather than exhaustively the autobiographical function of such artifacts. The role of artifacts in life writing can be divided into two broad categories: objects that physically encode auto/biographical information, and objects that have been preserved due to their auto/biographical associations. Both categories participate in the tension between the discursive and the figural that characterizes the relationship between word and image. For this reason, auto/biographical artifacts may be difficult to interpret

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for an observer not already acquainted with the life data represented through the object. In addition, as Mircea Eliade points out: “The use of an object clearly influences the beholder’s presumptions and associations: function guides the projection that the beholder makes. This phenomenon is also familiar from literature, where the reader’s expectations are shaped by the literary genre” (“Iconography”). The practice of graphically representing biographical information predates writing, but writing does not fully replace it. Historically, biographical artifacts have more often been approached anthropologically than textually. For example, funerary objects that indicate the social rank, profession, or gender of the deceased tend to be interpreted by anthropologists in terms of categorical rather than individual significance, although they could not attain the latter without representing the former. The category of objects that physically encode auto/biographical information can be further divided into those that literally incorporate materials from the subject’s life and those that merely represent elements of that life pictorially or graphically. The former, smaller subset is exemplified by quilts made from textiles woven or worn by the subject, or Victorian mourning pictures and brooches made from the hair of the deceased. The larger subset includes such phenomena as totem poles, kente cloth, or Australian “dreamings”, among other things, which tend to broaden the subject of life inscription from the individual to the communal. Although non-verbal in content, auto/biographical artifacts can be approached textually. Totem poles and appliquéd quilts operate pictographically, while kente cloth, pieced quilts, and Australian “dreamings” operate hieroglyphically. The former present the viewer with images that are apprehensible either literally or symbolically, while the latter group is more likely to present design value than information value to the uninitiated observer. A totem pole is “read” from top to bottom, although the largest, most important figure appears at its base. The crest image traditionally identifies the supernatural creature through which a human, by means of a marvellous encounter with the creature, establishes an ancestral connection to divinity; however, since a crest could also be acquired through marriage or by conquest of an enemy family, as well as traded, given as compensation, or appropriated from a family line that had become extinct, it becomes difficult to interpret a totem pole accurately when it is separated from its familial provenance. Grand in scale like totem poles, quilts provide a broad canvas for the representation of the maker’s relationships, ideologies, and tastes. A quilt may depict portraits of loved ones or admired political figures, or it can function as a graphic witness to significant life events such as birth, attainment of majority, marriage, and death. The “album” quilt incorporates not only personally relevant imagery but inscriptions such as names, addresses, dates, statements of relationships, personal messages, and literary quotations which may be inked, stamped, or embroidered on white spaces in the patterns. In such quilts the biographical intention is unambiguous. When a quilt is not textually augmented it may be difficult to determine whether the use of symbolic imagery such as the American eagle and the Whig rose intends a personal statement

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or merely incorporates a motif considered fashionable at the period of its making, unless textual documentation has also been preserved. Even more ambiguous is the biographical content of a pieced quilt of which the geometrical pattern bears a symbolically charged name. The application of the names “Kansas Tears” and “Texas Tears” to the same pattern in different decades of the 19th century points to a specific historical and regional consciousness, but other seemingly political pattern names are known to have been invented by the editors of women’s magazines to give a specious gravitas to fashion. Unlike “traditional” tartan (which actually acquired its semiotics of clan affiliation only in the 18th century, after the English conquerors of Scotland lifted a ban they had imposed on its use), kente cloth patterns are rarely linked to specific lineages; an exception is the “Asasia”, which can be worn only with the permission of the Asantehene or by descendants inheriting that permission. In Africa, kente cloth patterns are more typically linked to the status of the wearers. The traditional patterns, when their names are known, offer a semiotic representation of historical events, philosophy, and politics, among other themes. As is true for pieced quilt patterns, the significance of the names is not clearly visible in the textile. A contemporary wearer choosing a pattern named after a historical event or a proverb may be making a conscious statement or may be choosing only to please the eye. For African Americans, kente cloth has become a symbol of cultural heritage and pride irrespective of regional origin. In contrast to kente cloth patterns, the designs of Australian “dreamings” connect strongly both to clan and to land. While the x-ray representations of animal forms in Australian “dreamings” are clearly comprehensible as images of supernatural beings, the geometrical patterns in this art form mediate between the individual present and the ancestral past by encoding the relationship between primordial beings, people, and place. These designs are conceived as extensions of the ancestral beings themselves and are sometimes referred to as their “shadows”. Aboriginal women use analogous, but genderspecific, systems of design in their sand drawings. The information about kinship, class, renown, or relationship to divinity encoded in traditional artifacts may diminish in its communicative power when such artifacts enter the marketplace. Thus American New Deal-era totem pole restoration projects, even though undertaken by the Indian Civilian Conservation Corps, produced such an increase in white attention to the art form that many traditional carvers were tempted to pander to nontraditional tastes, creating works with more aesthetic than documentary value. The non-African wearer of kente cloth is not entitled to the status claims made by the quality and pattern of the fabric, even if she or he fully understands them, while a contemporary quilter may choose to reproduce the pattern New York Beauty merely because it is visually striking, and not out of a wish to make a statement about the Empire State Building or the ability of railroads to penetrate the Adirondack mountains. At the same time as traditional auto/biographical artifacts can diminish in evocative power through commercialization, commercial products can become “totemized”; gang members may choose off-the-rack garments in identifying colours, for example, while truck drivers in Haiti and Afghanistan intensely personalize their vehicles with paint, beadwork, photographs,

and other materials. Another way in which an artifact not originally designed to convey biographical information can be drawn into the nexus of life writing is through its connection to a significant personal event. Souvenirs and scrapbooks accomplish this connection straightforwardly and so are preserved despite their limited intrinsic value, but other kinds of artifacts attain enhanced value from the life narratives used to justify their preservation. Like totem poles, these artifacts frequently commemorate an encounter with a dignitary; for example, a particular quilt is preserved because, in her childhood, its maker gave a dipperful of water to George Washington on his way from New York to Philadelphia. Such heirlooms become the repositories of family folklore as well as the embodiment of intergenerational continuity, which confers on them a value independent of their aesthetic or economic merit. The auto/biographical function of artifacts, then, is highly contingent on context. Cut off from the communities that create and preserve them, such artifacts may be rendered illegible, translated from the narrative or didactic mode into the discourse of consumption. Joanne B. Karpinski See also Visual Arts and Life Writing

Further Reading Adjaye, Joseph K., “The Discourse of Kente Cloth: From Haute Couture to Mass Culture” in Language, Rhythm, and Sound: Black Popular Cultures into the Twenty-First Century, edited by Joseph K. Adjaye and Adrianne R. Andrews, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997 Burt, Eugene C., Ethnoart: Africa, Oceania, and the Americas: A Bibliography of Theses and Dissertations, New York: Garland, 1988 Christaller, Thomas and Kerstin Dautenhahn, “Remembering, Rehearsal and Empathy: Towards a Social and Embodied Cognitive Psychology for Artifacts” in Two Sciences of Mind: Readings in Cognitive Science and Consciousness, edited by Sean O’Nuallian, Paul McKevitt, and Eoghan MacAogain, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1997 Darling, David and Douglas Cole, “Totem Pole Restoration on the Skeena, 1925–30: An Early Exercise in Heritage Conservation”, BC Studies (Canada), 47 (1980): 29–48 Eliade, Mircea, entry on “Iconography” in The Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Eliade, New York: Macmillan, 1987 Elsley, Judy, Quilts as Textiles: The Semiotics of Quilting, New York: Peter Lang, 1996 Gennari, Silvia, Barbara C. Malt, Meiyi Shi, Steven A. Sloman, and Yuan Wang, “Knowing versus Naming: Similarity and the Linguistic Categorization of Artifacts”, Journal of Memory and Language, 40/2 (1999): 230–62 Hanson, Louise and F. Allan Hanson, The Art of Oceania: A Bibliography, Boston, Massachusetts: G.K. Hall, 1984 Meyer, Laure, Art and Craft in Africa: Everyday Life, Ritual, and Court Art, edited by Jean-Claude Dubost and Jean François Gonthier, translated by Jean-Marie Clarke, Paris: Terrail, 1995 (French edition, 1994) Oberholtzer, Catherine, “The Re-Invention of Tradition and the Marketing of Cultural Values” with French summary, Anthropologica, new series, 37/2 (1995): 121–53 Peterson, Thomas V., “Introduction: Cultural and Historical Interpretation through Nontextual Material”, Historical Reflections, 23/3 (1997): 259–67 Scarry, Elaine, “The Made-Up and the Made-Real” in Field Work: Sites in Literary and Cultural Studies, edited by Marjorie Garber, Paul B. Franklin, and Rebecca L. Walkowitz, New York: Routledge, 1996 Shuman, Malcolm K., “Artifacts and Archeology” in Digging into

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Popular Culture: Theories and Methodologies in Archeology, Anthropology and Other Fields, edited by Ray Browne and Pat Browne, Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1991 Stewart, Hilary, Totem Poles, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990 Thomas, Nicholas, In Oceania: Visions, Artifacts, Histories, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1997 Watson, Christine, “Re-Embodying Sand Drawing and Re-Evaluating the Status of the Camp: The Practice and Iconography of Women’s Public Sand Drawing in Balgo, WA”, Australian Journal of Anthropology, 8/1 (1997): 104–24

Asian American Life Writing Asian Americans began emigrating to the United States from the 1840s onwards, and auto/biographical and other accounts of their experiences began to appear from the 1880s. The earliest Asian labour immigrants to America tended to be sojourners, and rarely left behind any English-language accounts of their time in America when they left. However, many other early immigrants, including diplomats, foreign students, and scholars, did write autobiographical accounts of their experiences in America, partly in order to ingratiate themselves with an often hostile, predominantly white, host society. Elaine H. Kim has named these early autobiographers “ambassadors of goodwill”, precisely because of their attempts to promote Asians to America. These accounts include Chinese immigrant Lee Yan Phou’s When I Was a Boy in China (1887), Japanese American Etsu Sugimoto’s A Daughter of the Samurai (1925), Chinese American Lin Yutang’s My Country and My People (1937), Korean American Younghill Kang’s East Goes West (1937), and Filipino American Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart (1946). Somewhat outside the main development of Asian American life writing, but worth mentioning, are the turn-of-the-century Chinese Eurasian sisters, Edith Maude Eaton / Sui Sin Far and Winnifred Eaton / Onoto Watanna, who wrote autobiographical narratives exploring their position as biracial subjects in America. Both sisters adopted pseudonyms in order to write: Edith a Chinese-sounding name, and Winnifred a Japanesesounding name. The early cultural ambassadors were mainly first-generation immigrants, but their writings were later succeeded by accounts authored by American-born Asians, published in the 1940s and 1950s. These narratives include Chinese American Pardee Lowe’s Father and Glorious Descendent (1943) and Chinese American Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter (1945). These Chinese American narratives betray their authors’ eagerness to prove their Americanness to a white reading public; but, unlike the earlier autobiographies, this eagerness is coupled with an insistence upon the autobiographers’ right to exist in America. Sau-ling C. Wong has termed these writers’ work “autobiography as guided Chinatown tour” (in King-kok Cheung), because both texts offer a picture of Chinese America as exotic and different. For these American-born writers, America is their only home, so their texts do not reflect the “between-worlds” conflicts of the earlier narratives to the same extent.

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A further group of Chinese American women writers wrote a series of autobiographical pieces from the 1940s onwards. These include Han Suyin’s The Crippled Tree (1965), A Mortal Flower (1966), Birdless Summer (1968), My House Has Two Doors (1980), and the fictionalized Destination Chungking (1942); Helena Kuo’s I’ve Come a Long Way (1942); Mai-mai Sze’s Echo of a Cry: A Story Which Began in China (1945); and a collective autobiography by three sisters, Adet, Anor and Meimei Lin, Dawn over Chungking (1941). These Chinese American life stories have several Japanese American equivalents, although predominantly authored slightly later (between the 1940s and the 1980s). Many Japanese Americans were interned by the United States government during World War II, and much Japanese American life writing during the period 1946–82 focuses on this experience, protesting the treatment of interned Japanese Americans as well as exploring its psychological effects upon the victims. The majority of these narratives are by women, and include Miné Okubo’s Citizen 13660 (1946), Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter (1953), Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s Farewell to Manzanar (1973), and Yoshiko Uchida’s Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a JapaneseAmerican Family (1982). Texts by male Japanese Americans include Daniel Inouye and Lawrence Elliot’s Journey to Washington (1967), and Daniel Okimoto’s American in Disguise (1981). The era of the civil rights movements saw catalytic changes in Asian Americans’ self-image and a heightened awareness of racial identity for many Asian American writers. This resulted in a new kind of life writing, far more confident in both style and tone. Many of these more contemporary writings are experimental in form, mixing genres such as autobiography and fiction together. The best known of these is Chinese American Maxine Hong Kingston’s pair of memoirs / auto/biographies, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1976) and China Men (1980). Both of these texts relate the histories of Kingston’s ancestors: The Woman Warrior of her female relatives, and China Men of her male relatives. The Woman Warrior, in particular, has attracted widespread critical attention and acclaim, partly because of Kingston’s skilful mixing of genres, and partly because of her weaving together of her autobiography with the biography of her mother and other imagined and real female forebears. Another increasingly wellknown example is Korean American Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s multi-genre, experimental text, Dictee (1982). Other Korean American life writing includes Mary Paik Lee’s Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean American Woman in America (1990), and Margaret K. Pai’s The Dreams of Two Yi-Min (1989). Other recent forms of Asian American life writing include biographical work. Ruth Lum McCunn’s fictionalized biography of Chinese American pioneer Lulu Nathoy (Anglicized name Polly Bemis), Thousand Pieces of Gold (1981), is one such example. Another Chinese American example is Lisa See’s epic biography of her family, On Gold Mountain: The OneHundred-Year Odyssey of a Chinese-American Family (1995). A text that crosses the boundary between biography and literary criticism is Annette White-Parks’s literary biography, Sui Sin Far / Edith Maude Eaton: A Literary Biography (1995). Japanese American biographical work includes Akemi Kikumura’s anthropological / autobiographical texts about her parents, Through Harsh Winters: The Life of a Japanese Immigrant

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Woman (1981) and Promises Kept: The Life of an Issei Man (1991). One final form of Asian American life writing that bears mention is the recent trend of writing memoir-as-theory. Chief exponents of this kind of writing are the works of South Asian American women writers, including Meena Alexander’s Fault Lines: A Memoir (1993) and The Shock of Arrival (1996), Sara Suleri’s Meatless Days (1987), and Malayan American Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian American Memoir of Homelands (1996). Japanese American equivalents include Kyoko Mori’s The Dream of Water: A Memoir (1995) and Lydia Minatoya’s Talking to High Monks in the Snow: An Asian American Odyssey (1992). Helena Grice Further Reading Grice, Helena, “Asian American Women’s Prose Narratives: Genre and Identity” in Asian American Studies: Identity, Images, and IssuesPast and Present, edited by Esther M. Ghymn, New York: Peter Lang, 2000 Kim, Elaine H., Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982 King-kok, Cheung (editor), An Interethnic Companion to Asian American Literature, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997 Lim, Shirley Geok-lin, “Japanese American Women’s Life Stories: Maternality in Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter and Joy Kogawa’s Obasan”, Feminist Studies, 16/2 (Summer 1990): 289–312 Ling, Amy, Between Worlds: Women Writers of Chinese Ancestry, New York: Pergamon, 1990 Su, Hongjun, “Strangers within Our Gates: A Study of Four First Generation Chinese Immigrant Men’s Autobiographies, 1930s–1940s” (dissertation), Iowa City: University of Iowa, 1996 Wong, Sau-Ling C., Reading Asian American Literature: From Necessity to Extravagance, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993

Aubrey, John

1626–1697

English writer of biographical sketches John Aubrey’s name is remembered today because it is attached to a work he neither published in his lifetime nor finished, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, a title that is most frequently encountered in the footnotes of other biographers. In his own time, he was recognized as an antiquarian, having brought to light the megalithic remains at Avebury and produced numerous accounts (also unfinished and unpublished, but circulated in manuscript) of the topography and archaeology of his native Wiltshire, of Surrey, and Stonehenge. A man of insatiable curiosity, with a vast circle of friends, Aubrey in 1667 offered his assistance to the Oxford chronicler Anthony Wood, who was then beginning to compile the Athenae Oxonienses, a biographical dictionary of the writers and bishops educated at Oxford. Wood, who was as reclusive and unpopular as Aubrey was convivial, accepted the offer with alacrity, and over the next 20 years set Aubrey on a career of biographical investigation. For Aubrey, the task could not have been more congenial. “I am glad you put me on it”, he later wrote to Wood, “I doe it playingly”. Aubrey produced his Lives – or as he called them, “minutes of lives” – “tumultuarily”,

setting down thoughts as they occurred to him or as he received his information, supplying far more than the specific facts Wood had requested (personal observations, the recollections of distant connections – often at second or third-hand – gratuitous anecdotes and credulities), but with little regard for order or stylistic nicety. “First draughts ought to be as rude as those of Paynters,” he told Wood, “for he that in his first essay will be curious in refining will certainly be unhappy in inventing.” “A biography should either be as long as Boswell’s or as short as Aubrey’s”, Lytton Strachey wrote in an essay on Aubrey. On average, Aubrey’s lives were rarely longer than a single page, and he produced 462 of them. The shortest, on Abraham Wheelock, consists of only two words (“Simple man”); the longest, on his good friend the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, runs to about a dozen pages. Aubrey dashed off verbal caricatures that caught and preserved what was most memorable about his subjects. He seized upon details, such as Sir John Denham’s eyes (“1ight goose-gray”), that stared out of a face “unpolished with the smallpox”; they “had a strange Piercingness (like a Momus)” – or Ben Jonson’s – one of which was “lower than t’other, and bigger, like Clum the player; perhaps he begott Clum”. He reported that John Milton pronounced the letter “R” “very hard – a certaine signe of a Satyricall Witt”; that the poet Sir John Suckling was one of the best bowlers in England, but was bad at cards; that Hobbes “would drinke to excesse to have the benefit of Vomiting, which he did easily”. He records the dispositions in terms of the four humours of his subjects and, when possible, the precise hours of their births, for astrological purposes, along with the exact locations of their graves. And if a subject brought an interesting bit of oral history to mind, that too would be included. Indeed, such particulars may be the only justification for commemorating his more obscure subjects. In defence of this practice, Aubrey wrote that “men thinke because every body remembers a memorable accident shortly after tis done, twill never be forgotten, which for want of registering, at last is drowned in Oblivion; which reflection has been a hint that by my meanes many Antiquities have been reskued and preserved”. Such an unmethodical, antiquarian interest in people does not discriminate against rumours and unverifiable beliefs, however, and Aubrey has been generally blamed for his credulousness. He reports that Ben Jonson “killed Mr. Marlow, the Poet, on Bunhill, comeing from the Green-curtain play-house”, and, on the authority of Thomas Hobbes, that Francis Bacon died of a cold contracted when he attempted to preserve the flesh of a chicken by stuffing it with snow. Aubrey, in fact, took pains to determine the accuracy of information, and when possible records the names of his informants. For his life of Milton, he checked and rechecked his notes by interviewing the poet’s widow, his brother, and nephews; and when he encountered contradictory reports, as in the life of Sir Edward Coke, he registered the two contrary assertions impartially, with the complaint, “What shall one believe?”. To Anthony Wood, he made his purpose in the Lives clear: I here lay-downe to you … Trueth, and, as neer as I can and that religiously as a Poenitent to his Confessor, nothing but the trueth: the naked and plaine trueth, which is her exposed so bare that the very pudenda are not covered … So that after your perusall, I must desire you to make a

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Castration … and to sowe-on Figge-leaves … Unfortunately, Wood did not heed this final admonition. In transcribing Aubrey’s life of David Jenkins, the Oxford chronicler included the note that Jenkins might have become a Westminster Judge had he “given money to Chancellor Hyde”, a lapse for which Wood was fined and expelled from the university, his book publicly burned. Aubrey’s authority for the note was Jenkins’s. George Wasserman Biography Born in Easton Piercy, a hamlet in the parish of Kington St Michael, Wiltshire, England, 12 March 1626. Educated at local church schools and at Blandford Grammar School, Dorset. Studied law at Trinity College, Oxford, 1642, 1643, and 1646–48 (studies interrupted by illness and the Civil War), and the Middle Temple, London, 1646–48. Returned home after his father’s death. Spent much of his time on topographical, antiquarian, and archaeological pursuits; drew attention to the megalithic remains at Avebury, Wiltshire, 1649. Began a ruinous lawsuit concerning his encumbered inheritance, 1656. Researched north Wiltshire for a proposed county history from 1659. Elected fellow of the Royal Society, 1663. Embroiled in lawsuit over his disastrous engagement to Joane Sumner, 1665–69. Forced to sell the last of his estates, 1670, and his books, 1677. Granted crown patent to make antiquarian surveys, 1671; made a tour of Surrey, 1673. Wrote a comedy, The Country Revell, never performed. The only work published in his lifetime was Miscellanies (1696), a collection of folklore. Died June 1697.

Selected Writings Lives of Eminent Men, in Letters Written by Eminent Persons in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, vol. 2, edited by J. Walker, 1813; revised as Brief Lives, Chiefly of Contemporaries, 2 vols, edited by Andrew Clark, 1898; as The Scandal and Credulities of John Aubrey, edited by John Collier, 1931; as Brief Lives and Other Selected Writings, edited by Anthony Powell, 1949; as Aubrey’s Brief Lives, edited by Oliver Lawson Dick, 1949 and reprinted 1962 and 1982 Memoir of Aubrey (letters), edited by John Britton and the Wiltshire Topographical Society, 1845

Further Reading Altick, Richard D., Lives and Letters: A History of Literary Biography in England and America, New York: Knopf, 1966 Darbishire, Helen, The Early Lives of Milton, London: Constable, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1932 Hunter, M., John Aubrey and the Realm of Learning, London: Duckworth, and New York: Science History Publications, 1975 Powell, Anthony, John Aubrey and His Friends, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1948; revised edition, London: Heinemann, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1963 Stauffer, Donald A., English Biography Before 1700, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1930 Strachey, Lytton, “John Aubrey” in Portraits in Miniature and Other Essays, London: Chatto and Windus, and New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1931

Augustine, Saint

354–430

Bishop of Hippo and autobiographer Augustine’s magnificent autobiographical Confessiones (written c.397–400; Confessions) has proven perennially captivating not only because it portrays vividly the progress of a life of a great

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sinner to that of a great saint, or because it portrays the sinner himself with exceptional vivacity, but also because it constitutes a conceptually and philosophically rich piece of life writing. It is also one of the most rigorously sustained undertakings of selfinvestigation: throughout its pages, as Augustine writes with characteristic rhetorical power, “I probed the hidden depths of my soul and wrung its pitiful secrets from it” (all quotations are from the Pine-Coffin translation). Augustine, born in Thagaste in Roman north Africa, lived through many of the radical and often dramatic changes in politics, theology, philosophy, and culture at large that together marked the transition from late Roman paganism to early medieval Christianity. As a child he found himself surrounded by the culture of Roman antiquity; nearly 80 years later, as he lay dying, the invading Vandals were advancing rapidly toward his episcopal city of Hippo (now Annaba, Algeria), and early medieval Europe had already taken form out of the steeply declining Roman empire. Augustine, in writing the most influential of all ancient autobiographies, was honest enough a philosopher to extend his self-analysis into the analysis of memory itself. He observes that, despite virtually all of his experience residing within “the vast cloisters of my memory”, despite it being within memory (as he memorably puts it) that we meet ourselves, and despite the prodigious power of memory to plumb its own depths and thus actively to constitute the very subject being investigated, memory is nevertheless insufficient to the task of “understand[ing] all that I am”. And in his distinctive philosophical voice, he adds that: “this means, then, that the mind is too narrow to contain itself entirely”. Pressing beyond autobiographical self-reflection into its curious reflexive logic, Augustine finds himself lost in what he calls a bewildering maze of conceptual difficulties, deeply puzzled about where that part of the mind could be: “Is it somewhere outside itself and not within it? How, then, can it be part of it, if it is not contained in it?” As the 13 chapters unfold, we encounter Augustine’s boyhood, his early religious instruction, and the famous episode of his stealing pears from a pear tree, which he savoured not for the pears but rather for the taste of his “own sin, which [he] relished and enjoyed”, and indeed “it was the sin that gave it flavour”; it is no surprise that he quicky turns from this foundational and metaphorically significant episode to the subject of “lustful caresses” and “unchaste love”. He proceeds chronologically through his self-indulgent time in Carthage, his moving description of the death of a friend, his writing a book on Beauty and Proportion, his Manichean and Neoplatonic periods, his advancement from the literal to the figurative interpretation of scripture, his philosophizing concerning the nature of God and the explanation of evil, his long (and unsteadily prepared) conversion and baptism, and the death of Monica, his mother. At this point (chapters 10–13) the autobiographical writing changes to more purely philosophical and conceptual reflection on problems such as memory, time, creation, form, and matter, and he closes the book with a rigorously sustained allegorical interpretation of the final chapter of Genesis. This rather sudden textual division has provoked debate concerning the true end of the Confessions as composed by Augustine, with some arguing that Monica’s death at the close of chapter nine was the intended end of the autobiography. Be that as it may, we are extremely fortunate to have the last four chapters for all their

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intricate conceptual richness, and indeed we might argue that without seeing the philosopher Augustine we are not seeing the whole Augustine. It is of the essence to Augustine’s thought that, when recounting the experiences of his infancy and youth, he seizes the opportunity to reflect on the nature of language and languageacquisition. He reports that he noticed associations between sounds made and objects in the world and thus came to name the one with the other; he observes (placing emotional experience both logically and psychologically prior to language) that he recognizes jealousy in a baby who does not yet know how to talk and yet “whenever he [the baby] saw his foster-brother at the breast, he would grow pale with envy”. And he learned the “language” of adult facial and bodily gestures as well, relating them to his growing grasp of linguistic meaning. He reflects on his boyhood, noting that he was “a great sinner for so small a boy”; progresses in adolescence to his lust and its consequences – noting in retrospect that, introducing a distinction from Plato (to whom, along with Aristotle, he is considerably indebted), he was happy only on the level of appearance; and, although unbeknown to himself at the time (and thus beginning the debate over self-interpretive revisionism), he was most unhappily suffering in hedonistic anti-salvation. He examines his early subscription to the bifurcated philosophy of the Manicheans. They were followers of Mani, born 216ce in Babylonia, the founder of an influential religion whose central tenet concerned the dualism of good versus evil, where the origins of each are not derived from the same ultimate source but rather stand as metaphysically separate and theologically distinct forces of Light and Darkness, and where both are corruptibly intermingled in embodied humanity. Augustine then examines his subsequent disillusionment over their inability to reconcile their doctrine to empirically proven scientific facts. As an intellectually engaged member of the cultural world of late Roman antiquity, Augustine had an education that placed much emphasis on literary, and particularly rhetorical, study. This emphasis on the masters of Greek and Roman epic and drama clearly shows in his own refined rhetorical facility, and one of his early worldly ambitions was satisfied with the appointment to a chair of rhetoric in Milan. But, like the culture around him, Augustine’s mind was in transition, and he records throughout the Confessions a growing suspicion of rhetoric and its inherent dangers of making the false position appear, through rhetorical redecoration, persuasive: he thanks God for having taught him “that a statement is not necessarily true because it is wrapped in fine language or false because it is awkwardly expressed”. Always the philosopher, Augustine quickly articulates the converse, that “an assertion is not necessarily true because it is badly expressed or false because it is finely spoken”. And, in his distinct philosophical-autobiographical style, he shows an inward suspicion of rhetorical persuasion that parallels his outward suspicion of the rhetorical charm of writers – he is vigilant against the dangers of self-deception, and particularly so, given his background, to the variety of self-deception that is linguistically or propositionally stabilized. Modern readers of the Confessions may not always be convinced that Augustine is immune to that particular danger; his recounting of the heartbreaking necessity of breaking off with his beloved mistress to marry (so heartbroken he took another mistress to fill the void) can give rise to questions of whether he is protesting his own sins

too much, and perhaps satisfying a desire to make the absent lover present (rhetorically if not physically) in a way inconsistent with his textual self-definition. It is, again, in the final philosophical chapters of this adventurous study of selfhood that we find a famous encounter with the problem of evil (if God is omnipotent and benevolent, how can we explain the presence of evil in the world?) and an equally famous encounter with the problem of the nature of time (how can we make sense of the question of what God was doing before creation? What was before the beginning of time?). In the former, evil is reconstrued as a privation, as an absence not yet saturated by goodness and not something substantive in and of itself; in the latter, time is reconstrued not as a self-subsistent entity but rather as a form of relations between temporal events, thus precluding nonsensical rhetoric concerning the time when there was no time. Contained within these remarks is an implicit salutary warning concerning not only the conceptual dangers of rhetoric, or of grammatical appearance, but also the necessity of a particular context for intelligibility. Those issues, along with many others related to Augustine’s great project of selfinvestigation, have been taken up throughout the history of philosophy, and the lengthy list of important thinkers that his work has influenced includes Anselm, Aquinas, Petrarch, Dante, Luther, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. Moreover, in the centuries following Augustine’s death, there developed within theology what came to be known as Augustinianism or the Augustinian tradition, which, eventually closely linked to the Franciscan Order but widely influential beyond those boundaries, largely dominated medieval thought until the time of Thomas Aquinas and the subsequent legacy of Aristotelian Thomism throughout the late-medieval intellectual world. Augustinians drew from all of Augustine’s voluminous and fortunately well-preserved writings, and, among other tenets, posited faith as a precondition for understanding (codified in Anselm’s maxim Credo ut intelligam: “I believe in order to understand”); they also posited that the human being is a composite of soul and body where the former is (temporarily) using the latter and – resonant with the general idea of the Confessions if not invariably with its exact content – that the soul has direct knowledge of itself (and it is plausible to believe that Augustine exerted a decisive influence on Descartes’s conception of the interior self). But, most centrally, it is in the Confessions that we see the conceptually nuanced encounter of the self with that self’s representation in language. As such, Augustine’s work established a genre of philosophical autobiography defined through moral crisis, self-examination, and confession that has been canonized from Wilhelm Dilthey to Françoise Lionnet as the origin and pattern of Western autobiography. Garry L. Hagberg Biography Born Aurelius Augustinus in Thagaste (now Souk Ahras, Algeria) in the Roman province of Numidia, 13 November 354ce. Brought up as a Christian by his mother, Monica; his father Patricius was a pagan. Educated in rhetoric in nearby Madauros (now Mdaourouch), and went to Carthage to study rhetoric, 371. Abandoned Christianity. Had one son with his concubine, c.373. Adopted Manichaeism, 374. Taught rhetoric in Thagaste, 375–76, in Carthage, 376–83. Became disillusioned with Manichaeism, 383. Sailed to Rome, 383, and turned to Neoplatonism. Taught rhetoric in Milan, where he met Ambrose the bishop, 384–86. Converted to Christianity, 386: baptized by Ambrose,

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387. Mother died, 387. Returned to Africa, 388, and established a monastic community at Thagaste. Son died, 390(?). Was ordained priest in Hippo Regius (now Annaba, Algeria), 391, and became its bishop, 395. Wrote his autobiography, the Confessions. Contended with the Donatist schism, Pelagian heresy, and Vandal invasions, and wrote De Trinitate (On the Trinity) and De civitate Dei (The City of God) in response, among other works. Was the first Christian theologian to elaborate the doctrine of human salvation through divine grace. Died in Hippo, 28 August 430ce. (Feast day: 28 August.)

Selected Writings Confessionum libri XIII, written c.397–400; edited by M. Skutella, 1934, revised by H. Juergens and W. Schaub, 1969; as Confessiones, edited by M. Dubois, 1838, P. Knöll, 1886, and Felice Ramorino, 1909; as Confessions (in Latin), edited by James J. O’Donnell, 3 vols, 1992; books 1–4 edited by Gillian Clark, 1995; as The Confessions, translated by Sir Tobie Matthew, 1624, William Watts, 1631, Edward B. Pusey, 2 vols, 1838, Charles Bigg, 1898, F.J. Sheed, 1943, J.M. Lelen, 1952, Vernon J. Bourke, 1953, R.S. Pine-Coffin, 1961, Rex Warner, 1963, and E.M. Blaiklock, 1983; edited and translated by Henry Chadwick, 1991, and Maria Boulding, 1997 Epistolae; as Le lettere, edited by Luigi Carrozzi, 3 vols, 1969–74; translated as Letters in The Fathers of the Church, edited by Ludwig Schopp et al., 10 vols, 1947–63; as Select Letters (Loeb edition), translated by James Houston Baxter, 1930

Further Reading Brown, Peter, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, London: Faber, and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967 Chadwick, Henry, Augustine, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1986 Dilthey, Wilhem, Selected Writings, edited, translated, and introduced by H.P. Rickman, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976 Evans, G.R., Augustine on Evil, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982 Gilson, Etienne, The Christian Philosophy of St. Augustine, translated by L.E.M. Lynch, New York: Random House, 1960; London: Gollancz, 1961 Gusdorf, Georges, “Conditions et limites de l’autobiographie” in his Formen der Selbstarstellung, Berlin: Puncker and Humbolt, 1956; in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by James Olney, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Hawkins, Anne Hunsaker, Archetypes of Conversion: The Autobiographies of Augustine, Bunyan and Merton, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, and London: Associated University Presses, 1985 Kirwan, Christopher, Augustine, London and New York: Routledge, 1989 Lionnet, Françoise, Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, SelfPortraiture, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1989 Markus, R.A., entry on Augustine in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards, New York: Macmillan, 1967 Markus, R.A. (editor), Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays, New York: Anchor, 1972 Martone, John, “Augustine’s Fate”, Southern Review, 23/3 (1987): 597–98 Misch, Georg, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity, translated by E.W. Dickes, 2 vols, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1950 Mourant, John A., entry on “Augustinianism” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards, New York: Macmillan, 1967 Sorabji, Richard, Time, Creation, and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, London: Duckworth, and Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1983 Stock, Brian, Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996 Vance, Eugene, “Augustine’s Confessions and the Poetics of the Law”, Modern Language Notes, 93 (1978): 618–34 Weintraub, Karl J., The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978

Aung San Suu Kyi

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1945–

Burmese political leader and dissident Freedom, human rights, and the restoration of democracy in her native Burma are Aung San Suu Kyi’s principal concerns. Appropriately, this Burmese humanitarian’s first collection of life writing, published in 1991, is titled Freedom from Fear. Daughter of Aung San (as well as his biographer), Burma’s most prominent nationalist leader, Suu grew up with a sense of being closely identified with the destiny of her country. As early as 1972, she writes to her husband, the late English Oxford professor Michael Aris, “I only ask one thing, that should my people need me, you would help me do my duty to them”. Freedom from Fear reflects the aspirations and apprehensions of the Burmese people, always central to Suu’s sense of mission. Structured around a collection of essays, letters, speeches, and interviews, the subject matter of which ranges from biography and politics to literature, this collection resists easy generic classification. The common theme recurring in all her political writings, and this collection is no exception, is the quest for democracy under a tyrannical regime, be it the British Empire or the indigenous Burmese military dictatorship. Divided into two sections by the editor, Aris, the first section “The Inheritance” is primarily engaged with colonial Burma. Suu, as an actively participating presence, is remarkably absent from many of these writings. The essay “My Father” would lead us to anticipate a personalized account of Aung San; instead we are provided with an intellectual, rather than an emotional, understanding of him. Yet, the personal remains yoked to the factual, as the essay “My Country and People” (emphasis added) indicates. Part Two is considerably more eclectic in form, although its subject matter relates exclusively to the violation of human rights in Burma. The first three essays were written for a project that Suu was unable to complete because of her incarceration by the military regime in 1989. Here, occasionally, we are able to see Suu in and through her own writings. For example, in a speech to a mass rally at Shwedagon Pagoda, she defends her role in sustaining democracy in Burma and emphasizes her profound attachment to her country, despite her foreign residence and marriage, thus rejecting the views of detractors who would brandish her foreign links to undermine her. While most of Suu’s other writings are more academic in content, Letters from Burma, published in 1997 and written during her internment, reveal Suu’s intense preoccupation with the restoration of Burmese democracy as well as providing lingering descriptions of the country. In The Voice of Hope (1997), which consists of conversations with the American Burma scholar Alan Clements, she explains in detail why she chose to enter the political fight. She emerges valorous and confident, eager to combat the totalitarian regime head-on. She echoes Freedom from Fear when she says: “Fear is very much a habit. People are conditioned to be frightened”, echoing her ardent belief that it is truth and freedom from fear that ultimately liberates. The Voice of Hope is also much more intensely personal than her other writings, perhaps because the genre of “conversations” allows the interviewer to lead the discussion in whichever direction s/he wants to. Clements often directs the conversation to Suu’s relationship with her mother, her memory of her father, and the manner in which she has raised her children. Here, Suu

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mentions, on her own accord, the pain involved in her decision to return to Burma, leaving her husband and children in England. Since the interviews for The Voice of Hope were conducted 11 months after Suu’s release in 1995, the “mood” of this book is more hopeful than her earlier writings. Suu charts her vision of the future of Burma, claiming that the members of her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), are becoming more and more active, and she is optimistic about the popular support enjoyed by the NLD. Suu concludes with a bright vision for Burma and a clarion call to the rest of the world to help Burma restore Aung San’s dream – the initiation of a popular democracy. It is characteristic that Suu pushes her personal life to the periphery and instead continues to emphasize her role in the troubled political times in Burma. Pallavi Rastogi Biography Born in Rangoon, Burma, 19 June 1945. Her father was Thakin (or Bogyoke) Aung San, leader of Burma’s campaign for independence from Britain; he was assassinated in 1947. Educated at St Francis Convent and the Methodist English High School, Rangoon. Went to live in India with her mother, Khin Kyi, who was Burmese ambassador there, 1960. Attended Lady Shri Ram College and studied politics at Delhi University. Studied philosophy, politics, and economics at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, 1964–67 (BA). Assistant secretary, Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, United Nations Secretariat, New York, 1969–71. Research officer, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bhutan, 1972. Married Dr Michael Aris, a British academic working in the field of Asian studies, 1972: two sons. Visiting scholar, Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, Japan, 1985–86. Fellow, Indian Institute for Advanced Studies, Simla, India, 1987. Returned to Burma to nurse her invalid mother, at a time of popular uprising against the failing government, 1988. Led prodemocracy movement and became general secretary of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), 1988. Made extensive campaigning tour of Burma as leader of NLD, 1989. Placed under house arrest in Burma by the military government for attempting to disrupt army activity, July 1989. Prevented from running for election, May 1990. Refused to leave Burma, despite being offered freedom, unless country returned to civilian government and political prisoners released, December 1990. Detained incommunicado under house arrest for five years without charge or trial, 1991. Awarded Nobel Peace Prize, 1991, and established Health and Education Trust in support of the Burmese people with the prize money, 1992. Released from house arrest under pressure from the UN and Amnesty International, 1995. Remained in Burma and continued to campaign for democracy and human rights, despite continuing restrictions on her freedom; refused to leave Burma to visit her dying husband in England for fear of being refused re-admittance to the country. Husband died, 1999.

Selected Writings Aung San (biographical study), 1984; revised as Aung San: A Biographical Portrait, 1991 Freedom from Fear, edited by Michael Aris, 1991, revised 1995 Letters from Burma, 1997 The Voice of Hope: Conversations with Alan Clements, 1997

Further Reading The Words Cry Out: New Writing by Burmese in Exile, Prahran, Victoria: Australia-Burma support group, 1994 Ang, Chin Geok, Aung San Suu Kyi: Towards a New Freedom, New York: Prentice Hall, 1998 Baird-Murray, Maureen, A World Overturned: A Burmese Childhood, 1933–47, London: Constable, 1997; New York: Interlink Books, 1998 Clements, Alan and Leslie Kean, Burma’s Revolution of the Spirit: The

Struggle for Democratic Freedom and Dignity, New York: Aperture, 1994 Khaing, Mi Mi, Burmese Family, Bombay and London: Longmans Green, 1946; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962 Ling, Bettina, Aung San Suu Kyi: Standing for Democracy in Burma, New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1999 Stewart, Whitney, Aung San Suu Kyi: Fearless Voice of Burma, Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 1997 Victor, Barbara, The Lady: Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Laureate and Burma’s Prisoner, Boston: Faber, 1998 Win, Kanbawza, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Laureate: A Burmese Perspective, Bangkok: CPDSK Publications, 1992

Aurelius, Marcus

121–180

Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher This Roman emperor has always enjoyed tremendous respect for his outstanding political and military skills, his extensive education and culture, and significant philosophical life writings. He reflected in many ways the best virtues of the ancient Roman world at a time when it was faced with many military, financial, and political crises, and was also experiencing a series of devastating natural catastrophes. During his reign Marcus Aurelius strongly supported the arts, literature, philosophy, and rhetoric, and he himself practised the philosophy of stoicism, which finds extraordinary expression in his autobiographical Meditations. Marcus was considered the last of the five “good emperors” because of his profound concern for the material and spiritual well-being of his people. Under his rule civil law experienced a vast development, since he supported the works of Julian, Gaius, and Papinian, whose writings in turn became the basis for the Digest of Justinian. This represents the basis of modern Western law. Marcus Aurelius was born as Marcus Annius Verus in Rome. His grandfather Annius Verus, a member of the senatorial class, held the office of consul three times. His father, also called Annius Verus, seems to have died when Marcus was still very young. In his youth Marcus had acquired a solid education from his teachers Cornelius Fronto (Latin) and the famous rhetorician and sophist Herodes Atticus (Greek). When he was only 12 years old, he dedicated himself to the study of philosophy and rhetoric, but when he reached the age of 25 years he gained access to Greek literature and philosophy through the writings of the Stoic Aristo of Chios and the teachings of Junius Rusticus. In 137 Marcus was appointed prefect of the Latin festivities at Rome during the absence of the consuls. In accordance with a common practice among Roman rulers, Marcus was, together with Lucius Verus, adopted by the emperor Antoninus Pius in 138; Antoninus Pius had previously been adopted by Hadrian to guarantee the continuity of the line of emperors. In 139 Antoninus appointed Marcus as Caesar. Lucius became coregent between 161 and 169, but after the death of Antoninus Pius Marcus assumed the imperial throne by himself and met with general approval and popularity because of his previously outstanding performance in governmental services. During his reign Marcus had to fight enemies along almost all of the Roman borders, especially along the Danube frontier and in Palestine. While on his last campaign against the Marcomanni and Quadi in the area of modern-day Austria he died in Vindobona

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(Vienna) on 17 March 180. In his personal life the emperor had to witness the many infidelities of his wife, Faustina the Younger, daughter of Antoninus Pius, whom he had married in 145. His son Commodus proved to be a failure as his heir despite an extensive education. Curiously, Marcus, following the laws set up by his predecessors, persecuted the Christians quite harshly, perhaps because of his strong dedication to the pagan gods and his pantheistic beliefs. In his literary self-reflections, composed in the Greek language under the title Ta eis heauton and consisting of 12 books, he briefly outlines his personal development, his schooling, and the influence of his various teachers and relatives. Primarily, however, these life writings contain aphorisms and a detailed outline of the meaning of Stoic philosophy. In addition, the correspondence with his teacher Cornelius Fronto from 139 to 166/67 and political documents from the time of his reign have come down to us. In so far as the emperor rarely found the time during his military campaigns to compose a traditional autobiography, he relied on aphorisms, epigrams, and maxims, such as “let nothing be done rashly, and at random, but all things according to the most exact and perfect rules of art”, or “a man cannot any whither retire better than to his own soul”. By contrast, many Roman emperors before him, such as Augustus, Hadrian, and Tiberius, spent much attention on the very personal and even intimate aspects of their lives when they composed their autobiographies. He made profound statements about morality, ethics, human shortcomings, and ways in which to combat them by means of the new Stoic attitude. He composed his text in Greek because it was the language of intellectuals and fully in his command. The extraordinary wisdom expressed in these Meditations appealed both to his contemporaries and to posterity. Augustine, for instance, recommended to his flock the reading of Marcus’ text as a guide for their own lives. In the first book the author mentions his grandfather, who was a model of generosity and composure, and his father, who was an example of manly virtues and modesty. From his mother, Domitia Lucilla, he learned piety and kindness, whereas his great-grandfather Catillius Severus had ensured that he would be schooled at home. He praises his teachers for their moral and ethical lessons about moderation, frugality, distaste of arrogance, forgiveness, rationality, tolerance, and acceptance of all other people. He also underscored the need to stay away from tyranny, envy, violence, and force. His father demonstrated to him the value of self-control, honour, temperance, friendship, loyalty, open-mindedness, and love of philosophy. Marcus also emphasized the importance of virginity for men as well as women until they marry. Marcus believed in divine providence and the harmony of the universe. According to his convictions true happiness does not exist in the external world, but instead can be found only in the soul. All actions and thought should be guided by the awareness of ever-present death, which must be accepted as part of creation. Excessive search for truth will mislead the individual who is recommended to be content with his or her lot. Only philosophy can guide a person through transitory life, and for Marcus this meant a Stoic attitude in every situation and under every circumstance. The true stoic accepts other people as they are, even with their many faults, and tries to correct their failures in a tolerant fashion. All people are created to work in cooperation with society to improve human living conditions.

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The individual must recognize that he or she is only a small part of nature and will have only a very limited time of life. Albrecht Classen Biography Born Marcus Annius Verus in Rome, 26 April 121ce, into a consular family of Spanish origin. Gained the favour of the emperor Hadrian, who made him a Salian priest at the age of eight, supervised his education, and arranged a marriage. Prefect, Latin festivities in Rome, 137. Adopted (as Marcus Aelius Aurelius Verus Caesar) by Hadrian’s heir Antoninus Pius, his mother’s brother, when he became emperor in 138. Quaestor, 139; consul with Antoninus Pius, 140, and also in 145 and 161. Married Pius’ daughter, his cousin Annia Galeria Faustina, 145 (died 176): one daughter and one son. Abandoned study of rhetoric and began to study philosophy, c.146–47; influenced by Stoicism. Succeeded Antoninus Pius as emperor, 161. Elevated his fellow consul that year, Lucius Verus, to joint authority with himself. Negotiated with German tribes in Aquileia, 168. Ruled alone after Verus’ death in 169. Fought the Marcomanni and Quadi, two Danube tribes, 170–74. Began to write the Meditations. Visited Syria and Egypt to settle revolts, 175–76. Raised his son Commodus to rank of Augustus, 177. Fought the Marcomanni again, 177–78. Died 17 March 180ce.

Selected Writings Markou Antoninou autokratoros ton eis heauton; as M. Antonini…De seipso seu vita sua liber [I–]XII. nunc primum editi, edited by Wilhelm Xylander, 1559; edited by Joachim Dalfen, 1979, revised 1987; as M. Antoninus imperator ad se ipsum, edited by J.H. Leopold, 1908; as Marcus Aurelius Antoninus the Roman Emperor, His Meditations Concerning Himselfe, translated by Meric Casaubon 1635, revised 1663; as The Emperor Marcus Antoninus: His Conversation with Himself, translated by Jeremy Collier, 1702; as The Commentaries of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, 1747; as The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, translated by George Long, 1864, revised 1869; as The Communings with Himself of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Emperor of Rome (Loeb edition), edited and translated by C.R. Haines, 1916, revised 1930; as The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, edited and translated by A.S.L. Farquharson, 1944, Maxwell Staniforth, 1964, G.M.A. Grube, 1983, and Roy Alan Lawes, 1984; as The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, edited by Pierre Hadot, translated by Michael Chase, 1998 The Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto with Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, edited and translated by C.R. Haines, 2 vols, 1919–20, revised as The Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto with Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Lucius Verus, Antionius Pius and Various Friends, 2 vols, 1928–29 Letters, edited by L. Pepe, 1957 Fronto: Letters, edited by Michel P.J. van den Hout, 1988 The Meditations and a Selection from the Letters of Marcus and Fronto, translated by A.S.L. Farquharson and R.B. Rutherford, 1989

Further Reading Birley, A.R., Marcus Aurelius: A Biography, revised edition, New Haven: Yale University Press, and London: Batsford, 1987 (original edition, 1966) Farquharson, A.S.L., Marcus Aurelius: His Life and his World, edited by D.A. Rees, Oxford: Oxford University Press, and New York: Salloch, 1951 Herodian of Antioch, Herodian of Antioch’s History of the Roman Empire: From the Death of Marcus Aurelius to the Accession of Gordian III, translated by Edward C. Echols, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961 Rist, J.M., “Are You a Stoic? The Case of Marcus Aurelius” in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, edited by E.P. Sanders, vol. 3, SelfDefinition in the Graeco-Roman World, London: SCM Press, and Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982 Rutherford, R.B., The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: A Study,

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Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York, Oxford University Press, 1989 Sedgwick, H., Marcus Aurelius: A Biography, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1921; London: Milford, 1922 Watson, Paul Barron, Marcus Aurelius Antonius, New York: Harper, 1884 Theiler, Willy (editor and translator), Kaiser Marc Aurel: Wege zu sich selbst, Zurich: Artemis, 1951

Australia: 18th- and 19th-Century Auto/biography The history of Australia is largely a matter of first-person narratives, ranging from the journals of Captain James Cook to the official reports of Arthur Phillip and Watkin Tench of the First Fleet of 1787–88, to explorers’ accounts of expeditions into the interior.Written impersonally according to generic expectations, these narratives at first offered little room for self-presentation, but they were soon joined by others that included the self as well as Australia as an object of interest and discovery. The revolutionary event of coming to Australia, either voluntarily or involuntarily, inspired numerous individuals, who doubtless would never have become autobiographers had they stayed at home, with a compulsion to describe that experience. Extremely mixed in terms of class, ethnic origin, gender, wealth, education, occupation, and literary skill, early colonial autobiographies invariably privilege place over self. Prime motives for writing were the need to explain to relatives and friends the extraordinary differences of Australia from “home” and the desire to maintain relationships severed by distance. Sometimes in the case of convict narrators, the motive was one of selfjustification, protest, or self-rehabilitation in the form of confession. Two narratives in particular have been seminal for historians and writers of the convict period: the Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux (1819) and The Adventures of Martin Cash (1870). Other convicts to record their sufferings, remorse, or sense of outrage are Thomas Cook, John Broxup, S. Cockney, James Connor, William Derricourt, Snowden Dunhill, William Delaforce, Thomas Page, William Gates, and J.F. Mortlock. Two of the most remarkable life stories are Joseph Holt’s Memoirs, republished as A Rum Story (1988), which describes the narrator’s history from hero of the Wicklow rebellion in Ireland to exile in New South Wales, transportation to Norfolk Island, and shipwreck on the Falkland Islands; and Jorgen Jorgenson’s (A Shred of Autobiography 1835 and 1838; republished 1981), which contrasts his two visits to Australia, the first in the early 1800s as a young midshipman and the second as a transported convict. Male autobiographers of this period frequently present themselves in terms of occupation or experience, so that there is a host of personal stories of extraordinary achievement and extraordinary misfortune – by pioneers, naturalists, whalers, seamen, teachers, small settlers, itinerant workers, squatters, military officers, gold diggers, musicians, actors, politicians, ministers of religion, policemen, entrepreneurs, amateur explorers, and adventurers. Extraordinary events are no guarantee of interest, however, and some of the most readable and poignant narratives are the simplest. Education, furthermore, is not always allied with enlightenment, and often the poorly

educated reveal more sympathy and understanding of both convicts and Aborigines and more empathy with the landscape than the conventionally educated. Literary skill also seems to be a more random than predictable quality. Some self-consciously literary or “educated” autobiographies now have a dated air, while others, written by unlikely individuals, are vivid and even gripping. Foster Fyans, captain in the British Army and the author of Memoirs Recorded at Geelong, Victoria, Australia (written in the 1850s, published in 1986) has a gift for witty satire, and George Hamilton’s Experiences of a Colonist Forty Years Ago, and a Journey from Port Phillip to South Australia in 1839 (1879) manages to make even the droving of cattle humorous and lively. Significant male narratives written during the colonial period but often not published until the 20th century include Peter Cunningham’s Two Years in New South Wales (1827), Charles Macalister’s Old Pioneering Days in the Sunny South (1907), George Gordon McCrae’s Recollections of Melbourne and Port Phillip Bay in the Early Forties (1909, 1911, and 1912), Newland Simpson’s memoirs (1926), Roger Therry’s Reminiscences of Thirty Years’ Residence in New South Wales (1863), James Bonwick’s An Octogenarian’s Reminiscences (1902), W.A. Brodribb’s Recollections of an Australian Squatter (1883), Charles Cozens’s Adventures of a Guardsman (1848), Edward Curr’s Recollections of Squatting in Victoria, then Called the Port Phillip District, from 1841 to 1851 (1883), Richard Howitt’s Impressions of Australia Felix (1845), and James Backhouse’s A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies (1843). Alexander Harris’s various autobiographical narratives, dense in social detail and presenting rich quarries for historians, are also interesting as examples of Australia’s challenge to the self, which in Harris’s case led to a series of anonymous and pseudonymous ventures into life writing: a semi-autobiographical novel, The Emigrant Family (1849); the more documentarystyle Settlers and Convicts (1847); a series of articles initially titled “Religio Christi” and published in 1858, which are a reworking of the same material and were subsequently published as The Secrets of Alexander Harris (1961); and a more intimate account of his religious conversion, A Converted Atheist’s Testimony to the Truth of Christianity (1848). Other visitors to Australia from Europe also left remarkable accounts of their experiences, including Havelock Ellis in his My Life (1940), Mark Twain in Following the Equator: A Journey around the World (1897), and Anthony Trollope in Australia and New Zealand (1873). Women’s first-person narratives of this period, often preserved in the form of diaries and letters or family journals, generally record deeper levels of self-awareness as a result of their authors’ literary and social confinement to the domestic world. If men were constrained to introduce themselves in terms of occupation, setting themselves within the socio-economic structure of the community, women generally placed themselves within the community of the family, writing as wives, daughters, sisters, and mothers of squatters, missionaries, clergymen, and politicans. Religious experience or physical disability, however, as in Eliza Davies’s An Earnest Life (1881) and Tilly Aston’s Memoirs (1946), sometimes provided an excuse for a more independent approach. Two distinguished women writers of the period also wrote their life stories: Ada Cambridge in Thirty Years in Australia (1903) and The Retrospect (1912), and Rosa

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Praed in My Australian Girlhood (1902) and Australian Life: Black and White (1885). Significant autobiographies by women include Louisa Meredith’s lively and observant Notes and Sketches of New South Wales and My Home in Tasmania (1852), Sarah Musgrave’s The Wayback (1926), Jane Watts’s Family Life in South Australia Fifty-Three Years Ago (1890), Annabella Boswell’s Early Recollections and Gleanings from an Old Journal (1908), and Ellen Clacy’s A Lady’s Visit to the Gold Diggings (1853). The recent interest in women’s diaries and letters from the period suggests that they are often more revealing than publicly conceived memoirs. Annie Baxter Dawbin, for example, the author of a sanitized autobiography, Memories of the Past (1873), also left numerous, more frank and inward diaries that Lucy Frost has drawn on in No Place for a Nervous Lady (1984) and Face in the Glass: The Journal and Life of Annie Baxter Dawbin (1992). Lucy Frost has also edited a critical edition of Dawbin’s Journal from 1858–68 (1998). The discovery of gold and the subsequent gold rush resulted in a greatly increased number of narratives after 1850. Prospecting for gold is itself the subject of many of these narratives, and again gender differences are remarkable. Men often write ostensibly to impart mining information or record the history of rushes, successes, and failures; women to record the social fabric of the goldfields in which their own individual experiences as mothers, daughters, or sisters were interwoven. Reading the gold-rush narratives as a select collection reinforces the impression that those who flocked to the fields came from every walk of life and from a great variety of countries. It also reinforces the historical fact that failure, extreme hardship, and even ruin were more familiar experiences than the discovery of wealth. Two of the most striking narratives in this sub-genre are Emily Skinner’s A Woman on the Goldfields: Recollections of Emily Skinner 1854–1878 (1995) and James Armour’s The Diggings, the Bush, and Melbourne (1864). There are few published biographies in the period although research in recent years has resulted in a host of accounts of major colonial figures. Contemporary accounts include Edwin Hodder’s George Fife Angas: Father and Founder of South Australia (1891), J.F. Hogan’s The Convict King [on Jorgen Jorgenson] (1891), Arthur Patchett Martin’s Life and Letters of the Right Honourable Robert Lowe (1893), John Howlett Ross’s The Laureate of the Centaurs [on Adam Lindsay Gordon] (1888), and John Morgan’s The Life and Adventures of William Buckley (1852). Joy Hooton Further Reading Australian Dictionary of Biography, 14 vols, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, and Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1966–96 Johnston, Grahame (editor), Annals of Australian Literature, Melbourne and New York: Oxford University Press, 1970; 2nd edition, edited by Joy Hooton and Harry Heseltine, 1992 Walsh, Kay and Joy Hooton, Australian Autobiographical Narratives: An Annotated Bibliography, vol 1, To 1850, Canberra: Australian Scholarly Editions Centre, University College, Australian Defence Force Academy, 1993 Walsh, Kay and Joy Hooton, Australian Autobiographical Narratives: An Annotated Bibliography, vol 2, 1850–1900, Canberra: Australian Scholarly Editions Centre, University College, Australian Defence Force Academy and National Library of Australia, 1998

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Australia: 18th- and 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Paper was a precious commodity in colonial Australia. For many years after the first contingent of British soldiers and convicts set foot on the shores of Botany Bay in 1788, it had to be imported. The value of paper, however, lay not only in its distant origin; words on paper alone could communicate across the vast oceans that separated the British colonists from their kin. Letters and journals began flowing back to Britain immediately, and this paper trail continued for as long as people were transported, either involuntarily or voluntarily, across the southern seas. New selves unfold in 18th- and 19th-century Australian letters and diaries, subjectivities forged both through a confrontation with a strange landscape and people and a volatile, protean society offering unexpected possibilities. These colonists and convicts also strove for continuity, and writing was a powerful tool for negotiating selves poised between past and present. The letters of Margaret Catchpole (1762–1819) and Mary Reibey (1777–1855) convey the mundane realities of their convict life, a story not only of hard work but also of struggling to understand the architecture of power and policy. Both women eventually gained respectability, Reibey as a trader, and Catchpole as a farmer, shop owner, and midwife. In their pragmatic use of language – petitioning the colonial authorities, relaying agricultural prices to English friends, and so forth – Catchpole and Reibey disclose selves in tune with the political and commercial ethos of the penal society. William Smith O’Brien (1803–64) and Richard Dillingham (convicted in 1831) represent two extremes of convict experience in the way they could record their lives. Smith O’Brien was an educated and deeply self-aware Irish nationalist British MP convicted of treason in 1848 and transported to Tasmania. Dillingham, an illiterate Bedfordshire rural labourer caught stealing, had his death sentence commuted to Tasmanian exile. Dillingham’s autobiography consists of four brief, awkward, and self-effacing letters, dictated to an amanuensis. These sparse missives sketch nine years of his life from his conviction to gaining freedom. They seem intended less to portray the details of his life than to provide evidence of his continuing survival by the mere act of their arrival. The lengthy, elaborate, and highly ritualistic salutations beginning each letter become explicable in this light. By contrast, Smith O’Brien’s substantial journal, addressed to his wife in Ireland, mingles introspective musings and intimate discussions with weighty cogitations on politics, punishment, and social life – themes already explored in his published works. Kept in solitary confinement for the first two years of his sentence, Smith O’Brien was able to find solace in the mere act of writing. The Australian penal colonies, home to thousands of convicts and troubled by wars with the Aboriginal people, were unlikely to be considered appropriate places for ladies, yet the writings of gentlewomen capture best the difficult process of colonial selfinvention. On the eve of her departure to New South Wales in 1789, Elizabeth Macarthur (1766?–98) wrote to her mother that she was a “warm advocate” of emigration since she held a “reasonable expectation of reaping the most material advantages”. This keen eye for economic advancement was rewarded:

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six years later, and by now a major land-holder, she notes that the colony offers “numerous advantages”. Macarthur’s letters, written over half a century, portray a gentlewoman as competent in business dealings as in the more “feminine” role of raising a family. Elizabeth Fenton, by contrast, found her notions of gentility compromised in convict Tasmania. The wondrous vegetation compensates for her relocation to the southern wilds: she walks for miles with “undiminished interests” along “the banks of the rivers [which] are so endless in rich variety of shrubs”. Fenton admits that this behaviour is not becoming for a lady: if seen she would be “reported insane”. In juxtaposing a lively disrespect for decorousness with proper bourgeois sentiments Fenton’s diary captures the stresses exacted by colonial conditions on codes of behaviour. Women’s letters and diaries are commonly perceived as private documents delineating domestic life. It is certainly true that the writings of the women of Australia’s colonial elite give a vivid picture of the contours of their daily round. While the assumption of a separation of spheres in this period commonly shapes today’s analyses, this abstract dichotomy is not reflected in actuality. Political and personal life, public and private space, cannot be neatly divided for Anne Bourke, daughter of the governor of New South Wales. Late in 1831 she writes in her diary: “you may as well be in the streets as in the drawing room as the verandah is a complete thoroughfare to Papa’s room, and [visitors] generally stray in”. The letters of Fanny Macleay and Eliza Darling, and the diaries of (Lady) Jane Franklin, similarly narrate life stories that challenge Victorian gender ideology. A more familiar female terrain of household and kin, however, is mapped within the diaries of Sarah (d. 1848) and Mary Phoebe Broughton (d. 1867), Annabella Boswell (1826–1916), Georgiana McCrae (1804–90), and Blanche Mitchell (1843– 69), and the letters of Joanna Barr Smith (1835–1919). If certain women of the elite found that the colony allowed them to explore the possibilities of femininity, it is equally true that gender roles became unstable for some men. G.T.W.B. Boyes (1787–1853) was called up for colonial duty in the early 1820s and severed from his young family for nine years. A prolific letter writer, he used his considerable literary arts to maintain conjugal intimacy and familial common ground. No topic was deemed too insignificant to discuss: household rituals, both English and Australian, occupy a prominent place in his letters. The Reverend John Ramsden Wollaston (1791–1856) was past middle age when he emigrated with his family to the Swan River colony in the early 1840s. His observant shipboard journal matured into a self-reflective, highly critical, and engaging commentary on pioneering life. He soon learned that domestic matters were to occupy his time as much as spiritual ones. “Wearied with a heavy wash” began an entry in 1843, and continued “Nothing goes against the grain so much as Washing—I cannot imagine any work more disagreeable & awkward to a Gentleman. They who can have it done for them, and need only to go to their Wardrobe for a clean Shirt, ought to be thankful”. Wollaston’s diary portrays the tortuous process of acclimatizing to colonial conditions. His age and previous status in English society made this all the more troublesome, yet his diary reveals his good-humoured resilience. Many persons of an enterprising spirit were attracted to the Australian colonies in the mid-19th century, often from the middle ranks of society. They were products of a literate culture,

and emigration encouraged their writerly bent. Rachel Henning (1826–1914), Ned Peters (1833–1909), Edward Snell (1820– 80), Sarah Midgley (1831–93), and Richard Skilbeck (1838– 1924), among countless others, found entertainment and improvement in the communion of pen and paper. Annie Baxter Dawbin’s (1816–1905) journals, running to more than 30 volumes, would be exceptional in any nation’s history of life writing. Her writing, begun as a shipboard diary, soon outgrew this tame purpose and became implicated in an erotic economy: she lent her journals to male admirers. Their response to her selfportrait demanded more writing, her journals feeding a sexual circuit. It is misguided, however, to reduce Dawbin’s writing to a representation of female sexuality. Her diaries are enormous in scope and record superlatively a slice of mid-19th-century colonial society. Half a century later, Maisie Archer Smith, born in Australia but brought up in England, returned to the land of her birth on the rebound of an unhappy affair. Her frank, witty letters to her mother, begun on board ship, chart her sexual development from a flirtatious teenager to a young wife. In 1901, when Maisie revisited London to organize her wedding, Australia celebrated Federation and officially became a nation. This momentous event was glossed over in her letters. Like many others of her class, she maintained a dual (but not conflicted) sense of identity: British and Australian. There were others in Australia who did not share this sense of self. White Australian lives, most importantly, were entangled with those of the land’s original black owners. Contact took place inside the colonial home as well as on the more masculine terrain of the frontier. Eliza Marsden wrote in 1796 of the sixyear-old Tristan who was now beginning to “wait at [the] table” that she held every expectation that he would “be a useful member of society”. The voluminous journals of George Augustus Robinson (d. 1844) record his attempts to “protect” Aboriginal people by moving them out of their homelands into supposed safe havens. Later, Chinese, Italians, and Germans arrived in Australia, lured by the prospect of gold or a life free from persecution. These contrapuntal voices were alluded to repeatedly in the writings of Australia’s prominently British stock – though it was not until the 20th century that they would seize the pen and begin scripting their own stories. Anette Bremer Further Reading Archer Smith, Maisie, Maisie: Her Life, Her Loves, Her Letters from 1898 to 1902, edited by Joan Kyffin Willington, Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 1992 Barr Smith, Joanna and Robert Barr Smith, Joanna and Robert: The Barr Smiths’ Life in Letters, 1853–1919, edited by Fayette Gosse, Adelaide: Barr Smith Press, 1996 Boswell, Annabella, Journal, edited by Morton Herman, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1965 Boyes, G.T.W.B., The Diaries and Letters of G.T.W.B Boyes, vol. 1, 1820–1832, edited by Peter Chapman, Melbourne and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985 Clarke, Patricia and Dale Spender (editors), Life Lines: Australian Women’s Letters and Diaries, 1788–1840, St Leonards, New South Wales: Allen and Unwin, 1992 Dawbin, Annie Baxter, The Journals of Annie Baxter Dawbin, 1858–1868, edited by Lucy Frost, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1998 Day, David, Claiming a Continent: A History of Australia, Pymble, New South Wales and London: Angus and Robertson, 1996

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Dillingham, Richard, The Dillingham Convict Letters from the Hulks, Woolwich, the Transport Ship Catherine Stewart Forbes, and from Sandy Bay and Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, edited by Harley W. Forster, Melbourne: Cypress Books, 1970 Dixon, Robert, “Public and Private Voices: Non-fictional Prose” in The Penguin New Literary History of Australia, edited by Laurie Hergenhan et al., Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1988 Fenton, Elizabeth, The Journal of Mrs Fenton: A Narrative of Her Life in India, the Isle of France (Mauritus), and Tasmania during the Years 1826–1830, London: Edward Arnold, 1901 Fitzpatrick, David (editor), Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Irish Migration to Australia, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1994; Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1995 Franklin, John and Jane Franklin, Some Private Correspondence of Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin, (Tasmania 1837–1845), edited by George Mackaness, Sydney: [Privately printed], 1947 Grimshaw, Patricia et al., Creating a Nation 1788–1990, Ringwood, Victoria and Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1994 Heney, Helen (editor), Dear Fanny: Women’s Letters to and from New South Wales, 1788–1857, Rushcutters Bay, New South Wales: Australian National University Press, 1985 Henning, Rachel, The Letters of Rachel Henning, new edition, edited by David Adams, with introduction by Dale Spender, Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1988 (first edition, 1963) Jones, Dorothy, “Letter Writing and Journal Scribbling” in A Bright and Fiery Troop: Australian Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century, edited by Debra Adelaide, Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1988 Macarthur, Elizabeth, The Journal and Letters of Elizabeth Macarthur 1789–1798, edited by Joy N. Hughes, Glebe, New South Wales: Historical Houses Trust, 1984 McCrae, Georgina Huntly Gordon, Georgiana’s Journal: Melbourne 1841–1865, 2nd edition, edited by Hugh McCrae, London: Angus and Robertson, 1966 (first edition, 1934) Midgley, Sarah and Richard Skilbeck, The Diaries of Sarah Midgley and Richard Skilbeck: A Story of Australian Settlers 1851–1864, Melbourne: Cassell, 1967 Mitchell, Blanche, Blanche: An Australian Diary, 1858–1861, Sydney: John Ferguson, 1980 O’Brien, William Smith, “To Solitude Consigned”: The Tasmanian Journal of William Smith O’Brien, 1849–1853, edited by Richard Davis, Sydney: Crossing Press, 1995 Onslow Macarthur, Sibella, Some Early Records of the Macarthurs of Camden, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1914 Peters, Ned, A Gold Digger’s Diaries, edited by Les Blake, Newtown, Victoria: Neptune, 1981 Reibey, Mary, Dear Cousin: The Reibey Letters: Twenty-Two Letters of Mary Reibey, Her Children, and Their Descendents, 1792–1901, edited by Nance Irvine, Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1995 Robinson, George Augustus, The Port Phillip Journals of George Augustus Robinson, edited by Ian D. Clark, Melbourne: Monash University, 1988 Snell, Edward, The Life and Adventures of Edward Snell: The Illustrated Diary of an Artist, Engineer and Adventurer in the Australian Colonies, 1849 to 1859, edited by Tom Griffiths, London and Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1988 Wollaston, John Ramsden, The Wollaston Journals, edited by Geoffrey Bolton and Allan Watson, Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1992

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Australia: 20th-Century Life Writing “This autobiography is all about myself for no other purpose do I write it”. This frank statement by the feminist Miles Franklin, introducing her fictional autobiography, My Brilliant Career, published in 1901, the same year as Australian federation, was a dramatic beginning to Australian autobiography of the 20th century. An intentional reverse of the apologetic, indirect approach of previous women life writers, the novel’s feminist protest, rediscovered in the 1970s, was largely ignored by contemporary readers in favour of its “bush nationalism”. The novel was a false dawn, however, for both self-probing autobiography and for feminist writing, even though it was followed only nine years later by another radical autobiographical novel, The Getting of Wisdom (1910), by the distinguished woman writer Henry Handel Richardson. Nationhood, in fact, did not produce a marked change in life writing, autobiographers continuing to follow for several decades the traditions established by their colonial predecessors, including a marked preoccupation with place and the idea of home. In more recent years autobiographies have become increasingly inward-looking so that the emphases are different, but there is still frequently a focus on place as the self’s “home” and a continuing ambivalent awareness of Europe as cultural home. This dominant concern with homeland, in particular with the childhood home, has resulted in the classification of numerous narratives in library catalogues as regional histories. In a large number of autobiographies place is represented as the major stimulus to the writer’s imagination, while the identities of self and place are projected as intimately bound up together. Thus Barbara Hanrahan sensuously explores her gothic Adelaide in The Scent of Eucalyptus (1973); Mary Fullerton laments the passing of the densely forested Gippsland in Bark House Days (1921); Donald Horne is so conscious of the importance of the past place that he describes himself as writing “sociography” in The Education of Young Donald (1967); Vincent Buckley in Cutting Green Hay (1983) revisits his native Victoria; Kathleen Fitzpatrick in Solid Bluestone Foundations (1983) contemplates the Victorian mansion of her grandparents and its influence on her life with a historian’s eye; and Hal Porter, in one of Australia’s most praised autobiographies, The Watcher on the Cast-lron Balcony (1963), documents his youthful Gippsland with resonant detail. Meanwhile in numerous narratives, whether ostensibly fictional or factual, the childhood place is explored with an ambivalent mix of nostalgia and loss, which is not just loss of the original home but also loss of a sense that the security and identity it offered was illusory. This characteristic is shared by David Malouf’s fictional Johnno (1975) and his factual 12 Edmonstone Street (1985), Clive James’s Unreliable Memoirs (1980), Manning Clark’s The Puzzles of Childhood (1990), Porter’s The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony, Dorothy Hewett’s Wild Card (1990), Jane Lindsay’s Portrait of Pa (1973), Joan Colebrook’s A House of Trees (1988), and Alan Marshall’s I Can Jump Puddles (1955). For some writers the past has unpleasant or painful echoes, a prime example being the comedian and satirist Barry Humphries, who explores his nostalgic loathing for suburban Melbourne in More Please (1992). Germaine Greer in Daddy, We Hardly Knew You (1989), Jill Ker Conway in The Road from Coorain (1989), and

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Roger Milliss in Serpent’s Tooth (1984) share this feature in various degrees. Humphries’s autobiography illustrates another feature of the genre in Australia, a preoccupation with the older culture of Europe or, more frequently and specifically, Britain. There are of course numerous immigrant narratives that describe either the personal experience of immigration or the experience at second hand, as the child of immigrant parents. They include Marie Lewitt’s No Snow in December (1983), Magda Bozic’s Gather Your Dreams (1984), Rosa Capiello’s Oh Lucky Country (1984), Mary Rose Liverani’s The Winter Sparrows (1975), Amirah Inglis’s Amirah (1983), Alfredo Strano’s Luck Without Joy (1986), Yasmine Gooneratne’s A Change of Skies (1991), Judah Waten’s Alien Son (1952), and Andrew Riemer’s Inside Outside (1992). Elizabeth Wynhausen in Manly Girls (1989) describes the experience of growing up Jewish in Australia, as does Morris Lurie’s otherwise very different Whole Life (1987). Many narratives revisit the Irish inheritance of their authors: four of the most outstanding are Vincent Buckley’s and Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s, mentioned above, and Thomas Keneally’s Homebush Boy (1995) and Bernard Smith’s The Boy Adeodatus (1984). T.J. Kiernan’s The Irish Exiles in Australia (1954) and P.J. O’Farrell’s Letters from Irish Australia 1825–1929 (1984) document the familiar Irish immigrant experience. Older cultures often remain as continuing yet ambiguous presences in autobiographies of authors whose families have been settled in Australia for several generations. Autobiographers who have recorded the challenges of this negotiation of old and new include Manning Clark, Martin Boyd, Nancy Adams, Maie Casey, David Malouf, Patrick White, Randolph Bedford, Lionel Lindsay, Randolph Stow, and Norman Lindsay. Although the practice of writing from the point of view of professional or career experience has continued in the 20th century, and politicians in particular have been quick to record their experiences, writers and artists dominate the field, especially in narratives of childhood experience. The list of writers who have written of their youthful pasts is a lengthy one and includes, apart from those already cited, such figures as George Turner, Kylie Tennant, George Johnston, Oriel Gray, Xavier Herbert, Geoffrey Dutton, Katharine Susannah Prichard, Christina Stead, Jessica Anderson, Sumner Locke Elliott, Nancy Keesing, Nancy Phelan, Alexandra Hasluck, Elyne Mitchell, Eleanor Spence, Betty Roland, Mollie Skinner, Patsy Adam Smith, and Gavin Souter. A few autobiographies by unknown writers or by individuals whose profession is not that of writer or artist have found a ready reception, such as the narratives by Brian Lewis, Sunday at Kooyong Road (1976) and Our War (1980), but the most outstanding is Albert Facey’s A Fortunate Life (1981). Perceived as a microcosm of the general cultural experience, and describing Facey’s experiences as a combatant at Gallipoli and then as a soldier settler, A Fortunate Life was produced for stage and television, and has been taught in schools and universities, and frequently reprinted. War experience also stimulated numerous other individuals to write, so that every war that has involved Australia, from the Anglo-Boer War to the Vietnam War, has produced first-person accounts in the form of diaries, letters, or autobiographies. Outstanding writers on war include Martin Boyd, David Martin, Lawson Glassop, Kenneth Slessor, Alan Moorehead, David Selby, Patsy Adam Smith, Henry Gullett,

D.E. Charlwood, Russell Braddon, Ray Parkin, Hugh Lunn, and Terry Burstall. The impact of the Holocaust as experienced by the children of Jewish parents has also begun to be explored. Significant narratives on this subject include Andrew Riemer’s Inside Outside and The Habsburg Cafe (1993), Arnold Zable’s Jewels and Ashes (1991), and Martin Baker’s The Fiftieth Gate (1997). Aboriginal autobiographies were late to appear, but since the 1980s they have become the dominant genre in Aboriginal literature as a whole. Sally Morgan’s My Place (1987), written before her work as artist and writer became well known, coincided with a series of autobiographies by black writers that have negotiated a new relationship between black and white people and with the violent, exploitative past of race relations. They include Elsie Roughsey’s An Aboriginal Mother Tells of the Old and the New (1984), Glenyse Ward’s Wandering Girl (1988) and Unna You Fullas (1991), Jack Davis’s A Boy’s Life (1991), Ruby Langford Gibini’s Don’t Take Your Love to Town (1988), and Dick Roughsey’s Moon and Rainbow (1971), as well as several collections of individual testimonies. Biography is an increasingly popular genre, and wellresearched studies of major historical and political personalities have appeared in the last three decades. They include: John Monash (1982) by Geoffrey Serle, The Life of Captain James Cook (1973) by J.D. Beaglehole, John Wren (1976) by Niall Brennan, John Curtin (1977) by Lloyd Ross, Sturt, the Chipped ldol (1979) by Edgar Beale, Elizabeth Macarthur (1980) by Hazel King, Whirlwinds in the Plain (1980) [on Ludwig Leichhardt] by E.M. Webster, J.H. Scullin (1974 ) by John Robertson, H.R. Higgins (1984) by John Rickard, Aliee Henry (1991) by Diane Kirkby, Simpson and the Donkey [on J.S. Kirkpatrick] (1992) by Peter Cochrane, and Rose Scott (1994) by Judith Allen. Australia’s longest-serving prime minister R.G. Menzies has been the subject of two different biographical studies by A.W. Martin (1993) and Judith Brett (1992), while biographies of such recent prime ministers as R.G. [Bob] Hawke and Paul Keating have appeared, the former by Blanche D’Alpuget (1982) and the latter by John Edwards (1996). Writers, visual artists, and performing artists are popular Australian biographical subjects; some of the most significant are: Louisa [on Louisa Lawson] (1987) by Brian Matthews, Christopher Brennan (1980) by Axel Clark, Wild Man of Letters [on P.R. Stephensen] by Craig Munro (1984), Patrick White (1991) by David Marr, Christina Stead (1993) by Hazel Rowley, Melba (1986) by Therese Radic, Vance and Nettie Palmer (1975) by Vivian Smith, George Johnston (1986) by Garry Kinnane, Courage a Grace: Mary Gilmore (1988) by W.H. Wilde, Joy Hester (1983) by Janine Burke, Tom Roberts (1996) by Humphrey McQueen, William Dobell (1969) by James Gleeson, Martin Boyd (1974) by Brenda Niall, Catherine Helen Spence (1985) by Susan Magarey, The Archibald Paradox [on J.F. Archibald] (1983) by Sylvia Lawson, Xavier Herbert (1998) by Frances De Groen, Pioneer Players: The Lives of Louis and Hilda Esson (1995) by Peter Fitzpatrick, Eleanor Dark (1998) by Barbara Brooks, and James Edward Neild: Victorian Virtuoso (1989) by Harold Love. Two major biographies of the writer Henry Handel Richardson have been published, by Dorothy Green (Ulysses Bound, 1973) and by Axel Clark (Henry Handel Richardson, 1990), while Henry Lawson has been the subject of numerous biographical studies,

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the most significant being those by Brian Matthews (The Receding Wave, 1972), C.M.H. Clark (In Search of Henry Lawson, 1978), Xavier Pons (Out of Eden, 1984), and Colin Roderick (Henry Lawson: A Life, 1991). The letters of some writers have been published, including Hugh McCrae’s (1970), edited by R.D. FitzGerald; Norman Lindsay’s, edited by R.G. Howarth and A.W. Barker; Mary Gilmore’s (1980), edited by W.H. Wilde and T. Inglis Moore; Patrick White’s (1994), edited by David Marr; and Vance and Nettie Palmer’s (1977), edited by Vivian Smith. The correspondence between Walter Murdoch and Alfred Deakin was edited by J.A. La Nauze in 1974. The Oxford Book of Australian Letters (1998), edited by Brenda Niall and John Thompson, contains many letters by Australian writers as well as those by explorers, convicts, journalists, politicians, musicians, artists, and other individuals. Published diaries are not numerous. They include the immensely popular War Diaries (1986) of E.E. (“Weary”) Dunlop and the War Diaries (1985) of Kenneth Slessor, edited by Clement Semmler, as well as the more mundane journals of the writer Ethel Turner (Diaries, 1979), edited by Philippa Poole. Katie Holmes has written an interesting account of women’s diary writing, Spaces in Her Day (1995). Joy Hooton Further Reading Australian Dictionary of Biography, 14 vols, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, and Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1966–96 Coe, Richard N., “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Australian: Childhood, Literature and Myth”, Southerly, 41/2 (1981): 126–62 Coe, Richard N., When the Grass Was Taller: Autobiography and the Experience of Childhood, New Haven, Connecticut, and London: Yale University Press, 1984 Colmer, John, Australian Autobiography: The Personal Quest, Melbourne and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989 Colmer, John and Dorothy Colmer (editors) The Penguin Book of Australian Autobiography, Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1987 Hooton, Joy, Stories of Herself When Young: Autobiographies of Childhood by Australian Women, Melbourne, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990 Hooton, Joy (editor), Australian Lives: An Oxford Anthology, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998 McCooey, David, Artful Histories: Modern Australian Autobiography, Melbourne, Cambridge, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996 Whitlock, Gillian (editor), Autographs: Contemporary Australian Autobiography, St Lucia: Queensland University Press, 1996

Australia: Indigenous Life Writing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have existed in Australia for some 60,000 years. Before the arrival of the British in 1788, the indigenous people lived in 500 distinct groupings with 250 languages. That cultural heritage was shattered in many areas, with colonization through the takeover of lands, introduction of European diseases, acts of extermination, and practices of resettlement, as well as “protection” on mission settlements and reserves and forced policies of assimilation, including the widespread abduction and rape of Aboriginal women. Today the indigenous peoples live a multiplicity of

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lifestyles – from a more traditional existence in self-managed outback communities, to life on the fringe of and in urban communities. The indigenous people were not granted citizenship in Australia until 1967. The Aboriginal life story is a recent phenomenon in Australia. Aboriginal life stories suddenly entered the book market in the 1980s as texts that did not quite fit the genres of formal auto/biography, history, memoir, or fiction. They have become a forum for indigenous people to speak on their own behalf, thus reversing two hundred years of being spoken about, and for, by anthropologists, historians, linguists, missionaries, artists, poets, novelists, and film-makers. Since that time these life stories have performed an educative role for indigenous and non-indigenous readers alike, providing a cumulative challenge to national stereotypes that had previously gained authority through canonical national histories and fictions. Anthropologists and ethnographers collected and published oral narratives from indigenous people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but the first known Aboriginal autobiography, My Life Story (1951), was written by a mission-raised writer, musician, and inventor, David Uniapon. In the early days of indigenous publishing, the autobiographies of several prominent Aboriginal Australians appeared, including that of Evonne Goolagong, the internationally famous tennis star (with Bud Collins, Evonne! On the Move, 1973), Charlie Perkins, the first Aboriginal federal parliamentarian (A Bastard Like Me, 1975), and, more recently, the boxer Keith B. Saunders (Learning the Ropes, 1992; Myall Road, 1998). The first account of Aboriginal life published by a major press was the autobiographical novel Wild Cat Falling (1965) by the writer and critic Colin Johnson (who later took the names Mudrooroo Narogin and simply Mudrooroo, and whose claims to an indigenous heritage have been challenged). The novel deals with the brutality of institutionalized violence encountered by the nameless part-Aboriginal protagonist in orphanages, prison, and urban Sydney – a deprived, extreme urban life akin to those taken up in the short stories of Archie Weller (Going Home: Stories, 1986) and the representation of abject fringe-dweller existence detailed in Robert Bropho’s Fringedweller (1980). Ruby Langford Ginibi’s Don’t Take Your Love to Town (1988) and her stories and poems in Real Deadly (1992) provide a woman’s perspective on urban living that speaks of frequent dislocations and the disintegration of traditional lifestyles. Her work exemplifies the struggle against poverty and alcoholism, as well as the tragedy of imprisonment and death in its accounts of the fates of several of her sons. Sally Morgan’s My Place (1987) is the most acclaimed Aboriginal autobiography, having sold upwards of 700,000 copies across the world. A watershed publication, it details the narrator’s quest to recover a suppressed identity. Morgan’s story gives way to three oral narratives that shift the narrational voice and disrupt the linearity of the narrative. They are the stories of her mother Gladys, her grandmother Daisy, and her great-uncle Arthur Corunna. These stories highlight the consequences for several generations of Aborigines subjected to Australian state and federal government’s policies of forcible removal of socalled half-caste children from their families, and their placement in institutional care. Sally Morgan’s text recovers her mother’s story of forced removal and institutional care, as do a number of other texts

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that also tell of children trained for domestic service or for work in the pastoral industry. Told mainly by women, many of whom are highly regarded as elders within their communities, the historical sweep of these texts ranges from early childhood to adult activism. Growing out of oral traditions, shared histories, and collective experience, they confound Western generic definitions of autobiography. Many texts are life stories of self in community that arise as a result of collaboration, co-authorship, and semi-fictionalized reflection. These include Margaret Tucker’s If Everyone Cared (1977), Ella Simon’s Through My Eyes (1978), Mum Shirl: An Autobiography (written by Theresa Clemens and Shirley C. Smith, with the assistance of Roberta Sykes, 1981), Elsie Roughsey’s An Aboriginal Mother Tells of the Old and New (1984), Ida West’s Pride against Prejudice (1984), the Torres Strait Islander, Ellie Gaffney’s Somebody Now: The Autobiography of Ellie Gaffney (1989), Alice Nannup’s When the Pelican Laughed (with Lauren March and Stephen Kinnane, 1992), Evelyn Crawford’s Over My Tracks (1993), and Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence (1996) by Doris Pilkington (Nugi Garimara). The texts emphasize the fortitude and determination of the women who, although divorced from their traditional communities, continue to maintain vital links with their heritage. Many became political activists in the 1970s, and fought for prison, housing, health, employment, and education reforms. Glenyse Ward’s two popular autobiographical narratives, Wandering Girl (1987) and Unna You Fullas (1991), detail, with poignant humour, the clash of cultures, religion, and personalities encountered in early childhood in a Christian mission, followed by domestic service in the home of a prominent West Australian. The Outback life of stockmen and their wives on isolated properties in the 1920s and 1930s is detailed in the autobiographical novels and stories of Herb Wharton, Unbranded (1992), Cattle Camp: Murri Drovers and Their Stories (1994), and Where Ya’ Been, Mate? (1996), and in Bill Dodd’s Broken Dreams (1992). The title of Dodd’s text highlights the athletic youth’s swimming accident at the age of 18 which left him a quadriplegic for life. Yami Lester’s autobiography, Yami (1993), also tells of overcoming disability. An Aboriginal elder who became head of the Northern Territory Aboriginal Land Council, Yami spent his youth as a stockman in Central Australia and was blinded at Maralinga as a result of British nuclear testing in the Australian desert in the 1950s. The woman’s side of the rural Queensland stockman’s story is told in Marnie Kennedy’s Born a Half-Caste (1985), Doris Pilkington’s novel Caprise: A Stockman’s Daughter (1991), and Mabel Edmund’s No Regrets (1992). Many other texts give voice to the experiences of the children of the Stolen Generation, including the early autobiographical novel of Monica Clare, Karobran: The Story of an Aboriginal Girl (1978), as well as recent life-story narratives such as Ethel Anderson’s Warrigal’s Way (1996), Ruth Fraser’s Shadow Child (1998), Wayne King’s Black Hours (1996), and Ruth Hegarty’s Is that You, Ruthie? (1999). Rita Huggins’s and Jackie Huggins’s dual-voiced text, Auntie Rita (1994), treats cross-generational issues, including differing attitudes to assimilation, by recording a mother–daughter relationship. Widespread interest in the Stolen Generation has been spurred by testimonies published in the report Bringing Them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal

and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (1997), which conducted interviews with 535 indigenous people throughout Australia and made 54 recommendations, including one to establish a three-year Oral History Project (1998–2000) under the auspices of the National Library of Australia to record the stories of indigenous Australians who were fostered, adopted, removed, or institutionalized by government legislation and policy. A number of Aboriginal texts blend illustrations, verse, short story, oral narrative, interviews, and essays in one volume. Jack Davis’s memoir A Boy’s Life (1991) crosses genre to produce a multi-layered view of rural Western Australia in the 1920s and 1930s. Eileen Morgan, with the help of the historian Terry Fox, presents creation stories, poems, stories, drawings, and a family tree in The Calling of the Spirits (1994). Editing issues attend this text, like many of the aforementioned titles. Its publication came as a result of (mainly) white editors who sometimes became collaborators, taping, recording, or editing the oral or partially written narratives of the principal authors. Several white editors emphasize these ethical or compositional editing issues. One of these is Margaret Somerville, who recorded a series of dialogues with Patsy Cohen and the “five black matriarchs”, collected photographs and written records, and “stitched together” the various disparate elements into the narrative, Ingelba and the Five Black Matriarchs (1990). Several academic writers in the 1980s attempted to reproduce, in true Aboriginal narrative style, the Aboriginal English / Pidgin / Creole modes of speech used by cattle overlanders in the vast stretches of the northwest. These include Bruce Shaw’s My Country of the Pelican Dreaming: The Life of an Australian Aborigine of the Gadjerong, Grant Ngabidj, c.1904–1977, as Told to Bruce Shaw (1981), Banggaiyerri: The Story of Jack Sullivan, as Told to Bruce Shaw (1983), and Paddy Roe’s and Stephen Muecke’s Gularabulu: Stories from the West Kimberley (1983). Recent popular coffee-table anthologies, such as Above Capricorn: Aboriginal Biographies from Northern Australia (edited by Steven Davis, 1994), reproduce translations of oral narratives of traditional speakers, replete with touristic photographs of the people and their lands, attesting to the widespread acceptance of diverse presentational styles within indigenous narratives. These texts, emerging in the last two decades of the 20th century, mark the foundations of a new literature of indigenous Australia. In the late 1990s a number of black Australians published their life stories in which they attempted to recover a lost and possibly Aboriginal identity, only to discover that they were not indigenous by “descent”. These include Gordon Matthews’s An Australian Son (1996) and Roberta Sykes’s Snake Cradle (1997) and Snake Dancing: Autobiography of a Black Woman (1998). They, as well as the novels of Mudrooroo, testify to the difficulties of positioning oneself within an identity politics, especially for non-indigenous writers who have also experienced forms of institutionalization, adoption, prejudice, and racial discrimination within Australia in the 20th century. Kay Schaffer Further Reading Australian Author: Quarterly Journal of the Australian Society of Authors, “Special Issue on Black Writing”, 26/3 (Spring, 1994) Bird, Carmel, The Stolen Children: Their Stories, Sydney: Random House, 1998

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Brewster, Anne and Hugh Webb (editors), Aboriginal Literary Voices, Fremantle, Western Australia: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2000 Brewster, Anne, Reading Aboriginal Women’s Autobiography, Melbourne: Sydney University Press, 1996 Dalziel, Rosamund, “Racist Shame: Aboriginal Autobiographies” in her Shameful Autobiographies: Shame in Contemporary Australian Autobiographies and Culture, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1999 Edwards, Coral and Peter Read (editors), The Lost Children: Thirteen Australians Taken from their Aboriginal Families Tell of the Struggle to Find Their Natural Parents, Sydney and New York: Doubleday, 1989 Hooton, Joy W., Stories of Herself When Young: Autobiographies of Childhood by Australian Women, Melbourne and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990 Narogin, Mudrooroo, The Indigenous Literature of Australia: Milli Milli Wangka, Melbourne: Hyland House, 1997 Narogin, Mudrooroo, Writing from the Fringe: A Study of Modern Aboriginal Literature, Melbourne: Hyland House, 1990 Sabbioni, Jennifer, Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith (editors), Indigenous Australian Voices: A Reader, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998 Shoemaker, Adam, Black Words, White Page: Aboriginal Literature 1929–1988, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1988

Australian Dictionary of Biography The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) is a compilation of biographical articles on significant and representative people in Australia’s history since European contact with the continent in the 17th century. The first volume came out in 1966; volume 16 is planned for 2002; and a further series is in preparation. The publisher is Melbourne University Press. The foundation general editor was Douglas Pike, whose success was recognized by the Ernest Scott prize in 1969 and the Britannica Australia award in 1971. Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Serle continued his work and consolidated his achievement. Appointed in 1988, John Ritchie has now become the longest-serving general editor. The ADB is modelled on the British Dictionary of National Biography. Richard Davenport-Hines, in the Times Literary Supplement (1986), commended the “catholic but discriminating approach” of the ADB and “the demotic bias” to some entries. It is essentially a work of collaboration – the 15 volumes to date contain more than 9000 articles written by some 3500 authors. The general editor and a small team operate from (and are funded by) the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University in Canberra. An editorial board – in 2000 chaired by Professor Jill Roe of Macquarie University, Sydney – has general oversight of the project. Contributors are unpaid volunteers, nominated by working parties in each state, reflecting the country’s federal structure. These committees also draw up lists of recommended entries and suggest word lengths. Commonwealth and armed services working parties have responsibility for articles with wider, national connections. The genesis of the ADB can be traced to the preparatory work of L.F. Fitzhardinge, but the decisive steps in its establishment were taken by the foundation chairman of the editorial board, Sir Keith Hancock, who conceived it as a suitable national and historical enterprise when he returned from Britain to Australia in 1957. The conference of historians that he convened that year resolved to undertake a biographical dictionary. The project reflected the growth of Australian historical consciousness

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during that period and the concurrent flowering of teaching and research in Australian history. In the early 1960s a dispute between the editorial board and the man chosen to be one of the first joint editors, the journalist and historian M.H. Ellis, led to the latter’s resignation in 1962 in a flurry of hostile publicity. The appointment of the academic historian Douglas Pike rescued the project from this impasse, and his exceptional qualities as editor and manager resulted in its ultimate success. Possessing, according to Nairn, a “distaste for adjectives and adverbs” and a “flair for lean prose”, Pike established the scholarly basis and educative purpose of what has become the principal work of historical reference in Australia. His achievement, as Nairn identified, was to put into place an efficient productive system and to harmonize “concise biographical writing, virtually all of it new, with the occasionally conflicting demands of contributors and publishers”. His own, unsigned contributions to the early volumes reflect his egalitarianism and sharp political judgement. John La Nauze and Ken Inglis succeeded Hancock as chairman of the editorial board and contributed to the growing repute of the team. Nairn, who edited volume 6, continued and improved Pike’s administrative structure. He and Serle as joint general editors brought out volumes 7 to 10, the first to deal with the 20th century. The joint appointment was an unusual and successful example of interstate cooperation. The Sydney Catholic (Nairn) and the Melbourne Protestant (Serle) worked well together – Serle mischievously suggested that it “would have been much worse the other way around”. At the Canberra headquarters the two established what Serle described as “an informal, unauthoritarian, collaborative relationship which increased the very high staff morale and pride in the enterprise”. Serle was sole general editor for volume 11. In 1988 Ritchie took over the reins of the ADB, and brought the dedication of a new generation to deal with the tasks of producing entries on men and women who were comparatively recently deceased, of dealing with World War II, and of accommodating the new demands of scholarship of the time. He had to supervise the change from the floruit principle, which governed inclusion in the first 12 volumes, to inclusion based on the date of death, a necessary change but one that has increased the complexity of the scheme. The ADB had always aimed to include a representative sample of the Australian experience and a sprinkling of eccentrics. Now it was more important than ever to ensure that entries reflected the new emphases on women, minorities, and indigenous peoples while continuing to produce the looked-for articles on the leaders and the prominent, still overwhelmingly white and male. Ritchie met these conflicting demands and maintained the high standards of his predecessors. The ADB is a notable ongoing achievement of national definition. Christopher Cunneen Further Reading Davenport-Hines, Richard, “All Sorts and Conditions”, Times Literary Supplement, (14 November 1986): 1263–64 Inglis, K.S., “The Foundation Chairman” in Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 12, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, and Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990 McCalman, Iain, Jodi Parvey and Misty Cook (editors), National Biographies & National Identity: A Critical Approach to Theory and Editorial Practice, Canberra: Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, 1996

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Nairn, Bede, “The Foundation General Editor” in Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 6, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, and Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976 Serle, Geoffrey, “Bede Nairn: His Life and Work” in Bede Nairn and Labor History, edited by Bob Carr et al., Sydney: Pluto Press, 1991 Walsh, Gerald, “Recording ‘the Australian Experience’: Hancock and the Australian Dictionary of Biography” in Keith Hancock: The Legacies of an Historian, edited by D.A. Low, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001

Austria see Germany, Austria, Switzerland Authenticity Like the issue of authority, the matter of authenticity in life writing is of interest primarily with regard to autobiographical genres. (This means not only autobiography proper but also sub-genres, such as conversion narrative, and related genres, such as diary and journal.) In so far as the issues of authority and authenticity are separable, authority is primarily a question of the relation between the text and the extratextual world – veracity – while authenticity is essentially a matter of the relation between the text and its putative source – provenance. Authenticity is a matter of interest because it has to do with what is distinctive about autobiography: it concerns how writing represents or mediates identity. It is perhaps marginal cases – forged, anonymous, pseudonymous, and collaborative autobiography – that best illuminate the nature of autobiographical authenticity. Although an autobiography’s authority may be linked to its authenticity, the two aspects are far from identical. This is perhaps clearest in the case of forged autobiography. Since forgeries will have sufficient commercial value to repay the labour of composition only if attributed to persons of considerable fame, forgers go to some lengths to endow them with authority, or to “get the facts right”. This is largely a matter of producing a text consistent with what is already known of its subject and putative author. To a lesser extent, it is a matter of simulating the “voice” of the putative author. If a forged autobiography, like a biography, is based on reliable sources and thus accurately portrays the course of its subject’s life, it might be quite authoritative. (To cite two fairly recent examples, Clifford Irving’s never-published “autobiography” of reclusive millionaire Howard Hughes and the so-called “Hitler diaries” were exposed as hoaxes only after periods of considerable initial belief, even by supposed experts.) But even if it sounded as though it had been written by its subject, it would entirely lack “authenticity”. Forged autobiography is not actually autobiography at all. The determining factor, however, is not its truth value but its authorship, the process by which it was produced. (As the case of Irving’s “autobiography” of Howard Hughes revealed, even the subject’s denial that he had produced an autobiography may not be sufficient at first to disprove the authenticity of a forged autobiography.) Unlike forged autobiography, anonymous autobiography is not a contradiction in terms. Nor is it a trivial matter. There are circumstances in which it would be important to determine the authority of an anonymous autobiography, such as a testimonio

whose source required protection from political enemies. Its authority would rest not on the veracity of its self-portrayal – which could not be tested – but on the accuracy of its portrayal of the world. It would be possible, then, to assess its authority independent of knowledge of the identity of its author; its authenticity, on the other hand, could not be tested, but only attested to. Its authenticity would matter to its credibility, but it could not be definitively established without removing the cloak of anonymity; it would have to depend on authentication by some intermediary, such as a collaborator or editor. Different problems arise with the autobiographies of virtual anonyms, individuals whose names are known but whose lives have left few records. Even with living autobiographers, authenticity and authority may be difficult to verify because of the paucity of records. These issues are particularly important when, as in the case of testimony, autobiography bears witness to world-historical events, especially controversial or traumatic ones, such as the Holocaust. When questions arise as to the accuracy of self-portrayal – as has been the case with at least one purported Holocaust memoir (Binjamin Wilkomirski’s Bruchstücke, 1995, translated as Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood) – then the distinction between authenticity and authority may collapse. That is, if the story, though entirely selfwritten, proves to be fiction rather than fact, then the book will be properly judged as lacking in authenticity as well as authority because an identity has been fabricated or falsely claimed. Though rare, pseudonymous autobiography reveals the problematic status of both authority and authenticity. Much of the work of Mark Twain – Roughing It (1872) and Old Times on the Mississippi (1876), as well as Mark Twain’s Autobiography (1924) – is cast as autobiography. The authority of pseudonymous autobiography is impossible to establish in so far as it offers an account of the past of a pseudonymous persona, rather than of a historical personage, particularly when it describes a period before the assumption of the pseudonym. (Samuel Clemens had a documented childhood; Mark Twain did not.) Its authenticity is problematic in so far as it issues from a literary mask, rather than a historical person. One could say that pseudonymous autobiography approaches the status of fictional autobiography – or that it merely exposes, by openly acknowledging, the inherent fictiveness of all autobiography. But perhaps the most perplexing texts in terms of authenticity are collaborative autobiographies, because of their virtually oxymoronic nature. If authenticity is a function of the relation between the putative source and the words in the text, then it is obviously problematic in cases of “as-told-to” or otherwise collaborative narratives, whose readers are encouraged to take them as issuing from the titular subject rather than the co-author. (“Ghostwritten” autobiographies – those in which collaboration is not openly acknowledged – exacerbate this problem.) Under any circumstances, collaborative autobiography raises questions that, for example, collaborative fiction does not, for like forged autobiography, collaborative autobiography disrupts the single identity of author cum narrator cum subject that is the constituting feature of the genre. If authenticity were simply a matter of the congruence between the “source” (in the form of the subject’s words) and the final text, it would be relatively easy to assess. Authenticity might be considered to be a function of the faithfulness of the text to its source. But the

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sources are often not available for inspection. When they are not, authenticity becomes a function of successful simulation of a convincing voice. That is, it is at best a rhetorical effect, at worst an illusion. Collaborative autobiography is inherently ventriloquistic. And whether the voice of the narrator is really the voice of the subject may be less important than whether the subject has had any control over the narrative’s final state. When collaborators are from the same cultural and socio-economic background, and the distribution of power between them is fairly even, or when the subjects “outrank” their collaborators, there is less risk of irresponsible fabrication. It is generally accepted that famous politicians, business executives, movie stars, and athletes employ collaborators, whether or not this is openly announced; that is, it is usually assumed that celebrities do not literally write their autobiographies. Though this raises questions of authenticity – the degree to which the vision and voice of the narrative reflect those of its subject, rather than its author – the celebrity’s ability to vet the manuscript suggests that the final product at least conforms to the subject’s self-image. In this sense, control of the text by its subject guarantees a degree of authenticity, though it may not guarantee authority (the subject may have reasons to falsify the record that a biographer would not). The danger of inauthenticity is perhaps greatest when collaboration occurs on or across the borders of class, race, or ethnicity. This typifies the ethnographic scenario, in which a writer from a Western culture initiates a collaboration with a subject from a non-Western culture or marginalized group; in this scenario the writing partner “outranks” the subject. Many of these instances involve collaboration made necessary by the fact that the subject is one of “those who do not write”, in Philippe Lejeune’s phrase. (They may be members of traditional oral cultures or, like many American slaves, they may have been prevented from acquiring literacy, or they may have a disability that prevents them from writing, or even from speaking.) In these instances, the authenticity of the narrative may be questioned because of the difficulty, or even the impossibility, of having the subject review and revise the manuscript. There is another problematic aspect of authenticity in these cases. Like veracity, authenticity may be scrutinized more closely in narratives by the marginalized, who are already disadvantaged as autobiographers. In the case of collaborative narratives, the concern for authenticity is legitimate because of the danger of exploitation. Yet the concern for authenticity may inadvertently serve to hold the exotic subject at a distance, to confine him or her to the role of “other”. Thus, because of the presumed illiteracy of American slaves, the authenticity of a rhetorically sophisticated slave narrative might be considered doubtful. Similarly, like Native American art, Native American autobiographies are at risk of being held to a standard of authenticity not invoked with those produced by members of the dominant culture. To require African American autobiographers to sound “black”, to require women autobiographers to devise or adopt conventionally female forms of discourse, or to require Native American autobiographers to adhere to traditional modes of narration is to impose an unfair and patronizing conception of autobiographical authenticity on them. Indeed, it is to constrain rather than to enhance their autobiographical authority. G. Thomas Couser

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See also Authority; Mock and Parodic Life Writing

Further Reading Adams, Timothy Dow, Telling Lies in Modern American Autobiography, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990 Andrews, William L., To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of AfroAmerican Autobiography, 1760–1865, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986 Couser, G. Thomas, Altered Egos: Authority in American Autobiography, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989 Couser, G. Thomas, “Making, Taking, and Faking Lives: The Ethics of Collaborative Life Writing”, Style, 32/2 (1998): 334–50 Lejeune, Philippe, “The Autobiography of Those Who Do Not Write” in his On Autobiography, edited by Paul John Eakin, translated by Katherine M. Leary, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989 Olney, James, “‘I Was Born’: Slave Narratives: Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature” in The Slave’s Narrative, edited by Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985 Sturrock, John, “The New Model Autobiographer”, New Literary History, 9/1 (1977): 51–63 Twain, Mark, Mark Twain’s Autobiography, 2 vols, edited by Albert Bigelow Paine, New York and London: Harper, 1924

Authority The meaning of authority in life writing depends on the particular genre in question. With more outward and objective – i.e. biographical – modes, authority lies largely in matters of reference and veracity. Thus, the authority of biography would depend mainly on the relation between the text and the life of its subject (and the other records of that life by which it is mainly known). Is the narrative an accurate and comprehensive representation of the life? Is it thoroughly researched, using up-todate sources? Biographical authority also has rhetorical and ethical dimensions: is the narrative balanced and fair in its portrayal of its subject? Like biography, autobiography is advertised and marketed, and often consumed, as nonfiction; most lay readers treat autobiography as if it were ontologically different from fictional texts, such as novels. They assume that autobiography is, in effect, a sub-genre of biography – that it records the experience of a historical personality, not an invented “character”. And so the veracity of the narrative is also an aspect of the authority of more inward and subjective – i.e. autobiographical – modes of life writing. At the same time, it is generally accepted that autobiography is not research-based; its narrative authority derives not from research but from personal experience, from memory and subjectivity – that is, from self-identity. (This difference between genres is reflected in the fact that the highest accolade for biography – that it is “definitive” – is simply not applicable to autobiography.) Also, compared to biography, the authority of autobiography depends more greatly on the rhetorical dimension, which is akin to credibility. Does it seem sincere? Does it offer a frank, coherent, and compelling story? But there is an additional, more problematic aspect to the authority of autobiography. As distinct from biography, autobiography is often presented as an authoritative “inside” story,

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with the implication that the author is somehow uniquely present in the text. Thus, many readers implicitly grant autobiography the authority of its author’s privileged viewpoint. Such a view seems naive to most literary autobiographers and to autobiography critics, but it has its academic equivalent, as Avrom Fleishman describes it, in “the literalist or purist position, which maintains that an autobiography is a self-written biography designed and required to impart verifiable information about the historical subject”. According to this view, autobiography can claim the authority of its grounding in a verifiable relationship between the text and an extratextual referent, its author’s life. But the most interesting and significant autobiographical assertions – matters of motive, meaning, and selfinterpretation – are difficult, if not impossible, to assess in that way. As Georges Gusdorf has pointed out, autobiography will always tend toward apologetics. For him, the “truth” of autobiography is less a function of the relation between narrative and life-history than of the intimate link between text and self: “a likeness no longer of things but of the person”. We might call this the expressivist view of the genre. Gusdorf concedes, as most contemporary critics do, that autobiography is inevitably and inherently fictive, but he privileges autobiography over biography because he believes autobiography inevitably and truthfully corresponds to the self that generates it. John Sturrock has carried this line of argument further, arguing that “‘authoritative’ is synonymous with ‘autobiographical’ since whatever an autobiographer writes, however wild or deceitful, cannot but count as testimony”. He seems to mean that, as an emanation of the writer, autobiography is inevitably self-revelatory: although an autobiography’s statements may not accurately represent the historical figure portrayed, they will nonetheless somehow truthfully characterize their author. Sturrock makes a virtue, then, of the necessity of autobiographical falsehood; he resolves the question of the problematic authority of autobiography by defining it out of existence: autobiography is authoritative by nature. He is less interested in validating or invalidating the narrative than in probing the psyche of the autobiographer by assessing the significance of his or her conscious or unconscious distortion of the record. Yet his approach cannot entirely escape the problem of reference; one can know how to take “wild and deceitful” testimony only if one knows that it is such. And it is not always possible to discover the deceit in autobiographical testimony. In any case, even a sophisticated application of the referential approach to autobiography carries the critic only so far because it depends on the availability of documents or records against which to check the autobiographical text. In the case of obscure autobiographers, this can be a particularly vexing problem. With anonymous autobiography, it is insoluble. In the end, the authority of autobiographical texts can be neither reduced to, nor founded solely on, their veracity. The poststructuralist critique of the subject, which holds that “individuals” are not autonomous unique selves but rather products of cultural codes and semiotic systems that they neither create nor control, further complicates the view of autobiography as referential and thus verifiably authoritative. Autobiography is seen not as reflecting (in either sense: imitating or emanating from) a pre-existent, unified, unique self but as creating a provisional and contingent one. Indeed, that self is seen as determined by the constraints of the limited linguistic

resources and narrative tropes available to its “author”. For a language theory that views the self entirely as a linguistic construct, the authority of autobiography is a nebulous matter of textual effects, a function of the play of signs, tropes, and conventions that can at best render only the illusion of the presence of the self. Some texts may have perceptibly more authority than others, but the distinctions among them would be relatively insignificant. The recent controversy over the authority of autobiography is therefore a function, in large part, of two competing theories of language. For the “correspondence theory” of language – with its sense of a one-to-one correspondence among things, our concepts of them, and our words for them – autobiography is fundamentally a historical record of an antecedent set of phenomena; it thus claims to tell some truth about a real person. For the empiricist version of the correspondence theory, the authority of autobiography is largely a matter of veracity, the correlation of its assertions and “the facts”. (The contractual corollary held by “pact theorists” like the early Philippe Lejeune makes this a matter of ethical and virtually legal commitment.) The expressivist variant of the correspondence theory – held by John Sturrock – holds that, as an index of the self, autobiography is automatically authoritative because it is helplessly self-revelatory. Autobiography is inherently partial in more senses than one. As Gusdorf suggests, the most interesting autobiographical assertions may not be verifiable because they represent subjective states available exclusively to the autobiographer. This is not to say that “reality-testing” of autobiography is irrelevant or pointless, but it should begin rather than end investigations into the authority of autobiography. At best, veracity is a negative, legalistic standard, which would ensure only the absence of outright lies, rather than the presence of truth, or significant meaning. In any case, the notion of autobiography as issuing from, determined by, and referring reliably to an integral pre-existing self can no longer be considered self-evident. But if the danger of referential and contractual approaches to autobiography is that they may overinvest in veracity, locating autobiography’s authority primarily in its content, the danger of poststructuralist theories of language is that they may reduce autobiography to formal gestures and figures, cutting it off from the history that it purports to describe and that conditions and constitutes the self (de Man). This denial of the authority of autobiography unwisely ignores or negates its implication in extratextual “reality”. This is particularly important in genres, like memoir or testimony, that purport to witness worldhistorical events. But there is a third paradigm of language, the dialogical theory associated with Mikhail Bakhtin, which offers a more flexible view of the subtle relation between self and language and thus, implicitly, of the authority of autobiography. According to this theory, although linguistic elements may precede and help to construct the self, they do not necessarily or entirely predetermine it. Transpersonal conventions are amenable to personal appropriation and even subversion. According to this paradigm of language, then, autobiography neither refers transparently to the self nor produces it; rather, like all discourse, it is a kind of playground – or battlefield – on which the self struggles to establish presence and to exercise power. Whereas the correspondence theory of language privileges the pre-existent self as

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the textual referent and the poststructuralist model assigns autonomy to the linguistic system, the dialogical model conceives of the autobiographer as engaged in a dynamic struggle for authority. This approach to language better registers the way in which the authority of autobiography is constrained by matters such as gender, race, and ethnicity. Authority is located neither in correspondence to an extratextual reality nor in the self-determining agency of language; rather, it is negotiated in the engagement of contending parties and voices in the world. In sum, authority may be best viewed as culturally negotiated, rather than as inherent in, or necessarily absent from, autobiographical texts. It does not reside exclusively in the correspondence between the text and the facts or the text and the self; rather, it is something to be contested and established by the autobiographer and others – collaborators, editors, critics, biographers, historians, and lay readers. G. Thomas Couser See also Authenticity

Further Reading Adams, Timothy Dow, Telling Lies in Modern American Autobiography, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990 Bakhtin, Mikhail, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, translated and edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981 Couser, G. Thomas, Altered Egos: Authority in American Autobiography, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989 Couser, G. Thomas, “Authority in Autobiography”, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 10/1 (1995): 34–49 de Man, Paul, “Autobiography as De-facement”, MLN / Modern Language Notes, 94/5 (1979): 919–30 Fleishman, Avrom, Figures of Autobiography: The Language of SelfWriting in Victorian and Modern England, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983 Gusdorf, Georges, “Conditions and Limits of Autobiography” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by James Olney, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Lejeune, Philippe, Le Pacte autobiographique, Paris: Seuil, 1975 Sturrock, John, “The New Model Autobiographer”, New Literary History, 9/1 (1977): 51–63

Autobiographical Essay see Autobiography and the Essay

Autobiography: General Survey Most fundamentally, autobiography is a self-produced, nonfiction text that tells the story of its writer’s life. However, autobiography involves more than simple reportage; at least four additional features define the form. First, autobiography has a psychological and philosophical dimension that requires its writer to balance the deeds of an active public self with the thoughts of a contemplative private one. Second, autobiography requires its author to have an awareness of audience. Because the autobiographer does not simply recount life’s events, but offers the reader a window into thoughts about, motives for, and reactions to the events described, the autobiographer’s

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account differs distinctly from the purely private record of experience found in a diary or journal. Third, autobiography has clear formal conventions. Most typically, these conventions are the epic ones of hero (its subject-author) and journey (toward adulthood, self-awareness, spiritual growth, personal wholeness), but many autobiographies also employ several additional formal devices outlined by Albert E. Stone in his study of the genre: namely, “narration with its characteristics of pace and momentum; metaphors of self through which verbal patterns and bridges are constructed from narrative details; description, reflection, argument, and meditation; and other common literary features, including characterization, dialogue, dramatic scenes, and synecdoche”. Finally, autobiography is a literary form defined less by genre than by didactic intent. As Jill Ker Conway notes in her accessible and intelligent study of autobiography When Memory Speaks (1998): “Every autobiographer wants to persuade others to learn from her or his life. Most aim to convince their readers to take up some important cause, follow a new spiritual path, be aware of particular hazards, develop a new moral sense”. While autobiographers choose many different and overlapping forms in which to tell their stories – conversion narrative, immigrant story, adventure tale, poem, Bildungsroman – most have traditionally offered their stories as exempla, and most readers have traditionally accepted these stories as useful, reliable, and true accounts of the writer’s experience. In the modern era, however, this implicit contract between autobiographer and reader – as well as the philosophical and formal dimensions of the genre – has been challenged and changed by increasing scepticism about both the possibility of a cohesive self and the ability either to know or to tell the “truth” about such a self. While the word “autobiography” did not enter the English language until 1797 (see Marcus), the genre itself has a much longer history. Writers of classical antiquity – lyric poets such as Pindar and Sappho as well as historians such as Herodotus – recorded pieces of their own lived experience, and by the 4th century ce Augustine had produced the first full-length example of the genre in his Confessions (c.397–400). Augustine’s text is without doubt a classic of the genre; nonetheless, there are marked differences between the Confessions and the autobiographical texts that proliferated in Enlightenment Europe. While Augustine tells a personal story (his youthful indiscretions, his conversion in the garden at Milan, his subsequent attempts to lead an exemplary Christian life), he ultimately presents himself less as an irreproducible individual than as a model servant of God. Only with the emergence of more secular rationalism – a classic early example of which is Michel de Montaigne’s Essais (1595) – do autobiographers begin to focus on themselves as individuals. In his seminal study The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography, Karl Weintraub argues that this change from exemplum to singular individual marks the defining moment in the history of autobiography. If, as Montaigne writes, “nothing certain can be established about one thing by another”, then the closest one can come to certainty is to look inward, to study oneself. Thus, Weintraub suggests, the scepticism of Montaigne and his contemporaries transforms autobiography so that the genre begins to detail human uniqueness and the individual’s struggle to “actualize the one mode of being which only [the authorsubject] can be”.

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But to say that early autobiography presents the self as exemplum and later autobiography presents the self as individual is to oversimplify, not least because even such recent autobiographers as Maxine Hong Kingston (Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts, 1976) and Richard Rodriguez (Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, 1981) have exemplary or didactic designs. Perhaps a fairer way to assess the evolution of autobiography would be to say that the genre has shown a unique capacity for registering changing cultural conceptions of the self. Modern notions of individualism had relatively little purchase in Augustine’s 4thcentury Roman world, for instance, but considerably more in Montaigne’s 16th-century France. But “the individual” was hardly a static concept in post-Enlightenment Europe, and autobiographers described and defined themselves by emphasizing life details that accorded with – or self-consciously challenged – current cultural values. Thus the 17th-century English Puritan John Bunyan focuses on “the vanity and inward wretchedness of my wicked heart” in his account (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 1666); the 18th-century British philosophical historian Edward Gibbon insists on his story’s “unblushing truth, the first virtue of more serious history” (Memoirs, 1796); the 19th-century German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe reflects his era’s increasingly complicated notion of selfhood in his claim that all have “a double part to play in the world, a real and an ideal one” (Dichtung und Wahrheit, 1811; Poetry and Truth); the 19th-century Argentinean writer Domingo Faustino Sarmiento makes the personal political by declaring that he writes his account because he, like all Argentines, has “a need to call attention” to himself (Recuerdos de Provincia, 1850; Provincial Memories); and the Irish poet William Butler Yeats foregrounds modernist fragmentation and alienation when he concedes his inability to produce an account that will impose a truthful order on the chaos of life: “It must be that I have changed many things without my knowledge” (Autobiographies, 1955). Autobiographers have not only adapted the content of their stories to accord with cultural ideals; their forms and structures have evolved as well. Whether one sees autobiography as a genre in its own right or a mode that multiple genres (novel, essay, poem, short story) may employ, autobiography claims its own literary tradition. In “The Dark Continent of Literature: Autobiography” (1968), Stephen Shapiro neatly articulates one foundational principle of autobiography as a literary form: “Resonant context must be provided for the reader if experience is to be re-created, integrated into the fabric of art”. This context consists largely of an autobiographer’s formal and structural choices, and William Spengemann, in his oft-cited study The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre, shows how autobiographers from the Renaissance to the present have continually recalibrated the form. Spengemann identifies three main phases in autobiography’s formal evolution. First are the chronologically structured narratives – what he calls “historical autobiography” – of medieval and early modern autobiographers. Among these texts we might number Dante’s La vita nuova (composed 1292–94; The New Life), Teresa of Avila’s Libro de la vida (1588; The Book of Her Life), and John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding (1666). These narratives, which neatly trace the order of a life’s events, indicate an emerging sense of the self as a developmental entity – in

most cases, as a being who develops into a spiritual wholeness. The second phase of autobiography’s evolution, according to Spengemann, comes with the Romantic-era “philosophical autobiography” typified by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Confessions (1782–89), Thomas De Quincey in his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822), and William Wordsworth in The Prelude (1850). These texts not only emphasize the prevailing interest in epistemology and individual mental process, but incorporate those interests into their very structure. In The Prelude, for instance, Wordsworth uses his “spots of time” trope to govern much of the poem’s structure. Autobiography evolves into its final formal phase, Spengemann suggests, with the mode he calls “poetic autobiography”, in which writers subordinate issues of truth to matters of “poetic self-expression, and poetic self-invention”. If we accept Spengemann’s definition, we might well call much 20th-century autobiography “poetic autobiography”. In the 20th century, the line between autobiographer and novelist has become increasingly blurred. Such blurring is not an exclusively modern phenomenon, of course. Early novelists often cast their works as autobiography (see, for instance, Daniel Defoe’s The Life and Strange and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774; The Sorrows of Young Werther), or even Charlotte Brontë’s pseudonymously published Jane Eyre: An Autobiography (1847)). And even as early as Montaigne, autobiographers show occasional signs that they grasp the difficulties of telling a purely factual story. But until and for much of the 19th century, most autobiographers nonetheless saw “truth” as both their aim and their result: witness Gibbon’s disclaimer above; Rousseau’s insistence that his Confessions “display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature”; the British philosopher John Stuart Mill’s dutiful record of the facts and circumstances of his early life, education, and intellectual development in the Autobiography of 1873; or the British cardinal John Henry Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua of 1864, an autobiography expressly written to contest the charge that Newman did not properly value truth. But after the turn of the 20th century, modernist scepticism about the possibility of an integrated self posed new challenges for the genre. Would-be autobiographers, newly cognizant of the discontinuity of lived experience, the difficulty of presenting a unified and complete picture of a life still in progress, and the slipperiness of “truth”, understood the point that Francis Hart makes in his ground-breaking essay “Notes for an Anatomy of Modern Autobiography” (1970): namely, that “the paradox of continuity in discontinuity is itself a problem to be experimented with, and it is a problem both of truth and of form”. Consequently, 20th-century autobiographers have mounted a wide range of formal experiments. Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son (1907), a book based on Gosse’s own childhood and relationship with his father, heralded the emergence of one important (and long-lived) 20th-century experiment: the autobiographical novel. Gosse’s contemporaries quickly adopted the form and cast themselves as third-person protagonists, as evidenced by the Irish novelist James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914–15), La conscienza di Zeno (1923; Confessions of Zeno) by Joyce’s Italian friend and counterpart Italo Svevo, and the Frenchman Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps

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perdu (1913–27; Remembrance of Things Past). The American writer Henry Adams uses the technique to detail his Harvard career in the autobiographical novel The Education of Henry Adams (private edition, 1907; public edition, 1918), and explains that the third-person device allows him to present himself in the role “of model, to become a manikin [sic] on which the toilet of education is to be draped in order to show the fit or misfit of the clothes”. A second important 20th-century experiment has been the multiple autobiography. Ian Fletcher describes the form as a single writer producing several autobiographies, making different “approaches to the past made at distinct times in differing modes”. Yeats furnishes one early instance of this in his Autobiographies (1955), and the contemporary African American writer Maya Angelou has cast and recast her life story in both narrative forms (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1969; Gather Together in My Name, 1974; Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas, 1976) and lyric poetry (see her collection of 1975, Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well, or the 1978 volume And Still I Rise). Even those 20th-century autobiographers who write in less explicitly experimental forms exhibit a marked self-consciousness. For instance, the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotskii tellingly subtitles his 1930 autobiography My Life (Russian, Moia Zhizn’) as An Attempt at an Autobiography, and recognizes in his text the impossibility of providing the unvarnished facts of his political and personal life: “Describing, I also characterize and evaluate.” Amidst all of this experimentation, one feature of autobiography has remained relatively constant: namely, its status as a largely Western genre. With a few notable exceptions, such as the Japanese writer Murasaki Shikibu’s (973–after 1005) early autobiographical diary-novel Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji) and her Nikki (Diary) and Kash? (Poetic Memoirs), the Chinese author Shen Fu’s Fu Sheng liu ji (1878; Six Records of a Floating Life), and the modern Indian classics by Gandhi (The Story of My Experiments with Truth, 1927–29) and Jawaharlal Nehru (An Autobiography, 1936), other traditions have eschewed autobiography’s persistent and detailed focus on the individual. Even within modern Western culture, some groups have challenged the notion of autobiography as a thoroughly individualist form. Perhaps the clearest example of this is the work of Native American autobiographers so well documented by Arnold Krupat. Krupat notes that the ideas of both “self” and “alphabetical writing” implicit in the term “autobiography” are foreign to Native American culture. Consequently, Native American autobiographies are typically mediated productions – an oral account dictated to and transcribed by a (usually white) editor / translator (see, for example, Black Elk Speaks, 1932). The black American writers of slave narratives have provided a second such challenge. Their autobiographical form subordinates an account of unique individual experiences to a set of rigidly fixed conventions that almost invariably include a former slave’s reports of uncertain parentage, mistreatment by a cruel master or mistress, barriers to education and literacy, failed escapes, and finally a successful escape followed by the construction of a new identity and reflections on the institution of slavery (see, for example, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave of 1845, or Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself of 1861). James Olney explains that the writer of a slave

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narrative has compelling political reasons for producing such formulaic accounts: “To give a true picture of slavery as it really is, he must maintain that he exercises a clear-glass, neutral memory that is neither creative nor faulty – indeed, if it were creative it would be eo ipso faulty, for “creative” would be understood by skeptical readers as a synonym for “lying”. But Valerie Smith persuasively suggests that slave narratives, despite their standardized content, nonetheless empower their individual writers: The processes of plot construction, characterization, and designation of beginnings and endings – in short the process of authorship – provide the narrators with a measure of authority unknown to them in either real or fictional life. Ultimately, autobiography stands as one of the most democratic forms of writing in Western culture. As literature, autobiography draws from and appears in multiple genres; a single autobiographical text may employ formal strategies from drama, poetry, essay, and fiction. As a field for humanist enquiry, autobiography affords a richness unparalleled by any other single form of writing. Famous and obscure, rich and poor, male and female, whites and persons of colour – all have used the form to reflect on what it means to be human, to live in society, to be educated, to find a vocation, to develop principles and live accordingly. As such, while autobiography raises practical and theoretical questions about memory, identity, and “truth”, the form also dramatizes and perpetuates the universal human struggle to live an examined and meaningful life. Bonnie J. Gunzenhauser Further Reading Adams, Henry, The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918; London: Constable, 1919 (private edition, 1807) Angelou, Maya, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Bantam Books, 1969 Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, as told to John G. Niehardt, New York: Morrow, 1932 Conway, Jill Ker, When Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography, New York: Knopf, 1998 Eakin, Paul John, Touching the World: Reference in Autobiography, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992 Fletcher, Ian, “Rhythm and Pattern in Autobiographies” in An Honoured Guest: New Essays on W.B. Yeats, edited by Denis Donoghue and J.R. Mulryne, London: Arnold, 1965; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1966 Hart, Francis R., “Notes for an Anatomy of Modern Autobiography”, New Literary History, 1/3 (1970): 485–511 Kingston, Maxine Hong, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts, New York: Knopf, 1976; London: Allen Lane, 1977 Krupat, Arnold (editor), Native American Autobiography: An Anthology, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994 Marcus, Laura, Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994 Molloy, Sylvia, At Face Value: Autobiographical Writing in Spanish America, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991 Olney, James, Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972

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Olney, James, “‘I Was Born’: Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature” in The Slave’s Narrative, edited by Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985 Shapiro, Stephen A., “The Dark Continent of Literature: Autobiography”, Comparative Literature Studies, 5/3 (1968): 421–54 Sheringham, Michael, French Autobiography: Devices and Desires, Rousseau to Perec, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993 Smith, Valerie C., Self-Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987 Spengemann, William C., The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1980 Stone, Albert E., “Modern American Autobiography: Texts and Transactions” in American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect, edited by Paul John Eakin, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991 Trotskii, Leon, My Life: An Attempt at Autobiography, New York: Scribner, 1930 Weintraub, Karl J., The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978

Autobiography and Biography: Their Relationship Although the English term “autobiography” seems to be less than 200 years old, both biographical and autobiographical forms are ancient, and both spring from the same ultimate source, the wish to avoid oblivion. In this sense, both are older than the written word, for oral tradition preserves the memory of kings and heroes in early cultures. When writing developed, monuments could be used (as, for instance, by Persian and Roman rulers) to record for posterity their boasts. A new stage was reached when criticism and comparison were introduced, as, in the Western cultures, by Plutarch in the first century ce. Especially after he was translated into French and English in the latter part of the 16th century, Plutarch became perhaps the most influential of all biographers. In recent years the interdependence of autobiography and biography has once again become a focus of debate (as sometimes expressed in the term “auto/biography”; see Stanley). But the contrast between the two forms is still evident. Ultimately, it rests on the inescapable difference between subject and object. And this is reflected in a difference of sources. The first source of biography was oral tradition, possibly based on the impressions of eye-witnesses. As cultures became more literate, this was supplemented, and often overtaken, by documents, especially letters. Someone like Cicero (first century bce), whose letters were preserved in abundance, remains more vivid to later generations than a recent individual whose surviving letters are scanty. The primary material of autobiography is memory; even when autobiographers bring copious documents to their task, the reader will be aware of the author’s memory of the letter he or she wrote or received, and of his or her power of exclusion and choice. The autobiographer need not mention anything of which he or she is ashamed, or which conflicts with his or her literary plan; the biographer may be intent on revealing things that his or her subject might have wished suppressed, or traits of character that were hidden to the subject. A case of the latter is

Samuel Johnson, who thought himself a polite man, though the reader of Boswell’s famous Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) will be unlikely to agree. Further, the autobiographer is living; the subject of biography is often dead. H.G. Wells, for instance, wrote his autobiography in the euphoria of a prosperous life, delighted in the number of his mistresses and the fame of his books, but a biographer would have to reckon with the despair in which he died. But, while most autobiographers have lived the greater part of their life before they set out to write their stories, the contrast is, generally, much sharper than that. Most biographers pass lightly over early years. For instance, in the stout two-volume life of Mandell Creighton, Bishop of London (1843–1901), written by his wife, the reader reaches the subject’s 21st birthday by page 17. By then he had lived more than a third of his life. In many autobiographies, on the other hand, childhood and youth form the most important parts. Thus, the reader, if unguarded, may imagine that the subject of biography was formed by his of her career in the world, whereas the autobiographer was made by nursery dreams; but the contrast is not one of life, but of literary form. Old age (usually) and death (certainly) are omitted from autobiographies. But in biographies, the death scene may be the most important of all, and sometimes posthumous reputation is an important aspect as well. The Christian conviction that the moment of death is of supreme importance had, naturally, its influence on many of the lives of the saints. But the influence goes far beyond this. “Last words” are felt to be of peculiar interest even by biographers who do not believe in the Resurrection of Christ. Sometimes the intended literary climax fails to affect through banality or falsification. When, for instance, Lionel Trotter writing in 1901 of Major Hodson, a hero of British Imperial India, tells us that his subject’s last words were either “Oh, my wife” or “Oh, my mother”, we cannot feel confident that either phrase was not the biographer’s pious invention. (If a man cannot articulate the word “wife”, so as not to sound different from “mother”, then he is too far gone to utter either intelligibly!) Such details only illustrate the difference between the characteristic question authors are asking. The autobiographer typically asks “what made me what I now find myself to be?” The biographer usually asks “what was this person’s nature, and wherein lies the abiding importance of this life?” Generally, the reader of a biography can be compared to a spectator examining a portrait or viewing a performer on stage. The sympathetic reader of autobiography is summoned to empathy, and may remember moments more vividly than facts. Anyone who has not looked at Augustine’s Confessions for years is almost sure to remember the child in the garden, calling “Tolle, lege”, or Monica’s rejection of her son’s concern about her burial, while only close students will be able to give an account of neo-Platonic doctrines or the chronology of Augustine’s travels. Indeed, an autobiography that lacks memorable “spots of time” (in Romantic terminology) is liable to leave an impression of aridity. Of course, many biographers have had personal knowledge of their subjects. It is possible, then, for the two forms to merge in short passages. J.A. Froude’s moving account of his last conversation with the aged Thomas Carlyle, in which the latter complained that he was called “great”, but that nobody believed

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his teaching, could equally have been a passage in the author’s autobiography, had he written one. Many, though not all, autobiographies are vitiated by a wish to seem more stainless than the facts warrant; in biography we have to reckon with discipleship, in some cases, and hostility in others. Complete impartiality is an ideal seldom attained. Before beginning to write, the biographer will usually have formed a general view of his or her subject’s character. A crucial aspect, for which critical readers will be on the alert, therefore, will be those actions (which occur in most lives) that may plausibly be called “out of character”. A bad biographer may omit them or wilfully misinterpret them to fit a prearranged pattern. Good biographers will be sure to note their importance, but may have several ways of dealing with them. They may adjust their scheme to incorporate the unexpected; they may confess themselves puzzled; they may have a plan flexible enough to allow for the inconsistencies of human nature. In any case, those moments when the smoothness of literary composition confronts the rough texture of life often reveal the best evidence of a biographer’s quality. Selection and exclusion are necessary tools of both trades. Sometimes exclusion springs from a defined intention, as with John Henry Newman, who, writing of his religious opinions in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864), chose not to speak of his devotional feelings. In Praeterita (1886–89), John Ruskin indicated his reason for omitting mention of his wife by saying that he was writing only of what gave him pleasure. But he would undoubtedly have been at a loss to explain why so many summaries of Swiss history should have helped the reader to understand him. Sometimes, exclusion seems to spring from an unadmitted wish to suppress a painful memory. Then the writer might be puzzled or embarrassed to have his or her omission pointed out. Did John Stuart Mill really know why, in writing extensively about his childhood, he never mentioned his mother? In biography, the principle of exclusion may relate to public events, or to a concept of “decency”. Monypenny and Buckle’s six-volume life of Benjamin Disraeli does not mention his debts or his sexual history before marriage, perhaps employing both principles. Occasions that determine the timing of composition and publication are various. In biography, the subject’s death provides an obvious motive to begin work, but biographies of people long dead may still have an immediate motivation. Thus, Carlyle wrote on Oliver Cromwell partly as a counterblast to religious and political tendencies in the 1840s. In autobiography, the commonest reason to begin – at least before the emergence of mass-media celebrity autobiography – is that age is drawing on and most of a life’s work completed. Politicians, when dismissed or defeated at the polls, often begin work at once. Again there are exceptions: Beverley Nichols earned notoriety by writing his own life (1926) when he was twenty-five. Despite the fact that autobiographers control the version of the life they produce, not all wish to justify themselves. It is true they may have various motives for confessing to base or stupid actions. Augustine wished to show the mercy of God to a sinner, Benvenuto Cellini (perhaps) to boast of his cynicism, JeanJacques Rousseau to suggest that the reader, if honest, would recollect equally discreditable episodes in his or her own life. But it is not necessarily true that the autobiographer proves an egoist by publishing at all. Roy Pascal’s words seem to be wise

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in this context: “It is misleading to talk of the self-love of autobiographers; most of us love ourselves too dearly to be autobiographers.” A.O.J. Cockshut Further Reading Clifford, James L. (editor), Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism, 1560–1960, New York: Oxford University Press, 1962 Hart, Francis R., “Boswell and the Romantics”, English Literary History, 27 (1962): 44–65 Kendall, P.M., The Art of Biography, New York: Norton, 1965 Marcus, Laura, Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994 Maurois, André, Aspects of Biography, translated by Sydney Castle Roberts, London: Cambridge University Press, and New York: Appleton, 1929 Pascal, Roy, Design and Truth in Autobiography, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, and London: Routledge, 1960 Stanley, Liz, The Auto/biographical I: The Theory and Practice of Feminist Auto/biography, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1992 Stephen, Leslie, “National Biography” in his Studies of a Biographer, vol. 1, London: Duckworth, and New York: Putnam, 1898 Stauffer, Donald A., The Art of Biography in Eighteenth-Century England, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, and London: Oxford University Press, 1941 Stewart, J.I.M., “Biography” in The Craft of Letters in England: A Symposium, edited by J. Lehmann, London: Cresset Press, 1956; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957 Thayer, William R., The Art of Biography, New York: Scribner, 1920

Autobiography and the Essay The autobiographical essay may be viewed either as a kind of essay recounting some part of the writer’s own life or as a short autobiography having the character of an essay. Both approaches disclose the formal tensions shaping autobiographical essays: their participation in two genres – autobiography and essay – that, although traditionally distinguished, are here so joined as to foreground the historical instability and dynamism of each. Although autobiographical essays are to be found occasionally among the works of earlier writers, their proliferation is largely a 20th-century phenomenon. The term itself appears only at mid-century, despite the much earlier establishment of its components, “essay” (about 1600) and “autobiography” (about 1800). Earlier writers sometimes use the term “autobiographical sketch” for short self narratives that lack the ruminative texture of essays (e.g. Sir Thomas Bodley’s “Life”, 1609), as well as for essay-length texts that, from a contemporary standpoint, look like genuine autobiographical essays (e.g. Abraham Cowley’s “Of Myself”, 1668). Only in recent years has the autobiographical essay begun to assume theoretical status as an essay “type” which, though often incorporating features of other types (e.g. the travel essay, the moral essay, the critical essay), is marked by its focus on retrospection and remembrance (Good, 1988). As modern practices, both autobiography and the essay have their roots in the European Renaissance and enact that cultural epoch’s reconception of the individual life. Autobiography may be understood as a confluence of traditions whose characteristic

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modes are narrative: allegory, hagiography, and history, specifically biography. The essay, whose matrix is meditative and epistolary, has formal affinities with the thematizing schemata of commonplace books. If both autobiography and the essay are, broadly speaking, genres of self-representation, it is the culturally and historically variable impetus to recount the writer’s own life that informs autobiography, and it is the projection of the writer’s point of view – the reflective and often reflexive gaze provisionally shaping observation and experience – that directs the essay. The autobiographical essay, then, may be viewed as a practice at the intersection of autobiography and essay, a movement between the narratively self-centred imperatives of the former and the worldly discursiveness of the latter. Alfred Kazin’s much-cited delineation in The Open Form: Essays for Our Time (1961) of the essay’s domain – “not the self, but the self thinking” – brings into sharp relief the problematic hybrid character of the autobiographical essay’s simultaneous concern with “the self” and “the self thinking”. The essay as autobiographical space attempts to accommodate and to bring into artful relation autobiography’s traditional search for a significant personal past and the essay’s more or less self-conscious immersion in the pleasures and aporias of writing as such. Certain well-known autobiographical essays assume their very form through the negotiative processes entailed in this accommodation. Thus Montaigne’s “De l’exercitation” (1588; “Of Practice”) embeds a self-revising piecemeal account of an accident in an expanding self-meditation; Walter Benjamin’s Berliner Chronik (1970; A Berlin Chronicle) configures the life of childhood as personal and cultural topography; Virginia Woolf’s “A Sketch of the Past” (written 1939–40) juxtaposes then and now in an ever-shifting and evolving retrospective framework; Katherine Anne Porter’s “St. Augustine and the Bullfight” (1955) interweaves a continually deferred autobiographical anecdote with digressive speculation about the autobiographical act itself; Yukio Mishima’s Taiyo to tetsu (1968; Sun and Steel ) joins reminiscence and confession to literary and social commentary in a discourse that calls itself “confidential criticism”. More typically, the task of recounting the writer’s life in the span of an essay, within that genre’s conventions of fragmentariness and provisionality, is achieved through various narrative foreshortenings and dispersals. Thus, autobiographical essays may scale down the amplitude of a life by narrowing the retrospective gaze to a single significant experience, as in Washington Irving’s “The Voyage” (1819), William Hazlitt’s “My First Acquaintance with Poets” (1823), G.K. Chesterton’s “A Piece of Chalk” (1905), George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” (1936), W.E.B. Du Bois’s “The Guilt of the Cane” (1948), and Graham Greene’s “The Revolver in the Corner Cupboard” (1951); or by focusing on a formative stage of the writer’s life, and the places and people associated with it, as in Thomas De Quincey’s “The English Mailcoach” (1849), T.H. Huxley’s “Autobiography” (1889), W.B. Yeats’s Reveries over Childhood and Youth (1915), Eudora Welty’s “A Sweet Devouring” (1957), Wallace Stegner’s “The Town Dump” (1959), Nadine Gordimer’s “A Bolter and the Invincible Summer” (1963), and Shiva Naipaul’s “Beyond the Dragon’s Mouth” (1984). Most commonly, autobiographical essays tend to limit scope by pondering some aspect or crux of the writer’s creative, social, or spiritual existence, e.g. Jonathan Edwards’s “Personal Narrative” (1765), David Hume’s “My Own Life”

(originally published as The Life of David Hume written by Himself, 1777), Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” (1928), F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Crack-Up” (1936), Elizabeth Bowen’s “Out of a Book” (1950), Margaret Laurence’s “Where the World Began” (1971), and Alice Walker’s “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self” (1983). This approach has had particular appeal for distinguished writers in languages other than English, as exemplified by Lev Tolstoi’s “Ispoved’” (written 1779; “A Confession”), Ernest Renan’s “St. Renan” (1883), Franz Kafka’s “Brief an den Vater” (written 1919; “Letter to His Father”), Thomas Mann’s “Okkulte Erlebnisse” (1924; “An Experience in the Occult”), Albert Camus’s “La Mort dans l’âme” (1937; “Death in the Soul”), Jerzy Stempowski’s “Ksiegozbiór przemypników” (1948; “The Smugglers’ Library”), Christa Wolf’s “Blickwechsel” (1970; “Changing Viewpoint”), and José Donoso’s Historia personal del “boom” (1971; The Boom in Spanish American Literature: A Personal History). In all such instances it may be said that, even as autobiography urges its quest for the self as life story upon the essay, so, in turn, the essay conducts that quest on a scale suitable to its own rhetorical nature. Nowhere is this generic transaction more intricately sustained than in the autobiographical book composed as a series of separately titled, and sometimes independently published, pieces, e.g. Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory (1951; 1966), Sara Suleri’s Meatless Days (1989), and Tobias Wolff’s In Pharaoh’s Army (1994); a notable early example is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (1782; Reveries of a Solitary Walker). While chapters that make up such books work as essays, their internal resonances, thematic coalescences, and cumulative effects create the amplitude, if not the continuity, of autobiography. Beyond all such patently autobiographical essays lies a large body of texts which, while drawing upon autobiographical material, subordinate narrative to wide-ranging speculation. Most of Montaigne’s Essais (1580, 1588) belong here, as do the “Meditations” of John Donne’s Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624), and, among later writers in English, William Hazlitt’s miscellaneous essays, much of Washington Irving’s Sketchbook (1819), William Makepeace Thackeray’s Roundabout Papers (1863), and countless 20th-century essays traditionally labelled “familiar” or “informal”. Indeed, self-narrative may recede to the vanishing point in such works that are, nonetheless, deeply self-revelatory and / or passionately apologetic (e.g. Henry David Thoreau’s “Life without Principle”, 1863; Robert Louis Stevenson’s “An Apology for Idlers”, 1876; or E.M. Forster’s “What I Believe”, 1939). The strongly personal character of such essays suggests deep affinities with autobiography as a mode of self-location; at the same time, it raises difficult, if highly productive, questions about the relationship between the autobiographical essay and what throughout this century (at least as far back as Virginia Woolf’s 1905 piece, “The Decay of Essay Writing”) has been termed “the personal essay”. From one standpoint, the emergence and modern flowering of the autobiographical essay appears as a specialization of this broader “type” in which the writer’s perspective and sensibility (what writers such as Woolf called “personality”) move into the foreground. On this account, the autobiographical essay represents the most focused historical enactment of the antisystematic and anti-institutional tendencies that have marked

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the essay since its beginnings. Thus, in the context of 20thcentury preoccupations, at all levels of cultural experience, with diversity and difference, the old Renaissance questions of knowledge and authority express themselves in the autobiographical essay as negotiations of the historically and discursively situated self – the body that writes. But what if, like many writers and readers, past and present, we regard the “personal” as characterizing not a certain range of essays but the essay genre as a whole? To appreciate the persistence of this view one need only observe how widespread in the critical and pedagogic literature has been the sometimes deliberate, sometimes inadvertent, conflation of the terms “personal essay” and “essay”, no doubt because of the normative sway of Montaigne’s eminently “personal” – some would say “autobiographical” – Essais over the genre’s dispersed and multifarious practices. The theoretical implications of this terminological slippage for both traditions, autobiography and essay, are considerable. Scholars such as Hugo Friedrich (Montaigne, 1949) and Michel Beaujour (The Poetics of the Literary SelfPortrait, 1980) read Montaigne’s influential work not as autobiography but as self-writing of a kind that Beaujour terms “autoportrait” (a genre that might claim such postmodern texts as roland BARTHES par roland barthes, 1975). Suppose, however, that the autobiographical mark of Montaigne’s essays is their recounting not of the writer’s “life”, as a past of the recollected, but of the autobiographical act per se, as selfinscriptive process; the autobiographical essay, in this view, opens the door to a kind of meta-story. Thus the status we assign to Montaigne’s Essais positions our conception of both autobiography and the essay as discourses of the “personal” and frames our theoretical accounts of such salient notions as “narrative” and “self”. In its academically transgressive guise as “autobiographical” or “personal” or “narrative” criticism, the contemporary autobiographical essay engages these and other issues, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, and demonstrates yet again the protean energies of the two genres in which it participates. Lydia Fakundiny Further Reading Anderson, Chris (editor), Literary Nonfiction: Theory, Criticism, Pedagogy, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989 Butrym, Alexander J. (editor), Essays on the Essay: Redefining the Genre, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989 DeObaldia, Claire, The Essayistic Spirit: Literature, Modern Criticism, and the Essay, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995 Fakundiny, Lydia (editor), The Art of the Essay, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991 (anthology) Freedman, Diane et al. (editors), The Intimate Critique: Autobiographical Literary Criticism, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1993 Good, Graham, The Observing Self: Rediscovering the Essay, London and New York: Routledge, 1988 Good, Graham, “Identity and Form in the Modern Autobiographical Essay”, Prose Studies, 15/1 (1992): 99–117 Peterson, Linda, “Gender and the Autobiographical Essay: Research, Perspectives, Pedagogical Practices”, College Composition and Communication, 42 (May 1991): 171–93 Sayre, Robert F. (editor), American Lives: An Anthology of Autobiographical Writings, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994 “Terms of Identity: Essays on the Theoretical Terminology of LifeWriting”, special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 10/1 (1995)

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Autobiography and Fiction see Autofiction; The Bildungsroman; The I-Novel

Autobiography and Poetry Many think of poetry as directly autobiographical. This readerly expectation is particularly true of lyrical poetry, which is so often in the first person and typically deals with subjective states and personal predicaments. Thus when we read the fragments of Sappho’s verse or the erotic poems of Catullus, when we read Shakespeare’s sonnets or T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, we may feel as if we are reading direct accounts of their lived experience. However, such an assumption is dangerous because poets, unless they spell out alternative intentions, have always worked to create a convincing artifact for the imagination. They may well take personal incidents or personal feelings as a starting point but will change and develop these as the poem takes on its distinctive form. Indeed, while Shakespeare’s or John Donne’s love-sonnets, for example, have often been read as autobiographical, we can infer almost nothing about the poets’ own personal relationships from these writings. At most, one could argue that they aim to create a telling illusion of autobiography and of self-expression. In considering the subject of autobiography in poetry, therefore, this essay makes reference only to those poems that are consciously presented to the reader or listener as autobiography – that is to say where the “I” of the poem is seen to relate unambiguously to the actual “I” of the writer. One of the first major verse autobiographies in Western culture, in this strict sense, is Dante’s La vita nuova (The New Life). This was written around 1292–94, some four years after the death of Dante’s great love Beatrice, when the poet was about 30 years of age. The work, consisting of a series of sonnets and canzoni with a prose commentary, was written not in Latin, but in his Tuscan vernacular, and formed a public epistle to his older fellow poet and friend, Cavalcanti. The narrative of the book concerns the inner and linear progression of Dante’s understanding of erotic love. The volume is best envisaged as an autobiographical apologia where the poet, taking his own experience and showing how it was given definition in his own poetry, challenges the tradition of tragic love and troubadour rhetoric. Through personal testimony, drawing on his remembered experience – of events, of speculations, of dreams, of fantasies and visions – Dante is saying to Cavalcanti: “This, my friend, on the pulse of my own experience, is what true love signifies.” Strangely, this important piece of poetic and theological apologia, mixing prose and poetry into a single argument, created no tradition of autobiographical exegesis among later poets. Perhaps the most ambitious autobiography using poetry exclusively as its medium is Wordsworth’s The Prelude with its significant subtitle Growth of a Poet’s Mind. It was written during the years 1798–1805 and, with multiple revisions to the first version, was first published in 1850, shortly after Wordsworth’s death. This long autobiographical poem could not be more unlike Dante’s La vita nuova except that, like so much autobiographical poetry, it was written for a close friend.

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(Dante’s book addressed the poet Cavalcanti; Wordsworth’s addressed the poet Coleridge.) The Prelude is concerned to demonstrate a progressive movement from one level of consciousness to another, from the intense engagement of childhood to the reflective understanding of maturity as the older self remembers its former spontaneous experience. The Prelude contains some of the greatest poetry written by Wordsworth in its narration of his development as a poet. Without doubt, the most memorable autobiographical passages relate to his vivid memories as a child – for example, stealing the eggs of a raven, taking a small boat out onto the lake, skating in the winter on ice. These are some of the most linguistically embodied autobiographical passages of poetic re-creation in the English language. However, the poem is intended to be a monumental ars poetica, a personal plotting of the relationship between God, nature, humanity, and the poet, as well as a celebration of the lyrical power of memory; in this latter aspect it has much in common with Augustine’s Confessions (written 397–400ce) and Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27). For all its defects (it is tendentious, there is too much self-regard, and there is a profound failure of poetic verve in the later sections of the book) Wordsworth’s poem – both in its original 1805 edition and in its much-reworked 1850 version – stands as a unique landmark in the history of autobiography. In the 19th century the American poet Walt Whitman attempted Wordsworth’s sublime aim to write an epic autobiographical poem in verse. In 1855 Whitman published Leaves of Grass, which he continued to revise and re-publish during the course of his life, the first part of which was later to be titled Song of Myself. The poem, in contrast to the regular iambic pentameter used by Wordsworth, was composed in sprawling free verse, its cadences deeply influenced by the King James version of the Bible. There is, though, an enormous gap between the two autobiographical projects; where in Wordsworth the “I” of the poem refers to the individual author moving through life from childhood, to youth, to adulthood in the span of the prototypical autobiographical narrative, in Whitman the “I” refers to the author in a much more expansive, cosmic role. (The first edition of Leaves of Grass has an engraving of him – bearded, casual, a hand on his hip, a man of the people.) The “I” in Whitman is presented as a god-like celebrant of the immediate moment and of the mystical meanings that lie vibrating within it. And the book has for its immediate audience not an intimate friend, but the emerging people of the new democracy of the United States. It is an extraordinary literary experiment in what might be best termed cosmic autobiography. It could be compared to the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “The Wreck of the Deutschland” (written in 1875) in which, in another remarkably innovative poem, the author places his own life in a similarly vast perspective. There have been many other significant autobiographical poems and sequences of poems – poems, that is to say, where the author denotes a clear referential connection between the drama of the work and the drama of his or her own life. Any list would have to include the following: Basil Bunting’s Briggflatts (1966), F.T. Prince’s Memoirs in Oxford (1970), many of the poems in Seamus Heaney’s Death of a Naturalist (1966), Douglas Dunn’s Elegies (1985), Tony Harrison’s poems of class struggle and identity in From the School of Eloquence and Other Poems (1978), Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals (1980), Jackie Kay’s

The Adoption Papers (1991), Thom Gunn’s The Man with Night Sweats (1992; in the acknowledgements the autobiographical element is declared and the names of some of those who died are listed), and Ted Hughes’s Birthday Letters (1998). No account of poetry and autobiography would be complete without mention of what has come to be known as “confessional” poetry. It has been claimed that confessional poetry began in America on the evening of 18 November 1953. On that evening, at a concert, the poet W.D. Snodgrass scribbled the opening lines of the autobiographical sequence that was to be published as Heart’s Needle in 1959. The book, openly portraying the break-up of his own marriage, was to exert a strong influence. Even more seminal were the poems, published in the same year, by Robert Lowell under the title Life Studies. These poems mercilessly exposed the author’s background and his own severe psychological breakdown. The volumes by Snodgrass and Lowell together created a revolution in poetry. What was espoused was nothing less than the most direct writing from inner trauma, states of stress, and extreme dislocation. A series of acclaimed confessional volumes quickly followed: Anne Sexton’s To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960), John Berryman’s 77 Dream Songs (1964; as The Dream Songs, 1969), and Sylvia Plath’s Ariel (1965). Much contemporary poetry still occupies the febrile space opened up by these confessional poets. From the 1970s onwards, politically motivated poets, particularly feminist and black writers such as Sharon Olds and Alicia Ostriker, have drawn on the confessional model to suggest the more public and social articulations of trauma as the wellspring of poetry. The polemical concerns as well as the aesthetic complexity of such writing remind us that we must be on our guard against reading such confessional poetry as straight autobiography. We are only entitled to make that connection when the author explicitly invites us to connect the words on the page with the actual lived experience of the author. For if all poetry is seen as autobiography, then the category forfeits its power of differentiated meaning. Peter Abbs Further Reading Selected Poetry: Berryman, John, 77 Dream Songs, London: Faber, 1964; as The Dream Songs, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1969 Blain, Virginia, Caroline Bowles Southey: The Making of a Woman Poet, Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 1998 (includes text of Southey’s autobiographical poem The Birthday, 1836) Bunting, Basil, Briggflatts, London: Fulcrum Press, 1966 Dante, Alighieri, La vita nuova, translated by Barbara Reynolds, London and Baltimore: Penguin, 1969 Dunn, Douglas, Elegies, London and Boston: Faber, 1985 Gunn, Thom, The Man with Night Sweats, London: Faber, and New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1992 Harrison, Tony, Selected Poems, London: Penguin, and New York: Viking Press, 1984 Heaney, Seamus, Death of a Naturalist, London: Faber, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1966 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, Poems and Prose, introduced by W.H. Gardner, London: Penguin, 1958; Baltimore: Penguin, 1963 Hughes, Ted, Birthday Letters, London: Faber, and New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1998 Lowell, Robert, Life Studies, London: Faber, and New York: Farrar Straus Cudahy, 1959 Plath, Sylvia, Ariel, London: Faber, and New York: Perennial Library, 1965

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Prince, F.T., Memoirs in Oxford, London: Fulcrum Press, 1970 Sexton, Anne, Selected Poems of Anne Sexton, edited by Diane Wood Middlebrook and Diana Hume George, London: Virago Press, 1991 Snodgrass, W.D., Heart’s Needle, New York: Knopf, 1959; Hessle, Yorkshire: Marvell Press, 1960 Whitman, Walt, Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition, edited by Malcolm Cowley, New York: Viking Press, 1959; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986 Wordsworth, William, The Prelude: A Parallel Text, edited by J.C. Maxwell, London: Penguin, 1971; revised edition, London: Penguin, and New York: Viking Press, 1972

Analysis: Abbs, Peter, The Polemics of Imagination: Selected Essays on Art, Culture and Society, London: Skoob, 1996 Abrams, M.H., The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, London: Oxford University Press, 1953; New York: Norton, 1958 Abrams, M.H., Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, London: Oxford University Press, and New York: Norton, 1971 Arac, Jonathan, Critical Genealogies: Historical Situations for Postmodern Literary Studies, New York: Columbia University Press, 1978, pp. 57–81 Egan, Susanna, Patterns of Experience in Autobiography, Chapel Hill: Univeristy of North Carolina Press, 1984 Jay, Peter, Being in the Text: Self Representation from Wordsworth to Roland Barthes, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1984 Olney, James (editor), Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972 Olney, James (editor), Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Ostriker, Alicia Suskin, Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America, London: Women’s Press, 1986

Autoethnography Autoethnography is a term employed in recent postcolonial, multicultural, anthropological, and folkloric theorizing for hybrid texts that combine autobiographical and ethnographic writing practices. It situates the writer in, and through, a social milieu, or ethnos, that is irreducibly tied to the subject it constructs. Autoethnography is practised by subjects who are “unauthorized” in the autobiographical tradition, who implicitly interrogate its norms. Autoethnographic writers understand identity as collective or transindividual, located at a complex “contact zone” between metropolitan and indigenous sites, and as a métissage that braids together multiple, disparate discourses. Conceptually, they challenge the account of autobiography as a Western master narrative that was proposed by Georges Gusdorf, who asserted that “it is obvious that autobiography is not possible in a cultural landscape where consciousness of self does not, properly speaking, exist”. And, if non-Europeans write an autobiography, “those men [sic] will thereby have been annexed by a sort of intellectual colonizing to a mentality that was not their own”. Autoethnography situates self-presentation through the representation of the subject’s historically mis- or unremembered group; it reads the individual through a “synecdochic model” as a part of a collectivity, often one whose membership has been transmitted orally over generations (see Krupat). In “The Autobiography of Those Who Do Not Write”,

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Philippe Lejeune explores a version of this as “auto-ethnology” in memoirs of the French workers’ movement. The writer of such texts interiorizes a collective history “split between speech and writing”, thereby playing two roles, as worker and as author, either of which may predominate. Lejeune characterizes this as a situation in which the subject “is his own informer … whose plan in writing is to construct his identity”. Reinscribing the investigator–informant relationship in this interior process, Lejeune suggests that autoethnology may shore up the collective memory of a reading public or contribute to its willed amnesia through an “ethnological gap”. Autoethnography has a double history as critical theory, in anthropology and the social sciences since the 1980s, and as textual practice in writing and the visual arts throughout the 20th century in texts usually called autobiographical. Within anthropology the terms of debate have been differently inflected than in literary study. The postmodernist critique of anthropological method and its object of study was waged by Clifford Geertz, James Clifford, George Marcus, Michael Taussig, Michael M.J. Fischer, and others in the 1980s. Such central concepts as participant observation, the investigator–informant relationship, and fieldwork itself were deconstructed in this reinterpretation of the ethnographic project. In summarizing these debates, the anthropologist Deborah Reed Danahay has proposed a model of autoethnography as “a form of self-narrative that places the self within a social context … [It is] both a method and a text” performed by either an anthropologist doing “home” or “native” ethnography, a non-ethnographer, or an autobiographer situating a personal story in the story of the social context of its occurrence. She locates autoethnography at the boundary of three genres: “native anthropology”, in which informants write studies of their own groups; the “ethnic autobiography” of those in ethnic minority groups; and “autobiographical ethnography”, the ethnographic writing of anthropologists leavened with their personal experience. A boundary-crossing practice, autoethnography rewrites the self and the social through each other. While anthropologists place the ethnographic exchange between investigator and informant at the centre of autoethnography, theorists of autobiography have emphasized processes of writing and the formation of subjectivity. In autobiography studies, autoethnography emerged as a theoretical term in the analyses of the critics Françoise Lionnet and Mary Louise Pratt in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Both critics analysed a range of colonial and postcolonial first-person narratives situated at multiple cultural boundaries between metropolitan and local languages, oral and written modes of storytelling, individual and collective modes of self-presentation, and national and indigenous identities. Lionnet notes Fernando Ortiz’s use of autoethnography to explore the assimilation of Afro-Cuban culture into Hispanic culture, emphasizing the dialectical movement that writers make between cultures as they create a braiding of disparate discourses that does not privilege one over the other. The terms of subjectivity become pluralistic and transnational, oscillating between voicing and writing autobiography, as in the “anarchic” style of Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road (1942) or the francophone narratives of Maryse Condé. Pratt proposes a concept of autoethnography. She describes autoethnographic acts as “instances in which colonized subjects

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undertake to represent themselves in ways that engage with the colonizer’s own terms”. As counter-narratives that engage and interrogate Western discourses of truth and identity, autoethnographies occur at a “contact zone” that is geographic, linguistic, and cultural. The testimonio produced by Rigoberta Menchú with Burgos-Debray and other collaborators exemplifies for Pratt the complex processes of this transcription, circulation, and reception of autoethnography. Menchú presents herself ethnographically as a member of a community held together by ritual practices and traditional beliefs, but also as a self-conscious “I” able to parody ethnographic conventions; she is both a politicized representative of her community and an individual narrating a tragic personal story of suppressed desire in service to it. Many other literary critics in the 1990s have theorized autoethnography. Alice Deck characterized the autobiographies of Hurston (Dust Tracks on a Road) and the South African writer Noni Jabavu, in Drawn in Colour (1960) and The Ochre People (1963), as autoethnographic. In such texts “the traditional historical frame of autobiography is minimized or jettisoned; … instead the continuous present typical of ethnography and travel writing … coincides with the ‘narrator as eyewitness’ posture”. Deck emphasizes the bicultural identities and multiple subject positions that Hurston and Jabavu stake out and their projects of comparing the ethnic community of origin with the white community of education to display the humanity of the indigenous community to an international audience. Other studies of autoethnography construct a bridge between literary and ethnographic theorizing. Kamala Visweswaran proposes the concept of “hyphenated ethnography” to describe how autobiographers negotiate “the terms between shifting alliances” as they alternate between “speaking for” and “speaking from” groups of national or cultural identity. Caren Kaplan builds on Visweswaran’s reading of autoethnography in interpreting it as an “outlaw genre” of the master narrative of autobiography that “requires radical revisions of notions of individual authorship and authenticity” in “models of multiracial, multinational, multiethnic, and polysexual struggle”. Anne Goldman understands autoethnography as a hybrid genre produced by the “pressures ethnography exerts upon [the] desire … to speak autobiographically” in the writings of workingclass, ethnic-minority American women as they develop innovative texts that interweave social engagement and personal history. Autoethnographers such as Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, Cleofas Jaramillo, and Fabiola Cabeza de Baca in their cookbooks and Rose Pesotta in her labour-organizing narrative inscribe personal stories within everyday forms to both use and critique the ethnographic scripts that had historically effaced them. The Chippewa writer Gerald Vizenor has developed a mode of autoethnography in his mixed-blood writing of memory that intends to “loosen the seams in the shrouds of identities”. His trickster figure is “a transitive contradancer between communal tribal cultures … and urban pretensions that counter conservative traditions”. Vizenor’s autocriticism recrosses boundaries between dominant and indigenous practices of telling and remembering to reactivate and give voice to cultural memory even as he critiques any simple insider–outsider distinction. Two prime autoethnographic texts in the United States are the aforementioned Dust Tracks on a Road (1942) and Richard

Wright’s Black Boy (1945; the second part, American Hunger, was first published in 1977). Although Wright was critical of Hurston’s use of folk ethnography to represent African Americans collectively, both located their narrative “I” at an intersection of raced histories and practices, pointing at the mutual construction of otherness in social and self-formation. Both take the demeaning epithets used to characterize them – “boy”, “lady’s maid” – as a category of social identity to be redefined. Hurston, who trained as an anthropologist under Franz Boas at Columbia University, began her narrative of family and her African American town of Eatonville, Florida, with a collection of sayings, songs, and stories that, to paraphrase her, put the tongue in her mouth. Her narrating “I” is inextricable from the group she studies; she is both informant and ethnographer in the conversations, brawls, and rituals she records. Although Wright emphasizes his difference from others as an isolated protagonist in rural Mississippi and urban Chicago, he also inscribes his subject within the terms of race, class, region, and ideology. The boy narrator, distancing himself from his hostile family, neighbours, and the whites for whom he works, constructs an oppositional subjectivity to navigate the colour line. Hurston and Wright re-read growing up in the rural South as a dialogic process, which threatened yet also motivated their identityformation as accomplished writers. Many life stories of indigenous people, such as Native Americans, are also situated at such racial or cultural contact zones, though, as Arnold Krupat suggests, only “autobiographies by Indians” are autoethnographic. Life stories by bicultural American writers such as Zitkala Sa, William Apes, Sarah Winnemucca, N. Scott Momaday, and Leslie Marmon Silko frame a personal self within the terms of a collective, communal identity. By contrast, “Indian autobiographies”, such as Black Elk Speaks (1932), are told by indigenous people to someone from outside who elicits the story, often in conventional anthropological categories and with a third party, the translator, as ethnographic works (see Krupat). Canadian and Australian indigenous works may be framed in similar terms. As Hertha D. Sweet Wong has argued, such identities are irreducibly communal, even when spoken in a single voice. But the narratives of multicultural American subjects telling of cultural encounters are not necessarily autoethnographic. Many immigrant narratives, for example, are ethnic autobiographies celebrating an individual’s discovery of, accession to, and place within the new nation, as Betty Bergland has shown. Norma Cantú’s Canícula or Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory (1981) in different ways constitute such communities. Autoethnography, by contrast, questions the postulation of a coherent community from the perspective of a narrator whose identities are multiple, differently constructed, and incompatible. For example, Cherríe Moraga’s Loving in the War Years (1983) presents her affiliations – with Los Angeles Chicanas, lesbian feminists, the mixed-ancestry family in which she identifies as a woman and disidentifies as a daughter – as heterogeneous and contested, not complementary. Transculturating these shifting identifications, she resists each particular one. Much African life writing of the first postcolonial generation is also autoethnographic. In it, writers use the terms of metropolitan subjectivity and nation to contest those of local and ethnic affiliation, complicated by questions of language, syntax,

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writing, publication, and reception. In Senegal, for example, Nafissatou Diallo’s A Dakar Childhood (in French as De Tilène au plateau, 1975) is an insider–outsider narrative written in French, the colonial language, but embedded in local Dakar festivals, Wolof proverbs, and Islamic rituals and strictures. Ken Bugul’s The Abandoned Baobab (in French, 1984) suggests the impossibility of assimilated identity by representing the differential structures of temporality she experienced in late colonialism: from the ahistorical flow of life in the village to the progressive clock time of Brussels to the associational flood of memories of a lost mother and mother country. A South African autobiographical narrative such as J.M. Coetzee’s Boyhood (1997) presents autoethnography as a negotiation of clashing political and linguistic communities. The narrator critiques his young self’s uneasy assumption of dominance as Afrikaans in his identification with English educational values, fascination with Soviet politics, attraction to Catholicism, and eroticization of the “coloured” children with whom he is prohibited from playing. But the adult narrator reads the apartheid South African state of 1948 as less a nation than an occupying force. Similarly, the Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga, in Nervous Conditions (1988), exploring contradictory identificatory possibilities under colonialism, recasts her life story as a novel to indicate the collective nature of struggles of gender, race, class, and land politics. Discussions of autoethnography might include the case study, in which an individual takes her- or himself as exemplary and makes a life narrative emblematic of the untold story of a larger social group. Carolyn Steedman in Landscape for a Good Woman (1986) rewrites the materialist histories of the working class that dominated 20th-century British sociology but erased the meanings of the lives of women and children. In Head above Water (1986) Buchi Emecheta studies herself as an immigrant single mother in council flats in London rewriting the narrative of depressed, female-headed African families. As a case worker she narrates her success in resolving her own “case”. Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted (1993) pursues another kind of case study, assembling a diverse cast of characters in the “parallel universe” of a mental hospital. Documenting the stages of her hospitalization with official forms, she is authorized to speak both for, and on behalf of, those unable to tell their stories of marginalization. Life writing may also use ethnographic categories strategically to embed personal trauma in a socio-historical context. In Shame (1998) Annie Ernaux situates her childhood memory of a primal scene, her father’s attempt to kill her mother, within an extended ethnographic recollection of contexts of her childhood: I have … to explore the laws, rites, beliefs and references that defined the circles in which I was caught up – school, family, small-town life … [and] expose the different languages that made up my personality … I shall process [those images] like documents … I shall carry out an ethnological study of myself. Autoethnography becomes a means of recasting her narrative against a psychoanalytic reading of personal trauma, an aidemémoire. The West African filmmaker and critic Manthia Diawara, in

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In Search of Africa (1998), extends the use of autoethnography, combining the discourses of the Sartrean “situation”, criticism of African American memoirists, and a personal narrative of return to Africa in search of a childhood friend. In his autoethnographic film Rouch in Reverse (1995), he uses “reverse anthropology”, the study by subjects of ethnographic investigation of their former investigators, to interview the ethnographer Jean Rouch. Both an observer of and participant in African identity politics, Diawara makes the logic of his autoethnography clear: “I wanted to pass through Rouch in order to render visible new African voices and images: the ones that defy stereotype and primitivism”. The use of autoethnography in visual life histories has been increasingly recognized. Frida Kahlo’s painting My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (1936) embeds her infant selfportrait in her mixed European-Tehuana family’s genealogy, as Diego Rivera’s murals monumentally situate the present in Mexico’s indigenous past generations. Faith Ringgold’s multimedia quilts layer paint, fabric, and writing to narrate her own origins, through the coming of Africans to American shores, as both enslavement and rebirth. Carmen Lomas Garza uses paintings of her family engaged in preparing Tejano food to show how her own identity is embedded in their social traditions. The narration of these lives in a multigenerational, transnational context reinterprets Gusdorf’s individual “consciousness of self” as one irreducibly inscribed in communal practices and affiliations. Assessing the impact of these disparate autoethnographic texts throughout the 20th century on theorizing autobiography is a project for productive future research. Julia Watson See also Africa: Oral Life Stories; Anthropology and Life Writing; Ethnicity, Race, and Life Writing; Ethnography; Oral History; Orality; Personal Narrative

Further Reading Bergland, Betty, “Postmodernism and the Autobiographical Subject: Reconstructing the ‘Other’” in Autobiography & Postmodernism, edited by Kathleen Ashley, Leigh Gilmore and Gerald Peters, Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1994 Bugul, Ken, The Abandoned Baobab: The Autobiography of a Senegalese Woman, translated by Marjolijn de Jager, Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill, 1992 (French edition, 1984) Coetzee, J.M., Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life, London: Secker and Warburg, and New York: Viking Press, 1997 Dangarembga, Tsitsi, Nervous Conditions, London: Women’s Press, 1988; Seattle: Seal Press, 1989 Deck, Alice, “Autoethnography: Zora Neale Hurston, Noni Jabavu, and Cross-Disciplinary Discourse”, Black American Literary Forum, 24/2 (1990): 237–56 Diallo, Nafissatou, A Dakar Childhood, translated by Dorothy Blair, London: Longman, 1982 (French edition 1975) Diawara, Manthia, In Search of Africa, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998 Emecheta, Buchi, Head above Water, London: Ogwugwo Afo, 1986; Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1994 Ernaux, Annie, Shame, translated by Tanya Leslie, New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998 (French edition 1997) Goldman, Anne E., Take My Word: Autobiographical Innovations of Ethnic American Working Women, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996 Gusdorf, Georges, “Conditions and Limits of Autobiography” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by James Olney, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980

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Hurston, Zora Neale, Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1942 Kaplan, Caren, “Resisting Autobiography: Outlaw Genres and Transnational Feminist Subjects” in De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography, edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992 Kaysen, Susanna, Girl, Interrupted, New York: Random House, 1993 Krupat, Arnold, “Native American Autobiography and the Synecdochic Self” in American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect, edited by Paul John Eakin, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991 Lejeune, Philippe, “The Autobiography of Those Who Do Not Write” in his On Autobiography, edited by Paul John Eakin, translated by Katherine Leary, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989 Lionnet, Françoise, Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, SelfPortraiture, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1989 Lionnet, Françoise, Postcolonial Representations: Women, Literature, Identity, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1995 Moraga, Cherríe, Loving in the War Years, Boston: South End Press, 1983 Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London and New York: Routledge, 1992 Pratt, Mary Louise, “Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú: Autoethnography and the Recoding of Citizenship” in Teaching and Testimony: Rigoberta Menchú and the American Classroom, edited by Allen Carey-Webb and Stephen Berg, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995 Reed-Danahay, Deborah, introduction to Auto/ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social, edited by Reed-Danahay, Oxford and New York: Berg, 1997 Steedman, Carolyn, Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives, London: Virago Press, and New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1986 Visweswaran, Kamala, Fictions of Feminist Ethnography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994 Vizenor, Gerald, “Crows Written on the Poplars: Autocritical Autobiographies” in I Tell You Now: Autobiographical Essays by Native American Writers, edited by Brian Swann and Arnold Krupat, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987 Warren, Kay B., “Narrating Cultural Resurgence: Genre and SelfRepresentation for Pan-Mayan Writers” in Auto/ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social, edited by Deborah Reed-Danahay, Oxford and New York: Berg, 1997 Wong, Hertha D. Sweet, “First-Person Plural: Subjectivity and Community in Native American Women’s Autobiography” in Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998 Wright, Richard, Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth, New York: Harper, 1945

Autofiction Sometimes considered to cover the spectrum of autobiographical fiction, the French term autofiction more properly describes one of the forms taken by autobiographical writing at a time of severely diminished faith in the power of memory and language to access definitive truths about the past or the self. The notion of autofiction first emerged explicitly in France in the mid-1970s as part of a revival of autobiography at the level of both practice and theory. A new constellation took shape with the publication of Roland Barthes’s roland BARTHES par roland barthes (1975; Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes), Georges Perec’s W ou le souvenir d’enfance (1975; W or The Memory of Childhood), Patrick Modiano’s Livret de famille [1977; Family Record], and Serge Doubrovsky’s Fils [1977; Son / Sons /

Threads]. The key feature shared by these works is probably best characterized as their promotion of act-value at the expense of truth-value within the set of parameters considered effective in determining autobiography’s generic force. For the purveyor of traditional truth-value, the ideal autobiography is a transparent medium, a window on the past. The parameters of actvalue, on the other hand, stress that autobiography is “a personal performance” (see Bruss). On this understanding, the window turns into both a mirror and a scene of writing. The further one pushes the cause of act-value, the less important the view – or at least the clarity of the view – beyond the window. Thus the ebbing of confidence in truth-value, and the corresponding growth of investment in act-value, lead to a situation in which fiction is no longer automatically regarded as the other or outside of autobiography; indeed, it is no longer automatically regarded as the other or the outside of truth. Such is the general context in which the notion of autofiction makes its appearance. Since first being coined as a term by the French writer and critic Serge Doubrovsky in 1977, the notion of autofiction has undergone a process of generalization to a point where, despite pockets of resistance defended by the proponents of pure truthvalue, the idea that fiction and autobiography inevitably overlap has become a kind of norm shared – both within and beyond the French domain – by a significant number of writers, readers, and critics. The same strong sense of overlap applies equally to the new practices of biographical writing that have emerged over the last two decades of the 20th century, practices that have come to be characterized in France, in an obvious echo of Doubrovsky’s term, as biofictions. The term autofiction first appeared in the text of the backcover blurb of Doubrovsky’s Fils, where the author described his book as “a fiction, made from strictly real events and facts; if you like, an autofiction, for having entrusted the language of an adventure to the adventure of language, beyond any wisdom or syntax of the novel, whether traditional or new”. The reality of the real is denied in its formal realization. Language itself becomes the main event. Here Doubrovsky identifies autofiction as a subversion of the referentialist paradigm sustaining conventional auto/biographical discourse. That language can and should refer depends on the idea that there is a reasonably solid referent out there, or back there in the past, to which language can correspond: a life, a life story; a self, a self story. Doubrovsky moved on in later works to attribute fictional status to the referent itself. As he put it in Un Amour de soi [1982; A Love of Self]: “I barely exist, I am a fictional being. I am writing my own autofiction.” Doubrovsky has subsequently declared that the statement “I am a fictional being” expresses an “existential truth”, that it bears a value of “ontological” – as opposed to linguistic or merely ludic – subversion. As such, he echoes the now famous injunction with which Roland Barthes opened his self-portrait of 1975: “All this must be considered as spoken by a character in a novel.” Together, Doubrovsky and Barthes give priority in their own writing to the idea that the post-Freudian view of the subject as a destabilized agency invites new approaches to autobiographical performance, practices in which something like “fiction” would not be automatically disqualified or furtively concealed. A second factor explaining the generalization of the notion of autofiction is the broad understanding of fiction as the act, or

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the result of an act, of making (as opposed to making up). Remobilized by our contemporary sense of the heterogeneity of language and world, this broad sense of the word fiction is more and more understood to be commensurate with all acts of textualization or narrativization, regardless of generic or modal distinctions and notwithstanding authorial intent. This broad sense of fictionality as a condition attendant on any act of putting-into-words helps to explain why writers such as Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, Jean Rouaud, Eugène Savitzkaya, and, in English, Seamus Deane, have been happy to let certain of their works be described or discussed as novels – this despite the evidently nonfictional force of the works in question, and the absence of any markers or strategies within them seriously undercutting that force. The factors outlined point to the idea that the contemporary generalization of the notion of autofiction has taken the form of an increasingly constructive paradigm. In other words, the incidence of fiction in the context of autobiography is no longer regarded as primarily subversive of that context. As we have become more and more accustomed to commuting between fiction and reality, so we have come to look for something more than just an ironic play-off between the two. Increasingly, what contemporary writing gives us is a sense of the necessity of the conjectural and conditional within the auto/biographical enterprise. As demonstrated in late 20th-century autobiographical writings in French – by the likes of Jorge Semprún, Jacques Roubaud, Béatrice de Jurquet, and Chantal Chawaf – loss, forgetting, and trauma have so disturbed the modern subject’s claim to experience that, increasingly, the only chance to retrieve or bear witness to past events appears to lie in the indirectness, or as William Maxwell would call it, the “unsupportedness”, of fiction. Johnnie Gratton See also The I-Novel

Further Reading Bruss, Elizabeth, “Eye for I: Making and Unmaking Autobiography in Film”, in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by James Olney, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Doubrovsky, Serge, Jacques Lecarme and Philippe Lejeune (editors), Autofictions & Cie, Nanterre: Université de Paris X, 1993 Eakin, Paul John, Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of SelfInvention, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985 Lecarme, Jacques, and Éliane Lecarme-Tabone, chapter on “Autofictions” in their L’Autobiographie, Paris: Armand Colin, 1997

Avila, Theresa of see Teresa of Avila, Saint Avvakum

1620–1682

Russian archpriest and autobiographer The archpriest Avvakum is not only a central figure in the religious disputes of 17th-century Russia, but also the founder of a genuinely Russian autobiographical tradition. These two

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aspects of his significance are closely intertwined. The Church reforms introduced by the patriarch Nikon (1605–81) led, in 1667, to a schism between the official Russian Orthodox clergy and the adherents to the old traditions. It would seem that the alterations were insignificant: Nikon brought the Russian Orthodox rite closer to the Byzantine by redefining such particulars as making the sign of the cross, singing, and bending during the service. Yet Nikon’s reforms met with fierce resistance from a part of the Russian population who considered that they were the work of the Antichrist. Avvakum was the ideological leader of this traditionalist party, which came to be known as the Old Believers. The official repressions against Avvakum were severe: in 1653 he was banished, together with his family, to Siberia for ten years; shortly after his return to Moscow a second exile in Mezen in the Arkhangelsk region was inflicted on him; lastly, in 1667, a church council sentenced him to imprisonment in the northernmost region of European Russia, in Pustozersk, where in 1682 he was burnt at the stake as a heretic. Avvakum wrote his autobiography while serving his sentence in Pustozersk. He conceived of it as a political epistle with the foremost aim of supporting the Old Believers’ position after the schism of 1667. This pragmatic scope determines the form of the whole text. Avvakum’s Zhitie (Life Written by Himself) is by no means a Bildungsroman. The author does not bother to describe his childhood, the formation of his personality, or his problematic existence as a dissident. He rather conceives of his own existence from the position of a religious leader whose legitimation is beyond any doubt. Two separate styles can be discerned in his autobiography: episodes from his personal life are presented in colloquial, sometimes even vulgar Russian, whereas significant events that mirror Divine Providence are worded in church Slavonic and biblical quotations. The subsequent versions of Avvakum’s text between 1669 and 1675 intensify the tendency towards self-fashioning in the manner of a saint and display an increasing use of biblical expressions. Avvakum perceives his life in terms of present martyrdom and future redemption. Accordingly, he chooses as his predecessors Job, Lazarus, and, ultimately, Christ. Avvakum resorts in his Life to hagiographical devices: many episodes are shaped after textual models from the Bible or legends. At the end of the text, the cumulative account of the various miracles and healings worked by Avvakum sums up his saintly aspirations. One should not reproach Avvakum, however, for the bending of reality. He did not intend to provide a true rendering of his life. Most of the peculiarities of his autobiography can be explained if it is interpreted as a kind of textual icon. In the Russian Orthodox tradition, Christians believe that icons are not made by human hands. The artist is not the creator of the icon, but a “translator” of the holy original. An icon is in no way meant to represent reality; it rather opens a window into eternity. The usual laws of perspective do not apply within the iconic depiction; icons have an “inverted perspective”. Strictly speaking, an icon cannot be looked at; rather, it looks at the viewer. This is also the reason why icons do not have a frame, which could delineate a semiotic borderline between art and reality. Icons translate a higher reality into human life. Avvakum’s text has a very similar hermeneutic basis. He does not conceive of himself as the author of his Life. His biography is already written by God; he only “translates” this original text into a book. The Life is not a closed text, but open in two directions: towards the heavenly

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author and towards a very concrete reader, Avvakum’s fellow inmate Epifanii. Avvakum’s autobiography functions as the medium of exchange between God and his faithful. Therefore his impressive self-awareness should not be misinterpreted as the birth of modern individuality. The contrary holds true: Avvakum aims at a typological identity with Christ, and his autobiography is not the document of a unique life, but of God’s miraculous presence in this world which finds its conclusive evidence in the archpriest’s Life. It is precisely this quality that empowers Avvakum’s autobiography to be a political pamphlet proving the truth of the Old Believer’s fight against the Nikonian reforms. The text circulated in handwritten copies in their religious community and was published only in 1861. The Life was highly esteemed among Russian writers in the 19th century: Ivan Turgenev considered Avvakum’s writings as a source of the purest Moskovian language; Lev Tolstoi used to read Avvakum’s life aloud in the circle of his family; Nikolai Leskov modelled the protagonist of his novel Soboriane (The Cathedral Folk) on him. Ulrich Schmid Biography Born in Grigorov, Russia, 25 November 1620. Married Anastasia Markovna, 1638. Became deacon, Nizhnii-Novgorod, 1642; ordained priest in Lopatishchii, 1644. First visited Moscow and met Stefan Vonifatiev, a reforming priest in the tsar’s circle, 1647 or 1648. Archpriest in Iur’evets-Povol’zhskii; headed for Moscow at the invitation of the tsar, 1652. Led the resistance to patriarch Nikon’s reforms of the Russian Orthodox liturgy, 1652–53. Was arrested, 21 August 1653; spent his first period of exile with his family in Tobolsk, then exiled to Enisseisk in the region of the River Lena in Iakutsk, summer 1655. Joined Pashkov’s expedition in Dauriia with his family. Began three years of wandering: travelled from Enisseisk to Bratskii Ostrog, then moved through the Baikal region to Lake Irgen and to Lake Ingoda. Departed from the Nerchinsk Settlement, 1662. Returned to Moscow, 1664; wrote first supplication to the tsar. Stripped of his rank and condemned by Church Council in Uspenskii Cathedral, 13 May 1666 (his family were sent away from Moscow to Mezen in the

Arkhangelsk for 18 months while he was investigated). Interrogated for the last time before being exiled to Pustozersk, August 1666. Sent to Pafnut’ev Monastery until 30 April 1667. Wrote fifth supplication to the tsar, 1669. Final exile in Pustozersk, 1672/73. Completed the Zhitie [Life], 1675. Burned at the stake in Pustozersk after 14 years of incarceration, 1682.

Selected Writings Zhitie protopopa Avvakuma, im samim napisannoe, i drugie ego sochineniia, written c.1667–75, published 1861; edited by N.K. Gudzii, 1935; as Zhitie protopopa Avvakuma, edited by V.E. Gusev, 1960; as Zhizneopisaniia Avvakuma i Epifaniia, edited by A.N. Robinson, 1963; as Zhitie protopopa Avvakuma, 1982; as The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum by Himself, translated by Jane Harrison and Hope Mirrlees, 1924; as “The Life of Archpriest Avvakum by Himself”, translated by Serge A. Zenkovsky in his Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales, 1963, revised 1974; as Archpriest Avvakum: The Life Written by Himself, edited and translated by Kenneth N. Brostrom, 1979 Pustozerskii sbornik: Avtografy sochinenii Avvakuma i Epifaniia, edited by N.S. Demkova, N.F. Droblenkova, and L.I. Sazonova, 1975

Further Reading Bortnes, Jostein, Visions of Glory: Studies in Early Russian Hagiography, translated by Jostein Bortnes and Paul L. Nielsen, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1987; Oslo: Solum, 1988 Hunt, Patricia, “The Autobiography of the Archpriest Avvakum: The Outer Limits of the Narrative Icon” (dissertation), Stanford, California: Stanford University, 1979 Likhachev, Dmitri, “Smech kak mirovozzrenie” in Smekh v drevnei Rus, edited by Likhachev, A.M. Panchenko and N.V. Ponyrko, Leningrad: Nauka, 1984 Robinson, Andrei, “Ispoved’-propoved’ (o khudozhestvennosti Zhitiia Avvakuma)” in Istoriko-filologicheskie issledovaniia: Sbornik statei k 75–letiiu akademika N.I. Konrada, edited by M.B. Khrapchenko, Moskva: Nauka, 1967 Schmid, Ulrich, Ichentwürfe: Russische Autobiographien zwischen Avvakum und Gercen, Zurich: Pano, 2000 Vinogradov, Viktor, “O zadachach stilistiki: Nabliudeniia nad stilem Zhitiia protopopa Avvakuma” in Russkaia rech. Sbornik statei, edited by Lev Shcherba, Petrograd: Izd. Foneticheskogo prakticheskogo instituta iazykov, 1923

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Tijani, an Algerian who died in Morocco in 1815, founded the Tijanyia brotherhood which was to greatly influence Malian culture. Throughout his memoirs, Hampâté Bâ refers to Umar Tall, Grand Master of the Tijanyia brotherhood, as a holy man whose descendants are presented as possessing innate merit. The memorialist thus gives proud reminders of his maternal grandfather’s association, and that of his spiritual guide Tierno Bokar’s parentage, with Umar Tall. Himself established as affiliated to the Tijanya, Hampâté Bâ can even accept as history, and without apparent acrimony, that Umar Tall’s nephew ordered the execution of 40 men from two Fulani families from the Macina Empire, including the Bâ family. In a postcolonial attempt to counteract European assumptions that colonies were cultural deserts, the narrator carefully points to the complementarity of Islam and local tradition, referring to rules of civility and respect for the elders. On the other hand, from the favourable representation of Umar Tall to the disapproval of French interference in religious debates, Hampâté Bâ gives a strong sense of worlds apart, colonizer and colonized having little understanding of how the other functions. Hampâté Bâ’s unspoken mandate, as a “hostage” pupil of a French school, was to gain the means to act as a go-between. Although he seemed to defuse the administrators’ clashes with villagers with more success than he did the religious conflicts, he held on to the Muslim concept of compassion in interpersonal relations. The narrator projects himself as an intermediary between the many ethnic groups of the Niger region, the Islamic leaders, and the French commandants de cercle. Thus, he reminisces about his art of winning over rebellious returned soldiers or tirailleurs (French colonial troops) and even intractable commanders such as “Boule d’épines” (Thornball) by resorting to theatrical negotiations. Yet, in spite of his desire to resolve conflicts with the French, Hampâté Bâ unequivocally indicts French colonization, disapproving of the alliance between religion and the regime. Even before surveying the three periods of France’s systematic exploitation of African people, his narrative condemns colonial ideology, for example, in the French authorities’ failure to contain famine in 1914. In considering the successes and failures of his life, Hampâté Bâ reflects on the “law of the pendulum”, with a reference to the weaver’s loom, which symbolizes the ephemerality and movement of life. The most notable example described of a life come full circle is that of the flamboyant Ben Daoud Mademba Sy. The former dandy of the 1920s, son of a postman appointed

1901–1991

West African historian, ethnographer, and autobiographer Although involved in professional writing all his life, Amadou Hampâté Bâ was at a loss when his family asked him to write his real life story. Like an African griot (storyteller), he preferred to talk about other people rather than himself, a stance that could only be reinforced by the disinterest in self of a devout Muslim. Similar to an initiation narrative, Hampâté Bâ’s two autobiographical volumes contain many teachings. Readers have made much of the historical and ethnographic descriptions of an African society at the crossroads of tradition, Islam, and colonization. The definition of genre – whether memoirs or autobiography – the homage to tradition, and the construction of self are other focuses of interest and debate for readers and critics. The first chapters of Amkoullel, l’enfant peul (1991) read more like a tribute to the author’s parents and acquaintances than a Rousseau-like admission of petty misdemeanours. Images of traditional life, reminiscent of Camara Laye’s L’Enfant noir (1953; African Child), alternate with accounts of historical massacres. Yet, whether cruel or happy, the events unfold in an aura of acceptance that is all the more plausible because the narrator is a declared Muslim, a believer who finds fortitude in submitting to Allah’s will. Furthermore, as Hampâté Bâ writes retrospectively about being the Fulani child nicknamed “son of Koullel” (after Koullel, his favourite griot ), he praises his ancestry as though he was his own family griot. The second volume, Oui, mon commandant! (1994), retraces the early training and marriage of a public servant under French rule from 1922 to 1933 in Haute-Volta (Burkina Faso since 1983) and thus helps the reader identify the narrator more obviously as Hampâté Bâ. Hampâté Bâ searched for foundational heroes not only in his milieu but also in Malian history. References to the founder of the 13th-century Malian Empire, Sunjata, are not infrequent, but the mythical model of Amadou’s (Amkoullel’s) world is the legendary Tukulor leader of jihads, El Hadj Umar Sedu Tall (1797–1864). Hampâté Bâ goes back to the 1860s to retrace his family origins amid the rivalry between the Macina Fulanis, who had already adopted Islam, and the Tukulor Muslim warriors. African Islam developed brotherhoods honouring the Prophet Muhammad’s disciples or notable followers whose role was to be mediators between believers and Allah. Cheikh Ahmed 89

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king by the French, was prosecuted as a Gaullist by the Vichy administration and disinherited. A pattern of wealth and poverty, success and debasement slowly emerges as an underlying condition of life, which reinforces the necessity of pursuing aims other than social glory. More volumes of the autobiography are predicted, as well as a considerable corpus of poetry written in Fulani, from Hampâté Bâ’s large legacy of unpublished texts. Thus, belying the African proverb inevitably associated with Hampâté Bâ’s name – “whenever an old man dies, it is as though a library were burning down” – since the writer’s death in 1991, far from having burned down, a library is filling up with his posthumously published books.

d’un interprète africain, Paris: Union Générale d’Editions, 1972; as The Fortunes of Wangrin, translated by Aina Pavollini Taylor, Ibadan: New Horn, 1987; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999 Ricard, Alain, “La Réappropriation de la signature brèves: réflections sur l’oeuvre d’Amadou Hampâté Bâ”, Nouvelles de Sud, 6 (1986–87): 203–06 Sow, Alpha Ibrahim, Inventaire du fonds Amadou Hampâté Bâ, Paris: Klincksick, 1970 Soyinka, Wole, Aké: The Years of Childhood, London: Collings, 1981; New York: Vintage, 1983 Teko-Agbo, Ambroise, “Nature et sensibilité écologique et vision du monde dans Amkoullel, l’enfant peul de Amadou Hampâté Bâ”, Etudes Francophones, 11 / 1 (1996): 21–37

Blandine Stefanson Biography Born in Bandiagara, Mopti Region, southern Mali (then the French colony of Soudan Français), 1901. Grew up in Bandiagara, Bougouni, Bamako, and other towns in central or southern Mali. Attended French primary and middle schools for six years: 1912–21, repeating a year, 1918–19, because of a break in his education; also attended Qur’anic schools in Bougouni and Bandiagara for a while; passed exam for the elite Ecole Normale at Gorée, near Dakar, Senegal, 1921, but did not enter school on account of objections from his mother. Worked as a clerk in Ouagadougou, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso). Studied the Qur’an under Tierno Bokar and became one of his disciples. Married twice as a young man; several children died in infancy. Cabinet secretary in Upper Volta government. Left the French administrative service, and became researcher for the French ethnological service, Institut Français d’Afrique Noire (IFAN), 1942: worked in Guinea, Sudan, and Senegal, and began publishing his ethnological studies and other works. Malian ambassador for Mali to the Ivory Coast. Member of the Executive Council of UNESCO, where he worked to preserve traditional African cultures. Leader of the Black African Tidjanist Congregation. Helped to preserve the oral traditions of the Fulbe, Bambara, and Fulani peoples. Published L’Empire peul du Macina 1818–1853 [The History of the Peul Empire of Macina], 1955. Also published Bambara folk tales and a volume of poetry, with G. Dieterlein, Koumen: texte initiatique des pasteurs peul [Sacred Initiation Texts of the Fulani Shepherds], 1961. Later in life married Hélène Heckmann, who edited some of his works and became his literary executrix. Died 15 May 1991.

Selected Writings (with Marcel Cardaire) Tierno Bokar: le sage de Bandiagara (biographical study), 1957; as Vie et enseignement de Tierno Bokar, 1980 Amkoullel, l’enfant peul: mémoires, 1991 Oui mon commandant! Mémoires, 1994 Sur les traces d’Amkoullel, l’enfant peul, 1998 (selection with photographs)

Further Reading Aggarwal, Kusum, Amadou Hampâté Bâ et l’africanisme: de la recherche anthropologique à l’exercice de la fonction auctoriale, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999 Austen, Ralph A., “From a Colonial to a Postcolonial African Voice: Amkoullel, l’enfant peul”, Research in African Literature, 31 / 3 (2000): 1–17 Devey, Muriel, Hampâté Bâ: l’homme de la tradition, Senegal: Livre Sud, 1993 Hale, Thomas A., Griots and Griottes: Masters of Words and Music, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998 Hampâté Bâ, Amadou, Aspects de la civilisation africaine, Paris: Présence Africaine, 1972 Hampâté Bâ, Amadou, L’Empire peul de Macina, 1818–1853, Bamako: IFAN, 1955 Hampâté Bâ, Amadou, L’Etrange Destin de Wangrin, ou, les roueries

Barnet, Miguel

1940–

Cuban writer and testimonialist Miguel Barnet is one of Latin America’s leading exponents of the testimonio form, and although he has written several, it is the first, Biografía de un cimarrón (1966; The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave) that has become a classic of this kind of writing. According to Barnet, the testimonio is related to both the documentary novel as practised by those such as Truman Capote in his In Cold Blood (1964), and also to sociological studies such as those by Oscar Lewis that are based on interviews with the subjects of the study. The testimonial form has become controversial over the years, particularly in terms of what may or may not distinguish it properly from related forms such as autobiography or memoirs. Testimonio has aroused heated debate because of its close association with the political left in Latin America. Thus in Cuba it was given an official stamp of approval in 1970 when the prestigious cultural centre, Casa de las Américas, established an annual prize for this genre. In addition, a major purpose of the testimonio in developing countries, in particular, is to record the experiences of the illiterate, so creating a space in historical discourse in which the voices of the unprivileged can be heard. Barnet trained as an ethnographer, but his approach to testimonio is only partly scientific. He is also a poet and a writer of fiction, and so he acknowledges the use of poetic licence in his testimonial works. Unlike Oscar Lewis’s studies, Barnet’s testimonios do not consist of transcribed tapes; the Cuban writer “improves” on the original through the use of imagination and by omitting the tedious sections of interviews, such as needless repetititions. In Cuba, slavery was not abolished until the mid-1880s, making it possible for Barnet in 1963 to interview Esteban Montejo, who had been born a slave, subsequently becoming a runaway and living alone in the wild for some years. When Barnet met Montejo, the latter was 103 years old and living in an old people’s home. He was, however, lucid and his long-term memory was, apparently, still functioning well. Yet there are all sorts of reasons why this – and other – testimonies are no more historically valid than other forms of life writing. In this specific case, a degree of muddle emerges in the way that the Spanish title uses the term “biography” while the English version has “autobiography” instead.

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In the context of reliability, the question of mediation must be addressed since Barnet is there as editor and, of course, in a politically delicate climate, he has his own agenda. In the early 1960s he had been associated with the publishers El Puente and a group of writers of the same name. They fell foul of the authorities, and the publishing house was closed down in 1965. Thus Barnet may have deemed it prudent to write in an officially sanctioned form, something that applied at the time to all forms of writing on slavery and also to films and television programmes on the subject. Barnet’s account is limited to Montejo’s youth and so ends with Cuba’s second War of Independence (1895–98). William Luis, who writes shrewdly about this text in his study Literary Bondage (1990), speculates on the question of historical gaps and asks the following question about the absence of information about Cuban life since the Revolution of 1959: “Did Montejo, as in other parts of the narration, demystify and problematize the present conditions of the black because as he believed ‘the truth cannot be silenced’?” Luis pursues this point by asking if life for blacks since the Revolution was no more than a continuation of the past. For both the interviewer and the interviewee, a certain political reality is being imposed by the Revolution. Luis also notes that although the three parts into which the testimonio is divided appear in chronological order, the events narrated are cyclical because little changes for the blacks. This is painfully true in contemporary Cuba since few black Cubans chose exile, and so it is the white part of the population that receives regular sums of hard currency from relatives abroad, something which keeps black Cubans at the bottom of the socioeconomic heap and accounts for many of them turning to crime for a living. All these points mean that Biografía de un cimarrón should be read as a verisimilar rather than as an accurate historical account. However, the work provides vivid insights into a child’s experience of slavery and into how a young man manages on his own in the wild, living in the closest possible proximity to nature. The other testimonial works by Barnet are Canción de Rachel (1969; Rachel’s Song: A Novel), Gallego [1981; the Galician], and La vida real [1986; Real Life]. These are also accounts of marginalized types such as the Galician immigrant to Cuba and the emigrant to the United States in the 1950s (whose story, however, is not one of success). Verity Smith Biography Born in Havana, Cuba, 28 January 1940, into a middle-class family. Educated at American schools in Havana. Student at the School of Advertising at the start of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Studied ethnology, 1960–61, then taught folklore at the School of Art Instructors, 1961–66. Gained research experience at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore of the Academy of Science. Second volume of poems, Isla de güijes [Goblin Island], published by El Puente, 1964. Unable to publish for some time during the “grey years” of the Cuban Revolution in the 1970s. Career picked up again in the 1980s. Placed in charge of foreign affairs at UNEAC (Union of Artists and Writers) in the mid-1980s. Spent nine months in the United States researching his testimonial novel La vida real [1986; Real Life], funded by a Guggenheim award. Received the National Prize for Literature, 1994. Member of National Assembly. Some of his works have been adapted for the screen and operatic stage.

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Selected Writings Biografía de un cimarrón, 1966; as Cimarrón: historia de un esclavo, 1998; as The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave, edited by Miguel Barnet, translated by Jocasta Innes, 1966, revised (with new translation by W. Nick Hill), 1994; with introduction and bibliographical essay by Alistair Hennessy, 1993 Canción de Rachel, 1969; as Rachel’s Song: A Novel, translated by W. Nick Hill, 1991 Gallego, 1981 La vida real, 1986

Further Reading Barnet, Miguel, La fuente viva, Havana: Letras Cubanas, 1983 (contains essays on his testimonial writings) González Echevarría, Roberto, The Voice of the Masters: Writing and Authority in Modern Latin American Literature, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985 Luis, William, Literary Bondage: Slavery in Cuban Narrative, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990

Barnum, P.T.

1810–1891

American entrepreneur, circus owner, and autobiographer Phineas Taylor Barnum published three separate editions of his autobiography – in 1855, 1869, and 1889. It holds the distinction of being the single most-read book (besides the Bible) in 19th-century America. Promotion rather than content made Barnum’s autobiography a success. Barnum paid Redfield of New York to publish The Life of P.T. Barnum by Himself, the first edition. Barnum sold the volume at his American Museum. Burr and Company of Cambridge, Massachusetts published the 1869 edition, which Barnum entitled Struggles and Triumphs, or, Forty Years’ Recollections of P.T. Barnum. Burr sold the book by door-to-door subscription. Often including free circus tickets, Barnum later sold copies at his circuses. The 1889 edition expanded the 1869 title with the addition of the phrase … Including His Golden Rules for Money-Making. Despite its fame, 20th-century studies of history and literature in America largely ignore Barnum’s book. Barnum dedicated the first edition to the “Universal Yankee Nation”. He dedicated later editions to his wife and family. In the book he often sermonized on the acquisition of wealth, and he liberally supported his position with biblical quotations. He also emphasized family values and the importance of entertainment suitable for the Christian family. Struggles and Triumphs (1869) begins with Barnum’s genealogy, birth, and early youth in Connecticut. He describes his early experiences as a trader and a store clerk. He explains how experiences in his youth, including Sunday school attendance, prepared him for the life of business he would later enter. He relates the way in which he established himself as the foremost showman in 1835 by exhibiting Joice Heth, purportedly George Washington’s 161-year-old nurse. In 1842 Barnum opened his American Museum in New York. Through Yankee ingenuity, a blend of the Puritan work ethic and a highly developed self-promotional streak, Barnum created an audience for his museum of shows, eventually making the American Museum the most popular museum in America. Here he presented shows, lectures, and theatrical and musical

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performances, exhibiting a mermaid (the Feejee Mermaid), midgets (Charles Stratton, Lavinia Warren, and Colonel Nutt), “freaks”, exotic animals (woolly horses, whales, and elephants), Native Americans, and Chinese. He toured with his entourage of exhibits to Europe, even securing an audience with Queen Victoria. Barnum’s autobiography served as a major component in his effort to promote himself and his business. On the dedication page to the 1855 edition, Barnum gives thanks to “the American Museum, where the public first smiled upon me, and where henceforth my personal exertions will be devoted to its entertainment”. Barnum and the American Museum became synonymous. Barnum’s career prospered and expanded, incorporating other circuses, developing the three-ring, and even a four-ring, circus. His fame reached such proportions that he continues today to be synonymous with the circus form in America. Ringling Brothers’ Barnum and Bailey Circuses still tour America at the beginning of the 21st century. In 1889 Al Bailey took the Barnum and Bailey Circus to England. During this 1889–1890 “Greatest Show on Earth” Tour, P.T. Barnum exhibited himself twice daily. But Barnum arguably had already begun this process with his autobiography. The autobiography depersonalizes and publicizes in a manner reminiscent of the objectification and exhibitionism he applied to his circus employees and animals. Like his autobiography, the American Museum, and the people and animals he displayed as objects of entertainment, Barnum made himself the spectacle he ultimately became. Larry D. Griffin Biography Phineas Taylor Barnum. Born in Bethel, Connecticut, United States, 5 July 1810. Put in charge of his father’s general store at an early age. Discovered that the family was bankrupt at his father’s death when he was aged 15. Obtained another job running a store, then moved to Brooklyn to work in a better one. Returned home to Bethel and set up his own business at his grandfather’s home. Eloped with Charity Hallett, 1829: four daughters (one died in infancy). Purchased Joice Heth, a black woman, believing that she was 161 years old and had been George Washington’s nurse, 1835. Launched a successful publicity campaign, at which Heth sang songs and told her story, but was exposed as a hoax at her death. Acquired a dilapidated museum in New York where he exhibited freaks, which became known as Barnum’s American Museum, 1841. Discovered a five-year-old midget, Charles Stratton, whom he taught to perform stunts under the name of General Tom Thumb, 1842. Toured Europe with him, to great acclaim. Signed contract with the Swedish singer Jenny Lind and made a successful tour of the US with her in 1850. Made a high-risk investment in the Jerome Clock Company, 1855; contemplated suicide after the company went bankrupt. Turned his lecture notes into a bestselling pamphlet, The Art of Money Getting (1882). Created “The Greatest Show on Earth” featuring Jumbo the Elephant, purchased from London Zoo, 1871: the show was an instant success. Wife died, 1873. Married Nancy Fish, an Englishwoman 40 years his junior, 1874. Went into partnership with his chief competitor, James Anthony Bailey, to found the famous Barnum and Bailey Circus, 1881. Died in Bridgeport, Connecticut, 7 April 1891.

Selected Writings The Life of P.T. Barnum by Himself, 1855; also as The Autobiography of P.T. Barnum: Clerk, Merchant, Editor, and Showman, 1855; revised as Struggles and Triumphs, or, Forty Years’ Recollections of P.T. Barnum, 1869, and frequently updated; abridged version edited by Carl Bode, 1981; revised as Struggles and Triumphs: Sixty Years’

Recollections of P.T. Barnum Including His Golden Rules for Money-Making, 1889; as Struggles and Triumphs, or, The Life of P.T. Barnum, edited by George S. Bryan, 2 vols, 1927; as Struggles and Triumphs of P.T. Barnum, edited by John G. O’Leary, 1967; abridged as Barnum’s Own Story, edited by Waldo R. Browne, 1927 Selected Letters of P.T. Barnum, edited by A.H. Saxon, 1983

Further Reading Harris, Neil, Humbug: The Art of P.T. Barnum, Boston: Little Brown, 1973 Root, Harvey, The Unknown Barnum, New York: Harper, 1927 Saxon, A.H., P.T. Barnum: The Legend and the Man, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989

Barrios de Chungara, Domitila

1937–

Bolivian social activist and testimonialist Domitila Barrios de Chungara’s narrative of her participation in the Bolivian mine workers’ action during the tumultuous decades from the early 1950s to the 1970s, Let Me Speak! Testimony of Domitila, a Woman of the Bolivian Mines, is one of the founding examples of the genre that has come to be known as testimonio (see Gugelberger). Recounted to the Brazilian journalist Moema Viezzer, and first published in Spanish in Mexico as “Si me permiten hablar ...” (1977; Let Me Speak!), it tells both the story of Chungara herself and the tale of her participation in the organization of the women of the mining community of Siglo XX in protest against the corporate management of the mine and the exploitation of its workers – the fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers of the women. The narrative is divided into two principal parts: the first – and shorter – section is an account of “Her People”, the details of their lives and livelihoods, from the company’s ever-increasing control of their community to the inadequate housing, education, and decreasing subsistence standards for all, and concluding with the appeal that “we be well directed in the struggle of the working class and that each one carry out what is assigned him or her in the best possible manner”. In the second major section, “Her Life”, Chungara describes to her interviewer just what she herself came to do to help to “carry out” that struggle, from her birth in Siglo XX in 1937 to a mother from the city of Oruro and a native Indian father, who had been involved in political activities even before his marriage. Because her own limited schooling had been such an “alienating education”, Chungara advocates throughout her recollections a more responsive interaction between educators and their interlocutors, an abiding concern that is reflected in the redactive process of her testimonio. At the end of her school years, Chungara took a job in the town’s company grocery store. That was in 1953, a year after the “people’s revolution” in Bolivia. With her subsequent marriage, she remained a part of the mining community and in 1961 observed the organization of the Housewives’ Committee. As she says, “seeing all the struggles the people were involved in, they [the mine workers’ wives] couldn’t stay on the sidelines”, and in 1963 Chungara herself “began to participate”. That participation led her into violent confrontations with the company and its governmental sponsors, as well as onto public podiums at mass rallies, in defence of

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the mine workers’ radio station, and eventually to political prison. Chungara was pregnant when taken into her second period of incarceration, and her baby boy died shortly after she gave birth in detention. In 1975 the United Nations Decade of Women was launched and Chungara attended its first conference in Mexico City, as a representative of a non-governmental organization, and was thus assigned not to the “Conference” itself, but to the unofficial “Tribunal”. Her experience in Mexico City, where she discovered that “for us [Latin American women] the first and main task isn’t to fight against our compañeros, but with them to change the system we live in for another”, recurred halfway through the UN’s Decade of Women, at the succeeding conference in Copenhagen in 1980. Aquí también, Domitila! [1985; Here Too, Domitila] is the title of her reminiscences from that occasion, which details her renewed interactions with women on a conflicted international stage. The UN Decade of Women concluded in 1985 at the Nairobi conference, but the issues raised and the controversies generated by Domitila Barrios de Chungara when she demanded “let me speak!” – or in the less imperative Spanish titulation, “si me permiten hablar ...” – were continued through another decade of UN conferences, from Rio de Janeiro in 1992, which addressed questions of the environment, to Vienna on human rights (1993), to Cairo, in 1994, where debates over population and development occupied the participants, to Beijing’s conference on women (1995), and again in Istanbul in 1996, when it was habitat that provided the agenda. “Si me permiten hablar …” remains a clarion call both to a renewed international conference culture and to the literary-political genre of testimonio. Barbara Harlow Biography Born in Siglo XX-Llallagua, Potosi, Quijarro province, Bolivia, 7 May 1937. Her father, a tailor, was a Bolivian Indian who had been active in trade union and revolutionary political activism, her mother came from the nearby city of Oruro. Unable to attend school regularly, because of the family’s extreme poverty. Cared for her four younger sisters after her mother’s death when she was 10 or 11, but still managed to attend local school, finishing in 1953. Found work in a grocery store in neighbouring village of Pulacayo. Ran away from home as a result of cruel treatment by stepmother after her father’s remarriage; given shelter by her future mother-in-law. Married Rene, a civilian policeman, 1957: seven children. Moved back to Siglo XX, where her husband worked as a tin miner. Attended Jehovah’s Witness meetings. Experienced severe financial difficulties, especially after her sisters came to live with her, and the family was evicted from their home. Joined the Housewives’ Committee of Siglo XX, an organization of tin miners’ wives working against exploitation of the miners by the Bolivian government, 1963. Led the Committee’s activities during the military occupation of the mines under the government of General Barrientos and the massacre of San Juan, June 1967. Detained and imprisoned by the military regime on several occasions for her political activities on behalf of the tin miners of Siglo XX and neighbouring mines; during one period of imprisonment gave birth to a boy who died. Invited by the United Nations to attend the International Women’s Year congress in Mexico, 1970; spoke at the congress tribunal and drew international attention to the plight of the Bolivian tin miners and their families. Initiated major miners’ strike in Catavi, resulting in some concessions by the Bolivian government, 1976; gave birth during the strike. Published autobiographical testimony of her life, “Si me permiten hablar...” (Let Me Speak!), 1977. Attended the United Nations’ International Women’s conference in Copenhagen, 1980. Published her observations of that occasion in Aquí también, Domitila!.

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Selected Writings (with Moema Viezzer) “Si me permiten hablar ...”: testimonio de Domitila, una mujer de las minas de Bolivia, 1977; as Let Me Speak! Testimony of Domitila, a Woman of the Bolivian Mines, translated by Victoria Ortiz, 1978 (with David Acebey) Aquí también, Domitila!, 1985

Further Reading Gugelberger, Georg M. (editor), The Real Thing: Testimonial Discourse and Latin America, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1996 United Nations Conferences website at www.un.org

Barthes, Roland

1915–1980

French critic and autobiographer When it appeared in 1975 (the same year as Philippe Lejeune’s seminal study Le Pacte autobiographique), roland BARTHES par roland barthes caused a furore. For many it seemed unthinkable that, seven years after notoriously proclaiming the “death of the author”, the arch-structuralist and exponent of the “pleasure of the text” should be offering an account of his life. But a cursory look at the volume (in a series usually devoted to critical monographs) revealed a host of features, including an initial statement that the text should be read as the product of a fictional character (or characters), which suggested that Barthes’s aim might have been to contest the very possibility of life writing. More perceptively, the critic Lejeune was quick to recognize that in its remarkable formal inventiveness, as well as in its challenge to received notions about the self, Barthes’s text represented a major contribution to the evolution of autobiographical form. Like such earlier French radical innovators as Michel Leiris and Jean-Paul Sartre, Barthes had invented a new alternative to chronological narrative in autobiography; and, as had been the case with these precursors, his strategies and devices were closely linked to new ideas about the self. roland BARTHES par roland barthes begins with a sequence of photographs, mostly of the author himself at various stages, bearing captions that point to certain themes, including the self and its images, the body, family structures, and the posture of the intellectual. This is followed by a set of over 200 titled fragments whose order is dictated by the initial letter of a key word. Within the fragments (which vary in length from a few lines to a page) Barthes frequently switches between the first- and thirdperson pronoun, a procedure that is partly linked to the central concept of the “imaginary”, elaborated in several fragments. This term is adapted from the psychoanalytical theory of Jacques Lacan, where it stems from the famous “mirror stage” in which identity is allegedly formed in a process of alienation when the infant learns to associate its “self” with an external image. When he asserts that roland BARTHES par roland barthes is the book of his “imaginary”, Barthes does not mean that it is fictionalized, or indeed fictional in the sense of necessarily imagined. What he means is that the identity it delineates derives from images corresponding to the ways he thinks others see him, or the different ways he visualizes himself. By abolishing overall coherence, perspective, and fixity of point of view, the formal ingredients of Barthes’s text serve not to abolish the notion of the individual self but to enact a theatricalized

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subjectivity made up of multiple currents and constituents. Barthes emphasizes that in his autobiography (or self-portrait, as some critics prefer to call it) he actively questions his own ideas, and there are fragments relating to all the main phases of his intellectual career. As one might expect, given Barthes’s close association with structuralism and semiology, the relations among language, power, and ideology feature prominently in his autobiography. But Barthes’s venture into life writing reflects a new orientation in his thought, away from avant-garde theory towards more literary or aesthetic concerns, and towards a new kind of interest in subjective experience. Yet Barthes is emphatic that the “return of the subject”, which is central to his autobiographical enterprise, does not amount to a simple return to the “old stable ego”, in D.H. Lawrence’s phrase. The devices of roland BARTHES par roland barthes – the proliferation of fragments, pronouns, voices, images, discourses – do not portray a self so much as stake out the terrain of subjective experience, a shifting, mobile realm marked by infinite gradations and degrees. In this view, the human subject is constituted in a never-ending process whose changing parameters include desire, sexuality, the body, death, memory, and utopia. Following roland BARTHES par roland barthes, the two books Barthes completed before his early death in 1980 can be seen as further, if more oblique, explorations in a similar direction. Fragments d’un discours amoureux (1977; A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments) is a brilliantly inventive re-creation of the subjective “voices” of the lover. More directly autobiographical, La Chambre claire (1980; Camera Lucida) is a meditation on photography, which is also a poignant threnody on the death of the author’s mother. Barthes also wrote interestingly on biography (in Sade, Fourier, Loyola, 1971) and on diaries (in the essay “Deliberation”). His major contribution to life writing is to have shown that, far from being incompatible with contemporary poststructuralist concerns, it could develop new and intellectually challenging possibilities. Michael Sheringham

gained international recognition for his development of semiology and structuralism with the textual analyses Essais critiques (1964; Critical Essays), S / Z (1970), and other works. Chair of literary semiology, Collège de France, Paris, 1976–80. Co-founder, Théâtre Populaire, 1953, and Arguments, 1956. Contributed to various periodicals, including Communications, La Quinzaine Littéraire, Les Lettres Nouvelles, and Tel Quel. Appointed Chevalier des Palmes Académiques. Divided his time between Paris and his mother’s home near Bayonne. Died in Paris as the result of a street accident, 26 March 1980 (some sources give 25 March).

Selected Writings Sade, Fourier, Loyola, 1971; as Sade, Fourier, Loyola, 1976 roland BARTHES par roland barthes, 1975; as Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, translated by Richard Howard, 1977 Fragments d’un discours amoureux, 1977; as A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, translated by Richard Howard, 1978 La Chambre claire: note sur la photographie, 1980; as Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, translated by Richard Howard, 1981 Incidents, 1987; as Incidents, translated by Richard Howard, 1992

Further Reading Barthes, Roland, Sade, Fourier, Loyola, Paris: Seuil, 1971; Sade, Fourier, Loyola, translated by Richard Miller, New York: Hill and Wang, 1976; London: Jonathan Cape, 1977 Barthes, Roland, “Deliberation” in The Rustle of Language, translated by Richard Howard, Oxford: Blackwell, and New York: Hill and Wang, 1986 Beaujour, Michel, Poetics of the Literary Self-Portrait, New York: New York University Press, 1991 Eakin, Paul John, Touching the World: Reference in Autobiography, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992 Gratton, Johnnie, “Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes: Autobiography and the Notion of Expression”, Romance Studies, 8 (1986): 57–65 Jay, Paul, Being in the Text: Self-Representation from Wordsworth to Roland Barthes, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1984 Knight, Diana, Barthes and Utopia: Space, Travel, Writing, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997 Lejeune, Philippe, “Le Roland Barthes sans peine” in Moi aussi, Paris: Seuil, 1986 Sheringham, Michael, French Autobiography: Devices and Desires, Rousseau to Perec, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993

Biography Roland Gérard Barthes. Born in Cherbourg, Normandy, France, 12 November 1915. His father, a naval officer, was killed in 1916. Brought up by his mother in the Protestant home of his grandparents in Bayonne. Moved to Paris with his mother, now trained as a bookbinder, 1924. Educated in Paris at the Lycée Montaigne, 1924–30, and Lycée Louis-le-Grand, 1930–34 (baccalauréat). Spent a year in the Pyrenees recovering from pulmonary tuberculosis, which had prevented him from proceeding to the Ecole Normale Supérieure, 1934–35. Studied French, Latin, and Greek at the Sorbonne, Paris, from 1936 (licence in classical letters 1939, diplôme in Greek tragedy 1941, licence in grammar and philology 1943). Visited Greece, 1938. Taught at lycées in Biarritz and Bayonne, 1939–40, and at the Lycée Voltaire and Lycée Carnot, Paris, 1940–41. Forced to abandon teaching through a resurgence of tuberculosis. Spent the war years in sanatoria, in Isère and elsewhere, 1942–46. Convalesced in Paris, 1946–47. Taught at the French Institute, Bucharest, 1948–49; University of Alexandria, Egypt, 1949–50. Returned to France and taught at the Direction Générale des Affaires Culturelles, Paris, 1950–52. Teaching fellow in lexicology, 1952–54, and research fellow in sociology, 1955–59, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique [CNRS]. Became immediately established as a leading literary critic in France with Le Degré zéro de l’écriture (1953; Writing Degree Zero) and Michelet par lui-même (1954; Michelet). Also wrote an important work on popular culture (Mythologies, 1957). Chair, 1960–62, and director of studies, 1960–76, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris; also taught at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1967–68. Became widely known in France with Sur Racine (1963; On Racine), and

Bashkirtseff, Marie

1860–1884

Russian painter and diarist The Ukrainian-born Marie Bashkirtseff lived in Europe from 1870, eventually settling in Paris when she embarked on her artistic career. There are today examples of her paintings in various European museums, most of them in the Hermitage in St Petersburg. Today Bashkirtseff is remembered largely as the author of posthumously published diaries, Le Journal de Marie Bashkirtseff (1887; The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff), which articulated the tensions between social expectations of women and the practical difficulties of public life as a professional artist, and of letters to Guy de Maupassant. Bashkirtseff used pseudonyms to overcome class and gender boundaries. She spoke seven languages, including Latin and Greek, which were self-taught. She took her education very seriously and, while training as an artist at the Académie Julien, persuaded her family to move to Paris. In spite of some success in her own life – she was something of a cause célèbre – Bashkirtseff’s Journal reveals the frustrations of a young female artist

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with aspirations, lacking a male artist’s ability to combine his career with freedom in life’s sexual and social spheres. Bashkirtseff’s mother was the censor and editor of her daughter’s diaries, and tried to make the Journal conventional and palatable to a general readership. The French feminist scholar Colette Cosnier, in her recent study of the Journal, discusses omissions in the first edition such as indecencies, slang, and powerful criticism of women’s lack of social rights and restrictions. (Her pseudonymous contributions to the feminist periodical La Citoyenne testify to her views on the latter.) The Journal is a psychological study of a 19th-century woman who spoke for many talented and similarly trapped women. It portrays a female persona as fragmented and constrained. In some passages Bashkirtseff dramatically describes the split between public and private life, revealing the practices prohibiting free access for women to public areas of work and knowledge; for many young women, fleeing the family required either marriage or fame. In this respect Bashkirtseff’s work echoes Karolina Pavlova’s novella A Double Life (1848), about the young female poet Cecilia who marries to suppress her inner desire of becoming a poet. Some Russian critics (for example Count D. Mirsky, Ferdinand Bac, and Nikolai Gumilev) viewed Bashkirtseff’s stylistic indulgence in describing her ambitions and selfconfidence as a perfect example of female narcissism. Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1953) refers to Bashkirtseff as a woman who promoted the cult of herself. Although Bashkirtseff revealed a disjointed personality, her doubts were linked as much to her poor health, financial troubles, and scandals as to sexual stereotyping in society. In the Journal her artistic persona prevails at the expense of the young woman coming to terms with her class conventions and her sexuality. It appears that Bashkirtseff’s main goal was a career as a professional artist, which could be a path to freedom from the social stereotypes of femininity. She drew in order to fulfil her desires and to progress in life by dint of her talent. The Journal also includes travel impressions in which Bashkirtseff often used descriptions of space symbolically, rather than producing topographical accounts of her life in France and visits to Italy, Spain, and Russia. Bashkirtseff’s selfrepresentation is, however, ambivalent. She presents herself as a provincial and immigrant autobiographer producing contradictory discourses that simultaneously inscribe and resist Catholic ideology. On visiting the Vatican, Bashkirtseff and her family stressed that they were from Little Russia, not St Petersburg; in the face of the pope’s blessing (“your country is Heaven”), their link with Russia was terminated. Doubting the pope’s efficacy, Bashkirtseff prayed that “the pope’s blessing should prove a real blessing”. In one of her discourses on religion she states that “the Church has carried to the savages the name of God and civilisation. Without offence to God, I think that they could have been civilised without Catholicism”. Throughout the whole journal Bashkirtseff offers a highly individualized vision of her God, opposed to the Catholic Mass. In contrast to much of Europe she had seen, Bashkirtseff found Spain uncorrupted, spiritually pure, fresh, untouched, and wild. Although she found travelling with her family on an artistic tour oppressive, comparing it to “waltzing with one’s aunt”, her travels as an artist allowed her access to public places not normally seen by women of her class. Thus, a visit

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to a prison in Granada made a tremendous impression on her, and instilled a desire to draw the portraits of convicts she encountered. Bashkirtseff’s Journal, which brought her posthumous fame in the West, also made a profound impact on Russian writers of the silver-age period, including Valery Briusov, Zinaida Hippius, Maria Krestovskaya, Anastasiia Verbitskaya, Elena Guro, and especially Marina Tsvetaeva. The last dedicated her first collection of poetry to her. The Journal was republished in Russia in 1991, just over one century after its first Russian edition. It remains to be seen whether it will once again become an important part of Russian literary culture. Alexandra Smith Biography Born Marya Konstantinovna Bashkirtseva in Havrontsi, Poltava (Pultowa) province, Ukraine, 23 November 1860 (some sources give 1858), into a minor aristocratic family. Brought up by her mother and aunt after her parents separated. Spent early years travelling in Germany, Italy, and France; educated privately. Lived in Nice, southern France, from c.1870. Began her diary, in French, 1873. Settled in Paris, 1877. Initially intended to seek a musical career but instead went to study art at the Académie Julien in Paris under Tony Robert-Fleury and Jules Bastien-Lepage. First exhibited at the Paris Salon, 1880. Visited Spain, 1881. Contributed articles to the feminist journal La Citoyenne under the pseudonym Pauline Orell. Member of the Union des Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs, Paris. Contracted tuberculosis. Died in Paris, 31 October 1884.

Selected Writings Le Journal de Marie Bashkirtseff, edited by A. Theuriet, 2 vols, 1887; as The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, translated by Mathilde Blind, 1985; as I Am the Most Interesting Book of All: The Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff, translated by Phyllis Howard Kernberger and Katherine Kernberger, 1997 Les Lettres de Marie Bashkirtseff, edited by François Coppée, 1891; as Letters of Marie Bashkirtseff, translated by Mary Jo Serrano, 1891 I Kiss Your Hands: The Letters of Guy de Maupassant and Marie Bashkirtseff, 1954

Further Reading Cosnier, Colette, Marie Bashkirtseff: un portrait sans retouches, Paris: Pierre Horay, 1985 Garb, Tamar, Sisters of the Brush: Women’s Artistic Culture in Late Nineteenth-Century Paris, New Haven, Connecticut, and London: Yale University Press, 1994 Gladstone, W.E., “About the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff”, Nineteenth Century, 26 (1889): 602–07 Parker, Rozsika and Griselda Pollock, Introduction in The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, translated by Mathilde Blind, London: Virago, 1985 Rogala, Marianne, “The Quest for Marie Bashkirtseff: An Extraordinary Journal”, Quadrant (Victoria, New South Wales), (January–February 1987): 88–90 Rosenthal, Charlotte, “The Silver Age: A High Point for Women” in Women and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union, edited by Linda Edmondson, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992 Witzling, Mara R. (editor), Voicing Our Visions: Writings by Women Artists, New York: Universe, 1991; London: Women’s Press, 1992

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Bashπ

1644–1694

Japanese poet and travel diarist Bashπ lived in 17th-century Japan at time when the Tokugawa shoguns had instituted a policy of national isolationism. Rather than inhibiting cultural growth, this isolationism provided Japan with perhaps its greatest phase of cultural advancement, which included an increase in both literacy and the availability of printed books. Bashπ was not only soon recognized as responsible for transforming the haiku from a light pastime to serious art form, he was one of the first professional Japanese poets to benefit from a large reading public. This made him something of a celebrity in his own lifetime. After being born the son of a minor samurai, Bashπ entered an apprenticeship as a cadet for a local shogun. He developed a friendship with the shogun’s son, and they both devoted themselves to studying popular poetry under Kitamura Kirgin. When his friend died in 1666, Bashπ was bereft of the political connections necessary for his advancement in the samurai. For that reason Bashπ left for Edo (Tokyo), where he established himself as a professional poet. In less than ten years he was famous as a writer of renku or haikai no renga linked verses, a common form of poetry at the time that began with a haiku. His pen name (Bashπ = banana) derives from a banana tree planted by his students in front of his hut, which he wrote about: Banana tree in autumn winds, a night passed hearing raindrops in a basin. In his travel memoirs, Bashπ described nature in both poetry and prose. Thus, his variation on the tradition of linked poetry was to link his haiku with prose description and narration. In 1689, Bashπ began a 15,000-mile journey that resulted in the last of his five travel memoirs, Oku no hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North), perhaps his most famous work. At the beginning he wrote in prose: “Transitory though I know this world to be, I shed tears when I came to parting of the ways, overwhelmed by the prospect of a long journey ahead.” This he followed immediately with the haiku: Departing springtime: birds lament and fishes too have tears in their eyes. When he visited the Buddhist shrine, Komoyji, Bashπ wrote in prose: “We visited it by invitation and worshipped at the Ascetic’s Hall.” Then he followed with the haiku: Toward summer mountains we set off after prayers before the master’s clogs. Of travelling through rice fields, Bashπ wrote in prose: “Thus we went on into Kaga Province.” He followed with the haiku: Scent of ripening ears: to the right as I push through, surf crashing onto rocks.

In this fashion, The Narrow Road to the Deep North moves between its poetry and prose. As a writer of nature poems, Bashπ found in travelling through the natural world the proper inspiration for such poetry. For Bashπ, life was a Buddhist spiritual quest, which, for the professional poet like himself, required movement through space either for spiritual enlightenment or for the spread of doctrine as a necessary religious exercise. Through journeying and writing about those journeys, Bashπ practised his faith of Buddhism while simultaneously writing his life story. For Bashπ in The Narrow Road to the Deep North, the spiritual quest of the Buddhist, the professional quest of the poet, and the physical movement of the traveller represented the perfect melding of vocation, avocation, and spiritual association. Thus, The Narrow Road to the Deep North was not only the recounting of the physical route through Japan; it was also the spiritual path of the soul. While the prose and the poetry in The Narrow Road to the Deep North demonstrates the eight-fold path of Buddhism, Bashπ devoted himself more to nature generally than he does to Buddhism specifically in his life writing. Nearly three centuries after Bashπ died, by which time he had become deified by the Shinto Buddhists, the diary of his travelling companion Soro was published. Soro’s writing presented a much more human and less saintly portrait of the great Bashπ than Bashπ did of himself in his most famous travel journal. Larry D. Griffin Biography Born Matsuo Munefusa in or near Ueno, in Iga Province, Japan, 1644. His father was a low-ranking samurai (member of the military class). Entered the service of a local samurai of higher rank. Became an attendant to his son, Yoshitada, and studied poetry with him. Led an unsettled life after Yoshitada’s death in 1666, roaming the Kyoto area. Moved to Edo (now Tokyo), 1672. Eventually established himself as a teacher of poetry and began to study Zen Buddhism. Withdrew to a recluse’s hut near Edo, 1680. Took his literary name from a banana (bashπ) tree growing there, which he admired for its lack of practical utility – in Japan it produces no fruit and its leaves give no shade. Published an anthology of verse with his disciples, Minadhigun [Empty Chestnuts], 1683. Travelled around Japan, 1684–85, 1687, 1688, and 1689, and described his travels in verse and prose in journals and diaries. Collections of his works appeared from 1684, notably the famous Oku no hosomichi (1702; The Narrow Road to the Deep North). Died early autumn 1694.

Selected Writings Oku no hosomichi, 1702; as The Narrow Road to the Deep North, translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa with Other Travel Sketches, 1966; also translated by Earl Miner in Japanese Poetic Diaries, 1969; translated by Dorothy Britton as The Narrow Road to the Deep North, 1974, and A Haiku Journey: Basho’s Narrow Road to a Far Province, 1980; as Narrow Road to the Interior, translated by Sam Hamill, 1991; as The Narrow Road to Oku, translated by Donald Keene, 1996; as Basho’s Narrow Road: Spring and Autumn Passages, translated by Hiroaki Sato, 1996; selections translated by Keene in Anthology of Japanese Literature, 1955; selections as Back Roads to Far Towns, translated by Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu, 1968 Bashπ shokanshu (correspondence), edited by Shinpu Katsumine, 1934 “Basho’s Journey to Sarashina”, translated by Donald Keene in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, December 1957; as “Sarashina Travelogue” translated by Sam Hamill in The Essential Basho, 1999 “Basho’s Journey of 1684”, translated by Donald Keene in Asia Major, December 1959

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Zensh› (complete works), edited by Komiya Toyotaka, 10 vols, 1959– 69 The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches, translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa, 1966 Bashπ shokanshu (correspondence), edited by Yasuo Hagiwara, 1976 Traveler My Name, translated by Lucien Stryk, 1984 Bashπ no tegami (correspondence), edited by Tomotsugu Muramatsu, 1985 Matsuo Bashπ shu (diaries), edited by Noichi Imoto et al., 2 vols, 1995–97 The Essential Basho, translated by Sam Hamill, 1999 (contains “Narrow Road to the Interior”, “Travelogue of Weather-Beaten Bones”, “The Knapsack Notebook”, “Sarashina Travelogue”, and selected haiku)

Further Reading Barnhill, David L., “Bashπ as Bat: Wayfaring and Antistructure in the Journals of Matsuo Bashπ”, Journal of Asian Studies, 49/2 (1990): 274 ff. Makota Ueda, Matsuo Bashπ, New York: Twayne, 1970 Makota Ueda, Bashπ and His Interpreters, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991

Beauvoir, Simone de

1908–1986

French philosopher, novelist, essayist, and autobiographer Simone de Beauvoir is undoubtedly best known for her 1949 feminist work Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex) wherein she outlines her (then radical) social-constructionist idea that “on naît pas femme on le devient” (“one is not born a woman, one becomes one”). An existentialist philosopher, she spent much of her time before the 1960s working with her life partner, Jean-Paul Sartre, on his philosophical texts and her own novels. The latter works, while fictional, contain elements of autobiographical detail: Beauvoir hints that Françoise of her first novel, L’Invitée (1943; She Came to Stay), as well as the main characters in her prize-winning Les Mandarins (1954; The Mandarins), reflect elements of her own life and personality. Although she wrote that she had always been quite introspective, it was not until 1958 that she published the first of eight volumes of autobiographical text whose nearly 4000 pages cover her life in sometimes minute detail. Her autobiographical work is thus vast, but, some might say, vastly under-studied. The first volume, Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée (1958; Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter), recounts the story of her childhood growing up as an intellectual with her strict Catholic mother and carefree father in a family with financial worries. Beauvoir shares her memories of her own comingof-age with her childhood friend, Zaza Mabille (pseudonym of Elisabeth Lacoin) and her first meetings with Sartre and other Sorbonne students who would later become France’s political leaders and social activists. The text ends with Zaza’s untimely death at an early age. Patterson notes that Beauvoir, “convinced by her observation of members of her own family and especially by the tragedy of Zaza Lacoin’s premature death that conformity to social convention can be quite literally fatal to the vitality and development of a mature and autonomous young woman … strove throughout her life to distance herself from the bourgeois milieu in which she had been raised and to highlight the foibles and follies for her readers”.

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La Force de l’âge (1960; The Prime of Life) is an exploration of Beauvoir’s relationships with various student friends, notably her women friends Olga Kosakievicz, Nathalie Sorokine, and Bianca Lamblin (née Bienenfeld), all of whom were almost certainly lovers shared by both Beauvoir and Sartre. The “Other”, an important element in existential philosophy, becomes a leitmotif here as Beauvoir describes her feelings of insecurity, jealousy, anger, and finally necessity in the “family” relationship established between the “writing couple” and numerous of their students. Other titles in her personal writings include L’Amérique au jour le jour (1948; America Day by Day), which is a travel journal of sorts, with observations from a five-month tour of the United States, including comments on various of America’s social problems and on her relationship with her lover Nelson Algren. La Force des choses (1963; Force of Circumstance), is a récit of Beauvoir’s life from the period of the liberation of Paris (1945) until 5 July 1962, the date of the Algerian celebration of independence from France. Une mort très douce (1964; A Very Easy Death) is a heart-wrenching account of Beauvoir’s mother, Françoise de Beauvoir’s, not so easy death and a coming-toterms with Simone’s problematic relationship with her mother. La Vieillesse (Old Age), published in 1970, deals with the challenges faced by the elderly in society and, to a disappointingly lesser extent, Beauvoir’s substantial and often-present fears about growing old herself. Tout compte fait (1972; All Said and Done), with its less chronological structure than some of her other works, is a thematic exploration of the ideas most important to Beauvoir, and La Cérémonie des adieux (1981; Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre) (followed by interviews between Beauvoir and Sartre), is a chronicle of Sartre’s very difficult last ten years of life. Beauvoir’s reputation as a feminist philosopher does not allow one to avoid reading her as a female writing from within a masculinist value system. In such a framework, as Leah Hewitt comments, “her work vacillates between a position of solidarity with other women … and a position of competitiveness with them”. Beauvoir’s writings have produced a wide range of responses from critics: every aspect of her work – from narrative structure to transitions between sentences, from public ideologies to the most intimate private acts – has been alternately praised and criticized. Terry Keefe notices a certain “detachment” in Beauvoir’s memoirs, and comments that she writes of “her interest in the world, rather than herself, or rather, in the world, with herself as an object in it”. Readers will certainly enjoy Beauvoir’s exploration of the world, and many, particularly women, will be able to relate to aspects of her cathartic descriptions of herself as “object” within the world we all inhabit. Kimberly K. Carter-Cram Biography Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie de Beauvoir. Born in Paris, 9 January 1908, into a family of aristocratic descent. Her father went bankrupt soon after her birth. Educated at the Institut Normal Catholique Adeline Désir, Paris, 1913–25 (baccalauréat). Studied literature and philosophy at the Institut Sainte-Marie, Neuilly-sur-Seine, and mathematics at the Institut Catholique, Paris, 1925–26. Studied philosophy and literature in Paris at the Sorbonne, 1926–28, and the Ecole Normale Supérieure, 1928–29 (agrégation in philosophy). Began a lifelong relationship with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, 1929.

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Taught at lycées in Paris, then at the Lycée Montgrand, Marseilles, 1931–33; Lycée Jeanne d’Arc, Rouen, 1933–38; Lycée Molière, Paris, from 1938; and later also at the Lycée Camille-Sée, Paris, until 1943. Published her first novel L’Invitée (She Came to Stay), 1943. Founding editor, with Sartre, of the journal Les Temps Modernes, 1945. Received critical acclaim with the publication of Le Sang des autres (1945; The Blood of Others). Lectured in the United States and began a four-year relationship with the American novelist Nelson Algren, 1947. Published her most famous work, Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex), an examination of the plight of women, 1949. Lived with the writer and film-maker Claude Lanzmann, 1952–58. Won the Prix Goncourt for her novel Les Mandarins (1954; The Mandarins). Became increasingly committed to political activism from the late 1950s. Actively involved in the women’s movement in the 1970s. Cofounder and president of the feminist group Choisir, 1972; president, Ligue des Droits des Femmes, 1974. Died in Paris, 14 April 1986.

Selected Writings L’Amérique au jour le jour (travel writings), 1948; as America Day by Day, translated by Carol Cosman, 1999 Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée, 1958; as Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, translated by James Kirkup, 1959 La Force de l’âge (autobiography), 1960; as The Prime of Life, translated by Peter Green, 1962 La Force des choses (autobiography), 1963; as Force of Circumstance, translated by Richard Howard, 1965 Une mort très douce (biography), 1964; as A Very Easy Death, translated by Patrick O’Brian, 1965 La Vieillesse (semi-autobiographical study), 1970; as Old Age, translated by Patrick O’Brian, 1972 Tout compte fait (intellectual autobiography), 1972; as All Said and Done, translated by Patrick O’Brian, 1974 (with Jean-Paul Sartre) La Cérémonie des adieux: suivi de entretiens avec Jean-Paul Sartre: août–septembre 1974, 1981; as Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre, translated by Patrick O’Brian, 1984 Journal de guerre: septembre 1939–janvier 1941, edited by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, 1990 Lettres à Sartre, edited by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, 1990; as Letters to Sartre, translated and edited by Quintin Hoare, 1991 Lettres à Nelson Algren: un amour transatlantique, 1947–1964, edited and translated by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, 1997

Further Reading Bair, Deirdre, Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography, New York: Summit, and London: Jonathan Cape, 1990 Bieber, Konrad, Simone de Beauvoir, Boston: Twayne, 1979 Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, London and New York: Routledge, 1990 Celeux, Anne-Marie, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir: Une expérience commune, deux écritures, Paris: Librairie Nizet, 1986 Cottrell, Robert D., Simone de Beauvoir, New York: Frederick Ungar, 1975 Descubes, Madeleine, Connaître Simone de Beauvoir, Paris: Editions Resma, 1974 Duchen, Claire, Feminism in France: From May ’68 to Mitterrand, Boston and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986 Evans, Martha Noel, Masks of Tradition: Women and the Politics of Writing in Twentieth-Century France, New York: Cornell University Press, 1987 Evans, Mary, Simone de Beauvoir: A Feminist Mandarin, London and New York: Tavistock, 1985 Fitch, Brian T., “‘Le dévoilement de la conscience’ de l’autre: L’invitée de Simone de Beauvoir” in his Le Sentiment d’étrangeté chez Malraux, Sartre, Camus et S. de Beauvoir, Paris: Minard, 1964 Gilmore, Leigh, Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women’s SelfRepresentation, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1994 Gusdorf, Georges, Auto-bio-graphie, Paris: Editions Odile Jacob, 1991 Hatcher, Donald L., Understanding The Second Sex, New York: Peter Lang, 1984 Heilbrun, Carolyn G., Writing a Woman’s Life, New York: Norton, 1988 Hewitt, Leah, Autobiographical Tightropes: Simone de Beauvoir,

Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig and Maryse Condé, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990 Holveck, Eleanore, “Simone de Beauvoir: Autobiography as Philosophy”, Simone de Beauvoir Studies, 8 (1991): 103–10 Keefe, Terry, Simone de Beauvoir: A Study of Her Writings, London: Harrap, 1983; without subtitle New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998 LeDoeuff, Michèle, “Simone de Beauvoir and Existentialism”, Feminist Studies, 6 / 2 (1980): 277–90 LeDoeuff, Michèle, Hipparchia’s Choice: An Essay Concerning Women, Philosophy, etc., translated by Trista Selous, Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1991 Marks, Elaine (editor), Critical Essays on Simone de Beauvoir, Boston: G.K. Hall, 1987 Moi, Toril, Feminist Theory and Simone de Beauvoir, Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1990 Moi, Toril, Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman, Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1994 Nahas, Hélène, La Femme dans la littérature existentielle, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957 Patterson, Yolanda Astarita, “Simone de Beauvoir” in French Women Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Source Book, edited by Eva Martin Sartori and Dorothy Wynne Zimmerman, New York: Greenwood Press, 1991 Sheringham, Michael, French Autobiography: Devices and Desires, Rousseau to Perec, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993 Simone de Beauvoir Studies, 1983– Suleiman, Susan Rubin, “Simone de Beauvoir and the Writing Self”, L’Esprit Créateur, 29 / 4 (1989): 42–51 Whitmarsh, Anne, Simone de Beauvoir and the Limits of Commitment, New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981

Behan, Brendan

1923–1964

Irish playwright and autobiographer While Brendan Behan’s literary reputation rests on his dramatic works, The Quare Fellow (produced 1954, published 1956) and The Hostage (1958), both of which were substantial international successes, the bulk of his writing consists of various forms of autobiography. This body of work includes the travelogues Brendan Behan’s Island (1962) and Brendan Behan’s New York (1964), and the newspaper sketches of Behan’s Dublin collected in Hold Your Hour and Have Another (1963). Each of these volumes is a record of Behan’s impressions and opinions, and each is noteworthy for the sound of Behan’s voice as well as for the ease with which others’ voices are reproduced. The use of a tape-recorder in the production of the travelogues is obviously indispensable to their oral quality, and the same may be said of Behan’s final autobiographical work, the posthumously published Confessions of an Irish Rebel (1965), which concludes the story of his career as a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) begun in Borstal Boy. Among Behan’s autobiographical writings, however, Borstal Boy (1958) holds pride of place, due not only to its inaugural status in the canon of Behan’s prose but also to its artistic interest, as well as to the novelty and freshness of its cultural observations and its narrator’s experimental personae. This experimentation is a revealing anticipation of the extremely troublesome issues of persona and personality that recur with increasingly debilitating effect in Behan’s later autobiographical writings and, much more notoriously, in his career as a famous personality. In addition, Borstal Boy may be viewed as an assemblage of inflections, misgivings, and insecurities about the

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traditional bases of Irish identity, particularly those provided by republican nationalism and Roman Catholicism. This perspective underlines how the book both avails itself of some of the tropes embodied in the stereotypical stage Irishman and rehearses the more multiple, complex, and contradictory form of Irishness that has come to the forefront of Irish writing since Behan’s death. The title of Borstal Boy refers to the author’s youthful sojourn in a borstal – an institution for young offenders – in Suffolk in eastern England. Most of the text is devoted to Behan’s time in this institution, but a long opening sequence deals with his arrest in Liverpool for possession of explosives and to his pre-trial incarceration in that city’s Walton prison. At the time of his arrest in 1939, Behan was on active service as a member of the IRA, then engaged in a bombing campaign in England. He was aged 16, and received a three-year sentence. Behan’s stay in Walton was brief, but its extensive coverage in Borstal Boy serves a number of purposes, most of them concerning questions of persona, though some are subtly connected with issues in autobiographical narrative structure and, in particular, the problematical nature of time and its relation to memory within that structure. The opening section’s general effect is to offset through a sequence of deceptively artless set pieces such threats to the autonomy and validity of selfhood and individuality as the trauma of confinement; the severe, brutal, and racist nature of the penal regime; the rigid class structure imposed on prisoners; and the experience of foreignness and of existential duress. Vital ingredients of these set pieces are the fugitive acts of tenderness, concern, and overall solidarity among prisoners. Through these a claim to a non-prison and pre-prison life is established, and in seizing on them, Behan the writer as well as Behan the prisoner outwits the rigid and repetitive nature of prison life. In addition, his varied and resilient picture of imprisonment portrays how he counteracts the identity thrust upon him by the authorities’ rough-and-ready understanding of the offences with which he has been charged. As an Irish terrorist, he is perceived to be socially and morally different to his fellow-inmates. Behan’s reactions to that perception immunize him to a certain extent from the degrading and abusive treatment he receives and also act as a stimulus to evaluate the forces that formed his pre-prison identity. This process of evaluation is the main thread to the story of how Behan served his borstal sentence. Gradually a composite self evolves, one that retains an awareness both of its Irish antecedents and its present English conditions and avails itself of both as immediate circumstances warrant. This self, whose emergence is fostered by his borstal’s tolerant and humane regime, is a frank acknowledgement of the improvisational, provisional, and even deliberately duplicitous strategies required to make the most of every given prison moment. The ultimate effect amounts to an assertion that the shades of the borstal that surrounded the growing Brendan Behan existed largely in order to be dispelled. George O’Brien Biography Brendan Francis Behan. Born in Dublin, Ireland, 9 February 1923; older brother of the novelist Dominic Behan. His father was a house painter. Educated at the French Sisters of Charity School, Dublin,

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1928–34; Christian Brothers School, Dublin, 1934–37. Studied at the Day Apprentice School, 1937. Worked as an apprentice house painter, 1937–39. Joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA), 1937. Served a sentence at Hollesley Bay Borstal, England, for attempting to blow up a Liverpool shipyard, 1940–41, then deported. Served terms in Mountjoy, Arbour Hill, and Curragh prisons for the attempted murder of two police detectives, 1942–46. Worked as a house painter, journalist, and seaman, 1946–50. Broadcaster, Radio Eireann, 1951–53. Columnist, Irish Press, Dublin, 1954–55. Married Beatrice ffrench-Salkeld, 1955: one daughter. His fame rests principally on two plays, The Quare Fellow (1954) and The Hostage (1958), both produced by Joan Littlewood and the Theatre Workshop in East London. Died in Dublin, 20 March 1964.

Selected Writings Borstal Boy (autobiography), 1958 Brendan Behan’s Island: An Irish Sketchbook (travel writing), 1962 Hold Your Hour and Have Another (newspaper extracts), 1963 Brendan Behan’s New York (travel writing), 1964 Confessions of an Irish Rebel (autobiography), 1965 The Letters of Brendan Behan, edited by E.H. Mikhail, 1992

Further Reading Behan, Beatrice, Des Hickey and Gus Smith, My Life with Brendan, London: Leslie Frewn, 1973; Los Angeles: Nash, 1974 Behan, Brian, Mother of All the Behans: The Autobiography of Kathleen Behan as Told to Brian Behan, London: Hutchinson, 1984; Dublin: Poolbeg, 1994 Behan, Dominic, My Brother Brendan, London: Leslie Frewin, 1965; New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966 Boyle, Ted E., Brendan Behan, Boston: Twayne, 1969 Cronin, Anthony, Dead as Doornails: A Chronicle of Life, Dublin: Dolmen Press, and London: Calder and Boyars, 1976 Jeffs, Rae, Brendan Behan: Man and Showman, London: Hutchinson, 1966; San Francisco: World, 1968 Kearney, Colbert, The Writings of Brendan Behan, Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1977 McCann, Sean, The World of Brendan Behan, London: New English Library, 1965; Boston: Twayne, 1966 McMahon, Frank, Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy: An Adaptation for the Stage, adapted for the stage by Frank McMahon, Dublin: Four Masters; New York: Random House, 1971 Mikhail, E.H., Brendan Behan: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, London: Macmillan, and New York: Harper and Row, 1980 O’Connor, Ulick, Brendan Behan, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1970; Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1971 Ryan, John, Remembering How We Stood: Bohemian Dublin at the mid-century, Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, and New York: Taplinger, 1975 Simpson, Alan, Beckett and Behan and a Theatre in Dublin, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962; New York: Hillary House, 1966

Belgium see Netherlands and Belgium (Flemish) Benjamin, Walter

1892–1940

German autobiographer and critic The modernist and cultural critic Walter Benjamin remained both a social and intellectual outsider from his childhood days in Berlin, through his growing up in a middle-class, Jewish household, to his life in exile after 1933 in Paris, and finally to his suicide while fleeing Nazi-occupied France. His critical,

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historical, Marxist, and modernist thought was structured and presented – in a highly eclectic, associative, and aphoristic manner – through the prism of the self. Demonstrating both a traditional, Romantic, and aesthetic dimension as well as a modernist, Marxist, and materialist perspective, Benjamin’s discourse resonates subtly and suggestively in the fields of history and philosophy. Heavily influenced by such thinkers as the Annales historian Marc Bloch and literary critic Georg [György] Lukács and writers like Bertolt Brecht and Charles Baudelaire – whom he treated in Charles Baudelaire: ein Lyriker im Zeitalter des Hochkapitalismus (1969; Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism) – Marcel Proust, and Franz Kafka, Benjamin’s style often proved too self-conscious and idiosyncratic for his contemporaries, but it is a cornerstone of his growing posthumous fame. The earliest works, like his brilliant 1924 essay on Goethe’s Wahlverwandschaften and his Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (1928; Origin of The German Tragic Drama), failed to establish him as a writer or academic, but many of his most influential essays, including “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter der technischen Reproduzierbarkeit” (1936; “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”) are collected in his Illuminationen (1955; Illuminations). Moving among the prevailing revolutionary ideology of communism, Zionism, and critical theory, Benjamin opted for the role of solitary wanderer and homme de lettres, not for purposes of communicating to the reader, but for decoding and deciphering the self. The unique and original quality of Benjamin’s prose, his “gift for thinking poetically” (Arendt), may be circumscribed by three broad, extended metaphors that he employed as thinker and poet to weave the life of the mind into the tapestry of concrete things. First, the self and its memory are constructed not as character and narrative, but as places or tableaux – first and foremost, for Benjamin, of Berlin and Paris. For Benjamin time passes and fades, but places are more reliable, and by returning to the places of one’s past one may also recapture the temps perdu of one’s life. In his autobiographical writings Einbahnstrasse (1928; One-Way Street), Berliner Kindheit um Neunzehnhundert [1950; Berlin Childhood around 1910], Berliner Chronik (1970; “A Berlin Chronicle”) memory of one’s past is less a map than a labyrinth in which one loses one’s way. Thus, in his Passagen-werk (1983; The Arcades Project), the arcades of Paris are evoked in order to proceed upon a history of 19th-century Paris. Second, the allegory of collecting and the metaphor of a collection served as the central principle of Benjamin’s epistemology and methodology. Indeed, he understood history not as ordered narrative, but as chaos and debris, and the historian as a collector of ruins. An avid collector of books, Benjamin conceived of writing as collecting thoughts, letters, and quotations. In his work diaries or “little black notebooks” he collected quotations or “pearls of reading”, not to be subsequently used as documentation, but to constitute an intrinsic montage. According to the philosopher Hannah Arendt, who edited Illuminations, “to quote is to name, and naming rather than speaking, the word rather than the sentence, brings truth and light”. Third, the world both as place and as collection is modulated by the desultory rhetoric of purposelessness and chance. These

are signified by the image of the flâneur (idler) made famous by Baudelaire. Just as the urban flâneur strolls without aim through the modern city, so Benjamin conceives of thinking and writing as a form of flânerie or freely associative, open-ended essayism. For him, history – public and private – is experienced by the wanderer and collector travelling and decoding the enigmas of place and self. Ralph W. Buechler Biography Walter Benedix Schönflies Benjamin. Born in Berlin, Germany, 15 July 1892. His father was an affluent Jewish art and antiquities dealer. Educated at the Kaiser Friedrich school and the Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium in Thuringia. Studied philosophy at the universities of Freiburg, 1912, Berlin, 1913, and Munich, 1915–17. Avoided service in World War I by feigning sciatica. Married Dora Sophie Pollak (née Kellner), 1917 (separated 1923, divorced 1930): one son. Studied at the universities of Berne, 1917–19 (Ph.D in philosophy and literature), and Frankfurt-am-Main, 1925 (thesis rejected). Contributed to various journals from the early 1920s. Declared himself a communist, 1924. Wrote Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (1928; The Origin of German Tragic Drama), a study of the 17th century from the German viewpoint. Visited Russia, 1926–27, and Paris, 1927. Forced to leave Germany when the Nazis rose to power, 1933; lived in Paris. Associated with the Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt, 1934–37, and wrote for its journal Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung [Journal for Social Research]. Wrote essays on Marxist materialism, notably “The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1937). Attempted to escape from the Nazi regime by emigrating to the United States via Portugal, but committed suicide in Port Bou, Spain, when in danger of being betrayed to the Gestapo, 26 September 1940 (some sources give 27 September).

Selected Writings Einbahnstrasse (autobiographical prose), 1928; as One-Way Street, translated by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter in One-Way Street and Other Writings, 1979 Berliner Kindheit um Neunzehnhundert (autobiographical prose), 1950 Illuminationen: ausgewählte Schriften (selections), edited by Siegfried Unseld, 1955; as Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, 1968 Briefe, edited by Gershom Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno, 2 vols, 1966; as The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940, translated by Manfred R. Jacobson and Evelyn M. Jacobson, 1994 Charles Baudelaire: ein Lyriker im Zeitalter des Hochkapitalismus, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, 1969; as Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, translated by Harry Zohn, 1973 Berliner Chronik: mit einem Nachwort (autobiographical prose), edited by Gershom Scholem, 1970 as “A Berlin Chronicle” in OneWay Street and Other Writings, translated by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter, 1979 Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, edited by Peter Demetz, translated by Edmund Jephcott, 1978 Moskauer Tagebuch, edited by Gary Smith, 1980; as Moscow Diary, translated by Richard Sieburth, 1985 Briefe an Siegfried Kracauer, edited by Theodor W. Adorno, 1987 (with Theodor W. Adorno) Gesammelte Briefe, edited by Christoph Godde and Henri Lonitz, 1995–; as The Complete Correspondence, 1928–1940, translated by Nicholas Walker, 1999

Further Reading Adorno, Theodor W., “Benjamin the Letter Writer” in his Notes to Literature, vol 2, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992 Alter, Robert, Necessary Angels: Tradition and Modernity in Kafka, Benjamin, and Scholem, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991 Arendt, Hannah, introduction to Benjamin’s Illuminations, edited by Arendt, New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1968

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Buck-Morss, Susan, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1989 Cohen, Margaret, Profane Illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris of Surrealist Revolution, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993 Frisby, David, Fragments of Modernity: Theories of Modernity in the Work of Simmel, Kracauer, and Benjamin, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985; Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1986 Gilloch, Graeme, Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996 Nägele, Rainer (editor), Benjamin’s Ground: New Readings of Walter Benjamin, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988 Smith, Gary (editor), On Walter Benjamin: Critical Essays and Recollections, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1988 “Walter Benjamin”, special issue of New German Critique, 39 (Fall 1986) Wolin, Richard, Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption, New York: Columbia University Press, 1982; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994 (with a new introduction by the author)

Bernhard, Thomas

1931–1989

Austrian novelist, playwright, and autobiographer Over a span of seven years, Thomas Bernhard published five short volumes of autobiography about his childhood and youth during and after World War II: Die Ursache: eine Andeutung (1975; An Indication of the Cause); Der Keller: eine Entziehung (1976; The Cellar: An Escape); Der Atem: eine Entscheidung (1978; Breath: A Decision); Die Kälte: eine Isolation (1981; In The Cold); and Ein Kind (1982; A Child). Just as this pentalogy is a fictionalized and stylized account of Bernhard’s early years, inviting comparison with legends of artists and saints, his fictional prose is also autobiographical. In Ja (1978; Yes), an exotic woman and her Swiss husband are modelled partly on the poet Ingeborg Bachmann, whom Bernhard met in the late 1960s, and her partner, the Swiss author Max Frisch. Bernhard’s friend Paul Wittgenstein, a nephew of the philosopher, appears as the protagonist of Wittgensteins Neffe (1982; Wittgenstein’s Nephew), which was published as a sequel to the autobiography. In one of Austria’s most notorious literary scandals, Holzfällen (1984; Cutting Wood), a roman à clef ripe with bitter invective against the author’s old acquaintances, led to a court charge of slander and to the temporary confiscation by the authorities of the volume. Interestingly, a purely fictional novel, Der Untergeher (1983; The Loser), in which a character named Glenn Gould appears, was first mistaken by some reviewers as a biography of the Canadian pianist. Die Ursache tells of the author’s experiences – many of which cannot be corroborated – as a boarding-school student in Salzburg from 1944 through the city’s bombardment and the school’s reopening after the war. One of Bernhard’s major themes, the continuity between National Socialism and the postwar “National-Socialist-Catholic” state, finds harsh expression in the figure of the school’s new director after the war (“a Nazi and Catholic”). Claiming slander, the Salzburg priest who recognized himself in this figure succeeded in court in having the text modified. The volume exhibits many themes of the pentalogy as a whole. The child, forced by general crisis (war, poverty, disease) to choose between radical alternatives, gains identity and self-

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awareness. Choosing manual labour over classical learning, art over illness, life over death, he advances towards the individuation achieved by the mature author. In Der Keller, Bernhard tells of his decision to abandon his humanistic schooling in favour of a merchant apprenticeship. The boy’s positive assessment of his socialization and “usefulness” in society are contrasted with the narrator’s pessimistic outlook, for a long period of horrific illness is to follow the relative bliss of these early years. This odyssey through hospitals and institutions is described with raw medical detail and sometimes gripping accounts of isolation and despair in Der Atem and Die Kälte. As Bernhard struggles to survive an inflammation of the pleura, his beloved grandfather, the author Johannes Freumbichler, dies nearby. The crisis brings about his “decision” to live: “I wanted to live, nothing else mattered. Live my life, in a manner I choose and for as long as I choose”. Before transferring to a dark, desolate sanatorium – a counter-image of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain – for the treatment of tuberculosis, he establishes a new bond with his mother, only to find out that she suffers from cancer. Reading of her death in a newspaper notice, he is forced to borrow money for a train fare to the funeral. A bicycle excursion that ends in defeat and disappointment – a metaphor for the child’s strong, if unsuccessful, early attempts at individuation – opens the last-published volume, Ein Kind, which covers Bernhard’s earliest years. Its mood oscillates between the child’s humilation in the face of illegitimacy, poverty, and the affliction of bed-wetting on the one hand, and a positive thematic complex on the other: rural life in southern Bavaria, where he stays with his supportive grandparents. In contrast to the earlier volumes, where a prominent narrator grapples with the reality of the events he relates, always commenting, questioning motivations, and contemplating alternative outcomes, Ein Kind features a narrator more in tune with the child’s sometimes harrowing experiences. He expresses his critical distance from the events, including an extended stay in a Nazi reformatory, not through explicit commentary but through detached irony. It is the relaxed style and structural complexity of this volume that links Bernhard’s autobiographical writing to his later work, as he continued to refine a unique narrative style and probe the boundaries of life writing and fiction. Gregor Hens Biography Born in Heerlen, near Maastricht, The Netherlands, 10 February 1931, to an Austrian mother. Lived in Austria and southern Germany from 1932. Educated at Salzburg schools, 1943–47. Left school without degree and took up a commercial apprenticeship. Attended the Viennese Academy of Music and Drama, 51. Contracted tuberculosis and spent two years in convalescence, 1949–51. Studied singing, directing, and theatrical technique, 1952–55. Worked as a freelance writer and court reporter for the socialist newspaper Demokratisches Volksblatt from 1952. Contributed to the newspaper Die Furche. Studied drama at the Mozarteum, Salzburg, 1955–57. Travelled to Italy and Yugoslavia, 1953–57, to London, 1960, and to Poland, 1962–63. Published his first novel, Frost, 1963. Settled on a farm in Ohlsdorf, Upper Austria, 1965. Wrote poetry, more than 15 plays, novels (e.g. Das Kalkwerk, 1970; The Lime Works), and his autobiography. Received several prizes, including the Minor Austrian State Prize (1968), Büchner Prize (1970), Grillparzer Prize (1972), and Prix Médicis (1988). Withdrew from the Deutsche Akademie in 1979. Died in Gmunden, Austria, 12 February 1989.

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Selected Writings Die Ursache: eine Andeutung (autobiography), 1975; as An Indication of the Cause in Gathering Evidence Der Keller: eine Entziehung (autobiography), 1976; as The Cellar: An Escape in Gathering Evidence Der Atem: eine Entscheidung (autobiography), 1978; as Breath: A Decision in Gathering Evidence Die Kälte: eine Isolation (autobiography), 1981; as In the Cold in Gathering Evidence Ein Kind (autobiography), 1982; as A Child in Gathering Evidence Gathering Evidence: A Memoir (includes An Indication of the Cause, The Cellar: An Escape, Breath: A Decision, and A Child), translated by David McLintock, 1985

Further Reading Bugmann, Urs, Bewältigungsversuch: Thomas Bernhards autobiographische Schriften, New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 1981 Dörr, Volker C., “Leben und Wahrheit: Eine Lesart: zu den autobiographischen Büchern Thomas Bernhards”, Modern Austrian Literature, 32 /2 (1999): 39–57 Dowden, Stephen D., Understanding Thomas Bernhard, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991 Höller, Hans, Thomas Bernhard, Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1993 Huber, Martin, “‘Möglichkeitsfetzen als Erinnerung’: Zur Rezeption von Thomas Bernhards autobiographischer Pentalogie” in Kontinent Bernhard: Zur Thomas-Bernhard-Rezeption in Europa, edited by Wolfram Bayer, Vienna: Böhlau, 1995 Huguet, Louis, Chronologie Johannes Freumbichler – Thomas Bernhard, Weitra: Bibliothek der Provinz, 1995 Markolin, Caroline, Die Grossväter sind die Lehrer: Johannes Freumbichler und sein Enkel Thomas Bernhard, Salzburg: Müller, 1988 Mittermayer, Manfred, Thomas Bernhard, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995 Parth, Thomas, “Verwickelte Hierarchien”: Die Wege des Erzählens in den Jugenderinnerungen Thomas Bernhards, Tübingen: Francke, 1995 Schmidt-Dengler, Wendelin, “‘Auf dem Boden der Sicherheit und Gleichgültigkeit’: zu Thomas Bernhards Autobiographie Der Keller” in Autobiographien in der österreichischen Literatur: von Franz Grillparzer bis Thomas Bernhard, Innsbruck and Vienna: Studien Verlag, 1998 Tschapke, Reinhard, Hölle und zurück: Das Initiationsthema in den Jugenderinnerungen Thomas Bernhards, New York and Hildesheim: Olms, 1984

Bethlen, Miklós

1642–1716

Transylvanian statesman and autobiographer Miklós Bethlen’s memoirs (Önéletírása, literally “Autobiography”), were not meant for publication. They were written by this eminent Transylvanian statesman towards the end of his life while under arrest (they were finished in Vienna in 1710) and their addressee was not the imperial court or Hungarian public opinion but Bethlen’s own family and descendants. This is why the language of the memoirs is Hungarian, not Latin, though often sprinkled with Latin sentences and phrases; at any rate, they are a great achievement of Hungarian baroque prose, comparable to the Mémoires of Saint-Simon and other French writers of the age of absolutism. Önéletírása consists of three parts. In the lengthy introduction Bethlen explains the aims of his work: it is an apology for his life and a political testament in which he is trying to defend his honour and give an account of the most important events of his life. The introduction is followed by two books of autobiographical narrative, of which the first begins with the author’s

birth and ends in 1666, while the second traces his career from 1666 to 1708. In the 20 chapters of book one, Bethlen, by religion a Calvinist, gives an unusually frank, in some ways “modern”, physical and psychological description of himself and his early youth. The models are Augustine and René Descartes, but the language is Bethlen’s own, a very expressive, imagery-rich Transylvanian version of colloquial Hungarian. Bethlen’s autobiography is particularly memorable when he describes his studies abroad and travels in Western Europe, as well as episodes of great political significance, such as the death of Count Nicholas Zrínyi in a boar-hunt witnessed by the young visitor. In England, after an adventurous journey from Dover, via Rochester, to London, Bethlen had a good time, was introduced to Charles II, and conversed with him in French; he was invited to dine with “certain great men” both in London and Oxford and concluded that “the English are friendly people by nature”. He was bemused by the charming English habit of women of all ages kissing guests on the cheek and noted that even Oxford dons “found it difficult to converse in Latin”. In the last chapter of the first book where he confesses “the sins” of his youth, Bethlen also relates a visit to the Saracen’s Head, a certain London inn (in fact, a brothel) known to one of his fellow Hungarians then also staying in London, an episode that gives an interesting insight into the sexual mores and fears of the age. When describing his stay in Venice, Bethlen provides information about the behaviour of local courtesans, but that is supplied by his less scrupulous manservant indulging there in carnal pleasures. The second book of Bethlen’s autobiography is painted in darker colours. On the one hand it relates Bethlen’s two marriages and the birth of his children, but the pleasant moments of family life and careful estate management are drowned in a series of intrigues, plots, and clashes with political opponents such as Mihály Teleki, chancellor of Transylvania, and others. In 1676 and 1677 Bethlen even suffered imprisonment for his alleged involvement in a plot against Prince Apafi, the charge of which was later dropped as false. Apart from a detailed description of the changing circumstances of his imprisonment (he could ask for books and was fed at his own cost, but at one point his legs were chained, which caused him much suffering), Bethlen gives a thorough account of this whole affair, including an analysis of the changes in the prince’s attitude towards the prisoners. Though in 1691 Bethlen became chancellor himself, the subsequent loss of Transylvania’s independence and its inclusion in the Habsburg empire coincided with his exclusion from political power and arrest in 1704. The autobiography ends with the transportation of the embittered but still patient prisoner to Vienna four years later. Another interesting feature of Bethlen’s autobiography is the frequent insertion of dreams, some of which are portents of future political developments. Bethlen analyses his (sometimes very elaborate) dreams sensitively and intelligently, and he is a good enough psychologist to distinguish genuine oneiric foresight from “the whispers of the Devil” or weird hallucinations. One of the most moving parts of the autobiography is the description of Bethlen’s first wife’s agony on her deathbed where this virtuous person has fierce doubts about the salvation of her soul, resolved only shortly before expiring. The author’s loyalty to his first wife is in fact borne out by the manner of his second marriage: it is the dying wife’s wish that Bethlen should soon

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remarry (this was customary, for the sake of the children) and, if possible, he should marry an orphan. Júlia, the girl chosen by Bethlen to be his second wife, was indeed an orphan. The second book of Bethlen’s memoirs is stylistically less carefully written than the first half; it is interspersed with long Latin passages, partly recreating Bethlen’s conversations with imperial generals who, after 1689, held de facto power in Transylvania. The whole work, however, is a significant achievement of Hungarian prose which, though not directly influencing its development (it was first published from manuscript in the mid19th century), showed that János Kemény’s somewhat earlier memoirs were not a unique specimen of the genre and that Hungarian could serve as a fine vehicle of self-expression as early as the late 17th century. George Gömöri Biography Born in Kisbún, Transylvania (now in Romania), then a province of the Ottoman empire, 1642, into a Calvinist family of the wealthy nobility. Attended a school in Gyulafehérvár (Alba Julia), where he was taught by Pál Keresztúri and the English emigré theologian Isaac Basire, 1652–57. Taught by the influential educationalist János Apáczai Csere in Kolozsvár (now Cluj, Romania), 1658–59. Went abroad to study, 1661, attending the universities of Heidelberg, Utrecht, and Leiden. Visited England, 1663. Returned to Hungary via France. Sent to Venice on a diplomatic mission, 1665; had talks with the French ambassador in Vienna on his way home. Returned to Transylvania, 1666. Wrote a number of tracts in Latin against the increasingly intolerant religious policy of the Catholic Habsburgs. Imprisoned in Fogaras for alleged involvement in the “Béldi plot”, 1676–77. Tried to renegotiate Transylvania’s status with the Habsburgs after Mihály Apafi I’s death, which resulted in the decree known as the Diploma Leopoldinum. Became chancellor of Transylvania, 1691. Tried to reform the economy of the province. Created count, 1696. Tried to resign and handed over the tract Penetralia Transylvania to the emperor, Leopold I. Transylvania passed into Austrian Habsburg control after the defeat of the Ottoman forces, 1699. Married twice, on the second occasion to Júlia. Wrote a political tract in Hungarian, Olaját visellö Noe galambya [Noah’s Dove Bearing an Olive Branch], under a pseudonym, trying to mediate between Ferenc Rákóczi II (who rebelled against the Habsburgs, 1703–11) and Vienna, 1704. Arrested and sentenced to death, 1704, but sentence commuted to imprisonment, which he served in Nagyszeben (Sibiu) and Eszék (Osijek). Sent to Vienna, May 1708, and lived there under house arrest. Case investigated several times, but his petitions to be freed were ignored. Worked on his memoirs while in prison. Died in Vienna, 1716.

Selected Writings Gróf Bethlen Miklós önéletírása (memoirs), completed 1710, published (2 vols) 1858–60; as Bethlen Miklós önéletírása, edited by Eva V. Windisch, 2 vols, 1955; selections in Old Hungarian Literary Reader: 11th–18th Centuries, edited by Tibor Klaniczay, translated by Keith Bosley et al., 1985 Bethlen Miklós levelei (correspondence), edited by József Jankovics, 2 vols, 1987

Further Reading Jankovics József, entry on Bethlen in Új magyar irodalmi lexikon, edited by László Péter, Budapest: Akadémiai, 1994 Máté, Károly, A magyar önéletírás kezdetei, Pécs: 1926 Németh, László, Az én katedrám, Budapest: Magveto˝ es Szépirodalmi, 1969 Révérend, Dominique, Mémoires historiques du comte Bethlen-Niklos (fictitious autobiography), Amsterdam: Jean Swart, 1736 Szávai, János, Magyar emlékírók , Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1988 Tolnai Gábor, “Elo˝szó” in Bethlen Miklós Önéletírása, Budapest: Szépirodalmi, 1955

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The Bible Nowhere are the boundaries between life writing and imaginative literature less distinct than in the books of the Bible, and nowhere have their demarcations been drawn or debated for bigger stakes. The problems of extricating personal history from its mythic and legendary contexts have proven largely insurmountable. Even the very considerable modern scholarly effort to locate the so-called “historical Jesus” within the context of the canonical Gospels has, in the end, shown itself to be mainly a matter of definition, hypothesis, and speculation. The two fundamental questions for personal history in the Bible are still with us: did the ancient writers intend to provide accounts of actual persons and events and, if so, what value have these accounts as sources for modern biographers? Determination of scriptural genre has traditionally depended as much on religious faith as literary criteria. Modern and contemporary literarycritical approaches to the Bible, however, have problematized and sophisticated every aspect of biblical study and have affected the way we think about its most fundamental categories (genre, history, authorship, text, and so on). The influence of postmodern theory on the study of the Bible has been similar to its influence on the study of life writing. For example, just as deconstructionists tend to conflate life writing with fiction and the so-called “autobiographical self” with the “fictional I”, so the biblical narrative that for two millennia has been read as “sacred history” is now more often than not read as fiction. The privileged, a priori concept of the unity and continuity of the autobiographical self accords well with the Bible’s conception of the unity and continuity of God, especially when one considers its very first chapter’s insistence upon a humanity created in the (self-) “image of God” (Genesis 1:26ff.). Both the “worlds” of the Creator and the life writer are word creations and both discourses hinge on the privileged authority of their “authors”. The modern individual’s privileged access to the self finds some correspondence with the ancient prophet’s or apostle’s privileged revelation of God. The knowledge that results in both cases establishes the special relationship of addresser and addressee and the distinctive reading conventions (or faith) that that special relationship entails. The uniquely privileged point of view has the interesting effect of sanctioning the authority of a discourse without possibility of corroboration and explaining the accessibility of otherwise inaccessible experience. Because of this correspondence, prophetic oracle or apostolic confession can carry a kind of intimate revelation of self that is the closest the Bible comes to the modern selfrevelatory mode. The best example of this in the New Testament is found in certain verses of Paul’s Epistles, to be considered shortly. The most vivid exemplifications of self-revelation among the Hebrew Prophets are to be found in the extraordinary experiences documented (or invented) in Hosea 1–3 and in much more extensive sections of Jeremiah. The vast 52-chapter book of Jeremiah is a collection of first-person verse oracles linked in part by a biographical prose narrative, some of which was probably written by the eyewitness Baruch, the prophet’s scribe and close companion. The book begins with the divine call, which itself began as a pre-birth or predestined imperative (1:5), providing the type for the later claim by Paul (Galatians 1:15); it

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ends with the prophet’s disappearance in Egypt after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 bce. The motifs of persecution, isolation, “pain unceasing” / “wound incurable” (15:18), and obsessivecompulsive determination to carry out his divine commission provide the fullest material for scriptural “biography”. They also provide part of the typology for the “life” of the apostle Paul. Most of the external events and the socio-political context of Jeremiah are reconstructable as history, and the inner life is amply attested to, especially in chapter 1 and the so-called “Confessions” or “Prayers” of Jeremiah (at least 11:18–23, 12:1–6, 15:10–21, 17:14–18, 18:18–23, and 20:7–18). The most obvious life writing in the Bible is found in the New Testament. Of its four principal literary genres, three (all but apocalyptic literature) are relevant to the present discussion. The most often studied in recent decades has been the Gospel as a form of ancient biography. The Epistles, mentioned earlier, have been mined for their intimate autobiographical revelations and for their clues to Paul’s apostolate. The Acts of the Apostles, which can be read as a kind of ideologically driven historical literature, have always been thought of as containing Paul’s first “biography”. The four canonical Gospels are certainly as close as Scripture comes to biography, but whether or not they are biography is – as so much else in genre study – a matter mainly of debate. David Aune, who, along with other New Testament scholars, interprets Gospel as a sub-type of Greco-Roman biography, offers a very general description of the genre that seems broadly applicable to all four Gospels: “A biography relates the significance of a famous person’s career (i.e., his character and achievements), optionally framed by a narrative of origins and youth, on the one hand, and death and lasting significance on the other” (The New Testament in Its Literary Environment). One specialized form upon which the Gospels would seem to have been modelled (but about which scholars are still not generally convinced) is the aretalogy: an account of the career of an impressive teacher, usually consisting of a collection of miracle stories providing evidence for his preternatural gifts and usually used for moral instruction. Another paradigmatic form (suggested chiefly in the work of Philip Shuler) is a laudatory form known as encomium biography. Whereas biography is a type of personal history, the canonical Gospels are fundamentally mythic and kerygmatic (or proclamational). So the Gospels report and claim to report a truth that is independent of historical confirmation and that does not require corroboration for belief. What is also clear is that the Gospels, like all biblical narrative, manifest very little interest in physical appearance, formative experience, motivation and the so-called inner life, the development of personality, and other standard features of the modern biographical form. The Gospels remain focused on the early Christian kerygma, upon the presentation of Jesus as the eschatological prophet who is the Christ and the Son of God. The historical details of the Gospels are no more accurate or documentable than those of Acts, the reliability of which has been universally questioned by scholarly research of the last half century. It is in Acts alone that we read of Paul’s dramatic “conversion” on the road to Damascus. In no less than three separate accounts (Acts 9:1–19, a third-person narrative; and two firstperson accounts in 22:1–21 and 26:12–23), we read of Paul blinded by celestial light and converted by hearing the voice of

the risen Christ. None of these reports is confirmed in Paul’s Letters, which, in any case, treat his transforming experience more as a “call” on the model of the Hebrew prophet than as a conversion from one religious belief to another. Paul wrote directly to his contemporaries during the three decades following the crucifixion of Jesus, and his Letters provide some evidence for documenting each major stage of his life. The principal texts for the revelation of his personal life and sensibility are at least the following: Galatians 1:11–24, which deals with the call (conceived as originally predestined, then by Christ and God) and commission (to preach to the gentiles); Philippians 3:4–11 and Romans 7, which help in the re-creation of his pre-commissioned self; and 2 Corinthians 10–12, especially 11:21–33 (relating his hardships and persecution) and 12:1–10 (relating his ecstatic ascension “to the third heaven”, “into Paradise”, and the “thorn … in the flesh” that keeps him “from being too elated by the abundance of revelations”). From the perspective of life-writing theory, perhaps the most important aspect of the autobiographical sections of the Epistles is the clear pattern of contrasts that emerges between Paul’s life before his call and after it. This pattern is similar to the standard retrospective pattern of autobiography, in which the true significance of events and activities of the earlier life becomes clear only in retrospect. The pattern, however, is even more strikingly characteristic of conversion narratives (like the most famous one in Book 8 of the Confessions of St Augustine), in which the contrast between past and present selves is seen as the direct consequence of the central transforming experience of the life, the experience that leads to the re-evaluation of all that precedes it. In this sense Paul’s call is tantamount to conversion. Except for the self-constructions found in parts of the prophetic books (of which two have already been mentioned), the Hebrew Bible provides a less obvious and more challenging field of study than does the New Testament. The largest narrative portraits in the Hebrew Bible are those of Moses (contained mainly in Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) and David (in 1 Samuel 16–1 Kings 2), but “biography” is hardly the best term for these texts. While obsessed with history, ancient Israel seems to have been little interested in “personality”. Its narratives concentrate on ideology rather than personality, and it produced no generic form like biography as we understand it today. The prose narratives of the Hebrew Bible display little of the individualism we find in the New Testament, and so the discussion of their life writing must take a different direction. Israel is both the name of a person (Jacob) and the name of a people whose own self-narratives trace them back to their eponymous father. The early stories of the people, which shaped their corporate personality (their collective “autobiographical self”) are found in the more or less continuous story from Genesis 1 to 2 Chronicles 36 (the final chapter of the Hebrew Bible, different in arrangement from the Christian Old Testament). This narrative has traditionally been read as the ancient but undocumentable history of Israel. For our purposes it may also be read as a kind of mythic autobiography of Israel’s collective self, a self created and transformed by its own autobiographical acts, a self known through its self-writing, rewriting, and recitation. From this perspective the so-called “People of the Book” are literally that. Exodus has been characterized as “a national autobiography”. “Not the event”, says Arthur Gold in “Exodus as Autobiography” (1967), “but the telling of the event is what matters.

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Not the event that can be corroborated, but the event that is the telling of the event – and therefore neither needs nor bears corroboration”. Over many centuries Israel (later Judeans, Jews) has managed to differentiate itself from other peoples – that is, it has managed to achieve a self-identity – by telling itself the story of its providential liberation from Egypt. In orthodoxy this story is history; in another context it would be a foundation myth; it may also be regarded as collective autobiography. Ancient Israel defined itself in terms of its inscribed past and conceived of itself as “commanded” to remember that past by reciting it. It is this corporate historical memory that creates a cohesive “people”. Thus corporate memory in the Hebrew Bible and in Jewish ritual may be seen to function in a way very similar to that of personal memory in modern forms of life construction. It is also subject to the same sceptical inquiry, as when the memory is attacked as “false” (however oxymoronic that may be) and the story equated with fiction. Barry N. Olshen See also Christianity and Life Writing; Judaism and Life Writing; Religious Autobiography; Religious Biography; Spiritual Autobiography

Further Reading Aichele, George et al. (The Bible and Culture Collective), The Postmodern Bible, New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 1995 Alter, Robert and Frank Kermode (editors), The Literary Guide to the Bible, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, and London: Collins, 1987 Aune, David E., The New Testament in Its Literary Environment, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987 Fredriksen, Paula, “Paul and Augustine: Conversion Narratives, Orthodox Traditions, and the Retrospective Self”, Journal of Theological Studies, new series, 37 (1986): 3–34 Gold, Arthur R., “Exodus as Autobiography”, Commentary, (May 1967): 46–51 Luedemann, Gerd, Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles: Studies in Chronology, translated by F. Stanley Jones, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, and London: SCM Press, 1984 (German edition, 1980) Miles, Jack, God: A Biography, New York: Knopf, and London: Simon and Schuster, 1995 Minor, Mark, Literary-Critical Approaches to the Bible: An Annotated Bibliography, West Cornwall, Connecticut: Locust Hill Press, 1992; Supplement, 1996 Segal, Alan F., Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1990 Shuler, Philip L., A Genre for the Gospels: The Biographical Character of Matthew, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982 Talbert, Charles H., What is a Gospel? The Genre of the Canonical Gospels, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977; London: SPCK, 1978

The Bildungsroman The Bildungsroman, most commonly translated as the “novel of formation”, has been the subject of literary criticism since the late 19th century, when the eminent German literary theorist Wilhelm Dilthey identified Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–96; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship), as a foundation stone for a new literary form. Although Dilthey did not coin this word, and he was not the first to apply it to Goethe’s novel, his definition should be the

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starting point for any investigation of the genre. In his 1906 work, Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung (Poetry and Experience), Dilthey describes the Bildungsroman as a story of a youth and of how … in joyful dawning he enters into life, searches for kindred souls, encounters friendship, and love, and how he engages in a struggle with the hard reality of life, and thus maturing as a result of the multiplicity of life experiences, he finds himself and becomes aware of his purpose in the world. In Goethe’s novel, Wilhelm Meister rejects his father’s business expectations for a life as a dramatist, actor, and reformer of the theatre as a cultural institution. At first he is motivated by his affair with a young actress, but upon discovering her infidelity he sets out on a journey that brings him into contact with the full spectrum of German theatre life. Wilhelm’s goal is to develop his natural talents to their fullest potential, and, given the rigid class structure of 18th-century Germany, he sees the stage as the only realm available to the bourgeoisie for true artistic selfexpression. After a series of encounters and misadventures, his idealism is tempered and he abandons the stage. A secret society of progressive aristocrats reveals its long-time interest in his development, and ultimately he joins this group, rediscovering his young son from the earlier affair, becoming engaged, and taking up a practical and socially useful occupation. Goethe’s novel met with immediate popularity and found imitators (as well as detractors) among the Romantic writers (imitators included Ludwig Tieck’s Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen, 1798; and Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen, 1802). Other major contributions to the genre appeared during the 19th century (e.g. Adalbert Stifter’s Der Nachsommer, 1857; and Gottfried Keller’s Der grüne Heinrich, 1854–55; 1879–80). The German tradition continued, albeit in altered manifestations, into the 20th century with such works as Rainer Maria Rilke’s Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (1910; The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge) and Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg (1924; Magic Mountain). The use of the German term Bildungsroman as a designation of this literary genre is not only attributable to its national origin, but also to the inadequacy of translations to express succinctly the complexity inherent in the genre. Bildung, a concept whose meaning changed as social demands and environment shifted, is linked to a literary concept, Roman, or novel. Generally the early usage of Bildung referred to the outer form and shape of an object. The term was transformed in Pietist religious thought, where it was used to express God’s active work in reshaping the sinful individual. By the end of the 18th century, it had shifted to designate inner intellectual development. In this secularized usage, Bildung is not just a term for the static intellect, but is understood as a process involving dynamic interaction between the individual and the environment. The term, however, also evokes a historically determined collective understanding and value system among various social strata in Germany. These two meanings reflect the polarized tensions within the genre: the development of the individual’s unique potential, and the assimilation of the individual into society. It is this combination that distinguishes the Bildungsroman from the related genre: the Entwicklungsroman, or the

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novel of development (with its primary focus on the individual), and the Erziehungsroman, or the novel of education (with its focus on social integration). Goethe’s work had a direct impact on the British literary scene after Thomas Carlyle translated Wilhelm Meister into English in 1824, and the term Bildungsroman found its way into the vocabulary of English and American literary critics. A more generalized definition of the Bildungsroman was provided in 1974 by Jerome Buckley, who outlined the “principle characteristics” as the following: a (male) child grows up in the provinces, suffers constraints on his intellectual and imaginative development, clashes with his father and leaves home, usually heading for a large city. He experiences at least two love affairs, “one debasing, one exalting”, and, together with other experiences, they compel him to re-examine his values and to attain a measure of maturity and understanding of the world. Examples in the English tradition include Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1850) and Great Expectations (1861); George Meredith’s The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) and The Adventures of Harry Richmond (1871); Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure (1895); Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh (1903); D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers (1913); and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). Despite the varieties in genre designation, one essential aspect of the Bildungsroman is what Northrop Frye describes as “human character as it manifests itself in society”. Wilhelm Meister ultimately established his place in an aristocratic world, although the progressive Society of the Tower, which accepted him into their ranks, may be more a utopian projection than an attainable ideal. A major tension in the genre is the contradictory demands on the protagonist to develop fully his individuality and to harmonize his development with the goals of the greater community. Franco Moretti described the Bildungsroman as a “symbolic form of modernity”, since this internal contradiction reflects the nature of modern culture. In Western civilization, individuality is accentuated, but must nevertheless coexist within the demands of society. In his view, the Bildungsroman is the ideal narrative form for depicting and exploring the modern world. The term “female Bildungsroman” came to be applied to novels such as George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Middlemarch (1871–72) and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), since, given the social realities of the 19th century, even the most liberal definition of the genre precluded a female protagonist. The quest for self-realization could not range beyond the boundaries of hearth and home. In the 20th century the breakdown of social restrictions allowed a wider freedom of expression for women, yet there is some debate as to whether the Bildungsroman is an appropriate literary form for this expression. In some respects the female Bildungsroman (and the black Bildungsroman) restores one of the original conditions of the Goethean model, which dealt with the difficulties of integrating a disenfranchized minority – in Goethe’s era of aristocratic absolutism, the bourgeois male intellectual – into an inaccessible social order. The genre is stretched beyond the traditional patterns to include the “awakening” of the older woman after the social expectations of marriage and motherhood are fulfilled. This variant of the genre, in stark contrast to the Goethean model, outlines the evolution of the individual away from society. Examples include Margaret Atwood’s Sur-

facing (1972) and Lady Oracle (1976), and Sheila Ballantyne’s Norma Jean the Termite Queen (1975). Black Bildungsroman, too, rejects the possibility of attaining harmony with the existing social order. Identifying African American and West Indian novels as variants of Bildungsroman which derived from a tradition of slave autobiography (e.g. Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845; Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig, 1859; and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 1861), Geta Leseur shows the adaption of the European literary genre as a medium of cultural expression. Since harmonization with the dominant society is not an option in African American Bildungsromane, such as Richard Wright’s Black Boy (1945), James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970), the goal is to document the destructive impact of society on the individual. Likewise West Indian novels (e.g. George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin, 1953; and Austin Clarke’s Amongst Thistles and Thorns, 1965) seek cultural symbols of black heritage as a balance to the hostile white American and British society. In The Summing Up (1938), Somerset Maugham commented on his book Of Human Bondage (1915): It is not an autobiography, but an autobiographical novel; fact and fiction are inextricably mingled; the emotions are my own, but not all the incidents are related as they happened and some of them are transferred to my hero not from my own life but from that of persons with whom I was intimate. This statement could have been uttered by Goethe, who referred to the first book of Wilhelm Meister as a pseudo-confession. Additionally, at the time of its composition, Goethe edited and published Heinrich Jung’s autobiography as a novel, and collaborated with Karl Philipp Moritz, who had just published his autobiography as a novel. Perhaps the strongest indication of the relationship between the two genres is the inclusion of a Pietist autobiography at the centre of Wilhelm Meister. Autobiography and biography, like the Bildungsroman, are narrative interpretations of an individual’s life. The collapse of the teleological characteristics of the Bildungsroman in the 20th century and the breakdown of rigid genre expectations match the development in autobiography, where postmodernism undermined belief in the capability of narrative as an expression of personal identity. Thus the underlying relationship between these genres is becoming apparent. Raymond L. Burt Further Reading Abel, Elizabeth, Marianne Hirsch and Elizabeth Langland (editors), The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development, Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1983 Buckley, Jerome Hamilton, Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1974 Bruford, W.H., The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation: “Bildung” from Humboldt to Thomas Mann, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975 Frye, Northrop, The Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1957 Hardin, James (editor), Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991

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Howe, Susanne, Wilhelm Meister and His English Kinsmen: Apprentices to Life, New York: Columbia University Press, 1930 Kontje, Todd, The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre, Columbia: Camden House, 1993 Leseur, Geta, Ten is the Age of Darkness: The Black Bildungsroman, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995 Moretti, Franco, The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture, London: Verso, 1987 Swales, Martin, The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1978 White, Barbara Anne, Growing up Female: Adolescent Girlhood in American Fiction, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1985

Biographical Dictionaries The earliest biographical dictionaries appeared by the 10th century, among the Arabs: examples are the eight-volume Kitƒb al-tabaqƒt al-kab¡r (on biographies of religious figures and converts, including women, and companions of the Prophet) by Ibn Sa’d (d. c.845) and the Tabaqƒt fuh›l al-shu‘arƒ’ by Ibn Sallƒm al-Jamƒhi (d. c.846), on poets. These books appeared at the time, as Wadƒd al-Qƒd¡ has written, that Islam “was beginning to develop a clear self-image”. The genre was associated, and still is, with the emergence of (collective) identity, whether in national dictionaries of biography or in the many proliferating versions on special groups by race, gender, profession, or other identifying criteria. One source of the biographical dictionary in the West was the biographical history, which appeared in antiquity (Plutarch’s Lives and Pliny the Elder’s histories of illustrious figures) and were prominent in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. These focused on Christian martyrs and saints, popes, monarchs, and other “worthies”. Examples include Bartolomeo Platina’s lives of the popes (1479); Antonio de Villegas’s lives of the saints (1609); and Giovanni Alidosi’s biographical histories of prominent Bolognese theologians, philosophers, and physicians (1614). Saints, popes, and monarchs (and other royalty), along with physicians and lawyers, two of the principal types of professional in the Middle Ages, made up the subjects of biographical dictionaries up to the 17th century. The most exhaustive and among the first to use “dictionary” in its title was Louis Moréri’s Le Grand Dictionnaire historique, ou, le mélange curieux de l’histoire sacrée et profane … of 1681, which included geography, laws, customs, and manners as well as lives. Many of these were very popular and were frequently reprinted and translated. Related to these dictionaries were books of engraved portraits, or “heads”, of illustrious persons, the same subjects that dictionaries focused on. These histories were marked by their didactic purpose. Biographical dictionaries, however, were distinct from biographical histories, which wove lives together in a chronological pattern, often culminating in a national heroic tradition or national identity that complemented (and later displaced) the didactic purpose. Histories were overtly rhetorical and partisan – whether about leaders, monarchs, or artists, the last introduced into the genre by Giorgio Vasari, whose Le vite de’ più eccelenti architetti … (1550, 1568; Lives of the Artists) was imitated in every European country from the 17th to the 20th century.

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The modern secular biographical dictionary arose in the 18th century and was the product of the cosmological, encyclopedic thinking of the Enlightenment. It retained its earlier characteristics of alphabetical arrangement and “breadth of coverage” (as Wood says), ranging widely in subjects over time and place. Modern versions did not immediately shed the exemplary tradition. The “historical and biographical dictionary” by Jean Baptiste Ladvocat of 1754 included the Hebrew patriarchs as well as historians, pagan gods and heroes, popes, cardinals, poets, orators, divines, lawyers, physicians, learned women, and painters, “et généralement de toutes les personnes illustres ou fameuses des tous les siècles et des toutes les nations du monde” – an archetypal Enlightenment venture. Biographical dictionaries, however, became secularized and universal, applying the didactic functions of the earlier lives of saints and monarchs to exemplary citizens and historical topics, as in A New and General Biographical Dictionary … Lives and Writing of More Eminent Persons in Every Nation … Especially of Britain and Ireland (1761), Joseph Strutt’s Biographical Dictionary of Engravers (1785), Matthew Pilkington’s Dictionary of Painters (1797), biographical dictionaries of ancient classical history, and dictionary compendia for the Bible. Examples of national orientation in dictionaries are the Biographia Britannica, or, The Lives of the Most Eminent Persons Who Have Flourished in Great Britain and Ireland (1747–66) – “the pre-eminent eighteenth-century biographical collection” according to Wood – Robert Shiels’s The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753); A New and General Biographical Dictionary (1761–62); Isaac Reed’s Biographia dramatica (1764); George Ballard’s Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (1752); the Biographium faemineum (1766); John Aikin and William Enfield’s General Biography, or, Lives, Critical and Historical, of the Most Eminent Persons of All Ages, Countries, Conditions, and Professions, Arranged According to Alphabetical Order (1799); Mary Hays’s Female Biography, or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women of All Ages and Countries, Alphabetically Arranged (1803); and Matilda Betham’s A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804); as well as similar versions on the continent. Biographical dictionary entries tend to be brief and nonnarrative, not organized historically or chronologically but directed by motives of compilation towards a combination of inclusivity and brevity, as the titles above indicate. The emergence of alphabetical organization provoked debates in the 18th century about the threat that such organization posed to didactic purposes, since alphabetizing tended to level entries, making them all equal and all equally worthy. Having no overriding narrative themes as have histories, dictionaries appear to present “facts” and to be highly selective and “objective”. But the didactic content was not erased completely. The genre had “an underlying, hidden stratum of history” (al-Qƒd¡) that determined choices of subjects and entry lengths. Systematizing and ordering entries, dictionaries still determined who was worthy of honour by inclusion. Entries often had rhetorical motives, making some dictionaries moralizing and others nationalistic, highlighting national identity as the primary criterion for inclusion. Some intended to educate or elevate readers in the 19th-century processes of middle- and workingclass acculturation. Samuel Redgrave’s A Dictionary of Artists

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of the English School: Painters, Sculptors, Architects, Engravers and Ornamentists with Notices of Their Lives and Works (1874) was intended for a wide range of users, from the lay reader to the connoisseur and scholar, to bind them to national culture. Most important, however, was that as history came to dominate ways of organizing information, in such concepts as evolution and progress, biographical dictionaries could be created, and old dictionaries updated and expanded, to include new subjects that reflected new attitudes towards worth and achievements. Revisions and updates in Who’s Who and the current massive revisions of the British Dictionary of National Biography (DNB), due in 2002, exemplify how dictionaries function, through updating, as infinitely expandable resources through new historical documentation and methods. Entries can be very brief or several pages in length, as in the DNB, which has entries of varying lengths and depths and which grew out of a history of such national dictionaries throughout 19th-century Europe (e.g. the Biographie universelle, ancienne et moderne, 1843–65). Many old dictionaries were frequently revised – for instance, Baker’s biography of musicians and Chambers’s Biographical Dictionary. Bryan’s Dictionary of Artists was revised throughout the 19th century, with the aim of increasing historical accuracy. The revision of 1909–10 by George Williamson included hundreds of new biographies of recently deceased artists and thousands of revisions of old entries based on new art historical scholarship. Old Master entries were marked by length, catalogues of works, and several reproductions. New Masters, such as recently deceased Victorian painters, had entries just as long and well illustrated as their earlier counterparts and were thus by content and length of their entries elevated to Old Master status. Williamson’s revision gave attention to Victorian British artists, and even short entries on minor British artists were accompanied by reproductions (e.g. J.J. Jenkins), which served to encourage readers to see British art as part of a national identity. Dictionaries can also have a levelling effect by eliminating certain distinctions. In Williamson’s revision, an entry on Sarah Biffin, who had no hands or feet but many royal patrons, alongside entries on old masters exemplified this levelling. Criteria for inclusion were frequently in conflict with the dictionary’s inherent generic encyclopedic impulse. The current rage for biographical dictionaries is reflected in their many forms – most countries have dictionaries of national biography and most professions and other special interest groups have dictionaries of prominent persons in those professions. Dictionary subjects may be organized by race and gender (e.g. African American women) or by professions (such as medicine or musical composition), often in nationalistic frames (American reformers, British authors, American women in science, Art and Artists of South Africa, Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen, or A Biographical Dictionary of the Sudan). Biographical dictionaries confer status, through inclusion, on subjects previously left out or not recognized as coherent groups. Categories such as “thinker”, in Thinkers of the Twentieth Century, allow the authors latitude in defining criteria for inclusion. Dictionaries may embrace long stretches of time from antiquity to the present and thus confer historical legitimacy, as suggested in a title such as A Biographical Dictionary of Japanese History. They may also be global in range, as in the

Biographical Dictionary of World Artists. Increasingly, they may cover highly specialized topics, as in A Biographical Dictionary on the Political Abuse of Psychiatry in the USSR, Agitators and Promoters in the Age of Gladstone and Disraeli, or A Biographical Dictionary of the British Colonial Governor. Examples from the range of modern biographical dictionaries demonstrate the flexibility of the genre to treat (and thus foreground) subjects and validate new fields of enquiry, from Islamic women (Biographical Dictionary of Prominent Muslim Ladies) to peace movements (Dictionary of Modern Peace Leaders), from 20th-century musical sub-cultures (Biographical Dictionary of Blues Singers) to developing technologies (International Biographical Dictionary of Computer Pioneers). New fields, groups, and nations thus gain a greater recognition through biographical dictionaries; their existence is validated in a manner comparable to the saints, martyrs, and monarchs of the early works. Although historical fact now dominates over hagiographic representation, biographical dictionaries still communicate value by generally undergirding national identity and through this validation of new groups or enterprises, with the genre increasingly serving modern specialization, as al-Qƒd¡ suggests. Julie F. Codell See also Australian Dictionary of Biography; Biographie universelle & Dictionnaire de biographie française; Dictionary of American Biography; Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire biographique du Canada; Dictionary of National Biography; Dictionary of New Zealand Biography; Neue Deutsche Biographie; Who’s Who

Further Reading al-Qƒd¡, Wadƒd, “Biographical Dictionaries: Inner Structure and Cultural Significance” in The Book in the Islamic World: The Written Word and Communication in the Middle East, edited by George N. Atiyeh, Albany and Washington, DC: State University of New York Press / Library of Congress, 1995 Fenwick, Gillian, Women and the Dictionary of National Biography, Aldershot, Hampshire: Scolar, 1994 Fritze, Ronald H., “The Dictionary of National Biography and Its Early Editors and Publisher”, Reference Services Review, 16 / 4 (1988): 21–29 Longaker, Mark, English Biography in the Eighteenth Century, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1931 McCalman, Iain, Jodi Parvey, and Misty Cook (editors), National Biographies & National Identity: A Critical Approach to Theory and Editorial Practice, Canberra: Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, 1996 Stauffer, Donald A., The Art of Biography in Eighteenth-Century England, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, and London: Oxford University Press, 1941 Stephen, Leslie, “National Biography” in his Studies of a Biographer, vol. 1, London: Duckworth, 1898 von Harnack, Axel, “Die Neue Deutsche Biographie”, Historische Zeitschrift, 178 (1954): 531–36 Winslow, Donald J., Life-Writing: A Glossary of Terms in Biography, Autobiography, and Related Forms, revised edition, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995 Wood, Jeanne, “Alphabetically Arranged: Mary May’s Female Biography and the Biographical Dictionary”, Genre, 31 / 2 (1998): 117–42 Yeo, Richard, “Reading Encyclopedias: Science and the Organization of Knowledge in British Dictionaries of Arts and Sciences, 1730–1850”, ISIS, 82 / 311 (1991): 24–49

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Biographie universelle; Dictionnaire de biographie française Announced in a pamphlet by Louis-Simon Auger in 1810, the first double-column volume of the Biographie universelle was published in Paris in 1811. The coming decades were to be turbulent in France, but the audaciously ambitious project of covering all the significant individuals in human history was brought to an end with the 52nd volume in 1834, to be promptly complemented by three volumes on mythological figures, prepared by Parisot, and then by 30 supplementary volumes. The moving spirit behind this was Louis-Gabriel Michaud. Born in 1773, educated at a former Jesuit college and abandoning a military career in 1797, he went into publishing with his elder brother, Joseph-François, best known for his Histoire de Croisades (1812–22) and the major series of historical memoirs he later edited with Poujoulat. As publishers, the brothers Michaud generally brought out books with royalist and Catholic tendencies. The Biographie moderne des hommes qui se sont fait un nom en France et en Europe depuis 1789 may well have inspired the thought of a more ambitious work, and while aiming with their team of contributors at the widest possible coverage, they allowed their sympathies some expression in it. With date of birth given as 2978 (bce), Noah, for instance, is admitted as a historical personage, and his career is solemnly related in quasi-biblical language before there is any discussion of the Flood in rather more enlightened terms. Marshal Ney, one of the most controversial, as well as one of the most colourful personalities of the period contemporary with the publication of the Biographie, is treated adroitly. The facts are given, but the article contrives to undermine Ney’s reputation by making him condemn himself by quoting his own outrageously inconsistent statements. A characteristic feature of the Biographie universelle is the listing of sources, the full notice on “Horace” Nelson, for instance, being followed by acknowledgement of indebtedness to Robert Southey. The insertion of a lot of background information often lengthens the entries unduly, and, though obviously intended to help the reader understand the personalities under discussion, blurs the distinction between an encyclopedia and a dictionary of biography. In general, though, Michaud’s Biographie universelle stands as an impressive achievement and one that spurred successors to greater efforts. In 1852 the Parisian publishers Firmin-Didot embarked on a Nouvelle Biographie universelle, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à nos jours, planning a work that would amount to some 30 volumes. That number had grown to 46, i.e. nearly 50 per cent more, by the time the project was completed in 1866. The editor in charge was (Jean-Chrétien-)Ferdinand Hoefer. This remarkably able and industrious polymath, who was born in 1811 at Doenschnitz and studied the classics at nearby Rudolstadt, about 30 miles south of Weimar, made his way to Paris on foot in 1830, earned a living as a schoolmaster before gaining a doctorate in science, and took French nationality in 1848. The Nouvelle Biographie universelle, though by far the most ambitious, was by no means the only publishing enterprise with which he was connected. Some departures from Michaud’s policy can be detected. For instance, a prefatory note remarks that the apportioning of space will be a more accurate indication of the importance of the subject; though apparently sensible,

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such an approach disregards the fact that a comprehensive biographical dictionary is primarily of value for its entries for secondary figures. Prevalent attitudes may be inferred from some changes in the treatment of subjects already mentioned. Noah, for instance, is granted less space and viewed somewhat sceptically, and though Robert Southey is cited as a source of information about “Horatio” Nelson (as he is now correctly called), his biography, readers are informed, is unworthy of its reputation. More pages are devoted to Ney, and the opportunity is grasped for purple patches praising his courage. Hoefer’s Nouvelle Biographie universelle, though in many ways an improvement on Michaud’s work, does not, however, mark quite the advance that might have been hoped for. Mooted before the First World War by a schoolmaster at the prestigious Lycée Hoche, Versailles, and two “conservateurs” at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, the Dictionnaire de biographie française began to appear only in 1933, and in twothirds of a century it has advanced only halfway through the alphabet in its coverage of the achievements of French men and women at home and abroad. As in the British Dictionary of National Biography, the representation of women’s achievement, though not neglected when earlier periods are dealt with, becomes more marked in accounts of more modern times. Under a number of editors, of whom Roman d’Amat has made the greatest contribution since World War II, a team of scholars has maintained high standards. All the same, it is frustrating that protracted gestation reduces the value of this great work of scholarship. Christopher Smith Further Reading McCalman, Iain, Jodi Parvey and Misty Cook (editors), National Biographies & National Identity: A Critical Approach to Theory and Editorial Practice, Canberra: Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, 1996

Biography: General Survey Because it borrows from and overlaps with other genres, biography – “the history of the lives of individual men, as a branch of literature”, in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary (which notably fails to mention women!) – is a notoriously difficult form to define. Often seen as a subcategory of historical writing, biography is, like history, nonfictional and narrative, with the passage of time playing an important part in its structure. Biography also resembles fiction in its effort to evoke its subject’s inner life, as well as in its literary “realism”, that is, its use of anecdote and description to make its subject “come alive”. Biography is sometimes merged with autobiography, in that both depict a subject’s life. We can assume here, however, that there are generic distinctions unique to biography. It differs from history in that its scope is limited by its subject’s birth, death, and actions. Its distinction from fiction rests on an extratextual relationship of trust between author and reader: for a book to work as biography, its readers must believe it to be “true”, based on verifiable evidence in a way that novels need not be. Finally, it differs from autobiography in that its characteristic split between biographer and subject (i.e. they are

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not, as in autobiography, one and the same person) produces unique aesthetic and ethical problems. The word “biography” was first used in the anonymous Life of … Thomas Fuller of 1661, but accounts of people’s lives date back to ancient times. Historians of biography generally cite funeral orations, post-funeral songs of mourning and praise, and inscriptions on monuments as its earliest manifestations. Among the earliest surviving works to include biographical elements are The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, and the biblical accounts of Joseph and David. Arnaldo Momigliano speculates that the earliest Greek biographies – now lost – appeared in the 5th century bce: a life of Heraclides by Skylax of Caryande and one of Empedocles by Xanthus the Lydian are mentioned by ancient writers. But it was not until the 4th century bce, according to Momigliano, that the Greek term bios emerged to distinguish biographical from historical writing. During this century, admirers of Socrates wrote encomium-like accounts of his life, among them Plato’s Phaedo and Xenophon’s Memorabilia. Later in the century, influenced by Aristotle, biographers became more analytical and detached. Early biography tended towards the philosophical and didactic, depicting individuals’ lives in order to explore larger ideas such as leadership and courage; to analyse character types; or to provide models for imitation. Plutarch, for example, in his depiction of Mark Antony written in the 1st century ce, focuses on the conflict between Antony’s judgement and his passions, which led him ultimately to fail as a Roman leader. Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle in the 4th century bce, approaches human behaviour with his teacher’s classificatory impulse: his Characters depicts 30 personality traits – squalor, for example, and miserliness – each epitomized by an individual’s behaviour. During the Middle Ages, hagiography – the recording of saints’ lives – dominated European biography. The dual goal of saints’ lives was to provide evidence supporting the subject’s canonization (if not already achieved) and to provide readers with exemplary role models. Such works – among them Adamnan’s Columba (late 7th century), Bede’s St Cuthbert (8th century), and Eadmer’s Anselm (12th century) – emphasize the saint’s miraculous achievements as well as his exemplary response to death. Non-European medieval biographies were similarly hagiographic. In 12th-century India, notes Jagdish Sharma, the Jaina monk Hemachandra wrote Lives of Sixty-Three Illustrious Persons or Heroes. Japanese biographers during this time focused on admired warriors and Buddhists, Chinese writers on feudal leaders, and Islamic scholars on the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Although several distinguished English biographies were written in the 16th century – George Cavendish’s Wolsey, for example, and William Roper’s More – it was not until the 17th century that biography gained integrity as a distinct genre, when Francis Bacon, in 1623, distinguished “lives”, which deal with people, from “annals” and “narratives”, two other kinds of historical writing. The Renaissance, with its emphasis on human individuality as well as its newly available translations of classical biographical texts, stimulated this new interest in life writing. So, too, did the burgeoning market for sermons, letters, and essays, which often required biographical prefaces; this was the origin of Izaak Walton’s Donne (1640), for example.

Literary biographies – i.e. depictions of writers’ lives, such as Dryden’s Plutarch (1683) – multiplied, as did collections of short lives. In the 18th century, English-language literary biography reached what many would call its peak, in Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets (1779–81) and James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). With empiricism, Protestantism, and capitalism fuelling a new interest in the individual’s effort to wrest meaning and success from his or her encounters with the external world, biography flourished, alongside and in close relationship with the realistic novel. The effort to achieve an illusion of reality reached a climax in Boswell’s biography of Johnson, with its attention to what Boswell calls “the most minute singularities” of its subject, gathered through years of personal contact. Not only conversations, but physical idiosyncrasies, such as Johnson’s tendency to blow out his breath like a whale, are affectionately chronicled. Johnson himself advocated such attention to detail in biographical writing: “All knowledge is of itself of some value”, he told Boswell. “There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know it than not.” Johnson provided a full account of his ideas about biography in the Rambler, number 60, where he argued that “an account of anyone’s life … is useful, for all our lives are essentially the same”. Johnson’s attention to ordinary lives, his insistence that apparently minor incidents can reveal the most about a person’s character, and his acceptance that any convincing portrait must contain some negative attributes, while based on his classical reading, provided a new model for a biography that would illuminate human experience and personality without explicit didacticism. In the writing of such an account, intimacy with its subject was an advantage; indeed, Johnson told Boswell, “Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.” While Johnson and Boswell provided a new model for biography, few 19th-century biographers followed it exactly. Nineteenth-century biographies tended to be long and respectful, often compiled from letters and diaries by relatives or friends: examples include John Lockhart’s Life of Scott (1837– 38), Arthur Stanley’s Life of Dr. Arnold (1844), and John Morley’s Life of Gladstone (1903). Such biographies, as A.O.J. Cockshut points out, emphasized their subjects’ force of will and achievement as adults, with little attention to either their childhood or their inner conflicts. Carlyle’s view – expressed in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841) – that great men are the crucial factors in human history and that only hero worship would redeem humanity from its post-Industrial Revolution materialism, reinforced this tendency to emphasize the subject’s greatness rather than his failings. It also, of course, contributed to the enormous number of biographies written during this time: these included Carlyle’s own Life of John Sterling (1851), Leslie Stephen’s massive editorial project, The Dictionary of National Biography (begun 1882), and publishers’ series such as “English Men of Letters” and “Eminent Women”. Although Carlyle himself attacked eulogistic biographies as “mealy mouthed” and complained about the “Damocles sword of respectability” limiting biographers’ freedom, pressure on biographers to avoid explicitness about disturbing issues only intensified during the 19th century. Elizabeth Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857), which described Branwell’s sexual

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entanglements, and Froude’s Thomas Carlyle (4 vols, 1882–84), which alluded to marital conflicts, were attacked for their frankness. All this changed, however, with the impact of Freudian psychology and the wave of anti-Victorianism that followed World War I. The publication of Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians in 1918 is generally considered the turning point. Insisting that the biographer must be an artist, Strachey argued that the biographer must shape his / her material and expose his / her subject’s less complimentary features in the interest of constructing a coherent, artful, and convincing portrait. The term “new biography” emerged to describe the biographical experiments that followed: best epitomized by Strachey’s own Queen Victoria (1921), the trend also included André Maurois in France, Emil Ludwig in Germany, and Harold Nicolson in England, all of whom speculated freely about their subjects’ inner lives, assuming them to be shaped by unconscious motives better discerned by their biographers than by themselves. Explicitly Freudian biographies, sometimes termed psychobiographies, include that of Leonardo da Vinci by Freud himself (1910), of Elizabeth I by Strachey (1928), of Henry James by Leon Edel (5 vols, 1953–72), and of Flaubert by Jean-Paul Sartre (1971–72). There was also, of course, a counter-reaction: critics accused new biographers of misinformation and distortion. “Debunking” and “muck-racking” biographers were condemned as mean-spirited, while strictly Freudian interpretations were accused of oversimplifying their subjects’ motivations and belittling their achievements. More recently, biography has mushroomed into a plethora of forms. Scholarly biographies, characterized by careful archival research – Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce (1959), for example – continue to be widely respected. But there are also many more popular forms, including other media. The “bio-pic” dramatizes the subject’s life as television show or film, freely distorting and / or reconstructing the past in order to create dramatic interest. The “celebrity biography”, hastily compiled from interviews, focuses on the star of the moment. In the United States, the popularity “Biography Channel” and People magazine suggest that the life stories of famous people continue to fascinate. At the generic boundaries of biography are such mixed forms as the mock-biography (a novel in the form of a biography: Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928), for example, or Steven Millhauser’s Edwin Mullhouse:The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943–1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright, 1972) and the fictionalized biography (ostensibly true, yet containing invented material, such as Edmund Morris’s Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, 1999). Group biographies place multiple subjects in relation to each other: examples include Phyllis Rose’s Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages (1983) and Margot Peter’s Bernard Shaw and the Actresses (1980). From a theoretical standpoint, biography remains vexed by a number of recurring issues as well as new controversies, which fall into four categories: aesthetic, epistemological, ethical, and political. The aesthetic issue can perhaps best be understood in terms of Virginia Woolf’s dichotomy – framed in her essay “The New Biography” (1927) – between the “granite” of facts and the “rainbow” of personality. How to arrange intractable “facts” so as to evoke intangible personality? Woolf was sympathetic to the efforts of such new biographers as Strachey and Nicolson to

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provide fiction-like access to their subjects’ inner lives, but also worried that in doing so they mangled “truth” and lost the trust of their readers. In her “The Art of Biography” (1939) Woolf concluded that the biographer “is a craftsman, not an artist”, and biography not an art but “something betwixt and between”. This question of whether biography is a craft or an art continues to trouble life writers: if a craft, the biographer must restrain his or her imaginative and artistic ambitions and construct his or her portrait with a strictly conceived notion of evidence. If it is an art, on the other hand, the biographer may freely seek what Henry James called “the figure in the carpet” – that is, some pattern in the subject’s personality – and having determined it, shape the presentation to suit it. One way to reconcile these opposing pressures is to shift emphasis from the subject to the biographical process itself; then at least one can emphasize these difficulties rather than obscure them. Both A.J.A. Symons’s The Quest for Corvo (1934) and Ian Hamilton’s In Search of J.D. Salinger (1988) thematize the challenges of the biographical quest in this way. The epistemological issue – that is, the extent to which biography generates new and valuable knowledge about reality – remains equally unresolved. With the emergence of “New Criticism” in the 1920s, literary biography – accounts of authors’ lives – fell from favour. New critics such as W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley argued that the work itself should stand alone, and any attempt to decipher the author’s intention (presumably the very task a biography would facilitate) was doomed and worthless. Since then, the epistemological challenge to biography has been intensified by poststructuralist and postmodernist critiques of language, selfhood, and historical narrative. If language cannot transparently convey reality, if the self is a fictive construct or mere multiplicity of subject positions, if narrative itself imposes a false coherence on events, then no biographical account of someone’s life can be in any sense “true”. It is perhaps the ethical issue, though, that has produced the most controversy. To what extent is the biographer justified in depicting the life of a person no longer able to defend or explain himself or herself? To what extremes of intrusiveness is the biographer justified in going? Having been allowed access to the subject’s papers by his or her survivors, what obligations accompany that access? Is the “authorized” or “commissioned” biography necessarily less objective or convincing than the “unauthorized” one? As early as 1716, Joseph Addison complained about “Grub-Street biographers”, “who watch for the death of a great man, like so many undertakers, on purpose to make a penny of him”. Henry James’s ghost story of 1899, “The Real Right Thing”, depicts a character who returns after death to warn his biographer away from the task. But few subjects appear to have had this kind of postmortem power. These issues have become particularly visible in a spate of biographies of the poet Sylvia Plath: Plath’s literary estate was long controlled by her surviving ex-husband Ted Hughes and his sister Olwyn, who refused biographers permission to quote if their accounts of the Plath–Hughes marriage did not meet with their approval. Janet Malcolm’s account of these disputes, The Silent Woman (1994), concludes that the biographer resembles a “professional burglar”, and that readers of biography are motivated by “voyeurism and busybodyism”. Finally, biography and politics are intimately related, in that

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a culture’s dominant ideology – generated and sustained by those in power – will inevitably determine whose biographical data gets preserved and how the successful life is conceptualized. By focusing on those who achieve in visible, culturally sanctioned ways, biography has tended to overlook anyone marginalized by that culture – generally women, the poor, and ethnic minorities – and to overlook aspects of the life, such as homosexuality, that might disturb its values. There has also been an assumption that biography is primarily a Western form, shaped by ancient Greek and Judeo-Christian individualism. An African American, feminist, or non-Western overview of biography might well differ significantly from that traced above, emphasizing the way that oppressed peoples have used biography to reclaim their own history, for example, or the way non-Western as well as Western traditions have contributed to the interest in individual lives. In the early 1900s, W.E.B. Du Bois urged African American scholars to document the lives of Africans and African Americans; more recently, Arnold Rampersad – author of biographies of Langston Hughes and Du Bois – has suggested that while in the past African American writers have preferred autobiography to biography, the time for ambitious, psychologically informed, non-hagiographic biography by and about African Americans has come. From a feminist standpoint, biography, as Woolf writes in A Room of One’s Own (1929), has been “too much about great men”. Woolf herself called for – and wrote – “lives of the obscure”. The feminist critic Carolyn Heilbrun posits the publication in 1970 of Nancy Milford’s Zelda, about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife, as a crucial turning point in the history of biography. Since then, she argues, women previously seen as subsidiary to men have begun to be valued as individuals deserving of biographical attention, and their biographers have come to assume that the lives they depict will take shape differently from those of men. As for the intrinsically Western bias of biography itself, Asian scholars point out that in fact biographical writing has emerged from intellectual milieux other than Western individualism. Chinese dynastic histories included colourful and influential portraits of individuals as early as Sima Qian’s Shiji (Historical Records) of the late 2nd century bce; and the Japanese scholar Shoichi Saeki argues that 17th-century biographies of samurais and 18th-century biographies of eccentrics – vastly popular at the time in Japan – managed to capture their subjects’ unique personalities without isolating them from their respective communities. The history and theory of biography remains complex, contested, and underexplored. Albert Camus suggested that people read biography because they envy the coherence that lives achieve when recorded. Certainly biographies possess a unique power to attract readers. As a result they play a vital role in reinforcing and / or challenging a culture’s assumptions about what the successful life looks like, and who is worth remembering. Ruth Hoberman Further Reading Clifford, James L. (editor), Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism 1560–1960, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1962 Cockshut, A.O.J., Truth to Life: The Art of Biography in the Nineteenth Century, London: Collins, and New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974

Dai, Wenbao, “Biography in China in the Last Ten Years” in Biography East and West: Selected Conference Papers, vol. 3, edited by Carol Ramelb, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989 Edel, Leon, Writing Lives: Principia Biographica, New York: Norton, 1984 Garraty, John, The Nature of Biography, New York: Knopf, 1957 Heilbrun, Carolyn, Writing a Woman’s Life, New York: Norton, 1988; London: Women’s Press, 1989 Kendall, Paul Murray, The Art of Biography, New York: Norton, 1965 Malcolm, Janet, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, New York: Knopf, 1994 Momigliano, Arnaldo, The Development of Greek Biography, expanded edition, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993 Nicolson, Harold, The Development of English Biography, London: Hogarth Press, 1927; New York: Harcourt Brace, 1928 Rampersad, Arnold, “Biography, Autobiography, and Afro-American Culture”, Yale Review, 73 (Autumn 1983): 1–16 Rampersad, Arnold, “Biography and Afro-American Culture” in AfroAmerican Literary Study in the 1990s, edited by Houston A. Baker, Jr, and Patricia Redmond, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989 Rollyson, Carl, Biography: An Annotated Bibliography, Pasadena, California: Salem Press, 1992 Sharma, Jagdish, “Life-Pattern of the Jains” in Biography East and West: Selected Conference Papers, vol. 3, edited by Carol Ramelb, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989 Shoichi Saeki, “Images of Eccentrics: East and West” in Biography East and West: Selected Conference Papers, vol. 3, edited by Carol Ramelb, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989 Stauffer, Donald, English Biography before 1700, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1930 Stauffer, Donald, The Art of Biography in Eighteenth-Century England, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, and London: Oxford University Press, 1941

Biography and Fiction Biography in the Western tradition, like the novel, is a genre that became fully developed in the 18th century. Just as Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding were publishing their first great novels, Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) and Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), Samuel Johnson provided the first comprehensive apologia for biography in The Rambler (No. 60, 13 October 1750). In 1744, Johnson had published his Life of Richard Savage, a moving account of a disreputable minor poet, which is linked to the fiction of Johnson’s time in that the biography sought to explore the life of an intriguing personality, worthy of understanding precisely because of his unique individuality and not because of his contributions to society. In his Rambler essay, Johnson argued that any life might be the subject of a biography, for all lives, high and low, proved that “there is scarce any possibility of good or ill, but is common to humankind”. Just as Richardson could choose a servant girl as his heroine and Fielding a foundling as his hero, so Johnson selected specimens of humanity that earlier works of biography and fiction would have deemed inappropriate. To say, however, that biography and the novel became fully developed in the 18th century – particularly in England – is not to ignore earlier prose narratives that approximate the modern meaning of biography and fiction. Plutarch’s Vitae parallelae (late 1st century ce; Parallel Lives), translated into English in

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1579, provided vivid accounts of Greek and Roman leaders. Plutarch included accounts not only of great deeds but of personal anecdotes that humanized his portraits, many of which Shakespeare relied on in his history plays. But like the narrative accounts of saints in the Middle Ages, Plutarch’s work portrayed exemplary individuals who had made their mark on history. It was not until the 18th century – not only in England but in very different cultures such as Japan – that writers began to be interested in the human personality per se, in so-called ordinary or common individuals. Beginning in the 18th century, biography and fiction aspired to a meticulous accounting of both public and private lives. Richardson, for example, instilled Pamela with a sense of factuality by making her a letter writer, so that she literally tells the story of the novel through her correspondence. Indeed, Richardson’s novel evolved out of his writing of model letters for young women, advising them how to comport themselves in society. Pamela became an exemplary figure because of her virtue – that is, by demonstrating a standard of moral behaviour in everyday life that was worth imitating. However, as Johnson showed in his Life of Richard Savage and Daniel Defoe demonstrated in Moll Flanders, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous (1722), in which his main character succumbs to the very male seductions that Pamela resists, readers craved lives that were intrinsically interesting, and not necessarily confirmations of morality. The great landmark biography of the 18th century, James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), drew on many of the techniques of fiction. As Johnson’s faithful and studious friend, Boswell reported extensive examples of Johnson’s conversation, creating scenes with dialogue that rivalled that of the best realistic novels. Johnson stood revealed not merely as a great literary intellectual and a moral man but also as a quirky, opinionated, irascible, and even prejudiced person. Boswell contrived a story that put the reader in the room with Johnson, so to speak. Biography acquired a sense of immediacy and drama, so that subsequent critics would often praise biographies if they read like novels. Although Boswell set a high and enviable standard for biography, he had few imitators. When John Gibson Lockhart published his Life of Scott (1837–38), he specifically rejected Boswell’s method of creating scenes and reporting dialogue, even though Lockhart had been close to his father-in-law, Sir Walter Scott, and had the means to emulate the Boswellian method. Like other Victorian writers, however, Lockhart found aspects of the Life of Samuel Johnson unseemly, unbefitting the dignity of a renowned literary figure. For all his depiction of genius, Boswell seemed to make the great man a little too accessible. Lockhart chose a quieter form of narrative – risking dullness – rather than compete with fiction’s more inventive techniques. Victorian biographers brought the genre back to a form of hagiography, in which the modern hero was treated rather like a saint, his or her faults minimized or even eliminated from the biography lest they offended the subject’s family and readers. This practice of censoring biography and giving it a happier tone than the subject’s life had its parallel in the great Victorian novels, in which writers such as Dickens tempered their darker conclusions, sometimes even supplying alternative endings to novels in order to preserve an air of optimism.

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Biography and fiction were radically changed by the steady seepage of Sigmund Freud’s theories of identity into the literature of the 1920s. Freud saw the human mind as a great, seething drama, and novels such as James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) treated the life of an ordinary person – in Joyce’s case the Dubliner Leopold Bloom – with an intensity and meticulousness unrivalled in previous fiction. Joyce explored his characters’ stream of consciousness, their intimate thoughts about sex, and how they organized their everyday lives. His approach was psychological – as was biographer Lytton Strachey’s in Eminent Victorians (1918), a book that probed the peculiar tics of 19thcentury worthies such as Florence Nightingale and Cardinal Manning. Strachey implied a nexus between his subjects’ personalities and their public acts, thereby removing the Victorian veil that had shrouded such figures and frozen them in reverential and unreal poses. In Strachey’s hands, biography became a debunking genre, critical of society and of its so-called pillars. Similarly, many novelists regarded themselves as alienated from bourgeois society and dedicated to exposing its flaws and hypocrisies. Even biographers who did not emulate Strachey’s satirical style found his attention to psychological detail compelling. Following Freud, biographers combined this interest in psychology with a fresh sense of the importance of childhood, seeing in their subjects’ early lives the key to their later adult behaviour. Orthodox Freudians produced psychoanalytical biographies, in which they attempted to fathom their subjects’ minds just as Joyce had plumbed Bloom’s. Whereas 18th- and 19th-century biographers said little about childhood, focusing mainly on their subjects’ adult characters, the very term “personality” governed 20th-century biography and fiction, suggesting a view of human identity as a fragile, intricate sensibility exposed to and formed by the vicissitudes of family dynamics and societal demands from the very beginning. The two biographers and scholars most associated with the development of modern life writing have been Leon Edel and Richard Ellmann. It is no accident that Edel and Ellmann should choose Henry James and James Joyce as their subjects, since these novelists showed considerable interest in biography and psychology and produced great work that both biographers and novelists have emulated. Edel was especially taken with the notion that a biography could be factual and yet employ the most important techniques of fiction. Thus he structured his five-volume life of Henry James as a dramatic narrative, creating scenes meticulously based on his research, and experimenting with point of view, so that readers could see how James’s sensibility slowly evolved over time. Ellmann was more wary of the novel as a model for biography, and he used fewer fictional techniques. But like Edel, Ellmann thought the use of psychology crucial, believing that the methods Joyce had employed as a psychological novelist should be applied to his life and to the lives of other artists. Although Edel and Ellmann have had an enormous influence on contemporary biographers and their work is continually cited as the finest examples of 20th-century biography, both biographers and novelists have voiced significant dissenting opinions. Paul Murray Kendall, a biographer and author of The Art of Biography (1965), criticized Edel for losing sight of the chronological and documentary focus of life writing. Biography could not be literature in the same way as novels, Kendall

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argued, without violating the integrity of the way a life developed in time and in history. Literary form could, in other words, distort biography – a point made satirically in Steven Millhauser’s brilliant fictional spoof of Edel’s biography of James. Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943–1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright: A Novel (1972) is divided into “The Early Years”, “The Middle Years”, “The Later Years” – terms Edel uses to divide his narrative and which Millhauser applies to the life of a boy who dies before he reaches the age of twelve. In fact, a good many novelists – such as Samuel R. Delany and William Golding – have attacked biography and biographers in works of fiction, exposing their pretensions to knowledge and to artistry. Other novelists – such as Alison Lurie and Bernard Malamud – have presented biographers sympathetically. Certainly one of the most searching explorations of the connections between biography and fiction is to be found in the five-volume series of novels (beginning with Incline Our Hearts) produced in between 1989 and 1996 by A.N. Wilson, one of the century’s distinguished biographers in English. Carl Rollyson Further Reading Altick, Richard D., Lives and Letters: A History of Literary Biography in England and America, New York: Knopf, 1965 Amigoni, David, Victorian Biography: Intellectuals and the Ordering of Discourse, New York: St Martin’s Press, and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993 Boswell, James, Life of Johnson, edited by R.W. Chapman, revised by J.D. Fleeman, introduction by Pat Rogers, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1980 Cockshut, A.O.J., Truth to Life: The Art of Biography in the Nineteenth Century, London: Collins, and New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974 Delany, Samuel R., The Mad Man, New York: Masquerade Books, 1994 Edel, Leon, Writing Lives: Principia Biographica, New York: Norton, 1984 Edel, Leon, Henry James: A Life, revised and condensed edition, New York: Harper and Row, 1985 Ellmann, Richard, James Joyce, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1959, revised 1982 Ellmann, Richard, Golden Codgers: Biographical Speculations, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1973 Golding, William, The Paper Men, New York: Farrar Straus, and London: Faber, 1984 Holmes, Richard, Dr Johnson and Mr Savage, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1993; New York: Pantheon, 1994 Johnson, Samuel, Selected Writings, edited by Patrick Cruttwell, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968 Kendall, Paul Murray, The Art of Biography, New York: Norton, 1965 Lurie, Alison, The Truth about Lorin Jones: A Novel, Boston: Little Brown, 1988 Malamud, Bernard, Dubin’s Lives, New York: Farrar Straus, and Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979 Millhauser, Steven, Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943–1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright: A Novel, New York: Knopf, 1972 Rollyson, Carl E., Biography: An Annotated Bibliography, Pasadena, California: Salem Press, 1992 Strachey, Lytton, Eminent Victorians: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr Arnold, General Gordon, London: Chatto and Windus, and New York: Garden City Publishing, 1918 Wilson, A.N., Incline Our Hearts, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988; New York: Viking, 1989 Wilson, A.N., A Bottle in the Smoke, London: Sinclair-Stevenson, and New York: Viking, 1990

Wilson, A.N., Daughters of Albion, London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1991; New York: Viking, 1992 Wilson, A.N., Hearing Voices, London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995; New York: Norton, 1996 Wilson, A.N., A Watch in the Night, London: Sinclair-Stevenson, and New York: Norton, 1996

Biography and History The link between biography and history is perhaps best established by reference to the changing nature of the epistemological (i.e. pertaining to the theory of knowledge) and ontological (pertaining to the theory of being) construction of the past itself. In the West, it is with the Greeks and Romans that writing history is conventionally first located, notably in the work of classical historians and philosophers like Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Plutarch, and Tacitus. The literary records and annals of these thinkers largely avowed the accomplishments of kings and emperors, although certain ideas deployed by later generations of historians begin to emerge: notions of chronology, representation, truth, objectivity, referentiality, causation, contextualization, human intentionality, and the idea of history teaching moral lessons. However, a change can be read into the most well-known example of biography in this period, Plutarch’s Vitae parallelae (written after c.96 ce; Parallel Lives). What is significant for later generations of modernist or post-Enlightenment historians is Plutarch’s distinction in Parallel Lives between biography and history. The book is a series of comparative biographies of Greeks and Romans, the intention being not only to reveal how personal failings can destroy empires, but to distinguish for the reader the personal insight or moral lesson from the broader, somewhat less literary, historical account. This distinction was largely forgotten in the European West as late antiquity gave way to the early medieval and medieval periods. (An important example of ancient historiographic biography in a non-Western context is the work of the Chinese Sima Qian (c.145–c.90 bce). Two hundred years before Plutarch, as the first Grand Historian to the Emperor, Sima Qian wrote his Shiji (Historical Records) largely as a collection of zhuan, or biographies, framed as part of a dynastic record of the imperial reign. Sima Qian has long been praised both for the art and for the wide social range of his biographies, which included criminals and businessmen as well as royal or military leaders, but his lives, like zhuan up until the 20th century in China, reflect the traditional elision of biography, history, and didactic intent.) In the European West during the Middle Ages, the distinction between biography and history, as between fact and fiction, was blurred (although Plutarch’s Parallel Lives remained a model of sorts for writing history, with the most famous imitator being Augustine in his 4th-century Confessions). Although there were biographies – as opposed to comprehensive histories – written during this period, among them the 9th-century Frankish historian Einhard’s Vita Karoli (Life of Charlemagne), the predominant form of history was the provincial chronicle. Some broader historical accounts were written, such as William of Tyre’s 12th-century Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis

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gestarum (History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea), an account of the Crusades, and the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus’s 13th-century Historia Danicae (Danish History), which includes the narrative of Hamlet. There were a number of biographies produced towards the end of the middle ages, such as Eadmer’s 12th-century Vita Sancti Anselmi (Life of St Anselm). But it was with the Italian poet Petrarch’s 14thcentury sweeping history text, Africa, and his autobiography Secretum, that the West saw a return to the lessons of classical historical learning. Nevertheless, despite the work of Petrarch and the Renaissance recovery of the Greek and Roman heritage of critical history, the recounting and retelling of the lives of famous men and women as moral lessons was sustained. The Renaissance generated a humanist vogue for history and auto/biographical discourse, but one that witnessed the emergence of a rethinking of the relationship of the individual – the self – to nature. With the 300-year challenge to feudalism (from the 16th to the 18th centuries) offered by the rise of mercantile imperialism, urbanization, religious conflict, the eventual development of capitalism, and the rationalist Cartesian-inspired Enlightenment that created the educated middle classes, the connection between history and biography in the West entered a new phase. The consciousness of self, with its congruent self-reflexivity, developed alongside these massive cultural, economic, and political shifts to produce a growing divergence between history and biography. Enlightenment rationalism viewed history as the true account of facts explored through cause and effect. By maintaining the gap between the self-conscious historian and the facts, historians like the Scottish common-sense empiricist Adam Ferguson claimed in the late 18th century that the knowing subject could objectively represent such knowledge. In short, the Enlightenment created a disciplined history built on a methodology of objective empiricism and a degraded biographical version of history that engaged the author, the reader, and the subject in a collective pursuit of moral lessons. This divergence between history as an objective discipline and biography as a subjective moral pursuit was confirmed in the 17th and 18th centuries as historians like Giambattista Vico, Montesquieu, and Edward Gibbon produced comprehensive histories of social and cultural periods exploring and explaining the nature of historical change, while others continued to write laudatory biographies of the famous and well-to-do. The Englishman Izaak Walton wrote admiring biographies of his friends John Donne, George Herbert, and Henry Wotton (published together in 1670), and Wotton himself in his History of Rome (1701) offered accounts of pairs of lives in order to compare and contrast virtue with vice. The drifting apart of biography and history is further evidenced in the rise of the literary biography exemplified by Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets (1779–81), which was itself the model for James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). In the 19th century, Thomas Carlyle, with a spectacular lack of success, attempted to reconcile the two practices of history and biography by trying to demonstrate that the lives of eminent men were the very essence of history. One reason for Carlyle’s lack of influence over “proper” history was his poetic and present-tense style (as in The French Revolution, 1837) to which a good many historians objected, but the main reason was that history became increasingly

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entrenched in its realist aesthetic. History’s professionalized factualism, based on the representationalist correspondence theory of knowledge, was stiffened by the shift toward positivism and the application of social theory (in Europe by Karl Marx and later in the United States by Frederick Jackson Turner). After Carlyle, biography became a backwater of historical thought which, by the early 20th century, had become ever more strongly associated with the discipline of literature, a move articulated by “new biographers” such as Lytton Strachey or Virginia Woolf who suggested that to find out the truth of a life the biographer had to become an artist who actively engaged in the construction of his or her object. Woolf’s vision contrasted the imaginative and constructionist act of the writer even more starkly with the positivist-inspired rational / inferential and reconstructive operation of the historian. In the second half of the 20th century, however, two forces – in the European West, at least – attempted to restore biography as a legitimate form of history through the challenge to modernist history: the rise of psychology and the advent of postmodern criticism. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic conceptualization of the unconscious introduced a psychological form of biography as evidenced by his own Leonardo Da Vinci (1910) as well as those of the American historian Henry Adams, whose autobiography was written in the third person (The Education of Henry Adams, 1918), and the American literary scholar Leon Edel’s five-volume Henry James (1953–72). Psycho-history attempts to unify social-science approaches to history with psychodynamic clinical insights in order to offer, it is claimed, a more rounded view of the past. It is also claimed that psychohistory acknowledges as fruitful the conflation of the modernist categories of observer and observed. The historian thus becomes a psychoanalyst studying past human actions and intentions, in part guided by his or her own experience. In this respect history and biography are aligned once again. Much 20th-century continental philosophical thinking, especially that of Martin Heidegger and the philosophy of phenomenology, has provided the basis for the postmodern critique of modernist history not only by challenging its epistemological model, but also by suggesting that the connection between subject and object is not established at all at the epistemological level (the level of knowing). As Heidegger suggests in his book Sein und Zeit (1927; Being and Time), and contrary to a common assumption of deconstructionist theory that there is nothing beyond the text, prior to knowledge the human subject is, in fact, already in the given real world, and all the historian’s knowledge or theories, like those of the biographer and novelist, are built on this pre-epistemological state of existence. This can be seen in the work of two recent biographers, Robert A. Rosenstone (Mirror in the Shrine, 1988) and Donna Merwick (Death of a Notary: Conquest and Change in Colonial New York, 1999), who have both, in their different ways, explored the collapse of the unified subject and the subject–object polarity. These examples suggest that historical understanding is not epistemological but is ultimately ontological (the result of being in the world). This particular postmodern critique of the unified subject is compounded by deconstructionist Jacques Derrida’s rejection of the representationalist, correspondence theory of truth. This maintains that the historian’s language is inadequate to the task of representation. This, many postmodernists claim, strengthens the case for a return of

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biography as a legitimate form of what is now a rethought, de-disciplined, and de-privileged history. It follows that neither historian nor biographer can hope to achieve mirror-like reflectivity, and the Enlightenment rationale for distinguishing history from biography disappears along with many of history’s pretensions to being a truth-acquiring and representationalist discipline. The postmodern challenge to historical “truth” may, it seems, provide the key to returning biography to the fold of a reconceptualized history at the start of the third millennium through a new willingness to explore the intimate connection between the historian and the object of study. Alun Munslow See also Historiography

Further Reading Barzun, Jacques, Clio and the Doctors: Psycho-History, QuantoHistory and History, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974 Beales, Derek, History and Biography: An Inaugural Lecture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981 Biography (quarterly journal), 1978– Blanning, T.C.W. and David Cannadine (editors), History and Biography: Essays in Honour of Derek Beales, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996 Cockshut, A.O.J., The Art of Autobiography in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century England, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1984 Edel, Leon, Literary Biography, London: Hart-Davis, 1957; New York: Doubleday, 1959 Hook, Sidney, The Hero in History: A Study in Imitation and Possibility, New York: John Day, 1943 Lowenberg, Peter, Decoding the Past: The Psychohistorical Approach, New York: Knopf, 1982 Marcus, Laura, Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994 Merwick, Donna, Death of a Notary: Conquest and Change in Colonial New York, New York: Cornell University Press, 1999 Pimlott, Ben, “Is Contemporary Biography History?”, Political Quarterly, 70 / 1 (1999): 31–41 Porter, Roy (editor), Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present, London and New York: Routledge, 1997 Rosenstone, Robert A., Mirror in the Shrine: American Encounters with Meiji Japan, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988 Shortland, M. and R. Yeo (editors), Telling Lives in Science: Essays on Scientific Biography, New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 Winslow, Donald J., Life-Writing: A Glossary of Terms in Biography, Autobiography, and Related Forms, revised edition, Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1995 Woolf, Virginia, Granite and Rainbow: Essays, London: Hogarth Press, 1958; New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975

Biography and Poetry While the expression “biography in verse” may occasionally be found in descriptions of works whose dates and places of composition are widely scattered, the genre as such has not been given much scholarly attention. Consequently, definitions for such designations as biographical poetry, biographical verse, and verse biography simply do not appear even in our most comprehensive glossaries of literary terms. Nor can we be much surprised, since the exemplars of this category of composition

are themselves widely variant in their historical periods, social purposes, and poetic forms. Nevertheless, biographies in verse have – as scholarship proves – an ancient history; and, however doubtful their value as historical documents, poets are still composing book-length examples of them in our own times (see for example Riding, Sanders, Porter). Across the universe of learned commentary, specific poetic texts that tell the life story of another have generally been treated – often painstakingly and at great length – within traditional and national literary histories and according to their primary expressive motivations, for instance, as eulogy (i.e. encomium, epideictic poetry, and panegyric), elegy, epic characterization, satire (e.g. lampoon), the dramatization of the life of a remarkable real person, and so on. Most scholars of biography whose central interest is in the genre itself take on the area of verse biography in academically responsible and, thus, fairly limited ways: such as Anna Makolkin, who explores primarily English and Russian elegaic poetry in her study of the origins of biography, tracing a generic typology of biographic “invariants” through pre-heroic, heroic, anti-heroic, and post-heroic stages (see also Christensen, Guttierrez, Lapidge, Ramazani and Berger, and Schober and Holt). Among the most spectacular – in raising theoretical issues regarding life writing – are verse plays based on historical personages, including, among hundreds of other possible examples, Shakespeare’s tragedy Julius Caesar and his history plays on the English kings, Aleksandr Pushkin’s history play Boris Godunov (1831), Aimé Césaire’s Tragédie du roi Christophe (1963; Tragedy of King Christophe), Bertolt Brecht’s Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe (1932; St Joan of the Stockyards), Peter Weiss’s Marat / Sade (1964), and Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf of 1974 (which Shange has claimed is based on the real lives of black women she has known). Two broad scholarly trends characterize examinations of such works: the mytho-archetypal and the historicist. As Nicole Ferrier-Caverivière argues à propos the relation of historical to “mythical” figures, “the historical characters that art [especially poetry] succeeds in raising to this grandiose realm give the impression of being guided by a divine or a diabolical light. They seem, in some way, to be in league with the supernatural” (in Brunel). Even when strong historical and biographical claims can be made for a character portrayed in a poetic work, the medium (even if it is poorly handled) exalts the subject, and “history gives way to myth”, as Ferrier-Caverivière puts it. That phenomenon (the conversion of history into myth through poetry) also explains the ambition of poets of this particular genre: to create cultural or political capital. We need only consider the links between the manifold versions of the story of Joan of Arc and their authors’ often contradictory ideologies to appreciate what Simone Fraisse calls the “powerful inner existence [of personhood that] rises to the surface” like “a mystical presence” in poetic works that purport to tell of a real person’s life (see “Joan of Arc” in Brunel). While mytho-archetypal scholars study the essential character of the subject as it comes through the verse biography, historicists focus on the local and particular conditions of the creative act itself (see Altieri, Breatnach, Ibler, Keily, Metcalfe, and Stone). It is no doubt highly significant, from a theoretic point of

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view, that a meticulous scholar such as Altieri, in her historically conditioned examination of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, should agree with O.B. Hardison that “virtually all Renaissance literature is the literature of praise”; indeed, her book represents a fairly typical contemporary treatment of the epideictic tradition (see Preminger and Brogan), for it fastidiously historicizes the composition and production of individual masques and musical drama of the 16th and 17th centuries while subscribing, sweepingly, to the premise that, when versified, individual histories turn into mythology. The conversion phenomenon – in part an effect of the tribute implicit in the very act of versification – may also explain the durable popularity of versified lives, whatever their respective cultural context or poetic forms. The 20th century saw the production and publication – and probably far more production than publication – of third-rate biographical verse praising the accomplishments of family and friends, composed to be read at weddings, banquets, and funerals (e.g. Minahan, Finley and Bacon, Cutler et al., and Evans). Jay Farness argues that it is precisely Edmund Spenser’s poetic “craft” (in effecting the conversion) that “outwits our hope for biography” in The Faerie Queene, a work nevertheless tethered to the very real lives of Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, Lord Grey de Wilton, and so many others. But the fact remains that the best man John Doe’s rhymed narrative on the life of his friend the groom, composed to be recited at the wedding dinner, is just as much a charming fabulation as Spenser’s masterpiece, if not so richly textured or (thank goodness) so long. Alexander Pope’s verse epistles, according to one scholar, are among the most accomplished renderings in English of the impulse to versify real lives (see Davidow). And Catullus, according to the scholar Ken Hope, perfected the form in Latin. Obviously, versified life writing may vary as widely in tone as in subject. In his book-length index Poetry Themes, Peter Marcan lists more than 1500 entries, many of which describe anthologies made up entirely of biographical poems, among them rhymes of personal invective and satirical abuse, lampoons, mock-serious eulogies, and funny and light-hearted narratives as well as elegies, solemn eulogies, and patriotic verse. Marcan’s index is but one of an overwhelming number of bibliographic and scholarly testaments to the widespread popularity of these perennial life-writing forms. In the 1990s alone, thousands of volumes of scholarship have been published around the world that, like ‘Abbasid Belles-Lettres, edited by J. Ashtiany et al. and published by Cambridge University Press, include catalogues and descriptions of poems having biographical interest, but treated within the context of ethnic or national literary history. In Ashtiany, for instance, one may read about the madhh (panegyric) of Bashshƒr Bibn Burd, Ab® Nuwƒs, alMutanabb¡, and the Egyptian poets of the Fƒtimid (909–1171) and Ayy®bid periods (1169 to end of the 15th century), or about the hijƒ’ (lampoons) of Bashshƒr Bibn Burd and others. Such literary histories, however, make no pretence of theorizing the verse forms, but do serve as useful compilations, indexes, and bibliographies of many types of biographically prompted poems. The oldest instances of biographies in verse appear in the sacred texts of many cultures, for example the Hebrew Hagiographa and the Book of Job, the Sanskrit Mahƒbhƒrata (considered itihƒsa, or historical tradition), parts of the Bible,

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the Sumerian-Babylonian Gilgamesh, the German Niebelungenlied, the Finnish Kalevala, and so on. Praise poetry (epideictic or encomiastic) that celebrates particular kings, heroes, and leaders can be found in virtually every culture, whether in epic, panegyric, or elegaic form. The examples that follow can suggest only a breadth of range, for the monumental stories of specific individuals are told in the versified izibongo of the Xhosa and Zulu, the dithoko of the Sotho, and the maboko of Botswana; in the Quechua (Inca) Ollántay, and the Mayan Popol Vuh; in the Byzantine panegyrics of the 7th-century poet George Pisides (encomium of the emperor Heraclius), the Icelandic and Nordic sagas, the late medieval Gallic La Chanson de Roland, the Spanish El Cantar del Mío Cid, and the Irish filidh tradition of sung genealogies, histories, and praise of patrons; in John Donne’s “Anniversaries on the Death of Elizabeth Drury” and countless other elegies by poets as illustrious as Donne; and in contemporary poems that celebrate the lives of family and friends, such as the Malay poet S.T. Alisjahbana’s Tebaran Mega [1936; Scattered Clouds, written in memory of his wife] and the poems of the Palestinian Hanan Mikhail Ashrawi (in Jayyusi pp.335–41). Epic-length poems containing biographies in verse of historical figures (heroic or not) continue to be written in our day: among the more celebrated are the Brazilian poet Cecília Meireles’s Romanceiro da Inconfidência (1953; see Bernucci for a discussion of other South and Central American epics set in modern times); Derek Walcott’s Omeros (1990), set principally in the Caribbean; and W.S. Merwin’s The Folding Cliffs (1998), set in Hawaii a hundred years ago (see Fogarty 1998). Whether they focus on the old or the new, critical examinations of the relationship between heroic biographies (in verse and prose) and their respective oral and folk poetic traditions are as esteemed in the academy today as they ever have been and constitute a significant proportion of literary-historical scholarship. The works by Beeston, Campbell, Dykstal, Gonzalo and Bravo, Lindell, Macdonald, Milosevic-Djordjevic, Murphy, Olson, Rowan and Scully, Shamkovich, Stanonik, Watson, and Williams are all relevant in this respect. Perhaps it is not too bold a generalization to say that, today as in the past, scholars study biographical poetry because it so often perfectly reveals the poet’s idea of a character’s ethos (the moral element in character) and dianoia (the intellectual or rational quality of his or her thought) and because it offers insight into a culture’s as well as an era’s basis for judging human character and virtuous action. R. Victoria Arana

Further Reading Altieri, Joanne, The Theatre of Praise: The Panegyric Tradition in Seventeenth-Century English Drama, Newark: University of Delaware Press, and London: Associated University Presses, 1986 Anderson, Jervis, “Onward and Upward with the Arts: Derek Walcott’s Odyssey”, The New Yorker, 68 / 44 (21 December 1992): 71–79 Beeston, A.F.L., “Al-Hamadhani, al-Hariri and the Maqamat Genre” in ‘Abbasid Belles-Lettres, edited by Julia Ashtiany and others, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990 Bernucci, Leopoldo M., “That Gentle Epic: Writing and Elegy in the Heroic Poetry of Cecília Meireles”, Modern Language Notes, 112 / 2 (1997): 201–18 Breatnach, Padraig A., “The Poet’s Graveside Vigil: A Theme of Irish

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Bardic Elegy in the Fifteenth Century”, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 49–50 (1997): 50–63 Brunel, Pierre (editor), Companion to Literary Myths, Heroes, and Archetypes, translated by Wendy Allatson, Judith Hayward, and Trista Selous, revised edition, London and New York: Routledge, 1996 (first English edition, 1992) Burgess, Theodore, Epideictic Literature, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1902 Campbell, Alistair, Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History, London: H.K. Lewis, 1971 Christensen, Jerome, “Ecce Homo: Biographical Acknowledgment, the End of the French Revolution, and the Romantic Reinvention of English Verse” in Contesting the Subject: Essays in the Postmodern Theory and Practice of Biography and Biographical Criticism, edited by William H. Epstein, West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1991 Cutler, Ivor et al. (editors), Billy Jenkins, Entertainment USA: The Poems / Entertainment USA, Exeter, Devon: Stride, 1995 (features poems on the personalities featured in Jenkins’s musical suite) Davidow, Lawrence Lee, “Pope’s Verse Epistles: Friendship and the Private Sphere of Life”, Huntington Library Quarterly, 40 / 2 (1977): 151–70 Dykstal, Timothy, “The Epic Reticence of Abraham Cowley”, SEL: Studies in English Literature, 31 / 1 (1991): 95–115 Evans, B.R. (compiler), The Republican Compiler, Comprising a Series of Scientific, Descriptive, Narrative, Popular, Biographical, Epistolary, and Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Verse, Pittsburgh: Cramer and Spear, 1818 Farness, Jay, “Disenchanted Elves: Biography in the Text of Faerie Queene V” in Spenser’s Life and the Subject of Biography, edited by Judith H. Anderson, Donald Cheney, and David A. Richardson, Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996 Ferrier-Caverivière, Nicole, “Historical Figures and Mythical Figures” in Companion to Literary Myths, Heroes, and Archetypes, edited by Pierre Brunel, translated by Wendy Allatson, Judith Hayward, and Trista Selous, revised edition, London and New York: Routledge, 1996 (first English edition, 1992) Finley, John [H.] and Leonard Bacon, Biographical Notes, Mostly in Verse, New York: Printed for the Association [of Centurions], 1938 Fogarty, Robert S., “W.S. Merwin’s Hawaian Epic and National Poetry Month”, Antioch Review, 56 / 3 (1998): 260ff. Fraisse, Simone, “Joan of Arc” in Companion to Literary Myths, Heroes, and Archetypes, edited by Pierre Brunel, translated by Wendy Allatson, Judith Hayward and Trista Selous, revised edition, London and New York: Routledge, 1996 (first English edition, 1992) Gonzalo, Pedro and Antonio Bravo, “Sapientia et Fortitudo in the Anglo-Saxon Epic Heroes and in Aelfric’s English Saints”, SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature, 3 (1993): 72–102 Garrison, James D., Dryden and the Tradition of Panegyric, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975 Gutierrez, Nancy A., “The Remembrance: A Form of Renaissance Verse Biography”, Shakespeare and Renaissance Association of West Virginia Selected Papers, 7 / 2 (Spring 1982): 54–59 Hardison, O.B., The Enduring Monument: A Study of the Idea of Praise in Renaissance Literary Theory and Practice, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962 Ibler, Reinhard, “Zur Entwicklung des Elegienzyklus in der russischen Literatur des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts” [On the Development of Elegaic Cycles in Russian Literature of the 18th and 19th Centuries], Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie, 57 / 2 (1998): 331–51 Jayyusi, Salma Khadra (editor), Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992 Keily, David, “The Socialist Realist Panegyric in the Polish Poetry of the Stalinist Era: The Case of Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz’s ‘List do Prezydenta’”, Polish Review, 38 / 1 (1993): 57–68 Lapidge, Michael, “Tenth-Century Anglo-Latin Verse Hagiography” in Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch: Internationale Zeitschrift für Mediävistik, 24–25 (1989–90): 249–60 Lindell, Lisa R., “Recasting Epic Tradition: The Dispossessed as Hero in Sandoz’s Crazy Horse and Cheyenne Autumn”, Great Plains Quarterly, 16 / 1 (1996): 43–53

Macdonald, R.R., “John G. Demaray’s Cosmos and Epic Representation: Dante, Spenser, Milton and the Transformation of Renaissance Heroic Poetry”, Speculum, 69 / 1 (1994): 128ff. Makolkin, Anna, “Probing the Origins of Literary Biography: English and Russian Versions”, Biography, 19 / 1 (1996): 87ff. Marcan, Peter, Poetry Themes: A Bibliographical Index to Subject Anthologies and Related Criticisms in the English Language, 1875–1975, London: Clive Bingley, and Hamden, Connecticut: Linnet, 1977 Metcalfe, Jean LeDrew, “The Politics of Panegyric: Poetic Representations of Oliver Cromwell”, Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture 1660–1700, 18 / 1 (1994): 1–16 Milosevic-Djordjevic, Nada, “The [Serbian] Oral Tradition” on-line: The History of Serbian Culture, Porthill Publishers, Serbian Unity Congress, 1996–1999; see www.suc.org/culture/history/ Minahan, William B., Headlight Flashes of Facts in Verse: Political, Biographical, Historical, and Social, Oshkosh, Wisconsin: no publisher, 1905 Murphy, Shane, “‘You Took Away My Biography’: The Poetry of Medbh McGuckian”, Irish University Review, 28 / 1 (1998): 110–32 Olson, Paul A., “Black Elk Speaks as Epic and Ritual Attempt to Reverse History” in Vision and Refuge: Essays on the Literature of the Great Plains, edited by Virginia Faulkner and Frederick C. Luebke, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982 Porter, Dorothy, Akhenaten, St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1992 (biography in verse of the Egyptian pharaoh) Preminger, Alex and T.V.F. Brogan (editors), The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 3rd edition, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993 Ramazani, Jahan and Charles Berger, “Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney”, Modern Philology, 95 / 1 (1997): 142ff. Riding Gottschalk, Laura, Voltaire: A Biographical Fantasy, London: Hogarth Press, 1927; reprinted, Folcroft, Pennsylvania: Folcroft Press, 1969 Rowan, Charles and Stephen Scully, “Ancient Epic Poetry: Homer, Apollonius, Virgil”, Comparative Literature Studies, 33 / 3 (1996): 303ff. Sanders, Ed, Chekhov: A Biography in Verse, Black Sparrow Press, 1995 Schober, Juliane and John Clifford Holt, “Sacred Biography in the Buddhist Traditions of South and Southeast Asia”, History of Religions, 38 / 4 (1999): 401–02 Shamkovich, Tatyana I., “Saintly Hero: Mythological, Epic and Ecclesiastical Perspectives on the Image of the Saint in Medieval Hagiography” (dissertation), abstract in Dissertation Abstracts International, 53 / 2 (1992): 493A Stanonik, Marija, “The Relationship between Verse and Prose in Literary Folklore”, Estudios de Literatura Oral, 1 (Spring 1995): 211–16 Stone, Carole, “Elegy as Political Expression in Women’s Poetry: Akhmatova, Levertov, Forché”, College Literature, 18 / 1 (1991): 84–91 Watson, Roderick, “Alan Riach’s Hugh MacDiarmid’s Epic Poetry”, Modern Language Review, 88 (1993): 964ff. Williams, David, “Voltaire’s ‘True Essay’ on Epic Poetry”, Modern Language Review, 88 / 1 (1993): 46ff.

Black Elk

1863–1950

American autobiographer John Neihardt (1881–1973), poet laureate of Nebraska, and Black Elk (1863–1950), Lakota holy man, collaboratively produced what is perhaps the best-known and most venerated Native American autobiography, Black Elk Speaks, Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (1932). Since

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Neihardt spoke no Lakota and Black Elk little English, their collaboration necessarily involved other people. Black Elk’s son Ben Black Elk, who had been educated at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, translated his father’s words (and those of Lakota elders who supplemented Black Elk’s story) into English. Neihardt’s daughter Enid recorded these words stenographically. Working from Enid’s typescripts of her stenographic records of the interviews, Neihardt produced a seamless life story, beginning with Black Elk’s birth and ending with the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. (The process of collaboration and composition has been fully described, and the transcripts published, by Raymond J. DeMallie). Thus, the words so frequently attributed to Black Elk alone were in fact the product of a complex multi-stage process of translation. In addition to the issues of linguistic translation, the collaboration raises serious questions about cultural mediation, since autobiography is not a traditional Native American genre. The book is an “Indian autobiography”, as distinct from an “autobiography by an Indian” (Krupat). The former is produced by collaboration between an unacculturated Native American and a Euro-American; the latter is produced single-handedly by an acculturated Native. Although Neihardt was a poet rather than an anthropologist, his collaboration with Black Elk is an example, more generally, of the ethnographic scenario of collaborative life writing, in which the author comes from Western culture, while the native subject of the book comes from a non-Western culture. To his credit, Neihardt preserved or simulated many aspects of Lakota culture in the narrative. Nevertheless, when the circumstances governing the book’s production are understood, the result can no longer be viewed as a transparent representation of Indian subjectivity. In the early 1930s, Neihardt was seeking material about the Ghost Dance religion for The Song of the Messiah (1935), the last instalment in his cycle of epic poems about the West. As a participant in the Ghost Dance religion and witness to the massacre at Wounded Knee, Black Elk was an invaluable source. Although it is impossible to know the aims of each collaborator, it is clear in retrospect that they were working somewhat at cross purposes. The result, a book-length narrative with a single protagonist, must to some extent distort the Lakota holy man’s life and his relation to his people. In fact, the aftermath of the collaboration suggests that Black Elk, though not coerced to participate, may have felt that he was in some sense misrepresented. Neihardt deliberately portrayed Black Elk as an unreconstructed traditionalist, when in fact he had converted to Roman Catholicism, been baptized Nicholas Black Elk, and become a valued catechist who disseminated Christian doctrine among his people. This revelation shocks many readers of Black Elk Speaks largely because Neihardt so carefully excluded any evidence of Black Elk’s acculturation. When the book became known on the reservation, missionaries there felt betrayed by Black Elk. His response was to “speak” again, issuing a document in which he reaffirmed his faith in Christianity. This document (published in DeMallie) furnishes a salutary supplement to the life story. Collaborative autobiography is inherently a ventriloquistic genre – the simulation of one person’s voice by another – and Black Elk Speaks is more ventriloquistic than most readers have understood. In interviews in the 1970s, Neihardt acknowledged that several passages, including the opening and closing ones,

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had no source in the interviews. Indeed, Neihardt claimed as his own inventions some of the passages most frequently attributed to Black Elk. This is especially troubling because, since these passages create the narrative’s tragic sense of the finality of the Oglala Sioux’s defeat in 1890, they help to reinforce the myth of the “vanishing American”. Perhaps the ultimate irony of the collaboration is that the ventriloquism can be seen as working also in reverse: by speaking through Neihardt, Black Elk managed to preserve his vision and his Lakota faith for posterity. The book has contributed to the revival of traditional religion and served as a sort of pantribal Native American bible. A further irony is that the book for which Neihardt is remembered today is not his epic poem but the autobiography of Black Elk. G. Thomas Couser Biography Born Nicholas Black Elk on the Little Powder River (now in Wyoming), United States, December 1863. His father was Black Elk, a medicine man of the Lakota Sioux Indian clan. Brought up as an Oglala Lakota. Experienced spiritual vision indicating his calling as a shaman while suffering from a life-threatening disease, 1872. Witnessed battle of Little Big Horn, Montana, 1876. Demonstrated powers as shaman at Fort Keogh, Montana, 1881. Settled with his family and other Oglalas at the Pine Ridge Agency Indian reservation in South Dakota. Became a respected medicine man. Joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show to learn about white American culture and make a living, 1886. Toured US and Europe, 1886–89. Worked as a store clerk on his return to South Dakota. Took part in Ghost Dance religious movement, 1889–90. Settled in Wounded Knee district of Pine Ridge reservation, acting as a shamanic healer, after the battle of Wounded Knee, 1890. Married Katie War Bonnet, 1892: three children. Wife died, 1903. Received into the Roman Catholic Church as Nicholas Black Elk, 6 December 1904. Lived in Manderson, South Dakota; joined St Joseph Society there and assisted Jesuit priests as a catechist. Married Anna Brings White (also known as Brings White Horses), 1906: one daughter and two sons. Travelled as a Catholic missionary around many Indian reservations in the Wyoming and Nebraska area from 1908. Met John G. Neihardt, poet laureate of Nebraska, and formed deep spiritual friendship with him, 1930. Recounted details of his spiritual vision and experience as a traditional healer and shaman of the Lakota people, which Neihardt recorded in Black Elk Speaks (1932). Took part in Alex Duhamel’s annual Sioux Indian Pageant, demonstrating Lakota rituals, from 1935. Hospitalized for tuberculosis, 1941. Second wife died, 1941. Interviewed again by Niehardt in 1944 for his book on the history of the Lakota people, When the Tree Flowered (1951). Died in Manderson, South Dakota, 19 August 1950.

Selected Writings (with John G. Neihardt) Black Elk Speaks, Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, 1932

Further Reading Brown, Joseph Epes (editor), The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953 Brumble, H. David, III, American Indian Autobiography, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988 Couser, G. Thomas, Altered Egos: Authority in American Autobiography, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989 DeMallie, Raymond J. (editor), The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984 Krupat, Arnold, For Those Who Come After: A Study of Native American Autobiography, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985

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McCluskey, Sally, “Black Elk Speaks – and So Does John Neihardt”, Western American Literature, 6 (1972): 231–42 Neihardt, John G., The Song of the Messiah, New York: Macmillan, 1935 Rice, Julian, Black Elk’s Story: Distinguishing Its Lakota Purpose, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991 Wong, Hertha D., Sending My Heart Back across the Years: Tradition and Innovation in Native American Autobiography, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992

Blixen, Karen

1885–1962

Danish short-story writer and autobiographer Even though Baroness Karen Blixen is highly respected as a writer of short stories, it is the account of her life on her Kenyan farm, Out of Africa (1937), that has ensured her international literary fame. (A sequel, published in English as Shadows in the Grass, appeared in 1960.) After her divorce from her husband in 1921, she kept two important possessions that had been brought to her by her marriage: she retained the name Blixen in her everyday life (even though she used the pseudonym “Isak Dinesen” for the remainder of her literary career), and she continued running the Kenyan farm to which she had initially moved with her husband in 1914. During her early period of adaptation to life on the farm, Blixen relied on her writing as a means of escapism, and her subject matter, centred on the Gothic and on European forms of romance, was entirely removed from her everyday circumstances; gradually, though, the interaction with her African environment became an absorbing and ultimately fascinating experience, and it remained the central subject matter of her autobiographical prose once she was back in Europe. The text of Out of Africa covers the whole of her stay on the farm, from her first settling there to the time when the difficulties of meeting the demands of the coffee market forced her to sell it and to return to Denmark (1931). The speaker’s approach to her past experience is, from the start, serene and free from sentimentalism: her discretion concerning her private life is also noteworthy. Nothing very explicit is said about her marriage, her love for Denys Finch-Hatton (the most remarkable of the many figures evoked in the text) is indirectly expressed, and the narrative concentrates instead on the portayal of several individual characters, both African and European, not necessarily following the chronological development of her stay on the farm. Blixen’s admiration is always granted to the figures who appear endowed with a sense of individualism and strength; among them stand out the images of Kamante (the gnome-like Kikuyu servant, who acts as the repository of a practical wisdom that the author lacks at the start of her stay in Africa) or such figures as the Danish fugitive Knudsen (who constantly finds himself in trouble with authority) and especially Denys Finch-Hatton, a British adventurer, cultured and independent, who, in his unpredictable visits, takes Blixen to her most memorable moments. The lack of a clear temporal frame and the concentration on individual figures rather than on the author’s own subjectivity place Blixen’s text closer to the epic than to the lyric tradition. This tendency can also be seen in her treatment of her most intimate feelings (notably towards Dennis), which are expressed in succinct

scenes of action rather than in meditation. The most intense experiences of love can be expressed, for instance, in the description of a flight over Kenya in Denys’s plane, or through the silent sharing of a gun during a shooting party against a group of lions: “We did not speak one word. In our hunt we had been a unity and we had nothing to say to one another.” Love, just as the rest of the author’s African experience, is evoked as a series of significant isolated moments rather than as a narrative with a linear development. Particularly representative of this tendency is the fourth part of the book, “From an Immigrant´s Notebook”, which consists only of unconnected fragments, each of them spanning no more than three pages: they are a collection of anecdotes, conversations, and portraits. For Blixen, life itself is a series of relatively independent events; a sequence that has no specific form, and can be understood only when seen as a whole, but not while one is experiencing it. One of these fragments, “The Stork”, is in itself a commentary on this concept, and can be taken as a commentary on her autobiographical practice as a whole. The stork is a picture that is drawn for children, in the context of an oral story; the stork appears only when unifying the disparate shapes (a circle, a triangle, etc.) that previously seemed unconnected. The impossibility of seeing the shape of life from within it is compared to the difficulty of seeing the completed picture by focusing on only one of its parts: “When the design of my life is completed, shall I, shall other people see a stork?” It is not that life is formless: it is, rather, that its form cannot be understood at any particular moment of it: it cannot be narrated, therefore, as a romance, a tragedy, or a comedy. Still, and in spite of this tendency to abandon traditional models of narrative, Blixen’s style is clear and detailed, and her prose is classical and logically structured, far from the experimentalist tendencies of modernism. The few symbols that appear throughout the narrative are thus used sparingly, but with a sense of austerity and mystery that contributes to their effect. They are simple images, but by refusing to explain them clearly, Blixen ensures that they do not become simple metaphors, and they retain an aura of transcendence. The famous image of the lions coming to Denys FinchHatton’s grave, for instance, is presented as information that Blixen has received by hearsay, and is not dwelt on; once it has performed the function of ennobling Denys, Blixen simply adds a brief commentary that “even Nelson … in Trafalgar Square, has his lions made only out of stone”. This use of symbol makes evident the lack of sentimentalism or nostalgia, and the celebration of life that pervade the whole of the text: in the final section, as Blixen is selling her possessions at the farm, the image of a hen biting out the tongue of a chameleon and mutilating it is seen not as an image of destruction or fear but as an affirmation of the inherent violence of life, and as a reminder of the need to gather strength and go on: “This was clearly not the time for coddling … Great powers had laughed to me, with an echo from the hills to follow the laughter.” Recent developments in postcolonial criticism and feminism have had a major influence on the critical consideration of Blixen’s autobiography. Blixen herself explicitly denied having been a part of the feminist movement, yet her representation of the Somali women in Out of Africa has repeatedly been interpreted in feminist terms; on the other hand, her comparisons between the Somali or Masai traditions and the European

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aristocratic traditions (examined by Linda Donelson in her biography) have also been seen as a very bourgeois kind of fascination for the nobility on her part, a theme that tends to recur, moreover, in her private letters. One of the principal contributions in this area is the work of Susan Aiken and Catherine Stimpson: for them, Blixen (in her narrative works as much as in her autobiography) rewrites the notion of difference, both in the domains of sexual and colonial politics, and her extensive representation of the natives as inherently epic figures against the bourgeois tendencies of the colonizers implies a questioning of imperialist phallocentrism and problematizes the entire ideological basis of the colonial project. The critical debate on these matters promises to remain, at the start of the 21st century, one of the most fertile areas of academic discussion on Out of Africa. Joan Curbet Biography Born Karen Christentze Dinesen in Rungsted, Denmark, 17 April 1885. Educated privately at home and in France, Switzerland, and England. Adopted English as her main literary language. Studied art at the Copenhagen Academy, 1902–06; in Paris, 1910; and in Rome. Married a cousin, Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, 1914. Contracted syphilis from him. Managed a coffee plantation near Nairobi, Kenya, with her husband, 1913–21, then alone after their divorce in 1921. Returned to Denmark after her lover, Denys Finch-Hatton, died in a plane crash, 1931. Lived in Rungsted. Began writing short stories, including Winter’s Tales (1942), Last Tales (1957), and Anecdotes of Destiny (1958). Co-founder, with Ole Wivel, Bjørn Poulson, and Thorkild Bjørnvig, of the literary journal Heretica. Founding member of the Danish Academy, 1960. Her life story was the subject of the feature film Out of Africa (1986). Died in Rungsted, 7 September 1962.

Selected Writings Out of Africa (autobiography), 1937 Skygger på graesset (autobiography), 1960; as Shadows on the Grass, 1960 On Mottoes of My Life, 1960 Breve fra Afrika 1914–31, edited by Frans Lasson, 2 vols, 1978; as Letters from Africa 1914–1931, translated by Anne Born, 1981 Karen Blixen i Danmark: Breve 1931–62 (correspondence), edited by Frans Lasson and Tom Engelbrecht, 2 vols, 1996

Further Reading Aiken, Susan Hardy, Isak Dinesen and the Engendering of Narrative, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990 Donelson, Linda, Out of Isak Dinesen in Africa: The Untold Story, Iowa City: Coulsong List, 1995 Horton, Susan R., Difficult Women, Artful Lives: Olive Schreiner and Isak Dinesen: In and out of Africa, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995 Juhl, Marianne and Bo Hakon Jørgensen, Dianas Haevn, Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1981 Thurman, Judith, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1982; as Isak Dinesen: The Life of Karen Blixen, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982 Westenholz, Anders, The Power of Aries: Myth and Reality in Karen Blixen’s Life, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987

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The Body and Life Writing Many forces in Western culture – such as Christian theology or Cartesian dualism – have devalued or effaced the body. In addition, Western culture has tended to marginalize people on the basis of bodily differences, especially with respect to illness and disability. As a result, the body has not, until recently, figured very prominently in life writing in the West. Biographers usually treat illness as an interruption of the life that is their proper concern, except when it threatens life or ends it, or where the condition in question is considered a prime factor in the shaping of identity or career (as in the case of Samuel Johnson). While autobiographers are better situated than biographers to report on the somatic lives of their subjects, they too have been disinclined to do so. Traditionally, then, published lives have not been “body stories”. Except where it has been treated under the rubric of spiritual discipline, as in John Donne’s Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624), until the 20th century the story of illness and disability has been largely confined to private forms of life writing, such as diary and letters (for example, novelist Fanny Burney’s account of her tumour and mastectomy and Alice James’s diary, which ends with her account of her breast cancer). In the last several decades, however, illness narratives have been written and published in unprecedented numbers in North America and Europe. In the first study of this phenomenon, Reconstructing Illness (1993), Anne Hunsaker Hawkins declares that “as a genre, pathography is remarkable in that it seems to have emerged ex nihilo; book-length personal accounts of illness are uncommon before 1950 and rarely found before 1900”. New modes and genres of life writing have flourished in the post-World War II era. Dysfunction may remain in the background, as when serious illness or disability is the occasion for a reassessment of a whole life, but more often it is squarely in the foreground and the narrative is coextensive with the condition. Several related phenomena seem to be coinciding in the upsurge in personal narratives of the body. Writers already established in other more “literary” genres, like poetry and fiction, have been turning to autopathography; for them, bodily dysfunction has provided an occasion for an experiment with life writing. Works in this category would include William Styron’s 1990 Darkness Visible (which deals with depression), Audre Lorde’s 1980 The Cancer Journals (breast cancer), and Paul West’s 1995 A Stroke of Genius. Similarly, non-literary celebrities have taken illness as the occasion for autobiography, often collaborative in authorship – for example, American tennis player Arthur Ashe’s Days of Grace of 1993 (HIV/ AIDS). In both sets of examples, the fame of the subjects guarantees their books an audience; the narratives are published by well-known presses and reviewed widely and prominently. Less prominent but perhaps just as significant is the complementary groundswell of illness narratives by hitherto anonymous individuals. Illness and disability may stimulate the autobiographical impulse in a number of ways – by disrupting the apparent plot of one’s life and threatening one’s sense of self, and by heightening awareness of one’s mortality. Thus, illness and disability may induce autobiographical writing in those who would most likely never have written books, certainly not personal narratives, had they or someone close to them not

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become ill or impaired; indeed, their books are likely to be the only ones they ever write. Sometimes naive in their approach, they tend to be published by small presses and are usually not widely or prominently reviewed. Illnesses invested with cultural significance tend to provoke relatively large numbers of narratives. Thus, in the 19th century, tuberculosis generated a number of personal accounts. In the period immediately following World War II, polio narratives proliferated. Today, the extension of identity politics to illness and disability is a strong stimulus to personal narratives. The women’s liberation movement has created a receptive environment for breast cancer narratives, beginning with Betty Rollin’s First, You Cry (1976); the gay liberation movement for HIV / AIDS narratives (as in Paul Monette’s Borrowed Time, 1988); and the disability rights movement for narratives of disability (as in Irving Zola’s Missing Pieces, 1982). The recent proliferation of life writing about disease has to do with larger cultural forces, as well. One stimulus has been the rise of biomedicine, which renders survivable, and tends to destigmatize, conditions that once were unnarratable. Scientific medicine is not sufficient to destigmatize illness, however. In Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag showed that medical discourse often uses tropes for illness that may be hostile to patients; her critique of the cultural construction of illness was given further urgency by the mythologizing of AIDS. Biomedicine may stimulate life writing about illness in another way. The treatment of illness typically, and necessarily, involves a sort of narrative collaboration between doctor and patient. Diagnosis often relies, at least in part, on a “medical history”; the patient offers up testimony that the physician interprets according to codes and conventions generally unavailable to the patient. In diagnosis, physicians provide patients with an interpretation of their lives. Diagnosis leads in turn to prescription, treatment, and prognosis, all of which extend physicians’ authority over patients’ lives. Thus, physicians may both reinterpret patients’ pasts and literally pre-script their futures. The process is collaborative, but one-sided; patients submit their bodies to tests, their life histories to scrutiny, while physicians retain the authority to interpret these data. By means of this process, the sick person’s illness is reconfigured by the physician, through interrogation and interpretation, as the patient’s disease (see Kleinman). The process involves relinquishing control over one’s body and one’s life in a way that may seem objectifying to many patients. Thus, just as patients wish to vanquish the illness that alters their lives, they may also wish to regain control of their life narratives, which are yielded up to objective, and perhaps indifferent, medical authority. Increasingly, patients are resisting or challenging that authority, or seeking to share it. As patients seize, or at least claim, more authority over their treatment, they may also be more inclined to narrate their stories, to take their lives literarily into their own hands. The number of autobiographical narratives about illness is still relatively small, and, predictably, they are unevenly distributed among different classes, genders, and races. For the most part, people who write (or at least publish) personal narratives of sickness or disability have tended to be white and middle-class; many work in professions where writing is part of the job. When such people experience serious illness or disability, it jeopardizes an already valorized individuality; writing,

already a valued professional tool, promises to be an agent of recovery as well as self-expression. One of the constraints on autobiographical accounts of illness and disability is the powerful autobiographical convention of the comic plot, which by traditional definition should end happily for the protagonist. While comic resolution need not be provided solely by cure or recovery, illnesses that are invariably fatal, or conditions that are degenerative, seem inconsistent with comic plots. As a result, the accounts that get published tend to represent best-case scenarios. Another constraint is that a physical condition may be so daunting, debilitating, or disorienting as to impede or prevent retroactive first-person narration. With other forms of life writing, such constraints may not apply. The use of a collaborator may circumvent some obstacles, as in the case of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s celebrated narrative (translated as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) of a massive stroke that left him paralysed except for an eyelid; he was able to select letters, and thus to “type” his memoir, by blinking as a collaborator recited the alphabet. The diary or journal form also facilitates the representation of certain conditions, precisely because it does not require the comic resolution that seems to license most retrospective autobiographical accounts. While biography cannot render the subjective experience of illness, it can represent conditions (and outcomes) unavailable to autobiography. (Thus, most early HIV / AIDS narratives were written by surviving partners or relatives of people with AIDS.) The neurologist Oliver Sacks has made a literary career of writing case studies of people with rare disorders. Although most of his subjects are relatively normal, “high-functioning” individuals, most would not have been inclined or able to narrate their own stories. Life writing about somatic dysfunction, then, can take a number of forms. In the broadest sense, it can even include selfportraiture (e.g. the paintings of Frida Kahlo) or audio- or video-recording. The Human Genome Project, which aims to decode human DNA, is already having important impacts on life writing. For example, as the surest indicator of paternity, DNA has helped to revise the biography of Thomas Jefferson, confirming speculation – highly controversial when first aired – that he fathered children with his slave, Sally Hemings. DNA testing represents a significant addition to the biographer’s forensic toolkit that may help to resolve questions about medical conditions that have affected the personality and life events of historical figures. When it is applied to the living, DNA testing raises new ethical considerations. Today, when life writing often concerns ethnic and racial identity, biographers can use the results of DNA tests to help validate such aspects of their subjects’ identity, as well as to check questionable autobiographical claims of ethnic or racial identity – to detect, say, Aboriginal or Native impostors. Thus, DNA can be used to enforce what Philippe Lejeune has called “the autobiographical pact” in a rather legalistic way. The knowledge provided by the mapping of the genome has other implications for life writing – especially for autobiography. For example, the establishment of genetic predispositions for complex behaviours like alcoholism and criminality could generate a new subgenre of genetic confessions – or apologias. The mapping of the human genome represents a significant new development in the trend in biomedicine toward diagnosis and prognosis independent of the patient’s testimony or even

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cooperation; genetic testing represents the achievement, without literal penetration of the body, of the most metaphorically invasive of exposures. It will bring about presymptomatic diagnosis on a new scale, and this will undoubtedly precipitate new forms of personal narratives of the body. The awareness that one is fated, or merely predisposed, to develop a medical condition can induce intense, even excruciating, self-consciousness and thus be a powerful stimulant to self-monitoring in the form of diary writing or journal keeping. In Mapping Fate: A Memoir of Family, Risk, and Genetic Research, Alice Wexler recounts her family history of Huntington’s disease and her own decision not to take a DNA test that would have revealed whether she carried the gene herself. As the genome is mapped, more and more people will be living, like Wexler, in the interval between the discovery of the gene for a certain condition and the development of a therapy or cure for it; such individuals occupy a liminal zone between health and disease, normality and disability. The decoding of human genes – itself a form of biomedical life writing – will likely “out” a good many seemingly normal people as “latent defectives”, carriers of genes for various disabilities and conditions considered undesirable to perpetuate. Such a trend toward disseminating disability may shift or erase the usual border between “normal” and “abnormal”, and could significantly change the climate in which genetics and eugenics are understood. Part of the future project of life writing, then, will be reckoning with what is, and what is not, genetic destiny, for individuals and for the species. Still in early stages of development, body-centred life writing promises to illuminate the relationship between body, mind, and soul because physical as well as mental illness or disability may radically change a person’s sense of self. Perhaps our conventional notions of bodily integrity, individuality, and mortality are most profoundly challenged when surgeons successfully transplant vital organs – including that most metaphorically and symbolically charged of all such organs, the human heart. Such operations, which would have seemed like science fiction to earlier generations, have interesting and unsettling implications for life writing, because they threaten the very borders of self and life that autobiography usually takes for granted. A similarly transgressive scenario is the increasingly familiar one of the sex-change operation, as narrated for example by Jan Morris in Conundrum (1974). When illness and disability bring the body to mind in this way, life writing has a new opportunity to explore the ways in which identity or personality is mediated by the body. G. Thomas Couser Further Reading Ashe, Arthur and Arnold Rampersad, Days of Grace: A Memoir, New York: Knopf, and London: Heinemann, 1993 Bauby, Jean-Dominique, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, translated by Jeremy Leggatt, New York: Knopf, and London: Fourth Estate, 1997 Couser, G. Thomas, Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and Life Writing, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997 Donne, John, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Montreal: McGillQueens University Press, 1975; edited by Anthony Raspa, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987 Frank, Arthur W., The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995 Hawkins, Anne Hunsaker, Reconstructing Illness: Studies in

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Pathography, West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1993 James, Alice, The Diary of Alice James, edited by Leon Edel, New York: Dodd Mead, 1964 Kleinman, Arthur, The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition, New York: Basic Books, 1988 Lejeune, Philippe, Le Pacte autobiographique [The Autobiographical Pact], Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1975 Lorde, Audre, The Cancer Journals, Argyle, New York: Spinsters Ink, 1980; London: Sheba, 1985 Mairs, Nancy, Waist-High in the World: A Life among the Nondisabled, Boston: Beacon, 1996 Monette, Paul, Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1988 Morris, Jan, Conundrum, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, and London: Faber, 1974 Rollin, Betty, First, You Cry, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1976; updated edition, New York: New American Library, 1980 Sacks, Oliver W., An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales, New York: Knopf, and London: Picador, 1995 Sontag, Susan, Illness as Metaphor, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1978; London: Allen Cane, 1979 Styron, William, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, New York: Random House, 1990 West, Paul, A Stroke of Genius: Illness and Self-Discovery, New York: Viking, 1995 Wexler, Alice, Mapping Fate: A Memoir of Family, Risk, and Genetic Research, New York: Random House, 1995 Zola, Irving Kenneth, Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of Living with a Disability, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982

Bosnia-Herzegovina see Yugoslavia and Former Yugoslav Territories

Boswell, James

1740–1795

Scottish biographer and diarist James Boswell has long been thought to be the premier biographer in English. It is widely believed, for instance, that he virtually created the modern form of biography in his Life of Samuel Johnson, first published in 1791. But it is still important to understand that this work was necessarily the end result of a lifetime’s work in life writing. Curiously enough, Boswell’s achievement in biography began in autobiography, in his decision in his very early twenties to keep a regular journal. He was to proclaim its purpose to be “know thyself”. Whether Boswell ever succeeded in achieving that goal may be open to question, but these opening words of his London Journal can fairly be considered the beginning of a life-long commitment to journalizing that would eventually yield 15 printed volumes, constituting the fullest account we have of one person’s life in 18th-century England. The discovery and then the publication of Boswell’s journals have considerably altered our picture of him as a writer. Much of the attention has understandably focused on his private candour about sexual matters, shredding the veil that Victorian prudishness wanted to draw over such matters. But perhaps more importantly the journals help us to see Boswell both more widely and sometimes more deeply than we once could. It is first

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of all evident that he worked very hard to develop into the man and writer he later became, day after day, year in and year out. He began to record conversation early on, and only gradually learned how to do this with the skill that is so evident in scene after scene in The Life of Samuel Johnson. It is also clear that Boswell did not at first conceive of himself as Johnson’s biographer. In his journals, for instance, there are stunning accounts of his interviews in late 1764 first with Rousseau and then with Voltaire, and they indicate clearly enough just how well he could perform when Johnson was not his biographical subject. He would demonstrate that same power, though perhaps not so tellingly, in his rendition of his meetings with the Corsican rebel leader Pasquale di Paoli in 1765. This was published in 1768 as part of his larger Account of Corsica, a work that enjoyed considerable success in its own time. Nevertheless, the key moment in Boswell’s artistic development has to have been the journey he made with Johnson through Scotland and the western islands in the autumn of 1773. On this occasion Boswell spent more than 100 days in Johnson’s company. This is the time in which his long-established habits of journalizing and recording conversation seem to have reached critical mass. It was also the moment when the decision to dedicate his literary talents to becoming Samuel Johnson’s biographer seems to have become permanently fixed. After this, it would be Johnson or no one. However, the precipitant to Boswell actually becoming Johnson’s biographer was to come much later. Charles Dilly, a London bookseller, contacted Boswell shortly after Johnson’s death on 13 December 1784 to ask if he had any biographical materials he was willing to bring before the public. Boswell knew he could never complete the full-length biography he was nurturing within the timetable that Dilly had in mind, but he suspected that the public might be interested in his account of the journey he and Johnson had taken through Scotland in 1773 as a foretaste of what was to come. So, in late September 1785, not quite ten months after Johnson’s death, Boswell published his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Buoyed by the success of his Tour to the Hebrides, Boswell continued to work during the next six years on his full-length biography with important help from Edmond Malone. He sought out new sources, assembled and checked his facts, experimented with different arrangements, and of course ceaselessly mined his journals. By remaining faithful to what he had recorded in those journals, he ended up combining biography with autobiography, reminding us that our understanding of others is always grounded in the perceptions of the self. The course his biography would take was by then more or less set, but two events did have a significant impact on the shape and tone it would finally take. The first of these was the publication in 1786 of Hester Thrale Piozzi’s Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson. The second was the publication in 1787 of a full-length biography of Johnson by Sir John Hawkins. Boswell’s dissatisfaction with what he called Hester Piozzi’s “inaccuracies” helps to explain why he places so much emphasis on his own accuracy, while his indignant objection to the “dark uncharitable cast” that pervaded Sir John Hawkins’s biography suggests why his own portrait of Johnson is bathed in warmth and affection. The Life of Samuel Johnson was finally published on 16 May

1791, when Boswell was 50 years old, and 28 years to the day after he had first met Johnson in the back of Tom Davies’s London bookshop. It proved a great favourite with the public. Boswell, though, would not get to enjoy his triumph. His personal life by that time was almost a total wreck, and it continued on a downward spiral until he finally passed away on 19 May 1795, not yet 55. John J. Burke, Jr Biography Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, 29 October 1740, the eldest son of a successful lawyer (created Lord Auchinleck in 1754). Educated privately, then at Edinburgh High School. Studied at the University of Edinburgh, 1753–58, then studied civil law at the University of Glasgow, 1759–60. Expressed a desire to become a Roman Catholic priest, but persuaded by his family to abandon this plan, settling instead for a career in the army. Visited London with his father, 1760–61. Decided not to enlist and resumed legal studies in Edinburgh. Began to publish anonymous pamphlets and verses. Stayed in London, where he pursued a libertine lifestyle, 1762–63; met Samuel Johnson there in May 1763. Studied law at the University of Utrecht at the insistence of his father, 1763–64, then left to tour the Continent, 1764–66. Visited Voltaire and Rousseau, who inspired him to visit Corsica and support the cause of Corsican liberty, 1765; his experiences formed the basis of An Account of Corsica (1768). Returned to Britain and was admitted to the Scottish bar, 1766. Practised as an advocate in Edinburgh until 1788, visiting London frequently. Married a cousin, Margaret Montgomerie, 1769 (died 1789): seven children (two died in infancy). Elected a member of Johnson’s literary Club, and accompanied him on a tour of the Highlands and Hebrides, 1773. Contributed essays as “The Hypochondriack” to the London Magazine, 1777–83. Inherited the family estate on his father’s death, 1782. The success of the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), based on his trip of 1773, encouraged him to plan his masterpiece, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). Admitted to the English bar, at the Middle Temple, 1786. Recorder of Carlisle, 1788–90. Settled in London after his wife’s death in 1789. Suffered from severe depression and alcoholism in his last years. Died in London, 19 May 1795.

Selected Writings An Account of Corsica: The Journal of a Tour to That Island and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli, 1768 The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, 1785; edited by Frederick A. Pottle and Charles Bennett, 1936, re-edited, 1941; edited by Peter Levi (with Samuel Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland), 1984; as Johnson and Boswell in Scotland: A Journey to the Hebrides, edited by Pat Rogers, 1993; as Journey to the Hebrides, edited by Ian McGowan, 1996 The Life of Samuel Johnson, 2 vols, 1791; revised, 1793 and 1799; edited by George Birkbeck Hill, revised by L.F. Powell, 6 vols, 1934–64; as The Life of Johnson, edited by R.W. Chapman, revised by J.D. Fleeman, 1970; as The Life of Johnson, edited and abridged by Christopher Hibbert, 1979 Letters, Addressed to the Rev. W.J. Temple, edited by Philip Francis, 1857; edited by T. Seccombe, 1908; as The Correspondence of James Boswell and William Johnson Temple, vol. 1, edited by Thomas Crawford, 1991 Letters, 2 vols, edited by C.B. Tinker, 1924 Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–3, edited by Frederick A. Pottle, 1950

Further Reading Bloom, Harold (editor), James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, New York: Chelsea House, 1986 Brady, Frank, James Boswell: The Later Years, 1769–1795, New York: McGraw-Hill, London: Heinemann, 1984 Burke, John J., Jr, “The Documentary Value of Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides” in Fresh Reflections on Samuel Johnson: Essays in Criticism, edited by Prem Nath, Troy, New York: Whitston, 1987

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Burke, John J., Jr, “Talk, Dialogue, Conversation, and Other Kinds of Speech Acts in Boswell’s Life of Johnson” in Compendious Conversations: The Method of Dialogue in the Early Enlightenment, edited by Kevin L. Cope, New York: Peter Lang, 1992 Burke, John J., Jr, “Boswell and the Text of Johnson’s Logia”, Age of Johnson, 9 (1998): 25–46 Clifford, James L. (editor), Twentieth Century Interpretations of Boswell’s “Life of Johnson”: A Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1970 Clingham, Greg (editor), New Light on Boswell: Critical and Historical Essays on the Occasion of the Bicentenary of the Life of Johnson, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991 Dowling, William C., The Boswellian Hero, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1979 Dowling, William C., Language and Logos in Boswell’s “Life of Johnson”, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981 Greene, Donald, “The Logia of Samuel Johnson and the Quest for the Historical Johnson”, Age of Johnson, 3 (1990): 1–33 Hyde, Mary, The Impossible Friendship: Boswell and Mrs. Thrale, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1972 Ingram, Allan, Boswell’s Creative Gloom: A Study of Imagery and Melancholy in the Writings of James Boswell, London: Macmillan, and Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble, 1982 Lustig, Irma S. (editor), “Boswell at Work: The ‘Animadversions’ on Mrs. Piozzi”, Modern Language Review, 67 (1972): 11–30 Lustig, Irma S. (editor), Boswell: Citizen of the World, Man of Letters, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995 Martin, Peter, A Life of James Boswell, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999 Newman, Donald J. (editor), James Boswell: Psychological Interpretations, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995 Passler, David L., Time, Form, and Style in Boswell’s “Life of Johnson”, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971 Pottle, Frederick A., James Boswell: The Earlier Years, 1740–1769, New York: McGraw Hill, 1966 Siebenschuh, William R., Form and Purpose in Boswell’s Biographical Works, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972 Vance, John A. (editor), Boswell’s “Life of Johnson”: New Questions, New Answers, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985

Brandes, Georg

1842–1927

Danish critic, biographer, autobiographer, and letter writer As Denmark’s most influential literary critic, Brandes’s preferred method was the accumulation of a series of literary biographies into the broad characterization of a period or a movement. This method resulted from his studies of CharlesAugustin Sainte-Beuve and Hippolyte Taine, both of whom considered an understanding of the author essential to an understanding of the literary work. Whereas Taine, the subject of Brandes’s doctoral dissertation, believed that an author’s personality could be analysed scientifically on the basis of le race, le milieu, le moment (race, social environment, period), SainteBeuve was a master of literary portraiture who used details about an author’s character, opinions, attitudes, and life experience to analyse his or her writings. In his essay on Sainte-Beuve in Hovedstrømninger I det nittende aarhundredes litteratur (1872–90; Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature), Brandes further credits him with praising “the talent while indicating the defects in the soul which actually affect the talent and any permanent influence it may exercise”. Brandes based his

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own judgements not only on his tireless research and prodigious reading of works in several different languages, but also on his personal acquaintance and written correspondence with many of his subjects. Both Main Currents and Det moderne gjennembruds maend (1883; Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century) are based on this method. The latter work was important throughout the Scandinavian countries for stimulating literary realism and naturalism through a series of portraits of contemporary Scandinavian writers, as well as for bringing figures such as Henrik Ibsen and Bjørnstierne Bjørnsen to international attention. Brandes’s choices of biographical subjects were seemingly eclectic but actually chosen on the basis of his own interests and psychological identifications. His first long biographies were of the German leftist radical Ferdinand Lassalle, whose pamphlets he had come upon in Germany; the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, whom he had studied during his youthful exploration of Christianity; and the Jewish-English novelist and politician Benjamin Disraeli, who fascinated him as a Jew proud of his Jewishness. In the late 1880s Brandes started to read the works of Friedrich Nietszche and conducted a personal correspondence with him during the last 13 months of Nietszche’s sanity. From this sprang his lectures on Nietzsche at the University of Copenhagen in 1888 and his essay “Aristokratisk Radikalisme” [1909; “An Essay on the Aristocratic Radicalism of Friedrich Nietzsche”], which brought Nietzsche a much wider audience than he had had before. Brandes’s readers saw the essay as a contradiction of his former liberal positions, but Brandes himself asserted that his principles were not in the slightest way modified by his contact with Nietszche. Moreover, he continued, “my first thought with regard to a philosophical book was by no means to ask whether what it contains is right or wrong: ‘I go straight through the book to the man behind it ...’ ”. Nevertheless, the great biographies of Brandes’s later years, William Shakespeare (1895; William Shakespeare: A Critical Study), Wolfgang Goethe (1915), François de Voltaire (1916– 17; Voltaire), Cajus Julius Caesar (1918), and Michelangelo Buonarroti (1921; Michaelangelo: His Life, His Times, His Era), were often interpreted as instances of hero-worship. For Brandes, each of these figures “constituted an epoch” and had interested him all his life. In the case of Shakespeare, Brandes was faced with the difficulty that very little was actually known of the playwright’s life. Undaunted, he constructed a biography from his reading of Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays. Although the critics René Wellek and Austin Warren later found this method unacceptable, calling the resulting work “biographical romance” in their Theory of Literature, Wellek himself in his A History of Modern Criticism (1965) found that it contained “some well digested history, literary history, and simple exposition and criticism”. Although Brandes creatively incorporated his own inner history into his book on Shakespeare, his next books, on Goethe and Voltaire, focused on their subjects and were supported by detailed studies of their times. His biography of Caesar, on the other hand, although backed by detailed readings of the primary sources, “can be read as a documentary novel of the historical genre” in the words of Bertil Nolin, who also calls it “one of the purest examples of Brandes’s hero-worship”. Brandes’s book on Michelangelo attempted to portray this Renaissance Man in all

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his varied facets and bears the marks of Brandes’s own early intention to become a professor of aesthetics. Brandes’s own autobiography, Levned [1905–08; My Life], also employs his favoured method, relying on, and including, passages from his letters and diaries. It traces his intellectual development from childhood and vividly portrays his relationships with those who influenced him, whether famous or humble. In addition to its value as a record of Brandes’s life from his own point of view, it contains much useful information on the scholarly and educational practices of the age. The first volume alone, also the only one of the three to be translated into English (as Reminiscences of My Childhood and Youth), contains information of a personal and confessional nature. Kristine J. Anderson Biography Georg Morris Cohen Brandes. Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, 4 February 1842, into a middle-class Jewish family. Studied at the University of Copenhagen, 1859–64 (master’s degree in aesthetics). Travelled in Europe, 1865–71, where he met J.S. Mill, Hippolyte Taine, and Ernest Renan. Lived briefly in Paris. Doctoral dissertation, on Hippolyte Taine and French, accepted by University of Copenhagen, 1870. Taught literature at University of Copenhagen from 1871; published his lectures as Hovedstrømninger i det nittende aarhundredes litteratur (6 vols, 1872–90; Main Currents in Nineteenth-Century Literature). Also worked as a drama critic. Denied chair of aesthetics at University of Copenhagen, despite support from Copenhagen intellectuals, because of his Jewishness, his unorthodox views, and his atheism, 1872. Lived in Berlin, 1877–83. Wrote scholarly studies, including biographies of Søren Kierkegaard, William Shakespeare, and Goethe, and critical writings on modern Danish poetry. Developed philosophy of aristocratic radicalism, late 1880s: published Aristokratisk radicalisme, 1889. Returned to Denmark and became professor at University of Copenhagen, 1902. Travelled widely in Europe, meeting many prominent European writers, until his death. Attacked for his opposition to World War I, 1914. Died in Copenhagen, 19 February 1927.

Cajus Julius Caesar (biographical study), 2 vols, 1918 Michelangelo Buonarroti (biographical study), 2 vols, 1921; as Michelangelo: His Life, His Times, His Era, translated by Heinz Norden, 1963 Georg Brandes’ breve til hjemmet 1870–1871 (correspondence), edited by Alf Hjorth-Moritsen, 1938 Georg og Edv. Brandes: Brevveksling med Bjørnson, Ibsen, Kielland, Elster, Garborg, Lie (correspondence), edited by Francis Bull and Morten Borup, 3 vols, 1939 Georg og Edv. Brandes: Brevveksling med nordiske forfattere og videnskabsmaend (correspondence), edited by Morten Borup, 9 vols, 1939–42 Georg Brandes und Arthur Schnitzler: ein briefwechsel (correspondence), edited by Kurl Bergel, 1956 Georg Brandes’ breve til foraeldrene 1859–71 (correspondence), edited by Morten Borup, 3 vols, 1978 Brandes und die “Deutsche Rundschau”: unveröffentlicher Briefwechsel zwischen Julius Rodenberg und Georg Brandes (correspondence), edited by Klaus Bohnen, 1980 Georg Brandes og Emil Peterson: en brevveksling (correspondence), edited by Morten Borup, 1980 Selected Letters, edited by W. Glyn Jones, 1990 Georg Brandes’ breve til foraeldrene 1872–1904 (correspondence), edited by Morten Borup, 3 vols, 1994

Further Reading Hertel, Hans and Sven Møller Kristensen, The Activist Critic: A Symposium on the Political Ideas, Literary Methods and International Reception of Georg Brandes, Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1980 Mitchell, P.M., “The Breakthrough” in A History of Danish Literature, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, and New York: AmericanScandinavian Foundation, 1957; enlarged edition, New York: Kraus-Thomson, 1971 Nolin, Bertil, Georg Brandes, Boston: Twayne, 1976 Wellek, René, “The Lonely Dane: Georg Brandes” in his A History of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950, vol. 4, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1965

Selected Writings

Brazil

Ferdinand Lassalle: ein literarisches Charakterbild (biographical study), 1877; Danish edition, 1881 Søren Kierkegaard: en kritisk fremstilling i grundrids (biographical study), 1877 Benjamin Disraeli: en literaer charakteristik (biographical study), 1878; as Lord Beaconsfield: A Study, translated by Mrs George Sturge, 1879 Henrik Ibsen (biographical study), 1898, translated by Jesse Muir and Mary Marison in Henrik Ibsen: A Critical Study: With a 42 Page Essay on Björnstjerne Björnson, 1899 Det moderne gjennembruds maend (biographical studies), 1883; as Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century: Literary Portraits, translated by Rasmus Björn Anderson, 1886 William Shakespeare (biographical study), 1895; as William Shakespeare: A Critical Study, translated by William Archer, Mary Morison, and Diana White, 2 vols, 1898 Hovedstrømninger i det nittende aarhundredes litteratur, 1872–90; edited by Iver Jespersen, 6 vols, 1966–67; as Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature, translated by Diana White and Mary Morison, 6 vols, 1901–05 Levned, 3 vols, 1905–08; vol. 1 translated as Recollections of My Childhood and Youth, 1906, and Reminiscences of My Childhood and Youth, 1906 Friedrich Nietzsche (biographical study), translated by Arthur G. Chater, 1914 Wolfgang Goethe (biographical study), 2 vols, 1915; as Wolfgang Goethe, translated by Allen Wilson Porterfield, 2 vols, 1924 François de Voltaire (biographical study), 2 vols, 1916–17; as Voltaire, translated by Otto Kruger and Pierce Butler, 1930

Since the end of the 19th century, life writing has expanded steadily in Brazil. Autobiography, memoirs, diaries, collections of letters, testimonies, and biographies have all been published with increasing frequency, and today they are among the country’s most popular literary genres. Their appeal among a wide readership is at least partly explained by the deep social, racial, and cultural divisions, as well as the severe regional imbalances, that characterize contemporary Brazilian society. Living conditions, customs, and lifestyles vary dramatically, and for both the Brazilian reader and the scholar carrying out research on the country, such forms as memoirs and testimonies, by opening up personal experiences which are remote from their own, offer a valuable and fascinating insight into many aspects of the country’s complex social and cultural reality that are of difficult access and are poorly understood. Elements of life writing can certainly be traced back to Brazil’s earliest literary texts. These were first-hand accounts by chroniclers such as Pero Vaz de Caminha of the first phase of Portuguese colonialism. However, the effort to record and justify the enterprise took precedence over details of personal experience and sentiment. The same can be said of the letters written by missionaries later on in the colonial period. Those by Father Antônio Vieira (1608–97), for example, written to fellow

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clergymen and to statesmen, are principally of value for the information they convey about the problems being encountered in the colony, rather than for what they reveal about the man himself. It was in the latter part of the 19th century that the recording of individual experience really began to emerge as a major objective for Brazilian writers. The proliferation of autobiographies, memoirs, and diaries in Europe was undoubtedly a major influence. The Romantic period produced several important examples of life writing, most notably Como e por que sou romancista [1893; How and Why I Am a Novelist], by Brazil’s foremost Romantic writer, José de Alencar, and the Memórias [1948; Memoirs] written by Alfredo D’Escragnolle Taunay (1843–99), better known as the Visconde de Taunay. Both these works, however – published many years after the deaths of their authors – have been eclipsed by their novels. The example of Joaquim Nabuco, a politician who became a leading figure in the Abolitionist Movement in the 1880s, is significantly different. His autobiography, Minha formação [1900; My Education], is widely considered to be the most notable of the works he produced, which covered several genres. The case of Nabuco highlights the growing importance that was attached to life writing by the turn of the 20th century. In addition to his autobiography, he also published an extensive biography of his father, a senator, entitled Um estadista do Império [1899; A Statesman of the Empire], while his own biography, A vida de Joaquim Nabuco [1928; The Life of Jaoquim Nabuco] was written by his daughter, Carolina Nabuco, who also later published the collected letters of her father, and her own memoirs, focusing on the life of her illustrious family. In the 20th century, autobiographies and memoirs gradually progressed from the simple description of the major events in an author’s life to more detailed, intimate studies which often revealed his or her innermost sentiments. Examples are the Memórias [1933; Memoirs] of Humberto de Campos, and Quando eu era vivo [1942; When I Was Alive], by José Medeiros e Albuquerque, looking back critically on the bohemian lifestyle he followed in Europe at the beginning of the century. In the wake of the profound changes in Brazilian cultural life generated by the Modernist movement from 1922 onwards, and the political upheaval of the 1930s, it became increasingly common for writers to record their experience of events. Autobiographical works by major literary figures such as Augusto Schmidt, who published his memoirs, O galo branco [The White Rooster] in 1948, and Manuel Bandeira, whose Itinerário de Pasárgada [1954; The Route to Pasargada] describes his development as a poet, have proved to be a valuable resource for literary critics. Arguably, the most remarkable memoirs from those decades were Memórias do cárcere [1953; Prison Memoirs, 1974], in which Graciliano Ramos documents the brutality and humiliation he suffered during a year in prison, between 1936 and 1937, under the regime of Getúlio Vargas. Published in four volumes, the work transcends personal experience to probe critically numerous aspects of Brazilian society and culture, even debating the role the writer might play within it. Letters by Ramos, published in 1982, have been another significant source of information about his life and work, as has been the case with other major writers, such as Machado de Assis, Mário de Andrade, and Monteiro Lobato. Many of the socially and regionally orientated novels that

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dominated Brazilian fiction in the 1930s and 1940s incorporated clear autobiographical elements, with the central aim of social documentation relying considerably on direct personal experience. Perhaps the most striking example is the work of José Lins do Rego, who is best known for the six so-called “sugar cane cycle” novels that he wrote between 1932 and 1943, all of which drew directly on his memories of growing up on a sugar plantation in the Brazilian north east. Strongly nostalgic, they look back on the traditional patterns of rural life that were largely destroyed by modern, industrialized sugar production. The sadness at the passing of a way of life is linked to the loss of his own childhood. His reliance on personal experience for the creation of his fiction is clearly demonstrated in the memoirs he later wrote on his boyhood years, Meus anos verdes [1956; My Tender Years]. Since then, there have appeared a number of notable novels likewise based on autobiography, such as Fernando Sabino’s O encontro marcado [1956; A Time to Meet], recording a young man’s struggle to give a sense of meaning to his life, and Carlos Heitor Cony’s Informação ao crucificado [1961; Information to the Crucified], a fictional representation of his education in a seminary. From 1964 to 1985 a military dictatorship governed Brazil, and the experiences of oppression and censorship eventually produced another wave of testimonies, autobiographies, and documentary-based fiction. The desire of the reading public to uncover and understand the dramatic events of those years made some of those works bestsellers. Such was the case of Fernando Gabeira’s three-volume autobiography, published between 1979 and 1981, which is arguably the best testimonial writing of the period. The volumes are O que é isso, companheiro? [What’s This, Pal?], O crepuscúlo do macho [Twilight of the Macho], and Entradas e bandeiras [Portals and Flags]. It documents his involvement in guerrilla resistance to the regime, his arrest and torture, and his return to Brazil after nine years in exile. As with much Brazilian life writing, individual experience merges with the concerns of the wider community. Another major writer of memoirs to emerge during this period was Pedro Nava, whose Bau de ossos [1972; Trunk of Bones] was the first of six volumes which he published. Characterized by humour and lively anecdotes, the work critically evaluates the events in his life as it recounts them. The popularity of these varied documentaries on a difficult period in Brazil’s history played a major part in the so-called “boom” in national publishing that occurred in the mid 1970s. In the second half of the 20th century, the most significant development in Brazilian life writing was its increasing inclusion of the most marginalized sections of the country’s population. The publication of a diary, O quarto de despejo (1960; Children of the Dark), by a black woman from a São Paulo shantytown, Carolina Maria de Jesus, served as a vital catalyst for the process. It became one of the bestselling books in Brazilian history, and was widely translated, though the literary establishment tended to show disdain for the work, and Carolina herself benefited little from its success. Because of that contradiction, and the question of the role played by members of the mainstream culture in preparing it for publication, the diary focused unprecedented attention on this form of life writing. The fact that many other efforts have since been made to record the experience of the poorest social sectors is hardly surprising, given that conspicuous poverty alongside great affluence and

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dynamic consumerism is the most evident indication of Brazil’s unbalanced pattern of development. A more recent example of this type of work is Benedita da Silva: An Afro-Brazilian Woman’s Story of Politics and Love, edited by Meden Benjamin and Maisa Mendonça, which, published simultaneously in English and Portuguese in 1997, is da Silva’s testimony of how she emerged from the shantytown to become Brazil’s first black woman senator. During the same period, the lives of major public figures have been recorded more thoroughly than ever before, through numerous biographies and published interviews, in addition to their self-written memoirs, which became increasingly varied in style. Herbert Daniel, for example, published an extraordinary partial autobiography entitled Passagem para o próximo sonho [1982; Passage to the Next Dream], which, though based on his experiences as a gay activist living in Brazil and France, mixes several different forms of discourse. The autobiographical writings of Brazil’s best-known 20th-century author, Jorge Amado, are much more conventional. In 1980, he published his childhood memoirs, O menino grapiúna [The Boy from Ilhéus], and, in 1992, a volume of notes, Navegação de cabotagem: apontamentos para um livro de memórias que jamais escreverei [Voyage from Port to Port: Notes for the Memoirs that I Will Never Write], recalling key moments in his later life. In contrast, Confissões [1997; Confessions], by Darcy Ribeiro, are, as the title suggests, more introspective and reflective. One further indication of the dynamism of Brazilian life writing at the close of the 20th century has been the appearance of a number of critical studies of such work, which had received scant attention from literary scholars hitherto, and which are listed below. Mark Dinneen Further Reading Agosín, Marjorie (editor), Passion, Memory and Identity: TwentiethCentury Latin American Jewish Women Writers, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999 Aguiar, Joaquim Alves de, Espaços da memória: um estudo sobre Pedro Nava, São Paulo: EDUSP, 1998 Almeida Conrado, Regina Fátima de, O mandacaru e a flor: a autobiografía Infáncia e os modos de ser Graciliano, São Paulo: Arte e Ciência, 1997 Bastos, Hermengildo, Memórias do cárcere: literatura e testemunho, Brasília: Universidade de Brasília, 1998 (on Graciliano Ramos’s prison memoirs). Borim, Dario, “Borders and Selves: Contemporary Autobiography of Brazil and the Americas” (dissertation), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1997 Bosi, Alfredo, História concisa da literatura brasileira, São Paulo: Editora Cultrix, 1985 (first edition 1970) Bosi, Ecléa, Memória e sociedade: lembrancas de velhos, São Paulo: EDUSP, 1987 Chalhoub, Sidney and Leonardo Affonso de Miranda Pereira (editors), A História contada: capítulos de história social da literatura no Brasil, Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1998 Coutinho, Afrânio and José Galante de Sousa (editors), Enciclopédia de literatura brasileira, 2 vols, Rio de Janeiro: Ministério de Educação, 1990 Foster, David William and Robert Reis (editors), A Dictionary of Contemporary Brazilian Authors, Tempe: Centre for Latin American Studies, Arizona State University, 1981 Hunsaker, Steven V., Autobiography and National Identity in the Americas, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999 Levine, Robert M., ‘The Cautionary Tale of Carolina Maria de Jesus’, Latin American Research Review, 29 / 1 (1994): 5–83

Levine, Robert M. and J.C. Sebe Bom Meihy, The Life and Death of Carolina Maria de Jesus, Albuquerque: New Mexico University Press, 1995 Patai, Daphne (editor), Brazilian Women Speak: Contemporary Life Stories, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1993 Riedel, Dirce Côrtes (editor), Narrativa, ficção e história, Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1988 Stern, Irwin (editor), Dictionary of Brazilian Literature, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1988 Vieira, Nelson, “A Brazilian Biographical Bibliography”, Bibliography, (Fall 1982): 357–64

Brentano von-Arnim, Bettina see Arnim, Bettina Brentano-von

Breytenbach, Breyten

1939–

South African poet, artist, and autobiographer In his first volume of poetry (Die ysterkoei moet sweet, 1964 [The Iron Cow Must Sweat]) Breyten Breytenbach introduces himself in the dedication as “the thin man with the green sweater” who “supports and hammers his elongated head to produce a poem for you”. In another poem he talks about his parents, and in yet another he informs the reader when, where, and how he was born. But he also becomes a central metaphor of his poetry: the poet, but also the poem. In his recent selection of love poems, Lady One: 99 liefdesgedigte (2000; Lady One: 99 Love Poems), his beloved Vietnamese-born wife Hoang Lien is the subject of most of the poetry: “lady lady only lady / you with all the many names / did I call your name from my sleep?” Breytenbach has gained fame as one of South Africa’s leading poets not only because of his extraordinary and personal love poetry, which shows the influence of both Zen Buddhism and Indian Tantrism. He has also made his mark as a prominent Afrikaner writer who took an early and uncompromising stance against apartheid. In addition to his essays on the art of writing, all Breytenbach’s writing has definite autobiographical leanings. On his visit to South Africa with his wife in 1973, after an exile of 13 years, Breytenbach began a travel journal that offered bitter comment on the apartheid politics of his people, ‘N Seisoen in die paradys (1976; A Season in Paradise). In 1975 he secretly returned to his homeland on a political mission, and was arrested and jailed for seven years on a charge of “terrorism”. Writing in prison, he produced Mouroir (1983), subtitled the “mirrornotes of a novel”. This was published after his release. Although not directly about himself, its highly metaphorical approach reflects the prisoner’s strategy of coding as well as his reflection on abnormal states of existence. The dedication to “my old prison comrade and my master: Don Espejuelo” (Don Espejuelo is Spanish for “Mister Little Mirror”, a fictive character emphasizing the autobiographical: the writer writing himself ) is indicative of its autobiographical status, as is the first-page illustration by the author of himself looking into a mirror. His decision to become physically involved in the liberation of his country, some of the experiences in prison, and the nature of punishment in a South African prison are recorded in

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what is widely regarded as his principle work of life writing, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (1983). In a volume of essays, working notes, letters, poems, and diary writing De andere kant van de vrijheid (1985; End Papers) Breytenbach continued to reflect personally on the political situation in South Africa, the meaning of cultural liberation in a postcolonial Africa, and the problems of exile. Although the main character in the “novelistic” first part of Memory of Snow and of Dust (1989) is not a first-person narrator, events from Breytenbach’s life are obvious here. A poem in the text suggests as much: “I am the history of myself”. He and Yolande (Hoang Lien) visited South Africa in the early 1990s, and although he has declared that the book produced after that visit – Return to Paradise (1993) – “could well be a tissue of fiction”, the motto, from the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, again concerns a mirror (“in what mirror did I lose my face”). In The Memory of Birds in Times of Revolution (1996) he again describes travels to South Africa as a springboard for remembering his imprisonment, and for offering his views on his country and Africa. His increasingly nomadic perspective underpins Dog Heart (1998), a travel memoir describing his return to the district of his birth in the Little Karoo, in which South Africa itself becomes “Nomansland”. In Woordwerk [1999; Word Work] he is again the writer and the world wanderer, but always the person Breyten Breytenbach, writing about the art of writing, and forever formulating a new ars poetica. Breytenbach is also a painter, and much of his painting, as well as his writing about his painting, is autobiographical, for instance Notes of Bird (1984), where every face painted is that of the painter and the poet. “Bird” is also one of Breytenbach’s many names and signs for himself. Similarly in All One Horse (1990), although the paintings are of a more surrealist nature, the main character is quite recognizable, as are some of the places where he has been, such as a prison cell. A clue to Breytenbach’s authorial games can be found in the purported signatory to the preface, “A. Uthor”. The title of one of Breytenbach’s exhibitions can perhaps explain in part his ambiguous presence as poet, writer, and artist in most of his work: “Painting the I”. He has created himself through his work, but at the same time the eye of the writer creates and interprets the world he regards. Ampie Coetzee Biography Born in Bonnievale, Western Cape, South Africa, 16 September 1939, into a distinguished Afrikaner family. Studied literature at the University of Cape Town until 1959; also studied at the Michaelis School of Fine Art. Dropped out of college to travel in Europe, 1959. Lived in Paris, 1961–75; made a living from painting. Married Yolande Ngo Thi Hoang Lien, 1964. Published his first volume of poetry, Die ysterkoei moet sweet [The Iron Cow Must Sweat], and a volume of prose, Katastrofes [Catastrophes], 1964. Used the pen-name Jan Blom during the 1970s. Founded the Okhela anti-apartheid organization. Visited South Africa briefly, 1972–73. Returned there incognito with a false French passport and was arrested for anti-apartheid activities, 1975. Imprisoned in Pretoria and in Pollsmoor prison, near Cape Town. Released after pressure by the French government, on condition that he leave South Africa, 1982. Lived in Paris, where he continued to write poetry and to paint, from 1982. Became a French citizen, 1983. Published the semi-fictional Mouroir: bespieëlende notas van ‘n roman (1983; Mouroir: Mirrornotes of a Novel) and his prison memoir, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, 1984. Organized important meetings between South African writers and the African National

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Congress (ANC) in Dakar (Senegal) and Zimbabwe, 1987 and 1989. Held solo art exhibitions in Cape Town and Pretoria, 1994. Visiting writer, creative writing program, New York University, 1999. Appointed visiting professor at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Humanities, 2000. Selected Writings Die ysterkoei moet sweet (poetry), 1964 ’N Seisoen in die paradys (travel journal), 1976; as A Season in Paradise, 1980 Mouroir: bespieëlende nota’s van ’n roman, 1983; as Mouroir: Mirrornotes of a Novel, 1984 The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, 1983 Notes of Bird, 1984 De andere kant van de vrijheid: essays en werkboek, 1985; as End Papers: Essays, Letters, Articles of Faith, Workbook Notes, 1986 Judas Eye; and Self-Portrait / Deathwatch, 1988 Memory of Snow and of Dust (autobiographical fiction), 1989 All One Horse: Fictions and Images, 1990 (with others) Breyten Breytenbach: Painting the Eye, 1993 Return to Paradise (autobiographical fiction), 1993 The Memory of Birds in Times of Revolution, 1996 Dog Heart: A Travel Memoir, 1998 Woordwerk (Die Kantskryfjoernaal Van ‘n Swerwer), 1999 99 liefdesgedigte, 2000; as Lady One, 2000

Further Reading Egan, Susanna, “Breytenbach’s Mouroir: The Novel as Autobiography”, Journal of Narrative Technique (Spring 1988) Galloway, Francis, Breyten Breytenbach as openbare figuur, Pretoria: Haum-Literêr, 1990 Golz, Hans-Georg, Staring at Visions: The Concept of “Self” in Breyten Breytenbach’s Mouroir, Mirrornotes of a Novel, Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang, 1995 Jacobs, J.U., “Breyten Breytenbach and the South African Prison Book”, Theoria (Kwazulu-Natal) (December 1986) Jolly, Rosemary Jane, Colonization, Violence, and Narration in White South African Writing: André Brink, Breyten Breytenbach, and J.M. Coetzee, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, and Athens: Ohio University Press, 1996 Roberts, Sheila, “Breyten Breytenbach’s Prison Literature”, Centennial Review (Spring 1986) Weschler, Lawrence, Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998

Britain: Medieval Life Writing “Life” was already a literary genre in medieval English, so that Chaucer’s irreverent Miller can jokingly invoke the shadow of Joseph and Mary in promising to tell “a legende and a lyf / Both of a carpenter and of his wyf”. That The Miller’s Tale is no saint’s life is an indirect indication of how familiar the formula was. The normal pattern is a brief account of birth, upbringing, conversion, evidence of piety, trials, suffering, death, and miracles. The shared life as a model of Christian conduct is more important than personal historical facts. In this lies the literary interest of the “life”, which provided a blueprint not only for pious narrative, but also for romances about a hero’s whole life, such as Guy of Warwick (c.1300), or a heroine’s sufferings as in Emaré (mid 14th century), and for ideal paths, Arthurian or allegorical. Despite their formulaic nature, saints’ lives vary even before the Norman Conquest, by which time traditions of sacred and secular biography in Latin were well established. Some writers were learned, did research, and wrote of near

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contemporaries, while others merely repeated oral legends or wrote of figures who lived hundreds of years earlier. Different emphasis creates strikingly different senses of what a holy life meant. So, for example, Bede’s life of St Cuthbert (lived c.634–87, written post-699) – through images of Cuthbert’s praying up to his neck in the sea, his feet later dried by seals, and of his relationships with angels, eagles, and predatory ravens – conveys a life of pastoral mysticism, healing, and homely preservations from danger, full of foreseeings of death, while Eddius Stephanus’ life of St Wilfrid (634–709, written 710–20) – through the record of Wilfrid’s travels, dealings with Rome, vigorous engagement in public controversy and administrative work such as restoring the leaking roof and unglazed windows of the minster at York – communicates the tough awkwardness of the man and the bishop’s role as leader. Within sacred biography, as much as between sacred and secular, the distinction is apparent between the vita, a biography of the inner life, and the gesta, an account of public achievements. Personal involvement is sometimes the key to the quality of such biographies. For both Walter Daniel – the Northumbrian Cistercian who wrote the Life of St Aelred (d. 1167) – and for Jocelin of Brakelond, whose Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds (written 1190s) includes the lively portrayal of Abbot Samson with his bushy, often trimmed eyebrows, fluent in Latin and French but preaching in Norfolk English – the events they describe are part of their own autobiographies as well as a following of typological patterns of history and hagiography. It is to the tradition of the gesta that early secular biographies belong: writers combined eulogy and record in the style of obituary. Asser’s life of Alfred (written c.893), perhaps the first biography of a layman, is a patchwork from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Post-Conquest biographies may be separate texts, such as the anonymous 12th-century Gesta Stephani and the rash of Latin lives of Thomas à Becket, or in chronicles such as the Gesta Regum of William of Malmesbury (c.1090–1142), which includes assessments of the characters of kings, by this time sometimes more partisan. The earliest royal biographies in English (the Scottish “romance-biography” of Barbour’s Bruce (1370s) being in a class of its own) may have been lives of Henry V, although except for fragments in later texts, only Latin ones survive. English saints’ lives occur much earlier: they include those of Aelfric (d. c.1010), the Katherine Group texts (including Seinte Margerete, Seinte Juliene, and Seinte Katerine) and the South English Legendary (over 50 manuscripts, the earliest of which is from the late 13th century). Various impulses towards autobiography in this period are identifiable. Educated men recorded their actions and opinions, together with the history of people and institutions they knew: the earliest self-contained autobiography written in England may be the Latin account by the Lorraine-born Gyso of his years as Bishop of Wells (1060–88), which includes the momentous events of 1066, although Gyso was more interested in enlarging his church’s property. We learn more about Gerald of Wales (d. 1223), whose voluminous writings about Ireland, Wales, and the church include so much about himself that modern historians accuse him of vanity, though his use of letters and documents in his third-person account of his youth, manhood, and old age in De rebus a se gestis demonstrates some seeking for accuracy and detachment. Self-analysis was encouraged both by Augustine’s Con-

fessions (written c.397–400) and Boethius’ Consolations of Philosophy (written 525), where inner dialogue brings the resources of philosophical teaching to bear on worldly disappointments and moral uncertainties. The church’s stress on confession (especially after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which required every Christian to confess at least once a year) stimulated the production of confession manuals, and led to a more widespread use of standard moral categorization, such as self-examination under the headings of the seven deadly sins. Such influences lie behind various imaginings of self by the major Middle English poets, Chaucer, Langland, Gower, and the Gawain-Poet, and some of Chaucer’s associates, Thomas Usk, Sir John Clanvowe, and Thomas Hoccleve. Dream poetry, dialogue, complaint, lyric, narrative – all gave opportunities for first-person voices; their degree of individual identity or literal autobiography has often been debated. None of these authors was writing an apologia pro vita sua; rather they cast the light of their own inner experience on larger, moral themes. How far authorial self-reference was simply a rhetorical strategy is particularly teasing in the case of Hoccleve (1368 / 9–1426), clerk in the Office of the Privy Seal, who addressed poems hopefully to the interests and possible patronage of Henry IV, Henry V, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, but used his own youthful follies (La Male Regle), mental breakdown (Complaint), and personal circumstances as a framework for his treatment of contemporary morality and politics. Vernacular explorations of personal religious experience by Richard Rolle (1300–49), Julian of Norwich (1342–c.1420), and Margery Kempe (c.1373– c.1439) less ambiguously selected language and imagery in which traditional Christian teaching is re-expressed through individual self-invention. It remains a striking fact, however, that the most directly communicative examples of life writing from medieval Britain are those nearest to the raw material, particularly the collections of family letters and papers, such as survive for the Pastons, Celys, and Stonors. The grouping together of these mainly 15thcentury texts allows snapshots of particular moments to build up into sagas of birth, marriage, and death over several generations, so that a network of relationships, social circumstances, and contexts conveys to the modern reader a sense, perhaps illusory, of direct contact with the life of the time. Tony Davenport Further Reading Aers, David, Community, Gender and Individual Identity: English Writing 1360–1430, London and New York: Routledge, 1988 Boffey, Julia, “Middle English Lives”, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, edited by David Wallace, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999 Burrow, J.A., “Autobiographical Poetry in the Middle Ages: The Case of Thomas Hoccleve”, Proceedings of the British Academy, 68 (1982): 389–412; reprinted in Middle English Literature: British Academy Gollancz Lectures, edited by Burrow, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989 Burrow, J.A., “Fictions of Self”, in his Langland’s Fictions, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993 Clanchy, M.T., From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, revised edition, Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1993 (original edition, 1979) Ferguson, C.D., “Autobiography as Therapy: Guibert de Nogent, Peter Abelard, and the Making of Medieval Autobiography”, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 13 (1983): 187–212 Gransden, Antonia, Historical Writing in England c.550 to c.1307,

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Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1973; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974 Gransden, Antonia, Historical Writing in England c.1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982 Heffernan, Thomas J., Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988 Kane, George, The Autobiographical Fallacy in Chaucer and Langland Studies, London: H.K. Lewis, 1965 (Chambers Memorial Lecture, University College London, 1965) Lehmann, Paul, “Autobiographies of the Middle Ages”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, series 5, 3 (1953): 41–52 Moriarty, Catherine (editor), The Voice of the Middle Ages in Personal Letters 1100–1500, Oxford: Lennard, 1989 Morris, Colin, The Discovery of the Individual 1050–1200, London: SPCK, and New York: Harper and Row, 1972; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987 Rigg, A.G., A History of Anglo-Latin Literature 1066–1422, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992 Stauffer, Donald A., English Biography Before 1700, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1930 Strohm, Paul, “Passioun, Lyf, Miracle, Legende: Some Generic Terms in Middle English Hagiographical Narrative”, Chaucer Review, 10 (1975–76): 62–75 and 154–71 Webb, J.F., (editor and translator), Lives of the Saints, Harmondsworth and Baltimore: Penguin, 1965 Zumthor, Paul, “Autobiography in the Middle Ages”, Genre, 6 (1973): 29–48

Britain: Medieval Letters Although not devoid of inherent bias and careful rhetoric, medieval correspondence provides strikingly vivid glimpses into daily life. The chance survival of several letter collections has enriched our knowledge of the late medieval period; first-hand accounts and candid opinions, rarely intended for a wider audience than the initial recipient, provide us with alternative perspectives on events that are given scant or unemotional treatment in more formal documentation. The letters depict the lives of those otherwise hidden from view, chronicling their daily activities, relationships, travels, opinions, and interests. Much is missing from the correspondence: there is little, for example, on religious devotional practice, since this was so much part of daily life that it rarely warranted mention. What we gain instead are glimpses of issues that caused conflict or demanded consensus, often concerning property rights, career progression, marriage arrangements, and the administration of inheritance. Sometimes close family members wrote to share less momentous news, using the letter to maintain affectionate contact while away from home, but more usually the correspondence was written to procure expedient responses to requests for action in matters of urgency. Regardless of subject matter, however, we must be cautious of attributing any of the content of letters to a specific “author”: the ubiquitous use of secretaries and of formularies often obscures the true intentions or character of a signatory. The letter collections provide much that is strikingly revealing of the lives of the correspondents, but a cautious approach avoids hasty, perhaps invalid, conclusions. There is ample evidence, for example, that the truly revealing information was entrusted not to the written word but to messengers (often the so-called “bringers” or “bearers” of the letters).

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Most frequently drawn upon by historians to illustrate the tumultuous existence of one family during the Wars of the Roses in England, the Paston letters (1425–1520) are the largest of the medieval family letter collections. More than 1000 documents survive from the archives of this aspiring gentry family from Norfolk, who seem to have been more fastidious than most in retaining both the originals and draft copies of the letters and other administrative documentation entering or leaving their possession. By virtue of their diligence we are privy to the ebb and flow of life in the rather unstable environment of 15thcentury East Anglia, witnessing responses to a plethora of contemporary events. Many of the letters concern the lengthy dispute over the will of Sir John Falstof, but these are prefaced and interspersed by those that chart the aggrandizement of the family through the acquisition of property and the careful choice of marriage partners. However, we can learn much about these matters from administrative documentation other than the letters; the correspondence is more valuable for the light it throws on the individual responses to these events. The letters of the Paston wives, left at home while their husbands were in London, are particularly valuable in sketching out the concerns of those whose lives are otherwise hidden. They emerge as strong-willed and highly capable household managers, defending their property from attack in extreme circumstances, but more usually simply ensuring that their husbands are kept informed of local matters. The sustained, if not entirely continuous, narrative that is offered by the Paston letters allows us at least to imagine that we understand the concerns of these people. The Stonors of Oxfordshire were a more established gentry family than the Pastons, but were no less anxious about maintaining their status or increasing their property holdings. Nearly 300 of their English letters (1420–83) survive, and although more sporadic than those of their Norfolk counterparts, they illustrate the lives and concerns of the correspondents through passing references to events and conversations. In this way we learn that William Stonor’s brother, Thomas, disapproved of William’s wife Elizabeth’s penchant for extravagant purchases, and that Jane Stonor resented her husband’s too-frequent absence from home. Like the Paston letters, the Stonor correspondence is not restricted to exposing the lives of the family itself: the wide variety of authors provides glimpses into the lives of servants, London dignitaries, lawyers, and friends in trade, such as the merchant Thomas Betson, famously referred to by Eileen Power as “one of the most delightful people revealed to us in any of the fifteenth-century letters” (Power). The relations between the nobility and gentry are revealed alternately as congenial or antagonistic: for example, Alice, Duchess of Suffolk, offended Elizabeth Stonor by objecting to her daughter’s inadequate attire, but addressed William Stonor as her “entierly beloued ffrende”. While rhetoric can expose the relationships between people of different status, however, it can also be deceptive. Ulterior motives are often at play, and the true state of affairs can be quite different from that which is implied by obsequious phrasing. In the Plumpton letters (1416–1552) we observe again the difficulties encountered by a gentry family anxious to augment its status and wealth. The correspondence was copied into a letter book and a coucher book in the early 17th century (the originals no longer survive), and uniquely illustrates political life in the

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northern counties of England in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Typically, the lives of these Yorkshire correspondents are by no means fully delineated, but the snapshots provided in the letters are enough to give us an idea of their main preoccupations. The issue of inheritance is a prominent theme, in particular Sir Robert Plumpton’s struggle to assert his position as heir-male, and the usual conflicts over land and marriage arrangements reveal something of the fragile relationships that existed within the Plumpton circle. A smaller, and more recently discovered, collection of gentry correspondence concerns Robert and Joan Armburgh’s claim on the Brokhole inheritance. The Armburgh letters (1417–53), which survive as copies on a 15th-century roll, detail the progression of the litigation, but also reveal more domestic concerns. We read, for instance, of Robert’s pregnant stepdaughter’s desire for a loan to buy “onest beddyng”, to avoid being shamed before her friends when they visited her after the birth, and of the priest, John Barbour, who farmed the Armburgh estate of Mancetter, being rescued and cared for by an unnamed “gentil womman” after collapsing in ill health. The fifth collection of 15th-century correspondence is that of the Celys, who were not a gentry family but rather London merchants who were involved in the wool export trade. Their letters (1472–88) are accompanied by a large archive of business documentation, and together they provide detailed information about the workings of the wool trade. It might be argued that we gain a better idea of the personalities of the Cely correspondents than we do of any of the gentry families; their frequent letters to each other seem less constrained by protocol, and the chronological proximity of the letters results in a less disjointed portrayal of both character and events. The family letter collections of this period by no means provide enough material to construct a complete biography of any individual. Yet read in conjunction with accompanying documents, these and other surviving medieval letters, such as those of John Shillingford, mayor of Exeter, and Elizabeth Despenser, can yield a good impression of the human lives behind more unemotional descriptions of pedigree and accomplishments. Even if not forthcoming with the details we long for, the letter collections reveal that the lives of the correspondents were eagerly and anxiously observed by friends and foes alike, confirming the enduring human interest in other people’s lives. Alison Truelove Further Reading Bennett, H.S., The Pastons and Their England: Studies in an Age of Transition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922 Carpenter, Christine, “The Stonors and Their Circle in the Fifteenth Century” in Rulers and Ruled in Late Medieval England: Essays Presented to Gerald Harriss, edited by Rowena E. Archer and Simon Walker, London and Rio Grande, Ohio: Hambledon Press, 1995 Carpenter, Christine (editor), Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers 1290–1483, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996 Carpenter, Christine (editor), The Armburgh Papers: The Brokholes Inheritance in Warwickshire, Hertfordshire, and Essex, c.1417–c.1453, Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Rochester, New York: Boydell Press, 1998 Cherewatuk, Karen and Ulrike Wiethaus (editors), Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993 Kingsford, Charles L., “English Letters and the Intellectual Ferment” in

his Prejudice and Promise in XVth Century England, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925 Davis, Norman, “The Language of the Pastons”, Proceedings of the British Academy, 40 (1955): 119–44 Davis, Norman, “The Letters of William Paston”, Neophilologus, 37 (1956): 36–41 Davis, Norman, “Style and Stereotype in Early English Letters”, Leeds Studies in English, 1 (1967): 7–17 Davis, Norman (editor), Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, 2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971–76 Hanham, Alison (editor), The Cely Letters, 1472–1488, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1975 Hanham, Alison, The Celys and Their World: An English Merchant Family of the Fifteenth Century, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985 Kirby, Joan, “A Fifteenth-Century Family: The Plumptons of Plumpton and Their Lawyers 1461–1515”, Northern History, 25 (1989): 106–19 Kirby, Joan (editor), The Plumpton Letters and Papers, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996 Lyell, Laetitia (editor), A Mediaeval Post-Bag, London: Jonathan Cape, 1934 Moore, Stuart A. (editor), Letters and Papers of John Shillingford, Mayor of Exeter 1447–50, London: Camden Society, 1871; reprinted, New York: Johnson Reprint, 1965 Payne, Paddy and Caroline M. Barron, “The Letters and Life of Elizabeth Despenser, Lady Zouche (d. 1408)”, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 41 (1997): 126–56 Power, Eileen, “Thomas Betson, a Merchant of the Staple in the Fifteenth Century” in her Medieval People, London: Methuen, and Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924 Richmond, Colin, The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century:The First Phase, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990 Richmond, Colin, The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: Falstof ’s Will, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996 Stonor, Robert Julian, Stonor: A Catholic Sanctuary in the Chilterns from the Fifth Century till To-day, Newport, Montana: Johns, 1951 Taylor, John, “The Plumpton Letters, 1416–1552”, Northern History, 10 (1975): 72–87 Taylor, John, “Letters and Letter-Collections in England 1300–1420”, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 24 (1980): 57–70 Woolf, Virginia, “The Pastons and Chaucer” in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, edited by Andrew McNeillie, London: Hogarth Press, and San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1994

Britain: Renaissance Life Writing The principal cultural conditions responsible for the state of British Renaissance life writing were intellectual, religious, and technological. Humanist scholarship introduced British readers to a wealth of ancient life writing through its recovery and publication – in both the original languages and vernacular translations – of biblical, early Christian, and classical literature. Of fundamental importance were the English renditions of the Christian Bible, beginning with William Tyndale’s New Testament in 1525–26, culminating in the complete “Authorized Version” of 1611. Contemporaries treated their Bible as both a sacred text and a historiographical monument; in this dual function, it supplied the basic plot of Christian experience, collective and individual, written and unwritten. Among biblical genres, the epistle and prophecy influenced vernacular Renaissance life writing most, providing models for a diverse array of personal letters and testimonies, from those of the Marian martyrs (printed in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, 1563, and Miles Coverdale’s Certain Letters, 1564) to the pamphlet literature of

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the early Quakers and other radical sectarians of the 1640s and 1650s. Besides the Bible, Renaissance writers found models in contemporary publications by humanists of works of ancient historiography, such as Plutarch’s The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, in an English translation by Thomas North (1579), which scholars believe informed Shakespeare’s early history plays; Tacitus’ The Life of Agricola, translated by Henry Savile (along with Tacitus’ Histories, 1591), which is said to have influenced Francis Bacon’s The History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh (1622); and Suetonius’ The History of Twelve Caesars, Emperors of Rome, translated by Philemon Holland (1606). Humanist scholars also influenced contemporary taste and practice by inaugurating an indigenous tradition of life writing in the vernacular that imitated classical historiography, significant examples of which include Thomas More’s The History of King Richard the Third (written c.1513, printed 1557), George Cavendish’s The Negotiations of Thomas Wolsey, the Great Cardinal of England, Containing His Life and Death (written c.1556, printed 1641), William Roper’s The Mirror of Virtue in Worldly Greatness, or, The Life of Sir Thomas More, Knight (written c.1557, printed “Paris”, 1626), the anonymous History of That Most Eminent Statesman, Sir John Perrot (written c.1600, printed 1728), and Fulke Greville’s Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney (written c.1610, printed 1652). Conceived in the established tradition of written chronicles (of which Raphael Holinshed’s compilation, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland of 1577, is the most significant example), didactic and relatively impersonal by design, these works commented on contemporary or nearcontemporary political matters, and so were deemed too controversial to print immediately. Some readers still lament of such texts that “too much is left out”: that most Renaissance life writing fails to maintain focus on the subject matter purported by the proper name in its title, and when it does address aspects of the eponym, a dearth of “intimate” detail prevails. But to mourn thus is to fail to appreciate Renaissance life writing in the light of Renaissance concepts of self, an area of enquiry that has lately preoccupied scholars in the field. Though at present no consensus of opinion has emerged, studies indicate that in broad epistemological terms, Renaissance concepts of self were still chiefly extroverted rather than introverted in nature – paradoxically, to us, introspection was accomplished by looking without. As a consequence, Renaissance life writing explicitly gestures toward the Other, and so seems shallow or superficial, digressive, disintegrated, or even nonexistent, especially in comparison with modern examples. Of course, to contemporaries no such demeaning comparison was possible; the challenge to readers today therefore is to understand how Renaissance texts possess authenticity in themselves. This requires attention to the ideal of emulation that informed them, and which marked the literary culture of the period in general as one of re-nascence. All types of British Renaissance life writing appropriated the classical rhetoric of exemplarity, in which biographical subjects functioned not as objects of intrinsic interest, but rather as patterns for others to live by (a classic example is the popular compilation edited by William Baldwin, A Mirror for Magistrates, 1559). In diverse ways, the life writings of the period display the Renaissance ideal of being a human paragon, which compelled

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men and women to become, literally and figuratively, simulacra: copies of originals that are themselves copies. Yet imitation is also invention, and in this respect the British Renaissance can be seen as anticipating modern self-identity, which privileges autonomy and uniqueness. The proliferation of exemplary lives, a continuation of social practices and habits of thought from the past, was also an early step away from premodern norms. In England the reformed church led the way. The iconoclastic injunctions that accompanied the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536–40 all but annihilated the largely oral and pictorially based cult of saints and its attendant hagiography, which was derogated as mere “legend” (see William Caxton’s Golden Legend of 1483, a translation of the Legenda aurea of Jacob de Voragine). However, the church’s new emphasis on the personal practice of piety created a need for manuals of indoctrination, demonstration, and inspiration, which religious biography emerged to supply. These texts are mostly printed versions of funeral sermons with a sturdy biographical component that leads up to and often emphasizes the last hours of a dead “saint”, either a male or female layperson, usually of gentle social class, whose “godly life” was worthy of imitation. Although the funeral sermon predates the Reformation, its printing began in the late 16th century, and by the 1640s such books comprised an established form. What distinguishes these texts most is the historicity of the biographies, in particular their exact attention to the “verbatim” discourse of the subjects themselves – both oral and, when available, written. Significant examples include Philip Stubbes’s life of his wife Katherine, A Chrystal Glass for Christian Women (1591, not a funeral sermon but noteworthy because it was the most frequently reprinted of all the religious biographies, with 34 editions to 1700), William Hinde’s Faithful Remonstrance of the Holy Life and Happy Death, of John Bruen (1625–27, printed 1641, perhaps the earliest to cite the subject’s writing, in paraphrase, as evidence of his piety), Edmund Staunton’s Sermon on … Mistress Elizabeth Wilkinson (1659, which incorporates a complete “Narrative coppyed exactly out of her own hand writing, of God’s gracious dealings with her soul” – here religious biography verges on autobiography), and the nine different collections of godly lives, mostly derived from early 17thcentury funeral sermons, compiled by Samuel Clarke (1650– 83; the last, The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons in this Later Age, contains Clarke’s own “life”, written by himself, and an important preface on the theory of religious biography by the nonconformist divine Richard Baxter). A parallel form to religious biography lies in the accounts of the last words and execution of convicted criminals, for example the several works (1618–21) written by Henry Goodcole, which began to appear at this time, but would not flower until after the late 17th century. Though its title argues for inclusion in the tradition of religious biography, Isaak Walton’s The Life and Death of Dr Donne, which first appeared in Donne’s posthumously published LXXX Sermons (1640), is not a religious biography in the vein of godly lives; although it incorporates elements of the form, especially reference to Donne’s writings, it is exceptional, and ought to be read in the light of the sort of biographies that appeared en masse in the 18th century, as prefaces to a renowned writer’s collected works. The spread of handwriting skills among the aristocracy and some of the gentry was, along with printing, crucial to the

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proliferation and diversification of the forms and authors of British Renaissance life writing. The acquisition of writing skills expanded rapidly during the late 16th and early 17th century, so that by 1640 roughly 30 per cent of men and 10 per cent of women were able to use a pen. The earliest surviving “spiritual diaries” date from the late 1580s and 1590s; their composers – ministers – were experimenting with pen and paper in what had thus far been for everybody an exclusively oral practice of daily devotions, a half-century before the practice would be recommended publicly from the pulpit and in books (see the diaries of Richard Rogers and Samuel Ward, abridged versions of which are available together in a modern printed book). A number of devotional manuscript papers survive from the early 17th century, including the writings of aristocratic women (the papers of Margaret Hoby, Grace Mildmay, and Anne Clifford have been extensively excerpted and printed in modern books), and men and women of the gentry (the diary of Ralph Josselin and large parts of the diaries and meditations of Alice Thornton are printed). During the late 16th century “blank” almanacs, the forerunner of the printed pocket annual diary or date-book, were also introduced, and were first used to record financial transactions. At the same time, students and others began to keep their own written commonplace books and occasional notebooks with memoranda of sermons, antiquities, human characters, jests, and other ephemera seen and heard in quotidian life (see the notebooks of the law student John Manningham, the antiquarian /clerk Simonds D’Ewes, the yeoman Adam Erye, and the gentleman-dilettante John Evelyn). Some aristocratic men wrote out personal books of counsel or advice to their heirs that read as autobiographies, despite a focus on the family’s history (see the texts of Henry Cecil, Henry Percy, Walter Raleigh, and Christopher Guise). The familiar letter in Latin was a routinely practised form in the Renaissance: the printed exercises of Desiderus Erasmus of 1522 and Juan Luis Vives of 1533, both titled De conscribendis epistolis, were influential, along with editions of Cicero’s Epistolae familiares. However, original examples in the vernacular are less apparent, except in the aforenoticed collections of Foxe and Coverdale and the few modern printed collections of selected letters exchanged between members of aristocratic households, such as the Pastons (c.1420– 1504); the letters of Katherine Paston to her son, William, at Cambridge, c.1624–27, have also been printed), the Verneys (c.1495–1639), the Lisles (c.1533–40), and Henry Oxinden’s circle (c.1607–42). Many exist unpublished, in archived collections. Such letters were probably influenced by the translation into English of the relatively unbuttoned vernacular familiar letters of the Spaniard Antonio de Guevara, which exposed the form to writers outside the court and the humanist elite (Edward Hellowes, The Familiar Letters of Antonio de Guevara, 1574, and Geoffrey Fenton, Golden Epistles,1575). Some intimate and engaging personal correspondence written around the time of the Civil Wars has been printed in modern books (see the letters of Brilliana Harley, 1625–43, and Dorothy Osborne, 1652–54), yet this is but a fragment of what may be found still in manuscript. Michael Mascuch Further Reading Amelang, James, The Flight of Icarus: Artisan Autobiography in Early Modern Europe, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998

Anderson, Judith H., Biographical Truth: The Representation of Historical Persons in Tudor-Stuart Writing, New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 1984 Collinson, Patrick, “‘A Magazine of Religious Patterns’: An Erasmian Topic Transposed in English Protestantism” in Renaissance and Renewal in Christian History, edited by Derek Baker, Oxford: Blackwell, 1977 Delaney, Paul, British Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and New York: Columbia University Press, 1969 Dragstra, Henk, Sheila Ottway and Helen Wilcox (editors), Betraying Our Selves: Forms of Self-Representation in Early Modern English Texts, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000 Graham, Elspeth, Hilary Hinds, Elaine Hobby and Helen Wilcox (editors), Her Own Life: Autobiographical Essays by SeventeenthCentury Englishwomen, London and New York: Routledge, 1989 Greenblatt, Stephen J., Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980 Guillén, Claudio, “Notes toward the Study of the Renaissance Letter” in Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History, and Interpretation, edited by Barbara Lewalski, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986 Hampton, Timothy, Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1990 Mascuch, Michael, Origins of the Individualist Self: Autobiography and Self-Identity in England, 1591–1791, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996; Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997 Mayer, Thomas F. and D.R. Woolf (editors), The Rhetorics of LifeWriting in Early Modern Europe: Forms of Biography from Cassandra Fedele to Louis XIV, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995 Pollock, Linda, With Faith and Physic: The Life of a Tudor Gentlewoman Lady Grace Mildmay 1552–1620, London: Collins and Brown, 1993; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995 Shuger, Debora, “Life-Writing in Seventeenth-Century England” in Representations of the Self from the Renaissance to Romanticism, edited by Patrick Coleman, Jayne Lewis and Jill Kowalik, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000 Stauffer, Donald A., English Biography before 1700, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1930; reprinted, New York: Russell and Russell, 1964 Todd, Margot, “Puritan Self-Fashioning: The Diary of Samuel Ward”, Journal of British Studies, 31 (1992): 236–64 Webster, Tom, “Writing to Redundancy: Approaches to Spiritual Journals and Early Modern Spirituality”, Historical Journal, 39 (1996): 33–56 White, Helen C., Tudor Books of Saints and Martyrs, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963 Woolf, D.R., The Idea of History in Early Stuart England: Erudition, Ideology, and the “Light of Truth” from the Accession of James I to the Civil War, Toronto and Buffalo, New York: Toronto University Press, 1990 Wright, Louis B. (editor), Advice to a Son: The Precepts of Lord Burghley, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Francis Osborne, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1962

Britain: 17th-Century Life Writing Seventeenth-century English lives were composed by men and women who sought a better understanding of themselves and others. The philosophical and religious temper of the time reinforced such concerns. Self-consciousness figures centrally in the work of René Descartes, for example, who considered the mind immaterial and distinct from the body, but claimed certainty for thinking and the existence of an “I”. A century before

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Descartes, educational practices and other social regimes had worked to regulate behaviour and verbal expression through systematic programmes of self-examination and internalized control. Paradoxically, the Renaissance “discovery” of a writable, and presumably stable, self took shape alongside an equal emphasis on role-playing and social mobility. In conjunction with these developments, the literature of personal experience assumed increasing importance and visibility. Even if we bracket travel writing and letters as separate genres, “life writing” is a term that encompasses a vast array of materials in the 17th century. The scope of the subject can be seen at a glance from bibliographic guides that map the field (see Watson: 2247–74), or more comprehensive checklists of specific first-person forms: biographies (see Stauffer), autobiographies (see Matthews, 1955), and diaries (see Matthews, 1950: 7–54). Some literary histories impose a strict linear scheme on this heterogeneous material, working on the assumption that auto/biography passes through a pre-modern stage, evolves steadily after 1640, and culminates in the major works of the 18th century. There is some truth to the generalization that under the impact of scientific thought biographers acquired a new respect for first-hand observation and telling detail. It is also significant that earlier writers generally contented themselves with recounting saints’ and monarchs’ lives, or devising harrowing tales of religious martyrdom (e.g. John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, 1563). Even so, no obvious patterns of progressive development emerge from the period. “Character” writing, based on stereotypes, enjoyed a vogue and exerted a continuing influence. John Bunyan’s popular spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), exhibits no movement towards psychological realism or the secularism thought to define modernity. Izaak Walton’s pioneering lives (1640–78) trace the careers of notable English churchmen (John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, Robert Sanderson) in a deferential and stylized fashion. Thomas Sprat’s life of the poet (and his good friend) Abraham Cowley (1668) consistently falls back on panegyric and steers clear of personal revelation. Since many 17th-century ecclesiastical life narratives, including Walton’s Life of Donne (1658), served as prefaces to editions of theological writings, biographers often placed a greater emphasis on exemplarity and instruction than on what we might consider “truth”. Even Gilbert Burnet’s biography (1680) of the libertine poet Lord Rochester makes more of his death-bed conversion and religious views than his scandalous life and writing.This constant emphasis on mortality, also evident in the ecclesiastical biographies of Thomas Fuller and others, encourages us to think of certain texts as forming a sub-genre of “death writing”. Throughout the 17th century we can, in general, detect a growing intimacy between biographers and their subjects: in both Walton and Burnet, in Fulke Greville’s life of his friend Sir Philip Sidney (written 1610–12), in Lucy Hutchinson’s life of her husband John (written 1670–75), in Margaret Cavendish’s life of her husband, the first Duke of Newcastle (1667), and in various works that intermingle narrative with authorial selfdisclosure. Samuel Johnson later codified this valorizing of personal contact when he said that “nobody can write the life of a man, but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him”. Lucy Hutchinson portrays intimate episodes in the life of her spouse, a parliamentary colonel, yet

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also provides vivid descriptions of military campaigns and sectarian struggles. When first-hand observation became impossible for the well-connected biographer John Aubrey, he relied on anecdotes and gossip industriously collected from informants. The apparent authenticity of Aubrey’s Brief Lives (compiled between 1669 and 1696 and published in the 19th century) remains in part a function of its unembellished presentation of biographical data. As Donald Stauffer (1930) shows, the words “biography” and “biographer” first appear in English around the Restoration. For example, The Life of That Reverend Divine, and Learned Historian, Dr. Thomas Fuller (1661) is described by its anonymous author as “this Biography”. In the life that prefaces The Works of Mr. Richard Hooker (1662), Bishop John Gauden mentions those who “have ventured to be (Biogrrphers) [sic] writers of the lives of some English Divines”. Critics sometimes contend that “literature”, like “biography”, was an emergent discourse within which the early modern self was constituted, but literary biography does not loom large until later. Sprat found it necessary to defend his choice of Cowley as a biographical subject, finding the poet’s uneventful life and others like it full of “profitable instruction”. Among the early lives of Milton, the work of his nephew Edward Phillips (1694) is recognizably a “life of the poet” in so far as it plays up Milton’s intellectual excellence rather than his moral qualities, and judges him “scarce to be parallel’d by any the best of Writers our Nation hath in any Age brought forth”. Edward Phillips also compiled the first biographical guide to English poetry, Theatrum Poetarum (1675), which, unpredictably, includes brief sketches of the same women writers who constitute the present-day early modern canon (the Countess of Pembroke, Mary Wroth, Katherine Philips, Aphra Behn, etc.). The autobiographies of the 17th century – most of which remained unpublished during their authors’ lifetimes – occupy a niche midway between chronicle and religious instruction. Secular concerns more frequently found expression in travel writing or in military and political memoirs (Delany, 1969). The philosopher Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1582–1648) “thought fit to relate to my posterity those Passages of my Life, which I conceive may best declare me, and be most useful to them”, yet the braggadocio style of his autobiography (1764) discloses a personality very different from the Renaissance humanist readers might imagine from his philosophical writings. Much more self-effacing in style, yet no less didactic in intent, are the Memoirs of Ann, Lady Fanshawe (1676). She, too, fashions her narrative for posterity and encourages her son to apply its lessons to his own condition “and indeavour to avoyd those misfortunes we have passed through”. Another Royalist woman with extensive first-hand experience of the civil wars, Anne, Lady Halkett, writes frankly about her youthful amorous entanglements, but also records political events such as her extraordinary conversations in 1651 with officers of the parliamentary army, Colonel Robert Overton among them. The practice of keeping diaries as a technique of spiritual discipline fostered the belief that incidental experiences and spontaneous jottings could assume a larger significance when viewed cumulatively. The Quaker preacher George Fox (1624–91) combined diary entries and oral dictation to produce a witness of his time that also retains a keen polemical edge. No less than the diaries of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, who occupied higher

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positions in the social hierarchy, Fox’s Journal (1694; 1709) is deeply imprinted by the pressure of public events. Crammed with minute observation as well as personal disclosure, such diaries have long been mined by historians for their eye-witness accounts. Although earlier times produced works of auto/biography by persons of various ranks and occupations, the 17th century provides an extraordinarily full picture of the experience of everyday life. Allied to many other contemporary genres – including history, poetry, the novel, and polemic – the life writing of the period remains remarkable for its generic hybridity and for the window it opens on the world of early modern England. Alvin Snider Further Reading Amelang, James S., The Flight of Icarus: Artisan Autobiography in Early Modern Europe, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998 Delany, Paul, British Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and New York: Columbia University Press, 1969 Dragstra, Henk, Sheila Ottway and Helen Wilcox (editors), Betraying Our Selves: Forms of Self-Representation in Early Modern English Texts, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000 Ebner, Dean, Autobiography in Seventeenth-Century England: Theology and the Self, The Hague: Mouton, 1971 Graham, Elspeth et al., Her Own Life: Autobiographical Writings by Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen, London and New York: Routledge, 1989 Matthews, William, British Diaries: An Annotated Bibliography of British Diaries Written Between 1442 and 1942, Berkeley: University of California Press, and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950 Matthews, William, British Autobiographies: An Annotated Bibliography of British Autobiographies Published or Written before 1951, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955 Mendelson, Sara Heller, “Stuart Women’s Diaries and Occasional Memoirs” in Women in English Society 1500–1800, edited by Mary Prior, London and New York: Methuen, 1985 Novarr, David, The Making of Walton’s “Lives”, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1958 Otten, Charlotte F. (editor), English Women’s Voices, 1540–1700, Miami: Florida International University Press, 1992 Pask, Kevin, The Emergence of the English Author: Scripting the Life of the Poet in Early Modern England, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996 Sawday, Jonathan, “Self and Selfhood in the Seventeenth Century” in Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present, edited by Roy Porter, London and New York: Routledge, 1997 Stauffer, Donald A., English Biography before 1700, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1930 Watson, George (editor), The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, vol. 1, 600–1660, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974 Wendorf, Richard, The Elements of Life: Biography and PortraitPainting in Stuart and Georgian England, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990

Britain: Restoration and 18th-Century Auto/biography In his Essay on Man (1733–34) Alexander Pope exhorts the reader to “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; / The proper study of Mankind is Man” (ii, 1–2). Pope’s couplet use-

fully glosses the emphasis on self-analysis that lasted throughout the 18th century: this was a time when empirical research methods and increased prosperity seemed to promise a steady progress towards an attainable perfection – but only if individual citizens were prepared to explore (and overcome) their weaknesses. Given this, it is not surprising that during the 18th century there was a decisive consolidation of auto/biography. The most discussed philosophical work of the period, John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (published in 1690, with additions in 1694, 1700, and 1706), broke with the earlier concept of innate identity by picturing the mind as a blank page that slowly acquired knowledge by logging sensations from the external world. Locke’s dynamic notion of identity (which was influenced by Thomas Hobbes and René Descartes) prompted a more general probing of the self. Meanwhile the contemporary obsession with taxonomy encouraged the recording and comparing of lives, often to didactic effect. Thus, Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets (1779–81) is related to his Dictionary (1755) and to his edition of Shakespeare (1765): in all cases a desire to inform and to judge sits alongside a need to list and to compile. This gives rise to a spikier commentary than would be customary in the 19th century – hence Johnson’s withering scorn for writers who fail to meet the standards he imposes on them. This contempt is itself instructive, suggesting Johnson’s overwhelming confidence in the rightness of his judgements. Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets is the public face of 18thcentury biography: the verdicts are uncompromising, the voice secure. These pronouncements, however, should not be taken on their own terms. Johnson’s letters reveal melancholic tendencies, and the most influential biography of the 18th century, James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), gives hints of private vulnerability alongside records of public ebullience. Such tensions are common in 18th-century auto/biography where the desire to project a unified voice is often undone by the instabilities of the “self” under construction. Edward Gibbon (1737– 94), for example, wrote six drafts of his Memoirs, but the book remained unfinished except in a posthumous cut-and-paste version (published in his Miscellaneous Works, 1796). In his endeavour to present an orderly and comprehensive life, Gibbon left a succession of highly polished fragments. There are specific reasons for his failure to complete the Memoirs, but the book also stands as a testimony to the Enlightenment’s broader difficulty in sustaining its drive towards narrative perfection. David Hume’s (1711–76) case is also instructive. Unlike Gibbon, Hume finished his autobiography; the text, however, is only 10 pages long. Announcing that “this Narrative shall contain little more than the History of my Writings”, Hume glides over his adolescent breakdown and describes himself in the past tense: “I am, or rather was … a man of mild dispositions … and of great moderation in all my passions.” As if to acknowledge the limitations of this method, the autobiography was published with a letter in which Adam Smith provides a fuller insight into the philosopher’s death. The resultant Life of David Hume (1777) is an intriguing hybrid of biographical and autobiographical narratives. The Life also suggests that 18thcentury writers were more comfortable analysing other people’s lives than their own. Thus, Hume is uneasy with autobiography (“It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity; therefore, I shall be short”), while Smith finds ghoulish

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satisfaction in biography (“It is with a real, though a very melancholy pleasure, that I sit down to give you some account of the behaviour of our late excellent friend, Mr Hume, during his last illness”). One explanation of Hume’s reticence is that 18th-century auto/biography was inextricably linked to the novel – a genre of great popularity but low status. Daniel Defoe’s The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), and Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–67) are three of the many 18th-century novels that claim auto/biographical status – indeed until Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814) it is hard to find a major English novel named after a place rather than a person. Although literary history makes sharp divisions between 18th-century novels and auto/biographies, contemporary readers would not have been so precise. In any case, Tobias Smollett’s The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751) contains a notorious fusion of the two: chapter 88, which is more than 100 pages long, consists of the real-life memoirs of Lady Vane – an erotic narrative that Smollett seems to have ghostwritten with Vane’s cooperation. Few “respectable” writers were willing to imitate such exhibitionism, not least because Vane’s memoir highlighted the shared debt that life writing and the novel owed to criminal biography. It was all very well for novelists to make money from low-life tales of social transgression, but genteel 18th-century life writers tended to stick to letters and diaries. Ultimately, though, Locke’s emphasis on interiority would change the 18th century’s cultural values. His pupil, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, popularized a discourse of “sensibility” that led, eventually, to Romanticism – a phenomenon that placed supreme importance on the self. Here the breakthrough text was Rousseau’s unprecedentedly revealing Confessions (published 1781–89). Rousseau’s fame ensured an eager audience for his autobiography, although for all its forthrightness the text was published posthumously: decorum still forbade living writers from displays of self-indulgence. The Confessions inspired emotionally frank auto/biographies from radical writers sympathetic to Rousseau’s political agenda. William Godwin’s Memoirs (1798) of Mary Wollstonecraft is a classic of Romantic biography, while the outstanding autobiography of the late 18th century, Wordsworth’s long poem The Prelude, was begun in 1799 though published (posthumously, and after many revisions, excisions, and additions) in 1850. By insisting that the self is a legitimate subject for an epic poem, the version of 1805 proclaims autobiography’s central position in Romantic discourse. Wordsworth’s text is part of a larger emphasis on personal experience that can be traced in Romantic and pre-Romantic poems by writers such as William Cowper, Thomas Gray, Christopher Smart, Mary Robinson, Charlotte Smith, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It is no coincidence that most of these figures produced other forms of life writing. Coleridge’s experimental Biographia Literaria (1817) belongs to the 19th century, but William Cowper’s Memoir (written c.1767, published in 1816) gives a searing account of mental breakdown, attempted suicide, and religious conversion; as such, it anticipates a much later phase of Romantic auto/biography. The versions of the self that Wordsworth and Cowper produce are, of course, constructed; however, their seemingly

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transparent voices are far removed from the evasions of Hume’s or Gibbon’s memoirs. Ironically, though, the tacit didacticism of The Prelude reveals it as an Enlightenment, as well as a Romantic, text. Wordsworth’s cultural references are different from those of Pope’s Essay on Man – and Wordsworth focuses on the individual rather than on “Mankind” – but both texts feature the hope that “man” can be perfected. Thus, for all of its frankness, Romantic auto/biography encourages a belief that fissures can be mended and selves made whole. Moreover, writing auto/biography is still seen as one of the processes by which the individual can approach this ideal by gaining greater self-knowledge. Vincent Quinn Further Reading Cowper, William, The Letters and Prose Writings of William Cowper, vol. 1, edited by James King and Charles Ryskamp, Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1979 Cox, Stephen D., “The Stranger Within Thee”: Concepts of the Self in Late Eighteenth-Century Literature, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980 Holmes, Richard, Dr Johnson and Mr Savage, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1993; New York: Pantheon, 1994 Hume, David and Adam Smith, “The Life of David Hume” in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, edited by Eugene F. Miller, Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985, revised 1987 Lyons, John O., The Invention of the Self: The Hinge of Consciousness in the Eighteenth Century, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978 Nussbaum, Felicity A., The Autobiographical Subject: Gender and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century England, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989 Pope, Alexander, “An Essay on Man” in The Poems of Alexander Pope: A One-Volume Edition, edited by John Butt, London: Methuen, 1963 Robinson, Mary, Perdita: The Memoirs of Mary Robinson, edited by M.J. Levy, London and Chester Springs, Pennsylvania: Peter Owen, 1994 Spacks, Patricia Meyer, The Poetry of Vision: Five Eighteenth-Century Poets, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967 Spacks, Patricia Meyer, Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1976 Todd, Janet, Sensibility: An Introduction, London and New York: Methuen, 1986 Wendorf, Richard, The Elements of Life: Biography and PortraitPainting in Stuart and Georgian England, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990

Britain: Restoration and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters From the diary of Samuel Pepys, which inaugurates the “long century” in 1660, to the letters and journals of Frances Burney, who marks philosophically and artistically the shift from the 18th century to the 19th, diaries and personal letters are defining genres of the period. They are material products of a newly understood authorial “self”. The popularization of the diary form encouraged the recording and creating of a reality that fused public and private consciousness. In the case of letters, the authorial self had the extraordinary power to break barriers of distance that once isolated people from each other to a degree no

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longer imaginable. The letters and diaries of the period provide a chaotic but nonetheless invaluable record of the politics, personalities, habits of mind, and relationships that comprise 18th-century British history and culture. The widespread emergence of diary writing has various explanations. One possible origin is in spiritual autobiography, in which practitioners used writing as a means of scrutinizing their spiritual development and assessing their chances for grace and salvation. Another source is the explosive growth of travel writing, in which a daily account serves as a record of a journey. Robert Fothergill (1974) also connects the growth of diary keeping to the 18th-century fashion for personal anecdotes, the diary serving as a repository for vignettes that are characteristic of a public personality or private acquaintance. Both diaries and letters are manifestations of a newly emerging consciousness that these genres both reflected and helped to create: the writer as unique individual, recording and communicating a richly detailed sense of self in relation to the tide of historical events. Some critics have discerned in 18th-century correspondence a gradual shift in tone from public, formal expression to a private and personal voice – a change that mirrors a long-observed transition “from classic to romantic”. The change is certainly not a tidy evolutionary pattern, but one can see the extremes in Samuel Johnson’s letters, which resemble formal essays, and Burney’s letters to her sister, which are poignantly intimate and revealing. Letters and diaries played a remarkably diverse role in representing both public and private morality. Despite having been written in code for Pepys, as for most of the diarists who followed him, the form is an intersection between public observation and private confession, with a somewhat ambiguous understanding of intended readership. In his book Telling Time (1996), Stuart Sherman observes the simultaneous development of clocks and diaries as means of telling time: “Recording time in a secret book, like measuring it on a personal chronometer, is a way of owning it”, and he sees in the 18th century a fundamental shift in public consciousness about time that is reflected in these concurrent phenomena. The letter, perhaps, represents a different sort of self-conscious recording. For Horace Walpole, it was – or should be – a record of the ordinary speaking voice conveying the self across a barrier of distance. For others, like Alexander Pope, it was an assertion of literary immortality – a part of the preservation of the literary self in the public record. Pope requested that his friend and “muse” John Caryll return his correspondence for preservation for posterity, an indication that he deemed his letters an important part of his literary corpus. The handwritten letter also fills a rhetorical space between the formality of published text and the ephemeral quality of speech. Both forms, letters and diaries, dramatize the instability of the concepts of public and private in the 18th-century imagination. The letter is at the heart of the development of the novel, with Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) representing a young woman’s struggle to authorize herself: that is, to make public the “private” domestic misadventures she has endured at the hands of her master / captor. The Earl of Chesterfield’s letters to his son (written 1739–65) are, at one level, a record of paternal moral instruction; but they are also a public argument for a conventional genteel morality. Letters were also an integral part of the development of

newspapers and magazines. Typically pseudonymous contributions to the periodical literature of the day, whether genuinely unsolicited correspondence or fabricated editorials, dramatized a relationship between the journal and the public and seemed to draw on the vast store of experiences and expertise of a participating readership. They were also, occasionally, a battleground, wherein personal insults were volleyed or political positions assaulted – each issue representing a fresh field of attack. What distinguishes the 18th-century letter, according to Alan McKenzie (1993), was the potency of its rhetorical situation: “A strong sense of occasion, audience, and author – a sense reiterated explicitly in almost every letter ever written – sets one letter apart from another and any letter apart from many other texts that attract critical attention”. For 18th-century writers, like Voltaire, Walpole, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who produced thousands of them, letters – or in many cases series of letters – were an exercise in authorial subjectivity, a form in which to convey extensive narration, and one in which to discover and invent a writing self. The correspondence is also, of course, a record of relationships: of the courtship between Lady Mary and Wortley, of the friendship between Pope and Caryll, of the mysterious and subterranean communication between Johnson and Hester Thrale Piozzi. Diaries are another obvious example of the manifestation of authorial subjectivity. They are a chronological account of the train of events, with the narrator as both lens and protagonist – a record of the collision of public and private experience. For writers like James Boswell, they are a fusion of biography and autobiography, of travel narrative and hagiography, of personal conscience and public recollection. For Burney, they are the observations of a self-described “Nobody” inscribing a unique identity for herself. However, Fothergill finds a gendered distinction in the 18th century between male diarists, with a “strong self-concept” and in whose diaries individual artistic development is the narrative centre, and female diarists, whom he observes as more generally self-effacing and finding satisfaction in recording domestic narratives. In any event, diaries have been a relatively neglected literary form, in spite of their central place in the reputations of writers such as Pepys, Boswell, Burney, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Walter Scott. Richard C. Taylor Further Reading Anderson, Howard, Philip B. Daghlian and Irvin Ehrenpreis (editors), The Familiar Letter in the Eighteenth Century, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1966 Earle, Rebecca (editor), Epistolary Selves: Letters and Letter-Writers, 1600–1945, Aldershot, Hampshire, and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate, 1999 Fothergill, Robert A., Private Chronicles: A Study of English Diaries, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1974 Irving, William Henry, The Providence of Wit in the English Letter Writers, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1955 Lew, Joseph W., “Lady Mary’s Portable Seraglio”, Eighteenth Century Studies, 24 / 4 (1991): 432–50 Lewis, W.S. (editor), Selected Letters of Horace Walpole, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1973 Matthews, William, British Diaries: An Annotated Bibliography of British Diaries Written between 1442 and 1942, Berkeley: University of California Press, and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950 McKenzie, Alan T. (editor), Sent as a Gift: Eight Correspondences from the Eighteenth Century, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993

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Redford, Bruce, The Converse of the Pen: Acts of Intimacy in the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986 Sherman, Stuart, Telling Time: Clocks, Diaries, and English Diurnal Form, 1660–1785, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 Spacks, Patricia Meyer, Gossip, New York: Knopf, 1985 Spaulding, P.A., Self-Harvest: A Study of Diaries and the Diarist, London: Independent Press, 1949 Willy, Margaret, English Diarists: Evelyn and Pepys, London: Longmans, 1963

Britain: Romanticism and Life Writing Since the self-conscious practice of representing one’s experience has seemed to many observers to have developed during the British Romantic era, a history of life writing (at least in its modern sense) might well begin here. Some of the most venerable scholars of Romanticism, M.H. Abrams, Geoffrey Hartman, and Earl Wasserman, have defined this period, often dated as 1789–1832, in terms of its preoccupation with the self and its textualization. Indeed, the belief, current by the middle of the 18th century, that humans were individuals and not just projections of a God-centred cosmos, made self-regulation necessary and writing about one’s own private experiences possible. Raymond Williams (1955) has further argued that a rapidly expanding 18th- and 19th-century literary marketplace made it necessary for the Romantic artist to insist upon the relationship between who s/he was and what s/he did in order to resist commodification. The autobiographical impulse is, in other words, ever-present in Romantic literature because the artist had to assert his or her subjectivity as central to the writing itself. Given claims like these one might expect to see British Romanticism merge with life writing such that there could be no historical context more appropriate or more complex for examining this form. An overview of some of the life-writing texts often seen as central to Romanticism will serve as a framework for evaluating this intersection of literary history and genre. English nomenclature for describing self-representation developed during the 18th century, but not in a linear way. As early as 1755, Charlotte Charke published her autobiography, calling it A Narrative of the Life. In 1796, Isaac D’Israeli employed the terms “self-biography” and “self-characters” to describe the newly popular British habit “of writing lives”. The Oxford English Dictionary credits Robert Southey with coining the term “autobiography” in 1809, but it actually first appeared in William Taylor of Norwich’s 1797 review of D’Israeli’s Miscellanies, or, Literary Recreations. Whether we lay emphasis on early uses of the term “autobiography” or take a longer view of the developing lexicon for self-representation, this history reflects a developing awareness of self-revelatory forms in the period. At roughly the same time that D’Israeli, Southey, and Taylor were concerning themselves with autobiography’s traits, their compatriots William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were publishing lyric poetry with strong autobiographical tendencies. Wordsworth’s contributions to their jointly produced collection Lyrical Ballads (first published in 1798) and Coleridge’s “conversation poems” conflate the speaker and the

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poet, thus creating a sense of intimacy with the reader based upon self-revelation. Wordsworth’s The Prelude, substantively revised and rewritten between 1798 and 1850, is widely regarded as the first epic autobiography in English. Wordsworth takes “the growth of a poet’s mind” as his theme and pursues that development in terms of a spiritual quest that he unfolds over 13 books (14 in the final 1850 version). Concerned with the necessity and fallibility of memory in the construction of selfhood, The Prelude raises questions that continue to grip autobiographers and literary critics today. Seemingly ashamed of the attention he paid to his subjectivity, Wordsworth did not title or publish the autobiography in his lifetime. Believing it “unprecedented in literary history that a man should talk so much about himself”, Wordsworth left the manuscript for his wife, Mary Hutchinson, to name and publish. While his decision to transform his interiority into an epic poem for public consumption was stunningly original, his literary self-exploration itself was not. In 1781, nearly two decades before Wordsworth began work on his autobiography, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s shockingly intimate Confessions was posthumously published. This landmark text of self-revelation detailed the author’s intellectual, emotional, and sexual development from boyhood to adulthood, and had far-reaching effects on British Romantic writers, unlike Wordsworth’s autobiography which was published well into the Victorian period. Like Wordsworth, Rousseau believed his text had “no precedent”. Far from being unique, in fact, Wordsworth’s and Rousseau’s writings gloriously typify the perennial Romantic preoccupation with the relationship of the self to the material world. Influenced by philosophers like George Berkeley, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, John Locke, and others, British Romantic writers John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley developed imaginative symbolism in which the subject dissolves into the object. Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater also explores the relationship between subject and object: in this case, an opium addict’s confessional testimony of the foreign substance that colonizes his body. The texts of male Romantics like Wordsworth and De Quincey have become synonymous with British Romantic autobiography. It is this identification that has prevented students of Romanticism from evaluating the full range of self-expressive practices that developed in Britain during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Wordsworth and others textualized a version of selfhood that is autonomous, defined in terms of public achievement, and expressed in terms of its totality. The model of subjectivity developed by male Romantics like Wordsworth is, in other words, one that is generally at odds with social and cultural imperatives defining women’s subjectivities in terms of community, the body, and the business of daily domestic affairs. It is precisely this male Romantic emphasis on the public nature of the life, moreover, that led Virginia Woolf to claim, in 1940, that “there’s never been a woman’s autobiography”. Critics interested in studying life histories recorded by writers who did not think of themselves as strictly public or autonomous figures have thus had to develop theoretical approaches to self-representation that revise the assumptions of individualism at the heart of both Romanticism and Western autobiography. This critical methodology documents that modern interest in the cultural and aesthetic production of identity grew out of Romantic representations of the subject, which ironically ignored or

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repressed the social contexts enabling the announcement of subjectivity in the first place. Critics have thus demonstrated how the transhistorical, self-possessed subject of Romanticism has been read so as to deny ontological status to other subjects, and have subsequently devised new criteria for evaluating the many other forms of selfhood produced in English during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In so far as the public subject of Romantic autobiography has been normatively male and masculine, moreover, it is particularly women’s selves – or those troped as feminine – that have been suppressed, although commercially oriented or working-class life writings have also been under-examined in relationship to Romanticism. Important examples of lesser-known Romantic life writing include Dorothy Wordsworth’s Alfoxden (written 1798) and Grasmere (written 1800–03), Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), Mary Shelley’s History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1817), and Ann Radcliffe’s A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794. Angela D. Jones Further Reading Abrams, M.H., “Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric” in Romanticism and Consciousness: Essays in Criticism, edited by Harold Bloom, New York: Norton, 1970 Benstock, Shari (editor), The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writings, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, and London: Routledge, 1988 Boas, George, “The Romantic Self: An Historical Sketch”, Studies in Romanticism, 4/1 (1964): 1–16 Brownstein, Rachel Mayer, “The Private Life: Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals”, Modern Language Quarterly, 34 (1973): 48–63 Cook, Kay K., “Self-Neglect in the Canon: Why Don’t We Talk about Romantic Autobiography?”, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 5 / 2 (1990): 88–98 de Man, Paul, “Autobiography as De-Facement” in The Rhetoric of Romanticism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984 D’Israeli, Isaac, Miscellanies, or, Literary Recreations, London: Cadell and Davies, 1796; reprinted, New York: Garland, 1970 Hartman, Geoffrey H., “Romanticism and ‘Anti-Self-Consciosness’” in Romanticism and Consciousness: Essays in Criticism, edited by Harold Bloom, New York: Norton, 1970 Jay, Paul, Being in the Text: Self-Representations from Wordsworth to Roland Barthes, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1984 Kadar, Marlene (editor), Essays on Life Writing: From Genre to Critical Practice, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992 Lang, Candace, “Autobiography in the Aftermath of Romanticism”, Diacritics (1982): 2–16 Marcus, Laura, Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994 Mellor, Anne K., Romanticism & Gender, New York: Routledge, 1993 Nussbaum, Felicity, The Autobiographical Subject: Gender and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century England, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989 Rzepka, Charles J., The Self as Mind: Vision and Identity in Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986 Wasserman, Earl R., “The English Romantics: The Grounds of Knowledge”, Studies in Romanticism, 4 (1964): 17–34 Williams, Raymond, Culture and Society: 1780–1950, London: Chatto and Windus, 1955; New York: Columbia University Press, 1958

Britain: Travel, Exploration, and Imperialism As traveller, missionary, and writer, the 5th-century Briton Patricius, or Saint Patrick (d. 463), marks the start of British travel and its inseparability from questions of power and definition. Patrick’s mission to Christianize “heathen Ireland” presages the civilizing-mission rhetoric that later argued the rectitude of British imperialism; Patrick’s dream of Irish voices pleading for his presence in Ireland constitutes a moral “call to action” similar to Rudyard Kipling’s in “The White Man’s Burden” (1899). Patrick’s Epistola ad milites corotici (Letters to the Soldiers of Coroticus), however, is critical of British improprieties in Ireland and illustrates the multiple and often contradictory allegiances of travellers. Also, Patrick’s exploration of the self in his other surviving work, Confessio (Confession), while not strictly a travel piece, instantiates the autobiographical element of British travel literature. The autobiographical is apparent not only on the level of the personal but on the national level too. When the “travail” of “travel” (both words derive from the Old French travail) expands from the penance of individual pilgrimage typical of the 9th and 10th centuries into the mass, militaristic expeditions of the Crusades, at issue is not just the definition of self but that of entire peoples. King Richard I’s (the Lion-Heart’s) participation in the Third Crusade (1188–92), for instance, was fundamentally about defining both himself and his subjects in contradistinction to “heathen” non-Christians. The “Deus volt” (“God wills it”) justification of the Crusades – like St Patrick’s Vox-Hiberionacum (“Voice-of-the-Irish”) dream of a nation’s people asking him “to come and walk among us” – divides the world into Christian and non-Christian spaces, with the latter inviting invasion as part of God’s plan. During the late Middle Ages this binary cartography was reinforced, with Arthurian legend proclaiming a unique heroic past both rooted in, and continuing, Greek and Christian traditions. The publication of Richard Hakluyt’s three-volume The Principal Navigations, Traffics, Voyages, and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589; 1598–1600) furthers such anglocentrism. In what 19th-century historian J.A. Froude called “the prose epic of the English Nation”, Hakluyt alludes to a heroic past while introducing a collection of 216 travel narratives that move the definition of “Englishness” from a religious-mythic (extra-human) superiority toward a globally situated hegemony grounded in “superior” empirical reasoning and technomaterial productivity. When Sir Ralph Lane, first English governor in America, writes in 1585 that although “savages … possess the land, they know no [productive] use of the same”, but if Virginia were “inhabited with English, no realm in Christendom [would be] comparable to it”, we see the selfjustifying mix of Christ and commerce common to 16th-century travel narratives. Much of Hakluyt’s collection focused on trade in promotion of English imperialism. Perhaps more importantly, the late 16th and 17th centuries’ inclusion of latitude, longitude, altitude, and other empirical “truths” in travel accounts augmented Britain’s growing spatial dominance – epitomized in Sir Francis Drake’s 1577–80 circumnavigation of the world – with an epistemological dominance wherein the ability to understand, map, and

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control the world was further strengthened by both the 17thcentury rise of physical sciences and the 18th-century taxonomic system of Carolus Linneaus. To this ordering of life-forms and space, the 19th century added the ordering of time through the geological work of Charles Lyell (1830–33) and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution (1859). Beginning with Hakluyt’s collection and continuing through the 19th century, narratives of travel and exploration move from depicting non-Western peoples as partners in trade towards an increasing construction of natives as undeveloped, childlike, and unable adequately to manage (i.e. exploit) their lands. Part of this increasing infantilization indicated Britain’s waxing sense of itself as a nation whose difference in maturity befited and confirmed its role as world leader. Additionally influential is the burgeoning slave trade’s partial justification when conceived as a means of introducing structure to untutored lives. And even when Britain replaced the slave trade with colonization, a declaration like that in Richard F. Burton’s (1821–90) The Lake Regions of Central Africa (1860) – that the African is unable to move beyond “the incapacity of infancy … is cut off from the pleasures of memory[,] … desires to be lied to … [and] like the Asiatic … is stationary, but at a much lower level” – argued the necessity of colonialism just as it would once have done for slavery. The British traveller’s sense of superiority was objectified through naming and categorizing plants, animals, topographic features, and ethnic groups and situating each within a historical continuum. The possibility of bias is implicitly and repeatedly denied not only through the “truth” of figures but also through declarations of the traveller’s simplicity and reticence as a writer. When Captain James Cook, in An Account of the Voyages Undertaken by Order of His Present Majesty … (1773; compiled by John Hawkesworth, and based on the journals of Cook and others), describes himself as possessing neither “an education … [nor] abilities for writing” he declares an unadorned observational veracity. This disavowal of both intellectual “contamination” and the means to artistic embellishment strives towards the objectivity of science that is also sought by addressing travel narratives to such legitimizing organizations as the Royal Geographic Society of Great Britain. Sober, laconic, self-effacing, and called to duty (like St Patrick, Richard I, and Arthurian knights), the British traveller and explorer was metonymically the England whose history, the Victorian T.B. Macaulay declared, “is emphatically the history of progress”. This is the progress of “science” evidenced in the material realities of extraction, production, and exchange of goods whose “Crusader” logic is never lost but resurfaces, for instance, in traveller Winston Churchill’s 1897 account of Muslims in the northwest frontier of India (for the London Daily Telegraph), in which he declares that: “in proportion as these valleys are purged from the pernicious vermin that infest them, so will the happiness of humanity be increased, and the progress of mankind accelerated”. This is not to propose a complete lack of appreciation for non-Westerners in British travel writing. For example, Dixon Denham (1786–1828), writing of his four years in Africa in Narratives of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa (1826), in one of many examples declared that he found “the natives we were thrown amongst … hospitable, kindhearted, honest, and liberal”. It is also clear that the British

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traveller often distanced himself or herself from the 18thcentury mundanity of those at home. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s (1689–1762) famous appreciation of life in Turkey as expressed in her letters (published 1763) is a case in point. Considered as forms of life writing, however, imperial travel narratives showed a tendency to replace introversion, selfexamination, and self-doubt with a blithe sense of natural and cultural superiority and self-confidence. So, despite the heterogeneity of the relationship between explorer and foreign native, British travellers tended to write narratives that – generally until well into the 20th century – not only portrayed foreign lands and people in need of British imperialism but also confirmed Britain’s sense of itself as the nation, as poet laureate Alfred Tennyson wrote, “left to fight for truth alone” (“Britons, Guard Your Own”, 1852). Or, to quote another of Tennyson’s tributes to Empire, “To England under Indian skies / To those dark millions of her realm! / To this great name of England drink, my friends / And all her glorious empire, round and round … To keep our English empire whole!”. Kevin M. Hickey See also Africa: European Exploration and Travel Writings; Exploration Writings; Travel Diaries, Journals, Log Books; Travel Narratives

Further Reading Behad, Ali, Belated Travelers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1994 Clark, Steve (editor), Travel Writing and Empire: Postcolonial Theory in Transit, London and New York: Zed, 1999 Gikandi, Simon, Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996 Hakluyt, Richard, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation, London: Bishop, 1598–1600; New York and London: Dent, 1907 Leed, Eric J., The Mind of the Traveler: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism, New York: Basic, 1991 Leed, Eric J., Shores of Discovery: How Expeditionaries Have Constructed the World, New York: Basic, 1995 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, Turkish Embassy Letters, edited by Malcolm Jack, London: Pickering, and Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993 Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London and New York: Routledge, 1992 Said, Edward, Orientalism, New York: Pantheon, and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978 Said, Edward, Culture and Imperialism, New York: Knopf, 1993 Spurr, David, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1993 Studies in Travel Writing (annual), 1997– Thomas, Nicholas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, and Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994

Britain: 19th-Century Auto/biography At the start of the 19th century, though people were aware of ancient models, like Plutarch and Augustine, and recent ones, like Rousseau, two native names were pre-eminent, those of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. Johnson’s Lives of the Poets (1779–81) and Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson

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(1791) were models that showed a strong contrast. Johnson had gathered as much information as could be collected without deep research, and incorporated it in a short essay, giving his penetrating and humane judgement of a person and his literary achievement. Boswell had collected every scrap of information he could about Johnson, and intertwined it with vivid and detailed memories of conversations between Johnson and many of the late-Augustan intellectual elite. Few 19th-century biographies could rival the latter part of the Boswell formula, but the first (innumerable letters and documents) was followed with painstaking fidelity. In autobiography (the word itself is surprisingly late, the Oxford English Dictionary giving the first occurrence as 1809), the recognized models were older, including Puritan conversion memoirs – especially John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) and political memoirs, such as those of Lord Clarendon (1609–74, published only in 1759). The late appearance of the word “autobiography”, when the genre it describes is ancient, seems to indicate that earlier centuries were less aware than the nineteenth and twentieth have been of the contrast between the product of memory and reflection found in autobiography and the product of letters and documents, seasoned in some cases with memories of onlookers, to be found in biography. In the 19th century, there is a broad contrast in most (though not all) examples of the two modes. Biography tends to deal mainly with public events and achievements in the public domain, autobiography with intimate experience. This is most obvious where we find a distinguished biography of one who has already written an account of his or her own life – Wilfrid Ward’s life of J.H. Newman, for instance, following nearly half a century after Newman’s Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864). Four main types of celebration of a person’s public achievements and the more visible aspects of personality may be distinguished: The celebration of success. This is the largest group. It includes both the study of those whose birth and education set them on the road to success, like Thomas Babington Macaulay as described by his nephew Sir George Trevelyan (1876), or William Gladstone pictured by John Morley (1903), but also those who triumphed over poverty, ill-treatment, and ignorance. Especially important here are the biographies written by Samuel Smiles, especially his Lives of the Engineers (1861–62) and Industrial Biography (1863). These books, and others like them, formed the hagiography of the Manchester School. They proclaimed that England was no longer an agricultural, aristocratic polity, but a land of opportunity for people of any class who through their talent and industry contributed to its commercial greatness. The typical Smiles hero was one who, while receiving sixpence a day to run messages in Manchester streets, went without lunch to buy a Latin grammar. The flawed hero. This class, though less numerous than the last, perhaps includes more great works. John Lockhart’s lives of Robert Burns (1828) and Walter Scott (1837–38) are notable. The first ruined himself with drink and sexual promiscuity; the second, though honest, unassuming, and generous, was led to bankruptcy by a mixture of grandiose imagination and illfortune. Earlier, Robert Southey’s Life of Nelson (1813) had hinted at the personal weaknesses of a national hero. The hatchet job. These are rare but sometimes memorable.

Thomas Carlyle disposes of Coleridge in a few memorable pages of John Sterling (1851). But the most notable example is the memoir of Carlyle by J.A. Froude (1882–84). The humorous biography. One of the best examples of this genre is Thomas Hogg’s life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1858). Generally, the 19th century was a period of reticence about private life, especially about sexual and financial matters. But the reticence was not uniform in the first third of the century, because it was linked to gentlemanly honour. (One did not speak of the infidelity of the wife of a man who might challenge one to a duel, for example.) Later, down to about 1880, “decency” was observed to protect readers of both sexes and all ages from “contamination”. In the last years of the century, a greater freedom returned, but not without protests. Thus, Froude’s memoir of Carlyle was bitterly attacked, even though the author excluded, and left for a posthumous volume, his speculations about Carlyle’s impotence. Autobiographies range from scattered reminiscences, like those of Carlyle and Charles Dickens, which were later used by biographers, to full accounts. Often these were deliberately selective and specialized. De Quincey proclaimed his object in his title, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (in book form, 1822). Harriette Wilson wished to show that she was the most desired, successful, and generous courtesan of her day (Memoirs, 1825); Newman to vindicate his honesty, meanly impugned by the lies of Charles Kingsley; John Ruskin to recall what gave him pleasure to remember. Sometimes the plan led to surprising omissions: J.S. Mill never mentions his mother (Autobiography, 1873), and Ruskin omits his wife. Augustus Hare’s six volumes (1896–1900) do not mention the single fact that alone makes sense of the whole, his homosexuality. The best autobiographies are more eloquent than the biographies. Many of them dwell on particular moments of joy, grief, or illumination that are presented as turning-points in a whole life. The autobiographer often picks a single experience as an emblem of life’s meaning. Though he or she may use documents, they are outshone by the freshness of memory, especially of childhood and early years. The publication of William Wordsworth’s autobiography in verse, The Prelude (1850, although begun as early as 1799), along with some accounts of childhood in the novels of Dickens, helped to foster a new belief in the importance of the formative years of childhood, a belief that remained powerfully influential in the following century. Above all an age of documents, the 19th century also had, especially towards its end, a leaning towards more poetic, more hidden experience, and the impulse to convey the almost ineffable in words. A.O.J. Cockshut Further Reading “Constructing the Subject in Nineteenth-Century Autobiography”, special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 6 / 1 (1990) Barros, Carolyn A., Autobiography: Narrative of Transformation, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998 Clive, John, “More or Less Eminent Victorians”, Victorian Studies (September 1958): 5–28 Cockshut A.O.J, Truth to Life: The Art of Biography in the Nineteenth Century, London: Collins, and New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974 Cockshut, A.O.J, The Art of Autobiography in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century England, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1984

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Danahay, Martin, A Community of One: Masculine Autobiography and Autonomy in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993 Gagnier, Regenia, Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain, 1832–1920¸ New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 Jay, Paul, Being in the Text: Self-Representation from Wordsworth to Roland Barthes, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1984 Johnson, Edgar (editor), A Treasury of Biography, New York: Howell Soskin, 1941 Loesberg, Jonathan, Fictions of Consciousness: Mill, Newman, and the Reading of Victorian Prose, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1986 Machann, Clinton, The Genre of Autobiography in Victorian Literature, Ann Arbor: Univeristy of Michigan Press, 1994 Nicolson, Harold, The Development of English Biography, London: Hogarth Press, 1927; New York: Harcourt Brace, 1928 Peterson, Linda H., Victorian Autobiography: The Tradition of SelfInterpretation, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1986 Peterson, Linda H., Traditions of Victorian Women’s Autobiography: The Poetics and Politics of Life Writing, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999 Stephen, Leslie, Studies of a Biographer, 4 vols, London: Duckworth, and New York: Putnam, 1898–1902 Symons, A.J.A., Essays and Biographies, London: Cassell, 1969

Britain: 19th-Century Diaries Most scholars of life writing agree that the practice of keeping private diaries and journals reached its peak during the 19th century, especially in Britain, which has been the focus of extensive research on diaries, both published and in manuscript form. Although a practice among middle and upper classes for centuries, there was a proliferation of diary writing during the Romantic and Victorian eras in Britain no doubt attributable to the increased literacy, increased reading, and increased availability of literature, especially in lending libraries, of the times. Additionally, the heightened attention paid by many to the relationship between writing and defining an identity could also contribute to what George Steiner has called “the fantastically loquacious world” of the diary in the 19th century. At any rate, many men, women, and children of the middle and upper classes engaged in recording their lives on a daily basis during this time. Bound books manufactured especially for diary writing were readily available and widely used, although the use of blank paper for recording one’s daily life was also common. The bound books contained the now familiar dated pages for entries. Additionally, these bound books contained space for keeping accounts; public information and important facts, such as postage rates; and spaces to record anniversaries and other important dates. The availability of specifically manufactured travel journals attests to the popularity of the tour during the 19th century. Few diarists that we know of kept intimate diaries for their eyes only. The term “private” used to describe this form actually refers to the fact that, with the exception of the diaries of prominent figures, the diaries were simply not written for future publication or for wide circulation, although Oscar Wilde’s facetious remarks about diary-keeping in The Importance of Being Earnest would suggest that much posturing about diary writing took place: Cecily, recording the “facts” of her love life,

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effusively makes up her entries, protests to their privacy, and looks forward to their publication. Travel journals, especially, proliferate during the period and overlap with those written by public figures. The most prominent public personage keeping diaries was, of course, Queen Victoria, who was a prolific writer (Leaves from a Journal, 1855; Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, 1848–61). Diaries by those in the service of the queen, including that of the family’s dancing master, Joseph Lowe (A New Most Excellent Dancing Master), and journals of ladies-in-waiting, for example, also exist, although it must be emphasized that these works are not of the “tell-all” sort about the British royal family that was to gain popularity at the end of the 20th century. Foreign ministers and magistrates often document their tours of duty (for example, The Colthurst Journal: Journal of a Special Magistrate in the Islands of Barbados and St. Vincent, 1835– 38). The journals of literary figures such as Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, George Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Walter Scott, and those closely associated with literary figures – Dorothy Wordsworth, Jane Welsh Carlyle, Henry Crabbe Robinson, and the artist Benjamin Haydon – comprise a fair amount of the diaries that were published. Yet, along with diaries of the aristocracy are those of country parsons (most famously those of Francis Kilvert, written 1870–79), of rural dwellers, of men and women who never achieved prominence (nor did they wish to), but for whom keeping a diary was an essential part of their everyday lives. Even though men and women alike were enthusiastic diarists, much of the scholarship on 19th-century British diaries focuses on women’s writing. Early in the history of autobiography studies, the polished retrospective autobiography was given value over the fragmentary nature of the diary as a basis for theorizing about the role of the genre in structuring identity; but because the greatest percentage of published autobiographies were by men (a result of their public lives), feminists became interested in how autobiography and the fragmentary immediacy of the diary might differ, and thus how each genre might suggest differing structures of the self. Theorists began to examine the relationship between (especially 19th-century) female diarists and their exclusion from the institutions – religious, governmental, educational – that had power over them. What Katherine Goodman has suggested as characteristic of epistolary autobiography is true of the diary form as well: it “both credits individual experience and avoids harmonizing and unifying the subject” (“Elizabeth to Meta”). Major emphases in diaries identified by Cynthia Huff, whose work seeks to “reconstruct the lives of ordinary women”, include illness, fears about pregnancy, evaluation of spiritual progress, and service. Children’s diaries were linked to their moral instruction. As complements to Huff’s work, Harriet Blodgett and Judy Simons have examined published “private” diaries, especially those of literary figures: Frances Burney, Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, Beatrix Potter, and Amelia Opie, to name a few. In considering the diaries of both men and women, Robert Fothergill proposes four classes of 19th-century journals: travel journals, journals of conscience, public journals, and journals of personal memoranda. His categories, while limiting and often overlapping, do help bring under control thinking about the impetus behind diary-keeping. Most critical studies stress the

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absence of introspection in 19th-century diaries; of course, today one function of the diary is to “get it all out”, to express emotions, to use the writing as therapy, as a site for psychological healing. Such an emphasis would seem unusual to a 19thcentury diarist, and modern critics imposing such criteria on 19th-century works will come away sorely disappointed at best, and in error when making judgements about the author’s sense of self at worst. The extensive bibliographies found in the critical works listed below attest to the vast numbers of British diaries of this period, most of which are fertile ground for more scholarship – scholarship that will most probably continue to define the characteristics of the diary form in contrast with other, more public forms of life writing. Kay Cook Further Reading Batts, John Stuart, British Manuscript Diaries of the Nineteenth Century: An Annotated Listing, Fontwell: Centaur Press, and Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1976 Blodgett, Harriet, Centuries of Female Days: Englishwomen’s Private Diaries, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1988; Gloucester: Sutton, 1989 “Constructing the Subject in Nineteenth-Century Autobiography”, special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 6 / 1 (1990) Fothergill, Robert A., Private Chronicles: A Study of English Diaries, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1974 Goodman, Katherine R., “Elizabeth to Meta: Epistolary Autobiography and the Postulation of the Self” in Life / Lines: Theorizing Women’s Autobiography, edited by Bella Brodzki and Celeste Schenck, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988 Huff, Cynthia, British Women’s Diaries: A Descriptive Bibliography of Selected Nineteenth-Century Women’s Manuscript Diaries, New York: AMS Press, 1985 Matthews, William, British Diaries: An Annotated Bibliography of British Diaries Written between 1442 and 1942, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950 Ponsonby, Arthur, Scottish and Irish Diaries from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century, London: Methuen, and New York: Doran, 1927 Simons, Judy, Diaries and Journals of Literary Women from Fanny Burney to Virginia Woolf, London: Macmillan, and Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990 Steiner, George, George Steiner: A Reader, London: Penguin, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1984

Britain: 19th-Century Letters The emphasis in this essay is on 19th-century letters as they were mediated to the general public in the 19th and early 20th centuries, rather than modern scholarly projects covering, for instance, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Elizabeth Gaskell, though such comprehensive annotated collections are important and interesting in their own right. The 19th century inherited a rich literary tradition of letter writing in varied genres in the public domain from conduct manuals to the epistolary novel. It also saw, with the introduction in 1840 of the pre-paid penny post, a revolution in the mechanisms for the transmission of personal and business correspondence throughout the United Kingdom. Distance was

no longer a problem; the impecunious were no longer dependent on relatives or friends in Parliament who would forward their correspondence gratis under their frank. As mail coaches were superseded by the railway, rapid delivery enabled correspondence to flow like elegant, measured conversation, although by the final decades, as communication speeded up, there was a sense that the art of the leisurely, revelatory letter was fading. Mrs Humphry, the doyenne of good etiquette, blamed the “haste and bustle” of turn-of-the-century life; W. Carew Hazlitt thought the epistolary “perfection” of the age of Charles Lamb (1775–1834) had been encouraged by the need to write to an acquaintance in the “home counties, [letters] which one would only write nowadays to a settler in the Colonies or a relative in India”. There was a ready market for published collections of letters, offering readers the illusion of intimacy with their authors, of entering their private lives while understanding more fully their public ones. Money might be made from publication – H.F. Chorley’s “literary life and correspondence” of Felicia Hemans was, according to Mary Mitford, proposed partly “for the benefit of her boys”. Issues of personal reticence, questions of editorial responsibility, and concerns about offending living relatives and permitting public access to confidential material, however, continually surfaced. Thus the volumes of Charles Lamb’s rich literary correspondence, enlivened with personal revelations and gossip, edited by his friend Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd initially in 1837 and less reticently after Mary Lamb’s death, were enlarged and reorganized by later editors who freely adapted Talfourd’s connecting narrative according to their assessment of his professional integrity and skill. During the 19th century various publication formats and editorial or authorial usages of the familiar letter were crystallized. They were incorporated within biographies and memoirs, sometimes lavishly, reconstructing a life through complete letters and extracts linked by commentary. Mary Howitt’s autobiography adopted this method, as did John Forster with Dickens’s lively, vigorous correspondence, and Charles Kingsley’s widow in her pious tribute, still in print in its condensed one-volume edition 20 years later. Sometimes correspondence was used selectively – as with Charles Dilke’s memoir of his wife, the art historian and feminist Emilia Dilke, and James Austen-Leigh’s of his aunt Jane Austen – to illustrate a facet of character, the subject’s view on a particular issue, or the regard in which she was held. The popular “life-and-letters” approach is exemplified by George Layard’s book on Eliza Lynn Linton and Mrs Erskine’s on Anna Jameson. Correspondence from abroad was transmuted into travel books, a notable example being that by the young Elizabeth Rigby (Lady Eastlake). Collections of letters, like later editions of Lamb’s, were also produced for their broad appeal as cultural, social, or political history, or, as early publishers justly claimed on Keats’s behalf, for their literary merit. Intimate and immediate though letters may have appeared to readers, they reached their public filtered through the actions of their owners and custodians, the authors, recipients, executors, inheritors, editors, and publishers. The choice of organization, whether chronologically or by recipient, constructed lives and relationships differently. Suppression of indiscreet letters, excisions of what was deemed too intimate or coarse, explanatory notes, inadequate dating, and inept copying all intervened between writer and reader. Even absence of editorial control

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could render texts problematic. The very lack of annotation to the allusive running conversation forming Robert and Elizabeth Browning’s love letters to each other frustrated bemused readers, who, 50 years on, were doubtless attracted by the sensationalism of their romance. Editorial decisions on selection and organization were themselves constrained by availability. George Meredith’s son expressly disclaimed his novelist father’s letters as “a narrative of his life”, drawing attention to the inevitable partiality of a book that omitted friends whose correspondence was inaccessible or lost. The novelist and journalist Geraldine Jewsbury in her last illness “manfully destroyed”, as she promised, all but one of Jane Welsh Carlyle’s letters to her, so that their remarkable friendship, revealed in Mrs Ireland’s words through a long exchange “glowing with life”, made up of “almost love-letters”, reached readers only through Miss Jewsbury’s voice. George Layard was “disappointed” to learn from the executrix that the writer Eliza Linton’s letters to Dickens had been destroyed. Other custodians took up more robust attitudes. J.A. Froude’s decision to publish Jane Carlyle’s engaging, perceptive letters created a furore since their frankness exposed the fractures in her marriage. Thomas Carlyle, with the assistance of his devoted niece, Mary Aitken, had already carried out the complex and, for him, virtually penitential task of collecting and collating his wife’s letters, annotating them to provide biographical links. In the process he came to a realization of how deeply she had suffered within their marriage. Forman’s edition of John Keats’s intimate letters to Fanny Brawne was also denounced for its abandonment of dignity and delicacy. Women in particular had benefited from the reduction in the cost of postage, and the existence of earlier models of female epistolary writing provided encouragement to write, though there was always potential conflict between acceptance of the genre as an appropriate form for female writers, and the cultivation of the traditional female virtue of modesty. For men correspondence was merely one of the networking mechanisms that elided the business, social, political, and cultural sides of life. For women letter writing was an important substitute for the connections made through public school, the university, and the gentlemen’s clubs. For some, like Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Mary Mitford, whose social life was confined by domestic circumstances or constrained by ill health, correspondence sustained friendships, developed their literary lives, and maintained professional contacts. Through her voluminous body of letters Mary Mitford, buried in her Berkshire village, shared personal troubles, debated literature, and exchanged news and gossip (occasionally “twinning” the same letter to different recipients) with a wide circle of acquaintances including Mary Howitt, Felicia Hemans, Harriet Martineau, the painter Haydon, and Elizabeth Barrett, to whom she was confidante and professional adviser. Mitford’s professional life was largely conducted by letter. (She edited Finden’s Tableaux by correspondence, bombarding the publisher with instructions and complaints.) Sir William Elford provided an epistolary sounding-board for Mitford’s plans and problems, rather as Mary Braddon later used her novelistpatron Bulwer-Lytton, though letter writing played a more direct part in Miss Mitford’s training as a writer. In rejecting Elford’s suggestion to publish her letters, because to avoid hurting people she would have to edit out so much of the wit,

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she sought to borrow back her own letters for their freshness of expression that could be incorporated into her essays and sketches. This spontaneity, as well as her range of reference, encouraged the posthumous publication of variously structured selections from her correspondence. Relatively little has been published on 19th-century letters. In addition to the titles below, see also the useful introductions in Chapple and Pollard’s edition of Gaskell, Kintner’s edition of the Brownings, Storey and House’s preface to their edition of Dickens (on Forster’s intrusive editing), and Mathiessen et al.’s edition of Gissing. Barbara Onslow Further Reading Selected letters: Austen, Jane, Letters, edited by R.W. Chapman, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932 Barrett Browning, Elizabeth, The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford 1836–54, 3 vols, edited by Meredith B. Raymond and Mary Rose Sullivan, Waco, Texas: Armstrong Browning Library of Baylor University, 1983 Braddon, Mary Elizabeth in Robert Lee Wolff’s “Devoted Disciple: The Letters of Mary Elizabeth Braddon to Sir Edward BulwerLytton, 1862–1873”, Harvard Library Bulletin, 22 (January and April 1974): 5–35, 129–61 Browning, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1845–1846, 2 vols, London: Smith Elder, 1899 Browning, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1845–1846, 2 vols, edited by Elvan Kintner, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1969 Carlyle, Jane Welsh, Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, edited by J.A. Froude, 3 vols, London: Longmans Green, and New York: Scribner, 1883 Chapman, R.W. (editor), A Memoir of Jane Austen, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926 Chorley, H.F., Memorials of Mrs. Hemans, London: Saunders and Otley, 1836 Dickens, Charles, The Letters of Charles Dickens, 10 vols, edited by Graham Storey and Madeline Howe, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965– Dilke, Charles W., “Memoir (of Lady Dilke)” in The Book of the Spiritual Life, edited by Dilke, London: John Murray, and New York: Dutton, 1905 Eliot, George, The George Eliot Letters, 9 vols, edited by Gordon S. Haight, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1954–78; London: Oxford University Press, 1956–1978 Forster, John, The Life of Charles Dickens, 2 vols, London: Chapman and Hall, and Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1872–74 Gaskell, Elizabeth, Letters, edited by J.A.V. Chapple and Arthur Pollard, Manchester: Mandolin, 1997 (first published in this edition, 1966) Gissing, George, Collected Letters of George Gissing, 9 vols, edited by Paul F. Mattheisen, Arthur C.Young and Pierre Coustillas, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1990–97 Howitt, Margaret, Mary Howitt: An Autobiography, 2 vols, London: Isbister, and Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1889 Jameson, Anna, Anna Jameson: Letters and Friendships, edited by Mrs Steuart Erskine, London: Fisher Unwin, 1915 Jewsbury, Geraldine, Selections from the Letters of Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury to Jane Welsh Carlyle, edited by Mrs Alexander Ireland, London and New York: Longmans Green, 1892 Keats, John, The Letters of John Keats, 1814–1821, 2 vols, edited by H.E. Rollins, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1958 Kingsley, Charles (editor), Charles Kingsley: His Letters and Memories of His Life, 2 vols, edited by F.E. Kingsley (his wife), London: King, 1877; New York: Macmillan, 1894

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Lamb, Charles, Letters of Charles Lamb, 2 vols, edited by W. Carew Hazlitt, London: George Bell, 1886 Layard, George Somes, Mrs. Lynn Linton: Her Life, Letters and Opinions, London: Methuen, 1901 L’Estrange, A.G. (editor), The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford as Recorded in Letters from Her Literary Correspondents, 2 vols, London: Hurst and Blackett, and New York: Harper, 1882 Mitford, Mary Russell, The Life of Mary Russell Mitford, Related in a Selection from Her Letters to Her Friends, 3 vols, edited by A.G. L’Estrange, revised edition, London: Bentley, 1870; as The Life of Mary Russell, Told by Herself in Letters to Her Friends, New York: Harper, 1870 Mitford, Mary Russell, Letters of Mary Russell, 2 vols, edited by Henry Chorley, London: Bentley, 1872

Analysis: Altick, Richard, Lives and Letters: A History of Literary Biography in England and America, New York: Greenwood Press, 1979 Broughton, Trev Lynn, Men of Letters, Writing Lives: Masculinity and Literary Auto/biography in the Late-Victorian Period, London and New York: Routledge, 1999 Clarke, Norma, Ambitious Heights: Writing, Friendship, Love: The Jewsbury Sisters, Felicia Hemans, and Jane Welsh Carlyle, London and New York: Routledge, 1990 Favret, Mary, Romantic Correspondence: Women, Politics and the Fiction of Letters, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993 (on epistolary publications to 1830) Goldsmith, Elizabeth C., “Authority, Authenticity and the Publication of Letters” in Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolary Literature, edited by Goldsmith, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989 Israel, Kali, Names and Stories: Emilia Dilke and Victorian Culture, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 (on suppression / intervention in the Pattison and Dilke letters)

Britain: 20th-Century Auto/biography The recent development of the hybrid term “auto/biography” has shown the need to point up that autobiographical writing will always contain an impress beyond the isolable individual, and that biographical writing will invariably carry within it something of its author. These features are markedly significant in auto/biographical writings of the 20th century. In academic discussions, at least, expressions of private experience have been particularly valued when they show personal sensibility in the context of the intricate vicissitudes of cultural development. Thus by the year 2000 the axis indicated by the routine slash in “auto/biography” had become a recognized feature, not only of autobiographical and biographical writing, but also of the methodological protocols of social science research into lives (see Denzin, Stanley, Marcus 1994, and Erben). In British writing, 20th-century autobiography of the confessional variety may be said to begin with a text written in 1895 but published in 1905: Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, which, although written as a letter, is in fact as much autobiography as anything else. It charts the author’s progress from being London’s toast of the town to his miserable state as abject prisoner, and contains highly personal reflections as well as documentary details of his disastrous love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas. The work only appeared in its unexpurgated form in 1962. Another highly personal reflection, Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son (1907), is of importance to the development of 20th-century autobiography. The work is a self-

conscious attempt at a new form of life writing. In it, the author encapsulates a conflict of outlooks (that between a fundamentalist non-conformism and the “modern” mind) in a description of his own life placed against that of his father. As such the reader is presented with autobiographical and biographical material, detailing both an intellectual conflict within a dying Victorianism and a struggle of parent and child at total personal odds with each other. The changing cultural mood of the early 20th century is charted from a working-class perspective in D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers (1913), while Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (1914) fictionalizes the life of a builder to give a more pointed exposé of class oppression. World War I produced many accounts of lives, among which must be mentioned Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of a FoxHunting Man (1928), Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth (1933), and T.E. Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926). Sassoon’s account of a disappearing way of life, continued in Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) and Sherston’s Progress (1936), became a benchmark in 20th-century serialized autobiography. (Sassoon’s trilogy was published in 1937 as The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston.) Vera Brittain lost her brother, her fiancé, and several friends in the war, and her autobiography is a sustained discussion on the conduct of the conflict and its persistent slaughter. The restrained and poignant tone of Brittain’s book increases the effect of her pacifist argument, and her own autobiography becomes, as well, a collective biography of the many of her circle who went to their deaths. T.E. Lawrence’s personal account of the Arab Revolt (1917–18) is of quite another kind: its “man of action” narration reveals a quite different personality from that of the embittered poet Sassoon or the pacifist civilian Brittain. However, the work is significant, not only for its blend of autobiography and historical description (some of which has been disputed), but also for the quality of its writing and philosophical reflection. Praised on its appearance by figures as varied as Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, and Winston Churchill, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom remains a controversial work: the author himself, with characteristic paradoxicality, called it “a stodgy mess of mock-heroic egotism”. It nonetheless remains an astonishing and distilled account of personal life in extreme conditions. If in some sense the noteworthy examples of 20th-century autobiography and biography are marked by their rejection of prior models in the genre, it is Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians (1918) that avowedly, and with worldly discrimination, settles the account. The solidity of his 19th-century subjects (Florence Nightingale, Cardinal Manning, Thomas Arnold, General Gordon) makes his snappy brevity, satire, and irreverence towards them the perfect antidote. Although on the surface these biographies seem little concerned with the life of their author they, in fact, crystallize the anti-Victorian rationalism, unconventionality, and urbanity that most characterized the Bloomsbury Group’s most influential members. If Strachey had taken biography unreservedly away from piety and self-satisfaction, Harold Nicolson and Virginia Woolf stretched the bounds of the genre to breaking point. Nicolson, a major biographer and writer on biography himself, published a book, Some People (1927), which had no forebear. It was composed of a series of meta-biographical stories in which genuine biographical subjects became the starting point for fictional biography. However, far from being a disservice to biographical

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investigation the book became a source for imaginative speculation on the nature of auto/biography. As stern a critic as Virginia Woolf wrote that Nicolson “has devised a method of writing about people and about himself as though they were at once real and imaginary. He has succeeded remarkably, if not entirely, in making the best of both worlds.” Woolf herself produced even more spectacular experiments in fictional biography, the most notable being Orlando (1928), in which she stretched the life of her beloved friend Vita Sackville-West across four centuries and through a change in sex, and Flush (1933), about the life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s pet spaniel. Additional significant auto/biographical exercises of the period include Dorothy Richardson’s multi-volume Pilgrimage, which began with Pointed Roofs in 1915 and first appeared in a collected edition in 1967, and George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), and Homage to Catalonia (1938). Also of importance are Margaret Llewelyn Davies’s collection of working-class women’s testimonies in Life as We Have Known It (1931), A.J.A. Symons’s The Quest for Corvo (1934), and to a lesser, but not negligible, extent H.G. Wells’s Experiment in Autobiography (1934). World War II and the events leading up to it did not produce the sustained quality of auto/biographical works that were so notable a feature of World War I. Although some important accounts of lives were written – with perhaps the most emblematic example being Spitfire pilot Richard Hillary’s exploration of self-sacrifice in a faithless war, The Last Enemy (1942) – the formal margins of auto/biographical writing were rarely stretched. However, several autobiographical accounts of the war are particularly interesting owing to their singular perspectives. Christabel Bielenberg’s autobiography, The Past is Myself (1962), tells the story of being an Irish woman in Germany during the war, and of being married to a German associated with the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. Naomi Mitcheson kept diaries charting a socialist-feminist and Scottish nationalist view for the idiosyncratic social research organization, Mass Observation (published in 1985 as Among You Taking Notes), while Bloomsbury writer Frances Partridge’s diaries charted A Pacifist’s War (1978). The proliferation of auto/biographical writing since the 1950s has been immense. There is hardly a category of person, occupational group, or lifestyle that has been left without its auto/biographical representation. Additionally, and in great contrast with earlier periods, sexual matters and practices can be discussed and described in graphic detail without public or critical condemnation. The same is true of depictions of violent behaviour and its consequences. The lifting of censorship restrictions on works of fiction since the removal of the ban on D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1960 has extended into an increased candidness in auto/biography as well as fiction. An important work such as J.R. Ackerley’s My Father and Myself (1968) would have been difficult to publish prior to 1960. Like Gosse’s earlier volume, Ackerley’s book is both an autobiography of the author and a biography of the writer’s father, in this case providing a framework for discussing the author’s eccentric family circumstances, the “affliction” of his homosexuality, and his fondness for his dog. The more liberated atmosphere of the late 1960s and 1970s also saw the publication of Bertrand Russell’s Autobiography (1967–78), Sylvia Townsend Warner’s

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classic biography T.H. White (1967), and Christopher Isherwood’s Christopher and His Kind (1976). Isherwood’s work, which provides a frank discussion of his own homosexuality, is interesting to compare with his contemporary Stephen Spender’s more coded World within World (1951). The postwar lifting of taboos in auto/biography was particularly evident in the development of literary biography, most notably with George Painter’s biography of Marcel Proust (1959–65), and the landmark publication of Leon Edel’s fourvolume study, Henry James (1953–72), which approached its subject from a Freudian perspective, and left no detail of James’s long life untouched in its exhaustive, comprehensive approach. Another milestone in 20th-century British biography was Richard Ellmann’s classic and highly influential biography of James Joyce, first published in 1959. Ellmann, whose works include the biography Yeats: The Man and the Masks (1948), set an example for huge, revelatory, and speculative – yet irrefutably scholarly – life studies of writers. The Bloomsbury Group, so influential in setting the trend for irreverent and innovative biographical ponderings on writers by writers, continued to attract fascination to the point of spawning a small publishing industry in books about Bloomsbury. Michael Holroyd published the respected biography Lytton Strachey in 1967–68; this was followed by Quentin Bell’s biography of his aunt, Virginia Woolf (1972), and Angelica Garnett’s more bitter inside reflections on Bloomsbury, Deceived with Kindness: A Bloomsbury Childhood (1984). Edel turned his attention to the period with Bloomsbury: A House of Lions (1979), while Alan and Veronica Palmer published the Who’s Who in Bloomsbury in 1987. Countless other biographies of Virginia Woolf (including John Lehmann’s in 1975, Phyllis Rose’s in 1978, Lyndall Gordon’s in 1984, and Hermione Lee’s in 1996) and of the Bloomsbury circle have continued to be written and published since. More recently, important literary biographers in Britain have included Margaret Drabble, in her study of Arnold Bennett (1974), Richard Holmes, author of, among others, Shelley: The Pursuit (1974), Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin (1987), Kipling: Something of Myself (1987), Coleridge: Early Visions (1989), and Coleridge: Darker Reflections (1998). Peter Ackroyd, also a respected novelist, has written a number of critically acclaimed biographies including T.S. Eliot (1984), Dickens (1990), and Blake (1995). Victoria Glendinning, one of the most prolific yet highly respected biographers in Britain, has produced Elizabeth Bowen: Portrait of a Writer (1977), Edith Sitwell, A Unicorn among Lions (1981), Vita: The Life of Vita Sackville-West (1983), Rebecca West (1987), Anthony Trollope (1993), and Jonathan Swift (1998). Outside the field of literary biography, other forms of life writing have proven successful at bridging the gap between critical and popular success. One of the most notable recent trends has been for popular historical biographies, particularly about the lives of lesser-known women. Lady Antonia Fraser, grande dame of the royal historical biography and author of the hugely successful Mary, Queen of Scots (1969), perhaps deserves credit for laying the groundwork for the surge in historical biographies that also appeal to a wider public, but more recent examples have taken a more feminist approach and have aimed to highlight previously unacknowledged lives. Stella Tillyard’s Aristocrats (1994) told the story of the interweaving

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lives of the four Lennox sisters during the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Britain and Ireland. Amanda Foreman’s immensely popular Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire (1998) found a popular appeal both in judicious comparisons of her 18th-century subject’s life to the modern anxieties of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, and in carefully researched evidence of the duchess’s important influence on parliamentary politics of the day. Amanda Vickery’s The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (1998) is wider in scope, basing its study on the lives of over 100 women through their letters, diaries, and account books. With the advent of second-wave feminism and increased participation of women in educational and professional life since the 1960s, many women have produced autobiographical works analysing notions of gendered selfhood and self-identity within the nexus of class, generational difference, and, though less often, race and ethnicity. Three notable examples are Carolyn Steedman’s Landscape for a Good Woman (1986), Gillian Rose’s Love’s Work (1995), and Ann Oakley’s Man and Wife (1997). Works dealing with the complexities of life in multicultural Britain, especially from a female perspective, include Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s No Place Like Home (1995), Jenny Diski’s Skating to Antarctica (1997), and Jackie Kay’s autobiographical poems, The Adoption Papers (1991). From the male perspective, and with a focus on the psychoanalysis of class, is Ronald Fraser’s In Search of the Past (1984). This work is interesting in its view of the construction of upper-class masculinity, a plot that becomes more self-conscious in, for example, Blake Morrison’s And When Did You Last See Your Father (1993) and Tim Lott’s The Scent of Dead Roses (1996). Built around the suicide of his mother and his own nervous breakdown, Lott’s work has helped to popularize the mixing of autobiography, biography, history, and sociology that Britain in particular has seen recently in the humanities and social sciences. Autobiographies of importance by major biographers are Richard Holmes’s Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer (1985) and Michael Holroyd’s Basil Street Blues (1999). Works of merit exploring the genre of life writing (whether satirically or merely self-consciously) are A.S. Byatt’s Booker prize-winning novel Possession (1990) and Ian Hamilton’s In Search of J.D. Salinger (1988). The stylistic high tone and intellectual depth of Martin Amis’s Experience (2000), an autobiography pivoted on a father / son relationship is a clear demonstration how culturally removed and yet how emotionally similar have become auto/biographical concerns since Edmund Gosse. Collections of, and annotations upon, autobiography by lesser-known writers, by John Burnett (1989), William Matthews (1955), and C.S. Handley (1997), which often reflect a working-class tradition, are listed below. Michael Erben Further Reading Abbs, Peter, Autobiography in Education, London: Heinemann, 1974 Anderson, Linda, Women and Autobiography in the Twentieth Century: Remembered Futures, New York: Prentice Hall, 1997 “Auto/biography”, special issue of Sociology, 27 / 1 (1993) Burnett, John, David Vincent and David Mayall (editors), The Autobiography of the Working Class: An Annotated Critical Bibliography, vol. 3, Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1989 Denzin, Norman K., Interpretive Biography, Newbury Park, California

and London: Sage, 1989 Dodd, Philip (editor), Modern Selves: Essays on Modern British and American Autobiography, London and Totowa, New Jersey: Frank Cass, 1986 Erben, Michael, “Biography and Research Method” in Biography and Education: A Reader, edited by Erben, London: Falmer Press, 1998 Finney, Brian, The Inner I: British Literary Autobiography of the Twentieth Century, London: Faber, 1985 Handley, C.S., An Annotated Bibliography of Diaries Printed in English, 4 vols, Aldeburgh, Suffolk: Hanover Press, 1997 Hoberman, Ruth, Modernizing Lives: Experiments in English Biography, 1918–1939, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987 Marcus, Laura, “Enough about You, Let’s Talk about Me”, New Formations, 1 (1987): 77–94 Marcus, Laura, Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994 Matthews, William, British Autobiographies: An Annotated Bibliography of British Autobiographies Published or Written before 1951, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955 Olney, James (editor), Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Shumaker, Wayne, English Autobiography: Its Emergence, Materials and Forms, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1954 Stanley, Liz, The Auto/Biographical I: The Theory and Practice of Feminist Auto/biography, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1992 Steedman, Carolyn, Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives, London: Virago Press, 1986 Thompson, Paul, The Voice of the Past: Oral History, 2nd edition, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988 (first edition, 1978) Weintraub, Karl J., “Autobiography and Historical Consciousness”, Critical Inquiry, 1 / 4 (1975): 821–48

Britain: 20th-Century Diaries Concomitant with the rise in the cult of celebrity during the 20th century, the dramatic increase in the number of published diaries has enlarged the scope of the diary genre, and, particularly toward the end of the century, brought about a blurring of the usual distinction between the diary as private document and the autobiography as public text. As the purposes of the diary have proliferated, many sub-genres have appeared, of which the key ones will be addressed here. What characterizes the 20thcentury diary above all, perhaps, is the diary writer’s increased self-awareness as creator of a selective narrative of his or her own identity. The importance of diary writing to the maintenance of the unified ego is revealed by the lengths to which individuals have gone to keep a diary even under the most extreme conditions. The dramatic events of the 20th century, in particular the two world wars, created just such conditions. Ronald Blythe suggests that “The First World War could claim to be the most diarized event in history” (Blythe, 1989); dozens of World War I diaries have been published to date, despite the fact that diary keeping was officially banned for security reasons. Among the bestknown diaries of British men fighting at the front are those of Private Horace Bruckshaw (1979) and the poets Siegfried Sassoon (1983) and Edward Thomas (1971). Britain’s sense of itself at war is reflected by the experiences of those left at home as much as those at the front. The Rev.

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Andrew Clark’s Echoes of the Great War (1985) describes wartime life in an Essex village, and thus also falls into the quintessentially British tradition of the village diary, of which by far the most popular has been E.M. Delafield’s 1930 Diary of a Provincial Lady. W.N.P. Barbellion’s The Journal of a Disappointed Man (1919) created a storm when it was published; a diary of a young man condemned to an early death by multiple sclerosis, it was a poignant instance of the by then familiar figure of the young man cut down in his prime. Perhaps the most celebrated female diarist of the Great War was Lady Cynthia Asquith, married to the Prime Minister’s son; while Vera Brittain’s famous Testament of Youth was developed from diaries, which were themselves published in 1982. A similar cross-section of diaries covering World War II includes Keith Vaughan’s Journal & Drawings of life at the front (1966), and the diaries of novelist Evelyn Waugh. From those at home, we have Denton Welch’s diary, written, like Barbellion’s, from the perspective of an invalided man unable to fight, and famously Frances Partridge’s A Pacifist’s War (1978), describing the war through the eyes of those who were noncombatants through choice rather than circumstance. Perhaps the most important collection of diaries from this period is that of the Mass Observation movement. Set up in 1937, this independent social research project aimed to create “an anthropology of ourselves”, partly through the use of a panel of volunteer diarists who recorded aspects of daily life. Around 500 men and women kept diaries for Mass Observation during the first few years of the project until the end of World War II. These diaries provide a vastly wide-ranging and intimate picture of Britain at war, and two have been published in their own right: Among You Taking Notes (1985) is the wartime diary of well-known socialist-feminist novelist Naomi Mitchison, whereas Nella Last’s War (1981) represents an ordinary lowermiddle-class woman. (The BBC’s ongoing “Videonation” project might be seen as an offspring of Mass Observation for the age of digital technology; the project asks a variety of ordinary people to keep video diaries of episodes in their lives, for broadcast nationwide.) Partridge’s diary, though in many ways giving a less representative picture of the British non-combatant’s war than the Mass Observation diaries in that it describes the experiences of a member of a privileged elite, is, paradoxically, also typical of the 20th-century diary for precisely that reason. Some of the most celebrated published diaries of the century emanate from the Bloomsbury group, and it is thus fitting that Virginia Woolf’s description of her ideal diary as “some deep old desk, or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through” (A Writer’s Diary) has become the foundational reference for many critical works on 20thcentury diary writing – that of literary figures in particular. Yet the extent to which Woolf’s statement should be regarded as definitive of the genre is put into question by the variety of types of diary emerging during the 20th century. The soldier writing in the trench could not fail to be mindful of the limited time and space available to him, and perhaps feel a responsibility to represent as carefully as possible the extremity of his all but incommunicable experience – in sharp contrast to the relative lack of constraint expressed by Woolf. However, one of the paradoxes of diary writing is that almost all diary writers express their desire to write without self-

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consciousness – and in doing so undermine that lack of selfconsciousness to which they aspire; this paradox is felt most acutely by those who make their living by writing. Like Woolf, Siegfried Sassoon wanted to fill his diary with “hasty and passionate scrawlings, exaggerated and countless gropings after truth”, and insists “Much of my future material will, I promise, be ‘unprintable’” (Diaries 1920–22). The diary is a space where the writer can escape the constraints of writing for publication, and yet, particularly for writers who are already well known or who become so during the period of diary writing, the awareness that this material might one day become public occasionally rises to the surface. Nevertheless, such self-consciousness is interspersed with more apparently spontaneous musings and sketches; among the best-known examples of the writer’s diary as “scrapbook” of this kind are Woolf’s own diaries and Katherine Mansfield’s Journal (1927). Other renowned 20thcentury writers’ and artists’ diaries include those of novelists Arnold Bennett and Antonia White, painter Dora Carrington, and poet Stephen Spender. A further category of artists’ diaries are those kept by theatre practitioners for the duration of a particular production or period of their career, such as those by playwright Arnold Wesker, director Peter Hall, and actor Anthony Sher. Harold Nicolson’s diaries (published 1966) form a pivotal link between the writer’s diary and the political diary: Nicolson was a prolific writer and member of Bloomsbury bohemia, but had a career in the conservative circles of parliamentary politics. His diaries provide unique insights into the social and political environment in Britain during the middle of the century. There is, indeed, a strong tradition of the political diarist in Britain, sustained in more recent years by the publication of diaries by Labour Members of Parliament Richard Crossman, Barbara Castle, and Tony Benn (one of the nation’s most committed diary writers, whose diaries are, unusually, recorded onto tape before being transcribed), and most infamously by former Conservative MP and government minister Alan Clark. Clark’s diaries form part of a line of British, ostensibly “political”, diarists whose private and social lives turn out to be at least as interesting to the reading public as their political lives: in this line, Sir Henry “Chips” Channon’s mid-century diaries are the most celebrated, and the Labour MP and columnist Woodrow Wyatt’s diaries a good recent example (the final volume appeared in 2000). Publication of the diaries of those already in the public eye is more often than not left until after the writer’s death. (Often they are selected and compiled by editors; for obvious reasons of discretion, many diarists do not wish to risk the alienation of colleagues or friends given unflattering treatment.) The suffocatingly superficial diaries of the quintessentially 1970s British clothes designer Ossie Clark, for example, have only recently been published (1998), likewise the complete journals of Sylvia Plath (2000). Yet it seems that increasingly diaries are published during the lifetime of the writer; Tony Benn, for example, continues to write the later volumes of his diary, while many earlier volumes are already in print, disrupting the notion of these texts as “finished” and the idea of the diary as a conclusive and edited statement on the life of the author. But perhaps the most striking development in diary writing of the 20th century has been the increase in what might be called illness diaries, particularly of those with terminal illnesses. In this case, the diary is written

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with the mortality of the author very much in mind. The diary as a genre is particularly suited to such life stories where chronology is crucial; the specific duration of the illness and the timing of its development is recorded in detail since much of the purpose of such texts is to express the importance of time for those who are only too acutely aware that their own is limited. Two prominent examples of British illness texts, C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too by John Diamond (1998) and Ruth Picardie’s Before I Say Goodbye (1998), clearly rely on the journal form as a structure for their intimate day-by-day observations. The interspersal of diary-type entries in Picardie’s text with commentary or correspondence from family members or close friends indicates the kind of modification the diary form is undergoing at the beginning of the 21st century. Further, Diamond’s and Picardie’s choices to chronicle their illnesses in their newspaper columns as well as in a single book are characteristic of a late 20th-century blurring of the public and the private; as with Louise Arthur, who originally began posting her diary entries on the Web, the immediacy of the new media provides opportunities for the diarist whose personal circumstances might place constraints on the “capacious hold-all” model of the diary. Such texts are characterized by their focus on the pleasures to be taken in the minutiae of daily life. The genre of the diary here helps to remind us, in the most dramatic way, of that in which our lives ultimately consist: the often banal, the transient, the everyday. Bryony Randall Further Reading Aronson, Alex, Studies in Twentieth Century Diaries: The Concealed Self, Lewiston, New York and Lampeter, Dyfed: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991 Arthur, Louise and Tim Arthur, A Shadow in Tiger Country: One Last Year of Love, London: HarperCollins, 2000 Asquith, Cynthia, Diaries 1915–1918, London: Hutchinson, 1968 Barbellion, W.N.P., The Journal of a Disappointed Man, London: Chatto and Windus, 1919; with A Last Diary, London: Hogarth, 1984 Benn, Tony, The Benn Diaries, selected, abridged, and introduced by Ruth Winstone, London: Hutchinson, 1995 Bloom, Lynn Z., “The Diary as Popular History”, Journal of Popular Culture, 9 / 4 (1976): 794–807 Blythe, Ronald (editor), The Penguin Book of Diaries, London: Viking Press, 1989 Blythe, Ronald (editor), Private Words: Letters and Diaries from the Second World War, London: Viking Press, 1991 Brittain, Vera, Chronicle of Youth: War Diary 1913–1917, edited by Alan Bishop with Terry Smart, London: Gollancz, 1981 Bruckshaw, Horace, The Diaries of Private Horace Bruckshaw 1915–1916, edited by Martin Middlebrook, London: Scolar Press, 1979; Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1980 Carrington, Dora, Carrington: Letters and Extracts from Her Diaries, edited by David Garnett, London: Jonathan Cape, 1970; New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1971 Channon, Sir Henry, Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon, edited by Robert Rhodes James, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967 Clark, Alan, Diaries, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1993; as Mrs. Thatcher’s Minister: The Private Diaries of Alan Clark, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1994 Clark, Alan, Diaries: Into Politics: The Long Awaited Early Years, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2000 Clark, Andrew, Echoes of the Great War: The Diary of the Reverend Andrew Clark 1914–1919, edited by James Munson, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985 Clark, Ossie, The Ossie Clark Diaries, edited by Henrietta Rous, London: Bloomsbury, 1998

Crossman, Richard, The Crossman Diaries: Selections from the Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, 1964–1970, introduced and edited by Anthony Howard, London: Jonathan Cape, and London: Hamish Hamilton, 1979 Diamond, John, C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too, London: Vermilion, 1998 Fothergill, Robert A., Private Chronicles: A Study of English Diaries, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1974 Hall, Peter, Peter Hall’s Diaries: The Stories of a Dramatic Battle, edited by John Goodwin, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1983 Havlice, Patricia Pate, And So to Bed: A Bibliography of Diaries Published in English, Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1987 Kagle, Steven Earl, “The Diary as Art: A New Assessment” Genre, 6 (1973): 416–27 Last, Nella, Nella Last’s War: A Mother’s Diary 1939–1945, edited by Richard Broad and Suzie Fleming, Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1981 Mallon, Thomas, A Book of One’s Own: People and Their Diaries, New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1984; London: Picador, 1985 Matthews, William, British Diaries: An Annotated Bibliography of British Diaries Written between 1442 and 1942, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950 Milburn, Clara, Mrs Milburn’s Diaries: An Englishwoman’s Day-toDay Reflections 1939–45, edited by Peter Donnelly, London: Harrap, 1979 Mitchison, Naomi, Among You Taking Notes: The Wartime Diary of Naomi Mitchison, 1939–1945, edited by Dorothy Sheridan, London: Gollancz, 1985 Nicolson, Harold, Diaries and Letters, 3 vols, London: Collins, 1966 O’Brien, Kate, English Diaries and Journals, London: Collins, 1943 Partridge, Frances, A Pacifist’s War, London: Hogarth Press, and New York: Universe Books, 1978 Picardie, Ruth et al., Before I Say Goodbye, London: Penguin, 1998; New York: Holt, 2000 Ponsonby, Arthur, English Diaries: A Review of English Diaries from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century with an Introduction on Diary Writing, London: Methuen, and New York: Doran, 1923; reprinted Ann Arbor, Michigan: Gryphon Books, 1971 Sassoon, Siegfried, Diaries 1915–1918, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis, London and Boston: Faber, 1983 Sassoon, Siegfried, Diaries 1920–22 and 1923–1925, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis, London and Boston: Faber, 1981–84 Sher, Anthony, Year of the King: An Actor’s Diary and Sketchbook, London: Chatto and Windus, 1985; New York: Limelight Editions, 1987 Simons, Judy, Diaries and Journals of Literary Women from Fanny Burney to Virginia Woolf, London: Macmillan, and Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990 Slate, Ruth and Eva Slawson, Dear Girl: The Diaries and Letters of Two Working Women 1897–1917, edited by Tierl Thompson, London: Women’s Press, 1987 Spender, Stephen, Journals, 1939–1983, edited by John Goldsmith, London and Boston: Faber, 1985 Thomas, Edward, Diary of Edward Thomas, 1 January–8 April 1917, edited by R. George Thomas, Pembroke Dock, Wales: Dock Leaves Press, 1971 Vaughan, Keith, Journal and Drawings, 1939–1965, London: Alan Ross, 1966 Warner, Sylvia Townsend, The Diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner, edited by Claire Harman, London: Chatto, 1994 Welch, Denton, The Journals of Denton Welch, edited by Michael Dela-Noy, London: Allison and Busby, and New York: Dutton, 1984 Wesker, Arnold, The Birth of Shylock and the Death of Zero Mostel: Diary of a Play 1973 to 1980, London: Quartet, 1997 Woolf, Virginia, A Writer’s Diary: Being Extracts from the Diary of Virginia Woolf, edited by Leonard Woolf, London: Hogarth, 1953 Woolf, Virginia, The Diary, edited by Anne Olivier Bell, introduced by Quentin Bell, 5 vols, London: Hogarth Press, and New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977–84 Wyatt, Woodrow, The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, 3 vols, edited by Sarah Curtis, London: Macmillan, 1998–2000

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Britain: 20th-Century Letters In literary terms, the most interesting British epistolary phenomenon of the century is the extensive correspondence of the modernist writers and their social networks. This is not merely because as professional writers they were more likely than most to produce graceful or stylish writing even in their “off-duty” moments, in a period before telephone had become routine. It is also for their letters’ tracking of literary history and its personal inspirations. The complex relationships, emotional and political, as well as intellectual, that drove the glittering experiments of Eliot’s The Waste Land, Joyce’s Ulysses, Woolf’s The Waves, and the transforming scene of post-war culture, modulate the individualist and transcendent claims for much art of the period in fascinating ways. Thus, the letters of James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, W.B. Yeats, and Katherine Mansfield, to name some prominent examples, demonstrate modernism as a collective movement in which writing often depended on friendship. The expatriate character of modernism, which must qualify any strict delineation of “British” letters, is also embodied in many trans-Atlantic, European, and other transnational correspondences. These include Joyce’s letters to his American publisher of Ulysses and to the famous Paris bookshop owner, Sylvia Beach; exchanges over the little magazines that were so important to modernist publishing (see Hanscombe and Smyers), and correspondences with private patrons such as Harriet Shaw Weaver (see Lidderdale and Nicholson). This entwining of aesthetic and life-style experiment is particularly dramatic from the perspective of sexual relationship and identity. The letters between Katherine Mansfield and her husband John Middleton Murry demonstrate Mansfield’s bitingly ironic proto-feminism alongside her adoration of him. D.H. Lawrence found his chief correspondent in Murry, seeking with him (ultimately unsuccessfully) the quasi-mystic “Blutbrüderschaft” he dramatized fictionally in Women in Love (1920). (Lawrence’s letters to the cerebral Bertrand Russell include a characteristically torrid definition of his “blood philosophy” – 8 December 1915 – in the context of dialogue with a man so much his opposite.) Letters sustained and mediated not only heterosexual modernity but a homoerotic, lesbian, and bisexual subculture that crossed marriages, friendships, and orthodox identities. This is brilliantly represented in Constance Jones’s The Love of Friends: An Anthology of Gay and Lesbian Letters to Friends and Lovers (1997), which includes nodal snippets from correspondences of, among others, Hugh Walpole, Rebecca West, Joseph Conrad, Katherine Mansfield, and Virginia Woolf; Gertrude Stein, Mabel Dodge, and H.G. Wells; and T.H. White, Mary Potts, and David Garnett. Leonard Woolf and Lytton Strachey debate together which one of them should marry Virginia Stephens, “the only woman in the world with sufficient brains”, within the tones of their own passionate friendship. Several exchanges in Jones’s anthology illuminate the experiments in auto/biography of the period. Edmund Gosse’s and André Gide’s admiration of each other’s writing culminates in Gosse’s shock at reading Gide’s 1926 autobiographical defence of homosexuality, Si le grain ne meurt (1920– 21; If It Die …), while George Bernard Shaw and Lord Alfred Douglas spicily attacked each other over the proper way to write a biography of Oscar Wilde.

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A second useful resource in illuminating the role of letter writing in the period is Hanscombe and Smyers’s 1987 book Writing for Their Lives: The Modernist Women, 1900–1940. The authors note “that these writers and editors paid close attention to each other’s work; that they took each other seriously as writers trying to support themselves by writing; that they took each other seriously as women trying to find consonances between ‘art’ and ‘life’; all these stances are revealed both in their personal correspondence with each other and in their published reviews of each other’s work.” Hanscombe and Smythe reveal the close-knit world of interconnections, in which the modernist women writers’: personal letters are … revealing in indicating the directions of their interests and influences; Amy Lowell was the first to suggest to Bryher that she read H.D.; Bryher suggested to Marianne Moore that she read Dorothy Richardson; Marianne Moore suggested to H.D. and Bryher that they should read Mary Butts. And correspondences that sprang up because of an initial interest in each other’s writing turned, as well, to personal interest in each other’s lives and opinions. Virginia Woolf is the superlative modernist letter writer and indeed, the surest candidate for best British letter writer of the century. Woolf not only produced an astonishing output of some 4,000 personal letters to the intelligentsia of her day, but has been the writer most overtly interested in letter writing as a genre, which she once termed “the humane art which owes its origin to the love of friends”. She often exploited the form and style of the “open letter” in her essays, most famously in Three Guineas (1938), and produced several critical essays on the epistolic art in which she linked the aesthetic fortunes of letter writing to the changing and highly political relationship of public and private spheres. Thus Horace Walpole was an outstanding letter writer because he wrote in the 18th-century aristocratic climate of a “little public”. Of Dorothy Osborne, writing to her fiancé in the late 17th century, she concluded that brilliant letters did not compensate for a talented woman’s restriction to the private sphere. Woolf introduced a pioneering collection of life writings by working women in the Women’s Cooperative Guild with an open letter to the Guild’s secretary and her friend, Margaret Llewelyn Davies, in which she again lamented the lack of greater aesthetic opportunity for such women. By contrast, her review of Walpole’s letters, written in 1940, implies that the loss of a private sphere in wartime crushes the conditions for good letter writing. In her essays “Letter to a Young Poet” (1932) and “Modern Letters” (1930), Woolf jests that cheap postage has not killed the art of letter writing but encouraged a wonderful indiscretion. However, the professionalization of authorship in the 20th century has meant that appropriately spontaneous letters will generally no longer be seen by the public. Yet despite Woolf’s periodic (though often disingenous) requests never to have her letters published, her own dazzling and often wickedly funny missives were edited and published in six volumes by Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann Banks (1975–80). (Trautmann Banks has helpfully provided a single-volume, condensed version.) While Woolf discussed literary technique with Gerald Brenan, art with Roger Fry, writing with E.M. Forster, and read-

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ing with Lytton Strachey, it has been observed that her most satisfying correspondences were with the composer Ethel Smyth and Vita Sackville-West (see Banks’s introduction to the Selected Letters, and Stimpson). The power of Woolf’s epistolary romancing has been further appreciated with the publication of Vita Sackville-West’s letters to Woolf (in which short versions of Woolf’s replies are included) in 1984. SackvilleWest’s own artful love letters provide the context for Woolf’s experimental biography of her, Orlando (1928), dubbed by Nigel Nicolson, Sackville-West’s son, as “the longest love letter in literature”. Of related interest here are Violet Trefusis’s love letters to Sackville-West. Other outstanding literary letter writers of the century include the novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner, who wrote wonderfully arch letters during World War II, when everyone else bowed to censorship, to correspondents such as New Yorker editor William Maxwell and the radical journalist Nancy Cunard. Warner’s bittersweet exchange with David Garnett, when they were both elderly novelists who had outlived partners and the aesthetic fashions they believed in, is a particularly superb example of letter writing as elegy. The poet Philip Larkin also qualifies for special mention; as he wrote in an unfinished poem of August 1953, “I know, none better / The eyelessness of days without a letter”. Out of thousands of letters to more than 50 recipients, his dryly humorous literariness is particularly steady in his correspondence with the novelist Barbara Pym: on buying a car, he quipped, “aren’t they all ugly! and small, or else terrifyingly big! I am being given ‘a demonstration’ tomorrow – I can imagine Faust asking Mephistopheles for a demonstration. It reminds me of Auden’s ‘Today the deliberate and necessary increase in the chance of death’” (20 February 1964). Larkin’s very different correspondence with novelist Kingsley Amis shows their mutual pleasure in a mannered vulgarity that is both witty and sexist, and shows Larkin’s frequent use of his work as librarian at the University of Hull as springboard for jibes at academia. There are, of course, other dimensions besides the literary in which letters are important in 20th-century Britain, most notably in recording the experience of war. The war letters of Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg, and Wilfred Owen have been singled out for critical attention alongside their World War I poetry, as will undoubtedly be the recently published Letters from a Lost Generation: The First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends, Roland Leighton, Edward Brittain, Victor Richardson, Geoffrey Thurlow (1999). But Laurence Housman’s 1930 memorial collection of letters by lesser-known men killed in World War I is still fascinating for its charting of a waning patriotism. From World War II, Ronald Blythe’s anthology Private Words: Letters and Diaries from the Second World War (1991) and Annette Tapert’s Despatches from the Heart (1984) foreground an amateur view of conflict. Jenny Hartley on mothers and letters and the present author’s edition of letters between women working as welders analyse letter writing from civilian women’s perspectives. The letters of Keith Douglas, usually touted as the man nearest to being the unofficial “war poet” of World War II, confirm his unsentimentality, machismo, and overall belief in “the just war”. The many volumes of Winston Churchill’s letters (including a newly published edition by Mary Soames of his correspondence with his wife Clementine) are only one part of an extensive publishing

industry of political and military leaders’ letters. The letters of Harold Nicolson – Member of Parliament, a sometime British ambassador and later governor of the BBC, and husband of Vita Sackville-West – bring together the political and the literary cultures. Letters of travel, immigration, and emigration also chart the changing national identity and devolution of Britain, although there has been little synthesis of this undoubtedly enormously rich literature (particularly compared to work on North American immigrant letters and pre-20th-century British colonial letters). The letters between the Trinidian-born British writer V.S. Naipaul and his father Seepersad Naipaul are a particularly literary mapping of colonial and postcolonial relationships. Naipaul’s letters home from 1950s Oxford try to conceal his struggles (admitting in a letter to his sister that “my English pronunciation is improving by the humiliating process of error and snigger”), and also his growing distance from his father’s uninformed ambitions. Jean Rhys, a white writer from the West Indies, wrote to Selma Vaz Dias about the process of trying to bring “the Creole’s ‘I’ … to life” in writing Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). More political letters include C.L.R. James’s letters to Constance Webb and the 1944 British Soldier in India: The Letters of Clive Branson (1944), which interestingly evokes Indian nationalist organization through the sympathetic eyes of a white English officer and Communist party member in the early years of World War II. Another British Communist, Thomas Hodgkin, wrote letters during the 1950s from many African countries where he worked in adult education, which anticipated his later classic analyses of decolonization in Nationalism in Colonial Africa (1956) and African Political Parties (1961) (see Johnson). Collected correspondences from the Powys family and the poet / artist David Jones offer reflections on Welsh history, while the poet Hugh MacDiarmid’s letters and George Bruce’s A Scottish Postbag (1986) explicitly situate letter writing in a Scottish context. Women’s letters from a wide range of social and cultural contexts form a growing focus for historical interest in letter writing, and 20th-century Britain offers extensive material. Suffragette letter writing is wonderfully represented in the unassuming exchange between Ruth Slate and Eva Slawson, edited by Tierl Thompson as Dear Girl: The Diaries and Letters of Two Working Women, 1897–1917 (1987). Working-class women’s letters appeared in Margaret Llewelyn Davies’s early Maternity: Letters from Working Women (1915), telling of childbirth, death, poverty, abortion, and exhaustion. Also heartfelt are the letters from women – and some men – to the birth-control reformer Marie Stopes in the wake of her hugely influential Married Love (1918), while fellow reproductiverights advocate Stella Browne’s letters have recently been analysed by Lesley Hall. Ray Strachey’s family letters draw on 1930s discourses of female self-control to sketch a feminist maternity (see Alberti). Karen Payne’s Between Ourselves: Letters between Mothers and Daughters 1750–1982 (1984) is one of the few published collections of women’s letters from more recent years, documenting the personal changes formulated by second-wave feminism. Although email is probably the most popular form of letter writing today, most work on the topic has dealt with North American practice (see Yates, and Spooner). Helen Petrie’s study at the University of Buckinghamshire, however, has tracked 90 British emailers over a month-long period, to argue that email is

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used primarily in two very different ways. First, it is clearly now an indispensable practical tool for many people who feel increasingly busy and under stress. Second, it has found a niche for “phatic” communications of thanking, enquiring, apologizing, and other essentially emotional rather than informational gestures. This leads her to conclude that the internet does not isolate but indeed enhances personal contact, interestingly supported by the observation that by far the majority of emails are written in “correct” English, with little adoption of a new “email style”. Ruth Picardie’s sarcastically funny emails to friends about getting breast cancer, published after her death as Before I Say Goodbye (1998), perhaps supports this thesis, providing in any case an as-yet rare example of published autobiographical emails on a serious subject. Margaretta Jolly Further Reading Alberti, Johanna, “Striking Rock: The Letters of Ray Strachey to Her Family, 1929–1935” in Women’s Lives / Women’s Times: New Essays on Autobiography, edited by Linda Anderson and Trev Lynn Broughton, Albany: State University of New York, 1997 Branson, Clive, British Soldier in India: The Letters of Clive Branson, London: Communist Party, 1944; New York: International Publishers, 1945 Brittain, Vera et al., Letters from a Lost Generation: The First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends, Roland Leighton, Edward Brittain, Victor Richardson, Geoffrey Thurlow, edited by Alan Bishop and Mark Bostridge, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999 Bruce, George and Paul H. Scott, A Scottish Postbag: Eight Centuries of Scottish Letters, Edinburgh: Chambers, 1986 Butts, Mary, Imaginary Letters, Paris: E.W. Titus; reprinted, Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1979 Churchill, Winston and Clementine Churchill, Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, edited by Mary Soames, London and New York: Doubleday, 1998 Davies, Margaret Llewelyn (editor), Maternity: Letters from Working Women, London: Virago Press, 1978 (first edition, 1915) Eliot, T.S., The Letters of T.S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot, London: Faber, and San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988 Gonne, Maud and W.B. Yeats, The Gonne-Yeats Letters 1893–1938, New York: Norton, 1993 Hall, Lesley, “‘Not a domestic utensil but a woman and a citizen’: Stella Browne on Women, Health and Society” in Regenerating England: Science, Medicine and Culture in Inter-War Britain, edited by Christopher Lawrence and Anna-K. Mayer, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000 Hanscombe, Gillian E. and Virginia L. Smyers, Writing for Their Lives: The Modernist Women, 1900–1940, London: Women’s Press, 1987 Hartley, Jenny, “‘Letters are everything these days’: Mothers and Letters in the Second World War” in Epistolary Selves: Letters and Letter-Writers, 1600–1945, edited by Rebecca Earle, Aldershot, Hampshire and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate, 1999 Herrmann, Anne, The Dialogic and Difference: ‘An / Other Woman’ in Virginia Woolf and Christa Wolf, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989 Hodgkin, Thomas, Thomas Hodgkin: Letters from Africa, 1947–56, edited by Elizabeth Hodgkin and Michael Wolfers, London: Haan Associates, 2000 Holtby, Winifred, Letters to a Friend, edited by Jean McWilliam and Alice Holtby, London: Collins, and New York: Macmillan, 1938 Housman, Laurence (editor), War Letters of Fallen Englishmen, London: Gollancz, and New York: Dutton, 1930 James, C.L.R., Special Delivery: The Letters of C.L.R. James to Constance Webb, 1939–1948, edited by Anna Grimshaw, Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1996 Johnson, R.W., review of Thomas Hodgkin: Letters from Africa in London Review of Books, 22 / 24 (14 December 2000): 30–31

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Jolly, James and Estelle Kohler (editors), Gay Letters, London: Marginalia Press, 1995 Jolly, Margaretta (editor), Dear Laughing Motorbyke: Letters from Women Welders in the Second World War, London: Scarlet Press, 1997 Jones, Constance, The Love of Friends: An Anthology of Gay and Lesbian Letters to Friends and Lovers, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997 Joyce, James, Letters of James Joyce, 3 vols, new edition with corrections, edited by Stuart Gilbert and Richard Ellmann, New York: Viking Press, 1966 Joyce, James, James Joyce’s Letters to Sylvia Beach, 1921–1940, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987 Kauffman, Linda S., Special Delivery: Epistolary Modes in Modern Fiction, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 Kermode, Frank and Anita Kermode (editors), The Oxford Book of Letters, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995 Larkin, Philip, Selected Letters of Philip Larkin 1940–1985, edited by Anthony Thwaite, London and Boston: Faber, 1992 Lawrence, D.H., The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence, edited by Harry Thornton Moore, London: Heinemann, and New York: Viking Press, 1962 Lidderdale, Jane and Mary Nicholson, Dear Miss Weaver, London: Faber, and New York: Viking Press, 1970 Luhan, Mabel Dodge, et al., Some Letters Concerning D. H. Lawrence: From Mabel Dodge Luhan, Dorothy Brett and Frieda Lawrence to Eliot Fay, Fallbrook, California: Vance Gerry / Weather Bird Press, 1978 MacDiarmid, Hugh, The Letters of Hugh MacDiarmid, edited by Alan Norman Bold, London: Hamish Hamilton, and Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984 MacDonogh, Steve and Article 19, The Rushdie Letters: Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Write, Dingle: Brandon Books, and Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press Mansfield, Katherine, The Letters and Journals of Katherine Mansfield: A Selection, edited by C.K. Stead, London: Allen Lane, 1977 Mansfield, Katherine, The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, edited by Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott, 4 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984–96 Mansfield, Katherine and John Middleton Murry, Letters between Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry, edited by Cherry A. Hankin, London: Virago Press, 1988 Marlowe, Louis, Welsh Ambassadors: Powys Lives and Letters, London: Chapman and Hall, 1936; reprinted, London: Bertram Rota, 1971 Naipaul, V.S., Letters between a Father and Son, London and New York: Little Brown, 1999 Orwell, George, The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, 4 vols, edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, London: Secker and Warburg, and New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1968 Payne, Karen (editor), Between Ourselves: Letters between Mothers and Daughters 1750–1982, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983; London: Picador, 1984 Petrie, Helen, “Writing in Cyberspace: A Study of the Uses, Style and Content of Email”, www.netinvestigations.net Picardie, Ruth, Before I Say Goodbye, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998 Pound, Ezra and Ford Madox Ford, Pound / Ford: The Story of a Literary Friendship: The Correspondence between Ezra Pound and Ford Madox Ford and Their Writings about Each Other, edited by Brita Lindberg-Seyersted, London: Faber, and New York: New Directions, 1982 Rhys, Jean, Jean Rhys Letters, 1931–1966, edited by Francis Wyndham and Diana Melly, London: André Deutsch, 1984 Sackville-West, Vita, The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, edited by Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska, London: Hutchinson, 1984, and New York: William Morrow, 1985 Slate, Ruth and Eva Slawson, Dear Girl: The Diaries and Letters of Two Working Women 1897–1917, edited by Tierl Thompson, London: Women’s Press, 1987 Spender, Stephen, Letters to Christopher: Stephen Spender’s Letters to Christopher Isherwood, 1929–1939, with “The Line of the

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Branch”, Two Thirties Journals, edited by Lee Bartlett, Santa Barbara, California: Black Sparrow Press, 1980 Spooner, M. and K. Yancey, “Postings on a Genre of Email”, College Composition and Communication, 47 / 2 (1996): 252–78 Stimpson, Catherine, “The Female Sociograph: The Theater of Virginia Woolf’s Letters” in The Female Autograph, edited by Domna C. Stanton and Jeanine Parisier Plottel, New York: New York Literary Forum, 1984 Stopes, Marie, Dear Dr. Stopes: Sex in the 1920s, edited by Ruth E. Hall, London: André Deutsch, 1978; New York: Penguin, 1981 Trefusis, Violet Keppel, Violet to Vita: The Letters of Violet Trefusis to Vita Sackville-West, edited by Mitchell Alexander Leaska and John Phillips, London: Methuen, 1989; New York: Penguin Books, 1991 Warner, Sylvia Townsend, Selected Letters, edited by William Maxwell, London: Viking Penguin, 1982 Warner, Sylvia Townsend and David Garnett, Sylvia and David: The Townsend Warner / Garnett Letters, edited by Richard Garnett, London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994 White, T.H. and David Garnett, The White–Garnett Letters, London: Jonathan Cape, 1968 Wood, James, review of Letters between a Father and a Son by V.S. Naipaul, London Review of Books, 21 / 22 (1999): 25–27 Woolf, Virginia, Three Guineas, London: Hogarth Press, 1936 Woolf, Virginia, “The Humane Art”, New Statesman and Nation (8 June 1940): 726 Woolf, Virginia, “A Letter to a Young Poet” in her Collected Essays, vol. 2, London: Hogarth Press, 1966; New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1967 (written 1932) Woolf, Virginia, “Modern Letters” in her Collected Essays, vol. 2, London: Hogarth Press, 1966; New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1967 (written 1930) Woolf, Virginia, The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 6 vols, edited by Nigel Nicolson, with Joanne Trautmann Banks, London: Hogarth Press, and New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975–80 Woolf, Virginia, Congenial Spirits: Selected Letters of Virginia Woolf, edited by Joanne Trautman Banks, London: Hogarth Press, 1989 Woolf, Virginia, “Dorothy Osborne’s Letters” in her A Woman’s Essays, edited by Rachel Bowlby, Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 1992 Woolf, Virginia, “Memories of a Working Women’s Guild” in her A Woman’s Essays, edited by Rachel Bowlby, Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 1992 Yates, Simeon, “Computer-Mediated Communication: The Future of the Letter?” in Letter Writing as a Social Practice, edited by David Barton and Nigel Hall, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2000 Yeats, W.B., The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, 3 vols to date, edited by John Kelly and Eric Domville, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1986–97

Brittain, Vera

1893–1970

English lecturer, journalist, and autobiographer Vera Brittain’s autobiographical works include Testament of Experience (1957), which recounts her life as a mature woman, and Testament of Friendship (1940), which is an account of her friendship with the writer Winifred Holtby. But Brittain’s reputation as an autobiographer rests largely on the success of Testament of Youth (1933), a work that has been described as “the war book of the women of England” and is still the bestknown account of World War I written from a woman’s perspective. The war years, during which Brittain interrupted her studies at Oxford to volunteer as a nurse in Malta and France, occupy about a third of Testament of Youth. The early sections of the autobiography are devoted to Brittain’s childhood in Derbyshire in northern England and her struggle to be

allowed to leave home to go to university. The final sections of the book deal with her return to Oxford University, the beginning of her deep friendship with Winifred Holtby, and her meeting with the academic George Catlin, who was to become her husband. The power and poignancy of the book owe much to the contrast between the naivety and innocence of the young Vera Brittain and the extremities of suffering to which she was subjected when hardly more than a girl. Testament of Youth is a spirited feminist attempt to inscribe women into the history of World War I. The autobiography is illuminating on the role played in that war by Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurses like Vera Brittain and the conflict of loyalties confronting a woman torn between her responsibilities as a nurse serving abroad and as a daughter with a family at home. In Testament of Experience Brittain relates how she studied the war memoirs of Edmund Blunden, Siegfried Sassoon, and Robert Graves. She saw “things other than they have seen, and some of the things they perceive I see differently”. Her aims in Testament of Youth were to make her story “as truthful as history but as readable as fiction” and to speak “not for those in high places, but for my own generation of obscure young women”. Brittain took exception to the representation of women as “suffering wives and mothers, or callous parasites or mercenary prostitutes” by the men who wrote memoirs of World War I. Her ambition was to write “the epic of the women who went to the war”. However, surprisingly Testament of Youth contains many references to famous people but very few to writing about the war by women writers although Brittain was certainly aware of such works. She also attempts to assess the general significance of the war years. Testament of Youth is informed throughout by a romantic concept of war as a locus of heroic acts. Brittain was fascinated by the ideal of heroism, and it was important to her that the two men she loved most, her brother and her fiancé, displayed valour as they met their deaths. Her autobiography is an eloquent tribute to the qualities of the “lost generation”. The romantic and elegaic tones of Testament of Youth are bound up with memories of Brittain’s fiancé Roland Leighton, her brother Edward Brittain, and a close friend Victor Richardson. Like many memoirs of World War I, Testament of Youth is situated on the margins of the literary and the historical. Paul Fussell notes in his The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) that the special qualities of such memoirs are often overlooked “because too few readers have attended to their fictional character, preferring to confound them with ‘documentary’ or ‘history’”. Testament of Youth deploys many of the techniques of fiction, using graphic characterization, suspense, direct presentation of scenes, and arrangement of incidents in order to emphasize the drama of the young woman’s situation. By stressing her emotional responses and interpreting public events primarily in terms of their immediate impact on her life, Brittain evokes the sympathy of the reader and constructs a role for herself that is analogous to the heroine of a novel rather than to the narrator of a work of history who is abstracted from the processes that are described. The autobiography possesses the authority of the personal memoir without the injunction of a historical account, which is expected to subsume opinions and impressions gained through first-hand experience in a higher level of generality. Thus, for example, Brittain notes that she has

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“never been able to visualise Haig as the colossal blunderer, the self-deceived optimist, of the Somme massacre in 1916”. Testament of Youth ends with Brittain’s return to an England in which the gap between the generation whose lives have been radically changed by the war and those too young to have experienced it appears to be unbridgeable. Mary Joannou Biography Vera Mary Brittain. Born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England, 29 December 1893. Her father was a paper manufacturer. Grew up in Macclesfield, Cheshire, and Buxton, Derbyshire. Educated at St Monica’s School, Kingswood, Surrey. Won open scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford, 1914. Interrupted degree studies in 1915 to serve as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse during World War I, caring for wounded soldiers. Served in France, London, and Malta. Resumed studies at Somerville College, 1919–21. Met Winifred Holtby at Oxford, 1919. Active in feminist Six Point Group, 1920s. Married the political philosopher George Catlin, 1925: one son and one daughter (Shirley Williams, the future Labour Cabinet minister and then co-founder of the SDP [Social Democrat Party]). Stayed in England, writing and lecturing, while Catlin worked in the US for most of the year. first book, Testament of Youth (1933), became an immediate bestseller. Joined Peace Pledge Union, 1936. Spoke at many pacifist meetings and contributed to pacifist publications during the 1930s. Attacked for publicly denouncing Britain’s saturation bombing of Germany during World War II. Wrote Testament of Friendship (1940), a biography of Winifred Holtby, who died in 1935. Became prominent supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), the United Nations, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1950s. Travelled extensively throughout the world conducting lecture tours, including in the Nordic countries, 1945; Germany, 1947; India and Pakistan, 1949–50 and 1963. Published Testament of Experience, 1957. Chaired the board of the journal Peace News, 1958 –64. Addressed the University of Natal Jubilee Conference in South Africa, 1960. Died in London, 29 March 1970.

Selected Writings Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900–1925, 1933 Testament of Friendship: The Story of Winifred Holtby, 1940 Testament of Experience: An Autobiographical Story of the Years 1925–1950, 1957 Selected Letters of Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain (1920–1935), edited by Brittain and Geoffrey Handley-Taylor, 1960 Chronicle of Youth: The War Diary, 1913–1917, edited by Alan Bishop with Terry Smart, 1981 Chronicle of Friendship: Diary of the Thirties, 1932–1939, edited by Alan Bishop, 1986 Wartime Chronicle: Diary 1939–1945, edited by Alan Bishop and Y. Aleksandra Bennett Letters from a Lost Generation: The First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends: Roland Leighton, Edward Brittain, Victor Richardson, Geoffrey Thurlow, edited by Alan Bishop and Mark Bostridge, 1999

Further Reading Anderson, Linda R., Women and Autobiography in the Twentieth Century: Remembered Futures, New York: Prentice Hall, 1997 Bailey, Hilary, Vera Brittain: The Story of the Woman Who Wrote Testament of Youth, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987 Berry, Paul and Alan Bishop (editors), Testament of a Generation: The Journalism of Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby, London: Virago, 1985 Berry, Paul and Mark Bostridge, Vera Brittain: A Life, London: Chatto and Windus, 1995 Gorham, Deborah, Vera Brittain: A Feminist Life, Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1996 Joannou, Maroula, “Vera Britain’s Testament of Youth Revisited”, Literature and History, 2/2 (1993): 46–72

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Kennard, Jean E., Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby: A Working Partnership, Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1989 Layton, Lynne, “Vera Brittain’s Testament(s)” in Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, edited by Margaret Randolph Higonnet et al., New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 1987 Mellown, Muriel , “Vera Brittain, Feminist in a New Age (1893–1970)” in Feminist Theorists: Three Centuries of Key Women Thinkers, edited by Dale Spender, London: The Women’s Press, and New York: Pantheon, 1983 Panichas, George A. (editor), Promise of Greatness: The War of 1914–1918, London: Cassell, and New York: John Day, 1968 Rintala, Martin, “Chronicler of a Generation: Vera Brittain’s Testament”, Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 12 (1984): 23–35 Shaw, Marion, “‘A Noble Relationship’: Friendship, Biography and Autobiography in the Writings of Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby” in The Representation of the Self in Women’s Autobiography, edited by Vita Fortunati and Gabriella Morisco, Bologna: University of Bologna, 1993 Tylee, Claire M., The Great War and Women’s Consciousness: Images of Militarism and Womanhood in Women’s Writings 1914–1964, London: Macmillan, and Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990

Buddhism and Life Writing Life writing in Buddhist culture is not conceived on the basis of the individual in the Western sense, for an individual life is always regarded as one of many lives and is usually connected to a probable past life (which might not even have been human) as well as a future life. It has consisted primarily of accounts of the biography of the Buddha (c. 563–483 bce) and his disciples. These usually provide an explanation of the karmic consequences of good and evil deeds with reference to the previous lives of individuals. Literally referred to as birth stories (jƒtakas), the narratives often draw on oral and folk literature and have been composed in Sanskrit, Pƒli, Tibetan, and Chinese languages as well as the vernacular languages throughout south, southeast, and east Asia. The biographies of Gotama Buddha, which appear in texts such as the Nidƒnakathƒ’ (1877; The Story of the Lineage), the Lalita Vistara (1853–77; Lalita Vistara, or Memoirs of the Early Life of S´akya Siñha), and the Mahƒvastu (1882–97; Mahƒvastu) begin with his birth, describe his youth and renunciation of lay life, his ascetic practices leading to the enlightenment episode, and end with his ministry. Such apparently incomplete biographies are also found in the canonical Vinayapi¤ak.am (1879–87; Vinaya Texts) of several schools of Buddhism and have led scholars such as Erich Frauwallner to argue for the existence of an earlier and fuller account of the biographies which might end with the death of the Buddha and the councils. Biographical accounts of the Buddha, while extending to past lives, also include events transpiring after his demise. The Nidƒnakathƒ, for example, begins with the story of the future Gotama during the time of the previous Buddha, D¡pan˙kara; and in the Buddhavam . sa (1882; The Buddhavam . sa and the Cariyƒpitaka) Gotama relates encounters between himself in previous lives and 24 previous Buddhas, thus emphasizing his participation in a lineage of Buddhas. In the Mahƒvamsa (1837; The Great Chronicle) and the Jinakƒlamƒl¡pakaran. am . (1962;

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The Sheaf of Garlands of the Epochs of the Conqueror) Gotama in previous lives is associated with kings, thereby underlining his royal lineage. As evidenced in texts such as the Th›pavam . sa (1935; The Legend of the Topes) and the Pa¤hamasambodhikathƒ [1962; The Account of the Foremost and Highest Enlightenment], Gotama’s biography continues after his demise in the accounts of his relics, which allegedly evoke the presence of the Buddha himself. The largest single collection of jƒtakas in the Pƒli language includes 547 accounts of lives of the Bodhisattva or former Buddha in which he fulfils to perfection a Buddhist virtue, pƒramitƒ. These narratives generally include a story of the present, a story of the past with one or more verses, a commentary on the verses, and a concluding section. Considered by scholars as comprising the oldest part of the text, the verses, which are the only canonical portion of the collection, are alleged to date to pre-Buddhist times. The original collection of the jƒtakas, the Jƒtaka¤¤hakathƒ [Jƒtaka Commentary], written in Pƒli in the 1st century bce, was later translated into Sinhala. This translation, which is now lost, was then translated into an extant Pƒli version, the Jƒtakatthavan. n. anƒ (translated as The Jƒtaka, or, Stories of the Buddhas Former Births) in the 5th century ce. The didactic character of the jƒtakas, each of which instantiates a Buddhist moral, provides material that is used in sermons and rituals to this day. The longest and most renowned, the Vessantara Jƒtaka, for example, illustrates the virtue of generosity. The story of the present contextualizes the jƒtaka by recounting an incident in Gotama’s time. The story of the past, including a prose section and 700 verses, explains how the Bodhisattva as a generous king gives away the wealth of his kingdom, and later his wife and two children. Eventually, he is reinstated as king and his wife and children are returned to him. The concluding section identifies the main characters of the past tale with individuals in the time of Gotama Buddha. In Thailand, attending a complete recitation of the Vessantara Jƒtaka is alleged to ensure a good rebirth and this jƒtaka has become central in ritual contexts. Shorter jƒtakas in the Pƒli Jƒtaka collection might include only one or two verses. In these jƒtakas the Bodhisattva, often the protagonist, may also take the form of a bird or animal. Some scholars, contesting the particularly “Buddhist” nature of certain jƒtakas which appear to be pan-Indian, argue that they are not “Buddhist” in nature. Yet, Buddhist texts such as the canonical Cariyƒpi¤aka (translated in The Buddhavam . sa and the Cariyƒpi¤aka) clearly attest to their identity as Buddhist accounts. Verses from the Jƒtaka collection are found in other important Buddhist texts such as the Dhammapada (also translated as Dhammapada), and scenes from the jƒtakas are also widely depicted in st›pas (funeral monuments containing a relic of the Buddha or a Buddhist saint) and Buddhist temples. St›pas such as Sƒñch¡ (1st century bce), Bhƒrhut (2nd century bce), and Borobudur (8th century ce) portray events from the jƒtakas, although the possible didactic function of these visual depictions has been debated by scholars. Texts such as the Theragƒthƒ and the Ther¡gƒthƒ (translated in Psalms of the Early Buddhists), and the Apadƒna [1925–27; Glorious Deeds] depict accounts of the disciples of the Buddha. The Theragƒthƒ, composed of 1279 verses attributed to 264 theras (elder monks), portrays the attempts of theras to realize

the goal of enlightenment. The Ther¡gƒthƒ, which includes 522 verses uttered by more than a hundred ther¡s (elder nuns), expresses the lay experiences of the ther¡s and their aspirations for enlightenment. Biographical verses of 547 theras and 40 ther¡s from the Buddha’s time, describing one or more of their previous births, are also recorded in the Pƒli Apadƒna. Comparable versions of the apadƒnas are known to exist in Tibetan, Chinese, and Sanskrit literature. Contemporary Bhuddist life writing focuses on renowned Buddhist monks such as Paññƒnanda in Sri Lanka,$cƒn Man in Thailand, and the lay teacher U Ba Khin in Burma. Although the tradition of oral biography has long existed, the writing of modern biographies began only in the 19th and 20th centuries. Such written biographies, generally recorded by disciples of the subject, attempt to provide contemporary role models and legitimize a teacher and his lineage. In Thailand, the writing of biographies of renowned teachers is commissioned by a cremation committee and is central in funerary rituals. These biographies, often set in both a local and national context, provide important materials for research in life writing, history, and religion. Nirmala S. Salgado See also Indian Subcontinent: Early Life Writing; Thailand

Further Reading As´vaghosa, The Buddhacarita or Acts of the Buddha, edited and translated by E.H. Johnston, Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1935–36 Carrithers, Michael, The Forest Monks of Sri Lanka: An Anthropological and Historical Study, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983 Cowell, E.B. (editor), The Jƒtaka or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births, translated from the Pƒli by various hands, 7 vols, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1895–1913; several subsequent reprints Cummings, Mary, The Lives of the Buddha in the Art and Literature of Asia, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1982 Cunningham, Sir Alexander, The St›pa of Bharhut: A Buddhist Monument Ornamented with Numerous Sculptures Illustrative of Buddhist Legend and History in the Third Century bc, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, and London: Allen, 1879 Dharmas÷na, Thera, Jewels of the Doctrine: Stories of the Saddharma Ratnƒvaliya, translated by Ranjini Obeyesekere, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991 Foucher, Alfred, La Vie du Bouddha d’après les textes et les monuments de l’Inde, Paris: Payot, 1949 Frauwallner, Erich, The Earliest Vinaya and the Beginnings of Buddhist Literature, Rome: Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1956 Keyes, Charles F., “Death of Two Buddhist Saints in Thailand”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Thematic Studies, 48 / 3–4 (1982): 149–80 Khoroche, Peter (translator), Once the Buddha was a Monkey: Arya S´›ra’s Jƒtakamƒlƒ, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989 Marshall, Sir John and Alfred Foucher, The Monuments of Sƒñch¡, 3 vols, London: Probsthain, 1940; Calcutta: Government of India Press, 1947 Mitra, Rajendralala (translator), The Lalita-Vistara: Memoirs of the Early Life of S´akya Siñha, Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1881–86; reprinted, Delhi: Sri Satguru, 1998 Murcott, Susan, The First Buddhist Women: Translations and Commentaries on the Ther¡gƒthƒ, Berkeley, California: Parallax Press, 1991 Norman, K.R., Pƒli Literature, Including the Canonical Literature in Prakrit and Sanskrit of all the H¡nayƒna Schools of Buddhism, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983 Reynolds, Frank E., “The Many Lives of the Buddha: A Study of

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Sacred Biography and Theravada Tradition” in The Biographical Process: Studies in the History and Psychology of Religion, edited by Reynolds and Donald Capps, The Hague: Mouton, 1976 Radhakrishnan, N., “Contemporary Indian Biography” in Life Writing from the Pacific Rim: Essays from Japan, China, Indonesia, India, and Siam, with a Psychological Overview, edited by Stanley Schab and George Simson, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997 Reynolds, Frank E. and Charles Hallisey, entry on Buddha in The Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Mircea Eliade, New York: Macmillan, 1987 Rhys Davids, Caroline (translator), Psalms of the Early Buddhists, London: Frowde for the Pali Text Society, 1909–13 Schober, Juliane (editor), Sacred Biography in the Buddhist Traditions of South and Southeast Asia, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997 Sivaraksa, Sulak, “Biography and Buddhism in Thailand”, Biography, 17 / 1 (1994): 2–19 Sivaraksa, Sulak, “Biography and Buddhism in Siam” in Life Writing from the Pacific Rim: Essays from Japan, China, Indonesia, India, and Siam, with a Psychological Overview, edited by Stanley Schab and George Simson, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997 Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja, The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets: A Study in Charisma, Hagiography, Sectarianism, and Millenial Buddhism, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984 Thomas, Edward J., The Life of Buddha as Legend and History, London: Paul Trench Trubner, and New York: Knopf, 1927; revised edition, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1960

Bulgaria Life writing in Bulgaria developed originally out of the hagiographic tradition of the Orthodox church, the translation of saints’ passionals and original descriptions of their lives beginning immediately after the Bulgarians’ conversion to Christianity during 864–66. Notes in the margins of liturgical books and local and family chronicles written by priests, which appeared after the 16th–17th centuries, could also be considered early life writing. During the Middle Ages, biography was present in eulogies, in sermons for saints’ feast days, and on the occasion of the translation of a saint’s relics. Particularly original were the passionals of the saints Ivan of Rila, Cyril and Methodios, and Kliment of Ohrid (10th–11th centuries); and Prochor of Pchin, Gavril of Lesnovo, Romil of Bdin, Ilarion of Maglen, Petka of Epivat, Philotea, and Eutimius, the last Tarnovo patriarch (11th–14th centuries). Hesychasm – a contemplative Christian doctrine of the Orthodox church of the 14th century – influenced their style. The passionals were aimed at showing how the saint reaches the ideal of holy life in his life path. They rarely mentioned the subject’s place of birth, family, or social environment, considering instead that the real birthplace was the New Jerusalem and their relatives were the divine forces. The hagiographic tradition continued throughout the period of Ottoman rule in Bulgaria (the end of the 14th century to 1878), and a principal subject was the lives of Christian martyrs, such as St Georgi the New of Sofia and St Nikola of Sofia. The first autobiographical writings were written by monks in the second half of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century – a time of Bulgarian national renaissance – namely the autobiography of Partenius Pavlovich (1695–1761) and that of Sophronius, the Vratsa bishop (1739–1813). The title of

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Sophronius’s autobiography, “Life and Sufferings of Sophronius the Sinner”, and part of the manuscript of “The Orthodox Faith Confession”, point to the connection with passional literature and the confessional tradition (all titles in this essay rendered in English equivalents). In the first half of the 19th century the first diary appeared – that of Neophit, a monk of the Rila monastery and a teacher in the first secular Bulgarian school. These manuscripts were published considerably later. The publishing of autobiographical writings began in the second half of the 19th century. This was the time when secular schools for boys (1820s onwards) and for girls (after 1840) were established, and translated and original autobiographies often became part of the curriculum. In the second half of the 19th century, teachers’ autobiographies and memoirs of the participants in the Russian-Turkish wars and the Bulgarian liberation movement appeared. In 1876 the first female autobiography by the 20-year-old teacher and revolutionary Rayna Popgeorgieva appeared. It was published in Russia (in Russian). Other Bulgarian memoirs were also published in foreign languages such as Greek and Romanian. Bulgarian autobiography had not yet found its own voice at this time. The preserved letters of the period – family correspondence, letters between teachers and pupils, and others – provide evidence of a dominating influence of modern European literature including the translation of biographies such as Plutarch’s Lives, the biography of Napoleon Bonaparte, and Daniel Defoe’s fictional autobiography The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. A more confident sense of a Bulgarian identity appeared after the Liberation from Ottoman rule (1878) when the number of life writings increased rapidly. Memoirs written on different occasions – for anniversaries, jubilees, etc. – appeared. The most significant work of that time was “Notes on the Bulgarian Uprising” (3 vols, 1884–92; selection as Extracts from Notes on the Bulgarian Uprising) by Zahari Stoyanov, the famous journalist, politician, and revolutionary – the autobiographical confessions are attractively interwoven with social descriptions and dramatic and humorous narration. However, dozens of autobiographical writings of politicians and educators, etc., were published, notably: “Characteristics of the Life and Notes of Atanas Ivanov (Former Teacher)” in 1885, “My Life Writing, Which I Started in Bolgrad, Besarabia in 1868” (by Raycho Blaskov, a teacher), the “Autobiography of Yurdan Nenov” in 1890, and “Memoirs of My Life” (by Anastasia Tosheva, a female teacher, 1911). The Balkan wars (1912–13) and World War I (1914–18) provoked the next big wave of published memoirs. The first publications appeared during the wars, and they continued to be published over the next decades; they included the letters and diaries of soldiers, officers, prisoners of war, and refugees. During the 1920s and the 1930s the writing of memoirs and autobiographies was accepted as a natural expression of “the need to supply some information of interesting moments from Bulgarian social and private life”, as Mikhail Arnaudov wrote in the first study of the Bulgarian and European biographical tradition. During the 1920s the philologist Lyubomir Miletich collected numerous personal memoirs of participants in the Macedonian movement which he published in nine volumes. After World War II the communist regime set a strict control upon memoir publishing. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s

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most published memoirs were of communist movement participants under titles such as “Life for the Party” by Varban Varbanov (1978), “Under the Flag of the Party” by Shterju Atanssov (1962), “In the Lines of the Class” by Nikola Aleksiev (1977), and “Hard and Glorious Past Autobiography” by Dona Bogatinova (1973). Among more than 600 such autobiographies, the memoirs of the guerrilla commander Slavcho Transki, “Not Long Ago” (1957), are considered to be the most interesting. A number of autobiographies of the representatives of the former intellectual elite were also published, including Simeon Radev, Konstantin Kostantinov, and Hristo Brazitsov. During the 1970s and the 1980s autobiographical interest flourished, many old memoirs were republished, autobiographical essay writing developed (Toncho Zhechev, Vera Mutafchieva, Georgi Danailov, and others), and critical discussions of the genre appeared in the literary and historical press. The first attempts to publish some ordinary people’s memories appeared out of the political and intellectual establishment, for example “My Life in the Village of Pushevo” by Rada Langasova (1986) and “Flood” by Julia Popvasislieva (1988), which demonstrated the democratization of the autobiographical tradition. The political character of Bulgarian autobiographical writings continued even after the demise of the communist regime in 1989, for example in the publication of the autobiographies of former communist leaders, including Todor Zhivkov. But a more popular and academic interest is also developing, with two new centres for collecting autobiographies and life studies established in Sofia and Blagoevgrad, and three oral-history conferences held on the occasion of the first publication of oral autobiographies of Bulgarian Muslims, “I Want People Always to Be Nice to Me” by Petar Vodenicharov and others (1998). Furthermore, autobiographical studies are now included in the university curricula of St Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia and Neophit Rilski University in Blagoevgrad. Kristina Popova Further Reading Arnaudov, Mikhail, Bulgarski memoari [Bulgarian Memoirs], Sofia: 1938 “Biografichnijat metod” [The Biographical Method], special issue of Bulgarski Folklor, 6 (1994): 1–80 Dimitrova, Snezhana, “‘Ma Guerre n’est pas la vôtre ...’: la Grande Guerre et ses vécus immédiats articulés dans les lettres, journaux, mémoirs (1915–1918) des participants” in La Grande Guerre 1914–1918: 80 ans d’historiographie et de représentations, Montpellier: (publisher?), 2000 Grigorova, Ljudmila, Avtobiografi i tvorchestvo [Autobiographies and the Creativity Process], Sofia: Nar Mladezh, 1986 Miletich, Lyubomir, Materiali po istorijta na Makedonskoto osvoboditelno dvijenie, vols 1–9, Sofia: Makedonski Naucheu Institut, 1925–28 Petrova, Ivanka (editor), Istoriiata na Bulgariia v memoarnata literatura, bibliografski ukazatel [Bulgarian History in the Literature of Memoirs, Index of Bibliography], 3 vols, Sofia: Nar Biblioteka ‘Kiril i Metodi’, 1985–89 Popova, Kristina, “Nobody Spoke about Studying at Home” in Plurality and Individuality: Autobiographical Cultures in Europe, edited by Christa Hämmerle, Vienna: IFK, 1995 Vodenicharov, Petar, Kristina Popova and Anastasiia Pashova, Iskam chovekut da e vinagi priiaten i da si pravim moabet: rechevo povedenie i zhizneni svetove na bulgari mokhamedani ot Gotsedelchevsko i Razlozhko: avtobiografii i izsledvaniia, Blagoevgrad: Sanra Buk Trust

Bunyan, John

1628–1688

English preacher, prose writer, and autobiographer Best known for his allegorical fiction Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), John Bunyan is also noteworthy as author of what many consider the most powerful of Puritan autobiographies, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666). Just as Pilgrim’s Progress chronicles Christian’s journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, so Grace Abounding recounts the spiritual trajectory of Bunyan’s own life, from a rather pagan youth, through a protracted conversion experience in the 1650s, and to the time of the writing, at which the author, approaching the age of 40, was in his sixth year of imprisonment for refusing to desist from preaching at nonconformist meetings. Even this brief summary reveals that Bunyan was working in the tradition of St Paul and St Augustine, both of whose writings establish youthful profligacy or rebellion in order to authenticate and dramatize an eventual Christian conversion. While intensely personal, Bunyan’s autobiography clearly grew out of not only the beliefs but also the narrative practices of the separatist Protestant community of mid-17th-century England. These congregations voted on acceptance of an individual into membership only after hearing an oral account of the candidate’s conversion, which provided evidence of salvation. Bunyan was at the time of the writing a well-known and influential preacher and thus had no need to establish his election; the account was offered, rather, to demonstrate God’s ability to use the commonest instrument and to encourage readers who doubt their own salvation. In publishing his life Bunyan was participating, moreover, in the growth of the spiritual autobiography as a Puritan genre since its beginnings in the 1640s. As is typical of this genre, Bunyan’s narrative has two thrusts: firstly to demonstrate signs of Providential care of his soul, seen in early close escapes from death and, later, in protection from heresy (e.g. the teaching of the Ranters) and despair; secondly to reveal the tremendous struggle of the soul in the process of searching for evidence of salvation. Grace Abounding is chronologically comprehensive, beginning with an account of the author’s family origins; and yet even here the spiritual purpose is pronounced: In this my relation of the merciful working of God upon my Soul, it will not be amiss, if in the first place, I do, in a few words, give you a hint of my pedigree, and manner of bringing up; that thereby the goodness and bounty of God towards me, may be the more advanced and magnified before the sons of men. The autobiography is structured by the sequence of spiritual stages or events in the author’s life, as shown below (although only the final two of these stages are marked in the text as discrete sections with headings): (i) Childhood: poor family but schooled in literacy; early sinful tendancies, especially “cursing, swearing, lying, and blaspheming”; escape from drowning. (ii) Marriage and exposure to religion through wife’s pious books and godly father, which “did beget within me some desires to Religion”; begins attending church but

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(iii)

(iv)

(v)

(vi)

continues usual pleasures, most avidly the pursuit of sports and gambling on the sabbath. Struggle for assurance of election, following realization that his church-going has been external religion only; motivated not only by scripture heard at church but also by testimony of several old women of the church about a “new birth”; here begins long stretch of oscillation of hope and despair. Experience of assurance of salvation (though not without some remaining fear of own sinful nature) through repeated instances in which he hears or suddenly thinks of a scriptural message of hope that seems to speak directly to him. “A brief Account of the Author’s Call to the Work of the Ministry”, on his taking up the function of the preacher, about five years after knowledge of salvation, especially to country audiences, who “came in to hear the Word by the hundreds”; tells of opposition by the religious establishment (Presbyterian, at this time), including attempts to discredit his ministry with rumours that he is “a Witch, a Jesuit, a Highway-man, and the like.” “A brief Account of the Author’s Imprisonment”, recounting his arrest and imprisonment upon the Restoration of 1660 as “an Upholder and Maintainer of unlawful Assemblies and Conventicles, and for not conforming to the National Worship of the Church of England”; writes of his spiritual motives for refusing to comply and thus remaining in prison, even at great costs to the physical welfare of his wife and children.

It is the third section that dominates the autobiography, both in the space devoted to it and in the dramatic force of the competing psychological states of hope and despair. Bunyan recalls this period as one in which the discovery of signs of God’s election of his soul, usually in the form of the discovery of a Biblical passage seemingly meant personally for him, would repeatedly give way to new doubts about the possibility of salvation for him. Scholars have found in this hermetic oscillation the Puritan practice of “progressively opening and re-examining their lives” (Swaim, 1993) and, in its darkest aspect, a persistent sense of “agonized isolation” stemming from the Calvinist doctrine of reprobation (Stachniewski, 1991). It is the strength of Bunyan’s spiritual autobiography that this protracted looping sequence is so charged with urgency and sincerity that it does not strike the reader as formulaic. The reader of Grace Abounding will find particularly striking the absence for long stretches of any references to events or circumstances of Bunyan’s life not directly bearing upon his spiritual progress. Of his marriage we learn little other than the devout influence of his father-in-law; his work as a tinker goes unmentioned except for one vague reference to his “vocation”. The entire material world is felt mainly through Bunyan’s homely metaphors for spiritual things, e.g. religious doubt described as lying on his mind “like a Horseleach at the vein”. The larger cultural world is likewise elided by the lack of reference to the tumultuous events of the Puritan revolt of the 1640s and 1650s, even of the author’s own service in the Parliamentarian army (Ranters and Quakers are mentioned only as theological dangers). Cleared of history and culture, the auto-

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biographer inhabits an enclosed world peopled almost exclusively by spiritual forces (God and Satan) and Biblical figures. While figures that reveal the salvational narrative of scripture – David, Peter, Paul, etc. – proliferate, Bunyan reports being haunted by two very different figures, those of Esau and Judas, whose acts of selling their birthrights he feels almost doomed to repeat. Although God ultimately quells these doubts and assures Bunyan’s soul of salvation, this comfort is deferred with such frequency and near-perversity that it is the anxiety that gives the bulk of the narrative its dominant tone. Stephen M. Adams Biography Born in Elstow, Bedfordshire, England; baptized 30 November 1628. Educated at the village school in Elstow and possibly at Bedford Grammar School. His mother and sister died when he was aged 15; his father remarried. Served in the Parliamentarian army during the civil war, stationed at Newport Pagnell, 1644–46. Practised the family trade of tinker or brazier in Elstow and the surrounding area from 1646. Married in 1648 or 1649 (wife died c.1658): two sons and two daughters. Joined a nonconformist (Particular Open Communion Baptist) congregation at St John’s church, Bedford, c.1653. Moved to Bedford, 1655, and began to preach. Ordained, 1657, and soon became famous as a travelling preacher. Indicted for preaching at Eaton Socon, Bedfordshire, 1658. Married Elizabeth, 1659: one son and one daughter. Arrested for preaching without a licence and imprisoned in Bedford Gaol for refusing to give up his activities, 1660–72 (released for short periods from 1668). Wrote several books in prison, including his spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666). Pardoned under Charles II’s Declaration of Indulgence, 1672, and was licensed to preach: appointed pastor of St John’s church, Bedford. Imprisoned for six months after the annulment of the Declaration of Indulgence, 1676; began work on The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678–84). Returned to his congregation in Bedford after his release from prison. Also preached throughout Bedfordshire and beyond. Chaplain to the Lord Mayor of London, 1688. Died in London, 31 August 1688.

Selected Writings Bunyan, John, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, or, A Brief and Faithful Relation of the Mercy of God to His Poor Servant John Bunyan (autobiography), 1666; revised, c.1772; edited by Roger Sharrock, 1962; edited by W.R. Owens, 1987

Further Reading Beal, Rebecca S., “Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners: John Bunyan’s Pauline Epistle”, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, 21 (1981): 147–60 Carlton, Peter J., “Bunyan: Language, Convention, Authority”, English Literary History, 51 (1984): 17–32 Hawkins, Anne, “The Double Conversion in Bunyan’s Grace Abounding”, Philological Quarterly, 61 (1982): 259–76 Hill, Christopher, A Tinker and a Poor Man: John Bunyan and His Church, 1628–1688, New York: Knopf, 1989 Jagodzinski, Cecile M., Privacy and Print: Reading and Writing in Seventeenth-Century England, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999 Keeble, N.H. (editor), John Bunyan: Conventicle and Parnassus: Tercentenary essays, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988 Luxon, Thomas H., Literal Figures: Puritan Allegory and the Reformation Crisis in Representation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995 Mullett, Michael, John Bunyan in Context, Keele, Staffordshire: Keele University Press, 1996; Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1997 Nussbaum, Felicity, “‘By These Words I Was Sustained’: Bunyan’s Grace Abounding”, English Literary History, 49 (1982): 18–34 Pooley, Roger, “Spiritual Experience and Spiritual Autobiography”, Baptist Quarterly, 32 (1988): 393–402

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Stachniewski, John, The Persecutory Imagination: English Puritanism and the Literature of Religious Despair, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 Stranahan, Brainerd, “Bunyan’s Special Talent: Biblical Texts as Events in Grace Abounding and The Pilgrim’s Progress”, English Literary Renaissance, 11 (1981): 329–36 Swaim, Kathleen M., Pilgrim’s Progress, Puritan Progress: Discourses and Contexts, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993

Burney, Fanny [Frances]

1752–1840

English novelist, playwright, and diarist The journals and letters of Fanny Burney are a remarkable record of their author’s life and times. Their chronological breadth would almost guarantee their historical interest: they span over 70 years, from 1768 to 1840, and the modern scholarly edition runs to 12 volumes for the years 1791 to 1840 alone; but it is the range of Burney’s experiences and her critical insight in relating them that makes her so distinguished and valuable as a diarist. Burney’s father, Dr Charles Burney, was a successful composer and performer who moved in the highest musical, literary, and theatrical circles. As she grew up, Burney met the likes of poet Christopher Smart, actor and playwright David Garrick, painter Joshua Reynolds, and her mentor, Samuel “Daddy” Crisp, who later encouraged her to write. Her early journals refer to these and other figures, such as Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrale, with whom she developed independent friendships after the publication of her first novel, Evelina (1778). The years from 1786 to 1791, which Burney spent at court as Second Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, are also covered by the journals, as is her romance and marriage with the French émigré Alexander d’Arblay, the birth and childhood of their son, and Burney’s extraordinary adventures in middle and old age, which included witnessing the Battle of Waterloo, undergoing a mastectomy without anaesthetic, and exile in France as the wife of a French officer at a time when their two countries were at war. But Burney was more than simply a well-placed observer of the famous. She was an accomplished writer whose style was witty and assured, and whose tone could vary from the sombre and contemplative to the wickedly satirical. The published journals and letters range from brief informal notes to family and friends, to lengthy, retrospective accounts of significant episodes or periods in her life. Much of what survived the excisions and revisions of her old age, to be reconstructed by modern scholars, consists of epistles written monthly, or more frequently, to members of her family, in particular her closest sister Susanna. In these, Burney combined the personal and the public, confiding her fears and hopes for herself and her loved ones, but also providing the reader with a vivid and detailed account of meetings with other writers and with royalty, persons of state, generals, and so on. Her “Courtship Journal”, for example, is a tremulous and revealing decription of her growing ardour towards M. d’Arblay, but it also contains discussions of the contemporary political situation, which suggest that her perspective was anything but domestic.

Like all the journals, the Courtship Journal is memorable for its seemingly perfect recall of actual conversations. As a fiction writer Burney makes brilliant use of dialogue, especially to comic effect, and her journals share the novels’ ability to create character through speech. Long conversations are given verbatim, but enough is interjected by way of explanation (of context or tone) that the effect is of dramatic immediacy rather than mundanity. Burney’s celebrated abilities as a social anatomist in Evelina and its successors are evident throughout the journals, which excel in pen-portraits ranging from acerbic vignettes of brief acquaintances made in the assembly rooms at Bath and Tunbridge Wells, for example, to considered analyses of figures such as Johnson, George III, and Napoleon. Recent critical attention has focused on the tension between the personal and the private in Burney’s life writings, a tension that has also been detected in her novels, and which seems peculiar to women writers of her period. Burney began her diary in her teens, addressing it to “Miss Nobody”, since only to nobody could she write without reserve; and she continued to write in the face of considerable opposition from some of her elders. Yet her journals are rarely concerned with the very personal and have drawn disapproval from some quarters for their reticence. It seems that from the outset Burney wrote consciously, if tacitly, for an audience beyond her immediate addressees, and in later years she was careful to destroy or edit her journals to protect her family from this wider readership. Yet although modern readers may be frustrated by her discretion, it is Burney’s sense of herself as a public figure that is responsible for her fidelity history, and for to the detailed recall of persons, dialogue, and events, which makes her journals and letters so exceptional. Katherine A. Armstrong Biography Born Frances Burney in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, England, 13 June 1752. Her father was the composer and music historian Dr Charles Burney. Moved with her family to London, 1760. Brought up in literary and artistic circles, and began to write in her teens. Became an immediate celebrity with her first novel, Evelina (1778), which combined moral analysis with social satire. Member of the London literary circle of Hester Thrale, becoming a friend of Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and the actor David Garrick. Appointed Second Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, 1786; resigned appointment for health reasons and granted pension, 1791. Married a French émigré, General Alexander [Alexandre] d’Arblay, 1793 (died 1818): one son. Her third novel, Camilla (1796), was a literary failure but sold well. Lived in France, 1802–12. Published The Wanderer, the least popular of her novels, 1814. Lived in France and Brussels, 1814–15, then mainly in London. Spent the rest of her life writing and editing her father’s works. Died in London, 6 January 1840.

Selected Writings Memoirs of Dr. Burney, 3 vols, 1832 Diary and Letters 1778–1840, 7 vols, edited by Charlotte Barrett, 1842–46 The Early Diary 1768–1778, 2 vols, edited by Annie Raine Ellis, 1889; revised, 1907 The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney (Madame d’Arblay), 1791–1840, 12 vols, edited by Joyce Hemlow et al., 1972–84 Selected Letters and Journals of Fanny Burney, edited by Joyce Hemlow, 1986 The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, 1768–91, edited by Lars E. Troide et al., 1988– (3 vols to 1994)

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Further Reading Burney, Fanny, Evelina, or, The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World, edited by Edward A. Bloom, assisted by Lillian D. Bloom, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1982 Burney, Fanny, Cecilia, or, Memoirs of an Heiress, edited by Peter Sabor and Margaret Anne Doody, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988 Burney, Fanny, Camilla, or, Picture of Youth, edited by Edward A. Bloom and Lillian D. Bloom, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1972 Burney, Fanny, The Wanderer, or, Female Difficulties, edited by Margaret Anne Doody, Robert L. Mack, and Peter Sabor, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 Chisholm, Kate, Fanny Burney: Her Life 1752–1840, London: Chatto and Windus, 1998 Devlin, D.D., The Novels and Journals of Fanny Burney, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987 Gallagher, Catherine, Nobody’s Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670–1820, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994 Hemlow, Joyce, The History of Fanny Burney, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958 Hemlow, Joyce, “Letters and Journals of Fanny Burney: Establishing the Text” in Editing Eighteenth-Century Texts, edited by D.I.B. Smith, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968 Lonsdale, Roger, Dr. Charles Burney: A Literary Biography, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965; New York: Oxford University Press, 1986 Simons, Judy, Fanny Burney, London: Macmillan, 1984; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1987

Business Auto/biography The origins of business auto/biography in the English language can be traced to the 18th century. In England, the dramatic collapse of Sir John Blunt’s South Sea Company in 1720 brought financial ruin upon a British investing public, and ensured that the lives of financiers and businessmen became a subject of popular discourse. The poet Alexander Pope, himself an investor, inserted a brief biographical sketch of Blunt into his Epistle to Allen Lord Bathurst in 1735. Yet even then, business lives were usually subordinate to those in the fields of politics, adventure, and military endeavour in biographical writing. Rarely would a uniquely business-based life arouse popular interest. Only when fortunes were rapidly made, stolen, or squandered, where rights to invention were of dubious legality, or where gains were suspect, was interest provoked. The product was usually in pamphlet form, either decrying or supporting the individual, rather than in a more conventional form of life study. With the Industrial Revolution of the later 18th and 19th centuries those engineers who harnessed power for production and transportation became the heroes of their age, and so became the subjects of the first recognizable business biographies of any length. The most prominent biographer was Samuel Smiles, whose Life of George Stephenson (1857) and his three-volume Lives of the Engineers (1861–62) epitomize the genre in the mid-19th century. Despite the frequency of reference to Smiles’s work, there were others who wrote very similar volumes, such as E. Burrows’s The Triumphs of Steam, or, Stories from the Lives of Watt, Arkwright, and Stephenson (1859). Collected biographies became increasingly popular during the 19th century, and during the late 1880s and 1890s a number of competing volumes were published, such as E.R. Jones’s Heroes

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of Industry (1886) and J. Hogg’s Fortunes Made in Business (1884–87, revised 1891). From Smiles to the authors of later compendia, all revelled in describing their subjects’ ascents from rags to riches, their lives presented as triumphs over adversity in both business and private life. These men and their work were the marvels of the Victorian industrial age, and the public were naturally desirous to read stories of achievement, and to seek guidance for their own betterment. These biographical studies were invariably laudatory in tone, conveying ambition as heroic, and success as a matter of destiny for a few chosen individuals. The premature deaths of some subjects may have contributed to their heroic representation, with the suggestion that their lives were shortened by their selfless dedication to industrial progress. The subjects of business biography in this period were largely those practical men who, as consultants, engineers, or directly as businessmen, shaped the Industrial Revolution. In these lives, biographers were able to encapsulate a national pride in economic and technological development. In contrast to this eulogistic style of business biography, a more critical approach was concurrently emerging in Britain and the United States. A distinction appears to have been made between industrialists and financiers, the latter being regarded as manipulators for personal gain, irrespective of the economic good their actions may have brought. Chief among the targets were railway directors. In Britain, George Hudson (1800–71), “The Railway King”, became a popular subject, especially after his downfall over illegal dividend payments after 1848. Such was Hudson’s prominence and subsequent fall that The Times claimed in its obituary that “there was a time when not to know him was to argue one’s self unknown; now he is only a tradition”. Similarly, those in the United States who forged railway networks were often regarded as “robber barons”, those apparently unscrupulous industrialists for whom profit was paramount. The business practices of Jay Gould (1836–92) of the Union Pacific Railroad were criticized both during his lifetime and in numerous hack biographies soon after his death. Yet most business biographies still regarded their subjects with awe and reverence. The primary figures of the Industrial Revolution remained popular, and testimonial volumes, compiled to celebrate current business lives, were still common. But compared to the field of biography as a whole, business lives were still of marginal interest. The British Dictionary of National Biography (DNB), first issued in 1885, contained very few entries on business lives. (By the turn of the 21st century, this omission was being rectified in the new DNB.) In the early 20th century prominent industrialists began to write autobiographies, although in many cases their writing was more about the promotion of their business methods and ideals than a survey of their life. Henry Ford’s My Life and Work (1922) sheds little light on his life beyond his business activities: the book reasonably might be seen as an industrial explanation of the working methods employed by Ford. Andrew Carnegie appears to have intended his Autobiography (1920) to be a more genuine explanation of his conduct, but again it is not a full account of his life. Moreover, these men did not regard autobiography as a personal and confessional form: Ford had assistance from Samuel Crowther, and Carnegie’s volume is thought to be the result of hurried dictation (see Hughes). Business biography since the 1950s falls into three different categories. Collective biographies have resurfaced a century

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after their initial popularity, but now serve to contextualize the lives of prominent entrepreneurs by placing them together to draw out thematic linkages. Dictionaries of business biography have been compiled for a number of countries, facilitating study of the religious, social, and educational backgrounds of business leaders. This information has been used to bolster our understanding of the roots of entrepreneurship, and to facilitate international comparisons of business lives. Second, journalists have produced biographical studies of current business leaders. These are intended more for the general public than for an academic readership, since they concern either those whose business careers impact upon our economic existence, or those who have a public image beyond their business: scandal and financial misappropriation continue to generate public interest, as the life and death of the publishing mogul Robert Maxwell demonstrates. Third, professional historians have revisited the individual lives of business leaders from previous generations, with some forays into contemporary portraits. As well as reassessing the lives of entrepreneurs, as in The Vital Few by Jonathan Hughes (1966, expanded edition, 1986) and Maury Klein’s The Life and Legend of Jay Gould (1986), business historians have taken an interest in the anonymous salaried managers of the giant industrial enterprises of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Gourvish’s study of Mark Huish (1972), the general manager of the London & North Western Railway between 1846 and 1858, describes an important life in business, as does Charles Cheape in Strictly Business (1995), an appraisal of Walter Carpenter’s time at Du Pont and General Motors from 1919 to 1962. Scholarly reappraisals of prominent business lives have also been written for a broader market. Robert Kanigel’s The One Best Way (1997) is a fascinating and careful journey into the life of Frederick Winslow Taylor, father of scientific management (and, by inference, mass production), whose influence was paramount in the shaping of production methods and management practice in the 20th century. Niall Ferguson has shown an alternative mode of business biography by writing the history of a family. In his study of the Rothschilds, The World’s Banker (1998), he demonstrates that business biography need not limit itself to the minutiae of financial transactions or organizational form, but in some circumstances may embrace political and social history. The efforts of business historians may also contribute additional dimensions to lives previously narrated, but whose business careers may have been omitted, considered peripheral, or even unknown. Not until Harvey and Press wrote William Morris: Design and Enterprise in Victorian Britain (1991) was Morris’s business career fully appreciated, or even fully acknowledged. Previous studies of Morris had, understandably, focused almost entirely on his interests in socialism, literature, and art. Today the popular face of business auto/biography is in the plethora of books published on or by contemporary business leaders. When autobiographical, these tend to be written for the purpose of self-promotion, to raise further the profiles of business endeavours or to respond to their critics. Books such as those by Bill Gates of computer giant Microsoft, or Richard Branson of the multifaceted company Virgin, become bestsellers, competing even with popular fiction, and testifying to the enduring interest in those for whom business has brought wealth and fame. In this sense little has changed since the earliest manifestation of the genre.

Business biography has in many ways become more critical of its subjects since its 18th-century origins, but both biography and autobiography have emerged as marketing tools for use by the subjects themselves. Bias is unlikely ever to be eradicated even in the most objective study, but alternative means of observing business lives, whether through newspapers, television, or the internet, enable us to have more information today on our corporate icons than ever before. David Boughey See also Celebrity Autobiography; Celebrity and Popular Biography; Success and Life Writing

Further Reading Burrows, E., The Triumphs of Steam, or, Stories from the Lives of Watt, Arkwright, and Stephenson, London: Griffith and Farran, and New York: Nelson, 1859 Carnegie, Andrew, Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, and London: Constable, 1920 Cheape, Charles W., Strictly Business: Walter Carpenter at Du Pont and General Motors, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995 Davenport-Hines, R.P.T., Dudley Docker: The Life and Times of a Trade Warrior, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984 Fallon, Ivan, The Player: The Life of Tony O’Reilly, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1994 Ferguson, Niall, The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998; as The House of Rothschild: The World’s Banker, 1849–1999, New York: Viking Press, 1999 Ford, Henry with Samuel Crowther, My Life and Work, New York: Doubleday Page, 1922; London: Heinemann, 1923 Gourvish, T.R., Mark Huish and the London & North Western Railway: A Study of Management, Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1972 Harvey, Charles and Jon Press, William Morris: Design and Enterprise in Victorian Britain, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1991 Hendrick, Burton J., The Life of Andrew Carnegie, New York: Doubleday Doran, 1932; London: Heinemann, 1933 Hogg, James (editor), Fortunes Made in Business: A Series of Original Sketches, Biographical and Anecdotic, revised and enlarged edition, London: Griffith Farran, 1891 Hughes, Jonathan R.T., The Vital Few: The Entrepreneur and American Economic Progress, expanded edition, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986 (first edition, 1966) Jeremy, David J. (editor), Dictionary of Business Biography: A Bibliographical Dictionary of Business Leaders Active in Britain in the Period 1860–1980, 6 vols, London: Butterworths, 1984 Jones, Evan R., Heroes of Industry: Biographical Sketches, London: Sampson Low, 1886 Josephson, Matthew, The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861–1901, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1934; London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1962 Kanigel, Robert, The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency, New York: Viking Press, 1997; London: Little Brown, 1997 Klein, Maury, The Life and Legend of Jay Gould, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986 Millard, André, Edison and the Business of Innovation, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990 Overy, R.J., William Morris, Viscount Nuffield, London: Europa, 1976 Sloan, Alfred Pritchard, My Years with General Motors, edited by John McDonald with Catharine Stevens, New York: Doubleday, 1964; London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1965 Smiles, Samuel, Lives of the Engineers, with an Account of Their Principal Works, 3 vols, London: Murray, 1861–62; revised edition 1874; reprinted, 3 vols, New York: Kelley, 1968

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Stephen, Leslie (editor), Dictionary of National Biography, 69 vols, London: Smith Elder, 1885–1901; 71 vols, New York: Macmillan, 1885–1906

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a particular audience. Further, it is worth remembering the fact that he was an artist, even when letter-writing – and this despite the seemingly reckless speed of the letters. A letter to his publisher John Murray (6 April 1819) gives a taste of Byron’s aesthetic sense while also demonstrating the spontaneous style of his letters:

1788–1824

English poet, playwright, and letter writer The 13 volumes of Byron’s Letters and Journals, and the nearly 600 pages of his miscellaneous prose, testify to the volume of information that is known about Byron directly from his own pen. Furthermore, the most famous piece of Byron’s autobiographical writing, a manuscript always referred to as the “Memoirs”, was destroyed after his death by well-meaning friends. Whether this would have been as revelatory as all secrets promise to be when still kept secret is arguable. Thomas Moore, on balance (in public at least), thought not. That Byron’s letters and diaries virtually tell the story of his life was recognized by his first major biographer, that same friend Thomas (“Tom”) Moore. Moore had been assigned the “Memoirs” as a gift, and had not been wholly convinced that they should be destroyed. His Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of His Life (1830) built itself around the substantial primary material to which he still had access. Though these letters are racily direct, Moore felt obliged to censor many. Since Moore’s volumes remained the only source for many of Byron’s original letters (and indeed still remain so for a significant number of important letters and journal entries) this bowdlerized text formed the basis of the authoritative edition of the letters by R.E. Prothero, completed at the beginning of the 20th century. Not until Leslie Marchand’s edition, finished in 1994, was the full text (and therefore the frankness) of Byron’s originals restored, where available. Even here, however, much has been lost, since the originals mirror their author’s hectic life in an often equally hectic style – characterized by rhetorical rather than grammatical punctuation, and by the endemic use of the dash, sometimes itself almost a graphic mode of expression rather than the indicator of a pause. Not only is this graphic effect lost, but unfortunately Marchand (or his publisher), having started the edition reproducing the full flow of Byron’s prose, began to be more intrusive after the first few volumes in the matter of paragraphing and “elucidation” through use of added punctuation. Despite the frankness of his letters (for example to Lady Melbourne concerning his affair with Caroline Lamb, whose mother-in-law was Lady Melbourne herself, or even more riskily concerning his affair with his half-sister Augusta), one should not suppose that they were all written with no thought for their audience or even for posterity. If that sounds extreme, one might at least substitute “with no thought for aesthetic effect”. Understandably, important events are relayed to friends more than once (for example the shooting of the military commandant outside Byron’s house in Ravenna), but these events are often retold with a clear eye to a particular audience, and the telling is polished in the retelling. In interpreting Byron’s life writing, therefore, it is as well to remember his self-confessed “mobility”, indicating an adaptability not only to the present moment but to

So you and Mr Foscolo etc. want me to undertake what you call a ‘great work?’, an Epic poem I suppose or some such pyramid. – I’ll try no such thing – I hate tasks – and then ‘seven or eight years’! God send us all well this day three months – let alone years – if one’s years can’t be better employed than in sweating poesy – a man had better be a ditcher. – And works too! – is Childe Harold nothing? You have so many ‘divine’ poems, is it nothing to have written a Human one? without any of your worn-out machinery. Why – man – I could have spun the thoughts of the four cantos of that poem into twenty – had I wanted to bookmake – & its passion into as many modern tragedies – since you want length, you shall have enough of Juan for I’ll make 50 cantos … Byron claims that in order to remain truthful he would have to contradict himself “on every page”. As an autobiographer he throws out a forceful challenge to the idea that a biographer should “explain” his subject. Byron uses humour and change of pace throughout his letters to show that no event is ever quite what it seems, and no representation of an event remains stable for long. He tells the story of his days almost in a “deconstructive” way (though he would have hated the pretentiousness). Any biographer trying to pin Byron down is liable to be contradicted by the subject himself at some other point in this vast output. Byron’s letters read as if the poet of Don Juan had found his voice in prose nearly 15 years earlier than in verse. Drummond Bone Biography Born George Noel Gordon Byron in London, 22 January 1788. His father John (“mad Jack”) Byron, a guards officer who squandered the family inheritance, died in 1791 when he was aged three. Lived in Aberdeen with his mother; suffered many unsuccessful attempts to cure his birth defect of a club foot. Educated at Aberdeen Grammar School, 1794–98. Inherited his great-uncle’s title, as 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale, and the estate at Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire, 1798. Studied at Harrow School, Middlesex, 1801–05; Trinity College, Cambridge, 1805–08 (MA). Returned to Newstead and took his seat in the House of Lords, 1809. Achieved recognition as a writer with the satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809). Toured Portugal, Spain, Malta, Greece, and the Levant with John Cam Hobhouse, 1809–11. Resumed seat in the House of Lords and was active on the liberal wing of the Whig Party, 1811–13. Became famous after the publication of the first instalment of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812). Had many liaisons with women, including Lady Caroline Lamb, 1812–13. Married an heiress, Annabella Milbanke, 1815 (she left him in 1816): one daughter. Ostracized for his supposed incestuous affair with his half-sister Augusta Leigh (with whom he probably had a daughter) and left England, 1816. Lived in Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and her step-sister Claire Claremont, 1816. Affair with Claire Claremont, 1816–17: one daughter (died 1822). Sold Newstead Abbey and moved to Venice, 1817. Published Beppo and began writing his masterpiece, the comic satire Don Juan, 1818. Lived with Shelley in Pisa, 1818. Met Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli, 1819: lived near her in Venice and Ravenna, 1819–20, and with her after she left her husband, in Pisa, 1821–22, Livorno, 1822, and Genoa, 1823.

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Actively supported Italian patriots from 1820. Editor, with Leigh Hunt, of the Liberal, 1822–23. Published The Vision of Judgement, 1822. Organized an expedition to assist in Greek war of independence from Turkey, 1824. Died in Missolonghi (now Mesolóngion, Greece), 19 April 1824.

Selected Writings A Letter to John Murray on Bowles’ Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope, 1821 Correspondence of Lord Byron with a Friend, edited by R.C. Dallas, 1824 Conversations of Lord Byron, compiled by Thomas Medwin, 1824; edited by Ernest J. Lovell, 1966 Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of His Life by Thomas Moore, 2 vols, 1830 Memoir of the Rev. Francis Hodgson BD, Scholar, Poet and Divine: With Numerous Letters from Lord Byron and Others, edited by James T. Hodgson, 2 vols, 1878 The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, edited by R.E. Prothero, 1898–1901 Correspondence, edited by John Murray, 2 vols, 1922 Lord Byron in His Letters, edited by V.H. Collins, 1927 The Ravenna Journal, 1821, edited by Rowland E. Prothero, 1928 Seventeen Letters of George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron, to an Unknown Lady, 1811–1817, edited by Walter Edwin Peck, 1930

The Last Attachment: The Story of Byron and Teresa Guiccioli as Told in Their Unpublished Letters and Other Family Papers, edited by Iris Origo, 1949 The Self Portrait: Letters and Diaries 1798 to 1824, edited by Peter Quennell, 2 vols, 1950 Selected Letters, edited by Jacques Barzun, 1953 His Very Self and Voice: Collected Conversations of Lord Byron, edited by Ernest J. Lovell, 1954 Selected Poems and Letters, edited by William H. Marshall, 1968 From Cambridge to Missolonghi: Byron Letters at the University of Texas, edited by T.G. Steffan, 1971 Lord Byron’s Letters and Journals, edited by Leslie A. Marchand, 13 vols, 1973–94; selections as Lord Byron’s Selected Letters and Journals, edited by Marchand, 1982 The Complete Miscellaneous Prose, edited by Andrew Nicholson, 1991

Further Reading Baker, Mark, “Byron Epistolaris” (dissertation), abstract in Dissertation Abstracts International (February 1986) Clubbe, John, “Byron in His Letters”, South Atlantic Quarterly, 74 Jump, John D., “Byron’s Prose” in his Byron, London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972 Wilson, Frances (editor), Byromania: Portraits of the Artist in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Culture, New York: St Martins Press, 1998; London: Macmillan, 1999

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c The best-known exploration literature in English was written during the late 1700s, when fur traders, mainly from the North West Company, explored uncharted territory as they searched for fur. At the end of their careers, many explorers reworked journals and logs containing practical information into more coherent narratives in the hope of gaining literary distinction from a large European audience eager for tales from abroad. The most famous account is Samuel Hearne’s Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort, in Hudson’s Bay, to the Northern Ocean (1795). Others include Alexander Henry’s Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories (1809), Alexander Mackenzie’s Voyages … through the Continent of North America … (1801), and Captain John Franklin’s Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea (1823). Many of the pioneers who came to Canada in great numbers throughout the 19th century, both from Britain and from the south in the wake of the American Revolution, also wrote autobiographical works describing their experiences for European audiences. These texts tell of homesickness, poverty, culture shock, and struggles with the harsh Canadian landscape. Though pioneer women’s narratives are usually more internally focused than men’s, as a group these accounts are primarily focused on the external world. Archival material represents a broad range of the population, but most published pioneer accounts are by writers of some wealth and education, many of whom were published authors before coming to Canada. Examples include William T. Baird’s Seventy Years of New Brunswick Life: Autobiographical Sketches (1890), Susan Allison’s A Pioneer Gentlewoman in British Columbia: The Recollections of Susan Allison (1931), Elizabeth Johnston’s Memoirs of a Georgia Loyalist (1901), and Samuel Strickland’s Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West, or, the Experience of an Early Settler (1853). Strickland’s sisters, Catherine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie, both authors before coming to Canada, wrote some of Canada’s most famous pioneer texts. Traill’s The Backwoods of Canada (1836) and Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush, or, Life in Canada (2 vols, 1852) and Life in the Clearings (1853), though first written for British audiences, have become Canadian classics. A successful literary career virtually guaranteed writers publication of their autobiographies and also instilled in them the impulse to record important events. As a result, many literary autobiographies appeared during the 19th century. John Galt wrote plays, poems, travel narratives, and biography before emigrating to Canada as an agent for the Canada Company. His

Canada: Auto/biography to 1900 Much of the large body of auto/biographical writing produced before 1900 in the region that is now Canada preceded the formation of the country. First written by European writers for European audiences, then by permanent inhabitants for European audiences, and finally by Canadians for a Canadian audience, Canadian auto/biographies reflect the country’s history from a sparsely populated new world, to separate French and English colonies, to a unified nation. In fact, many of these texts were first published after 1867, as citizens of the newly formed country attempted to create a national heritage. In the early 1600s, French explorers, drawn to Canada in search of resources such as cod and furs, kept journals and daily logs that charted navigational courses and reported on the new lands and people they encountered. Some of the most famous French exploration narratives are Samuel de Champlain’s Des sauvages (1604; “The Savages”, included in The Voyage to New France) and Voyages (2 vols, 1613–19; Voyages and Explorations). Also from this period, though known from its English version of 1669, is Pierre Esprit Radisson’s Voyages (1885; Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson). Often published in Paris, these accounts were important in claiming French territory and raising money for later expeditions. The French were motivated by religion as well as the desire for territorial gain, and missionaries who attempted to bring spiritual enlightenment to the aboriginal people also produced autobiographical works. Texts of missionary explorers include Gabriel Sagard’s Le Grand Voyage au pays de Hurons … (1632; The Long Journey to the Country of the Hurons) and Histoire du Canada [1636; History of Canada), and Chrestien Le Clercq’s Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie …(1691; New Relation of Gaspesia, with the Customs and Religion of the Gaspesian Indians). Other important French missionary accounts are the Relations des Jesuites, reports sent from the Québec Jesuits to the provincial father of the Society of Jesus in Paris. Started by Paul Le Jeune in 1632 and regularly published in Paris until 1673, these relations included personal accounts of important events and day-to-day life in Quebec, as well as journals, letters, reports, and business correspondence. They were published in English as The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France 1610–1791 (73 vols, original texts and English translations, 1896–1901). 165

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Autobiography (2 vols, 1833) primarily describes his public and literary life. The British writer and feminist Anna Brownell Jameson wrote Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838) about the time she spent in the Toronto area attempting to arrange a separation from her husband, Robert S. Jameson, attorney general of Upper Canada. Oliver Goldsmith, author of The Rising Village and great-nephew of the Anglo-Irish author of the same name, completed his autobiography in 1855, intending it to be a family record, not a published text. It was rediscovered in the late 1930s and published in 1943 (Autobiography of Oliver Goldsmith) because of interest in his literary achievements. Major John Richardson, author of Tecumseh, or, Warrior of the West (1828), wrote two autobiographical works, War of 1812 (1842) and Eight Years in Canada (1847), both valuable for their political and historical information. During the 19th century, many writers of auto/biographical works began to aim their publications more towards a domestic audience. Numerous English autobiographies appeared at this time, primarily chronicling the lives of politicians, members of the military, and missionaries. At the same time, Canadian and European interest in Native Canadians created a demand for personal stories, and autobiography was common in early Native writing. Many Native Canadian autobiographies were by Native teachers and missionaries. Their texts often retained features of oral literature, combining personal narrative with the legend and myth of the writer’s community. Examples include The Life, History, and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (George Copway) (1847), Life and Journals of Kah-Ke-Wa-Que-Na-By (Rev. Peter Jones) Wesleyan Minister (1860), and Journal of the Reverend Peter Jacobs, Indian Wesleyan Missionary (1854). In 19th-century Québec, the memoir was a popular form. Most were didactic accounts of public lives meant to promote French national history at a time when the French were becoming increasingly outnumbered by the British. Two exemplary texts of this period are the Mémoires (1866; A Man of Sentiment: The Memoirs) of Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, author of the historical novel Les Anciens Canadiens (1861), and Revd Charles Chiniquy’s Cinquante Ans dans l’Eglise de Rome (1885; Fifty Years in the Church of Rome), which tells of Chiniquy’s conversion from the Catholic to the Protestant faith. Canadian biography in English and French developed primarily in the 1800s as a way of establishing and promoting national identities. Biography in English, which existed in the early 1800s in the form of short documents such as obituaries, eulogies, and biographical sketches, often published in society yearbooks, began to appear in book-length texts by the mid1800s. Numerous biographies, usually of politicians and other public figures, were published before the end of the century. Examples include Fennings Taylor’s Thos. D’Arcy McGee (1868) and James Macpherson’s Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir John A. MacDonald (2 vols, 1891). Around the time of confederation (1867), several biographical collections began to appear as Canadians sought to develop a national and regional history. Henry James Morgan, a founder of the nationalist “Canada First” movement, published several of these texts, including Biblioteca Canadensis (1867), a collection of bio-bibliographical sketches of early Canadian writers, and Canadian Men and Women of the Time (1898), the whole of which was incorporated into the first Canadian Who’s Who (1910). Other

early biographical compilations include Fennings Taylor’s and William Notman’s Portraits of British Americans (3 vols, 1865–68), J.C. Dent’s The Canadian Portrait Gallery (4 vols, 1880–81), and G.M. Rose’s A Cyclopedia of Canadian Biography (2 vols, 1886–88). Biographies in French became common in the 1850s. Until the late 1880s, most were hagiographic works describing the founders of the French Canadian religious order, with an aim toward its advancement in both Québec and Europe. Examples include Etienne Michel Faillon’s La Vie de Mme d’Youville [1852; The Life of Madame d’Youville], Soeur Bourgeoys [1853; Sister Bourgeoys], and Jeanne Mance (1854), and HenriRaymond Casgrain’s Histoire de la Mère Marie de l’Incarnation [1864; History of Mother Marie de L’Incarnation]. These biographies were used in sermons and schools, and often appeared when their subjects were being considered in Rome for beatification. In late 19th-century French biography, as a result of a growing desire to protect and promote French culture, patriotic texts about national heroes became common. Their subjects were often the prominent figures of New France. Narcisse-Eutrope Dionne’s Jacques Cartier (1889) and Samuel Champlain (1891, 1906) are two of many works of this type. Spanning more than two centuries, early Canadian auto/biographical texts have provided important information about almost all major events in the country’s history, influenced many 20th-century writers, and been important to the construction of a Canadian identity. Alana Bell Further Reading Buss, Helen M., Mapping Our Selves: Canadian Women’s Autobiography in English, Montreal and Buffalo, New York: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993 Cotnam, Jacques, entry on “Biography and Memoirs in French” in the Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, 2nd edition, edited by Eugene Benson and William Toye, Toronto and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997 Craig, Terrence, The Missionary Lives: A Study in Canadian Missionary Biography and Autobiography, New York and Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997 Dvorak, Marta (editor), La Création biographique / Biographical Creation, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1997 Macpherson, Jay, entry on “Autobiography” in Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English, edited by Carl F. Klinck, Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1965; 2nd edition, Toronto and Buffalo, New York: University of Toronto Press, 1977 Matthews, William, Canadian Diaries and Autobiographies, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950 McMullen, Lorraine (editor), Re(Dis)covering Our Foremothers: Nineteenth-Century Canadian Women Writers, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1990 Petrone, Penny, Native Literature in Canada: From the Oral Tradition to the Present, Toronto and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990 Rhodenizer, Vernon Blair, “Autobiography” in his Canadian Literature in English, Montreal: Quality Press, 1965 Stich, K.P. (editor), Reflections: Autobiography and Canadian Literature, Ottawa: Ottawa University Press, 1988 Thurston, John, “‘Remember, My Dear Friend’: Ideology and Genre in Upper Canadian Travel and Settlement Narratives”, Essays on Canadian Writing, 56 (Fall 1995): 183–98 Woodcock, George, entry on “Biography and Memoirs in English” in the Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, 2nd edition, edited by Eugene Benson and William Toye, Toronto and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997

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Canada: Diaries and Letters to 1900 For the Canadians of this period, a people of explorers and frontier tamers at least as adventurous as any in the world, an important distinction needs to be made between the diary and the journal. To John Stuart Batts, “at one time a ‘diary’ … was considered a personal private record, and a ‘journal’ as a record of a more official kind … in practice [though] journals and diaries have become interchangeable”. The francophone explorers and missionaries of what they called New France, most of which became the province of Québec, provided the initial canon of life writing in Canada. The first piece of literature written in or about Canada is sometimes credited to Jacques Cartier, who explored the St Lawrence River in the 1530s. His journal, Première Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada (The Voyages of Jacques Cartier), though, had an odd publishing history; it was supposedly a translation from the original into Italian, then English, then back to French. Many scholars doubt its authenticity. There is greater confidence in the first of the three Voyages (1603), volumes said to be by Samuel de Champlain, detailing his explorations. Many of the best sources of life writing from the colony come from the church. A widow who then took religious vows, Mother Marie de l’Incarnation, often wrote to her son, a priest, about many in New France, from the highest to the most humble, and became, unknowingly, a social historian. Originally, 228 of her letters were published nine years after her death in Lettres de la vénérable Mère Marie de l’Incarnation (1681), and expanded editions continue to appear. Les Relations de Jésuites (1610– 1791; The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France) were written by members of the Order and collected annually by their Superior in New France, then shipped back to the Provincial in Paris from 1611 to 1791. The work exists today both in microforms and as a 73-volume collection (1896–1901). These annual reports are filled with letters narrating everything from discussions of crops to relations with the indigenous peoples. In addition, the collection contains other letters and the diaries of the members. They include those both by and about Father Jean de Brébeuf, whose death in 1649 is described to gain him status as a martyr. There are two other very different examples of letters from the lay world: the elegant and historically intriguing correspondence of the generals François-Gaston, duc de Levis, and Louis-Joseph, marquis du Moncalm, who lost the pivotal battle at Québec City in 1759. Their journals are also available. Then there are the letters of Elisabeth Bégon, widow of the governor of Trois-Rivières, a fascinating record of life, which she wanted destroyed; they survived and have been collected in Lettres au cher fils (1972). They chronicle Québec society in the 1740s and the writer’s tragic love for her widowed son-in-law, the cher fils of the title. It was the anglophone writers, however, who created most life writing during the 18th and 19th centuries. For Canadians, their great frontier went west and, unlike the United States, north. The explorers of the Arctic became heroes, especially after the printing of their journals. With the economic power of the Hudson Bay Company behind most of them, they opened up these harsh, rich lands. The first was Samuel Hearne, whose Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort, in Hudson’s Bay, to the

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Northern Ocean (1795) describes his solitary trek and life with the native Cree. Sir Alexander Mackenzie, the first European to cross the continent, tells his tale in Voyages from Montreal, on the River St Lawrence, through the Continent of North America, to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans, in the Years 1789 and 1793 (1801). George Vancouver, once a simple seaman with Captain Cook, commanded an expedition to British Columbia and beyond, as described in his Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and round the World … in the Years 1790–1795 (1798). Captain John Franklin published his Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea (1823) following his first explorations, but his death in 1847 during another expedition gave him legendary status, and his fate was a mystery until his ships were found years later. Simon Fraser, one of the last great Canadian explorers, wrote his Journals and Letters, 1806–1808 (published 1960) in an unadorned style while describing horrific dangers. David Thompson’s Travels in Western North America 1784–1812 (published 1916) was repeatedly rewritten in his later years before publication. An irascible soldier, politician, and author of the fictional frontier epic Wacousta (1832), Major John Richardson left many letters and journals, such as Correspondence (Submitted to Parliament), between Major Richardson, Late Superintendent of Police on the Welland Canal (1846) to other provincial officials of Upper Canada, along the St Lawrence. A giant in another genre was T.C. Haliburton, humorist and creator of the clockmaker character Sam Slick in the 1830s. Haliburton, from Nova Scotia, was one of the most famous literary artists on both English-speaking sides of the Atlantic. The Letters of Thomas Chandler Haliburton (published 1988) reveal his thoughts. Also from Halifax is the diary of a minister’s wife, who wrote down the events of her spiritual journey since adolescence. It was published, to help others find faith, as the Memoir of Mrs Eliza Ann Chipman (1855) just before her death, as the author requested. Among the most notable women writers are the Strickland sisters Catherine Parr (C.P.) Traill, and Susanna Moodie. While they were also famous writers of fiction, their published diaries and letters delineated women’s frontier lives. Traill’s words in The Backwoods of Canada: Being Letters from the Wife of an Emigrant Officer, Illustrative of the Domestic Economy of British America (1836) spoke forcefully to both Britain and Canada in her own time, and more recent collections are available, such as I Bless You in My Heart: Selected Correspondence of Catherine Parr Traill (1996). Moodie’s correspondence has been edited into a few collections, including Susanna Moodie: Letters of a Lifetime (1985) and Letters of Love and Duty: The Correspondence of Susanna and John Moodie (1993). The sisters’ literary influences were so great that, in 1970, Margaret Atwood created a fictional work entitled The Journals of Susanna Moodie. Among other important women writers were Julia Ewing, whose letters home to New Brunswick are published in Canada Home (1983), and Anna Brownell Jameson. A naturalist and horticulturist, Jameson created volumes of detailed descriptions and is also known as a powerful writer in pieces such as A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories and Fancies, Original and Selected (1854) and the edited collection Letters and Friendships, 1812–1860 (1915). There are many records of famous women’s lives, such as Lucy Maud Montgomery’s, but, as the critic Kathryn Carter has warned, their work was often heavily revised before publication.

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(Montgomery’s original journals, which started in 1899, do still exist, though, in the holdings of the University of Guelph.) With confederation in 1867, the royal colony became the Dominion of Canada. A very large volume of the correspondence of the first prime minister of Canada, Sir John A. Macdonald, is available in the Correspondence of Sir John Macdonald (1921). The manuscript diaries of his wife, Lady Susan Agnes (Bernard) Macdonald from 1867 to 1872, and 1875 to 1883, are held at the National Archives of Canada. In moving west, Canadians were confronted by the wide prairies and the Rockies until, in Macdonald’s second term, the government committed itself to building Canada’s great binding tie: the Transcontinental Railroad. In The Diaries of Louis Riel (published 1976) we can learn about the leader of the Metis, the inhabitants of the prairies of mixed ethnic origin and race. They believed themselves to be a unique people, not simply of the First Nations (indigenous), French, or English-speaking peoples. Riel twice led armed insurrections, the second time in Saskatchewan where he was defeated by troops sent by Macdonald. Riel was hanged, after massive protests, in 1885. Also available in the National Archives are the highly prized diaries of W.L. Mackenzie King, who served as prime minister on three occasions, from 1921 to, after losing two intervening elections, 1948. While the diaries cover many years, the record of his days as a student in the last decade of the 19th century before acquiring fame and power is particularly interesting. They have been issued on microfiche with a transcript (The Mackenzie King Diaries, 1973). Besides the secondary sources listed, further primary resources are available at such repositories as the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa, which contains, for example, hundreds of official logs by captains and crews dating from at least 1702 and scores of immigrant diaries. John Stuart Batts of the University of Ottawa has also been collecting sources from the beginning of the exploration to writers still working today for the Canadian Diaries Manuscript Project. To W.H. New, writers such as de Brébeuf, Hearne, Moodie, and Riel each became “a kind of icon inside Canadian culture”. For Canadians, much of what literature they call their own, as cultural markers, lies not in fiction or theatre but in the factual dramas, as evoked in letters and diaries, of their ancestors. Michael W. Young Further Reading Batts, John Stuart, “Private Chronicles in Public Places”, Canadian Literature, 121 (Summer 1989): 12–25 Carter, Kathryn, Diaries in English by Women in Canada, 1753–1995: An Annotated Bibliography, Ottawa: National Library of Canada, 1997 Halpenny, Francess G. (editor), Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Toronto and Buffalo, New York: University of Toronto Press, 1966–98 Hoerder, Dirk, Creating Societies: Immigrant Lives in Canada, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000 Klinck, Carl F. (general editor), A Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English, 2nd edition, 4 vols, Toronto and Buffalo, New York: University of Toronto Press, 1976–90 Matthews, William, Canadian Diaries and Autobiographies, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950 New, W.H., A History of Canadian Literature, London: Macmillan, and New York: New Amsterdam, 1989 Toye, William (general editor), Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, Toronto and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983;

2nd edition, edited by Eugene Benson and William Toye, 1997 Union List of Manuscripts in Canadian Repositories, revised edition, Ottawa: Public Archives of Canada, 1975; four supplements, 1976–85

Canada: 20th-Century Auto/biography In Canada the development of biography and autobiography over the course of the 20th century followed a pattern similar to that of other Western countries. A focus on the lives of important historical, political, literary, and religious figures (usually men of Western European ancestry) has gradually expanded to include more women and people from diverse cultural backgrounds, as well as more “ordinary” people. On an artistic level, strictly chronological accounts have in many cases given way to more literary experiments with narrative form. However, it is essential to understand these developments in the context of Canada’s unique historical, social, cultural, and political realities. Given that Canada’s Confederation dates only from 1867, the early decades of the 20th century (1900–29) are often considered along with the final ones of the 19th century as a period of nation-building. Perhaps the most significant biographical project of the early 20th century was the publication of a number of patriotic biographical series focused on important historical figures and consistent with the project of national selfdefinition: for example, George Morang’s 20-volume Makers of Canada series, edited by Duncan Campbell Scott and Pelham Edgar (1903–08), and the 32-volume Chronicles of Canada series (1914–16), 13 volumes of which are biographical in nature. Most book-length biographies published during this period focus on historical and 19th-century political figures: W.D. LeSueur’s Count Frontenac (1906) and O.D. Skelton’s Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier (1920), for example. In contrast to the importance of biographical collections during this period, the production of memoirs and autobiographies was relatively meagre. Autobiographical works from these early years include the posthumously published Reminiscences (1910) of the journalist Goldwin Smith, and Wilfred Grenfell’s A Labrador Doctor: The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell (1919). In subsequent decades (1930–59) the general interest in political and historical biographies continued. Men of science and medicine also came to be seen as important national figures, and had their stories told in works such as Lloyd Stevenson’s Sir Frederick Banting (1946) and Ted Allan and Sydney Gordon’s treatment of the life of Norman Bethune, The Scalpel and the Sword (1952). However, a number of important social and literary developments also led to new directions for auto/biographical writing during these decades. The British writer Lytton Strachey played an important international role in challenging Victorian literary conventions and popularizing the genre of biography. As it became less adulatory, biography became more scholarly in its critical attention to detail, and more popular or readable in its form. The Depression years following the stock market crash of 1929 were a time of increasing awareness of economic and social injustices, and a literature of social protest and reform

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was born. Canadian autobiographies by social reformers include Revd Charles W. Gordon’s Postscript to Adventure (1938) and Nellie McClung’s Clearing in the West (1935) and The Stream Runs Fast (1945). The year 1929 was also the occasion in which Canadian women were declared “persons” under the law, and this political victory (in which Nellie McClung played an important part) was followed by an increased interest in women’s auto/biographies. Significant biographies of and by women that were published during this period include Annie Harvey Hanley’s The Mohawk Princess: Being an Account of the Life of Tekahion-Wake (1931) on Pauline Johnson, and Byrne Hope Sanders’s Emily Murphy, Crusader (1945). Laura Goodman Salverson’s Confessions of an Immigrant’s Daughter (1939) provides a glimpse into the Icelandic immigrant community of the period. The Canadian Authors’ Association was formed in 1921, and gradually Canadian writers and artists began to develop a consciousness of themselves as the creators of a national tradition distinct from the British or European ones. Between then and the 1950s the institutionalization of Canadian literature had begun. During this period, literary biography made its first appearance on the Canadian scene, with books that included James Cappon’s Bliss Carman and the Literary Currents and Influences of His Time (1930). Lorne Pierce’s 12-volume Makers of Canadian Literature series (1923–26 and 1941) was an important contribution to this field, and a number of biographies of Canadian visual artists were also published under his encouragement, including Blodwen Davies’s Paddle and Palette: The Story of Tom Thomson (1930). There was also a growing number of autobiographies by literary figures: Stephen Leacock’s The Boy I Left Behind Me (1946), R.W. Service’s Ploughman of the Moon: An Adventure into Memory (1945) and Harper of Heaven: A Record of Radiant Living (1948), and Mazo de la Roche’s Ringing the Changes (1957), among others. Frederick Philip Grove’s In Search of Myself (1946) has received critical attention as an autobiography that has been exposed as more fictional than truthful. Autobiographies by some of Canada’s most important painters also appeared during this period, such as A.Y. Jackson’s A Painter’s Country (1958), and Emily Carr’s many autobiographical writings, including her autobiography proper, Growing Pains (1946). The last four decades of the 20th century (1960–99) have been a period of unparalleled growth for the auto/biographical genre in Canada. Federal government support for the arts was strong during the 1960s, and the advent of Canada’s centennial in 1967 contributed to a nation-wide celebration of Canadian culture and identity. However, the last 40 years have also been marked by a growing consciousness of issues of ethnicity and gender, and a sense that the Canadian cultural landscape is much more diverse and fragmented than had previously been acknowledged. The ongoing project of the bilingual Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire biographique du Canada was begun in 1966, and the Canadian Writers and Their Works project in 1983. The large numbers of autobiographies and biographies also published during this period point to the growing literary and popular importance of these genres during the late 20th century. Apart from the usual interest in historical and political figures, including a large number of biographies of past and relatively recent Canadian prime ministers, it is worth mention-

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ing certain groups that begin to figure in biographies for the first time. There have been more biographies published of women in politics, such as Doris Pennington’s Agnes Macphail, Reformer: Canada’s First Female MP (1989), and of Canada’s earliest women writers, for example, Lorraine McMullen’s An Odd Attempt in a Woman: The Literary Life of Frances Brooke (1993), a life of Canada’s first woman novelist. Efforts have also been made to uncover the lives of women in science: Despite the Odds: Essays on Canadian Women and Science (1990), edited by Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, includes a section of short biographies. Visual artists are well represented during this period by biographies such as Maria Tippett’s Emily Carr (1979). Prominent businessmen have received attention in works such as Joy Santink’s Timothy Eaton and the Rise of His Department Store (1990). Intellectuals and academics have figured in biographies such as Philip Marchand’s Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger (1989). Jazz musicians and other popular entertainers have had their stories told in works such as Gene Lees’s Oscar Peterson: The Will to Swing (1990). Sports figures, particularly hockey players, have the status of national icons in Canada, and Ken Dryden’s The Game (1983) and Wayne Gretzky’s Gretzky (1990, with Rick Reilly) are among the sports autobiographies that have had a wide readership. Established Canadian authors have published their share of autobiographies during this period: Dorothy Livesay’s Left Hand Right Hand (1977) and Journey with My Selves (1991), Margaret Laurence’s Dance on the Earth (1989), Earle Birney’s Spreading Time (1980), Al Purdy’s Reaching for the Beaufort Sea (1993), Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family (1982), and Austin Clarke’s Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack (1980) are among the many important literary autobiographies of these years. Another group of people who have begun to publish autobiographies during this time are women who are survivors of incest and sexual abuse: these include Sylvia Fraser in My Father’s House (1988) and Elly Danica in Don’t (1988). Group memoirs have also taken on a new importance, such as Makeda Silvera’s Silenced (1983), the stories of Caribbean domestic workers. The last two decades of the 20th century have witnessed the development and the flourishing in Canada of a critical literature devoted to life writing. Not only have Canadian, American, and European critics begun to focus on life writing in Canada, but many Canadian scholars have distinguished themselves as important voices in the academic study of auto/biographical literature and theory. Ira Bruce Nadel, Shirley Neuman, George Woodcock, Marlene Kadar, and Susanna Egan have all written or edited significant general works on the theory and criticism of auto/biography. Helen Buss has published a number of studies that have advanced understanding and appreciation of the place of women’s life writing in Canada, as well as an autobiographical work of her own: Memoirs from Away: A New Found Land Girlhood (1999). Finally, periodicals such as Canadian Literature and scholarly associations such as the Association Française d’Etudes Canadiennes have published specific issues or volumes devoted to the criticism of Canadian autobiography (see Further Reading). Laurie Aikman

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Further Reading Buss, Helen M., Mapping Our Selves: Canadian Women’s Autobiography in English, Montreal and Kingston, Ontario: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993 Carr, Graham, “Dated Lives: English-Canadian Literary Biography”, Essays on Canadian Writing, 35 (Winter 1987): 57–73 Dvorak, Marta (editor), La Création biographique / Biographical Creation, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1997 Egan, Susanna, Patterns of Experience in Autobiography, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1984 Jackel, Susan, “Canadian Women’s Autobiography: A Problem of Criticism” in Gynocritics: Feminist Approaches to Canadian and Quebec Women’s Writing, edited by Barbara Godard, Toronto: ECW Press, 1987 Jaumain, Serge and Marc Maufort (editors), The Guises of Canadian Diversity: New European Perspectives, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995 Kadar, Marlene (editor), Essays on Life Writing: From Genre to Critical Practice, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992 MacPherson, Jay, entry on “Autobiography” in Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English, 2nd edition, vol. 2, edited by Carl F. Klinck, Toronto and Buffalo, New York: University of Toronto Press, 1976 Nadel, Ira Bruce, Biography: Fiction, Fact and Form, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1984 Nadel, Ira Bruce, “Canada Made Me and Canadian Autobiography”, Canadian Literature, 101 (Summer 1984): 69–81 Nadel, Ira Bruce, “Canadian Biography and Literary Form”, Essays on Canadian Writing, 33 (1986): 144–60 Neuman, Shirley, entry on “Life Writing” in Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English, 2nd edition, vol. 4, edited by W.H. New, Toronto and Buffalo, New York: University of Toronto Press, 1990 New, W.H. (editor), “The Art of Autobiography”, special issue of Canadian Literature, 90 (Autumn 1981) New, W.H. (editor), “Personal Experience and the Creative Writer”, special issue of Canadian Literature, 101 (Summer 1984) New, W.H., A History of Canadian Literature, London: Macmillan, 1988; New York: New Amsterdam, 1989 Ryan, Leila and Klay Dyer, entry on “Biography and Memoirs in English 1983 to 1996” in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, 2nd edition, edited by Eugene Benson and William Toye, Toronto, New York, and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997 Stich, K.P. (editor), Reflections: Autobiography and Canadian Literature, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988 Swainson, Donald, “Trends in Canadian Biography: Recent Historical Writing”, Queen’s Quarterly, 87 (1980): 413–29 Thomas, Clara, entry on “Biography” in Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English, 2nd edition, vol. 3, edited by Carl F. Klinck, Toronto and Buffalo, New York: University of Toronto Press, 1976 Woodcock, George, entry on “Biography and Memoirs in English” in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, 2nd edition, edited by Eugene Benson and William Toye, Toronto, New York, and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997

Canada: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Too few diaries were published in Canada during the 20th century to write of either national or regional traditions. A chronological account of diaries published over the century is a more appropriate way to understand a genre still in its infancy. This is not to suggest, however, a dearth of Canadian diarists. In fact, archival holdings across the country confirm that women and men, from the time of the earliest settlement, kept diaries to record experiences and events of private and public concern.

Just as most diaries of the 19th century remain unpublished – interested readers have ready access to manuscripts held in archival collections – many diaries of the 20th century are still in private hands. There are few examples of contemporary Canadians who write with a view to publishing their diaries. Diaries from the early part of the century record more of public life than private experience. Hence, exploration diaries, war diaries, and diaries of public service are common. From 27 February to 13 June 1903, for example, John Strickland Leitch writes as member of a party seeking coal deposits in the Peace River district of British Columbia (British Columbia Historical Quarterly, 14, 1950). In lively prose, he describes a hazardous crossing of the Peace River Canyon on a raft. The public diary of Ernest William Harrold appeared in weekly instalments from 1930 to 1945 in the Ottawa Citizen – Harrold was associate editor from 1923 to 1945 – and was published in 1947 by Ryerson Press of Toronto (The Diary of Our Own Pepys: E.W. Harrold’s Record of Canadian Life). An account of life in Ottawa, the diary describes newspaper work, a royal visit, and includes war news, but reveals little of Harrold’s personal life. An example of a student’s diary is H. Earl Miller’s “Edmonton Diary: 1924–1925” (Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 54, Summer 1981). Miller and a classmate, both students at St Louis Seminary, came to Canada to assist with church work. A unique and beautifully produced record of pioneering enterprise is the artist Frank E. Schoonover’s The Edge of the Wilderness: A Portrait of the Canadian North (1974). The diary of the Welshman Edgar Christian of 14 October 1926 to 1 June 1927, Unflinching: A Diary of Tragic Adventure (1937), is a tale of harrowing loss. The 18-year-old Christian writes as a member of an expedition that set out to explore a route from Great Slave Lake to Chesterfield Inlet on Hudson Bay: they all died for lack of food because of poor hunting and fishing. The diaries of Monica Storrs, an English Anglican missionary, have been published in two volumes: God’s Galloping Girl: The Peace River Diaries of Monica Storrs, 1929–1931 (1979) and Companions of the Peace: Diaries and Letters of Monica Storrs, 1931–1939 (1999). Her imperialistic attitude toward Canadians softened during her stay in the Peace River district of northern British Columbia, but her characteristic wit persisted. War diaries include those of the intelligence officer Lieutenant R. Thistle, “The Defense of Prince Rupert: An Eyewitness Account” (BC Studies, 31, Autumn 1976), written between 7 December 1941 and 21 June 1942. Thistle had access to classified information; he feared a Japanese invasion of Canada after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and tells of the evacuation of Japanese-Canadians. In a diary of 15 October 1942 to 3 February 1943, found a month after his death, Grover C. Hodge, Jr, a pilot and First Lieutenant, described his crew’s attempts to survive brutal weather conditions in Labrador where their plane had ditched (Air Power Historian, 6, October 1959). Journal of a War: North-West Europe 1944–1945 (1965) by Donald Pearce, of the First Canadian Army in the Netherlands-Belgium campaign, is an impersonal narrative of his convoy from New York to Europe. Between June 1944 and May 1945 the maritime artist Alex Colville recorded the war in pictures and sketches. Alex Colville: Diary of a War Artist (1981) reproduces his art, which sharpens his daily record of events. The novelist Henry Kreisel’s “Diary of an Internment” (white pelican, 4/3,

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Summer 1974) is a rare account of British internment in Canada during World War II. While most diaries written by women are available only in archives, a few have been published, such as Hilda Rose’s The Stump Farm: A Chronicle of Pioneering (1928), written in letter form, and No Place Like Home: Diaries and Letters of Nova Scotia Women 1771–1938 (1988). Margaret Conrad includes excerpts from diaries in Recording Angels: The Private Chronicles of Women from the Maritime Provinces of Canada, 1750–1950 (1982). During the second half of the 20th century an important trend developed, namely the publication of journals by significant Canadian figures, primarily writers, a trend that still continues. The Mackenzie King Diaries, 1893–1931 (microfiche, 1973) provides a remarkable window into the life of a former prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King. Writers’ journals – often invaluable sources of information on craft, inspiration, and life – include: Emily Carr’s Hundreds and Thousands (1966); The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery (in 4 volumes, 1985–98); A.M. Klein’s Notebooks: Selections from the A.M. Klein Papers (1994); Hector de Saint-Denys-Garneau’s Journal of 1935 to 1939 (published in 1954); Elizabeth Smart’s Necessary Secrets (1986) and On the Side of the Angels (1994); P.K. Page’s Brazilian Journal of 1957 to 1959 (published in 1987); Robert Kroetsch’s The “Crow” Journals (1980), selections from the journal he kept while writing his novel What the Crow Said (1978); and Jacques Godbout’s L’Ecrivain de province: journal 1981–1990 (1991). Charles Ritchie has been described as Canada’s only contemporary diarist of note. Ritchie – who began writing diaries as an adolescent – became a career diplomat who lived a public life. His diaries, published during retirement, are repositories of private observations rendered with grace and inimitable wit. The four volumes comprise An Appetite for Life: The Education of a Young Diarist 1924–1927 (1977), The Siren Years: A Canadian Diplomat Abroad 1937–1945 (1974), Diplomatic Passport: More Undiplomatic Diaries, 1946–1962 (1981), and Storm Signals: More Undiplomatic Diaries, 1962–1971 (1983). The Siren Years won a Governor General’s Award. More editions of letters than those of diaries were published during the 20th century. This may be simply because more people write letters than diaries, but the modern interest in Canadian letters derives also from the establishment of a national literature, which acquired momentum in 1967 – Canada’s centenary year – and continues with striking gusto. The rise in status of Canadian literature has driven scholars and editors to produce collections of letters that enhance our understanding of Canadian writers and the body of literature they have produced. Arthur S. Bourinot, a lawyer, poet, and editor, prepared several volumes of literary letters. His first booklet, Edward William Thomson (1849–1924): A Bibliography with Notes and Some Letters (1955), includes a memoir, bibliography, chronology, a commentary on Thomson’s books, and brief excerpts from Thomson’s letters to William E. Marshall and the poet Ethelwyn Wetherald. Bourinot went on to publish editions of letters by the confederation poets Archibald Lampman and Duncan Campbell Scott. In 1980 Helen Lynn published An Annotated Edition of the Correspondence Between Archibald Lampman and Edward William Thomson (1890–1898), a

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complete edition that acknowledges the flaws and strengths of Bourinot’s groundbreaking editorial work. Desmond Pacey’s edition of The Letters of Frederick Philip Grove (1976) reflects a personal and academic engagement with the letters of an important, original writer. Pacey’s conviction that the serious study of Canadian literature requires access to primary materials informed his scholarly edition. His introductions and annotations contextualize Grove’s letters and work, and his transcriptions of letters are faithful and reliable. Pacey’s careful work has served as a model for subsequent scholarly editions, including recent volumes of letters by prominent 19th-century writers such as Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Catherine Parr Traill, and Susanna Moodie. The letters of the confederation poets Bliss Carman and Charles G.D. Roberts appeared in 1981 and 1989, respectively. As Shirley Neuman writes in the Literary History of Canada, the fact that these collections “are being published now tells us a good deal about the value the contemporary literary institution places on establishing a tradition with strong historical and sociocultural explanatory power”. In addition to their journals, volumes of letters by Emily Carr and Lucy Maud Montgomery – an inveterate letter writer – are available in Dear Nan: Letters of Emily Carr, Nan Cheney and Humphrey Toms (1990), The Green Gables Letters: From L.M. Montgomery to Ephraim Weber 1905–1909 (1960), and My Dear Mr M: Letters to G.B. MacMillan from L.M. Montgomery (1980). More letters by women are available than diaries. A record of the century can be found in the letters of Ruby Cress (to her sister Edna Staebler), Maureen Hynes (from China), Dr Mary Percy Jackson, Margaret Laurence, Gabrielle Roy, Elizabeth Smart, Ethel Wilson, and Adele Wiseman, and in the letters of male contemporaries – Louis Dudek, Claude Gauvreau, Ralph Gustafson, Henry Kreisel, Irving Layton, Hugh MacLennan, Al Purdy, W.W.E. Ross, Hector de SaintDenys-Garneau, John Sutherland, and George Woodcock. Scholars continue to produce authoritative editions of letters, such as Sursum Corda! The Collected Letters of Malcolm Lowry (in two volumes, 1995–96) and the letters of A.M. Klein (forthcoming). Recent volumes of correspondence by intellectuals and public figures – such as Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye – and literary figures – such as William Arthur Deacon, E.K. Brown, and Jack McClelland – suggest the rich mine of material that beckons the skilful and determined editor of letters. Ruth Panofsky Further Reading Carter, Kathryn, Diaries in English by Women in Canada, 1753–1995: An Annotated Bibliography, Ottawa: Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, 1997 Neuman, Shirley, “Life-Writing” in Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English, 2nd edition, vol. 4, edited by W.H. New, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990 Ritchie, Joanne, “Cartographies of Silence”: An Annotated Bibliography of English Language Diaries and Reminiscences of New Brunswick Women 1783–1980, Ottawa: Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, 1997

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Canada: French Canadian Life Writing Travel narratives of New France (1534–1760), from those of Jacques Cartier (1491–1557) the discoverer and Samuel Champlain (1567–1635) the explorer to those of Louis-Armand de Lahontan (1666–c.1715), an atheistic humanist subdued by the “Noble Savage”, consist of personal feelings, descriptions, and stories about a geophysical New World and a mysterious, fascinating New Man. So do the famous Relations des Jésuites (1632–73; The Jesuit Relations), official annals signed by missionaries who were sometimes classical writers (Jeun de Brébeuf, Paul Lejeune). Marie de l’Incarnation’s mystical yet practical letters, addressed to God, to her sisters and to her fatherless son, were compared by the theologian JacquesBénigne Bossuet to Teresa of Avila’s writings. In her diary and letters (written 1748–53; published as Lettres au cher fils, 1972) to her beloved son-in-law, the high commissioner in Louisiana, Madame Elisabeth Bégon has something of the qualities of Madame de Sévigné and Racine’s tragic heroine Phèdre. The British supplied their new colony with printing press and newspapers, but the political situation was not propitious to French language and literature. At the end of the 18th century travelogues, log-books, and letters consisted of complaints, pleas for the defence, and appeals. Pierre Du Calvet’s personal and collective Appel à la justice de l’Etat, addressed to the king, was published (in translation) in London in 1784 as a simple legal paper, The Case of Peter Du Calvet, Esq. of Montreal in the Province of Quebeck [sic]. Members of the Legislative Assembly (1791), even the great leaders the Papineaus, father and son, spoke much better than they wrote. Diaries, letters, and narratives were written in Australia and the West Indies by political prisoners banished after the rebellion of 1837–38 in Lower Canada. The best piece of life – or rather death – writing at this period was written in Montreal by a young notary, hour by hour, just before hanging on the gallows in 1839. Chevalier de Lorimier’s 15 letters to his wife, children, and compatriots – Dernières Lettres d’un condamné [1848, 1996; Last Letters of a Man Sentenced to Death] – are a terse mixing of Romanticism (in the style of Victor Hugo) and classicism, revolt, courage, and a sense of history. Recollections, reminiscences, and occasionally memoirs (such as the Mémoires of Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, 1866) were the predominant life-writing genres practised at the end of the 19th century, largely by politicians, priests, magistrates, and journalists. In these forms, everyone, conservative or liberal, clerical or lay, upholds his or her opinions, his or her party, his or her conception of progress or kind of nationalism. On the political right, a triumphant Catholic church allied with the Tories; on the left, a few enlightened landlords, such as Louis-Antoine Dessaulles (1819–95), an exile in Brussels and Paris, left personal accounts, as did radical young men like Arthur Buies (1840–1901), partly educated in Paris, whose Reminiscences (1893) are, however, disappointingly short. Dessaulles’s and Buies’s letters were not published until 1991 and 1993 respectively. Faucher de Saint-Maurice (1844–97), a traveller and an officer, wrote 15 books of tales, notes, and narratives (En Route; Out at Sea) everywhere in North America, and here and there in Europe and Africa [Loin du pays, 1889; Far from My Country]. He also recorded his war experiences in De Québec à

Mexico: souvenirs de voyage, de garnison, de combat et de bivouac [1874; From Quebec City to Mexico City: Reminiscences of Journeys, Garrisons, Battles and Bivouac]. There are, however, two or three unexpected masterpieces of life writing from the 19th century. Octave Crémazie (1827–79) was a traditional epic poet who, exiled in Paris, wrote highly original diary accounts of the siege of Paris by the Prussians in 1870 and critical letters to Abbé Henri-Raymond Casgrain on literary institutions, noting, for example: “If we had our own language (huron, mohawk), we would be read in Paris. Unfortunately, we speak an archaic, idiomatic, provincial French …”. At the same time, in St Hyacinthe, Henriette Dessaulles (1860–1946), a well-born and educated teenager, kept a private diary on her “self”, her family, politics, religious and moral matters, and particularly on her love affair with a law student. Henriette’s Journal (written 1874–81), published a century later (as Fadette: journal d’Henriette Dessaulles, 1971), is not at all childish or sentimental, but tough, passionate, and mature. Abbé Casgrain (1831–1904), a jack of all trades, and Canon Lionel Groulx (1878–1967), the second French Canadian national historian, left rich collections of semi-private documents. Although we know little about Casgrain’s many travels, we will soon be able to read thousands of the letters he received from America and Europe. Groulx also wrote quantities of professional and personal letters, a journal, and memoirs, but nowhere was he closer to his childhood than in Les Rapaillages [1916; Haycocks]. The first Quebec minister of culture, the liberal Georges-Emile Lapalme (b. 1907), showed his disillusionment in Le Paradis du pouvoir [1973; Political Heavens]. His deputy minister, Guy Frégault, a historian, had the same embittered point of view, expressed in his Chronique des années perdues [1976; Chronicle of Lost Years]. Another historian, Marcel Trudel, was more optimistic; his Mémoires d’un autre siècle (published 1987) are ancestral memories as well as the memoirs of a man born in 1917. Family papers were often lost in removals, burnings, cleanings, clearings, and legacies. A few bourgeois families, however, notably the Papineau, Dessaulles, Bourassa, Garneau, Grandbois, and Ferron, left personal records. Robert Laroque de Roquebrune (1889–1978) was born into an authentic aristocratic family, near Montreal. A psychological, historical novelist, Testament de mon enfance (1951; Testament of My Childhood) also reveals him to be an exceptional memorialist. In the Eastern Townships, the poet Alfred DesRochers (1901–78), who corresponded with a competent critic, Louis Dantin, exiled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was an advisor for a network of women and other young writers. But most of his 2300 letters remain unpublished in the archives of the University of Sherbrooke. Other writers and artists were luckier, for instance Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau (1912–41). The poet Alain Grandbois’s (1900–75) travel narratives from around the world, in the interwar period, were edited and published in the 1990s. Two emblematic figures of Quebec modernity, Paul-Emile Borduas (1905–60), a painter, and Claude Gauvreau (1925–71), a playwright, who launched the Automatic Movement (the Automatistes), did not only sign the manifesto Refus global (1948; Total Refusal). Gauvreau wrote Rilkean letters to a young poet, JeanClaude Dussault (published as Correspondance, 1949–1950, 1993), and Borduas produced letters, notes, lectures, and

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diaries, available in Ecrits (Writings 1942–1958, 1978). Not far from the Borduas-Gauvreau group are Jacques Ferron’s (1921– 85) letters to his sisters – Marcelle, an automatist painter; Madeleine, a novelist, the author of Adrienne: une saga familiale [1993; Adrienne, My Young Mother] – to his translators, to a psychoanalyst, and even to terrorists. Gaston Miron’s letters to Claude Haeffely of 1954–65 [A bout portant, 1989; Fire!] are highly representative of this transitional period. Several academics, journalists, and critics have produced intellectual diaries that are also personal journals. The editor-inchief of Le Devoirs, co-president of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, André Laurendeau kept a diary, published 20 years later (1990), that offers a sharp personal perspective on issues of cultural and linguistic identity so central to francophone Canada. The sociologist Fernand Dumont (1927–97) is more than an autobiographer in his memoirs of a workman’s son, Récit d’une émigration [1997; Account of an Emigration]. The psychocritic Gérard Bessette (b. 1920) subjectively reviewed Mes Romans et moi [1979; My Novels and I]; his homeric Les Dires d’Omer Marin [1985; Omer Marin’s Tales] include a false posthumous narrative. André Brochu (b. 1942) mixed autobiographical and literary essays in La Visée critique [1988; The Critical Line of Sight]. Professor Jean-Louis Major’s (b. 1937) Entre l’Écriture et la parole [1984; Between Writing and Speaking] is altogether theoretical and personal, about life, death, and silence. Jean Ethier-Blais (1925–95) produced a Dictionnaire de moi-même [1976; Dictionary of Myself] that is good literary criticism, and Fragments d’une enfance [1989; Pieces of a Childhood] about his French, middle-class childhood in northern Ontario. Professional fiction writers have also contributed to the rising interest in autobiography. The poet Fernand Ouellette (b. 1930) entitled his recollections of essays on self, God, art, poetry, and language Journal dénoué [1974; Untied Diary], “dénoué” implying something that is unknotted, but neither loose nor undone. When the novelist and filmmaker Jacques Godbout (b. 1933) calls himself L’Ecrivain de province [1991; Provincial Writer], does he mean that he is a writer in the country or a provincial writer published in Paris? The playwright Michel Tremblay’s (b. 1942) autobiographical trilogy – Les Vues animées [1990; First Movies], Douze coups de théâtre [1992;Twelve Plays], and Un ange cornu avec des ailes de tôle [1994; A Horned Angel with Sheet-Metal Wings] goes through his city neighbourhood, his mother, gay life, but also films, theatre, and readings. Another suburban Montreal child, Gilles Archambault (b. 1933), confesses his mother’s sin and virtue – she had refused an abortion – in Un Après-Midi de septembre [1993; An Afternoon in September]. Two of the best immigrant life writings are by the Iraqi-born Jew Naim Kattan (Adieu Babylone, 1975; Farewell Babylon), and the Italian-born Marco Micone’s [Le Figuier enchanté, 1992; The Magic Fig Tree]. The well-organized feminist movement, particularly effective in Quebec on issues of language, theatre, and teaching, as well as politics, induced women of all ages and social classes to testify to their experiences of oppression. Claire Martin’s (b. 1914) analysis of her father, a domestic tyrant, in Dans un Gant de fer (1965; In an Iron Glove) was an early turning point in this regard. Some women writers who adhered to structuralism and formalism were initially reluctant to give utterance to their feelings. Life writing seemed to mar their search for scientific objec-

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tivity. However, many feminist writers succumbed at last, such as Madeleine Ouellette-Michalska in La Tentation de dire [1985; The Temptation to Confess]. The poet and theoretician Nicole Brossard (b. 1943) published a journal intime with an ironic subtitle, Journal intime, ou, voilà un manuscrit [1984; Private Diary, or, Here is a Manuscript]. The summit of life writing in French Canada and Quebec is, however, Gabrielle Roy’s (1909–83) unfinished autobiography, La Détresse et l’enchantement (1984; Enchantment and Sorrow), followed and accompanied by François Ricard’s excellent biography of her (Gabrielle Roy: une vie, 1996; translated as Gabrielle Roy: A Life). “When did I become conscious for the first time that I was, in my country, part of a sort of people treated as an inferior?” That was the first and last question the great Manitoban-born novelist asked herself, and on behalf of all French Canadians. Laurent Mailhot Further Reading Biron, Michel and Benoit Melançon (editors), Lettres des années trente, Ottawa: Le Nordir, 1996 Brunet, Manon and Serge Gagnon (editors), Discours et pratiques de l’intime, Quebec City: Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture, 1993 “Les Correspondants littéraires d’Alfred Des Rochers”, special issue of Voix et Images, 46 (Autumn 1990) “L’Ecriture intime”, special issue of Arcade, 12 (October 1986) “Effets autobiographiques au féminin”, special issue of Voix et Images, 64 (Autumn 1996) Hare, John, Les Canadiens français aux quatre coins du monde, une bibliographie commentée des récits de voyage de 1670 à 1914, Quebec City: Société Historique de Québec, 1964 Hébert, Pierre, with the contribution of Marilyn Baszczynski, Le Journal intime au Québec: structure, evolution, réception, Montreal: Fides, 1988 Laflèche, Guy, Le Missionnaire, l’apostat, le sorcier: relation de 1634 de Paul Lejeune, Montreal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1973 Lamonde, Yvan, Je Me Souviens: La Littérature personnelle au Québec, 1860–1980, Quebec City: Institut Québécois de Recherche sur la Culture, 1983 Lapointe, Gilles, L’Envol des signes: Borduas et ses lettres, Montreal: Fides-CETUQ, 1996 “La Littérature personnelle”, special issue of Revue d’Histoire Littéraire du Québec et du Canada Français, 9 (Winter–Spring 1985) Mailhot, Laurent, “Entre l’Histoire et la critique: la biographie québécoise” in 100 Years of Critical Solitudes: Canadian and Québécois Criticism from the 1880s to the 1980s, edited by Caroline Bayard, Toronto: ECW Press, 1992 Melançon, Benoit and Pierre Popovic (editors), Les Facultés des lettres: recherches récentes sur l’épistolaire français et québéçois, Université de Montréal: CULSEC, 1993 Melançon, Benoit (editor), Penser Par Lettre, Montreal: Fides, 1998 Morency, Pierre (editor), La Tentation autobiographique, Montreal: L’Hexagone, 1988 Van Roey-Roux, Françoise, La Littérature intime du Québec, Montreal: Boréal, 1983

Canada: Aboriginal Life Writing Life writing has served as a vehicle for Aboriginal Canadians to represent their historical and contemporary experience and to articulate their culture and values. It has emerged as a critical genre of Canadian writing and an important part of the

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Aboriginal cultural renaissance since the 1970s. “Aboriginal” is the constitutionally and widely accepted term in Canada to describe First Nations, Inuit, and Metis Nations, who are also referred to collectively as “native peoples”, “indigenous peoples”, “first peoples”, “original peoples”, and where appropriate by their national designation as Cree, Nisga’a, Dene, and so on. Many of the First Nations are reclaiming their own names for themselves in the manner that the Inuit have replaced the designation Eskimo, as Haudenosaunee for Iroquoian and Anishnabwe for Ojibway. In the variety of traditional Aboriginal cultures that exist in Canada, spoken life history is a genre in which storytellers, traditional teachers, leaders, and elders communicate historical events, life lessons, cultural values, and unique experiences for educational and entertainment purposes. Contemporary native Canadian life writing may be said to draw on one of the most vital and engaging of Aboriginal traditional narrative forms. The form has been given recent impetus by two important public events. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples’ final report in 1996 was partly based on massive amounts of oral evidence, much of it in the form of life history and life writing. Similarly, the law courts in Canada have come to recognize the legal value of oral history, most recently in the Supreme Court of Canada’s Delgaamuukw (1998) and Marshall (1999) decisions. Hence a significant impetus has come from the legal and political spheres to bolster the established interest from literary and academic institutions. Among the most powerful and compelling texts in the genre is Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed (1973), a book that in many ways acted as a manifesto for Metis political consciousness. Minnie Aodla Freeman’s Life among the Qallunaat (1978) is a remarkable Inuit ethnography of the dominant white settler society told through the vehicle of her life history. In My Heart Soars (1974) the prominent Canadian actor and Salish chief Dan George used the prose poem as a vehicle for life writing. These works are all in the autobiographical or memoir form. An extensive literature in this form, frequently published by small presses, has flourished in recent years. It includes the poetry of Margaret Sam-Cromarty’s James Bay Memoirs (1992), and in prose Dorothy Mesher’s Kuujjuaq – Memories and Musings (1995), John Tetso’s Trapping is My Life (1970), and Khot-La-Cha: The Autobiography of Chief Simon Baker, compiled and edited by Verna Kirkness (1994). The biographical has also been prominent, obviously with particular relevance to historical figures, though there is a recent tendency for active political or cultural leaders to have biographies published. Well-known texts in the field include: a number of biographies of the 19th-century Metis leader Louis Riel, including those by Thomas Flanagan, M. Siggins, and George Stanley; George Woodcock’s account of the life of Riel’s compatriot Gabriel Dumont (1975); Kelsay’s biography of the Mohawk loyalist Joseph Brant (there are several); Norma Sluman’s Poundmaker (1967) on the plains Cree chief; and Hugh Dempsey’s Crowfoot (1972) and Big Bear (1984), on the Blackfoot and Cree leaders. Among the biographies of political leaders of the 20th century are: Jean Goodwill and Norma Sluman’s account of the modern plains Cree leader John Tootoosis (1982); Murray Dobbin’s The One-and-a-Half Men (1981) on the Metis radicals Jim Brady and Malcolm Norris; Johanna Brand’s study The Life and Death of Anna Mae

Aquash (1978) on the Micmac political activist; Roy MacGregor’s life of the contemporary Cree land-claims negotiator Billy Diamond in Chief (1989); and Peter McFarlane’s Brotherhood to Nationhood (1993) on the Shuswap leader George Manuel, who helped to found the National Indian Brotherhood. Biographies have also been written about cultural leaders, such as the very interesting Sacred Feathers: The Reverend Peter Jones (1987) on the Anishnabwe evangelist by Donald Smith, and Betty Keller’s Pauline (1981) and Walter J. McCrea’s early Pauline Johnson and Her Friends (1947) respecting the renowned Mohawk poet. Historical works, frequently by Aboriginal writers, have used the life-writing form extensively, sometimes piecing together a variety of oral histories, at other times relying on one source. Ila Bussidor and Ustun Bilgen-Reinart’s Night Spirits (1997) chronicles the tragic removal of the Sayisi Dene in northern Manitoba, for example, using a number of sources. Kenn Harper’s Give Me My Father’s Body (1986) tells the story of the Inuk Minik and relates what is surely one of the most painful and egregious instances of cultural appropriation in modern history. A number of texts dealing with the residential school experience have appeared, including Knockwood’s study (1992) of Shubenacadie Residential School in Nova Scotia, Celia HaigBrown’s Resistance and Renewal (1988), Jack Funk and Gordon Lobe’s compilation … And They Told Us Their Stories (1991), and Residential Schools: The Stolen Years (1993) edited by Linda Jaine. Life writing has proved a critical vehicle, as the above indicate, for conveying the experience of history as trauma for many Aboriginal Canadians. The realm of ethnography has found a prominent place for life writing. Julie Cruikshank’s Life Lived Like a Story (1990) is the outstanding example of what can be accomplished in this form. In that text three women from Yukon First Nations, Angela Sidney, Annie Ned, and Kitty Smith, weave the stories of their lives together with historical events and traditional narratives. Regina Flannery’s Ellen Smallboy (1995) is another example of this type of text. At the other end of the age spectrum, Jean Briggs’s Inuit Morality Play (1998), which focuses on the transition from infancy to early childhood of a single Inuk child, may also be placed in this category as an equally compelling account. Aboriginal fiction has also used the form of life writing extensively. The Okanagan writer Jeanette Armstrong’s compelling novel Slash (1985) tells the story of 1960s activism through the device of a fictional life history. Ruby Slipperjack, of Anishnabwe heritage, used the life of an Ojibway girl named “the Owl” in Honour the Sun (1987) to portray the contemporary experience of a young girl from a small isolated community, while Thomas King’s Medicine River (1990) and Beatrice Culleton’s In Search of April Raintree (1983) both portray contemporary Metis experience through the vehicle of fictional life writing. The most widely growing form of life writing is the “Aboriginal voice” text, which usually involves transcriptions of life history and traditional narrative from an oral recorded source. Freda Ahenakew’s Stories of the House People (1987), Janet Silman’s Enough is Enough (1987), Flora Beardy and Robert Coutts’s Voices from Hudson Bay (1996), and Beth Brant’s I’ll Sing ’til the Day I Die (1995) are good examples. In the Words of Elders (1999) edited by Kulchyski, McCaskill, and New-

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house, while by no means comprehensive, includes life histories from female and male elders in each of the regions of Canada. The Dene elder George Blondin, with his When the World Was New (1990) and Yamoria the Lawmaker (1997), has integrated life history, biography, history, and traditional narrative, and also demonstrated a new form of Aboriginal controlled text. Fiddler and Stevens’s Killing the Shamen (1985), which relates very interesting family and legal history, also demonstrates the strengths of new styles of collaborative work, as does Pitseolak and Eber’s People from Our Side (1975), which deals with Inuit experience. Penny Petrone’s two edited texts, First People, First Voices (1983) and Northern Voices, (1988), contain a collection of historical and contemporary texts, many of which are life writings, of First Nations and Inuit, respectively, and can be recommended as a starting point for those interested in the genre. Aboriginal life writing is one of the most engaging and dynamic genres in contemporary Canadian letters. Aboriginal authors, frequently in creative collaboration, have used the vehicle to convey the felt trauma of history as it was experienced, to convey values and cultural forms associated with different stages of life, and to reflect creatively on broad philosophical questions about the good life and imaginatively to reconstruct their place within Canadian society. Peter Kulchyski and John Milloy Further Reading Ahenakew, Freda (editor), Waskahikaniwiyiniw-acimowina: Stories of the House People, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1987 Anderson, Frank, Almighty Voice, Calgary: Frontier, 1971 Armstrong, Jeanette C., Slash, Penticton, British Columbia: Theytus, 1985; revised edition, 1988 Beardy, Flora and Robert Coutts (editors), Voices from Hudson Bay: Cree Stories from York Factory, Montreal and Buffalo, New York: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996 Blondin, George, When the World Was New, Yellowknife: Outcrop, 1990 Blondin, George, Yamoria the Lawmaker: Stories of the Dene, Edmonton: NeWest Press, 1997 Brand, Johanna, The Life and Death of Anna Mae Aquash, Toronto: James Lorimer, 1978 Brant, Beth, I’ll Sing ’til the Day I Die: Conversations with Tyendinaga Elders, Toronto: McGilligan, 1995 Briggs, Jean L., Inuit Morality Play: The Emotional Education of a Three-Year-Old, St John’s, Newfoundland: Institute of Social and Economic Research, and New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1998 Bussidor, Ila and Ustun Bilgen-Reinart, Night Spirits: The Story of the Relocation of the Sayisi Dene, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1997 Campbell, Maria, Halfbreed, Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, and New York: Saturday Review Press, 1973 Cruikshank, Julie, Life Lived Like a Story: Life Stories of Three Yukon Native Elders, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, and Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990 Culleton, Beatrice, In Search of April Raintree, Winnipeg: Pemmican, 1983 Dempsey, Hugh, Crowfoot, Chief of the Blackfeet, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972 Dempsey, Hugh, Big Bear: The End of Freedom, Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1984 Dobbin, Murray, The One-and-a-Half Men: The Story of Jim Brady and Malcolm Norris, Metis Patriots of the Twentieth Century, Vancouver: New Star, 1981 Fiddler, Chief Thomas and James R. Stevens, Killing the Shamen, Moonbeam, Ontario: Penumbra Press, 1985 Flanagan, Thomas, Louis David Riel: Prophet of the New World,

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Toronto and Buffalo, New York: University of Toronto Press, 1979; revised edition 1996 Flannery, Regina, Ellen Smallboy: Glimpses of a Cree Woman’s Life, Montreal and Buffalo, New York: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995 Freeman, Minnie Aodla, Life among the Qallunaat, Edmonton: Hurtig, 1978 Funk, Jack and Gordon Lobe (editors), … And They Told Us Their Stories, Saskatoon: Saskatoon District Tribal Council, 1991 Gedalof, Robin (editor), Paper Stays Put: A Collection of Inuit Writing, Edmonton: Hurtig, 1980 George, Dan and Helmut Hirnschall, My Heart Soars, Toronto: Clarke Irwin, 1974 Goodwill, Jean and Norma Sluman, John Tootoosis: Biography of a Cree Leader, Ottawa: Golden Dog Press, 1982 Haig-Brown, Celia, Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School, Vancouver: Tillacum Library, 1988 Harper, Kenn, Give Me My Father’s Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo, Frobisher Bay, Northwest Territories: Blacklead, 1986 Jaine, Linda (editor), Residential Schools: The Stolen Years, Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan Extension Press, 1993 Keller, Betty, Pauline: A Biography of Pauline Johnson, Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1981 Kelsay, Isabel, Joseph Brant 1743–1807: Man of Two Worlds, Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1984 King, Thomas, Medicine River, Markham, Ontario, and New York: Viking Press, 1990 Kirkness, Verna J. (editor), Khot-La-Cha: The Autobiography of Chief Simon Baker, Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1994 Knockwood, Isabelle, Out of the Depths: The Experiences of Mi’kmaw Children at the Indian Residential School at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, Lockeport, Nova Scotia: Roseway, 1992 Kulchyski, Peter, Don McCaskill and David Newhouse (editors), In the Words of Elders: Aboriginal Cultures in Transition, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999 McCrea, Walter J., Pauline Johnson and Her Friends, Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1947 McFarlane, Peter, Brotherhood to Nationhood: George Manuel and the Making of the Modern Indian Movement, Toronto: Between The Lines, 1993 MacGregor, Roy, Chief: The Fearless Vision of Billy Diamond, Markham, Ontario: Viking, 1989 Mesher, Dorothy, Kuujjuaq – Memories and Musings, Duncan, British Columbia: Unica, 1995 Petrone, Penny (editor), First People, First Voices, Toronto and Buffalo, New York: University of Toronto Press, 1983 Petrone, Penny (editor), Northern Voices: Inuit Writing in English, Toronto and Buffalo, New York: University of Toronto Press, 1988 Petrone, Penny, Native Literature in Canada: From the Oral Tradition to the Present, Toronto and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990 Pitseolak, Peter and Dorothy Eber, People from Our Side: An Inuit Record of Seekooseelak, Edmonton: Hurtig, 1975; as People from Our Side: An Eskimo Life Story in Words and Photographs, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975 Sam-Cromarty, Margaret, James Bay Memoirs: A Cree Woman’s Ode to her Homeland, Lakefield, Ontario: Waapoone, 1992 Siggins, M., Riel, Toronto: HarperCollins, 1994 Silman, Janet (editor), Enough is Enough: Aboriginal Women Speak Out, Toronto: Women’s Press, 1987 Slipperjack, Ruby, Honour the Sun: Extracted and Revised from the Diary of an Owl, Winnipeg: Pemmican, 1987 Sluman, Norma, Poundmaker, Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1967 Smith, Donald B., Sacred Feathers: The Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) and the Mississauga Indians, Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, and Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987 Stanley, George F.G., Louis Riel, Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1968; Toronto and New York: McGraw Hill Ryerson, 1972 Tetso, John, Trapping is My Life, Toronto: Peter Martin, 1970 Woodcock, George, Gabriel Dumont: The Metis Chief and His Lost World, Edmonton, Alberta: Hurtig, 1975

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Canetti, Elias 1905–1994 Austrian / British novelist, essayist, and autobiographer Elias Canetti is rare among life writers in that he published several volumes of Aufzeichnungen – a possible translation for the term is “memoirs” – as well as a three-volume autobiography covering the first 32 years of his life. The “memoirs” read more like a diary or notebook, since they contain aperçus and aphorisms, teasing conundra and mini-essays that are only occasionally personal, let alone confessional. One nonetheless gets an impression of Canetti’s character through exposure to his precise and wide-ranging mind: Die Provinz des Menschen (The Human Province) is the title of the most substantial volume and reveals his intention to reinvent the civilized values of the Enlightenment in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The autobiography is his superior achievement and could well come to be Canetti’s lasting contribution to 20th-century literature. The style is, however, apparently anything but modern, and a reader’s first impression might well be that he or she has stepped into a 19th-century Bildungsroman. One model is clearly Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth). Canetti begins with his first memory and proceeds to trace his upbringing and education under a set of recurrent, though unstated, themes and motifs. The volume titles hint that he is developing his ability to speak (Die gerettete Zunge, 1977; The Tongue Set Free), to hear (Die Fackel im Ohr, 1980; The Torch in My Ear), and to see (Das Augenspiel, 1985; The Play of the Eyes). Canetti has no truck with modernist notions of the disintegration of the self. For that reason his semi-fictionalized firstperson narrative was criticized for appearing all-commanding and unreflective. Yet his text is original in structure. The life is merely his raw material, but his account of it is nonetheless fascinating for the purely empirical or historical information he conveys. He depicts a Central European milieu that was obliterated by Hitler: born a Turkish citizen in what is today Bulgaria to Sephardic, Spanish-speaking Jewish parents, Canetti spent parts of his childhood in Manchester, Frankfurt, and Switzerland, though there was never any doubt that Vienna, the great capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was the centre of his cultural world. As a young man he consorted with many of the great figures of the age (playwright Bertolt Brecht, satirists Georg Grosz and Karl Kraus, novelist Hermann Broch, shortstory writer Isaac Babel, novelist Robert Musil, and Alma Mahler) and each features distinctively. Yet he tells us nothing new about any of them and dwells often on obscure characteristics. This is where autobiography departs from memoir. Like the figures in his personal life and the books he devours, these artists are staging posts on his route to self-discovery, which is a ceaseless confrontation with preconceptions he had little idea he possessed and which he must overcome. When stories by his wife Veza (1897–1963) were re-issued at the beginning of the 1990s, Canetti was criticized for not even mentioning in his glowing portrait of her that she wrote at all, and that she was, eight years his senior, a better-known writer than he by the time they married in 1934. In his recreation of his past Veza simply plays a role in his liberation from his domineering mother. The point, however, is that the autobiography’s value does not lie in its factual completeness. Canetti seeks to emulate the Babylonian Gilgamesh in rebelling against death: whereas

Gilgamesh railed against the gods and went in search of eternal life, Canetti will do battle with all forms of death in life, which means essentially fossilized views and lovelessness. Life is defined by openness to new ideas and stimuli, constant movement, and self-transformation. He invites his readers to identify the ways, often painful, in which he has grown and learnt, sometimes unwittingly through the intervention of others. By the end, a year before Hitler’s takeover and his emigration to London, he has emerged a larger-than-life super-hero of his own text, which itself has become an exploration of truth with regard to the development of a personality and a statement of the values Hitler was intent on destroying. This makes the three books into far more than an autobiography, let alone a memoir. Julian Preece Biography Born in Ruse (Ruschuk), Bulgaria, 25 July 1905. His parents were prosperous Sephardic, Spanish-speaking Jews. Educated at schools in England, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. Studied chemistry at the University of Vienna, 1924–29 (DSc). Subsequently worked as a fulltime writer. Married Venetia “Veza” Taubner-Calderón, 1934 (died 1963). Wrote Die Blendung (1935; Auto-da-Fé), a novel about totalitarianism. Left Vienna in 1938 and emigrated to Britain. Wrote Masse und Macht (1960; Crowds and Power), a study of fascism and other mass movements. Married Hera Buschor, 1971 (died 1988): one daughter. Lived in England, but from the 1970s also maintained a home in Zurich. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1981. Died in Zurich, 14 August 1994.

Selected Writings Die gerettete Zunge: Geschichte einer Jugend, 1977; as The Tongue Set Free: Remembrance of a European Childhood, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, 1979 Die Fackel im Ohr: Lebengeschichte 1921–1931, 1980; as The Torch in My Ear, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, 1982 Das Augenspiel: Lebengeschichte 1931–1937, 1985; as The Play of the Eyes, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1986 Die Provinz des Menschen: Aufzeichnungen 1942–1972, 1973; as The Human Province, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, 1978 The Memoirs of Elias Canetti, 1999 (includes The Tongue Set Free, The Torch in My Ear, and The Play of the Eyes) Also wrote a study of Kafka’s letters to Felice: Der andere Prozess: Kafkas Briefe an Felice (1969; as Kafka’s Other Trial: The Letters to Felice, translated by Christopher Middleton, 1974)

Further Reading Bollacher, Martin, “‘I Bow to Memory’: Elias Canetti’s Autobiographical Writings” in Essays in Honor of Elias Canetti, translated by Michael Hulse, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1987 Darby, David, “A Literary Life: The Textuality of Elias Canetti’s Autobiography”, Modern Austrian Literature, 25/2 (1992): 37–49 Doppler, Alfred, “Vor- und Gegenbilder (Gestalten und Figuren als Elemente der Zeit- und Lebensgeschichte in Canettis autobiographischen Büchern)” in Elias Canetti: Londoner Symposium, edited by Adrian Stevens and Fred Wagner, Stuttgart: Heinz, 1991 Eigler, Friederike, Das autobiographische Werk von Elias Canetti, Tübingen: Stauffenberg, 1988 Gould, Robert, “Die Gerettete Zunge and Dichtung und Wahrheit: Hypertextuality in Autobiography and Its Implications”, Seminar, 21 (1985): 79–105 Preece, Julian, “Portraits of the Artists as Young Men: The Autobiographies of Elias Canetti and Thomas Bernhard” in The Individual, Identity and Innovation: Signals from Contemporary Literature and the New Germany, edited by Arthur Williams and Stuart Parkes, New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 1994

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Saunders, Barbara, Contemporary German Autobiography: Literary Approaches to the Problem of Identity, London: Institute of Germanic Studies, and Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1985 Trautwein, Ralf, Die Literarisierung des Lebens in Elias Canettis Autobiographie, Berlin: Galda and Wilch, 1997

Caribbean: Anglophone Caribbean life writing begins in the 18th century with works written by African slaves. Autobiographies such as Ukawsaw Gronniosaw’s A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an African Prince, as Related by Himself (c.1770), Ottobah Cugoana’s Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1787), and Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative (1789) recount displacement to the New World, enslavement in the West Indies, and the quest for freedom. Unlike traditional autobiographies such as Augustine’s Confessions (written 397–400) and JeanJacques Rousseau’s Confessions (1782–89), in which individual self-construction and subjectivity are the primary ends, the selfquest in these black texts functions to promote social objectives; protest and the struggle for civil rights are their goals. Women, enslaved and free, contributed several texts of selfwriting in the early 19th century. The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself (1831) is a slave narrative orally narrated by Mary Prince to her editor. On the other hand, Elizabeth Hart Thwaites and Anne Hart Gilbert were free “coloreds” from Antigua who used their church history, The History of Methodism (1804), to explore their own selfconstruction through religious conversion. The work also preserves life histories that would otherwise have remained untold, those of black women reformists in Antigua. Anne Hart’s Memoir of John Gilbert (1834) served the multiple purpose of recording the life of her husband, the churchman John Gilbert, while documenting her own abolitionist work. Mary Jane Seacole’s Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857) is an extraordinary literary achievement in which she manipulates androcentric, Eurocentric literary conventions – specifically, those of autobiography, travel writing, and memoir – to authorize her hybrid, “different” subjectivity, and to criticize the vagaries of emancipation. Seacole shows how the free(d), female subject fashioned her identity from a socially, racially, and economically disempowered position in the postemancipation period. Jamaican-born, trained by British surgeons in medicine, and acquiring the title of “yellow doctoress”, this independent and ambitious woman became a heroine of the Crimean War. Writers of British descent are part of the Caribbean tradition of life writing. Most familiar are Matthew (“Monk”) G. Lewis’s Journal of a West India Proprietor (1834), Lady Nugent’s Journal (1839), and Mrs Carmichael’s Domestic Manners and Social Conditions of the White, Coloured, and Negro Population of the West Indies (1833). Using the literary forms of journal and travel writing, these administrators, plantation owners, and wives of governing officials or missionaries reflect empowered subjectivities that observe the “othered” subjects of

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slavery and colonialism. Generally, their works serve nationalistic and imperialist ends. The nationalistic self-awareness of the 20th century resulted in an increasing number of works written by Caribbean Creole writers. Though much of this is manifested in poetry and fiction, interest continues in autobiographic modes. Nothing So Blue (1927) and Youth is a Blunder (1948), both written by the Dominican Elma Napier under the pseudonym Elizabeth Garner, evidence the residual interest. Later texts are more strategically manipulative. C.L.R. James’s Beyond a Boundary (1963) provides an astute cultural reading of the imperializing project behind cricket, alongside self-exploration; V.S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival: A Novel (1987) mediates between two genres, while Jean Rhys’s Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography (1979) mixes songs, letter fragments, and histories to represent her culturally and racially complex colonialized history and identity. Singularly notable is the work of the Nobel Prize-winner of 1992, Derek Walcott, who in the autobiographical poem Another Life (1973) draws upon fragments of memory, folk biographies, Caribbean legends, colonial history, classical allusions, and painterly narratives to provide a profound meditation on self, race and origin, history, and art. These texts differentiate themselves from typically European models by their greater focus on the socio-political / historical sources of subjectivity. Two women’s autobiographical texts are worth noting. Edna Manley’s The Private Years, 1900–38 (1975) and The Diaries (1989) return to the diary genre to write the life of an activist political spouse. Also of significance is Lionheart Gal (1986; edited and transcribed by Honor Ford Smith), a collection of oral narratives of the Sistren Theatre Collective (Jamaica). These life histories of working-class women, in their own Creole voices, preserve an under-represented history. Since the 1950s, Caribbean writers have increasingly used the innovative form of “autobiographical fiction” – a hybrid genre that accommodates the persistent need of colonialized writers to address problems of identity. Jean Rhys’s Voyage in the Dark (1934) is a seminal work in this mode, a fiction about an immigrant West Indian girl in England, with experiences similar to Rhys’s, which explores issues of hybridity, race, and gender, and the sources of fragmented identities in colonialism. Later works, such as George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin (1953), Samuel Selvon’s A Brighter Sun (1952), V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), and Edgar Mittelholzer’s A Swarthy Boy (1963), use this radical genre to reconstruct selves torn by experiences of slavery, indentureship, migration, and colonialism. Some works, such as Michael Anthony’s The Year in San Fernando (1965), address Caribbean identity in the Caribbean space. Contemporary women have provided a large number of works in the genre of autobiographical fiction. Challenging linguistic, epistemological, and ideological systems, they reenvision gender, class, race, community, and nation. Texts such as Erna Brodber’s Jane and Louise Will Soon Come Home (1980), Jamaica Kincaid’s At the Bottom of the River (1983) and Annie John (1985), Michelle Cliff’s Abeng (1984) and No Telephone to Heaven (1987), and Jackie Bodden Webb’s Grand Cayman: On the Island of Cayman (c.1981) break out of silence to give their own histories. Talking back – “back chatting” – they redefine their gender and racial identities in politically meaningful ways.

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Biographies recount the lives of important public figures. Past subjects have been the imperial conquerors and colonizers. Recent writing seeks to reverse this tradition. Thus the biographies of national heroes (Paul Bogle, Maroon Nanny, Marcus Garvey, for example) and political figures (the Manleys, Eric Williams) now figure prominently. For example, W. Adolphe Roberts’s Six Great Jamaicans (1951) provides histories of West Indians such as Edward Jordon, G.W. Gordon, and Herbert deLisser; the later work, Clinton V. Black’s Living Names in Jamaica’s History (1991), concerns patriots such as Moses Baker, Richard Hill, Mary Seacole, and William Menzie Knibb. Interestingly, many contemporary biographies lionize popular figures from entertainment, seen perhaps as significant cultural workers. Bob Marley is the subject of more biographies than any of the national heroes or statesmen. Evelyn J. Hawthorne Further Reading Black, Clinton V., Living Names in Jamaica’s History, Kingston: Jamaica Information Service, 1991 Brereton, Bridget, et al., Gendered Testimony: Autobiographies, Diaries, and Letters by Women as Sources of Caribbean History, Mona, Jamaica: Department of History, University of the West Indies Carmichael, Mrs (A.C.) Domestic Manners and Social Conditions of the White, Coloured, and Negro Population of the West Indies, London: Whittaker, 1833; reprinted New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969 Cugoana, Ottobah, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery and Other Writings, edited by Vincent Carretta, New York: Penguin, 1999 (first edition, 1787) Equiano, Olaudah, The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings, edited by Vincent Carretta, New York: Penguin, 1995 (first edition, 1789) Ferguson, Moira (editor), The Hart Sisters: Early African Caribbean Writers, Evangelicals, and Radicals, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993 Garner, Elizabeth (pseud. Elma Napier), Nothing So Blue, Kensington: Cayme Press, 1927; London: Jonathan Cape, 1928 Garner, Elizabeth (pseud. Elma Napier), Youth is a Blunder, London: Jonathan Cape, 1948 Gronniosaw, Ukawsaw, A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an African Prince, as Related by Himself, Bath: S. Hazzard, c.1770; Newport, Rhode Island: 1774 James, C.L.R., Beyond a Boundary, Kingston: Sangster, 1963; London: Stanley Paul, 1980; New York: Pantheon, 1983 Lewis, Matthew Gregory (Monk), Journal of a West India Proprietor, Kept During a Residence in the Island of Jamaica, edited by Judith Terry, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 (first edition, 1834) Mittelholzer, Edgar, A Swarthy Boy, London: Putnam, 1963 Naipaul, V.S., The Enigma of Arrival: A Novel, New York: Knopf, and Harmondsworth: Viking, 1987 Nugent, Maria, Lady Nugent’s Journal of Her Residence in Jamaica from 1801 to 1805, edited by Philip Wright, revised edition, Kingston: Institute of Jamaica, 1966 Nugent, Maria, Lady Nugent’s Journal: Jamaica One Hundred Years Ago, edited by Frank Cundall, London: Black, 1907 (first edition, 1839) Prince, Mary, The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave, revised edition, edited by Moira Ferguson, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997 (first edition, 1831) Rhys, Jean, Voyage in the Dark, London: Constable, 1934; New York: Morrow, 1935 Rhys, Jean, Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography, New York: Harper and Row, and London: Deutsch, 1979 Roberts, W. Adolphe, Six Great Jamaicans: Biographical Sketches, Kingston: Pioneer Press, 1951

Seacole, Mary, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, edited by William L. Andrews, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988 (first edition, 1857) Selvon, Samuel, A Brighter Sun, London: Wingate, 1952; New York: Viking, 1953

Caribbean: Francophone The history of life writing in the French Caribbean is not an especially long one, since written literature is recorded from the mid-18th century and is sporadic for the next 100 years. Because of the violent record of colonialism and slavery throughout the region, writers have engaged in a particular identity search that explores the legacy of psychic alienation, or mistrust, even hatred, of oneself and one’s own kind, and negotiates complex matrices of race, class, language, geography, and history. Slavery was abolished in the colonies of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and French Guiana in 1848; before that date any writing was done by the white ruling class and consisted largely of travelogues, chronicles, and sociological treatises. Literary production by slaves primarily took the form of contes créoles, stories told by the conteur, or storyteller, to a nocturnal audience. These Creole tales avoided imprudent revelation of personal details, but rather masked themes of political and cultural resistance with the use of animal characters. Haiti was the site of the first and only successful slave revolt in the New World, whereby the republic was established in 1804. On account of the political upheavals and various foreign occupations that make up Haiti’s history, the most common type of memoir has been the political one. Many diplomats and functionaries recorded their political lives and views, and there are dozens of such texts, including Joseph Balthazar Inginac’s Mémoires de J.B. Inginac [1843; Memoirs of J.B. Inginac], Louis Boisrond-Tonnerre’s Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire d’Haiti [1851; Memoirs in Service of Haitian History], Choses vues: récits et souvenirs, 1902 [1939; Things Seen: Tales and Memories, 1902] by Berthoumieux Danache, and Léocadie Elie Lescot’s, president of the Republic from 1941 to 1946, Avant l’Oubli [1974; Before Oblivion]. In French Guiana, which contained Devil’s Island as a penal colony for the French territories, a more common genre was the convict memoir. By far the best known among these is Papillon by Henri Charrière (1969; Papillon). The autobiographical fiction of René Maran (Guiana) and of Mayotte Capécia (Martinique) received close analysis in Peau noire, masques blancs (1952; Black Skin, White Masks) by Frantz Fanon of Martinique; Capécia especially gained notoriety after Fanon’s virulent condemnation of her portrayal of race alienation and what he perceived as her self-hatred. The narrator of her novels Je suis une martiniquaise (1948; I Am a Martiniquan Woman) and La Négresse blanche (1950; The White Negress) tends to value white skin more than black, indicating interiorization of the colonizer’s values. Maran, winner of the Prix Goncourt for his novel Batouala (1921; Batouala), published a thinly veiled autobiography, Journal sans date [1927; Journal without a Date], later extended into Un Homme pareil aux autres [1947; A Man Like Any Other], which involves the anxiety surrounding a black man’s love for a white

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woman and the split engendered between his “civilized” status as a student in France and the colour of his skin. Guianese Bertène Juminer’s autobiographical novel Les Bâtards (1961; The Bastards) delves into the psychic damage effected on a family by racism. Life writing by women that explores the intersection of race, class, and gender-oppression includes Fortuna Augustin Guery (Haiti), Témoignages [1950; A Personal Account], Françoise Ega (Martinique), Le Temps des madras: un récit de la Martinique [1967; Time of the Madras: A Tale of Martinique], and Jacqueline Manicom (Guadeloupe), La Graine: journal d’une sage femme [1974; The Seed: Journal of a Midwife]. One of the more important forms that French Caribbean literature has taken is autobiographical fiction as childhood narrative, the récit d’enfance créole, wherein a child is pulled between two cultures and languages: French Creole, spoken at home and with friends, and “French French”, spoken at school, where Creole was for many years forbidden. The child as narrator is poised between the affective world of family and assimilation into society. The family – especially the maternal figure, whether mother or grandmother – the community, the landscape, and especially the experience of education affect the direction of the child’s life. The Martinican Joseph Zobel’s La Rue case-nègres (1950; Black Shack Alley), also a film of 1983 by Euzhan Palcy with Zobel playing the part of the African sage Médouze, is a wellknown instance of the genre. The character of José is brought up by his grandmother, a cotton worker who makes sacrifices so that he can attend school on a partial scholarship. In the Martinican Patrick Chamoiseau’s Antan d’enfance (1993; Childhood) and Chemin d’école (1994; School Days) a teacher practises “cultural orthopaedics” on Creole students and has tremendous impact on them, for better or worse. The main character is referred to as “the boy” but Chamoiseau often intervenes in the first person to comment; this technique, and his use of répondeurs, or chorus, exemplify the créoliste’s belief in “creolizing” French by incorporating Creole rhythms and traditions. Raphael Confiant (Martinique) has written several novels with autobiographical resonance in Creole as well as in French. Ravines du devant-jour [1995; Ravines of Dawn] incorporates central themes of racial identity, community, landscape, and language. Confiant finds that only Creole and French entwined will serve to evoke his particular childhood memories. Aspects of Maryse Condé’s life can be seen in several of her novels; her explicitly autobiographical work is Le Coeur à rire et à pleurer [1999; Laughing Crying Heart]. She remembers as a child in Guadeloupe not being allowed to speak Creole and being taught to mistrust those darker-skinned and less educated than herself. Her mother is a central figure in this text, as is the Haitian writer Emile Ollivier’s in his Mille Eaux [1999; A Thousand Waters]. Ollivier’s childhood during the 1940s was coloured by the natural beauty of his island and the importance of ancestry. In the domain of poetry, Eloges (1911; Eloges) by Saint-John Perse (Guadeloupe) and the Martinican Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1939; Notebook of a Return to the Native Land) recall childhood details to varying effect: “Enfance, mon amour” (“Childhood, my love”), Saint-John Perse writes, while Césaire recalls the incessant noise of his

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mother’s sewing machine as she worked to put food on the table. Adele Parker Further Reading Antoine, Regis, Rayonnants écrivains de la Caraïbe: Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane: anthologie et analyses, Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 1998 Case, Frederick Ivor, The Crisis of Identity: Studies in the Guadeloupean and Martiniquan Novel, Sherbrooke, Quebec: Naaman, 1985 Corzani, Jack, La Littérature des Antilles-Guyane françaises, Fort-deFrance: Désormeaux, 1978 Crosta, Suzanne, Récits d’enfance antillaise, Quebec City: Université Laval / GRELCA, 1998 Hornung, Alfred and Ernstpeter Ruhe (editors), Postcolonialisme et autobiographie: Albert Memmi, Assia Djebar, Daniel Maximin, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998 Malena, Anne, The Negotiated Self: The Dynamics of Identity in Francophone Caribbean Narrative, New York: Peter Lang, 1999 Mathieu, Martine (editor), Littératures autobiographiques de la Francophonie, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996

Carlyle, Thomas

1795–1881

Scottish historian, biographer, and essayist Thomas Carlyle was among the most influential writers of the Victorian period. His principal books include The French Revolution (1837), On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1841), Past and Present (1843), Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches (1845), Frederick the Great (1858–65), and a series of literary and biographical essays largely written in the 1820s and 1830s. He contributed to the field of life writing through two main works. The first was a fictionalized autobiography published early in his career called Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh; it was serialized in Fraser’s Magazine in 1833–34, but not published in book form until 1836. His more overtly autobiographical Reminiscences was written in 1866 and 1867 shortly after the death of his wife, and published in February 1881, the month of his death. (The “James Carlyle” essay from it had been written in 1832, shortly after the death of Carlyle’s father.) Sartor Resartus is among the most influential books published in English in the 19th century. Carlyle denied that it was directly autobiographical, but it is most commonly referred to as a “spiritual autobiography”. That Carlyle was, in the 1820s, trying to work out a set of beliefs he could accept after his own loss of faith in revealed religion some years before, however, and that the general outline of these beliefs comes in Sartor he never denied. The book presented a mythic, protean persona, the German-born Diogenes Teufelsdröckh “God born devil’s dun”, a professor of Things in General (“allerlei Wissenschaft”) at the University of Know Not Where (Weissnichtwo). The book follows his life and attempts an exposition of his philosophy of clothes – a metaphor for systems of religion, government, belief, and thought. Carlyle creates additional personae (the Hofrath Heuschrecke [Councillor Grasshopper] and an unnamed English editor) who interrogate and interpret the life and writings of the work’s central figure. Subtitled The Life and

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Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh, the book was pieced together by the English editor from published and unpublished writings and other fragments of Teufelsdröckh’s, follows his education, failed romance, loss of religious faith, and physical and spiritual wanderings around the globe. The central character gains an education steeped in the traditions of the Enlightenment which destroys his belief in revealed religion, but leaves him little or nothing positive to embrace. Scepticism is equated with mechanism; the universe becomes devoid of wonder, mystery; God is nothing more than a steam engine. These realizations lead to a crisis of faith, “das ewige Nein” (the everlasting No), at which point Teufelsdröckh contemplates suicide. He is saved by his embracing of “das ewige Ja” (the everlasting Yea), a belief that he and the universe are not soulless, are not of the Devil, but divine. Those without a fixed system of beliefs can still find some peace and satisfaction in continuing their journey towards one, but they must also work, which by itself is a wholesome anodyne to despair. The divine universe and the spark of the divine in man are not ascribable to any particular creed. In other words, all beliefs are culturally conditioned, and therefore must change and evolve as cultures do. A tearing down or questioning of the beliefs of one faith is in fact the preparation for a newer, richer, and truer form of belief in a new era. Carlyle was among the earlier figures in the Victorian period to articulate the “crisis of faith” that was to be common in the 19th and 20th centuries, and to point a way toward a moral and upright life without the underpinnings of the church. He thus influenced several generations of readers and writers. Contemporary criticism of Sartor Resartus tends to focus more on the structure and rich allusiveness of the work rather than its morality. It is easily Carlyle’s most important and most studied book. The Reminiscences was a controversial work that has only recently come to be carefully considered as a work of auto/biography. Many early reviewers were offended by the frankness of Carlyle’s characterizations of his contemporaries, found his remarks indiscreet, or were appalled by the less-than-flattering image that the work appeared to paint of Carlyle as a husband, or the honesty with which it discussed some of the tensions within the Carlyle marriage. The publication of this work also led to an angry dispute between the work’s first editor, James Anthony Froude, and Carlyle’s niece and nephew Mary and Alexander Carlyle, which essentially concerned the control of Carlyle’s posthumous reputation. The frankness of the book along with Froude’s biography of Carlyle and an edition of Jane Carlyle’s letters that her husband had prepared for publication helped to spark a debate about the propriety of unflattering revelations about famous men and women coming into the public domain so soon after their deaths. However, more recent scholarship has connected the essays in the Reminiscences with the exaltation of the commonplace that was a hallmark of the Romantic movement. The work’s lack of an obvious trajectory of progress and triumph against difficult odds marks it as a very different sort of life writing than what was common in the Victorian period, particularly among male writers. Its structure as a series of biographical essays focused ostensibly on other figures important in Carlyle’s life, particularly his early life, often diffuses the attention on the primary figure in the narrative. The essays thus take on a more rhythmic form of life writing more often associated with women’s auto/biography, such as that of Margaret Oliphant.

Carlyle was also influential as a writer of biographies and a theorizer about the genre. In his essays on history he calls that genre “the essence of innumerable biographies”. His adherence to this credo is borne out by the largely biographical focus of most of his writing, ranging from earlier literary essays, the massive six-volume biography of Frederick the Great, and his final published book, which included the extended essay “The Early Kings of Norway” (1875). In between he wrote on Cromwell, Frederick, and his Life of John Sterling (1851), a close friend. His essay “Biography” (1832) suggests the “unspeakable delight” that readers take in biography. It is an instructive genre that, paradoxically, allows readers to “expand” themselves “on all sides” and “indefinitely enrich” themselves, yet at the same time helps them to “discern the image of [their] own natural face[s], and the supernatural secrets that prophetically lie under the same!” (Collected Works, vol. 28). Carlyle evinces fascination with minor characters in history, and so foreshadows a strong interest in what we now call social history, yet also prefers stories of individuals, rather than groups. While he suggests that nature itself is an emblem of God and so deserves careful study, he intuits an inherent, natural desire for human beings to focus on other human beings: “wherever there is a Man, a God also is revealed, and all that is Godlike: a whole epitome of the Infinite, with its meanings, lies enfolded in the Life of every man”. The problem with this is that few are suited to reveal this Godlike spirit (ibid). In Carlyle’s view, only one authentically great biography in English existed in 1832: James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). Carlyle’s thoughts on biography developed further in his lectures on hero-worship in 1840, published in 1841. Carlyle believed that there was an impulse in individuals that caused them naturally to revere and esteem those whom they recognized as being better than they. Humankind forms a natural hierarchy. Hero-worship, Carlyle wrote in his essay “Sir Walter Scott”, “will be the ultimate and final creed of mankind; indestructible, changing in shape, but in essence unchangeable; whereon politics, religions, loyalties, and all highest human interests have been and can be built, as on a rock that will endure while man endures” (ibid., vol. 29). It would thus be unfair to say that Carlyle favoured dictatorships. Rather, he viewed reverence as the natural foundation of society and institutions. In his lectures Carlyle notes a progression of forms of hero-worship, from the hero as divinity (Odin), to prophet (Mohammed), through heroes as priests (John Knox and Martin Luther), men of letters (Samuel Johnson and Robert Burns), and finally as rulers (Oliver Cromwell and, more briefly, Napoleon). As his career advanced, he tended to favour political over literary heroes since they seemed to be individuals who could actually get things done, rather than simply write about or interpret events, but until quite late his writing evinces a fierce tension between men of thought and men of action. One final aspect of Carlyle’s biographical writing concerns his wife, Jane Baillie Welsh Carlyle (1801–66). Carlyle wrote a beautiful yet controversial reminiscence of his wife after her death. He also set about collecting, annotating, and ordering her letters, insisting on their brilliance, but also on the difficulty of editing them appropriately. She in effect became his last, and undeniably greatest-loved, heroine. She had wit, “spontaneous nobleness of mind and intellect”, genius, and uncomplaining

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loyalty, of which Carlyle regretted he had not been more conscious while she had lived. He wrote in the Reminiscences of her letters: “what a piercing radiancy of meaning to me in those dear records, hastily thrown off, full of misery, yet of bright eternal love; all as if on wings of lightning, tingling through one’s very heart of hearts!” He felt her epistolary talent “equal” to or better than any ability he observed in “all the Sands and Eliots and babbling cohue of ‘celebrated scribbling Women’ that have strutted over the world, in my time” (ibid). D.J. Trela Biography Born in Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, 4 December 1795. His parents were strict Presbyterians, his father a stonemason. Educated at Ecclefechan school; Annan Grammar School, 1805–09; and the University of Edinburgh, 1809–14 (no degree). Trained for the ministry of the Church of Scotland, 1813–18, but abandoned this plan under the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment. Taught mathematics at Annan Academy, 1814–16, and Kirkcaldy Grammar School, 1816–18 (resigned). Lived in Edinburgh, 1818–22; studied Scottish law and began to study German literature, 1819; also taught privately and wrote for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia. Tutor to all the children in the Buller family, 1822–24. Lived in London and visited Paris, 1824. Became a full-time writer, contributing to journals such as the Edinburgh Review and Fraser’s Magazine; his translation of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister (1824) brought him entry into London’s literary circles, and his Life of Schiller appeared in book form in 1825. Lived on a farm rented by his father and managed by his brother at Hoddam Hill, near Mainhill, 1825. Married Jane Baillie Welsh, 1826 (she later became well known for her correspondence). Lived in Edinburgh, 1826–28, then for financial and creative reasons moved to his wife’s isolated farm at Craigenputtock, Dumfriesshire, 1828–34. Wrote his first major work, Sartor Resartus (serialized, 1833–34; as book, 1836). Moved to London and settled in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, 1834. Began work on The French Revolution (1837). Became famous after its publication, and the centre of a brilliant literary circle. Wrote some influential essays on social and political issues, including Chartism (1839), Past and Present (1843), and Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), and published his 1840 lectures in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841). His edition of Oliver Cromwell’s letters and speeches appeared in 1845. Began a study of Frederick the Great, 1854 (published 1858–65). Elected Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, 1865. Worked on the Reminiscences and edited his wife’s letters after her death in 1866. Awarded the Prussian Order of Merit, 1874. Declined the Grand Cross of the Bath from the prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, 1875. Died in London, 5 February 1881.

Selected Writings The Life of Schiller, 1825 Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröck (fictional spiritual autobiography), as book, 1836; edited by Charles Frederick Harrold, 1937; edited by Kerry McSweeney and Peter Sabor, 1987; edited by Rodger L. Tarr and Mark Engel, 2000 On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (lectures on history and biography), 1841; edited by Michael K. Goldberg, Joel J. Brattin and Mark Engel, 1993 The Life of John Sterling (biography), 1851; edited by W.H. White, 1907 The History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, 6 vols, 1858–65; abridged by A.M.D. Hughes, 1916; edited and abridged by John Clive, 1969 The Early Kings of Norway; An Essay on the Portraits of John Knox, 1875 Reminiscences, 2 vols, edited by J.A. Froude, 1881; edited by Charles Eliot Norton, 1887; edited by Ian Campbell, 1972; edited by K.J. Fielding and Ian Campbell, 1997 Letters to Mrs Basil Montagu and B.W. Porter, edited by Anne Benson Procter, 1881 Reminiscences of My Irish Journey in 1849, 1882

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The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson 1834–1872, 2 vols, edited by Charles Eliot Norton, 1883; Supplementary Letters, 1886; as The Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle, edited by Joseph Slater, 1964 Early Letters 1814–1836, 4 vols, edited by Charles Eliot Norton, 1886–88 Correspondence between Goethe and Carlyle, edited by Charles Eliot Norton, 1887; edited by G. Hecht, 1913 The Works of Thomas Carlyle, centenary edition, 30 vols, edited by H.D. Traill, 1896–99 Historical Sketches of Notable Persons and Events in the Reign of James I and Charles I, edited by Alexander Carlyle, 1898 Letters of Thomas Carlyle to His Youngest Sister, edited by Charles Townsend Copeland, 1898; reprinted, 1968 New Letters, edited by Alexander Carlyle, 1904 Unpublished Letters, edited by F. Harrison, 1907 The Love Letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh, 1909 Letters to William Allingham, 1911 Letters to John Stuart Mill, John Sterling and Robert Browning, edited by Alexander Carlyle, 1923 Journey to Germany, Autumn 1858, edited by R.A.E. Brooks, 1940 Letters to William Graham, edited by John Graham, Jr, 1950 Thomas Carlyle: Letters to His Wife, edited by Trudy Bliss, 1953 Letters of Thomas Carlyle to His Brother Alexander, with Related Family Letters, edited by Edwin W. Marrs, Jr, 1968 The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, 28 vols, edited by Charles Richard Sanders, K.J. Fielding, Clyde de L. Ryals et al., 1970–2000 Thomas and Jane: Selected Letters, edited by Ian Campbell, 1980 The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, edited by George Allan Cate, 1982 Also edited and extensively annotated Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches with Elucidations, 2 vols, 1845, revised 1846 and 1849; edited by S.C. Lomas, 3 vols, 1904

Further Reading Carlyle, Jane Welsh, Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, 3 vols, edited by James Anthony Froude, London: Longmans Green, and New York: Scribner, 1883 Clarke, Norma, Ambitious Heights: Writing, Friendship, Love: The Jewsbury Sisters, Felicia Hemans, and Jane Welsh Carlyle, London and New York: Routledge, 1990 DeLaura, David J., “Ishmael as Prophet: Heroes and Hero-Worship and the Self-Expressive Basis of Carlyle’s Art”, Texas Studies in Language and Literature, 11 (Spring 1969): 705–32 Froude, J.A., Thomas Carlyle: A History of the First Forty Years of His Life, 1795–1835, 2 vols, London: Longmans Green, and New York: Scribner, 1882 Froude, J.A., Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London 1834–1881, London: Longmans Green, 1884; New York: Harper, 1885 Hanson, Lawrence and Elisabeth Hanson, Necessary Evil: The Life of Jane Welsh Carlyle, London: Constable, and New York: Macmillan, 1952 Hardwick, Elizabeth, “Jane Carlyle” in Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature, New York: Random House, 1974 Kaplan, Fred, Thomas Carlyle: A Biography, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983 Kusch, Robert W., “Pattern and Paradox in Heroes and HeroWorship”, Studies in Scottish Literature, 6/3 (1969): 146–55 Larkin, Henry, Carlyle and the Open Secret of His Life, London: Kegan Paul and Trench, 1886; reprinted New York: Haskell House, 1970 Miller, Robert Keith, Carlyle’s Life of John Sterling: A Study in Victorian Biography, Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1987 Peterson, Linda, Victorian Autobiography: The Tradition of SelfInterpretation, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1986 Tennyson, G.B., Sartor Called Resartus: The Genesis, Structure, and

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Style of Thomas Carlyle’s First Major Work, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1965 Tennyson, G.B., “The Carlyles” in Victorian Prose: A Guide to Research, edited by David J. DeLaura, New York: MLA, 1973 Trela, D.J., A History of Carlyle’s Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, Lampeter, Dyfed and Lewiston, New York: Edward Mellen Press, 1992 Trela, D.J. and Rodger L. Tarr (editors), The Critical Response to Thomas Carlyle’s Major Works, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1997

Carossa, Hans

1878–1956

German doctor, diarist, and autobiographer Nearly all of Carossa’s longer prose works are based closely on his life and narrated in the first person. He wrote only one novel in the third person, Der Arzt Gion (1931; Doctor Gion). His other semi-autobiographical novels, such as Geheimnisse des reifen Lebens [1936; Secrets of the Mature Life], are clearly framed as fictions and the narrators are given fictive names. His own autobiography is a series of four works composed over many years as a retrospective accompaniment to his adult life. In Eine Kindheit (1922; A Childhood), which he started in his late thirties, during medical service in World War I, he recalls the first ten years of his life growing up in Bavaria. In Verwandlungen einer Jugend (1928; Boyhood and Youth), written in his late forties, he revisits his years in boarding school. In Das Jahr der schönen Täuschungen (1941; The Year of Sweet Illusions), written during National Socialist [Nazi] rule, he comments on his experiences at the University of Munich in 1900, a year that to some readers “really stands for 1940 or 1941” (Thoenelt). Finally, in Der Tag des jungen Arztes [1955; The Day of the Young Doctor], written in his last 15 years, he returns to his student days at the University of Leipzig and the first years of his medical practice. These works were all published together under the title Geschichte einer Jugend [1957; Story of a Youth]. These works are highly poetical and non-documentary. Writing in a style marked by classical balance, simplicity, and accuracy, Carossa describes selected episodes from his youth, including dreams, confessions, encounters with family members, friends, teachers, and the wonders of nature. He highlights events that transcend the merely personal and that give some hint of the organic interconnectedness of all life in the “light of nature”. While the events described actually happened at some time, their exemplary and symbolic value are given more weight than their factuality. Following Goethe, who said that the goal of the artist was to transform life into a Bild (“image” or “form”), Carossa attempts to mould his earlier life into an objective form. He wants to eliminate everything persönlich (“personal” or “individual”) in this form, to make it unwirklich (“unreal”), and, thereby, to create an effective “symbol”, an “artistic reality” (Briefe, volume 2). His approach to art and life is founded in part on Goethe’s idea of Bildung (“education”, “development”) – the process of continuous organic development and personal self-realization through the experience of art and nature. This process reconciles art and life, humanity and nature, and – the title of Goethe’s own autobiography – Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth).

In three additional autobiographical works Carossa explores less distant and more controversial phases of his life. Rumänisches Tagebuch (1924; A Roumanian Diary), republished under the title Tagebuch im Kriege [1934; Diary in War], consists of selections from his war diary, which show him to have been a humane observer of civilians and combatants on all sides. Its motto, “Raube das Licht aus dem Rachen der Schlange!” (“Wrest the light from the jaws of the serpent!”), expresses his belief that the higher truth, or “light”, remains hidden behind the suffering of the world and that one should heal humanity by preserving the humanistic vision that seeks the light. Führung und Geleit: ein Lebensgedenkbuch [1933; Leading and Accompanying: A Memoir of Life] discusses literary influences, Carossa’s “double life” as a poet and physician, and his attempts to bring his artistic life into “harmony” with his professional career. He expresses his guilt about his tendency to confuse his medical and poetic projects, but offers hope that he can transform this confusion into a reconciliation. Bildung again is the guiding principle. When Carossa gave up his medical practice in the 1930s, he likened his writings to medicine and his readers to patients who heal themselves by “deciphering” his symbols and “ciphers”. Lastly, again from feelings of guilt, he wrote “Lebensbericht” [1951; Life-Report] – a major section of the book Ungleiche Welten [1951; Unequal Worlds] – to explain his thoughts, feelings, and actions during the 12 years he remained in National Socialist Germany. Disgusted by National Socialism, which he called “Anti-Goetheanism”, but unpolitical by nature, he withdrew into “inner emigration” and offered only passive resistance. Yet he continued to publish in Germany, and received several literary honours, including the Goethe prize in 1938. In 1941 he was also persuaded, despite his reluctance, to accept the presidency of Germany’s newly created Europäischer Schriftsteller-Verband (European Writers’ Union). This further damaged his reputation, and after the war many critics in Western Europe – and especially in communistic Eastern Europe – denounced his work as irrelevant and bourgeois. Nevertheless, he quickly regained his reputation in the West, where he continued to be published and studied. The reception of his autobiographical writings, as of his poetry and novels, has always emphasized the influence of Goethe. Although Carossa’s old-fashioned classicism and belief in a continuous, organic process of development and education make him seem less relevant in a world that now favours a more Proustian and Freudian understanding of life as a discontinuous series of dislocated experiences conditioned by repression and social discontent, Carossa is still admired for trying to preserve and renew the ideas of Bildung and “life as art”. Robert S. Freeman Biography Born in Tolz (now Bad Tolz), Bavaria, Germany, 15 December 1878. His father was a physician. Brought up in Lower Bavaria. Learned the work of Goethe from his parents. Studied medicine in Munich, 1897–1903, where he met the writers Richard Dehmel and Frank Wedekind. Received an MD from Leipzig University, 1903. Began practising as a physician, 1903. Took over his father’s medical practice in Passau, Bavaria, after his father’s death, 1906. Published the long mystical poem Stella Mystica [Mystical Star], 1907. Practised medicine in various cities from 1907, including working in Munich as a lung specialist from 1914. Published Gedichte [Poems], 1910, and Doktor Bürgers Ende [Dr Bürger’s End; as Die Schicksale Doktor Bürgers,

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1930], 1913. Conscripted into the German army as a doctor, 1916. Went to Flanders, France and Romania, where he wrote part of his Rumänisches Tagebuch (1924; A Roumanian Diary). Badly wounded and invalided out of the army; resumed practice in Munich after the war ended. Wrote the first volume of his autobiographical works, Eine Kindheit (1922; A Childhood), and a novel, Der Arzt Gion (1931; Doctor Gion). Refused membership of the Prussian Academy, 1933. Started affair with Hedwig Kerber, a rich Bavarian woman, 1927: one daughter. Awarded the Goethe prize, 1938. Married Kerber, 1943, after the death of his first wife. Became president of the European Writers’ Union, a Nazi organization, under pressure from Goebbels, 1942. Resisted the Nazi regime during World War II. Wrote letters to Gestapo on behalf of harassed friends; helped to secure the release of the poet Alfred Mombert, who was sent to Switzerland. Condemned to death by the Nazis after he asked for the surrender of Passau to the advancing American forces, but rescued by the Americans, 1945. Lived in Rittsteig, near Passau, Bavaria, from 1945. Died in Rittsteig, 12 September 1956.

Selected Writings Eine Kindheit (autobiography), 1922; as A Childhood, translated by Agnes Neill Scott, 1930 Rumänisches Tagebuch, 1924; as Tagebuch im Kriege, 1934; as A Roumanian Diary, translated by Agnes Neill Scott, 1929 Verwandlungen einer Jugend (autobiography), 1928; as Boyhood and Youth, translated by Agnes Neill Scott, 1931 Führung und Geleit: ein Lebensgedenkbuch (autobiographical and literary prose), 1933 Das Jahr der schönen Täuschungen (autobiography), 1941; as The Year of Sweet Illusions, translated by Robert Kee, 1951 Ungleiche Welten (prose selection), 1951 (includes the section “Lebensbericht”) Der Tag des jungen Arztes (autobiography), 1955 Geschichte einer Jugend (contains Eine Kindheit, Verwandlungen einer Jugend, Das Jahr der schönen Täuschungen, and Der Tag des jungen Arztes), 1957 Briefe, edited by Eva Kampmann-Carossa, 3 vols, 1978–81, revised 1997

Further Reading Baier, Clair, “Introduction” in Selections from Hans Carossa, edited by Baier, London: Thomas Nelson, 1960 Michels, Volker, “Hans Carossa–zu weich für Zeiten, die ‘hart wie Kruppstahl’ waren? Überlegungen anlässlich der erstmaligen Edition seiner Briefe” in Hans Carossa: Dreizehn Versuche zu seinem Werk, edited by Hartmut Laufhütte, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1991 Subiotto, A.V., “Hans Carossa and Modern German Autobiography”, German Life and Letters, new series 11/1 (1957): 34–40 Thoenelt, Klaus, “Hans Carossa” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 66, German Fiction Writers, 1885–1913, edited by James Hardin, Detroit: Gale Research, 1988 Unglaub, Erich, “Ahnenlehre” in kritischer Absicht: Hans Carossas autobiographisches Erzählen unter den Bedingungen des Dritten Reichs, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1985 Van Ingen, Ferdinand, “Hans Carossa’s Rumänisches Tagebuch” in Hans Carossa: Dreizehn Versuche zu seinem Werk, edited by Hartmut Laufhütte, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1991 Weber, Albrecht, “Widersprüche harmonisiert? Hans Carossas Leben als Werk” in Hans Carossa: Dreizehn Versuche zu seinem Werk, edited by Hartmut Laufhütte, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1991

Carr, Emily

1871–1945

Canadian painter, autobiographer, and diarist Emily Carr is one of Canada’s best-known visual artists, and it was as an artist that she primarily defined herself. Yet it was as a writer that Carr, at the age of 70, first captured the public

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imagination with her initial publication, Klee Wyck (1941), recollections in story form of her early years on painting trips to Pacific-coast Native American villages. The book won the Governor General’s Award for 1942. Carr continued to write with the aim of publishing, as ill health prevented her from taking her accustomed sketching trips. Six more of her books were published between 1942 and 1966. Dear Nan, a collection of her correspondence, was published in 1990. Those familiar with Carr, either as an artist or as a figure of celebrity, must inevitably bring a preconceived image, or series of images, to the reading of Carr’s life writing. Popular mythologizing, especially in Carr’s home city of Victoria, British Columbia, cast the artist in the role of local eccentric, pushing a baby carriage through the streets with the monkey Woo on her shoulder. Her self-portrait, done in middle age, shows a direct gaze above a matronly figure. Carr’s drawings of herself in various sketch books depict a pert and humorous earlier self, with a round face and flying hair. However, Carr’s chief biographers – Shadbolt, Tippett, and Blanchard – have portrayed her in a more heroic role, that of consummate artist struggling against isolation, poverty, and gender stereotyping to win through to national recognition. Shadbolt offers also an informed discussion of Carr’s use of form and of how her search for form became a search for the means to express the spiritual through her art. Art historian Ann Davis locates Carr as one of a group of visionary Canadian painters, chief among whom was Lawren Harris, whose goal was to explore a mystic view of reality through the use of form and colour. Through a varied use of autobiographical vehicles, Carr constructs a more diverse subjectivity in her life writing than is possible in traditional biography. In Growing Pains (1946), she does use the traditional linear form of written autobiography to focus, as do her biographers, on her artistic journey, in order to produce what Shadbolt calls “a self-authorizing public image”. A more spontaneous voice is to be found in the journal writings that are contained in Hundreds and Thousands (1966). The journal form, with its dated entries, facilitates Carr’s mix of the ordinary, told in tart tones, with a sometimes rhapsodic outpouring. She records, for example, “I sailed up the church aisle late to avoid the obnoxious soloist and got there just in time for her solo”. A few entries later the tone changes: “Tonight there was the tiniest, delicate new born moon, needle sharp and whoop upwards and the most delicate blue-green-gray-sky … How can a human hand dare to feel into that light and space?” Much the same mix is revealed in her correspondence, while it is the tart voice that dominates The House of All Sorts (1944), a recounting through story form of Carr’s 15 years as a landlady, at war with her roomers and doing little painting. Another Carr voice can be heard in The Book of Small (1942), the writing of which is a further manifestation of Carr’s unquenchable creativity. Ill and bedridden, she reaches into her past and re-creates a child who is both the little girl she was and the creative artist she has become. She also uses the voice of Small in her letters to Ira Dilworth, her friend and mentor in her later years, thereby setting up a persona that allows her to express her feelings more freely than she otherwise would. The Heart of a Peacock (1953) and Pause (1953) detail her relationship with animals. Biographers and critics tend to dismiss these as peripheral to her development as an artist. What these writings

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reveal, however, is the richness of Carr’s subjectivity outside her identity as an artist. Her knowledge of animal behaviour, her willingness to work in order to keep these creatures in her life, and her sensitivity to all living things mark her as gifted naturalist and animal handler. What these accounts document, too, is her strong maternality. Literary critic Helen Buss makes the case that maternality shapes much of Carr’s presentation of self and identifies Carr’s own need for female approval as characteristic of all her writing. This search for a maternal surrogate emerges as a unifying theme in Klee Wyck, which Buss describes as “a poetic exploration of her relationships with an Indian mother figure, Sophie”. It was from her that Carr learned her love of Native American culture and its spiritual power, symbolized by the totem figure of D’Sonoqua, “the wild woman of the woods”. About the totality of Carr’s writing, Buss comments, “taken together, her writings offer us a guide to the stages of a creative woman’s life unparalleled in our literature”. Not all critical commentary has been as laudatory. The early 1990s saw Carr’s espousal of native culture become the subject of controversy involving the politics of the margin and issues of cultural appropriation. In a 1991 article Marcia Crosby, a Haida university student, castigates Carr not only for appropriating a culture other than her own, but for projecting onto this culture her own romantic fantasy needs. In a similarly deconstructive mode, Peter Sanger takes Carr to task for the many factual inconsistencies and “evasions” in her writing, which he attributed to a desire to “reconstruct the past in her favour”. Both articles sparked off critical debate, touching on the question of readership and the appropriate contextualizing of life writing from an earlier era. In response to Sanger, Nancy Pagh argues that Carr’s inscription of self challenges the traditional androcentric autobiographical model favoured by Sanger, a model that assumes as its goal a definitive representation of a stable subjectivity. Instead, Pagh locates Carr’s work within the recent theories of women’s autobiography, which accept fragmented, non-conclusive, and interdependent representations of self, along with the genres that facilitate these representations, as both legitimate autobiographically and more accommodating to the female experience and voice. Assuredly, Emily Carr was ahead of her time, in her practice of both visual art and life writing. Verna Reid Biography Born in Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, 13 December 1871. Orphaned as an adolescent and brought up by her older sisters. Attended the California School of Design, San Francisco, 1890–93. Returned to Victoria on account of financial problems. Taught art classes to children in barn studio next to her home in Victoria, 1893–95. Visited Native American villages in Ucluelet, north of Victoria, with a missionary friend, and made sketches, 1899; given the name Klee Wyck (“Laughing One”) by Native Americans. Studied at the Westminster School of Art, London, England, 1900–03; also painted in Hertfordshire and St Ives, Cornwall. Became depressed and mentally unstable: spent 15 months in a mental hospital in Suffolk, 1903–04. Returned to Victoria, 1904; continued to paint and drew cartoons for local newspaper. Moved to Vancouver to teach art, c.1906. Travelled widely along the west coast of Canada, studying Native American life. Met the American painter Theodore J. Richardson in Alaska, 1907: under his influence, started to concentrate on totem poles as a subject in her painting. Moved to Paris to study

painting at the Académie Colarossi, 1910. Recuperated from illness in Sweden and painted in Brittany, 1911; studied the work of Henri Matisse and adopted Fauvist palette. Exhibited at the Salon d’Automne, Paris, 1911. Returned to Vancouver and opened studio at 1465 West Broadway, 1912. Introduced modernist European artistic ideas to younger Canadian artists and continued to travel among Native American settlements, sketching and painting. Held large exhibition of documentary paintings of Native American life in Vancouver, 1913. Built a studio and apartment house, “The House of All Sorts”, in Victoria, 1913; later ran it as a boarding-house. Started raising thoroughbred dogs and making pottery to support herself, 1917. Began painting again, 1925. Participated in major exhibition, Canadian West Coast Art: Native and Modern, at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, where she met other prominent Canadian artists, including Lawren Harris, a member of the Group of Seven, 1927. Continued to paint West Coast Indian life, encouraged by Harris; resumed professional career, 1928. Visited New York, where she met the American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, 1930. Concentrated mainly on landscape painting from 1930; influenced by Cubism and the poetry of Walt Whitman. Exhibited with the Group of Seven in Toronto, 1930 and 1931. Sold boarding-house, 1936. Health deteriorated from late 1930s; started writing. Won the Canadian Governor General’s award for her first autobiographical book, Klee Wyck (1941). Lived with her sister Alice in Victoria after a second heart attack, 1940. Died in Victoria, 2 March 1945.

Selected Writings Klee Wyck (autobiographical stories), 1941 The Book of Small (autobiographical prose), 1942 The House of All Sorts (autobiographical stories), 1944 Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr, 1946 The Heart of a Peacock, edited by Ira Dilworth, 1953 Pause: A Sketch Book, 1953 Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr, 1966 Dear Nan: Letters of Emily Carr, Nan Cheney and Humphrey Toms, edited by Doreen Walker, 1990

Further Reading Blanchard, Paula, The Life of Emily Carr, Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, and Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987 Buss, Helen, Mapping Our Selves: Canadian Women’s Autobiography in English, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993 Crosby, Marcia, “The Construction of the Imaginary Indian” in Vancouver Anthology: The Institutional Politics of Art, edited by Stanley Douglas, Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991 Davis, Ann, The Logic of Ecstacy: Canadian Mystical Painting, 1920–1940, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992 Fulford, Robert, “The Trouble with Emily”, Canadian Art, 10/4 (1993): 32–39 Gusdorf, George, “Conditions and Limits of Autobiography” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by James Olney, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Marchessault, Jovette, Emily Carr: A Shaman’s Voyage, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Sextet Series, 1990 (radio play) Neuman, Shirley, “Life Writing” in A Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English, 2nd edition, vol. 4, edited by W.H. New, Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1990 Pagh, Nancy, “Passing Through the Jungle: Emily Carr and Theories of Women’s Autobiography”, Mosiac, 25/4 (1992): 63–79 Pearson, Carol, Emily Carr as I Knew Her, Toronto: Clarke Irwin, 1954 Sanger, Peter, “Finding D’Sonoqua’s Child: Myth, Truth and Lies in the Prose of Emily Carr”, Antigonish Review, 69/70 (1987): 211–39 Shadbolt, Doris, Emily Carr, Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, and Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990 Tippett, Maria, Emily Carr: A Biography, Toronto and New York: Oxford University Press, 1979; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982 Walker, Stephanie Kirkwood, This Woman in Particular: Contexts for the Biographical Image of Emily Carr, Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1996

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Casanova, Giovanni Giacomo

1725–1798

Italian dilettante, autobiographer, and man of letters Written at the end of the 18th century, Casanova’s Histoire de ma vie (History of My Life) is one of the principal Italian autobiographical texts, even though it is written in French. The author chose this language because at the time it was far more glamorous and widely spoken than Italian, and this choice shows that from the start he intended to publish his work. The narrative opens with a short genealogy of the Casanova family since the 15th century (notwithstanding the fact that Giacomo Casanova was not the child of the actor Gaetano Casanova, but the illegitimate son of the aristocrat Michele Grimani), covers the author’s childhood, and, starting with the period of his adolescence, dwells upon the vicissitudes of his dissipated and adventurous life. From his youth Casanova decided that he would not adopt a particular goal in his life, for he wanted to follow chance or, as he saw it, his destiny. This choice led him to incessant travels, amorous intrigues, fortunes, and misfortunes in the many different careers he undertook. The disorderliness of his life is mirrored in a series of events described in his autobiography, where he withdraws from all the people he met and all the actions he performed from his birth until 1774, the year of his decline. He began writing his autobiography during a period of illness in 1789 when, retired to private life at Dux, in Bohemia, he worked as librarian to the earl of Waldstein. Through his letters one can follow the different stages of the drafting, which covers the period from 1789 to 1792. The author had thought to divide the text into six volumes, with the seventh to include the letters and the documents that he shrewdly preserved and used as source material. The Histoire de ma vie was, however, not the first autobiographical text written by Casanova: in 1780 he had published the Duello, ovvero saggio della vita di G. C. veneziano, which relates the duel that Casanova won against Count Brunicki, and in 1787 he wrote the Histoire de ma fuite des prisons de la République de Venise qu’on appelle Les Plombs, where he tells about his flight from the famous Venetian prison. The “autobiographical pact” of Histoire de ma vie, which is rather complicated, is contained in the long introduction to the text. Casanova explains that the reason he writes is the necessity “to keep himself busy and to laugh”, and that his greatest amusement is to remember the pleasures he enjoyed in his past. In reality, behind this simple statement, there is a philosophy of remembrance. During the drafting of his autobiography Casanova lived in a sort of double time: the pleasure of memory, and the pleasure of the things remembered. He seeks for and relives the joy of his sexuality, of his adventurous life, of his search for happiness. This text becomes the opportunity to explain his personal life-philosophy: to have a project for one’s own life is useless and deceitful; the only important thing is to follow one’s instinct, to search for happiness, beyond the logic and morals of most members of society. In this sense, while Casanova is almost the archetypal 18th-century picaresque rogue, he also represents an aspect of 18th-century innovation that would be taken up in the following century. With considerable modernity, he considers his autobiography as an act that does not require explications and justifications: it is written to

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allow the readers to come to know the author, whose life alone is a sufficient reason to write. He does not need to be an important person or to have created an important oeuvre to earn the right to write about his life. Nonetheless, we have to remember that this introduction was written some years after the draft of the text, in 1797, the same year in which he also wrote a summary of his life (Sommario della mia vita). Like other important autobiographers of the period, Casanova shows the influence of Rousseau’s Confessions (1782–89), and is very modern in certain of his narrative choices, such as the distinction between the beginning of the narrated life and the beginning of his real life, that is to say, for him his life since his first moment as a “thinking being”, his first memory, the beginning of his conscious life. Many literary critics have judged Casanova’s prose to be far in advance of other autobiographies of the period, to such a degree that if it had been written in Italian, 19th-century Italian literature would have gained several decades of stylistic research. The story of the manuscript of Histoire de ma vie and of its reception is as much of an adventure as the content of the autobiography. Casanova experienced many difficulties in publishing the text, probably because of its explicitness. When he died it was sold by Carlo Angioini, his niece’s husband, to the publisher Brockhaus in Berlin; Brockhaus published a censored version between 1822 and 1828. After a pirate version in French, Brockhaus published a censored French version corrected by Jean Laforgue. The first Italian version, translated from that of Laforgue, was published only between 1882 and 1888. After a number of pirate versions, and having escaped the danger of a fire during World War II, the original, unabridged manuscript was finally made available in 1960, and the first unabridged version in Italian was published in 1964–65. Anna Iuso Biography Jean-Jacques Casanova, chevalier de Seingalt. Born in Venice, then an Italian republic, 2 April 1725. His parents were both actors. Sickly as a child; unable to speak until he was eight years old. His father died when he was very young; his mother left the family to tour abroad. Educated at a boarding school in Padua, where he studied law and first discovered gambling, and at an abbey school in Venice. Expelled from the seminary of St Cyprian in Venice for scandalous conduct, 1741. Entered the Venetian army as an ensign; resigned 1745. Became secretary in the house of Cardinal Aquaviva. Began to play the violin in a theatre orchestra. Saved the life of a wealthy and influential Venetian politician, Senator Bragadin, who invited him into his home and introduced him to society. Became well known for his wit and sexual conquests. Derived income from gambling, using the Senator’s money. Arrested for possessing books on magic, and imprisoned in the Piombi prison at the Doge’s Palace in Venice, 1755. Escaped with the aid of his cellmate and left Venice, 1756. Travelled extensively in Europe; conversed with Voltaire, George III, and Catherine the Great; wrote novels, plays, and scholarly treatises. Became director of state lotteries in Paris and accumulated a fortune. Knighted in The Netherlands, 1759. Worked as a spy for Louis XV of France. Gained a reprieve from Venice on condition that he act as an informer on behalf of the Venetian Inquisition, 1774. Exiled from Venice after he made a satirical attack on one of his patrons, 1782. Stayed in England for eight years, but failed to prosper and became penurious. Returned to Venice, but was unable to re-enter society circles. Accepted an invitation to become librarian for Graf von Waldstein at his château in Dux, Bohemia (now Duchcov, Czech Republic), 1785. Began to compose his memoirs. Died in Dux, 4 June 1798.

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Selected Writings Duello, ovvero saggio della vita di G. C. veneziano, 1780; as Il duello, edited by Elio Bartolini, 1979 Histoire de ma fuite des prisons de la République de Venise qu’on appelle Les Plombs, 1787 Sommario della mia vita, 1797 Histoire de ma vie, 1822–28 (censored version); as Mémoires de J. Casanova de Seingalt, corrected and edited by Jean Laforgue, 2 vols, 1826–38, and translated into Italian as Storia della mia vita, 1882–88; as Mémoires (Pléïade edition), edited by Robert Abirached and Elio Zorzi, 3 vols, 1958–60; complete version as Histoire de ma vie, 12 vols, 1960, as Storia della mia vita, 12 vols, 1964–65, and as History of My Life, translated by Willard R. Trask, 6 vols, 1966–72; also as The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, translated by Arthur Machen, 12 vols, 1922 Correspondence avec J.F. Opiz, edited by Frantisek Khol and Otto Pick, 2 vols, 1913 Casanova in England … as Told by Himself, edited by Horace Bleackley, 1925 Epistolario (1759–1798), edited by Piero Chiara, 1969 Lana caprina: epistola di un licantropo, edited by Renato Giordano, 1991

Further Reading Casanova Gleanings (journal), 1958–80 Childs Rives, J., Casanoviana: An Annotated World Bibliography of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt and of Works Concerning Him, Vienna: Nebehay, 1956 Childs Rives, J., Casanova: A Biography Based on New Documents, London: Allen and Unwin, 1961 Flem, Lydia, Casanova, ou, l’exercise du bonheur, Paris: Seuil, 1995; as Casanova: The Man Who Really Loved Women, translated by Catherine Temerson, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997 L’Intermédiaire des Casanovistes (journal), 1984— Mangini, N., entry on G. Casanova in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 21, edited by Alberto M. Ghisalberti, Roma: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960 Pages Casanoviennes (journal), 1925–29 Pollio, Joseph, Bibliographie anecdotique et critique des oeuvres de Jacques Casanova, Paris: Giraud-Badin, 1926 Roustang, François, Le Bal masqué de Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798), Paris: Minuit, 1984 Società di studi Casanoviani (journal), 1967–68

Case Histories Most 19th-century lunatic asylums held “Case Books” on their patients. Differing strikingly little from Hippocrates’ Epidemics, they served to help in the diagnosis and treatment of psychological maladies. The most casual and the most intimate details of the patient’s personal life were also recorded, including whether he or she was “accustomed to moderate or excessive smoking” or if the patient was of a “so-called ‘gay’ disposition, or addicted to self-abuse”. As with the nervous system, eyes were examined (oblique, squinting, protruding, dull, heavy, bright) as well as the shape of one’s nose (“hawk-shaped” or a “Jewish snub”). These records, written privately and for no other purpose than the classification and treatment of disease, take the form of abbreviated, medicalized forms of biography and consider subjects who had seldom, if ever, come under the scrutiny of professional biographers. Medicalized histories of patients contained in the Bethel Street Asylum Case Book (held at the Norfolk Record Office in England), for example, did not take the form of coherent narratives. The entries were short, abruptly scrawled and often left

unblotted. As in published accounts of cases in medical journals such as the Lancet and the Journal of Psychological Medicine, 19th-century physicians made little if any overt reference to the theoretical implications implicit in the act of constructing a medicalized biography. Representing the convergence of psychological theory and practice, the concise ordering of the case history in a narrative form (which made clear the physician’s reasoning) left little room for its objectivity and authenticity to be questioned. It was at once rational and legitimate and, like more traditional forms of life writing, “internally selfvalidating”. As with autobiography, the case history’s “truth” depended not only on clinical evidence but equally on the narrative’s “closure”. Ironically, case histories in which the patient’s status was diminished in favour of the physician’s reductive control of both the text and the disease offer the reader a more legitimate source of factual biographical information than that contained in Freud’s late 19th-century cases, despite his more radical procedures, which demanded the verbalization of the patient’s “most secret and repressed wishes”. Freud’s failure successfully to treat “Dora”, Steven Marcus suggests, could produce only a disjunctive narrative. Only with the healthy body (or full recovery of the patient) was the production of a linear and coherent narrative possible. Freud believed that it was impossible to protect the identity of his patients and maintain clinical accuracy and scientific objectivity. Even when he sought to prevent “non-medical” and “unauthorized” readers from detecting the “scent” that would lead to the revelation of “Dora’s” identity (by publishing it in 1905 in Mschr. Psychiat. Neurol., a “purely scientific and technical periodical”), those in his own profession, “revolting though it may seem”, were more than capable of interpreting his case history “not as a contribution to the psycho-pathology of the neuroses, but as a roman à clef designed for their private delectation”. Such comments betray Freud’s anxiety not only about the potential readership of his cases but about the problems of reading itself. Nevertheless, a clinical narrative that demanded details that would reveal the patient’s identity was far more dangerous, Freud believed, than the construction of a “parallel” fiction. Frank Sulloway has suggested that in the literary and symbolic narrative that resulted (Dora’s life was presented as an “un-navigable river” and his own concerns were like those of a “conscientious archaeologist”), Freud consciously endeavoured to translate the incomplete and speculative nature of his case materials into a rhetorical virtue. Even though it was, in the name of science, “a disgraceful piece of cowardice” not to publish such cases, entitling his histories “Notes” and “Fragments” indicated his continuing belief that psychoanalysis could only be learned from cases that resisted tidiness and closure. Freud’s case histories were aesthetic narratives. He was concerned to “know” his patients and to teach psychoanalysts to “read” the patient and thus learn about psycho-sexual maladies in a fundamentally new way. He created in “case histories” like “Dora” a narrative that drew explicitly upon the resources of “culture” in the cause of science. Constructing scientific pathologies of the human body by employing humanistic observations would in essence, he believed, mirror the “sense” experience of the patient. Julia Epstein has argued that case histories were attempts to “re-embody the body in

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language”. The appearance of contradictions, omissions, concerns about censorship, and bias resulting from the difficult effort to re-create authenticity (effected by a process in which representational, clinical, and rhetorical strategies were mediated simultaneously) was perhaps inevitable in Freud’s attempt to overhaul the traditions that constituted conventional “casetaking”. Concerns with “audience”, authenticity, and with “control” of the narrative, as well as anxieties arising from the creation of “parallel fictions” in the case of Freud’s histories (he disposed of original notes upon publication), point up the profound similarities between case histories and traditional forms of life writing. As Steven Marcus suggests in writing of Freud’s case histories, the patient “does not merely provide the text; he also is the text, the writing to be read, the language to be interpreted”. In just the way that autobiographies sought to construct the “self” in a broader “social” discourse, the case history as it was conceived of in the late 19th century represented not only the construction of the patient’s history but of the broader “social” development, Sulloway suggests, of psychological modes of knowledge. Case histories in the 20th century continued to be inflected with social relations of power. As part of a regime of surveillance, they became even more powerful in the expanded political uses of psychiatry. For example, psychiatry was used systematically to hinder the activities of activists and dissidents, as accounts such as Zhores and Roy Medvedev’s A Question of Madness (1971) indicate. A Soviet scientist and “dissident intellectual”, Medvedev had written a samizdat critique of the government which had resulted in his being forcibly detained in a clinic. The diagnosis of “reformist delusions” and “incipient schizophrenia” was evidence, Medvedev believed, of the manner in which medicine became a means of government control and political regulation. The “medical record”, he concluded, “kept in a clinic or outpatient department may cause a man as much trouble as a court conviction or Jewish origin”. Such accounts, seeking to expose the pernicious abuse of psychiatry and to counter professional and medicalized biographies, themselves take on the form of autobiographical “case histories”. On the other hand, case histories have also been used to advocate the interests of medical or psychiatric subjects, particularly in their more literary forms. Oliver Sacks’s “clinical tales” become in this sense exemplary models of medicalized life stories. Margaret Homberger See also The Body and Life Writing; Illness and Life Writing; Disability and Life Writing; Insanity and Life Writing; Medical Autobiography; Sexuality and Life Writing; Trauma and Life Writing

Further Reading Bloch, Sidney and Peter Reddaway, Soviet Psychiatric Abuse: The Shadow over World Psychiatry, London: Gollancz, 1984; Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1985 Cohen, Stanley and Andrew Scull (editors), Social Control and the State: Historical and Comparative Essays, Oxford: Martin Robertson, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1983 Freud, Sigmund, Case Histories I: ‘Dora’ and ‘Little Hans’, edited by James Strachey, and translated from German by Alix and James Strachey, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977 Epstein, Julia, “Historiography, Diagnosis, and Poetics”, Literature and Medicine, 11/1 (1992): 23–44 Iacovetta, Franca and Wendy Mitchinson (editors), On the Case:

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Explorations in Social History, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998 Marcus, Steven, “Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History” in In Dora’s Case: Freud–Hysteria–Feminism, edited by Charles Bernheimer and Claire Kahane, New York: Columbia University Press, 1985 Medvedev, Zhores A. and Roy A. Medvedev, A Question of Madness, translated by Ellen de Kadt, London: Macmillan, and New York: Knoff, 1971 Micale, M.S., “Paradigm and Ideology in Psychiatric History Writing: The Case of Psychoanalysis”, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 184/3 (1996): 146–52 Nowell-Smith, Harriet, “Nineteenth-Century Narrative Case Histories: An Enquiry into Stylistics and History”, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 12/1 (1995): 47–67 Peterson, C.E. and R.G. Peterson, “Chinese Medicine and Politics: Mao to Tiananmen”, Maryland Medical Journal, 39/12 (December 1990): 1075–79 Sacks, Oliver, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, New York: Summit Books, and London: Duckworth, 1985 Sulloway, Frank J., “Re-assessing Freud’s Case Histories: The Social Construction of Psychoanalysis, Isis, 82/312 (1991): 245–75 Szasz, Thomas S., Ideology and Insanity: Essays on the Psychiatric Dehumanization of Man, New York: Anchor, 1970; London: Calder and Boyars, 1973

Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle 1623–1673 English autobiographer and biographer Margaret Cavendish was long considered by those who study English literature to be a writer of little importance, though a colourful and eccentric aristocrat. She has recently shed the sobriquet “Mad Madge of Newcastle” and is now both widely read and respected by those who also read other early women writers. Indeed, Cavendish’s reputation has benefited from the general re-evaluation of early women’s writing that began during the mid-1980s and continues today. Cavendish’s autobiography was published as an addendum to Nature’s Pictures (1656). It marks a milestone in the history of life writing as the first autobiography written for print by an Englishwoman. Titled A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding and Life, the piece runs to about 25 pages in the 12 or so editions and printings that appeared in Britain and the United States at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. In these editions, it was always printed together with her biography of her husband, The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle (1667), though the two were not published together during her lifetime. The biography was also the first written for print by an Englishwoman. The autobiography and biography were not admired by the late Victorians for their literary merit, but for the accurate record the pieces purported to give of the lives of the “loyal” or “horsemanship” duke and his wife. Both the autobiography and the biography, in fact, were designed to counter widespread and unflattering views of the couple. Cavendish was taken to be a social climber who was not worthy of her husband or of his title (then marquis), and Queen Henrietta Maria had opposed the marriage. The autobiography, in an attempt at counterbalancing the queen’s view, stresses the natural aristocracy of the Lucas family. The biography, for its

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part, tries to correct the suggestion made by Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, and probably others, that her husband, commander of Royalist forces in the North, should have stayed in England to fight again after being defeated by Oliver Cromwell at the battle of Marston Moor in 1644. Cavendish never deals with this view directly in the biography but repeatedly asserts that war is a matter of funding, that her husband paid his troops out of his own pocket, and that he was impoverished by the military defeat. The biography is full of details of places and dates, as well as numbers of various sorts of forces. Cavendish prided herself on her accuracy and elsewhere attacked as untrustworthy the contemporary civil war historian Sir William Sanderson. The biography appears to have been widely read, though Samuel Pepys felt that the subject was a fool to have allowed his wife to have it printed. Lucy Hutchinson appears to have thought otherwise, for she modelled her manuscript biography of her husband, Colonel Hutchinson, on Cavendish’s Life. The autobiography and the biography both have interesting early printing histories. The autobiography was omitted from the second edition of Nature’s Pictures, which appeared in 1672. It may be that Cavendish felt that there was no longer need to assert the natural nobility of her family because Henrietta Maria’s opposition to her marriage had been long forgotten. The biography is remarkable for the handmade deletions present in nearly all copies of the first edition. These deletions appear to have been made at Cavendish’s behest and in an effort to comply or seem to comply with a request from her husband that the biography contain no personal attacks. James Fitzmaurice Biography Born Margaret Lucas in St John’s, near Colchester, Essex, England, c.1623. Her father died when she was an infant. Educated privately at home. Maid of honour to Queen Henrietta Maria, 1643–45; during the civil war accompanied her to exile in Paris, 1644. Married William Cavendish, Marquis (later Duke) of Newcastle, 1645. Lived with her husband abroad after the defeat of the royalists: in Paris, 1645–48, Rotterdam, 1648, and Antwerp, 1648–60. Wrote verse (Poems and Fancies, 1653), plays, orations, and letters. Visited London in an attempt to gain compensation for her husband’s sequestered estates, 1652–53. Returned to England at the restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660, living mainly at the Cavendish estate at Welbeck. Died in Nottinghamshire, December 1673.

Selected Writings A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding and Life, addendum to her Nature’s Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life, 1656; edited by Egerton Brydges, 1814; edited by C.H. Firth with The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, 1886, revised 1906 Philosophical Letters, 1664 CCXI Sociable Letters, 1664 The Life of the Thrice Noble High and Puissant Prince, William Cavendish, Duke, Marquess, and Earl of Newcastle, 1667 The Phanseys of William Cavendish Addressed to Margaret Lucas and Her Letters in Reply, edited by Douglas Grant, 1956 Margaret Cavendish: Sociable Letters, edited by James Fitzmaurice, 1997

Further Reading Battigelli, Anna, Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind, Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1998 Fitzmaurice, James, “Fancy and the Family: Self-Characterizations of Margaret Cavendish”, Huntington Library Quarterly, 53/3 (1990): 199–209

Gallagher, Catherine, “Embracing the Absolute: The Politics of the Female Subject in Seventeenth-Century England”, Genders, 1 (1988): 24–39 Grant, Douglas, Margaret the First: A Biography of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, 1623–73, London: Rupert HartDavis, and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957 Hobby, Elaine, Virtue of Necessity: English Women’s Writing 1649–88, London: Virago Press, 1988; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989 Lamb, Charles, “Mackery End”, in Elia, and The Last Essays of Elia, edited by Jonathan Bate, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987 (first published in The Essays of Elia, 1823) Pepys, Samuel, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol. 8 (p.243) and vol. 9 (p.123), edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews, London: Bell, 1970 Rees, Emma L.E. (editor), Special Margaret Cavendish Issue of Women’s Writing, 4/3, (1997) Todd, Janet, The Sign of Angellica: Women, Writing, and Fiction, 1660–1800, London: Virago Press, and New York: Columbia University Press, 1989 Walpole, Horace, A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, Scotland, and Ireland, edited by T. Park, vol. 3, London: 1806 (enlarged edition) Woolf, Virginia, The Common Reader, London: Hogarth Press, and New York: Harcourt Brace, 1925 Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own, London: Hogarth Press, and New York: Fountain Press, 1929

Celebrity Autobiography To a certain extent, all autobiographical texts written by people of public renown could be classified as having a celebrity quality, and there is a long-standing tradition of such writing, encompassing many kinds of public activity from entertainment to politics. But, like celebrity itself, the modern “celebrity autobiography” as such is a more recent phenomenon, reflecting the growth of the media, the mass market, and a culture of individual fame. As a form of genre publishing, celebrity autobiographies often contain common characteristics, such as a tendency towards the sensational confessional, often sexual (sometimes even murderous, as in serial killer Pee Wee Gaskins’s Final Truth, 1992), and often accompanied by a self-aggrandizing tone. Deliberately shocking or exploitative autobiographies tend to encourage a perception of the whole genre as a version of tabloid journalism between hard covers. This journalistic quality is encouraged by the fact that so many celebrity autobiographies have been written for their socalled authors by professional “ghost writers” – sometimes silently, at other times explicitly presented as collaborators or “as-told-to” participants. This aspect presents literary critics with a series of challenges. Because they are often collaboratively written, celebrity autobiographies challenge the generic boundary between autobiography and biography. Furthermore, because the degree of collaboration is often impossible to know, celebrity autobiographies complicate contemporary definitions of authorship. Celebrity autobiographies are also often published as memoirs of other celebrities, even when the author is a celebrity in his or her own right. For example, in Me and My Shadows (1998), Lorna Luft recalls her tumultuous childhood with her mother Judy Garland and half-sister Liza Minnelli. Similarly, in At Home in the World (1998), author and media

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personality Joyce Maynard writes about her year-long relationship with the private and reclusive author J.D. Salinger. Most celebrity autobiographies follow a structure that is characteristic of traditional autobiographical narratives: they are chronological; they chart the author’s character development; they build to a moment of crisis, followed by a subsequent denouement. They often employ traditional narrative techniques such as flashbacks and dialogue. Celebrity autobiographies can, of course, reject linear approaches. For example, the singer Cher’s The First Time (1998) is anecdotal, structured as a series of page-long entries, accompanied by pictures of the star, with each entry focusing on an important “first” moment in Cher’s life, such as the first time she experienced fame or the first time she had sex with a “bad boy”. Visual components, however, are almost always present in some form, whether they be a selection of pictures from the celebrity’s childhood or photographs of other celebrities encountered in the subject’s life. These might foster a sense of intimacy between the celebrity and the reader or further emphasize the celebrity world inhabited by the subject: the total effect is complicated by the fact that images of both kinds often appear in a single work. Either way, the inclusion of photographs emphasizes the importance of visual media in the constitution of celebrity. Other than photographs, celebrity autobiographies may contain more esoteric forms of visual selfrepresentation or self-justification. For example, the actress Mia Farrow in What Falls Away (1998) includes an image of the State Supreme Court’s custody ruling in her high-profile divorce from actor-director Woody Allen, while the singer Madonna expressed her sexually imaginative world through the risqué images of her book Sex (1992). While celebrity autobiographies range in tone from the conversational to the confessional, or even to the political, they follow a series of relatively predictable plots. For example, many celebrity autobiographies chart the “rags-to-riches” or “rise-tofame” stories of their authors. In Losing My Virginity: How I’ve Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way (1999), the British entrepreneur Richard Branson, dyslexic and school dropout, explains how he built his Virgin business empire. In To Hell and Back: An Autobiography (1999), the 1970s recording star Meatloaf explores how an overweight child, taunted by his peers and abused by his alcoholic father, could go on to record one of the bestselling albums of all time. Other celebrities, in contrast, share with the rest of us what it is like to be born into a life of privilege. Actor-director Peter Fonda, in Don’t Tell Dad (1998), describes growing up in Hollywood in a famous acting family and socializing with the likes of the Beatles and Mick Jagger. Although many revel in their fame, celebrities are increasingly likely in their autobiographies to explore the darker side of life in the public spotlight. Indeed, in a publishing world ever more populated with self-help and “recovery” books, it could even be said that there is a kind of cultural pressure on celebrities to emphasize those parts of their lives that show them falling prey to psychological, physical, or social stresses. Indeed, the tension between apparent success and private struggle has become so conventional that it might be considered a reflection of a larger cultural unease with shiny celebrity, or a wish to reconcile it with a contemporary culture of victim identity, as much as indicative of the more perennial plots of hubris brought down. At any rate, there seems to be an increasing market for the

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celebrity-as-victim story, and often an expectation (played up in the marketing by publishers, and leapt on in reviews) of revelations of trauma, waywardness, indiscretion, or illness. And so modern celebrities often describe their private struggles with challenges – often exacerbated by the celebrity lifestyle – such as drug abuse, alcoholism, eating disorders, or mental illness. There are numerous examples, including the child star Drew Barrymore’s account of her involvement with drugs at the age of nine in Little Girl Lost (1991), Spice Girl Geri Halliwell’s revelation of her battle with bulimia in If Only (1999), and Patty Duke’s description of her years as an undiagnosed manicdepressive in Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke (1987). But something of the obverse is also more apparent nowadays, in that the autobiographical literature of physical illness increasingly includes works by celebrities about life-threatening diseases or accidents that have little or no relation to the celebrity lifestyle – and thus have the potential for a more universal empathy. For many readers, while such works often exhibit all the clichés of celebrity autobiography (the great career cut short by cruel fate), they also have a levelling effect, exposing the shallowness of celebrity life compared to the randomness of contingency, thereby reclaiming the authors for the everyday world of the ordinary reader, with especial relevance for those suffering similarly. Prominent recent examples include Gilda Radner’s It’s Always Something (1989), the late British television presenter Helen Rollason’s Life’s Too Short (2000), which tells of her struggle against cancer, and actor Christopher Reeve’s Still Me (1998), which describes his coming to terms with life as a quadriplegic after a fall from a horse. One final consideration in a discussion of celebrity autobiography should be those celebrities who have reached achieved fame precisely because of the success of their autobiographies, when they were previously unknown. While there are historical examples (for example, the Anglo-African ex-slave and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, who became a public figure in 18thcentury England following the appearance of his The Interesting Narative in 1789), the speed and penetrability of modern media can create celebrity writers extraordinarily quickly. After the American author Kathryn Harrison’s account of incestuous relations with her father was published (The Kiss, 1997), she joined the talk-show circuit and was featured in national magazines. And Frank McCourt’s recent bestselling account of his impoverished Irish childhood (Angela’s Ashes, 1996) resulted in international celebrity and a Hollywood film of his book, begging the question of how far the sequel – ’Tis (1999) – now owed its sales to the fame of its author. In such cases the implicitly circular relationship between autobiography and celebrity is revealed, even as it is exaggerated. Traci Freeman See also Business Auto/biography; Criminal Autobiography; Gossip; Conversations, Dialogues, and Table Talk; Interviews; Scandal; Sporting Auto/biography; Television and Life Story

Further Reading Eakin, Paul John, How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1999 Folkenflik, Robert (editor), The Culture of Autobiography: Constructions of Self-Representation, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1993

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Diski, Jenny, Don’t, London: Granta, 1998 Gagnier, Regenia, Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain 1832–1920, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 Gullestad, Marianne, Everyday Life Philosophers: Modernity, Morality and Autobiography in Norway, Oslo and Boston: Scandinavian University Press, 1996 Finnegan, Marianne Gilbert, “Bibliographic Essay: The Inclusive Past: Forms of Modern Autobiography”, Soundings, 78/3–4 (1995): 611–45 Newbury, Michael, “Eaten Alive: Slavery and Celebrity in Antebellum America”, ELH / English Literary History, 61/1 (1994): 159ff. Seaton, Beverly, “The Popular Topical Autobiography”, Biography, 5/3 (1982): 253–66 Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson (editors), Getting a Life: Everyday Uses of Autobiography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996 Stone, Albert E., “Collaboration in Contemporary American Autobiography”, Revue Française d’Etudes Americaines, 7/4 (1982): 151–65

Celebrity and Popular Biography Biography ranges along a continuum from scholarly to popular to celebrity (or super-pop). In many instances, the main difference between reliable scholarly biographies and authoritative popular biographies is the extent to which the sources are visible, either in the text of the biography itself or in its supplementary material – appendices, notes or bibliography. Both scholarly and popular biographies reveal the full range of available, authoritative source materials – primary, secondary, tertiary. However, scholarly biographies are much more heavily documented, and (perhaps as a consequence) are often less gracefully written than popular works. Celebrity biographies are distinctively different from both, in the choice and characterization of their subjects, uses and acknowledgments of sources, extent of invented material, literary style, and intended audience. In theory, biography is democratic. Anyone can be a biographical subject, whether ancient or contemporary, historically significant or personally notorious. Even if personally unremarkable, the subject may be representative of an occupation, era, geographic location, social group, or way of life. In practice, however, popular biographies much more often maintain true eclecticism; their subjects range from presidents, politicians, and preachers to writers, inventors, and explorers, more of whom are more successful than not; and a host of others rich and poor, known and unknown, but whose era or accomplishments are worthy of notice. Celebrity biographies almost always focus on people currently in the news, or the intimate or antagonist of a public figure capitalizing on “15 minutes of fame” in the reflected limelight; sports or entertainment figures, some barely in their teens; or the subjects of gossip, court trials, or other notoriety – almost always living, unless recently dead through disease, drama, or foul play. The subjects of popular biographies are usually presented as complex, multi-dimensional characters in multiple roles, or in many facets of a single role. Popular biographies are analytic, and often critical of their subjects. They account for changes in the subjects’ characters, pursuits, and accomplishments – often over a significant span of time, if not an entire lifetime. They consider complex motivations and a host of familial, social,

political, economic, religious, environmental, and other factors that influenced the subject’s life and were in turn influenced by him or her. These explanations, often reflective of prevailing theoretical constructs (such as Freudianism, Marxism, feminism, post-colonialism), are usually thorough, and often complicated. In contrast to the highly developed subjects of popular biographies, the subjects of celebrity biographies are likely to be presented as “flat” characters, whose limited self is either trimmed in a procrustean manner to fit the stereotyped image in the public eye or inverted to reveal an alternative self previously undisclosed – Marilyn Monroe as a latent intellectual rather than a sex queen, for example. Often one or two of the celebrity’s roles provide the book’s focus, such as athletic or film stardom; or the book may focus on the same limited segment of the life that appears in tabloid headlines. Either a simplistic public image is maintained and exploited, or an equally oversimplified private self is “exposed” or “revealed”. Because these biographies are not analytic, they appear content with surface manifestations of the subject’s personality and actions and offer simple motives and repetitive explanations of behaviour, often full of trivia. Contemporary popular biographies can exude authority, or what Coleridge called “the solidity of specification”. All aspects of the life, and interpretations of them, are buttressed by a wealth of sources – usually reliable primary texts (when available), corroborated by a wide range of secondary and tertiary sources. Because of their complexity and their abundance of sources, popular biographies tend to be long, more than 500 closely packed pages (1000-page books are not uncommon), of which 10 per cent may be citations and index. It is no wonder they are highly labour-intensive, frequently taking between five and ten years of the biographer’s full-time effort. Popular biographies of the past quarter century often identify their sources specifically, usually in bibliographies and in endnotes identified by the page numbers in the text; the citations of sources in earlier works are more casual and intermittent. When the sources are not fully comprehensive they are representative of available information. As a rule, popular biographies do not carry on extended debates in footnotes, or pursue arcane digressions there, as scholarly works often do; the endnotes stick to the point in the text. Celebrity biographies cite few sources – another reason (in addition to their limited focus) why such works are much shorter than popular biographies. The sources for a celebrity biography, when acknowledged at all, are likely to be general, global, and often unreliable (tabloids, gossip columnists, press releases, and agents’ publicity); there may be but a single acknowledged source if the work is “as-told-to”. Or the celebrity biographer may simply make up information, what Norman Mailer calls “factoids”. Celebrity biographers have to work fast: their work can take no more than a few weeks or months if it is to feed transient interest in the subject. Although no genre is immune from dullness, the best popular biographies are clear and lively; they tell a series of engaging stories that compel interest from start to finish and provide the basis for interpreting – and judging – the subject. If fictional techniques are used (dialogue, interior monologue, scenes, dramatic confrontations) they are usually derived from verifiable evidence, with notable exceptions such as Edmund Morris’s insertion of himself as a fictive character in Dutch: A

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Memoir of Ronald Reagan (1999). Celebrity biographies may be flamboyant and overwritten, or laden with repetitive vocabulary derived from the clichés of popular fiction, cinema dialogue, or gossip columns. Some celebrity biographers use such a high proportion of fictional techniques that they resemble novels. Popular biographies are intended for an audience of general readers from a wide range of backgrounds and interests. Yet because of their thorough coverage of the subject and their extensive documentation they can meet the scrutiny of scholars and other specialists – people with an enduring, often critical interest in the subject and an appreciation of the work’s depth, breadth, and perhaps novel interpretation of the subject or inclusion of new information. Celebrity biographies play to the same audience for whom the celebrities perform: fans, foes, and curiosity and sensation seekers swept up in the intrigue of the moment. Lynn Z. Bloom See also Business Auto/biography; Conversations, Dialogues, and Table Talk; Criminal Biography; Gossip; Interviews; Royal Biography; Scandal; Sporting Auto/biography; Television and Life Story

Further Reading Life Writings: Anderson, Christopher, The Day Diana Died, New York: Dell, 1998 (on Diana, Princess of Wales) Bair, Deirdre, Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography, London: Jonathan Cape, and New York: Summit, 1990 Goodwin, Doris Kearns, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, New York and London: Simon and Schuster, 1994 Johnson, George, Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics, New York: Knopf, 1999 Kelley, Kitty, Jackie Oh!: An Intimate Biography, Seacaucus, New Jersey: Stuart, and London: Hart-Davis MacGibbon, 1978 (on Jacqueline Onassis) McCullough, David, Truman, New York and London: Simon and Schuster, 1992 Mailer, Norman, Marilyn: A Novel Biography, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, and London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1973 (on Marilyn Monroe) Morris, Edmund, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, New York and London: Random House, 1999 Morton, Andrew, Diana: Her True Story, London: O’Mara, and New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992; revised edition, as Diana, Her True Story: In Her Own Words, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997 Morton, Andrew, Monica’s Story, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999 (on Monica Lewinsky) Rampersad, Arnold, The Life of Langston Hughes, 2 vols, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986–88 Rasmussen, William M.S. and Robert S. Tilton, George Washington: The Man behind the Myths, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999 Rosaforte, Tim, Tiger Woods: The Makings of a Champion, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997 Sampson, Anthony, Nelson Mandela: The Authorized Biography, New York: Knopf, 1999 Weems, Mason, The Life of George Washington; with Curious Anecdotes, Equally Honourable, to Himself, and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen, editions 6–74, Philadelphia: Matthew Carey, 1801—

Analysis: Bernstein, Richard, “The Effort of a Lifetime for Biographer and Subject”, New York Times (28 October 1999): B1–2

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Bloom, Lynn Z., “Popular and Super-Pop Biographies: Definitions and Distinctions”, Biography, 3/3 (1980): 225–39 Lellenberg, Jon L. (editor), The Quest for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Thirteen Biographers in Search of a Life, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987 Wilson, John Scott, “Popular History and Biography” in Handbook of American Popular Literature, edited by M. Thomas Inge, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1988

Cellini, Benvenuto

1500–1571

Italian goldsmith, sculptor, and autobiographer Trained as a goldsmith in Florence, Siena, and Bologna, Benvenuto Cellini produced some of the finest metalwork, coins, medallions, and sculptures of the 16th-century Italian Renaissance. He travelled widely, working for such patrons as Pope Clement VII in Rome, Cosimo I de’ Medici in Florence, and François I in Paris and at Fontainebleau. Quick-tempered, adventurous, and with few scruples, he was often on the move to avoid arrest – charges levelled against him included violent affray, attempted murder, theft, spying, and gross indecency – and he spent several periods in prison. Thanks to his autobiography, Vita di Benvenuto Cellini (1728; The Life of Benvenuto Cellini), we know far more about his life, both personal and professional, than we do about that of any other Renaissance artist. He began his Vita in 1558 while under house arrest on a charge of sodomy. His intention, as a man of “truth and honesty”, was to give a full account of how, through his virtù (that strength of character that allows a man to succeed in his ambitions), he had achieved excellence in his art. At this stage of his life he undoubtedly wanted to defend himself against what he felt were unjustified attacks on his character. He was also well aware that he was not one of the artists in Vasari’s celebrated Vite (Lives), which had appeared in 1550 (characteristically, he presents Vasari as a cowardly sycophant with low standards of personal hygiene). Cellini’s central theme is that his life has been an attempt to fulfil a glorious God-given destiny. After writing the first few pages himself, he started dictating his story to a 14-year-old amanuensis (which may, in part at least, account for the fluency of the narrative, and perhaps also its persistent boasting). By 1559 he was able to submit a draft to the Florentine scholar Benedetto Varchi (1503–65), asking him to “improve its style”. Varchi wisely declined and the text retained Cellini’s earthy Tuscan dialect, complete with its colourful idioms and its abundant expletives and terms of abuse. He worked on the text for several more years, abandoning it in 1562. He died in 1571, and his Vita was not published until 1728. Cellini’s autobiography (which covers almost all of his life) provides a vivid and often brutally frank portrait of both the man and his age. If Baldassare Castiglione’s celebrated Il libro del cortegiano (1528; The Book of the Courtier) is the voice of the Renaissance humanist court, refined, intellectual, and elegant, Cellini’s Life is the voice of the workshop, tavern, prison, and marketplace, as well as that of princes’ courts. As his biographical models, Cellini would have been familiar with compilations of saints’ lives, perhaps with several Roman

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historians, and with the classically inspired genre of “lives of illustrious men”, the most recent example being Vasari’s Vite. There were far fewer autobiographies to act as models: the leading examples included Augustine’s Confessions (written c.397– 400), Petrarch’s Secretum (written 1342–43), and Piccolomini’s frank Commentarii (from the 15th century). But in their piety and scholarly decorum, such works were a world away from Cellini’s scandalous and overweening narrative. Rich in colourful characters, adventures, and circumstantial detail, his autobiography reads like a picaresque novel. This may well be because the tone, the brisk narrative style, and the characterization are not derived largely from the classical authors that the scholars and writers of the period were studying and imitating, but from popular storytelling. In drawing on a largely folk tradition, his Vita is much closer to the very popular Italian novelle (tales) of the period and also to such works as Rabelais’s Pantagruel (1532) – which, though bristling with humanist learning, draws heavily on popular tales and characters, i.e. the carnivalesque – than it is to Tacitus or Plutarch. The narrator quickly emerges as a larger-than-life figure, egotistical, boastful, violent, arrogant, promiscuous, and vindictive – as well as loyal, hard-working, and passionate about his art (as his celebrated description of the making of his bronze statue Perseus (1554) shows). Although he has moments of despair (in prison he comes close to suicide), he is not given to introspection or the subtle analysis of motives. His notion of personality is the familiar Renaissance amalgam of astrology, the church’s moral psychology, and the theory of humours. He seems to understand who and what he is and takes the world as he finds it, knowing that it is divided into “honest men” and “scoundrels” and that even a man of exceptional abilities has to fight hard to succeed. At times there is a strong (if anachronistic) element of Baron Munchausen-esque fantasizing about his many escapades. In his account of the storming of the Castel Sant’Angelo during the Sack of Rome (1527), for example, where “every day” he performed “some extraordinary feat”, he claims that he shot one Spanish officer so accurately from a great distance that the man’s sword, struck by the bullet, cut him clean in two; that it was his bullets that brought down both Charles de Bourbon and the Prince of Orange; and that his final cannon shot, fired when the ceasefire had been called, “caused so much destruction that the enemy was on the point of abandoning the palace”. Alongside such braggadocio, the endless catalogue of petty acts of vindictiveness, dishonesty, and cruelty (such as beating and kicking a mistress “until I was exhausted”, and then merely regretting that she was so badly injured she would not be able to model for him) introduce a more disturbing note. And what are we to make of the claim, for example, that while languishing in prison he was visited by Christ and the Virgin Mary, who conferred on him a “light – a brilliant splendour” that hovered above his head for the rest of his life, unseen by others? Such claims, together with the contradiction between his stated intention – to prove himself a worthy man who has achieved great things – and his compulsion to record every detail of an often squalid life, raise a number of intriguing issues. Among them is the question of how we are to regard the narrator. Are we to take him at face value, as Cellini himself giving a “sincere” and ingenuous account of his beliefs and actions? Or can we see him as a convenient persona by which Cellini, a complex man of turbulent emotions, was able to engage in a process

of self-definition (personal as well as social) that involved dissimulation, a mocking irony, and a theatrical bravado worthy of a Pantagruel? As a 16th-century text, Cellini’s Life is one of the most compelling expressions of the growing individualism that the 19th-century cultural historian Jakob Burckhardt identified as a central characteristic of the Renaissance; it is also a reflection of the rapidly changing status of the artist, who by this stage was no longer a mere craftsman but a practitioner of the liberal arts and an intimate of cardinals and popes. As an autobiography, it can be seen as a forerunner of the morally ambiguous confessions of such writers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Marquis de Sade, and Jean Genet. Chris Murray Biography Born in Florence, then an Italian republic, 3 November 1500. His father was an architect and engineer, and an amateur musician. Apprenticed against his father’s will as a goldsmith in the workshop of Andrea di Sandro Marcone in Florence at the age of 15. Became involved in a brawl and was banished from Florence, 1516. Went to Siena, where he worked for a goldsmith. Recalled to Florence by Cardinal de’ Medici after his father interceded for him. Sent by his father to study music in Bologna, but worked with a goldsmith there. Returned to Florence after several months, then worked in Pisa. Moved back to Florence and studied the work of Michelangelo. Travelled to Rome, 1519. Stayed in Rome for two years then returned to Florence. Escaped from Florence under sentence of death for fighting, 1523. Escaped to Rome, where he received important commissions and established his own workshop. Participated in the defence of Rome against the forces of the Holy Roman Empire, serving in the pope’s artillery, 1527: claimed to have killed Charles de Bourbon and wounded the Prince of Orange. Returned to Florence, moved to Mantua, then back to Florence. Travelled to Rome, 1529; received commission from Pope Clement VII for the famous morse (clasp), now lost. Murdered a rival goldsmith, 1534: pardoned by Paul III. Visited France, 1537; became ill and returned to Rome. Arrested by the pope for allegedly stealing the papal jewels and imprisoned in the Castel Sant’Angelo. Released through the intervention of Cardinal d’Este, who took him to France, 1539. Worked for the king, François I, who gave him a salary; granted letters of naturalization, 1542. Completed his famous salt-cellar Neptune and Triton for the king, 1543. Returned to Florence, 1545. Worked for Cosimo I de’ Medici for the rest of his life. Completed statue of Perseus, 1554. Also began to work in marble. Began his autobiography and treatises on sculpture and goldsmithing. Sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for sodomy, 1557; sentence commuted to house arrest. Died in Florence, 13 February 1571.

Selected Writings Vita di Benvenuto Cellini orefice e scultore fiorentino (written 1558–62), 1728; edited by Ettore Camesasca, 1954, G.G. Ferrero, 1959, Bruno Maier, 1962, Guido Davico Bonino, 1973, and Lorenzo Bellotto, 1996; as La vita, i trattati, i discorsi, edited by Pietro Scarpellini, 1967; as The Life of Benvenuto Cellini, translated by Thomas Nugent, 2 vols, 1771; also translated by John Addington Symonds – as The Life of Benvenuto Cellini, 1888, Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini, 1898, and The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, 1910 (and edited and abridged by Charles Hope and Alessandro Nova, 1983) – and by George Bull, 1956, revised 1998

Further Reading Avery, Charles, Florentine Renaissance Sculpture, London: John Murray, and New York: Harper and Row, 1970 Bull, George, introduction to his translation of The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956 Cervigni, Dino Sigismondo, The Vita of Benvenuto Cellini: Literary Tradition and Genre, Ravenna: Longo, 1979

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Gallucci, Margaret Ann, “The Unexamined Life of Benvenuto Cellini: Poetic Deviance and Sexual Transgression in Sixteenth-Century Italy” (dissertation), Berkeley: University of California, 1995 Goldberg, Jonathan, “Cellini’s Vita and the Conventions of Early Autobiography”, Modern Language Notes, 89 (1974): 71–83 Pope-Hennessy, John, Cellini, London: Macmillan, and New York: Abbeville Press, 1985 Price Zimmermann, T.C., “Confession and Autobiography in the Early Renaissance” in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, edited by Anthony Molho and John Tedeschi, Florence: Sansoni, 1971 Symonds, John Addington, chapter on Cellini in his Renaissance in Italy: The Fine Arts, London: Smith and Elder, 1877

Censorship and Life Writing Censorship is commonly thought of as the prohibition of free expression by government officials or representatives of other secular or religious institutions (such as a church or other religious establishments or orders). In life writing, however, the censorship may be self-imposed (consciously or unconsciously), or the life writer may find his or her work opposed and curtailed by members of a literary establishment. Censorship applied to life writing is an effort to control what can be said about a particular life. The censor has in mind a standard of conduct, a view of what the public should know and what should be suppressed. The letters of literary figures such as George Eliot and Matthew Arnold, for example, were not fully accessible to scholars until the late 20th century. In both cases, it was thought that aspects of Eliot’s and Arnold’s lives detracted from their reputations as authors. In such cases the censor believes that the public has no right to know about intimate aspects of the writer’s private life. Yet from the perspective of those opposed to censorship, authors draw on their private lives and write with an air of intimacy that uncensored biographies of those same authors seek to emulate. Of course, censors (often members of the author’s family) may also be seeking to protect family members from being hurt by a biography’s revelations of private life. To that concern, the great 18th-century biographer Samuel Johnson replied that if biographers were enjoined to respect the dignity of their subjects they had an even higher duty to respect the truth. Censorship, from this perspective, poisons the quest for veracity and makes the life writer complicit in the suppression of the full human record. Censorship often seeks, then, to maintain an exemplary view in life writing – that is, the subject is portrayed in the best possible light as a model for society and future generations. Literary authors have often imposed censorship on their own lives by artfully omitting less flattering details from their autobiographies or by making sure that an authorized biographer presents a view of the subject that s/he and his or her company of friends endorse. At times an entire community or profession may close ranks to protect the reputation of a favoured son or daughter. Thus Richard Aldington, a significant author and critic in his own right, was aghast to find his biography of T.E. Lawrence opposed by the English literary establishment when his research threatened to expose as a sham Lawrence’s claims to heroism. The establishment had invested too much in its view of Lawrence to brook Aldington’s exposure of the myth Lawrence had built up about his life.

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Censorship of life writing unsurprisingly expresses power and control. Thus Thomas Hardy wrote his autobiography but attached his wife’s name to the book, maintaining the fiction that the book was a retrospective account produced by a biographer intimate with, but also separate from, him. In a more nefarious case, Edgar Allan Poe’s literary executor, Rufus Griswold, actually doctored Poe’s correspondence in order to highlight his supposed immorality, for Griswold thought Poe had led a depraved life. Although Griswold is an extreme example, literary history is replete with cases of widows and other family members who not only destroyed letters and other documents but rewrote evidence. Henry James provides an insightful fictional example of this phenomenon in his novel The Aspern Papers (1888), as does W. Somerset Maugham in Cakes and Ale (1930). Biographer and novelist A.N. Wilson has written a five-volume series of novels that brilliantly explores the question of censorship and biography. Censorship has had a powerful impact on the history of life writing. For example, American playwright Lillian Hellman produced a series of memoirs that were initially received with great enthusiasm for their candour. As long as Hellman restricted herself to certain details of her life, not much notice was taken of rather large omissions of facts and events that streamlined her life and gave it a pleasing aesthetic shape. But when she produced a political memoir, Scoundrel Time (1976), which not only misrepresented her own politics but made obvious mistakes about elementary historical facts, critics began to examine much more closely how much she had censored important areas of her life. Of course, Hellman, like many authors, claimed a right to relate her life as she saw fit, and no book can faithfully represent a life in all of its details. But life writing needs to be scrutinized for reliability precisely because it is so susceptible to censorship and self-censorship. One of the most famous cases of censorship is that of the diary of Anne Frank. Anne’s father Otto, the diary’s initial editor, suppressed several pages concerning his daughter’s growing awareness of her sexuality as well as passages revealing tensions between Anne and her mother. Both elements were present in the first published version of the diary, but they were minimized, perhaps to respect Anne’s privacy (although she foresaw publication of her diary) and to keep in the forefront events more relevant to the Holocaust. Later editions have restored some of the censored material, and a new biography of Anne Frank makes clear precisely what Otto Frank omitted for publication. Does the censorship in this case matter? For readers mainly concerned with the diary as a memoir of the Holocaust, perhaps the details of private life do not seem so consequential. Yet, one could ask, what is the power of Anne’s story if it is not the manner in which she reveals herself so intimately? Should not the diary, as she wrote it, be respected? From this perspective, her story is more than an account of the Holocaust; it concerns coming of age in every sense of the word, and provides a record of her growing powers as a writer. To edit out what Anne Frank deliberately put on the page (she not only wrote but rewrote her diary, as a professional writer might) might be considered a fundamental curtailment of freedom of expression. There are occasions, of course, in which censorship appears to serve a moral and praiseworthy political or social purpose. In his great autobiography, The Narrative of Frederick Douglass (1845), the author censored the details of how he made his

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escape from slavery to freedom. To be candid, Douglass argued, was not only to embarrass the people who aided him but to supply slaveholders with a more precise idea of how slaves were able to escape to the North and to Canada. Indeed, he criticized many proponents of the underground railroad (the clandestine network of abolitionists who arranged transport of slaves into free territory) for publicizing their efforts and thus alerting the slaveholding South to their tactics. Douglass made a powerful point, although he may have been insensitive about the propaganda value of the underground railroad for abolitionists who wanted to show how widespread and effective their efforts to free slaves had been. Similarly, had Douglass been more forthcoming about the complex chain of accomplices in his escape, he would surely have presented a record of the resourcefulness of slaves and their allies. This is not to say that Douglass’s selfcensorship was mistaken, but rather that any form of censorship – no matter how well intentioned – can produce negative consequences. One of the most disturbing forms of censorship in life writing in English is the use by certain authors of copyright laws to suppress the freedom of expression of other writers. A recent case in point is American author J.D. Salinger, who objected to Ian Hamilton’s biography of him. A very private man, Salinger was outraged that Hamilton did not respect his wishes to have no biography of him written. As an unauthorized biographer, Hamilton proceeded with his project, relying on the doctrine of “fair use”, or “fair dealing”, as it is known in Great Britain. But with no permission to quote substantially from Salinger’s letters and manuscripts, Hamilton could quote only brief passages, and paraphrase or summarize others. Salinger brought a suit for copyright infringement and won. The court decision of 1987 virtually destroyed the idea of “fair use” for unpublished material, and the result had a chilling effect on publishers and authors. Authors were instructed to eliminate almost all quotations or close paraphrases of unpublished work if they had not secured permission from the copyright holder. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, and other distinguished historians and biographers protested against the sweeping, negative impact of the court decision, and eventually the US Congress amended the copyright law so that it was clearer that “fair use” applied to both published and unpublished work. Of course, authors need the protection of copyright, which prohibits the unauthorized use of large quantities of material over which an author would otherwise have no control, and other subjects of life writing rightly rely on laws that prohibit and punish libel and invasion of privacy. But, especially in the case of life writing, certain authors and estates have abused copyright law in order to control the nature of what is said about literary figures. Both Ian Hamilton, in Keepers of the Flame (1992), and Michael Millgate, in Testamentary Acts (1992), document the long history of efforts to thwart biographers and other authors of life writing. An increased awareness of censorship issues in life writing should stimulate readers of auto/biographical writing to consider not only what those works say but perhaps what they are not permitted to say. Carl Rollyson Further Reading Boyer, Paul S., Purity in Print: The Vice-Society Movement and Book Censorship in America, New York: Scribner, 1968

De Grazia, Edward, Censorship Landmarks, New York: Bowker, 1969 Downs, Robert B., The First Freedom: Liberty and Justice in the World of Books and Reading, Chicago: American Library Association, 1960 Ernst, Morris L. and Alan U. Schwartz, Censorship: The Search for the Obscene, New York: Macmillan, 1964 Hamilton, Ian, In Search of J.D. Salinger, New York: Random House, and London: Heinemann, 1988 Hamilton, Ian, Keepers of the Flame: Literary Estates and the Rise of Biography, London: Hutchinson, 1992; as Keepers of the Flame: Literary Estates and the Rise of Biography from Shakespeare to Plath, London: Faber, 1994 Karl, Fred, “Writing George Eliot’s Biography”, Biography, 22 (1999): 75–85 Millgate, Michael, Testamentary Acts: Browning, Tennyson, James, Hardy, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992 Rollyson, Carl, Lillian Hellman: Her Legend and Her Legacy, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988 Rollyson, Carl and Lisa Paddock, “‘Fair Use’ and the Unauthorized Biography: Dealing with the Dilemma”, Biography and Source Studies, 3 (1997): 137–49 Weinberg, Steve, Telling the Untold Story: How Investigative Reporters Are Changing the Craft of Biography, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992 Wilson, A.N., Incline Our Hearts, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988; New York: Viking, 1990 Wilson, A.N., A Bottle in the Smoke, London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1989; New York: Viking Press, 1990 Wilson, A.N., Daughters of Albion, London, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1991 Wilson, A.N., Hearing Voices, London, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995 Wilson, A.N., A Watch in the Night, London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996

Chang, Jung see Jung Chang Charke, Charlotte

1713–1760

British actress and autobiographer Charlotte Charke had several compelling reasons for writing her quixotic and wryly self-deprecating autobiography, A Narrative of the Life of Mrs Charlotte Charke (1755). She was penniless on her return to London after nine years on the road as a strolling player, and she hoped to repair her fortunes by recounting her extraordinary life. As an actress she had excelled in male roles such as Roderigo in Othello; she then carried her crossdressing into her private life. Posing as a man (sometimes “Sir Charles” or “Mr Brown”), she got work as a waiter to a lord, was wooed by an heiress, travelled with “Mrs Brown”, and generally experienced adventures far beyond the scope of other women of her time. Furthermore, she could exploit her notoriety as the estranged daughter of the poet laureate Colley Cibber. Her father, who had made his name by acting and writing the part of the fop, went on to become theatre manager of Drury Lane and, after retiring, to write his memoirs, An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber (1740). Charke later followed suit, but she outstripped her father in her portrayal of a complex character at odds with itself. She structured her Narrative around her thwarted relationship with him, declaring at the outset that she intended to make a “public Confession” of her “Faults” in the hopes that he would forgive her. She shares with the reader her repentant letter to him and, finally, her anguish when he returns it with a blank piece of paper. Representing her-

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self as the “Prodigal” whose father has failed to show mercy, she rails against the “unnatural” family from which she is outcast. Her penurious position, her father’s callous treatment, and the rueful charm with which she describes her recklessness and generosity, contributed to the popularity of her Narrative. It was serialized in the Gentleman’s Magazine, and printed even in the more prescriptive climate of the 19th century. But it never brought her wealth: she was paid a pittance for the copyright. Ever since Delarivière Manley’s scandalously autobiographical The History of Rivella (1714), novels based on the lives and letters of women, often written by female authors, had proliferated. But, ironically, it took two male authors, Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson, both purporting to be mere editors of their heroine’s accounts, to render women’s life writing more respected and profitable. The influential popularity of very different novels, Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722) and Richardson’s Pamela (1740), encouraged women to write unashamed “real life” memoirs themselves. Refusing to idealize themselves or their society, they give a startlingly clear picture of women’s inequality in terms of education, work, marriage, and the law. Memoirists such as Catherine Jemmat (Memoirs, 1762), Elizabeth Gooch (Life, 1792), and Mary Bowes (Confessions, 1793) describe with “strict Adherence to Truth” their faults and misfortunes – unhappy marriages, debts, love affairs, fragmented careers – and their spirit of survival. Mid-18th-century “scandalous memoirists” who preceded Charke – Laetitia Pilkington, Constantia Phillips, and Lady Frances Vane – also reveal self-conflictive characters which, they acknowledge, contributed to their downfall. With these increasingly subtle subjectivities, female memoirists encouraged, in their turn, more complex representations of interiority in the novel. However, aware of her contemporaries’ potential disapproval, Charke begs them to give her Narrative a fair trial – the “common Chance of a Criminal” – and promises to conceal nothing “to escape a Laugh, even at my own Expence”. Tracing her oddity to her unconventional childhood, she portrays herself as blundering “thro’ many strange and unaccountable Vicissitudes of Fortune”. These included marriage at 17 to a feckless musician; parodying her father in a savagely satirical play by Henry Fielding (which effectively ended her career); taking revenge on her theatre manager, Charles Fleetwood, by lampooning him in her own play The Art of Management (1735); and rescue from debtors’ prison by the prostitutes of Covent Garden. She charts the decline of her career from its promising beginning – when she performed characters as diverse as Fainlove and Cleopatra – to its ending when she was a puppeteer, strolling player, and, finally, prompter. Besides all the action, Charke’s representation of her bemusement at her inability to fathom the conflicts and inconsistencies of her character is highly original. She opens with a mocking dedication from “the Author to Herself” in which opposing aspects of her nature – one capricious, the other judicious – attempt to reach a rapprochement. The device is symptomatic of the quizzical selfmockery that she employs to convey tragedy and hardship in a light and entertaining tone. Her droll portrayal of her own flawed character influenced other actress-memoirists such as George Anne Bellamy (An Apology, 1785) and Mary Robinson (Memoirs, 1801), and contributed to an enrichment of representations of inner consciousness in the novel. Lynda M. Thompson

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Biography Born Charlotte Cibber, possibly in London, 1713. Her father was Colley Cibber, the famous dramatist, actor, and manager of the Drury Lane Theatre from 1710. Attended a school in Westminster and learned Latin and Italian in addition to music and dancing. Moved to Hillingdon, Middlesex, late 1720s. Married Richard Charke, a musician, 1729: one daughter. Separated from Charke, 1730 (he died in Jamaica in the late 1730s). Performed on the London stage with the Drury Lane Company, 1730–33. Performed at the Haymarket Theatre, London, 1733. Returned to Drury Lane Theatre, 1734; often played male characters. Quarrelled with the manager, Fleetwood, and published a play against him, The Art of Management, 1735. Left Drury Lane and went to Giffard’s Company at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 1735. Started a puppet theatre in the Haymarket, 1737; also ran a grocery store and became an oil dealer. Started dressing as a man, 1738. Worked as a sausage-seller, tavern-keeper, and gentleman’s valet. Was often destitute, abandoned by her father whom she had offended. Reappeared at the Haymarket Theatre, 1744–45. Attempted unsuccessfully to manage the Haymarket Theatre Company, 1746. Married secretly, c.1738–40; husband died shortly after their marriage. Performed with troupe of strolling players in the provinces, 1740s. Returned to London and published her autobiography in an attempt to make money, 1755. Died in poverty in Islington, London, 6 April 1760(?).

Selected Writings A Narrative of the Life of Mrs Charlotte Charke, Youngest Daughter of Colley Cibber, Esq. Written by Herself, 1755; edited by Robert Rehder, 1999

Further Reading Brant, Clare and Diane Purkiss (editors), Women, Texts and Histories 1575–1760, London and New York: Routledge, 1992 Campbell, Jill, ‘“When Men Women Turn’: Gender Reversals in Fielding’s Plays” in The New Eighteenth Century: Theory, Politics, English Literature, edited by Felicity Nussbaum and Laura Brown, London and New York: Methuen, 1987 Cibber, Colley, An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber: With an Historical View of the Stage during His Own Time, edited by B.R.S. Fone, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968 Gonda, Caroline, Reading Daughters’ Fictions 1709–1834: Novels and Society from Manley to Edgeworth, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996 Jelinek, Estelle C., The Tradition of Women’s Autobiography from Antiquity to the Present, Boston: Twayne, 1986 Morgan, Fidelis, The Well-Known Troublemaker: A Life of Charlotte Charke, London and Boston: Faber, 1988 Nussbaum, Felicity, The Autobiographical Subject: Gender and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century England, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989 Potter, Lois, “Colley Cibber: The Fop as Hero” in Augustan World, edited by J.C. Hilson, M.M.B. Jones, and J.R.Watson, Leicester: Leicester University Press, and New York: Harper and Row, 1978 Staves, Susan, “A Few Kind Words for the Fop”, Studies in English Literature, 22 (1982): 413–28 Straub, Kristina, Sexual Suspects: Eighteenth-Century Players and Sexual Ideology, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992 Thompson, Lynda M., The Scandalous Memoirists: Constantia Phillips, Laetitia Pilkington and the Shame of “Publick Fame”, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000

Chateaubriand

1768–1848

French writer, traveller, politician, and autobiographer The rise of critical interest in autobiography since the 1970s has led to far greater recognition of the importance of Chateaubriand’s Mémoires d’outre-tombe (1849–50; Memoirs)

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in the history of European life writing. Like many great autobiographies, the Mémoires d’outre-tombe have an extremely complex textual history. Always intended for posthumous publication, like Rousseau’s Confessions, they were written over a very long period of time. The initial project and earliest passages date from 1803, and a short version, entitled Mémoires de ma vie, was written in 1809. The bulk of the text was then produced intermittently up to the early 1830s. Particularly from 1833, and until his death in 1848, Chateaubriand not only continued to write but substantially revised and augmented earlier sections. This progressive layering and textual accretion reflect the fundamental nature of Chateaubriand’s autobiographical project where the relationship between time and individual experience (including historical experience) is a central theme. A famous passage, greatly admired by Marcel Proust, epitomizes Chateaubriand’s method. Resuming his narrative at Montboissier in 1817, he notes that three years have elapsed since he last added to his memoirs, and goes on to ruminate on the cataclysmic historical events – Napoleon’s return to power during the “cent jours”, the battle of Waterloo, the restoration of the monarchy – which have happened in what will be a gap between two paragraphs of his book. Chateaubriand then notes how, having just heard the song of a thrush, he has abruptly been carried back to his childhood at Combourg, of which he then proceeds to give a marvellously fresh account. The effect of the passage is vividly to dramatize both the passage of time and the fragmentation of individual experience. A variety of temporal levels – from childhood to various moments in adult life, up to the time of writing itself – are set in parallel, and Chateaubriand even adds further dimensions, past and present, by developing associations relating to the setting at Montboissier – a ruined castle symbolizing the ancien régime – and by musing on the publication of his memoirs at some point in the future. Although narcissism and self-glorification are undoubtedly factors in Chateaubriand’s project, what clearly fascinates him most is the diversity of self-images thrown up by the process of recording a remarkable life. He retraces the story of a young Breton from the minor nobility who was presented at court, emigrated at the Revolution, spent time in America and England, rose to considerable eminence as writer and politician (enjoying a succession of ministerial and ambassadorial positions), and then, despite strong monarchist leanings, became a severe critic of the restoration and a liberal upholder of constitutional rights. But rather than a chronological narrative, Mémoires d’outretombe provides us with an exhilarating journey in time, giving precedence to the resonances, parallels, and associations between episodes and incidents that had often occurred at totally different moments. Chateaubriand does not search for the meanings of past events through introspection, but presents himself as a man for whom any encounter, current or recollected, immediately presents a connection with an earlier parallel experience or an image from the historical past. More than once, he uses the idea of the palimpsest to convey this. New events inscribe themselves on older ones, partly erasing and modifying what came before, but providing the opportunity for a fundamentally anachronistic process of superimposition rather than a definitive retrieval of the past. Instead of uncovering buried truth, Chateaubriand’s approach tends to dramatize the dialectic of self and history.

The later parts of the Mémoires d’outre-tombe involve a wonderful account of journeys to Venice and Prague on behalf of a pretender to the French throne. Writing as an old man, often in transit, Chateaubriand makes life writing a form of time travel, inventing a narrative voice that maintains a distance from any psychological centre. The elements of the external scene are absorbed into an associative process which, if it tends to mythologize individual experience, does not so much produce a fixed identity as enact the production of self-images. In the context of the renewal of autobiography in recent years Chateaubriand has found new admirers, including Roland Barthes, an avid reader of the Mémoires d’outre-tombe, and the German writer W.G. Sebald, whose memoir, The Rings of Saturn (1998), owes something to Chateaubriand’s method of superimposition, and which contains a section inspired by a passage in the Mémoires. Chateaubriand’s Vie de Rancé, the life of a religious leader, has also been reappraised in the light of renewed interest in styles and methods of biography. Michael Sheringham Biography François-René August, Vicomte de Chateaubriand. Born in Saint-Malo, Brittany, France, 4 September 1768. Spent much of his childhood at the family château of Combourg, near Saint-Malo. Educated at schools in Saint-Malo and Dol, 1777–81; at the Collège de Rennes, 1781–83; and Collège de Dinan, 1783–84. Joined the army, 1786. Went to Paris, where he was presented at court and made literary friends, 1788. Career interrupted by the Revolution. Visited North America, 1791– 92. Returned to France and served briefly in the royalist army defeated at Thionville, 1792. Married Célèste Buisson de la Vigne, 1792 (died 1847). Had many affairs with women throughout his life. Spent years of exile in Jersey, 1792, and England, where he taught French, living in London and Bungay, Suffolk, 1793–1800. Returned to France, 1800. Contributed to the Mercure de France, 1800–14. Established his literary reputation with the tale Atala (1801), followed by René (1802), his best-known story. Attracted the attention of Napoleon with Le Génie du christianisme (1802), a vindication of Roman Catholicism, and appointed ambassador to Rome, 1803. Served as a diplomat in the Swiss canton of Valais, 1803–04, but resigned after the execution of the duc d’Enghien, refusing to serve under Napoleon. Travelled to the Holy Land, North Africa, and Spain, 1806–07; wrote Itinéraire de Paris à Jerusalem (1811; Travels in Greece, Palestine, Egypt, and Barbary). Elected a member of the Académie Française, 1811. Supported the Bourbon cause, 1814. Left for Ghent after Napoleon’s landing in France, 1815; became honorary minister of the interior of the government in exile, president of the electoral college of Orléans, and a peer of France. Began lifelong relationship with Juliette Récamier, 1817. Founded Le Conservateur, 1818 (closed down 1820). Served as envoy extraordinary to Berlin, 1820–21; ambassador to Britain, 1822; and minister of foreign affairs, 1822–24. Became a Liberal when he failed to be appointed prime minister, 1824. Ambassador to Rome, 1828–29. Returned to the royalist party after the downfall of Charles X at the July Revolution of 1830. Wrote his celebrated memoirs during the reign of Louis-Philippe. Arrested briefly on suspicion of a conspiracy to overthrow the monarchy, 1832. Died in Paris, 4 July 1848.

Selected Writings Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem, 1811; as Travels in Greece, Palestine, Egypt and Barbary, translated by Frederick Shoberl, 2 vols, 1812 Voyage en Amerique; Voyage en Italie, 1827; as Travels in America and Italy, 2 vols, 1828 La Vie de Rancé, 1844; edited by Marius-François Guyard, 1969 Mémoires d’outre-tombe, 12 vols, 1849–50; edited by Jean-Claude Berchet, 4 vols, 1988–2000; as The Memoirs of François René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, 6 vols, 1902; sections edited and translated by Robert Baldick, 1961

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Further Reading Barthes, Roland, “Pour un Chateaubriand de papier”, Le Grain de la voix: entretiens 1962–1980, Paris: Seuil, 1981 Berchet, Jean-Claude et al., Chateaubriand: Mémoires d’outre-tombe, Paris: SEDES, 1990 Berthier, Philippe, Stendhal et Chateaubriand: essai sur les ambiguités d’une antipathie, Geneva: Droz, 1987 Painter, George D., Chateaubriand: A Biography, vol. 1, London: Chatto and Windus, 1977 Rannaud, Gérard, “Le Moi et l’histoire chez Chateaubriand et Stendhal”, Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France, 6 (1975): 1004–17 Richard, Jean-Pierre, Paysage de Chateaubriand, Paris: Seuil, 1967 Riffaterre, Michael, “De la structure au code: Chateaubriand et le monument imaginaire” in his La Production du texte, Paris: Seuil, 1979 Roulin, Jean-Marie, Chateaubriand: l’exil et la gloire, du roman familial à l’identité littéraire dans l’oeuvre du Chateaubriand, Paris: Champion, 1994 Sebald, W.G., The Rings of Saturn, translated by Michael Hulse, London: Harvill Press, and New York: New Directions, 1998 Sheringham, Michael, French Autobiography: Devices and Desires, Rousseau to Perec, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993 Vial, André, Chateaubriand et le temps perdu: devenir et conscience individuelle dans les Mémoires d’outre-tombe, revised edition, Paris: Union Générale d’Editions, 1971 (original edition, 1963)

Chaudhuri, Nirad

1897–1999

Indian scholar and autobiographer When The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian appeared from a London publisher in 1951, Nirad C. Chaudhuri was 54 years of age, and Indian independence only four years old. The book attracted wide attention in both Britain and India – ironically, immediately invalidating its title – but of different kinds. In India the reception was distinctly cool, and Chaudhuri has never had as many admirers in his country of origin as in his adopted country (he lived in England from 1970 until his death). The autobiography is dedicated to “the memory of the British Empire in India”, and the dedication goes on to claim that “all that was good and living within us was made, shaped and quickened by … British rule”. This was not, and for many is still not, a position likely to win wide assent in India, but Chaudhuri’s defence of his claims, and his acknowledgement of his personal indebtedness to the British cultural and political legacy, remained uncompromising. The main focus of the book, which covers only the first 23 years of Chaudhuri’s life, is his early mental development as a child born into an orthodox Hindu family in East Bengal and as a student at Calcutta University. His father had encouraged him to read Edmund Burke and other classic writers of English prose, and Chaudhuri’s own style reflects this conservative, mandarin tradition. At the same time his taste for wit, irony, and paradox, and his sometimes mischievous delight in startling or shocking the reader and stimulating controversy, suggest a debt to Oscar Wilde, G.K. Chesterton, and George Bernard Shaw. The preface states that the object of the book is to describe “the conditions in which an Indian grew to manhood in the early decades of the century”, and adds that it tells “the story of the struggle of a civilization with a hostile environment, in which the destiny of British rule in India became necessarily

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involved”. As this suggests, the focus of the work is primarily political and historical: the interest claimed for the authorsubject is that of a representative case rather than a unique individual. It is not surprising, therefore, to find chapters with titles like “Enter Nationalism” and “New Politics”. The emphasis falls very largely on what is repeatedly referred to as “environment”, and particularly on the penetration of one culture by another, rather than on subjective experience or the formation of the self. Although an entire chapter of the autobiography is devoted to England, Chaudhuri’s first visit there did not take place until 1955. The “England” of the 1951 book is therefore a country of the mind, and this perspective, he argues, was an advantage, since a first-hand acquaintance with contemporary English realities might have blunted the sharp imaginative impact of his contacts with British culture. An outcome of his 1955 visit was A Passage to England (1959). Successful in England, it was again unfavourably received in India, and Chaudhuri’s observations, such as (to take an instance at random) “all women in India … have the habit of overdressing”, make this unsurprising. When he was 90 years old, Chaudhuri published another volume of autobiography, Thy Hand, Great Anarch (1987). Although nearly 1000 pages long, this book continues the story of his life only up to a point shortly before his first visit to England. Subtitled India, 1921–1952, it covers the period that culminates, historically speaking, in the granting of independence to India in 1947, and, as the subtitle suggests, focuses even more strongly than its predecessor on public events. The final section includes some interesting passages describing the origins of the author’s vast autobiographical enterprise and the reception of the earlier volume. The prefatory “Apologia pro Biographia sua” makes it clear that the original intention of the 1951 book was to bring the narrative as far as 1947; however, thanks largely to the expansiveness with which the descriptions of “environment” were treated, this aim was abandoned. This disclosure raises interesting questions about the proportioning of an autobiographical narrative in relation to the life it narrates. It is interesting to note, for instance, that halfway through the first volume the narrative has only reached 1910, when the author was 13 years old, so much in the way of “background” having been deemed essential. Even with the addition of the second volume, little more than half of the life of the author had been dealt with. The fact remains, however, that the underlying subject is the decline and fall of the British Empire in India, and by the mid-century that story was complete. It seems clear that, as an autobiographer, Chaudhuri’s preoccupation was with the exploration of origins, especially the formation of his mind and sensibility. In this process, the culture, religion, and physical environment of his native land played a significant part, but as a figure of controversy Chaudhuri is likely to be remembered chiefly for his insistence on the importance of British and European culture in the development of himself and the generation for which he claims to speak. Norman Page Biography Nirad Chandra Chaudhuri. Born in Kishorganj, East Bengal, India (now in Bangladesh), 23 November 1897. His father was a lawyer. Brought up in Kishorganj in a strict orthodox Hindu family. Moved

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with his family to Calcutta, 1910. Educated at Scottish Church College. Studied history at Calcutta University, graduating in 1918. Because of illness, failed examinations for MA in history, 1920. Gave up formal education. Clerk in the Military Accounts Department of the Government of India, 1921. Freelance journalist from the early 1920s. Active among the literary supporters of Rabindranath Tagore in Calcutta, 1920s. Assistant editor of the Modern Review, under editorship of Ramanand Chatterjee, 1926. Editor of the Bengali journals Shonibarer Chithi and Probashi, 1927–32. Married Amiya Dhar, a writer, 1932: three sons. Secretary to Sarat Chandra Bose, leader of the Congress Party in Bengal, 1937–41. Moved to Delhi as staff political commentator for All-India Radio, broadcasting in Bengali, 1942. Published The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, 1951. Invited by the British Council and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to visit England for a lecture tour and broadcasts on the Overseas Service, 1955; also visited France and Italy. Wrote A Passage to England (1959) about his time abroad. Published The Continent of Circe, 1965. Began writing again in Bengali for a brief period. Emigrated to England, settling in Oxford, 1970. Visiting professor at University of Texas and University of Chicago, 1972. Wrote Scholar Extraordinary: The Life of Professor the Rt Hon. Friedrich Max Müller (1974), Clive of India (1975), and Hinduism (1979). Resumed writing in Bengali. Commander, Order of the British Empire, 1992. Wife died, 1994. Died in Oxford, 1 August 1999.

Selected Writings The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, 1951 A Passage to England, 1959 Scholar Extraordinary: The Life of Professor the Rt Hon. Friedrich Max Müller, P.C. (biographical study), 1974 Clive of India: A Political and Psychological Essay (biographical study), 1975 Thy Hand, Great Anarch: India, 1921–1952, 1987

Further Reading Philip, David Scott, Perceiving India: Through the Works of Nirad C. Chaudhuri, R. K. Narayan, and Ved Mehta, New Delhi: Sterling, and New York: Envoy Press, and London: Oriental University Press, 1986 Sinha, Tara, Nirad C. Chaudhuri: A Sociological and Stylistic Study of his Writings During the Period 1951–1972, Patna: Janaki Prakashan, 1981 Stilz, Gerhard, “Experiments in Squaring the Ellipsis: A Critical Reading of the Autobiographies of Gandhi, Nehru, Chaudhuri and Anand” in New Perspectives in Indian Literature in English: Essays in Honour of Professor M.K. Naik, edited by C.R. Yaravintelimath et al., New Delhi: Sterling, 1995

Chesnut, Mary Boykin

1823–1886

American diarist and memoirist Although Mary Boykin Chesnut wrote in the second half of the 19th century, it is only in recent years that her significance as probably the most important Southern woman’s voice to bear direct witness to the American Civil War has been adequately grasped. The basis of her now secure reputation is two ably edited works, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (1981), edited by C. Vann Woodward, and The Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries (1984), edited by Woodward and Elisabeth Muhlenfeld. The former is based on Chesnut’s revision in the 1880s of her original diaries from the 1860s. Following modern editing techniques, Woodward incorporates significant portions of the original diaries, which Chesnut had omitted in her revision process, into the body of her 1880s revision, the

version she had hoped to prepare for publication. The Private Mary Chesnut presents the original diaries composed during the Civil War. Earlier editions of Chesnut’s writings are unreliable. The wife of a leading Confederate political and military leader and a friend of the wife of the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, Chesnut lived at the epicentre of Confederate society and politics. Having grown up on plantations in South Carolina and, for a year, in Mississippi, after her marriage she accompanied her husband, James, on his state and national political activities. During the Civil War she resided with her husband at the first Confederate capital at Montgomery, Alabama, and later was with her husband at Charleston, South Carolina, where she observed the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. At the subsequent Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, she entertained the Confederate president and other members of the political and military elite of the South. Beginning her diary in February 1861, Chesnut provides an “insider” view and a Southern woman’s perspective on one of the most tragic periods of American history. In addition to providing a window on the public life of the short-lived Southern “nation”, Chesnut gives intimate portraits of important personalities, including the generals Robert E. Lee, Pierre Beauregard, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, as well as leading figures of the arts and religion. Because her diaries give such a privileged, intimate picture of the dominant society, Chesnut has been described as the Samuel Pepys of the Confederacy. In Patriotic Gore Edmund Wilson discusses Chesnut alongside the Confederate diarists Kate Stone and Sarah Morgan, and emphasizes Chesnut’s conscious, literary art. She clearly had literary ambitions and experimented with fiction as well as nonfictional life writing. A comparison of the original 1860s diaries with her 1880s revisions as published in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War reveals experimentation with characterization and narrative technique, including expansion and compression of material. Wilson notes that Chesnut uses effectively the generic convention of the diary in which the writer narrates the progress of “situations or relationships of which she [presumably] cannot know the outcome”. He shows how, in a Chekhovian fashion, Chesnut draws parallels between the ill-fated love story of a debutante friend and a young Confederate general and the story of the doomed Confederacy itself. Perhaps of greater interest to present-day readers is C. Vann Woodward’s analysis in “Of Heresy and Paradox” of Chesnut’s thematic focus on the “unlimited power” of white men. Woodward points out that she combines a theme of oppression inherent in the slave system with a feminist theme of the oppression of Southern women, both white and black. As Wilson notes, Chesnut describes a world in which white women were expected to adhere to idealized standards of personal morality while their husbands might with “uninhibited ease … go to bed with the black girls” and even sexually abuse them. As Chesnut wrote in her journal entry for 18 March 1861, Southern men were doubtless “no worse than men everywhere, but the lower their mistresses, the more degraded they must be”. Yet “they seem to think themselves patterns – models of husbands and fathers”. For many readers the most salutary effect of reading Chesnut’s diaries will be the unsettling of assumptions about the South. Thus, we learn of Chesnut’s father-in-law, a South Carolina plantation owner with a slave mistress, who remained

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solidly pro-Union throughout the Civil War. Even more, Mary Chesnut’s self-characterization subverts stereotypes. Unlike the cliché figure of the fluttery Southern belle, Chesnut was a voracious reader of critical intellect and a writer who experimented with varied techniques to convey her great subject. She reflected the views of many Southern women when she wrote against the “curse” of slavery and could see a parallel between the two categories of “Poor women. Poor slaves”. James Robert Payne Biography Born Mary Boykin Miller on a plantation near Statesburg, South Carolina, United States, 31 March 1823. Her father, Stephen Decatur Miller, was a prominent lawyer and politician. Lived as a child with her family on her grandparents’ plantation near Camden, South Carolina. Moved to Columbia when her father became state governor, 1828. Returned to Camden when he gained US Senate seat, 1830. Educated at a local school in Camden, and from 1835 at Madame Talvande’s French School for Young Ladies, Charleston, South Carolina. Joined family in Mississippi, 1836. Moved back to Charleston, 1837. Went to Mississippi to help her mother deal with the estate after the death of her father, 1838. Returned to Charleston, 1839. Married James Chesnut, 1840. Moved to his family plantation near Camden, “Mulberry”, 1840. Travelled to London, England, 1845. Stayed in New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, visiting relatives and seeking help for illness and depression, 1847–48. Moved into her own house in Camden. Wrote letters to her husband and family opposing slavery, 1850–54. Moved to larger house in North Camden, 1854. Looked after her sister’s five children while she was in Europe, 1857. Moved to Washington, DC, when James Chesnut became US senator, 1858; became his part-time secretary and literary hostess. Followed him on war duties in the South after he resigned from the Senate, November 1860. Travelled with him to Montgomery, Alabama, then Charleston, where she witnessed Fort Sumter Battle, 1861; recorded stories of and reactions to the Civil War in her diary. Moved to Richmond, Virginia, when her husband was promoted to colonel, 1862. Became close friend of Jefferson Davis and his wife. Moved to Columbia, South Carolina, after her husband’s promotion to brigadier-general, 1864. Stayed for safety in Lincolnton, North Carolina, 1865. Ceased writing diary after the end of the Civil War, April 1865. Returned to home state, South Carolina, settling in Chester, where she provided refuge for Jefferson Davis’s wife and children, 1865. Returned to Camden, 1866. Built new house there, 1873. Prepared diaries for publication, 1881–84. Published story in Charleston Weekly News and Courier, early 1880s. Husband and mother died, 1885. Left little more than her home; kept a dairy farm to make a living. Died in Sarsfield, Camden, South Carolina, 22 November 1886.

Selected Writings A Diary from Dixie, edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, 1905; edited by Ben Ames Williams, 1949 Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward, 1981 The Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries, edited by C. Vann Woodward and Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, 1984

Further Reading Aaron, Daniel, The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War, New York: Knopf, 1973; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975 Gregory, Eileen, “The Formality of Memory: A Study of the Literary Manuscripts of Mary Boykin Chesnut” in South Carolina Women Writers, edited by James B. Meriwether, Spartanburg, South Carolina: Southern Studies Program, University of South Carolina, 1979 Gwin, Minrose C., Black and White Women of the Old South: The Peculiar Sisterhood in American Literature, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985 Hayhoe, George F., “Mary Boykin Chesnut’s Journal: Visions and

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Revisions” in South Carolina Women Writers, edited by James B. Meriwether, Spartanburg, South Carolina: Southern Studies Program, University of South Carolina, 1979 Muhlenfeld, Elisabeth, Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Biography, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981 Muhlenfeld, Elisabeth, “Of Paradigm and Paradox: The Case of Mary Boykin Chesnut” in Feminist Visions: Toward a Transformation of the Liberal Arts Curriculum, edited by Diana L. Fowlkes and Charlotte S. McClure, University: University of Alabama Press, 1984 Wiley, Bell Irvin, Confederate Women, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1975 Wilson, Edmund, Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War, New York: Oxford University Press, 1962; London: Hogarth Press, 1987 Woodward, C. Vann, “Of Heresy and Paradox” in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by Woodward, New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 1981

Chesterfield, Earl of

1694–1773

English letter writer and profile writer Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, is remembered today principally as the patron whose negligence prompted Dr Johnson’s annihilating definition of a patron as “a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery”. Lord Chesterfield was known to his contemporaries, however, as a persuasive orator in Parliament and an able administrator of a succession of high government posts; and he left a significant body of life writing that drew on his commanding knowledge of the highest social and political circles during the reigns of the first two Georges. The value of his writing – the correspondence and the Characters – lies as well in its fine style and consistent interest in assessing human behaviour. Although Chesterfield kept his correspondence for the most part private, the year following his death in 1773 saw the publication of his letters to his illegitimate son, Philip Stanhope, who had predeceased him at the age of 33. The Letters to His Son run from 1739 to 1765 but are concentrated on the years 1747–51, when the son was approaching adulthood and, Chesterfield hoped, an illustrious public life. The earl had provided Philip with the best formal education and the grand tour, but his belief in the necessity of social savvy for public life made him eager to have a personal hand in forming the youth’s mind and manners. With this goal, the Letters carry on the tradition of courtesy literature, typified in Baldassare Castiglione’s The Courtier (1528) and practised by Chesterfield’s grandfather, Lord Halifax, in A Lady’s New Year Gift, or, Advice to a Daughter (1688). The theme of the importance of good manners, characteristic of courtesy books, appears from the beginning. At the age of nine Philip is already instructed that “civility, affability, and an obliging, agreeable address and manner” have a more immediate effect on people than virtue or honour and are thus of more practical value (no. 699; all citations are from the Dobrée edition of the complete letters); in the next letter Chesterfield makes the same point in negative terms: “I have known many a man, from his awkwardness, give people such a dislike of him at first, that all his merit could not get the better of it afterwards” (no. 701). Over the years of the boy’s adolescence the letters develop this theme by defining gentlemanly behaviour in a variety of social situations: a court reception, a dance, a public

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insult, a sexual intrigue, and so on. Such an emphasis on appearances and effects was censured by the poet William Cowper and dismissed roughly by Samuel Johnson as “teach[ing] the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master”. Certainly, Chesterfield’s instructing Philip at length on the expedient of prudent, as opposed to abject, flattery, or his guiding the youth towards intimacy with a more experienced and polished French woman (hoping some of the polish would rub off ), would scandalize some readers; yet even such ethically dubious advice is consistent with the goal of forming a skilful politician. This controversy over the morals of the Letters to His Son has historically obscured the fact that Chesterfield taught not only social self-awareness (controlling one’s own manner) but also social judgement (reading the manner of others), believing that the statesman must interpret behaviour correctly in order to judge character shrewdly. Thus the letters take on a biographical cast as Chesterfield sketches the lives of his acquaintances to provide models, and sometimes foils, for the envisioned future life of his son. A letter of 1753, for example, begins by making didactic use of a visit from a bookish relation: I have this day been tired, jaded, nay tormented, by the company of a most worthy, sensible, and learned man, a near relation of mine, who dined and passed the evening with me. This seems a paradox, but is a plain truth; he has no knowledge of the world, no manners, no address; far from talking without book, as is commonly said of people who talk sillily, he only talks by book, which in general conversation, is ten times worse. He has formed, in his own closet, from books, certain systems of everything, argues tenaciously upon those principles, and is both surprised and angry at whatever deviates from them. (no. 1886a) An earlier letter devotes a long paragraph to a profile of the Duke of Marlborough, who, despite marginal literacy and an unremarkable mind, could rise to eminence through social grace: “He was always cool, and nobody ever observed the least variation in his countenance; he could refuse more gracefully than other people could grant” (no. 1601). Sprinkled throughout, these character sketches provide the didactic letters muchneeded particularity and wit. A fuller appreciation of his life writing awaits the reader in Dobree’s complete letters of Chesterfield. Not only does the chronological arrangement of the letters reveal his skill in changing social register for his very different correspondents, at one point ranging from a 5-year-old godson to the Duke of Newcastle, secretary of state, it also unfolds the active political life that both motivated and informed Chesterfield’s study of human nature, most interestingly in the letters to his protégé, Solomon Dayrolles. This wider reading reveals as well a richer emotional life than can be glimpsed in the letters to his son, which maintain a demanding, unforgiving posture, at least until Philip enters his twenties. In the letters of the 1760s, the elder Stanhope commiserates with his son on his failing health, complains mildly of his own increasing deafness, and passes along what scraps of court gossip he hears in retirement; and he begins a correspondence with his young godson and heir (written in French to support the child’s language instruction) that still encourages ambition and manners but in a voice softened by age, retirement, and loss.

Chesterfield’s second significant work of life writing is his Characters, a slim volume of short sketches of political luminaries and friends. Published posthumously (16 profiles in 1778; four more added from manuscript in 1845), they are more particularized and individualized than the Theophrastian character, bearing more affinity to La Bruyère’s Les Caractères (1688), which Chesterfield admired (see McKenzie’s introduction). The sketch of George I is nearly a lampoon: “George the first”, he begins, “was an honest, dull, German gentleman, as unfit as unwilling to act the part of a king, which is to shine and to oppress … Importunity alone could make him act, and then only to get rid of it”. In most of the sketches, however, the wit is subordinated to a more complex study of character: Caroline was beloved as a private woman but too ambitious a queen; Robert Walpole was “the ablest manager of parliament” but dangerously cynical and easily duped by a woman’s flattery; the Duke of Newcastle was industrious and disinterested but overly fearful of change; Alexander Pope was both resentful and charitable, exemplifying the contradictions of human nature Pope himself had made the subject of his poetry. Chesterfield lends authority to his assessments by noting his first-hand knowledge of his subjects, as when he writes of the irritability of George II, “Little things, as he has often told me himself, affected him more than great ones”; or when he mentions that his observations of Alexander Pope came largely from his long stays at Pope’s estate house, Twickenham. Together with his correspondence, the Characters offer a historically valuable and thoughtful account of the life of the sometime lord lieutenant of Ireland and arbiter of decorum and of the lives of many of the most influential people of his time. Stephen M. Adams Biography Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield. Born in London, 22 September 1694. His mother was Lady Elizabeth Savile, for whom Lord Halifax had written A Lady’s New Year Gift, or, Advice to a Daughter (1688). Educated privately. Studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, 1712–14. Travelled in Europe, 1714–15. Whig Member of Parliament for St Germans, Cornwall, from 1715, and Lostwithiel, from 1722. Held court appointments under George, Prince of Wales (George II from 1727) as Gentleman of the Bedchamber, 1715, Captain of the Gentlemen-Pensioners, 1723, and Lord of the Bedchamber, 1727. Inherited title on his father’s death in 1726, becoming the 4th Earl of Chesterfield and a member of the House of Lords. Appointed privy councillor, 1728, and lord steward of the king’s household, 1730. British ambassador in The Hague, 1728–32, where he negotiated the marriage between William, Prince of Orange, and Ann, Princess Royal of England, 1730. Created Knight of the Garter, 1730. Became a bitter opponent of prime minister Sir Robert Walpole. Had one illegitimate son, Philip Stanhope (died 1768), with Elizabeth du Bouchet, 1732. Married Petronilla Melusina von de Schulemburg, Countess of Walsingham and Baroness of Aldeburgh (an illegitimate daughter of George I), 1733. Toured Europe, 1741. Served in Henry Pelham’s ministry, as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1745–46, and secretary of state, 1746–48, then retired from politics. Intimate of writers Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and Viscount Bolingbroke. Wrote political tracts, contributed to various journals, including Common Sense and The World, and was responsible for the adoption of the New Style Gregorian calendar (1751). Died in London, 24 March 1773.

Selected Writings The Letters to His Son Philip Stanhope, 2 vols, 1774; several revised editions, 1776–1800; selections as: Letters to His Son, edited by James Harding, 1973; Dear Boy: Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His

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Son, edited by Piers Dudgeon and Jonathan Jones, 1989; Letters, edited by David Roberts, 1992 Characters of Eminent Personages of His Own Time, 1777; enlarged edition, 1778, and 1845; reprinted with introduction by Alan T. McKenzie, 1990; edited by Colin Franklin, 1993 The Art of Pleasing, or, Instructions for Youth in the First Stage of Life, 1783 (included in later editions of Letters to His Son) Letters to His Godson and Successor, edited by the Earl of Carnavon, 1890 The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Fourth Earl of Chesterfield, 6 vols, edited by Bonamy Dobrée, 1932 (most comprehensive edition to date, with biography of Chesterfield) Some Unpublished Letters, edited by Sidney L. Gulick, Jr, 1937

Further Reading Dobrée, Bonamy, introduction to The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, vol. 1, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, and New York: Viking Press, 1932 McClish, Glen, “Is Manner in Everything, All? Reassessing Chesterfield’s Art of Rhetoric”, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 28/2 (1998): 5–24 McKenzie, Alan T., “History, Genre, and Insight in the ‘Characters’ of Lord Chesterfield”, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 21 (1991): 159–76 Price, Cecil, “‘The Art of Pleasing’: The Letters of Chesterfield” in The Familiar Letter in the Eighteenth-Century, edited by Howard Anderson, Philip B. Daghlian, and Irvin Ehrenpreis, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1968 Pullen, Charles, “Lord Chesterfield and Eighteenth-Century Appearance and Reality”, Studies in English Literature, 8 (1968): 501–15 Rawson, C.J., “Gentlemen and Dancing-Masters: Thoughts on Fielding, Chesterfield, and the Genteel”, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1/2 (1967): 127–58 Root, R.K., introduction to Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son and Others, London: Dent, and New York: Dutton, 1929 Shellabarger, Samuel, Lord Chesterfield and His World, Boston: Little Brown, 1951

Chesterton, G.K.

1874–1936

English fiction writer, journalist, biographer, and autobiographer In a sense, most of Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s books are either biographical or autobiographical, even historical works like A Short History of England (1917) or the Father Brown detective stories. Chesterton understood ideas and events in humanist terms: the person is central as subject and object in the formulation of ideas. To biographical writing he brought the curiosity of the journalist and a notion of the heroic that Thomas Carlyle, the Victorian champion of heroism, would have appreciated. Chesterton does admirably what all biographers must ultimately do: record histories and draw larger conclusions. Moreover, he frames the individual life within a larger context of ideas about nature, human nature, and God. Chesterton is, in short, the philosophical biographer. Published in 1902, Twelve Types is a collection of earlier essays consisting of brief biographical sketches on Savonarola, St Francis of Assisi, Lev Tolstoi, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Carlyle, among others. It was Chesterton’s fourth book, and it caused a stir because of some factual inaccuracies; its value lies in its judicious criticism of personality and motivation. Like Twelve Types, Heretics (1905) is a collection of vignettes about secular figures, some well known, others obscure

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today: the writers Kipling, Shaw, H.G. Wells, and the former priest Joseph McCabe, for example. This is one of Chesterton’s most amusing books, for despite the title it deals not so much with doctrinal or religious matters but with the foibles of contemporary life and the intellectual structure of modernity. The more expansive biographies of literary figures began with a commission from the Macmillan publishing house for a book about Robert Browning as part of the English Men of Letters series. This was to be the largest project of Chesterton’s prolific career, and he was only 29 when the book was published in 1903. It created a furore at Macmillan’s because of inaccurate quotations and uncorrected proofs, but it was ultimately a success with critics and readers and illustrated early on Chesterton’s consistent attitude towards biography: it is almost as much about the author’s theories and observations on various topics as it is about Browning. This autobiographical bent is evident again in the 1906 biography Charles Dickens, where he dwells, as in Twelve Types, on personality types through Dickens’s characters and on the great historical significance of Dickens “as a great event in English literature” and “as a great event in English history”. Perhaps the most personal of Chesterton’s biographies is the 1909 book on his friend and public opponent George Bernard Shaw. Typically, the book concentrated on Shaw’s ideas. He called him “the greatest of the modern Puritans and perhaps the last”. In the introduction he boasted “I am the only person who understands him, and I do not agree with him”. Shaw was, in fact, everything Chesterton was not: a Fabian socialist, an atheist, a free-thinker. Shaw himself reviewed the biography in The Nation, and was hurt by it while still calling it “the best work of literary art I have yet provoked”. The biographies Robert Louis Stevenson and Chaucer appeared in 1927 and 1932 respectively and are considered among Chesterton’s most successful life writings. Each shows character against a cultural-historical backdrop: in the case of Stevenson, the decadent ethos of fin-de-siècle England at the time of the Art for Art’s Sake movement; in the case of Chaucer, Catholic England, where a literature and world view informed by Aristotelian realism and the ancient faith produced engaging art and joyous living. From the beginning of his career Chesterton was interested in art criticism, which he incorporated in the biographies of the painter George Frederick Watts and the poet / painter William Blake. He had studied art in London, first in St John’s Wood and later at the Slade School. It has been said that it was as an artist that Chesterton viewed the world. G.F. Watts (1904) was well received, although it is most useful as a keen insight into the Victorian frame of mind, as a cultural study. In 1910 Chesterton published his second full-length study of an artist, William Blake, a subject he did not totally understand. His general judgement of Blake as man and artist is favourable, but not a very complete or coherent vision of either. If Chesterton did not fully understand Blake, he certainly did understand the subject of his 1925 biography, the 18th-century English political philosopher William Cobbett. It is an explanation of the biographer’s own Distributist views as much as a life of Cobbett. Furthermore, the book shows a basic religious affinity between author and subject; for Cobbett, although never a Catholic, wrote strongly against the English Reformation, on which he blamed many of England’s social ills.

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The Catholicism that Chesterton could not share with Cobbett he did with two great but very different medieval saints: Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas. Perhaps the serene quality of their biographies stems from the communion the author felt with his subjects. Based on the earlier sketch in Twelve Types, St Francis of Assisi (1923) was the first book Chesterton wrote after his conversion to Catholicism. In it he portrays Francis both as a mystic and as a precursor of much that is good in modernity. St Thomas Aquinas (1933), published towards the end of Chesterton’s life, complements the St Francis biography by stressing the need for moderns to learn not only to love rightly but to think rightly. For Chesterton, Aquinas’s reformulation of Aristotelian realism is a prescription for sanity and common sense: both, he felt, desperately needed in the modern world. These two biographies, containing the typically Chestertonian autobiographical element, have an organic relationship to the early Orthodoxy (1908) and to the posthumously published Autobiography (1936). In varying degrees, we see in the lives of the saints the growth of the writer’s own religious ideas. Orthodoxy is a chronicle of Chesterton’s intellectual development and the apologia of an orthodox if not yet Catholic Christian. The Autobiography, by necessity less focused and unified, also affords wonderful insights into this intellectual and spiritual growth. In a sense, both Orthodoxy and the Autobiography are summaries of Chesterton’s prodigious work. They offer more directly what the biographies offer more or less obliquely: the conclusions about God and humanity of a man who loved both deeply and who consistently sought to understand them justly. Robert Carballo Biography Born in Kensington, London, 29 May 1874. His father was head of a well-known firm of auctioneers and estate agents. Educated at Colet Court School, London; and St Paul’s School, London, 1887–92 (editor of The Debater, 1891–93). Studied at a drawing school in St John’s Wood, London, 1892; studied at the Slade School of Art, London, 1893–96. Never practised as an artist professionally, but occasionally worked as an illustrator, notably for Hilaire Belloc’s novels. Staff member of the London publishers Redway, 1896, and T. Fisher Unwin, 1896–1902. Married Frances Alice Blogg, 1901. Columnist, London Daily News, 1901–13, and Illustrated London News, 1905–36. Published Twelve Types, the first of his biographies, 1902. Became well known with his first novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), followed by the spy novel The Man Who Was Thursday (1908). Moved to Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, 1909. Published The Innocence of Father Brown, the first of his highly successful detective stories featuring a Roman Catholic priest, 1911. Founder, with his brother Cecil Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, and co-editor and contributor, Eye Witness (later New Witness), London, 1911–23 (revived as G.K.’s Weekly, 1925). Contributed to the London Daily Herald, 1913–14. Leader of the Distributist movement from 1919, and president of the Distributist League. Editor, with H. Jackson and R. Brimley Johnson, Readers’ Classics series, 1922. Converted to Roman Catholicism, 1922. Devoted most of his subsequent works to religious themes, including St Francis of Assisi (1923) and The Everlasting Man (1925). Editor of G.K.’s Weekly, 1925–36. President, Detection Club, 1928. Lecturer at Notre Dame University, Indiana, 1930; also lectured throughout the United States and Canada. Radio broadcaster, BBC, 1930s. Knight Commander with Star, Order of St Gregory the Great, 1934. Died in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, 14 June 1936.

Selected Writings Twelve Types (biographical sketches), 1902; expanded edition, as Varied Types, 1903; selection as Five Types, 1910 Thomas Carlyle (biographical study), 1902 Robert Louis Stevenson (biographical study), with W.R. Nicoll, 1903 Leo Tolstoy (biographical study), with G.H. Perris and Edward Garnett, 1903 Charles Dickens (biographical study), with F.G. Kitton, 1903 Robert Browning (biographical study), 1903 (with R. Garnett) Tennyson, (biographical study), 1903 (with Lewis Melvill) Thackeray, (biographical study), 1903 G.F. Watts (biographical study), 1904 Heretics (biographical sketches), 1905 Charles Dickens (biographical study), 1906 Orthodoxy (autobiographical prose), 1908 George Bernard Shaw (biographical study), 1909; revised 1935 William Blake (biographical study), 1910 Lord Kitchener (biographical study), 1917 What I Saw in America, 1922 St Francis of Assisi (biographical study), 1923 William Cobbett (biographical study), 1925 Robert Louis Stevenson (biographical study), 1927 Chaucer (biographical study), 1932 St Thomas Aquinas (biographical study), 1933 Autobiography, 1936

Further Reading Canovan, Margaret, G.K. Chesterton: Radical Populist, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977 Coates, John D., Chesterton and the Edwardian Cultural Crisis, Hull: Hull University Press, 1984 Coren, Michael, Gilbert: The Man Who Was G.K. Chesterton, London: Jonathan Cape, 1989; New York: Paragon House, 1990 Dale, Alzina Stone, The Art of G.K. Chesterton, Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985 Dale, Alzina Stone, The Outline of Sanity: A Biography of G.K. Chesterton, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1982 Evans, T.F., “Shaw, Chesterton, and Magic”, Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, 15 (1995): 21 Ffinch, Michael, G.K. Chesterton, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, and San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986 Hodgson, Peter, “Chesterton and Science”, Chesterton Review, 20/4 (1994): 487–501 Hollis, Christopher, G.K. Chesterton, London and New York: Longmans Green, 1950 Kantra, Robert A., “Undenominational Satire: Chesterton and Lewis Revisited”, Religion and Literature, 24/1 (1992): 33–57 Keats, Patrick H., “Chesterton, Browning, and the Decadents”, Chesterton Review, 19/2 (1993): 175–91 Lauer, Quentin, G.K. Chesterton: Philosopher without Portfolio, New York: Fordham University Press, 1988 Manganiello, Dominic, “Where in Hell Are We?: Chesterton on Dante”, Chesterton Review, 20/1 (1994): 65–81 Quinn, Dermot, “Distributism as Movement and Ideal”, Chesterton Review, 19/2 (1993): 157–73 Varnado, S.L., “The Leap of Laughter: G.K. Chesterton’s Christian Rhetoric”, Dawson Newsletter, 7/1 (1988): 7–9 Ward, Maisie, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, New York: Sheed and Ward, 1943; London: Sheed and Ward, 1944

Chicano/a Life Writing see Hispanic American Life Writing

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Childhood and Life Writing It was not until the 18th century that childhood was given extensive attention in life writing, although the Confessions of Augustine (354–430ce) is a notable exception. Beginning with his infancy, Augustine recalls his early language awareness, neglect of his studies for ball games, and sense of sin – themes that were to continue occupying autobiographers for many centuries. Initially, however, childhood was seen largely as a preliminary to adulthood, more striking in saints’ lives than in those of ordinary people. Moreover, it was essentially boyhoods, rather than girlhoods, that gained attention, no tradition of female childhoods emerging to parallel the line of development from Augustine to Rousseau’s Confessions (1782–89), Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811–33; Poetry and Truth), John Ruskin’s Praeterita (1885–89), and beyond. Because childhood normally lacks a public dimension, there was also relatively little information for biographers to use, and only sparse records of the imaginative lives experienced by child subjects. Hence “childhoods” are often shaped, consciously or unconsciously, by a sense of what the subject was to become. Richard N. Coe gives 1835 (with Stendhal’s autobiography La Vie de Henri Brulard) as the date when “the Childhood” as a distinct literary form began to crystallize. This was the autobiography concerned largely or only with childhood: concurrently, however, full-length autobiographies assigning several chapters to childhood also developed in the 19th century, inspired by the Romantic interest in childhood experience. Some of the best-known childhoods – Charles Dickens’s, Ruskin’s, J.S. Mill’s, and Anthony Trollope’s – all more or less unhappy – belong to this period of intense introspection, when childhood is seen as a distinct phase of human life experience with its own mental world. Rousseau’s Confessions relaunched many of the themes that persisted in childhood life writing: a sense of the writer’s uniqueness, his schooldays, reading, and most importantly, his sensory impressions. According to Hannah Lynch, in Autobiography of a Child (1899), children live in “broken effects” and “unaccountable impulses” that lend undue significance to trifles. Much of the best childhood writing evokes strong visual memories that in themselves may have little significance, the arrested moment becoming a popular unit of construction with post-Rousseau autobiographers, such as Wordsworth in The Prelude (completed, 1805; published 1850). Nor was this interest confined to the Romantics: autobiographers such as Harriet Martineau, in her Autobiography (1877), and Virginia Woolf, in “A Sketch of the Past” (written 1939–40), recall strong sensory impressions, such as a pattern on their mothers’ dresses, or the appearance of objects in a room. John Ruskin in Praeterita recounts a childhood deprived of all but the simplest toys, for which he consoled himself with a bunch of keys and by studying the knots of wood in the floor. All that James Kirkup could initially remember of his childhood, however, were the front door “and the shining doorknob of the house where I was born” (The Only Child: An Autobiography of Infancy, 1957). A torrent of returning memories then prompted him to write a second volume, Sorrows, Passions and Alarms (1959). In A Small Boy and Others (1913), Henry James viewed the world around him with a sharply remembered intensity: one of his favourite activities was idling through the streets,

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“wondering and dawdling and gaping”. Evocations of childhood stress both the perspectiveless stillness of the time, and the emergence of an individual destined for achievement and public notice. Childhood experiences tend to be recalled either as paradisical or profoundly unhappy. Goethe was unusual in recalling a predominantly happy childhood in his Dichtung und Warheit. Kathleen Raine, in Farewell Happy Fields (1973), believed that there was “something Paradisal even in Ilford itself”, referring to her London family home. Fruit imagery occurs in writing by Rousseau, Mary McCarthy, and Simone de Beauvoir; and pleasure in the countryside in The Childhood of Edward Thomas (1938). To Angelica Garnett, in Deceived with Kindness (1984), her childhood seemed “a precarious paradise, slung like a cradle over a cloud”. The Edenic paradigm is useful for autobiographers wanting to stress a “fall” of some kind, entry into a wider world or the loss of sexual innocence being almost an inevitable part of most childhood self-writing. More often, autobiographers emphasize their loneliness, fear, and unhappiness as children. Thomas De Quincey’s Suspiria de Profundis (1845) includes a section called “The Affliction of Childhood”; W.B. Yeats remembered “little of childhood but its pain” in his Autobiographies (1914); Harriet Martineau felt unloved and misunderstood by her family; Hannah Lynch, who recalls alternations of anguish and rapture, was frightened of her mother; Leigh Hunt, describing himself as “an ultra-sympathizing and timid boy”(Autobiography, 1850), was frequently ill as a child, and horrified by book illustrations; Anna Jameson’s autobiographical essay “A Revelation of Childhood” (1854) recounts the “horrors of my infancy”; Edwin Muir (An Autobiography, 1954), became timid and frightened after a bout of influenza, and a sense of guilt and tragedy dominated his early years on farms on the Orkney Islands of northern Scotland. Charles Dickens’s autobiographical memories of working in a blacking warehouse, when his father was in London’s Marshalsea Prison, resonated through the rest of his life. Unhappiness in childhood was often caused by bad school experiences. Anthony Trollope (An Autobiography, 1883) and James Kirkup recall bullying and cruelty from other children; Elizabeth Sewell (Autobiography, 1907) describes a girls’ school with excessively strict systems of reward and punishment; William Cowper, sent to school at the age of six, remembers being bullied by a 15-year-old; while John Stuart Mill, famously educated at home by his father, recalls the staggering quantities of reading and memorizing he was expected to do, which later caused him to feel emotionally retarded. In biography, famous childhoods include Graham Greene’s at Berkhamsted School, where his father was headmaster: Norman Sherry draws on Greene’s “The Burden of Childhood” (1950) and memories of the green baize door between home and school, which became “the division between heaven and hell, the gate that separated Eden from the wilderness of the world” (Graham Greene, 1989). Working-class childhoods often include strong memories of school, perhaps because the time spent there was all too brief. John Burnett’s anthology, Destiny Obscure: Autobiographies of Childhood, Education and Family from the 1820s to the 1920s (1982) offers a broad range of examples. One of the most disturbing childhoods is Maksim Gor’kii’s, which evokes “the stifling and horrifying surroundings in which the ordinary Russian lived” (Detstvo, 1913; translated as

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Childhood). Other famous European evocations of childhood include Tolstoi’s Detstvo (1852; Childhood), the first stage of his tripartite study of childhood, boyhood, and youth; Elizaveta Fen’s A Russian Childhood (1961); and Nathalie Sarraute’s Childhood (1983), which recounts an upbringing partly spent in Russia, but is experimentally structured as a dialogue between herself and a questioning double. Other classic French childhoods include André Gide’s in Si le grain ne meurt (1920–21; If It Die …), which explores the sources of his dual nature, including his homosexuality, Jean-Paul Sartre in Les Mots (1963; The Words), and Michel Leiris’s in La Regle du jeu (4 vols, 1948– 76; Rules of the Game), which traces his associations with particular events in his youth. Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior: Memories of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1975) reconstructs the rich cultural confusions of a Chinese American upbringing. Childhood is usually evoked restrospectively by adults, but has been recorded by several child authors. Journals were kept by Emily Shore (1819–39) and Anne Frank (1929–45); while Elizabeth Barrett attempted two early “autobiographies”, “My Own Character” (1818) and “Glimpses into My Own Life and Literary Character” (1820). Emily Shore’s journal displays an impressive range of interests, from insects to architecture; while Anne Frank’s has become legendary in revealing her courage and adolescent frustrations while her family were in hiding from the Nazis. With the advent of Freudian psychology and the recognition of childhood’s crucial impact on adult development, accounts of early life in the 20th century have become considerably more widespread and self-aware. Several are semi-fictional, such as Dylan Thomas’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940), Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie (1959), and Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford (1939). Others have become more specialized and thematic: Helen Corke’s In Our Infancy: An Autobiography 1882–1912 (1975) recounts her childhood and youth before World War I; while Christopher Milne’s The Enchanted Places (1974) recalls the experience of being “Christopher Robin” in A.A. Milne’s “Winnie-the-Pooh” stories. Edith Sitwell’s Taken Care Of (1965) recounts a lonely and angry childhood as an unwanted daughter; and Maya Angelou, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), describes being raped at the age of eight, and refusing to speak for five years afterwards. Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes (1996), his evocation of a miserable Irish childhood, was a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. There is now little inclination to idealize or ignore childhood, but rather to see it as a period of crucial importance and considerable stress. Biographers are at pains to trace adult difficulties to childhood traumas, while autobiographers are more likely to recall what was important about their early years, and to feel relatively uninhibited about revealing even the most distressing of their formative experiences. Valerie Sanders See also Adolescence and Life Writing; Children’s Life Writing; Family Relations and Life Writing; Fatherhood and Life Writing; Motherhood and Life Writing

Further Reading Beauvoir, Simone de, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, translated by James Kirkup, London: Deutsch / Weidenfeld and Nicolson, and Cleveland, Ohio: World, 1959

Brown, Penny, The Captured World: The Child and Childhood in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing in England, London and New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993 Burnett, John (editor), Destiny Obscure: Autobiographies of Childhood, Education and Family from the 1820s to the 1920s, London: Allen Lane, 1982 Coe, Richard N., When the Grass Was Taller: Autobiography and the Experience of Childhood, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1984 Corke, Helen, In Our Infancy: An Autobiography 1882–1912, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975 Egan, Susanna, Patterns of Experience in Autobiography, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984 Gosse, Edmund, Father and Son, London: Heinemann, and New York: Scribner, 1907; edited by Peter Abbs, Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 1983 James, Henry, A Small Boy and Others, London: Macmillan, and New York: Scribner, 1913 Kinney, Anne Behnke (editor), Chinese Views of Childhood, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995 Kirkup, James, The Only Child: An Autobiography of Infancy, London: Collins, 1957 Lifson, Martha Ronk, “The Myth of the Fall: A Description of Autobiography”, Genre, 12 (Spring 1979): 45–67 Lynch, Hannah, Autobiography of a Child, Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1899 Martineau, Harriet, Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, edited by Gaby Weiner, London: Virago Press, 1983 (first edition, 1877) Mill, John Stuart, Autobiography, edited by Jack Stillinger, Oxford: Oxford University Press, and Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969 (first edition, 1873) Muir, Edwin, An Autobiography, London: Hogarth Press, and New York: Sloane, 1954 Pascal, Roy, Design and Truth in Autobiography, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1960 Raine, Kathleen, Farewell Happy Fields: Memories of Childhood, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1973; New York: Braziller, 1977 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, translated by J.M. Cohen, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1953; New York: Penguin, 1989 (original French edition, 1782–89) Ruskin, John, Praeterita: Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts Perhaps Worthy of Memory in My Past Life, edited by Kenneth Clark, London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1949 (first edition published serially, 1885–89) Sanders, Valerie, The Private Lives of Victorian Women: Autobiography in Nineteenth-Century England, London: Harvester, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1989 Sarraute, Nathalie, Childhood, translated by Barbara Wright, London: John Calder, and New York: Braziller, 1984 (French edition, 1983)

Children’s Life Writing Children write about their lives surprisingly often – in school newspapers, holiday scrapbooks, diaries, letters, postcards, and whenever they write stories that draw in any way on their own experience. Of course much of such writing is induced by coaxing parents or schoolteachers. Children do not, as a rule, spontaneously sit down to write their autobiographies. Thus it is hard, if not impossible, to describe the origins, chronology, or development of children’s life writing as a genre, if indeed there is one. Yet a consideration of young children’s conversations and writing has begun to gain recognition as immensely important for the analysis of the developmental beginnings of adult autobiography. This work has incited a lively intersection of literary and psychological forms of analysis. While children do

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not begin life with the ability, or motivation, to write autobiographies, the seeds of this process manifest themselves surprisingly early. Though adult life writing is to a great extent the domain of literature, its origins in early childhood are the domain of developmental psychologists, who, along with educators, are beginning to collect data systematically on the intersections of language, memory, and self-development. The examples in this essay are all taken from an ongoing research project conducted by Susan Engel and her research students at Williams College (USA), looking at children ages 3–18. The subjects in this research are primarily working- and middle-class children living in the suburban and rural north-eastern United States (Vermont, New York, Massachusetts). The majority of children are caucasian. While sitting at the dinner table with her parents and a family with whom she was very familiar, the 30-month-old Alice announced at the table: “One day Mommy wanted Ali, and then I grew up, and then I had my swing set” (Engel). The mother laughed with pleasure and said, “There you have it. That is Alice’s life story”, and repeated what Alice had just said to the group at the table. Such examples of the genre show that the urge to talk about the past with others comes as early as 16 months (Engel, 1995). Studies have shown that toddlers first reminisce with others. Early autobiographical memories are communicated orally, and are constructed with others. Toddlers and those close to them (parents, caregivers, older siblings) talk about shared experiences. This allows several important things to happen. Parents can talk about the past in such a way that their children can say and remember more than they would on their own. It is also through this joint reminiscing that young children learn what kinds of recollection and talk about the past are effective in their family and cultural group. Finally, talk about the past is a powerful way of building and confirming intimacy. The act of collaborative remembering confirms that people are close by, reminding both partners that they have been through things together. Furthermore, joint remembering allows them to revisit that shared experience while sharing the experience of talking about it: Child: Memmer when, memmer when, memmer my toe got split? Mother: Oh yes. Wasn’t that awful? That big stone fell right down on your big toe. Child: It bleeded. Mother: Ugh that’s true. There was blood everywhere. We were scared, weren’t we? And while shared reminiscing continues, develops, and serves new functions in adulthood (reminiscing between lovers, colleagues, and adult siblings) it also feeds into a later emerging process: autobiography. Thus what begins, in early childhood, as an oral exchange between those who are intimate provides the base for what becomes a literary (and much more solitary) process in adulthood. Those earliest snippets, whether they take shape in conversation or are told in monologue (as was Alice’s) provide the first template for what can become the ability, if not the proclivity, to tell and then write a complete life story. Though examples of autobiographies written by children are hard to find, the one

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below, spontaneously created, gives a glimmer of what the possibilities are, and also suggests some of the essential characteristics of children’s life writing: What would you do if this happened to you? Based on a true story by Jay Stillman Chapter one: What would you do My brother is dieing. Nothing could help him. Not plasma, not any kind of medicen. It is hopeless. What would you do if this happened to you. It may be hard. It may be touch, but be happy it isn’t you. If our brother dies, be happy. It is better for him to die, then he won’t be sufering. Chapter 2: its ok Its ok for you to cry. It won’t make you look bad, it won’t make you look stupid. Its better to let it out than hold it in. Nothing is wrong with crying. Its ok to show your sadness. Just don’t show it to much. Just remember the good times. My brother was funny, so I remember the times he made me laugh. He was nice so I remember the times he did stuff for me and when he bought me presents. Chapter 3: The pain for the child If your child is dieing he may be in a lot of pain. But the suffring for a child with his brother is also painfull. Take it from me. I’m only 9 and I’ll be 10 in May. My brother just might make it to see me 10. It is very painful for me. But god keeps on pulling off miracles. He almost died one day after school, but god puld off another one of his great miracles. Young autobiographers such as this one leave out much more than they put in. They tend to focus on emotionally compelling events, feelings, or details, and present them starkly. In this way, young children are often more vivid (and spare) than the average adult writing about his or her life (and by implication more like those adults who are very good at writing about their lives). Children tend to give as much space to a dramatic or personally significant detail as they do to the complicated and long chronologies that might document more, but convey less. Children also tend to use evocation rather than description to communicate subjectivity. As with adults, their use of first and last lines is often revealing. For instance, Sonja (five years old) begins: “My life is great with horses.” And Roger (seven years, one month) ends his autobiography, which has been fairly impersonal, with the following sentence: “And most important of all I have to watch my brother.” Fortunately, most children do not experience the kind of trauma that compelled this young boy to write an autobiography in chapters, chronicling the death of his brother. The fact that he did so reminds us that motivation is central to the content and form of personal narratives. The autobiographical writing of young children will vary as a function of whether they are writing to comfort themselves, fulfil an assignment, impress someone with their heroic or exciting past, or explain to another why they are so different from most children. In each case, their own sense of the purpose of the activity will inform the length, the veracity, the liveliness, the conventionality, and the detail of what they include in their work.

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Most children who go to school are at some point or another assigned the task of writing or conveying their life story. What they include in these fledgling autobiographies depends on the context in which the assignment is given. “Write a private diary to be read by the teacher only”, “write an autobiography after reading from one”, and “make a timeline of your life” are just three possible ways the task might be framed for a child by an adult. There are a few published examples of life writing. Some are diaries (famous, such as Anne Frank’s, and infamous, such as Opal: Diary of an Understanding Heart, which may have been a fraud). There are also a few examples of children’s story writing where the process was also recorded, as in Carolyn Steedman’s The Tidy House (1982). While this story was not intended to be a life story by its three nine-year-old authors, Steedman, through an analysis of their process of writing, argues that it reflected their attempt to understand the social networks and interactions of their homes and daily lives. More recently some psychologists have begun deliberately asking children to tell, or even dictate or write, their life stories. Children as young as five can tell and /or write a life story when they are asked to. Some children construct a chronological account of their lives. Jim (five years, two months) When I was 2 I went to school. When I was 3 I did not go to school. When I was 4 I went to Smith’s class. Other children create autobiographies that seem guided by emotional and episodic themes – for example, “all the happy times in my life”, or “accidents that have happened to me”. For example: Jesse (5 years, 6 months) This story is the story of my life. It is about the things that I like to do and the people and things that are important to me … I like to make things. I made a tee-pee once, and a broom also … I also like music and pianos … Many include some expression of subjectivity, and certainly many of them evoke in a listener a sense of the author. While young children rarely direct the reader explicitly to the subjective experience of past events (“when that happened I felt …”, or, “to my eyes it looked …”), their juxtaposition of events, their highlighting of an idiosyncratic detail, and their sometimes abrupt beginnings and ends all communicate the subjective nature of what they are recounting. In one study, a group of seven- and eight-year-olds were asked to write their autobiographies. What was most striking was their ability to convey a moment (“I dove into the water. It was cold. Blue and cold.”) and to create in the listener / reader a sense of the emotional meaning of events (“When I was six my parents got divorced. I was afraid of getting sucked down the drain in the bathtub”). However, while such examples show that children employ a variety of embryonic communicative and literary devices to describe their lives, it has recently been pointed out that their autobiographies are notably lacking in one essential ingredient of adult autobiography: turning points. Some have suggested that this is because children do not yet have any turning points.

But the data suggest otherwise. Children as young as seven do in fact think of certain events as being more important than others. A tension between internal and external landscape is also clearly discernible. But children do not see these events as causing or shaping what comes afterwards. What is missing is not the presence of such mental signposts, but rather the awareness that the construction of the life story should revolve around these signposts, and a sense that they might explain the meaning and sequence of life events. It is not yet known how and when children first create internal autobiographies upon which they can reflect. But it is clear that by the time they are called upon to do so, they know how to construct a life story. In Western school culture, as children get older their life writing tends to lose some of its earlier directness and expressiveness, as it becomes more conventionally correct. While many young life writers describe their lives with flair, fewer and fewer use form, language, and style to convey a deeply personal account of their lives as they move on to secondary school. As writing becomes more separate from talking, it loses (in later primary and secondary school years) some of its communicative force, and allure, for children. Though the roots of autobiographical writing lie in early childhood, some of the qualities that pervade young children’s personal narratives appear to be vulnerable to the forces (internal and external) of development. The expressiveness, the vital link between motivation and form, and the inventive use of language and style, which add so much communicative force to the life writing of many young children, fade – until by adolescence these qualities are found only in the narratives of a talented few. Susan Engel The quoted samples of children’s life writing are from the unpublished data of the author.

Further Reading Bamberg, Michael, Narrative Development: Six Approaches, Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997 Britton, B. and A. Pellegrini (editors), Narrative Thought and Narrative Language, Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1990 Eakin, Paul John, How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1999 Engel, Susan, The Stories Children Tell: Making Sense of the Narratives of Childhood, New York: Freeman, 1995 McCabe, Allyssa and Carole Peterson (editors), Developing Narrative Structure, Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991 Nelson, Katherine (editor), Narratives from the Crib, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989 Steedman, Carolyn, The Tidy House: Little Girls’ Writing, London: Virago Press, 1982 Stern, Daniel N., The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology, New York: Basic Books, 1985; London: Karnac, 1988

China: to the 19th Century What we would now recognize as biography went under a variety of names in traditional China. The sub-genre that enjoyed the widest vogue and resembled the modern form the most is the chuan [zhuan]. The term was first used in this sense by Ssu-ma Ch’ien [Sima Qian] (145–c.90 bce) to denote the

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biographies that constituted the bulk of his Shih chi [Shiji] (Historical Records), the first comprehensive history of China from the earliest times to his own day. The style and format of this massive work were followed by subsequent historians, especially those who were commissioned in successive dynasties to compile the so-called dynastic, or standard, histories. Thus in each of the 25 dynastic histories – the Historical Records being the first – biography or the chuan dwarfs the other sections by its bulk. As a biographer Sima Qian had no match among subsequent dynastic historians. With a few bold strokes he created vivid portraits of a great variety of individuals: emperors and nobles, scholars, good and cruel officials, roving knights and assassins, imperial favourites and clowns, fortune-tellers, merchants, and industrialists. To add colour and drama to pivotal events he did not shy from extensive use of dialogue, some of which must have been invented. It is widely believed that the language he used did not depart too much from the vernacular of his day. Critics frequently praise him for the freshness and vigour of his style. For reasons we shall see his successors have not fared as well. Serving historiography as its main vehicle, the chuan could not help but acquire certain definite traits, but even in its earliest days the didactic function of the word had already been foreshadowed. In its verbal form the word means “to transmit”, and it was used in its nominal form before Sima Qian’s time to denote a commentary on, or an exegesis of, a canonical text. The historians were then justified on etymological grounds for their practice of pressing the chuan into service: as biography it should contain what was worthy of transmission to posterity, and its contents should illustrate or demonstrate general principles. Consequently Chinese biography was not primarily a “representation of a life”, as in ancient Greece, but mainly a way of transmitting to posterity certain aspects of a life. Its long association with historiography left indelible marks on biography. Even biographers in later ages who wrote not as compilers of dynastic histories or who employed sub-genres other than the chuan could seldom escape its bondage. To act as historians the biographers tended to maintain what may be called the convention of the impartial, invisible, and unobtrusive narrator. Even when the biographers wrote about subjects they knew personally, the canon of objectivity demanded that they shun their own observation and rely on archival materials or reports made by others. From its genesis in the 2nd century bce until the modern age the chuan hardly changed, either in style or in format. This had also much to do with the language in which it was written, classical Chinese, which remained more or less the same for more than two millennia. The result is a prose style succinct, compact, terse, and highly selective in what it could represent or express. Reality may be represented evocatively or allusively; a close-up and detailed view is seldom possible. Diegesis is preferred over mimesis. Whatever the stylistic limitations of the genre, biography proliferated. The compiling of dynastic histories has been more or less mimicked on local levels: every province, every prefecture, every county, and even many a township has its own gazetteer. Although the gazetteer is ostensibly concerned mainly with geography, it always contains a large chuan section, which hardly differs in structure or style from its prototype. Almost as copious as the chuan is a group of sub-genres –

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which I shall call necrology – associated with the Chinese practice of commemorating the dead with literary compositions rather than with sculpture or monuments. Since they were written in connection with different aspects or stages of the funeral rite, necrologies go by a variety of names, such as chih (notice), ming (inscription), mu chih ming (tomb notice and inscription), chi-wen (elegy), k’uang-chih (grave notice), lei (dirge), shou-ts’ang-chih (sepulchre notice), pei (epitaph), chuang (obituary), and hsing-chuang or hsing-shu (account of conduct). Nearly all of them contain at least a biographical sketch of the deceased, and in many cases the composition is indistinguishable from a chuan. If biography in various guises constitutes probably the largest component of Chinese writings, Chinese autobiography is by comparison minuscule. In its early stages Chinese autobiography was almost slavishly imitative of its older and more opulent sister. Nearly every sub-genre of the former can be traced back to a counterpart in the latter; the derivative and its model are often indistinguishable in tone, style, or narrative stance. Chinese autobiographers for their part took this as a matter of course. The imitation is often openly and specifically acknowledged: the authors, and sometimes their editors, tend to include as a part of the titles of their works the name of the relevant biographical sub-genre prefixed with the term tzu (auto) or tzu-hsü (self-narrated). Every pre-modern autobiographer, East or West, has been confronted with two problems. One was the lack of a suitable literary form; the other the inhibition, probably universally strong until some four centuries ago, against self-disclosure and self-presentation outside a religious context. Chinese biography offered Chinese autobiographers means to overcome these problems. It offered a ready-made format for telling a life; and by using it the autobiographer could always protest that he or she was following a time-honoured and respectable precedent: the association with a legitimate enterprise, which he or she avowed while naming the title of a piece, might afford him or her some protection from the censure of egomania, of doing something unconventional. The dependence of Chinese autobiography during its early stage on biography was made even greater by the absence of alternative models: such first-person narratives as travel literature, eye-witness accounts of campaigns or missions, and autobiographical fiction did not exist in ancient China. As time went on some autobiographers managed to loosen the grip of historiography and speak of themselves with an individual voice. The great woman poet Li Ch’ing-chao (1084– 1151?) tells us in a language at once vigorous and wistful of the life that she shared with her late husband Chao Ming-ch’eng (1081–1129). She was able to do so because ostensibly she was writing a postface to a collection of epigraphy, the result of their joint effort, not an autobiography of herself or a biography of her husband. Thus she was free to reminisce, to describe the private world of two kindred spirits who indulged in antiquarian passion and bookish games. Li Chih (1527–1602) was another writer who circumvented the demands of the historiographical canon. A rebel and iconoclast all his life, Li labelled his narrative not an autobiography but a lun, the generic term for the short piece that is sometimes appended to the biographies in the dynastic histories, in which the historian, often using the first person, gives his own opinions

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on the subject. Seeing the autobiographical possibilities of this established genre, Li introduced a fictitious biographer-narrator who, purporting to be a close friend of Li’s and quoting him frequently, revealed more of Li’s domestic life – his quarrels with his wife and their poignant and complex reactions to the death of their two young daughters – than the prevailing convention permitted. If the two Lis succeeded almost surreptitiously, the intellectual climate of 17th-century China provided autobiographers with an unprecedented freedom. The yearning for immortality, the dissatisfaction with the mundane and the conventional, the vogue of eccentricity and dissent, the rampant egotism and individualism, all noticeable in other fields, contributed to the autobiographers’ increasing freedom from historiography. They could now unabashedly adopt themes and motifs from myths and popular literature. Two new-style autobiographers, Wang Chieh (1603?–82?) and Mao Ch’i-ling (1623–1716), stood out. Both wrote after the fall of the Ming in 1644 but before the consolidation of the new regime, which was to discourage experimentation and dampen spiritual fervour. Each in his own way carried the range and intensity of self-celebration to new limits, as if the old order’s demise had loosened inhibitions, numbed the sense of propriety, and fostered a new spiritual anarchy in which the self fed on itself and recognized few restraints. Wang, having failed the civil examination on numerous occasions and eked out a simple living as a private secretary, was one of the most obscure of autobiographers. Mao was a prominent man of letters. What they had in common was such an egomania that their narratives run effusively to unprecedented lengths. Wang, after briefly lamenting his failures, went on to list one feat after another, many of which strain credulity. The most fantastic is his success in persuading, with a magic pen given him in a dream by an angel, a wild tiger to behave with Confucian bonhomie. Equally inventive, Mao tells his life story with a string of topoi culled from diverse sources. His adventures culminate in the meeting with a mysterious stranger on top of a sacred mountain, who imparts to him a secret message that has been passed down from mouth to mouth for two millennia. Pei-Yi Wu The Wade-Giles transliteration system has been preferred to the Pinyin system in this entry because of its greater prevalence in discussions of this period.

Further Reading Goodrich, L. Carrington and Chao-ying Fang (editors), Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1368–1644, New York: Columbia University Press, 1976 Huang, Martin, Literati and Self-Re/representation: Autobiographical Sensitivities in the Eighteenth-Century Chinese Novel, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995 Kuo Teng-feng (editor), Li-tai tzu-hsü-chuan wen-ch’ao [An Anthology of Autobiographies], Shanghai: Shang wu yin shu Kuan, 1937 Nivison, David S., “Aspects of Traditional Chinese Biography”, Journal of Asian Studies, 21/4 (1962): 457–63 Tu Lien-che (editor), Ming-jen tzu-chuan wen-ch’ao [An Anthology of Ming Autobiographies], Taipei: I-wen yin-shu-kuan, 1977 Tu Mu (editor), Wu-hsia chung-mu i-wen [Necrologies Recovered from Wu Area], Taipei: T’ai-wan shu-chü, 1969 Wang Chin-kuei, Chung-kuo chi-chuan-t’i wen-hsien yen-chiu [A Study of Chinese Biographical Writings], Beijing: Beijing ta-hsüeh ch’u-pan-she, 1996 Watson, Burton, Ssu-ma Ch’ien: Grand Historian of China, New

York: Columbia University Press, 1958 Wu, Pei-yi, “Varieties of the Chinese Self” in Designs of Selfhood, edited by Vytautas Kavolis, Rutherford, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, and London: Associated University Presses, 1984 Wu, Pei-yi, The Confucian’s Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990

China: 19th Century to 1949 The development of life writing in China from the beginning of the 19th century to 1949 falls into two distinctive periods, divided around 1898. In the first period, embracing almost all of the 19th century, life writing was still on the whole inseparable from Confucian-oriented historical writing and the style set by classical literature. It was a period when nianpu (chronological biographies), which had gradually assumed an independent existence from history writings, were very influential. But their association with Chinese historiography suggested that there was a tendency for scholar-officials to regard chronological biographies as the main repositories of exemplary individuals as well as genealogical paeans. In the same period, a vast number of zizhuan (“self-accounts” or autobiographies) were also written about an extensive range of subjects. They reached a high stage of subtlety and sophistication but not much originality as products of an elite highly trained in classical arts. Not until the end of the 19th century did auto/biographical writing embark on a new course of development. During the late 1890s, a new trend emerged in Chinese life writing. Modern auto/biographical writing in China came into being in response to the intellectual enlightenment awakened during the “Hundred Days Reform” of 1898. Earlier, Chinese scholars had had little knowledge of Western auto/biographical traditions; after 1898 many reform-minded intellectuals began to champion biography in particular as an instrument for national reform. Various attempts were made by Chinese intellectual groups to modernize Chinese life writing in order to end the long monopoly of the nianpu and zizhuan. The transformation from traditional to modern biography must be primarily credited to Liang Qichao’s (1873–1929) pioneering effort. After the abortive political reform in 1898, Liang advocated the introduction of Western life writing into China and was responsible for translations as well as his own biographies of both Western and Chinese subjects. The introduction of Western biographical works caused many to be disillusioned with the traditional tenets of Confucianism. The changes initiated during this short period were greater than during the previous 2000 years. In an effort to define the distinctive contribution of Western biography, in his essay that translates as “A Discussion on Relations of Story and Governing Society” (1902) Liang Qichao coined a new word for life writing: “new novel” (xin xiaoshuo). This term was applied to life writing and expanded the concept of the genre beyond the limits of history and literature, so that it included a wider range of literature than the term “biography” in English. From the time that Liang enunciated this formulation, the variety of life writing increased dramatically, so that there was a gradual ascendance of the biographical narrative

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over discursive novel writing, following Liang’s advocacy of “biographies of political figures”. Another scholar who played a crucial role in inaugurating modern biographical writing in China at the beginning of the 20th century was Hu Shi (1891–1962). He supported Liang’s vision and became a strong advocate of modern biography. He wrote a number of biographies in the vernacular cadences of ordinary speech, including Yao lieshi zhuan [1908; Biography of Martyr Yao] and Zhongguo aiguo nüjie Wang Zhaojun zhuan [1908; Biography of Wang Zhaojun: A Patriotic Heroine of China], which stood out starkly against traditional styles. Both Liang’s and Hu’s biographies and biographical critiques are extremely rich in both quantity and stylistic variety. The well-known ones are Liang’s Wanh Anshi zhuan [1908; Biography of Wang Anshi] and; Hu’s Zhuanji wenxue [1914; Biographical Literature]. They exerted a lasting effect on biographical writers of the subsequent decades. Liang and Hu also wrote biographies in the Victorian style of hero-worship, different from the style of moral judgement of prominent figures in China. The subject matter of these biographies reflected a new interest in humanism, individualism, and psychology instead of the traditional view of an individual life in terms of its role in the corporate family. Of course, the perceived purpose for introducing these Western biographies to Chinese readers was not merely a search for novelty, but rather to create a medium of expression for reform-minded intellectuals. Before the Revolution of 1911, revolutionaries made use of biographical writings to spread anti-Manchurian and nationalistic propaganda. Life writers put special emphasis on the social and political function of biographical writing during this transitional period – biographies became a symbol of the revolt of revolutionists against the Qing imperial authority. Thus new styles of political criticism began to replace old ones of eulogistic memorials. Although the process of adaptation to Western styles of biography had begun in the early 20th century, the New Cultural Movement (1916–27), which is often identified with the May Fourth Movement, marked a greater climactic cultural change for life writing. Intellectuals sought to counter what they considered to be decadent Confucianism by rejecting the central values of traditional life writing. Chinese life writers began to find a new security in the norms of Western autobiography and biography, characteristically publishing in the many new vernacular journals and newspapers. In the 1920s and 1930s, Chinese translations of Western biographies and the new model of “debunking” biography – after Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians (1918), then challenging life-writing practices in the West – continued to fuel local modernism. Yu Dafu’s essay “Biographical Literature” (1933) praised Strachey and the 18thcentury biographer James Boswell, and Zhu Dongrun and Sun Yutang also devoted their energies to disseminating Western biographies and their related theories in China. The immediate attraction of modern biographic forms to Chinese readers was twofold: it appealed to their curiosity about human personality and stimulated their interest in vernacular narrative. The introduction of Western biography also provoked an interest in the writing of Chinese autobiographies, diaries, and reminiscences in Western style. The emergence of modern autobiography was rooted in the breakdown of Confucian moral ethics and the quest for individual liberation. These writings

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reached a cultural peak during the 1930s and 1940s, when an impressive series of monumental autobiographies by the great modernists Ba Jin (b. 1904), Shen Congwen (1902–88), and Zhang Ziping (1893–1959) attempted to address the public conscience. However, there was little critical commentary on autobiography, and authors were often unable to refrain from invention and exaggeration, while political figures practised outright evasion. Nevertheless, this kind of autobiography was generally far more open than that after 1949, when the People’s Republic came to power. Many biographies written during the War of Resistance against Japan (1937–45) were closely connected with a reportage style of writing. These writings were characterized by a particular narrative method – interviews and sketches of individuals – and were directed towards a new audience, attempting to arouse a new awareness of political problems. Biographical works at this time were thus more concerned with ideological and political issues than with critical evaluations of their subjects. Reaching their zenith in the late 1940s, ideological biographies clearly paralleled the social revolution occurring in China during this time. It is interesting to note that during this period a number of biographers explored for the first time a strong claim for the connections between traits of Chinese traditional biography and Western patterns. Zhu Dongrun’s Zhang Juzheng da zhuan [1943; A Full Biography of Zhang Juzheng], for example, represented his attempt to bridge the gap between Western aesthetic description and Chinese historical narration, while once again paying homage to Boswell and Strachey in a polemical preface. The range of this kind of work was limited, however, because the subjects were confined to relatively distinctive “scholarly” interests. There was at this time a tendency to overemphasize biography’s political function. Some biographers consciously subordinated their works to the desire for political expediency, rather than treating them as purely academic studies or cultural works. For this reason, they could not avoid selecting and interpreting materials under the influences of political and ideological biases. This consequently motivated many writers to choose more distant historical figures as their main subjects. Fumbling attempts to relate biographical writing to politics and revolution were made by left-wing intellectuals, often in reaction to nationalist rule during the 1940s. This kind of writing radiated a propagandist association across the whole genre of biographical writing, a movement that was to become pervasive after 1949, so that it fully dominated in the 1950s and 1960s. Shao Dongfang Further Reading Chen Boda, Qieguo dadao Yuan Shikai [Yuan Shikai: The Thief Who Sold Out the Nation], Yan’an: Xinhua shudian [Xinhua Bookstore], 1946 Curwen, Charles Anthony (editor and translator), Taiping Rebel: The Deposition of Li Hsiu-cheng, New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977 Fan Wenlan, Hanjian kuaizishou Zeng Guofan [Traitor and Butcher: Life of Zeng Guofan], Yan’an: Xinhua shudian [Xinhua Bookstore], 1943 Guo Moruo, Moruo zizuan [Autobiography of Guo Moruo], Shanghai: Haiyan shudian [Petrel Bookstore], 1947 Howard, Richard, “Modern Chinese Biographical Writing”, The Journal of Asian Studies, 21/4 (August 1962): 465–75

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Hu Shi, Hu Shi wencuni [Collected Writings of Hu Shi], Shanghai: Yadong tushuguan [Yadong Lirbrary], 1928–1930 Hu Shi, Sishi zishu [Autobiography at the Age of Forty], Shanghai: Yadong tushuguan [Yadong Library], 1933 Ku Chieh-kang, The Autobiography of a Chinese Historian, translated and annotated by Arthur W. Hummel, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1931 Larson, Wendy, Literary Authority and the Modern Chinese Writer: Ambivalance and Autobiography, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1991 Liang Qichao, Zhongguo lishi yanjiufa bubian [Supplement to Methodology of Chinese Historical Research], Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1933 Liang Qichao, Yingbinshi heji [The Complete Works of Liang Qichao], Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju [Zhonghua Publishing House], 1936 Shao Dongfang, “Transformation, Diversification, Ideology: Twentieth-Century Chinese Biography” in Life-Writing from the Pacific Rim: Essays from Japan, China, Indonesia, India and Siam, with a Psychological Overview, edited by Stanley Schab and George Simson, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997 Shen Fu, Six Records of a Floating Life, translated by Leonard Pratt and Chiang Su-hui, New York: Penguin, 1983 Sun Yutang, Zhuanji yu wenxue [Biography and Literature], Chongqing: Zhengzhong shuju, 1943 Wu Pei-yi, The Confucian’s Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990 Yu Dafu, Dufu rijiji [Diary of Yu Dafu], Shanghai: Beixin shuju [Beixin Press], 1935 Yu Dafu, Xianshu [Books for Idle Hours], Shanghai: Liangyou tushu yinshua gongsi [Liangyou Books Publishing Company], 1936 Yu Dufu, Dufu zizhuan [Autobiography of Yu Dafu], Shanghai: Beixin shuju [Beixin Press], 1936 Yu Ying-shih, “Modern Chronological Biography and the Conception of Historical Scholarship”, Chinese Historians, 6/1 (1993): 31–43 Zhu Dongrun, “Zhongguo zhuanji wenxue de guoqu yu jianglai [The Past and Future of Chinese Biographical Literature], Xuelin [Academia], 8 (June 1941): 19–29 Zhu Dongrun, Zhang Juzheng da zhuan [A Full Biography of Zhang Juzheng], Shanghai: Kaiming shudian [Kaiming Bookstore], 1945

China: 1949 to the Present During the second half of the 20th century, Chinese life writing was shaped by the political and ideological movements that swept across China. With the victory of Mao Zedong’s communist forces over the nationalists in China’s civil war, the first impulse that motivated life writing in the 1950s arose from political and moral desires to invoke the personalities of revolutionary heroes as models. Life writing was supposed to implement a creative form of Marxism imbued with the vigour of Mao Zedong’s thought, emphasizing the need to extol revolutionary ideas and virtues as well as to reveal the vices of past social leaders and institutions. The government ordered the publication of a massive compilation of these “model” biographies. Exemplary workers, peasants, and soldiers were identified as the prime subjects for this new biography. Writers pampered and flattered their subjects to an extraordinary degree, typically praising self-sacrificing and physically courageous behaviour. These biographies had enormous appeal to young people, who idolized the revolutionary martyrs and heroes, even though their style and content were heavily reminiscent of revolutionary writings for political purposes. In this environment, biographers were instructed to write according to the theory of class struggle and to follow the Party line. Representa-

tive works were Lin Yanpin and Liu Shuyong’s Hao Jianxiu (1953), Miao Shipei’s Kuangshan yingxiong Ma Liuhai yu Lian Wanlu [1954; Ma Liuhai and Lian Wanlu: Heroes in the Mine], Huang Sui’s Chen Yongkang [1955; Chen Yongkang], Yi Ping’s Weidade Fang Zhimin [1953; Great Fang Zhimin], Kangri yingxiong Zhao Yiman [1958; Zhao Yiman: A Heroine in the War of Resistance against Japan], and Liu Hulan xiaozhuan [1951; A Brief Biography of Lin Hulan]. Such revolutionary fervour did, however, produce an experiment in popular and collective life writing, a campaign to write the lives of factory workers in a variety of forms – prose or poetry, journalism or academic writing, or simply transcripts of oral interviews. By 1960 the new people’s history had been launched in a nationwide campaign for the Four Histories – village, family, factory, and commune – which lasted until 1965. While tape-recorders were rarely used and there were few lasting publications, such popular testimony – even if highly formulaic – is still highly original in Chinese and other life-writing histories (see Thompson and Thompson, Yang Liwen, and Zhang Xinxin and Sang Ye). The Cultural Revolution (1966–76) further politicized the practice of life writing. Life writers considered to be tainted by so-called feudal and bourgeois ideologies were strictly punished and suppressed, and the publication of biographies that contained information harmful to Mao Zedong’s political view was forbidden. Several ideological attacks on the well-known biographers Wu Han (1909–69) and Zhu Dongrun (1896– 1988) almost suffocated the whole genre of life writing as counter-revolutionary or individualist, and it is hardly surprising that few autobiographies were written at this time. In addition, although Mao’s personality cult was at its height during the Cultural Revolution, no one dared to write a fullscale biography of him. The tendency to deify Mao and his revolutionary activities was apparent in almost all depictions, and his image remained resolutely public. Life writing embarked on a new course of positive development only after the death of Mao Zedong and the return of Deng Xiaoping as premier in the late 1970s. After 1978 a considerable number of biographies of writers began to be published, and eventually autobiography too came to be a favoured form. A new effort to ensure the freedom of literary creation in the early 1980s created a more conducive environment for life writing, and biographers were once again able to choose their subjects. Life writers appealed for less restriction in selection and a return to the true spirit of life writing advocated by the May Fourth intellectuals from the 1920s. They started to see their obligation to historical truth as more important than political considerations. As a result, there was a relatively new openness in the discussions of public figures, using a variety of political concepts. Writers began treating long-suppressed subjects involving politically sensitive historical figures such as Chen Duxiu, the founder of the Chinese Communist party, and He Zizhen, the ex-wife of Mao Zedong. Their explorations included individuals in ancient and modern times, Chinese and foreign, dead and living, so breaking free in a number of ways from the narrow confines of the communist-martyr paradigm. Chinese life writers were also successful in spreading their works to a broad circle of people, so that their biographies were widely read and appreciated by a populace that had just freed itself from the nightmare of the Cultural Revolution.

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Admittedly, contemporary Chinese life writing is still largely constrained by political censorship and “public opinion”. Many biographers take precautions not to offend the authorities, so sometimes they have to write against their own convictions. In particular, the faults or flaws, personal relations, and private lives of Chinese political leaders are regarded as taboo and can seldom be mentioned in officially approved biographies, although there are a few exceptions. These factors probably contribute in part to a deep-rooted tradition of Confucianism that runs counter to the concept of individual independence. Life writing in the 1980s was still very eulogistic, and historical truth was sometimes distorted. Many biographies have become an intriguing mélange, blending Confucian traditions of morality with standard public images, but rarely delving into the inner world of the subject’s emotional experiences. The reintroduction of Western biographical works engendered disillusionment with the conventional tenets of traditional Chinese life writing. By the early 1990s, a new, more critical trend emerged in China’s life writing, and some confessional autobiographies even appeared. The autobiographical “confession” Suixiang lu [1983; My Caprice] by the well-known writer Ba Jin and Sitong lu [1998; Recollecting the Painful Experiences] by Wei Junyi speak to a new generation in search of inner reasons to criticize the current system, while Ji Xianlin’s autobiographical Niupeng zayi [Recollections of the “Cow-shed”] defends the usefulness of the form per se. Despite the fact that post-1949 Chinese life writing is voluminous, it has rarely been explored theoretically. At present, autobiography studies in China are still in their infancy. However, in recent years, some theorists have begun to show concern about this shortcoming and are establishing associations to pursue such studies in a number of institutions including Beijing University.

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Jolly, Margaretta, “The Exile and the Ghostwriter: East-West Biographical Politics and The Private Life of Chairman Mao”, Biography, 23/3 (2000): 481–503 Li Jiantong, Liu Zhidan, Beijing: Gongren chubanshe [Workers’ Publishing House], 1979 Li Jui, The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao Tse-tung, translated by Anthony W. Sariti, edited by James C. Hsiung, White Plains, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1977 Liang Xing, Liu Hulan xiaozhuan [A Brief Biography of Liu Hulan], Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe [Chinese Youth Publishing House], 1951 Mu Qing, Feng Jiang and Zhou Yuan, Xianwei shuji de bangyang [Jiao Yulu: A Model for County Party Secretaries], Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Publishing House], 1966 Peng Dehuai, Memoirs of a Chinese Marshall: The Autobiographical Notes of Peng Dehuai (1898–1974), translated by Zheng Langpu, edited by Sara Grimes, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1984 Shao Dongfang, “Transformation, Diversification, Ideology: Twentieth-Century Chinese Biography” in Life-Writing from the Pacific Rim: Essays from Japan, China, Indonesia, India, and Siam, with a Psychological Overview, edited by Stanley Schab and George Simson, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997 Tao Ch’eng, My Family, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1960 Thompson, Stephen and Paul Thompson, “Oral History in China”, Oral History Journal, 15/1 (1987): 17–21 Wang Gungwu, “The Rebel-Reformer and Modern Chinese Biography” in The Chineseness of China: Selected Essays, edited by Gungwu Wang, Hong Kong and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 Wu Han, Zhu Yuanzhang zhuan [Biography of Zhu Yuanzhang], Beijing: Sanlian shudian [SDX Joint Publishing Company], 1965 Yang Chih-lin, Iron Bars But Not a Cage, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1962 Yang Li-wen, “Oral History in China”, Oral History Journal, 15/1 (1987): 22–25 Yang, Zhengrun, Zhuanji wenxue shigang [A Concise History of Biographical Writing], Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe [Jiangsu Education Press], 1994 Zhang Xinxin and Sang Ye, Chinese Lives, edited by W.J.F. Jenner and Debra Davin, London: Macmillan, 1987

Shao Dongfang Further Reading Aisin-Gioro, Pu Yi, From Emperor to Citizen: The Autobiography of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi, translated by W.J.F. Jenner, Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1964–65; Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987 Ayers, William, “Current Biography in Communist China”, Journal of Asian Studies, 21/4 (August 1962): 487–85 Chen Guangsheng, Maozhuxi de haozhanzhi Lei Feng [Lei Feng: Chairman Mao’ Good Soldier], Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe [Chinese Youth Publishing House], 1963 Chen Maiping, “On the Absence of the Self: From Modernism to Postmodernism?” in Inside Out: Modernism and Postmodernism in Chinese Literary Culture, edited by Wendy Larson and Anne Wedell-Wedellsborg, Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1993 Chen Yinke, Liu Rushi Biezhuan [Unofficial Biography of Liu Rushi], Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe [Ancient Books Press], 1980 Deng Maomao, Deng Xiaoping: My Father, New York: Basic Books, 1995 Di Feng and Shao Dongfang, “Life Writing in Mainland China (1949–1993)”, Biography, 17/1 (1994): 39–59 Epstein, Israel, Woman in World History: Life and Times of Soon Ching Ling, Beijing: New World Press, 1993 Fang, Percy Jucheng and Lucy Guinong J. Fang, Zhou Enlai: A Profile, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1986 Feng Youlan, Sansongtang zixu [Memoirs of the Three Pines Hall], Beijing: Sanlian shudian [SDX Joint Publishing Company], 1984 Jin Chongji (editor), Zhou Enlai zhuan [Biography of Zhou Enlai], 2 vols, Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [Central Document Press], 1998

Christianity and Life Writing To say that Christianity has been a shaping force in the development of Western life writing and, particularly, in the development of deep subjective autobiography is an understatement. It has been the major inspiration of autobiographical utterance in Western culture and the dominant matrix for its articulation over 2000 years. In contrast to the mood of most ancient classical writing, the Old Testament often expresses a fierce personal yearning that accepts no worldly compromises or solace. The Book of Job and the Book of Psalms, for example, give poetic expression to a restless, inner questing of the soul, and an intense desire for wholeness and salvation. But in the New Testament this cast of mind becomes a way of life, an existential expectation and an existential demand. In the New Testament the human urgency about life and death throws an enormous importance on immediate testimony, on speaking out, on examining the inner motives for outer action, and on sharing the experience of hope and exultation – all central features of the autobiographical tradition, as it would develop. The reasons for this are complex and manifold, but at least three should be mentioned. First of all, throughout the historical

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period of Christ’s life and for many decades afterwards there was a febrile expectation among various sects on the edge of the Roman empire that the end of the world was imminent. (The Apostles’ accounts have Christ himself expecting such a dramatic apocalypse.) This expectation fostered a profound concern for inner preparation for the final event, a state of spiritual readiness, an anxious daily concern for reading and addressing the state of one’s own consciousness. Second, the general tenor of Christ’s teaching invited not servile conformity to the established codes of society so much as the affirmation of immediate, inward states of holistic being; at the same time, an acute awareness of hidden motives was an essential part of this new inwardness. Third, Christ’s teaching, following the tradition of the Old Testament, imparted a dramatic notion of God as both a loving being and a severe judge who was, by this token, in intimate relationship with each individual. The Christian God is not a remote First Cause or Universal Form as in the tradition of Stoicism and Platonism; rather, he is a being to whom one can relate. In intimate relationship with this divine being, through prayer and inner dialogue, the individual had a means of developing himself or herself and achieving salvation. These three conditions, working dynamically together, created among the early Christians, and subsequently across Christian civilization, a distinctively subjective orientation of mind. Many individuals sought to disclose, explore, and deepen their spiritual lives in various kinds of personal utterance, from the sacrament of confession to (as with Saint Augustine) deep subjective autobiography. In the New Testament, Saint Paul is the most emphatically personal of the 12 apostles and by far the most autobiographical. His letters not only give detailed accounts of his various adventures and encounters, but also disclose ambivalent and contradictory elements at the centre of Paul’s personality, a conflict between the desires of the body and the desires of the spirit, which the will does not seem able to resolve. Here, again, we find a movement away from external forms and with it an insistence on confession and testimony – as if (perhaps paradoxically) without these public symbolic forms the inner changes would lack all meaning. In Paul it is as if the autobiographical act is the only means left for some kind of social validation. It can be no accident that the letters of Paul exerted a profound influence on Augustine and were partly responsible for his final conversion – for it was Augustine who converted the autobiographical impulse generated by early Christianity into what is regarded by many scholars as the first major autobiography. His Confessions, divided into 13 substantial volumes, were written about 397–400 ce. Although in its fine conceptual analysis of states of feeling and the faculty of memory the book demonstrates the influence of classical culture, its prevailing idiom is Christian-derived existential testimony. Augustine speaks, for the most part, in the biblical manner. This means that, instead of examining his feelings from an impersonal distance and placing them in a linguistic system of syntactical qualifications, Augustine re-creates his emotions as living forces through a form of poetic parataxis. One of the great models here was the Psalms – a work that forms a sublime counterpoint running through the whole of the Confessions – for the Psalms also consititute a paratactic monument of praise and penitence in which the author’s voice always sounds like intimate dramatic speech and never like elaborate classical composition.

Significantly, Augustine’s work has strong similarities with the narrative structure of the sacrament of confession. In the sacrament of confession the believer brings, through the power of memory, past offences and failings to full consciousness, analysing their motives and finally confessing them to God in the hope of forgiveness and inner renewal. Often the confessional ends in a prayer of thanksgiving and praise. The rhythm of the confessional is the quintessential rhythm of much spiritual autobiography. In this way literary confessions can be seen as the transposition of the sacramental form. Augustine’s work is no exception. It is characteristic that Teresa of Avila (1515–82) wrote her Confessions at the instigation of her confessor and used the framework suggested by him. In the development of autobiography and life writing, in general, Augustine’s work and the Christian tradition of confession and testimony from which it came were to exert a massive influence in the West. Tellingly, the autobiographical explorations of Petrarch in Secretum – written around 1342 – take the form of a dialogue between the author Petrarch and Augustine. Later the influence of Augustine and Paul can be found more broadly in thousands of spiritual diaries – particularly, in the English tradition, by Puritan writers in the 17th century. These works were invariably Nonconformist and were written by both men and women, often from poor or artisan backgrounds. Many of these personal accounts remained no more than handwritten scripts that would be informally passed to fellow believers or potential converts or given by parents to their children or grandchildren. They have many names: “a narrative”, “a declaration”, “a confession”, “a journal”, “epistles and papers of living experience”, “a relation”, “memorials of ”, “a memorandum”, “adventures”, “a short history”, curriculum vitae, “the prophetical warnings of”, etc. The best known of these personal religious writings is John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding, first published in 1666. There was at the time no common generic term for these expressions of spiritual autobiography, yet they were widely written and strongly contributed to the birth of the Puritan novel, which often presented itself in the guise of a personal adventure in the form of autobiography – Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) is an excellent example of the transformation of spiritual autobiography into the realm of fiction and the documentary novel. The work of John Wesley towards the end of the 18th century was to renew the tradition of the earlier Puritans. Wesley’s ministers were expected to keep regular personal journals, and many spiritual autobiographies were published in regular instalments in The Arminian Magazine, launched in 1778 (changing its name in 1798 to the Methodist Magazine). This stream of spiritual writing, in which the author is invariably established as the pilgrim, travelling through the world and resisting temptation, committed to the divine and working out his or her salvation, has continued down to our own time through a variety of diverse cultural traditions, European, African, American, Indian, and Chinese, though now increasingly more secularized. However, the general influence of Christianity on life writing was much wider than the above account of English development suggests. In creating conditions for deep subjectivity and selfscrutiny, it also profoundly influenced the sensibility of those writers who wanted to establish a different kind of self-analysis and self-narration. The seminal figure in this context is Jean-

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Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), who was brought up as a Calvinist in Geneva but converted, for a time, to Catholicism. In his Confessions (1782–89) he set out to establish a new genre of autobiography, based not on notions of original sin but of original goodness, not on supernatural notions but on natural notions deriving from biology and psychology. Even so, Rousseau’s autobiographical idiom is often Christian in tone and his radical new book of self-exploration and justification began with a dramatic rehearsal of the Last Judgement. Even as the genre changed and expanded during the 19th century, it invariably revealed its earlier roots in the Christian faith and the quest for salvation. It could be argued that the sacramental form of the confessions has evolved into the literary form of the autobiography as we generally conceive it today, just as in the evermore secularized West the specific desire for personal salvation has become the more general psychological quest for individuation. Peter Abbs See also The Bible; Confessions; Conversion and Turning Points; Judaism and Life Writing; Religious Autobiography; Religious Biography; Repentance and Life Writing; Revelation and Life Writing; Spiritual Autobiography

Further Reading Abbs, P., “Quest for Identity” in New Pelican Guide to English Literature, vol. 8, edited by Boris Ford, Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 1983 Abbs, P., The Polemics of Imagination, section 3, “Autobiography and the Quest for Individuation”, London: Skoob Books, 1993 Abrams, M.H., Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, New York: Norton, and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971 Brown, Peter, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, London: Faber and Faber, and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967 Delany, Paul, British Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and New York: Columbia University, 1969 Frye, Northrop, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982 Josipovici, Gabriel, The Book of God: A Response to the Bible, New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 1988 Misch, Georg, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity, translated by E.W. Dickes, vols 1 and 2, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1950 Starr, G.A., Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1965 Watkins, Owen C., The Puritan Experience, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and New York: Schocken Books, 1972 Weintraub, Karl Joachim, The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978 Zumthor, Paul, “Autobiography in the Middle Ages”, Genre, 19/6 (1973): 29–48

Chungara, Domitila Barrios de see Barrios de Chungara, Domitila

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English statesman, historian, and autobiographer With the possible exception of David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill was the most important British statesman of the 20th century, holding Cabinet office – at least for a time – in every decade from the 1900s to the 1950s. Churchill has attracted many biographers; he figures prominently in the memoirs of others and in virtually all works covering the history of Britain from the time of the second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) until after the accession of Elizabeth II in 1952. Given his immensely active public life, Churchill’s own literary output is astonishing. It begins in 1895 with his despatches on the Cuban rising against Spain – the origin of his fondness for cigars and his taste for a siesta – and ends in 1958 with the final volume of his History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Although careful of his prose style, Churchill worked fast. A noted amateur bricklayer, he told Stanley Baldwin that he spent August 1928 “building a cottage & dictating a book: 200 bricks and 2,000 words per day” (Pelling). In short, the corpus of literature either by or about Churchill is immense, even overwhelming. Some of Churchill’s works are overtly autobiographical or deal with close relations. This group includes his biography of his father, Lord Randolph, and My Early Life (1930). Both suggest an obsession with a dead father, a father who had actually taken little interest in his son and had a low opinion of his potential. Yet in his Life of Lord Randolph Churchill (1906), Churchill insists that his father, whose own political career had ended in failure and early death, had been a truly great man. Churchill’s cousin observed that: “few fathers have done less for their sons, few sons have done more for their fathers … perhaps the greatest filial tribute in the English language”. (Sir Shane Leslie, The End of a Chapter, 1916). The ghost of Randolph Churchill also looms large in My Early Life – subsequently the basis of the film Young Winston. Convinced that, like Randolph, he too would die young, Churchill portrays himself as a driven man. In what little time he has, he will prove himself greater than his father ever suspected and achieve what Randolph might have achieved if fate had been kinder. In relation to Randolph, Churchill reveals a sense of inferiority, certainly a craving for attention and recognition. But Randolph is dead and thus can never give the approval so desperately sought; Churchill must drive himself on and on in his fruitless quest. A partial solution emerges in Churchill’s other writings, overtly less autobiographical and more historical. Here, inferiority towards Randolph is replaced by its apparent opposite – superiority to others. Churchill is not an ungenerous writer; he is generous even to Neville Chamberlain whom he succeeded as prime minister during World War II. But he is sure of his own merit, sure of his predestined place in history. He writes of becoming prime minister in 1940: “I felt as if I were walking with destiny” (The Second World War, vol. 1). Churchill thinks of himself as special. He thus possesses the essential quality of autobiography, preoccupation with self. E.T. Williams suggests that Churchill’s marriage was successful because “‘Clemmie’ was primarily interested in Winston and so was Winston” (Dictionary of National Biography, 1961–1970). An autobiographical element in much of Churchill’s work is inevitable

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because he played a major role in the events he describes. Yet some have thought it excessive; Arthur Balfour memorably described The World Crisis, 1911–1918 (1923–31) as “a brilliant autobiography disguised as a history of the universe” (Williams). Balfour’s comment raises the question of whether a writer can achieve greatness both as an autobiographer and as a historian. The subjectivity of “autobiography” is hard to reconcile with the objectivity usually required in history. Few have succeeded. Perhaps Edward Gibbon came closest in his classic Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; but even he found it difficult. Consciously or unconsciously, Churchill follows Gibbon’s example. Apart from Lord Randolph, Churchill’s mother, Jennie Jerome, was the most important influence on his early life; significantly, she sent an edition of Gibbon to her son when he was serving in India in 1896. Churchill’s prose style echoes Gibbon’s, and Balfour’s witticism paraphrases Horace Walpole’s joke about Gibbon – that he thought he was the Roman empire. The dichotomy between subjective and objective can be overcome if the writer “annexes” his topic to his own personality. Thus Churchill’s self-perception expands to include the Churchill family, the British war effort in World War I and World War II, perhaps even the universe, or at any rate the English-speaking part of it. After all, Jennie Jerome was American. Harmless in a private man like Gibbon, such self-perception is dangerous in a statesman. It suggests near insanity or megalomania, superficially reminiscent of Hitler’s identification with the Germans. Both in his own lifetime and subsequently, Churchill has been much criticized for personal foibles (he drove others remorselessly; his judgement could be erratic and rash; he drank heavily) and policy positions, including even his opposition to the appeasement of Germany. Yet Churchill makes an unconvincing monster. Churchill shares with Gibbon a code of ethics; he judges the leaders of modern Britain, including himself, by the standards that Gibbon applies to the emperors Marcus Aurelius, Constantine, and Julian: do they exhibit the Ciceronian virtues of gloria, libertas, and humanitas? If Churchill’s works now seem old-fashioned, it is because, as a writer, one of the greatest statesmen of modern times belongs to a quite different age, to the 18th century. While he is currently experiencing a literary decline, this will surely be reversed when readers of history and autobiography appreciate that both the autobiographical and historical genres can work best when they are informed by a code of ethics and values.

employment laws. Defeated in by-election in Manchester; won seat in Dundee, 1908. Married Clementine Ogilvy Hozier, 1908: four daughters, one son. Home secretary, 1910; First Lord of the Admiralty, 1911. Organized naval mobilization in readiness for World War I, 1914. Resigned Admiralty post after Dardanelles disaster; returned to active service in the British army, fighting in France, 1915. Returned to Parliament as a private member, 1916. Minister of Munitions under Lloyd George, 1917. Secretary of state for War and Air, 1919–21: presided over cuts in military expenditure. Instrumental in sending arms to Poland during invasion of Ukraine, 1920. Moved to Colonial Office, 1921. Active in Irish treaty negotiations, 1921. Also concerned with Middle East affairs; produced White Paper confirming Palestine as a Jewish national home, 1922. Lost seat in House of Commons, 1922. Published the first volume of The World Crisis, 1923, and bought a country house, Chartwell in Kent, with proceeds. Left Liberal Party; won seat as “Constitutionalist” MP for Epping, Essex, and was offered the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin’s Conservative government, 1924. Restored gold standard (1925), which led to the general strike of 1926. Edited the British Gazette, an emergency government newspaper, 1926. After fall of the Conservative government, resigned from the shadow cabinet over Government of India bill, 1929. Subsequently concentrated on writing and built up a private intelligence centre at Chartwell, convinced of the threat posed by Hitler. Appointed member of a secret committee on air-defence research by Stanley Baldwin, 1935. Publicly championed the cause of Edward VIII over abdication issue, 1936. Urged government to effect joint declaration of purpose by Britain, France, and Russia, 1937. Criticized Munich Agreement, 1938. Appointed First Lord of the Admiralty again at outbreak of World War II, 1939. Became Prime Minister and head of Ministry of Defence in new coalition government after the resignation of Neville Chamberlain, 1940. Committed Britain to all-out war with Germany, with parliament granting the government comprehensive emergency powers, 1940. During World War II, his leadership became charismatic symbol of resistance to Hitler. Brought about Atlantic Treaty through negotiation with US President Franklin Roosevelt, starting Britain’s “special relationship” with the United States, 1941. Constructed Anglo-Soviet pact of mutual assistance, 1942, after Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union (1941). Determined strategy for Battle of Alamein, 1942. Met Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, which effectively brought about the defeat of Germany, 1945. Key figure at Potsdam Conference at the end of the war, June 1945. Became leader of the Opposition following Conservative defeat in July 1945. Warned against Soviet communism and the “iron curtain”; advocated European union. Wrote The Second World War (6 vols, 1948–54). Became Prime Minister again when Conservative party returned to power, 1951. Received Order of the Garter, 1953. Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature, 1953. Partially paralysed by a stroke, June 1953. Resigned as Prime Minister, April 1955. Declined a peerage; remained in the House of Commons as MP for Woodford, Essex, and as “father of the House”, 1955–64. Wrote A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (4 vols, 1956–58). Received US honorary citizenship, 1964. Died at Chartwell, Kent, 24 January 1965.

John C. Clarke

The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan, edited by F. Rhodes, 2 vols, 1899 London to Ladysmith via Pretoria, 1900 Lord Randolph Churchill, 2 vols, 1906 My African Journey, 1908 The World Crisis, 1911–1918, 6 vols, 1923–31 My Early Life, 1930 Marlborough: His Life and Times, 4 vols, 1933–38 Great Contemporaries, 1937 The Second World War, 6 vols, 1948–54; abridged as Memoirs of the Second World War by Denis Kelly, 1959 The Unwritten Alliance: Speeches 1953 to 1959, 1961 Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence, edited by Francis L. Loewenheim, Harold D. Langley, and Manfred Jonas, 1975 Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, edited by Warren F. Kimball, 3 vols, 1984 The Churchill–Eisenhower Correspondence, 1953–1955, edited by Peter G. Boyle, 1990

Biography Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. Born in Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England, 30 November 1874. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a younger son of the Duke of Marlborough; his mother, Jennie Jerome, was American. Educated at Harrow School from 1888. Studied at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, then entered the 4th Hussars, 1895. Soldier and military correspondent in Cuba (1895–96), India (1896), and Egypt (1897–98). Resigned army commission and failed first attempt at election to the House of Commons; reported on the Anglo-Boer war in South Africa for Morning Post newspaper, 1899. Entered House of Commons as Conservative Member of Parliament for Oldham, Lancashire, 1900. Joined Liberal party, 1904. Completed biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, 1906. Won seat in Manchester as Liberal MP, 1906. Served as under-secretary of state for the Colonies, 1906–08; Cabinet minister and President of the Board of Trade, 1908. Reformed

Selected Writings

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Winston Churchill and Emery Reves: Correspondence, 1937–1964, edited by Martin Gilbert, 1997 Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, edited by Mary Soames, 1998; as Winston and Clementine: The Personal Letters of the Churchills, 1999

Further Reading Ashley, Maurice, Churchill as Historian, London: Secker and Warburg, 1968; New York: Scribner, 1969 Brendon, Piers, Winston Churchill: A Brief Life, London: Secker and Warburg, 1984; as Winston Churchill: A Biography, New York: Harper and Row, 1984 Broad, Lewis, Winston Churchill, London: Hutchinson, 1941; revised edition, London and New York: Hutchinson, 1951 Churchill, Randolph S. (vols 1–2) and Martin Gilbert (vols 3–8), Winston S. Churchill (official biography), London: Heinemann, and Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966–88 James, Robert Rhodes, Churchill: A Study in Failure, 1900–1939, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, and New York: World, 1970 Manchester, William, The Last Lion, Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874–1932, London: Michael Joseph, and Boston: Little Brown, 1983 Manchester, William, The Caged Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1932–40, London: Michael Joseph, 1988; as The Last Lion, Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932–1940, Boston: Little Brown, 1988 Moran, Lord Charles, Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940–1965, London: Constable, and Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966 Pelling, Henry, Winston Churchill, London: Macmillan, and New York: Dutton, 1974 Woods, Frederick, A Bibliography of the Works of Sir Winston Churchill, revised edition, London: Kaye and Ward, and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969

Cicero, Marcus Tullius

106–43 bce

Roman statesman, orator, and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero was prominent in the social and political life of Rome at the end of the 1st century bce. He is remembered most for his contributions to Roman oratory, philosophy, and stylistics, but he also composed in a variety of auto/biographical modes, especially in the years following his consulship of 63 bce. The poet Archias, on whose defence Cicero spoke in 62 bce, apparently promised to compose a poem on Cicero’s consulship, and may even have begun it (see Pro Archia 11.28; 12.31). Yet, as Cicero laments in a letter to Atticus, the poem was never completed (see Epistulae ad Atticum 1.16.13). Cicero took matters into his own hands in 60 bce. He composed in Greek a commentarium – a prose “rough draft” narrative in the tradition of the Hellenistic memoirs that had gained popularity in the 1st century bce (and was the form that Julius Caesar used for the Bellum Civile (Civil War) and Bellum Gallicum (Gallic War) ). On 15 March 60 bce Cicero sent a copy of his Greek commentarium to Atticus with the promise of a Latin version pending completion. Details about the Latin version are sketchy; even its title is uncertain (Consulatus suus; De consulatu suo). It seems not to have been published or even completed. The work consisted of at least three books in dactylic hexameter. The contents of the first book are unknown beyond a note of Servius on Virgil’s Eclogues 8.105 describing an omen that befell Cicero’s wife Terentia. A letter attributed to Sallust describes another episode

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possibly in the first book: Cicero’s admission into the council of the gods where Jupiter and Minerva advise him in the manner of an epic hero (see Ps-Sall. In Ciceronem 2.3). Cicero himself quotes a long fragment of the second book at De divinatione 1.2.17, when the muse Urania recounts the omens presaging the Catiline conspiracy. From the third book only the final three lines survive (see Epistulae ad Atticum 2.3.4). Shortly after his return from exile in 57 bce, Cicero wrote to the historian Lucceius suggesting that he narrate the Catiline conspiracy and Cicero’s role in saving the Republic (see Epistulae ad familiares 5.12). Lucceius did not take the hint and once again Cicero was on his own. No verses of De temporibus meis (probably begun in 55 bce) are extant, though evidence suggests that it too was divided into three books of hexameter verse (see Epistulae ad familiares 1.19.23). It is unclear when, if ever, composition was completed, but certainly not before September 54 bce (see Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem 3.1.24). Cicero was also the author of hexameter biographies of Marius and Julius Caesar. Little is known about his work on Marius, and the date of composition could fall anywhere between 86 and 52bce. Two fragments survive, both as quotations elsewhere in Cicero’s works (De legibus 1.1.2; De divinatione 1.47.106). Details of his biographical poem on Caesar are sparse, though it seems that after a long delay the poem was completed in December 54 bce. No verses survive, and no references are made to it by contemporary authors. This silence suggests that the work was not published, and perhaps not widely circulated outside Caesar’s immediate circle. Cicero’s vast extant correspondence is his most substantial contribution to the history of life writing. His letters survive in four collections, arranged by addressee: 16 books of Epistulae ad familiares (Letters to His Friends), to a wide variety of correspondents; 16 books of Epistulae ad Atticum (Letters to Atticus); three books of Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem (Letters to His Brother Quintus); and Epistulae ad Brutum (Letters to Brutus). Only the Epistulae ad familiares preserve the occasional reply to Cicero. Although Cicero thought of publishing his correspondence as early as 44 bce, there is no direct evidence that the surviving collections reflect his editorial judgement (Epistulae ad Atticum 16.5.5; Epistulae ad familiares 16.17.1). The letters were probably edited and published post mortem by his freedman Tiro. We ought not to doubt, however, that Cicero exercised ample control over the preservation of his letters, particularly through his habit of making copies (exemplaria) and filing them away for future publication. Cicero’s letters supply us with an invaluable if idiosyncratic snapshot of political and social life during the tumultuous collapse of the Roman republic. They also offer us the illusion of an intimate glimpse – foibles and all – of one of the late republic’s most enigmatic figures. After stumbling upon a manuscript of the letters to Atticus, Quintus, and Brutus in a monastery in 1345, Petrarch ‘replied’ to the long-dead Cicero, “I eagerly read your long-sought after letters cover to cover; I heard you saying many things, bewailing many things, and wavering over many things, knew what sort of teacher you were for other men, now I finally know what sort of man you were in your own eyes.” In his letters, Cicero brought the personal, subjective voice of his contemporaries, the lyric poets Horace and Catullus, to Latin prose. Conversational in tone and rife with colloquialism, the letters blur the boundary

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between the public and the private. In the course of the collection we see not only Cicero the politician and rhetorician, but also a father mourning the death of his daughter, a devoted citizen suffering the uncertainties of exile, an egoist desperate to ensure his immortality. This intimate voice that Petrarch heard so clearly would inspire such later epistolographers as Pliny, Fronto, Symmachus, Ausonius, the Christian Fathers, the Italian humanists, Erasmus, Madame de Sévigné, and Lord Chesterfield. Indeed, Cicero’s innovative use of the prose letter as a vehicle for writing and circulating the self reached far beyond the limits of the ancient Roman world. Jennifer V. Ebbeler Biography Marcus Tullius Cicero. Born in Arpinum, Latium (now Arpino, Lazio), Italy, 3 January 106 bce, into a family of equestrian rank. Suffered from weak health throughout his life. Educated in Rome and later Greece. Served in the army of Pompeius Strabo, 89 bce. Conducted his first case as a lawyer, 81 bce; established his reputation in political trials, usually acting for the defence. Married Terentia, 80 bce: one daughter and one son. Studied rhetoric and oratory in Athens and Rhodes, 79–77 bce. Quaestor (financial administrator) in western Sicily, 75 bce; praetor (judicial officer), 66 bce. Successfully prosecuted Gaius Verres for extortion in Sicily, his most famous case, 70 bce. Consul, 63 bce: exposed Catiline’s plot to carry out a social revolution in Italy and executed the conspirators. Declared an exile by Clodius for having executed citizens without trial, 58 bce; lived in Thessalonica and Illyricum, but recalled with the help of Pompey, 57 bce. Reluctantly allied himself with the triumvirate of Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Crassus, 56 bce, and retired from public life until 51 bce. Served as governor of Cilicia, Asia Minor, 51–50 bce. Supported Pompey in the civil war against Caesar, 49–48 bce; pardoned by Caesar after Pompey’s defeat. Divorced Terentia and married Publilia, 47 bce (divorced 45 bce). Daughter Tullia died, 45 bce. Welcomed Caesar’s assassination, 44 bce, and delivered the Philippicae, orations against Mark Antony, 44–43 bce. Put on the execution list at Antony’s instigation when he came to power in the triumvirate with Octavian and Lepidus, 43 bce. Captured and killed in Formiae (now Formia), 7 December 43 bce.

Selected Writings Epistulae, edited by Robert Yelverton Tyrrell and Louis Claude Purser, 7 vols, 1898–1918, revised by D.R. Shackleton Bailey and W.S. Watt, 4 vols, 1958–65; as The Letters of Cicero, translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh, 4 vols, 1899–1900; selections as Letters, translated by L.P. Wilkinson, 1949; as Selected Letters, translated by D.R. Shackleton Bailey, 1980 Epistulae ad familiares, edited by D.R. Shackleton Bailey, 2 vols, 1977, and W.S. Watt, 1982; as Letters to His Friends (Loeb edition), translated by W. Glynn Williams, 1927–29; translated by D.R. Shackleton Bailey, 1978 Epistulae ad Brutum; as Brutus, edited by H. Malcovati, 1963, A.E. Douglas, 1966; as Letters to Brutus, translated by M. Cary, in Letters to His Friends (Loeb edition), vol. 3, 1929; also translated by H.M. Poteat, 1950 Epistulae ad Atticum, edited by W.S. Watt and D.R. Shackleton Bailey, 2 vols, 1961–65; as Letters to Atticus (Loeb edition), translated by E.O. Winstedt, 3 vols, 1912–18; edited and translated by D.R. Shackleton Bailey, 7 vols, 1965–70 Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem, edited by W.S. Watt, 1958, and D.R. Shackleton Bailey, 1980; as Letter to His Brother Quintus, translated by W. Glynn Williams, in Letters to His Friends, vol. 3, 1929; also translated by D.R. Shackleton Bailey, 1978 De divinatione, edited by Arthur S. Pease, 4 vols, 1920–23; as De divinatione, with De senectute and De amicitia, translated by William Arthur Falcolner, 1922; as On Divination, translated by H.M. Poteat, 1950 (contains fragments of Cicero’s life of Marius) De legibus (Loeb edition, with De republica), translated by Clinton Walker Keyes, 1928; edited by Niall Rudd and Thomas Wiedemann,

1987; as The Laws (with The Republic), translated by Niall Rudd, 1998; as On the Laws (with On the Commonwealth), edited by James E.G. Zetzel, 1999 (contains fragments of Cicero’s life of Marius) The Letters of January to April 43BC, edited and translated by M.M. Willcock, 1995

Further Reading Courtney, Edward (editor), The Fragmentary Latin Poets, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 156–75 Cugursi, Paolo, Evoluzione e forme dell’ epistolografia latina nella tarda repubblica e nei primi due secoli dell’ impero, Rome: Herder, 1983 Hooper, Finley and Matthew Schwartz, Roman Letters: History from a Personal Point of View, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991 Hutchinson, G.O., Cicero’s Correspondence: A Literary Study, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 Nicholson, John, “The Delivery and Confidentiality of Cicero’s Letters”, Classical Journal, 90/1 (1994): 33–63 Nicholson, John, “The Survival of Cicero’s Letters” in Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, vol. 9, edited by Carl Deroux, Brussels: Latomus, 1998 Peter, Hermann, Der Brief in der römischen Litteratur, Leipzig: Teubner, 1901; reprinted, Hildesheim: Olms, 1965 Townsend, G.B., “The Poems” in Cicero, edited by T.A. Dorey, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and New York: Basic Books, 1965

Classical Greece and Rome The English words “biography” and “autobiography” have Greek antecedents (bios = “life”; graphein = “to write”), but the Greek word biographia is not attested until the 5th century ce, and the word autobiography (autos = “self”) is not found at all in ancient Greek and Latin literature, but was coined about 1800. As these etymological details might indicate, life writing in classical antiquity was not classified under any one rubric, but was part of an array of work, and came from a range of genres and time periods. In general, ancient life writing involved works with various styles, forms, and literary antecedents, and was not a stable or monolithic category. Autobiographical writing as a self-conscious attempt to describe the writer’s own past life is hard to find in antiquity: there are though such notable exceptions as Augustine’s Confessions, and numerous letters, speeches, commentaries, and travel accounts that have the function of self-representation. It is worth remarking that most ancient life writing was composed by males from the dominant elite, and reflects elite interests. It should also be noted that many ancient works of life writing are lost, although fragments and quotations from some of these texts are extant. In Greece, life writing has discernible roots in oral poetry of the 8th and 7th centuries bce, and auto/biographical elements are present in the early Greek poetry of Homer and Hesiod. In addition to the general problem of interpreting poetry as auto/biography, part of the complication with this early material is that much of it deals with heroes or gods; nonetheless, this material can be evaluated as a form of life writing, not least because it helped influence the development of mortals’ biographies. Lyric poetry composed not long after Homer uses the first-person voice, and has caused some interpreters to read

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it as auto/biographical and personal; but more recent scholarship has instead chosen to focus on the performative force and social contexts of the poetry. Another important type of early life writing is the grave inscription, which often contains material, sometimes in exquisitely beautiful verse, of an auto/biographical nature. In the 5th century bce, Herodotus and Thucydides give brief background information on their subjects’ motives, intentions, or actions that could be construed as biographical. From the perspective of life writing, however, their works are little recompense for the now vanished biographical texts attributed to other 5th-century writers such as Scylax of Caryanda, Ion of Chios, and Stesimbrotus of Thasos. Given the loss of their works, the earliest extant Greek biographies come from the 4th century bce, and take the shape of encomiastic discourse: Isocrates’ Evagoras, an account of a recently deceased king of Cyprus, and Xenophon’s Agesilaus, an essay on the king of Sparta. Xenophon (c.428–c.354bce) is also the author of an Anabasis (The March up Country), which includes portraits of Greek soldiers and of a Persian prince, and of the Cyropaedia (The Education of Cyrus), an imaginative, largely fictional recreation of the life of the founder of the Persian empire; his Memorabilia (Memoirs of Socrates) concentrates more on Socrates’ teachings than on his life. The works by Isocrates and Xenophon reflect the changed political circumstances of the 4th century, when it was possible for Athenians to consider monarchy as a viable political option. Autobiographical narratives can also be found in Isocrates’ Antidosis, Demosthenes’ speech De corona (On the Crown), and Plato’s Seventh Letter; the last, if authentic, is a spirited, vivid defence by the philosopher of his life and political ideals. Following in this tradition, but much later, are the Life written by Josephus (b. 37/38 ce), the Jewish historian who wrote in Greek, and the Ta eis heauton (Meditations) of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180 ce), as well as the lost texts of Aratus of Sicyon (271–213 bce) and Nicolaus of Damascus (1st century bce). Aristotle (384–322 bce) and his school left an important mark on life writing, and tried to give both general background and the distinctive achievements of a given person. His follower Chameleon drew on the poets’ own works to write lives of Sappho, Anacreon, and Aeschylus – which led him to some bizarre, circular claims – while his pupil Aristoxenus of Tarentum wrote lives of philosophers. Except for a few fragments, however, the works of these writers are no longer extant, as is also the case with numerous other works written in their aftermath by Greek writers of the Hellenistic period (the years following Alexander’s death in 323 bce), in Alexandria and elsewhere. Some of the important figures who can be named here are Hermippus of Smyrna, Antigonus of Carystus, and Satyrus. Plutarch of Chaeronea (c.50–c.120 ce), a Roman subject who wrote in Greek, completely transformed the practice of life writing. His Vitae parallelae (Parallel Lives) contain 23 pairs of lives, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman figure, plus four other lives that were written for different reasons. The Parallel Lives give biographies of major political and military leaders, and carry the stated goal of “understanding character and personality”. In his Life of Alexander, he states: “I am not writing history but biography … I must be allowed to devote more time to those aspects which indicate a person’s mind and

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to use these to portray the life of each of my subjects.” According to Plutarch, his chief interest in the Lives is character (ethos), and he analyses his subjects’ actions (praxeis) as a means to understanding character. Against the modern interest in complexity of character, however, he looks for consistency in personality traits and tries to find complementary features in an individual, even as he reflects on nuances. After Plutarch, there was a string of biographers writing in Greek, but none of these was able to match him in capturing the depth and movement of his subjects’ lives. Notable successors include Philostratus (2nd to 3rd centuries ce), who wrote the Vita Apollonii (The Life of Apollonius of Tyana); Diogenes Laertius (3rd century), who wrote about the lives of philosophers in Vitae philosophorum (The Lives of Eminent Philosophers), a work that is still consulted by scholars for biographical detail; and Porphyry of Tyre (3rd century), the author of a life of Pythagoras, Vita Pythagorae. In Rome, the auto/biographical tradition drew partly on native practices and partly on Greek models; writers from the Roman period composed in Greek or Latin, and some have been touched on above. Along with making sepulchral inscriptions, early Romans used to sing dirges and deliver orations at funerals. The Romans also kept “likenesses” (imagines) of famous ancestors in their homes, with the result that the older families were surrounded by images of their forebears. All these images and laudations were ways of commemorating and remembering the dead and, as such, may be considered forms of life writing. By the middle of the 3rd century bce, Roman funeral laudations came to be circulated as written texts, and by the end of the 2nd century bce, political memoirs were being published in increasing numbers. Such memoirs, invariably self-justifying, are attributed to Marius (157–86 bce), Sulla (137–78 bce), Cicero (106–43 bce), Caesar (100 or 102–44 bce), Agrippa (63– 12 bce), and Augustus (63 bce–14 ce), among others. Cicero wrote numerous self-revealing letters to members of his family and his friend Atticus, and also such works on rhetoric as Brutus, which makes Roman oratorical history reach fruition in the compositions of Cicero himself. Classical Latin poetry, especially elegy, is often read as self-revealing and self-analytical, but some of this first-person poetry (e.g. Catullus’) can also be interpreted as deconstructive of identity, and an intervention in conventional systems of self-presentation, rather than an unmediated path to the writer’s self. In a different vein, Ovid’s exile poetry is as much a reaffirmation of mainstream Roman ideologies of the imperial subject as it is a lament for separation from the metropolis. As with Greek, much Latin life writing has not survived. The most important surviving biographies written in Latin are the De viris illustribus (Lives of Illustrious Men) by Cornelius Nepos (c.100–c.25 bce); the life of Agricola by Tacitus (1st to 2nd centuries ce); the De vita Caesarum (Lives of the Twelve Caesars) by Suetonius (1st to 2nd centuries ce), who also wrote an extant treatise De grammaticis et rhetoribus (On Teachers of Grammar and Rhetoric); and the accounts of the later Roman emperors (17–284ce) contained in the 4th-century Historia Augusta. Of these, Suetonius’ work, racier than Plutarch’s, but less concerned with “character”, had the largest impact on biographers and historians in late antiquity. Much interesting autobiographical material comes from the

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surviving works of Pliny the Younger (62–112 ce; his letters), Aelius Aristeides (117–after 181 ce; his Sacred Discourses), Lucian (120–after 180 ce; his essays), Galen (129–99 ce; his medical writings), Libanius (314–c.393 ce; his speeches and letters), and the emperor Julian (331–363 ce; his speeches and letters). No Latin writer, however, practises self-representation with the same combination of spiritual and intellectual energy as does Augustine (354–430 ce), in his Confessiones (Confessions) and letters: his texts are part of a vast tradition of early Christian life writing, including hagiography and martyrology. The Confessions, an incredibly fertile work, joins an account of the narrator’s past actions to meditations on sin, memory, time, and the search for the Christian God, and thereby interrogates both the impetus to put one’s life into words and the value of that life in relation to the highest thinking. Phiroze Vasunia Further Reading Greek and Latin texts of many of the authors mentioned above can be found in the Oxford Classical Texts series and the editions published by B.G. Teubner (Stuttgart & Leipzig). The Loeb Classical Library, published by Harvard University Press, provides texts and English translations of Greek and Roman authors; the Budé series (Collection des Universités de France) supplies texts and French translations. Reliable English translations of select works are also available in Penguin Classics and the Oxford World’s Classics series.

Baslez, Marie-Françoise, Philippe Hoffmann, and Laurent Pernot (editors), L’Invention de l’autobiographie d’Hésiode à Saint Augustin, Paris: Presses de l’École Normale Supérieure, 1993 Burridge, Richard A., What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992 Cox, Patricia, Biography in Late Antiquity: A Quest for the Holy Man, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983 Dihle, Albrecht, Studien zur griechischen Biographie, 2nd edition, Göttingen: Vandenbroeck and Ruprecht, 1970 (first edition 1956) Edwards, M.J. and Simon Swain (editors), Portraits: Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997 Gentili, Bruno and Giovanni Cerri, History and Biography in Ancient Thought, translated by David Murray and Leonard Murray, Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1988 Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, vol. 3: The Care of the Self, translated by Robert Hurley, New York: Pantheon, 1986; London: Allen Lane, 1988 Gleason, Maud W., Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995 Griffin, Jasper, Latin Poets and Roman Life, London: Duckworth, and Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986 Lefkowitz, Mary R., The Lives of the Greek Poets, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, and London: Duckworth, 1981 Leo, Friedrich, Die griechisch-römische Biographie nach ihrer litterarischen Form, Leipzig: Teubner, 1901 Malherbe, Abraham J., Ancient Epistolary Theorists, Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1988 Misch, Georg, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity, 2 vols, translated by E.W. Dickes, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950 Momigliano, Arnaldo, The Development of Greek Biography, 2nd edition, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 1993 (first edition 1971) Pelling, C.B.R. (editor), Characterization and Individuality in Greek Literature, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990 Scardigli, Barbara (editor), Essays on Plutarch’s Lives, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995

Selden, Daniel L., “Ceveat lector: Catullus and the Rhetoric of Performance” in Innovations of Antiquity, edited by Ralph Hexter and Daniel Selden, New York and London: Routledge, 1992 Stuart, Duane Reed, Epochs of Greek and Roman Biography, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1928

Clemens, Samuel see Mark Twain Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

1772–1834

English poet, critic, and autobiographer Coleridge’s irrepressible mind, attending at once with equal care to the world outside and the world within, and his tempestuous life as a man of letters, at once ruinous and heroic, could scarcely have produced anything other than a digressive, dense, and difficult prose – “great sentences”, as Virginia Woolf remarked, “pocketed with parentheses, expanded with dash after dash, break[ing] their walls under the strain of including and qualifying and suggesting all that Coleridge feels, fears and glimpses” (Griggs, Introduction to Woolf’s Collected Letters). Seldom in the history of English literature were form and content so decisively welded as in Coleridge’s prose. Here was the mind incarnate, each performance bearing witness to what is always true, especially of Coleridge: life and writing are inextricable. Hence the autobiographical nature of nearly all he wrote. Coleridge was obsessed with what he called “the mind’s selfexperience in the act of thinking” (Biographia Literaria, I). In an entry from 1801 he records his four-year-old son, Hartley, looking out of the window at some mountains. I showed him the whole magnificent Prospect in a Looking Glass, and held it up, so the whole was like a Canopy or Ceiling over his head, and he struggled to express himself concerning the Difference between the Thing and the Image almost with convulsive Effort. – I never before saw such an Abstract of Thinking as a pure act and energy, of Thinking as distinguished from Thoughts. (Notebooks I) Or again, “Metaphysics make all one’s thoughts equally corrosive on the Body by the habit of making momently & common thought the subjects of uncommon interest & intellectual energy” (Notebooks, I). Even in his “incomparable autobiographical letters”, as his compiler called them (Letters, I), the chronicler is also the critic, whether of himself – “I am unworthy to call any good man friend” (Letters, III) – or of books – “observe the march of Milton – his severe application, his laborious polish, his deep metaphysical researches” (Letters, I). So we are not surprised when Coleridge, in his last completed work, poses his most characteristic, relevant, and abiding question: “If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?” (Aids to Reflection, 1825). Nor are we surprised at the summary of his life and work provided 15 years later by John Stuart Mill: Coleridge led men to ask of themselves, “in regard to any ancient or received opinion … What is the meaning of it?” (Mill).

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Aids to Reflection, of signal importance to Coleridge’s disciples, was by no means autobiographical. But as John Beer points out, it was an attempt on Coleridge’s part “to hand on as directly as possible the fruits of his own spiritual experiences” (Aids to Reflection). Likewise, the great “Logosophia”, the magnum opus that Coleridge made notes for nearly all his life but never brought to fruition, was to be built upon a life observed: “The Title is: Christianity the one true Philosophy – or 5 Treatises on the Logos, or communicative Intelligence, Natural, Human, and Divine:— to which is prefixed a Prefatory Essay … illustrated by fragments of Auto-biography” (Letters, III). Such was Coleridge’s method – to deduce principles from the thinking self and then to illustrate the principles from experience. The great example of this was not so much the notebooks or letters as the literary life he wrote in 1815 (published 1817), Biographia Literaria, or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. Written during a time of great personal turmoil, the book is a testament to Coleridge’s belief that the imaginative powers of the mind could salvage a life from the conditions of disaster. The idea for the Biographia occurred to Coleridge as early as 1803. A notebook entry reads, “Seem to have made up my mind to write my metaphysical works, as my life, & in my Life – intermixed with all the other events / or history of the mind & fortunes of S.T. Coleridge” (Notebooks, I). The Biographia came out very much in accordance with these early specifications. It will be found that the least of what I have written concerns myself personally. I have used the narration chiefly for the purpose of giving a continuity to the work, in part for the sake of the miscellaneous reflections suggested to me by particular events, but still more as introductory to the statement of my principles in Politics, Religion, and Philosophy, and the application of the rules, deduced from philosophical principles, to poetry and criticism. (Biographia Literaria, I) In short, “matters of personal biography are raised into a metaphysical principle” (Cooke, 1971), life writing proving itself to be “a host (as opposed to a parasite) genre” (Jackson, 1997). Like Wordsworth in the Prelude, Coleridge used autobiography as a vehicle for the higher purpose of showing the growth of the poet’s – and also the philosopher’s – mind. The Biographia is on most accounts an unruly, difficult, and digressive book, impossible to summarize adequately. Volume 1 deals principally with philosophy – with nothing less than a refutation of materialism from Aristotle to Hartley and then, towards the end, with Coleridge’s attempt to achieve a ground for philosophical certainty. The volume closes with his famous and abortive Chapter 13 on the difference between imagination (in both its primary and secondary forms) and fancy. Once Coleridge had established his philosophical principles, he moved in Volume 2 to treat poetry and criticism. Nearly the entire second volume is devoted to Coleridge’s arguments with and evaluations of Wordsworth and with his own version of their collaboration in the Lyrical Ballads (1798, 1800, 1802). Despite the intellectual unity accomplished by Coleridge’s strategically placed 13th chapter, which hinges the two volumes together (Wheeler, 1994), and despite the structural unity

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afforded by the “narration” itself, readers have found the book at the least troubling and at worst incomprehensible. In Coleridge’s own time, William Hazlitt called it a “garrulous” production from “the maggots of his brain” and added, “Till he can do something better, we would rather hear no more of him”. John Wilson, a one-time friend of Coleridge’s, under the cover of a pseudonym, wrote of Coleridge’s “pretended account of the Metaphysical Systems of Kant, of which he knows less than nothing” (Holmes, 1998). Near the turn of the century, Leslie Stephen assured his readers that the book was “put together with a pitchfork” (Stephen, vol. 4, 1892). Such sentiments have stubbornly refused to go away: in 1906 Arthur Symons called it “the greatest book of criticism in English, and one of the most annoying books in any language” (Symons). Nearly a century later C.M. Wallace remarked that “[a]t first glance [but only at first glance] there is ample evidence that Biographia Literaria is a fragmented disaster whose difficulties can neither be resolved nor understood” (1981). Even the most sympathetic reader will find him- or herself agreeing, at least in part, with the claim that: numerous local promiscuities have embarrassed or irritated readers of the Biographia since its publication, among them … the unsettling enrichment of the language by capricious coinages; puzzling, often alarming leaps in logic or obliquities in argument; a suspiciously flagrant figurativeness; the disturbing gusto displayed in the use of footnotes to crack jokes, explore etymologies, or open entirely novel areas of inquiry. There seems to be no suitable explanation for such errancies. (Christensen, 1994) And yet there are “suitable explanations”. The book’s “historical importance”, says Lawrence Buell, and its “present status as a sort of prose classic makes one feel uncomfortable about pigeonholing it as a ‘remarkable failure’” (Buell). Coleridge himself knew that he was difficult to read, and he was bedevilled all his life by charges of obscurity. But he also knew that difficult material called for a difficult style. Above all, in his quest for “unity in multeity” he would find himself unable to say one thing without at the same time saying everything. “My illustrations”, Coleridge admitted, “swallow up my thesis – I feel too intensely the omnipresence of all in each, platonically speaking” (Notebooks, II). His heavy use of parentheses (which he called “the drama of reason”) and footnotes, his digressions, etymological explorations, and illustrations not only reflected the processes of thinking itself but (paradoxically) re-enacted his great mental yearning for a unified system. Coleridge himself firmly believed that no great writer or thinker could do without such rhetorical accessories. One critic contends that, in the “most practical of ways, the ‘digressive’ texture coherently reflects Coleridge’s desire to help his readers think about ideas” (Wallace, 1983). Another says that Coleridge consciously mixes conversational and critically authoritative voices to demonstrate his “criterion for the workings of Imagination, the reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities, and further illustrates how the Biographia Literaria is conceived in terms of process” (Mallette). In spite of all the stylistic difficulties of the Biographia, more than one critic has called Coleridge the “ideal autobiographer” (Cooke), and the esteem in which Coleridge is held today is evidence of the work scholars have done to answer the charges raised against him in his own time. Even “[s]elf-

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contradiction”, says H.J. Jackson, “gives the Biographia a dramatic and destabilizing character that to my mind is an asset. It is one of the manifestations of a distinctive vitality. It is both consistent with and contributes to the dialectical pattern of mental progress that shapes the whole work” (Jackson). But it is important to note that the difficult nature of the book is also inextricable from the genre it inherited and for ever altered. The Biographia, like other spiritual autobiographies, aims “to convert others … suppressing other aspects of the writer’s life in order to concentrate on what matters most” (Jackson). What matters most is not merely a life, but a life spent thinking. Thus: It is the essential mark of the true philosopher to rest satisfied with no imperfect light, as long as the impossibility of attaining a fuller knowledge has not been demonstrated … philosophy cannot be intelligible to all, even of the most learned and cultivated classes. A system, the first principle of which it is to render the mind intuitive of the spiritual in man (i.e., of that which lies on the other side of our natural consciousness) must needs have a great obscurity for those, who have never disciplined and strengthened this ulterior consciousness. (Biographia Literaria, I) T.S. Eliot’s famous quip that Coleridge was “perhaps the greatest of the English critics, and in a sense the last” has proved durable (Eliot). Other readers have been no less enthusiastic: “the Biographia is one of the wonders of Western literature and a gold mine for students of autobiography” (Jackson). If readers feel overwhelmed by the centripetal force of Coleridge’s prose and outmatched by the power and energy of the mind inside it, they should remember that Coleridge “compels us to stand before his writings in a special manner” (Christensen, 1977): he compels us to consider that the life lived must be a life rigorously contemplated; to remember that if we are not thinking men and women, to what purpose are we men and women at all? Jason R. Peters Biography Born in Ottery St Mary, Devon, England, 21 October 1772. His father, a schoolmaster and clergyman, died when he was aged nine. Educated at Christ’s Hospital school, London, 1782–90. Awarded a scholarship to study classics at Jesus College, Cambridge, 1791–94: won Greek verse medal, then ran away before graduating to enlist in the 15th Dragoons, but was rescued by his family. Met poet Robert Southey on a walking tour, 1794, and with him devised Pantisocracy, a scheme to set up a utopian community in Pennsylvania. Married Sara Fricker, 1794: three sons (one died in infancy) and one daughter. Lived in Bristol, 1794–96, and Clevedon, Somerset, 1796, where he edited The Watchman, a radical Christian journal. Moved to Nether Stowey, Somerset, near his close friends William and Dorothy Wordsworth at Alfoxden, 1797; wrote his poems “Kubla Khan”, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, and “Christabel” during this period. Received an annuity from the Wedgwood family and published Lyrical Ballads, a joint collection of poems with Wordsworth, 1798. Spent winter of 1798–99 in Germany with the Wordsworths. Lived briefly in London, and contributed to the Morning Post. Moved to Greta Hall, Keswick, in the Lake District, near Southey and the Wordsworths, 1800. Wrote “Ode to Dejection”, 1902. Had already become addicted to opium, and went abroad in an effort to restore his health, 1804–06; worked as secretary to the governor of Malta, Sir Alexander Bell, 1804–05, and travelled through Sicily and Italy. Separated from his wife, 1807. Moved to Grasmere in the Lake District to live with the Wordsworths, 1808. Launched a weekly paper, The Friend, 1809 (closed 1810). Lectured extensively in London, 1808–19. Assistant editor of The

Courier, 1810–11; contributed to various journals and newspapers. Quarrelled with Wordsworth, 1810, and moved to London, 1811; on the verge of suicide, he was taken by friends to stay in Calne, Wiltshire, then Bath. Wrote a play, Remorse (1813). Lived in Highgate, London, with a physician, James Gillman, and his family, 1816–34. Wrote critical-biographical works during these years, including Biographia Literaria (1817), Aids to Reflection (1825), and Anima Poetae (1895), as well as poems. Became an Associate of the Royal Society of Literature (with pension), 1824. Died in Highgate, 25 July 1834.

Selected Writings Biographia Literaria, or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, 2 vols, 1817; edited by George Watson, 1956; edited by James Engell and Jackson Bate, 2 vols (part of Collected Works), 1983 Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2 vols, edited by Henry Helson Coleridge, 1835; edited by Carl Woodring, 2 vols, 1990 Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit, edited by H.N. Coleridge, 1836 Biographia Epistolaris, Being the Biographical Supplement of Biographia Literaria, edited by A. Turnbull, 2 vols, 1911 Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 6 vols, edited by Earl Leslie Griggs, 1956–71 The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 4 vols, edited by Kathleen Coburn with Merten Christensen, 1957–90 Selected Letters, edited by H.L. Jackson, 1987

Further Reading Buell, Lawrence, “The Question of Form in Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria” in Critical Essays on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by Leonard Orr, New York: G.K. Hall, and Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada, 1994 Christensen, Jerome, “The Literary Life of a Man of Letters” in Critical Essays on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by Leonard Orr, New York: G.K. Hall, 1994 Christensen, Jerome C., “Coleridge’s Marginal Method in the Biographia Literaria”, Publications of the Modern Language Association, 92/5 (1977): 928–40 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Aids to Reflection, edited by John Beer, London: Routledge, and Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993 Cooke, M.G., “Quisque Sui Faber: Coleridge in the Biographia Literaria”, Philological Quarterly, 50/2 (1971): 208–29 Eliot, T.S., The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, London: Methuen, 1920; New York: Knopf, 1921 Goodson, A.C., entry on Coleridge in British Romantic Poets, 1789–1832, edited by John R. Greenfield, vol. 93 of Dictionary of Literary Biography, Detroit: Gale Research, 1990 Holmes, Richard, Coleridge: Early Visions, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989; New York: Viking, 1990 Holmes, Richard, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, 1804–1834, London: HarperCollins 1998; New York: Pantheon, 1999 Jackson, H.J., “Coleridge’s Biographia: When is an Autobiography Not an Autobiography?”, Biography, 20/1 (1997): 54–71 Mallette, Richard, “Narrative Technique in the ‘Biographia Literaria’”, Modern Language Review, 70/1 (1975): 32–40 Matlak, Richard E., “Licentia Biographica, or, Biographical Sketches of Coleridge’s Literary Life and Plagiarisms”, European Romantic Review, 4/1 (1993): 57–70 McGann, Jerome J., “The Biographia Literaria and the Contentions of English Romanticism” in Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria: Text and Meaning, edited by Frederick Burwick, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1989 Mill, John Stuart, “Coleridge” in Essays on Literature and Society by Mill, edited by J.B. Schneewind, New York: Collier, and London: Collier Macmillan, 1965 (originally published in London and Westminster Review, 1840) Stephen, Leslie, Hours in a Library, London: Smith Elder, 1874–9; New York: Scribner, 1875; revised edition, London: Smith Elder, 1892; New York: Putnam, 1894 Symons, Arthur, introduction to Biographia Literaria by Coleridge, edited by Ernest Rhys, London: Dent, and New York: Dutton, 1906

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Wallace, C.M., “The Function of Autobiography in Biographia Literaria”, Wordsworth Circle, 12/4 (1981): 216–25 Wallace, C.M., The Design of Biographia Literaria, London and Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1983 Wheeler, Kathleen M., Sources, Processes and Methods in Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980 Wheeler, Kathleen M., “Structural Unity in the Biographia” in Critical Essays on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by Leonard Orr, New York: G.K. Hall, 1994

Colette

1873–1954

French novelist, prose writer, and autobiographer Colette’s diverse literary production consists of novels, plays, essays, memoirs, and short stories, whose themes and characters often reflect the author’s own experiences. Tracing out the textualization of the self in the works of Colette has become a central concern in recent theoretical debates surrounding her oeuvre. The numerous points of intersection between Colette’s own life and her writing, along with the general tendency to read women’s writing as a transparent inscription of personal experience, has contributed to the conceptualization of her work as largely autobiographical. Indeed, the conflation of Colette and her female narrators and characters was rarely questioned at first. The very diversity and complexity of her writing has, however, led critics to employ a wide variety of terms in an attempt to characterize the nature of her autobiographical enterprise: “autofiction”, “auto-portrait”, “fictional autobiography”, “autobiographical fiction”, “autography”, and “testimonial life writing”. Generally, the division of her works into autobiographical fiction and fictional autobiography provides a useful starting-point for sorting out the complex relationships between her life and work, and for examining the ways in which she destabilizes traditional notions of the “autobiographical pact” as defined by French critic Philippe Lejeune. Colette’s early works, such as the Claudine series and La Vagabonde (1911; The Vagabond), are mostly autobiographical fictions in which the author does not appear under her own name, while such works as La Naissance du jour (1928; The Break of Day) and La Maison de Claudine (1922; My Mother’s House) constitute examples of her more overtly autobiographical works. The personal experiences portrayed in Colette’s work privilege a questioning of gender roles and an exploration of the female self. Recurrent themes centre on the nature of women’s friendship, marriage, female sexuality, and the mother-daughter bond. Much of Colette’s writing is shaped by childhood experiences, in particular her relationship with her mother and her love of, and nostalgia for, the Burgundy region where she grew up. In Sido (1929), for example, descriptions of the idyllic natural environment and evocations of a nurturing maternal figure combine to create an idealized vision of lost childhood pleasures. Her earliest works, which were ghostwritten for her first husband “Willy” (Henri Gauthier-Villars) and are linked by the central character of Claudine, were inspired by episodes from her childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, and deal with such varied topics as education, sexual awakening, and marital relations. In L’Envers du music-hall (1913; Music-

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Hall Sidelights), the focus shifts to Colette’s liberating experiences in theatre after her separation from Willy. L’Etoile vesper (1946; The Evening Star) and Le Fanal bleu (1949; The Blue Lantern), works produced in her final years, fall less clearly into the category of conventional autobiography, although they continue to relate Colette’s response to major events in her life such as war and aging. In these, as in her corpus as a whole, the creation of the self through writing – which is reflected in the interrelated themes of masking, disguise, performance, and mirrors – constitutes a leitmotiv, thus foregrounding the problematic nature of the autobiographical act. Colette’s significant role in the history of autobiography is similar to that of writers such as George Sand and Violette Leduc. Her influence can be seen in particular in her use of hybrid forms that blur the boundaries between fiction and autobiography. She anticipates many of the techniques common in contemporary autobiographical writing by incorporating aspects of various genres into her work – journals, diaries, and essays, for example. It is to a large extent this innovative practice that has led critics to re-examine Colette’s work in light of recent gender and genre studies and to emphasize her role as a precursor. The strikingly modern elements of Colette’s texts also raise issues that lie at the heart of autobiographical theory today: the ever-changing nature of the self, the notion of the self as a fictional construct, and indeed the very nature of the autobiographical project. This renewed interest in Colette’s work has done a great deal to change the paradoxical situation whereby “Colette is always read biographically, and at the same time excluded from the corpus of autobiographical writing” (Miller). Susan Ireland and Patrice J. Proulx Biography Born in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Burgundy, France, 28 January 1873. Her father was a retired army captain and tax collector; her mother encouraged her love of books. Educated at a local school to age 16. Moved with her family to Châtillon-sur-Loing in the nearby Loiret district, 1890. Married the writer Henri Gauthier-Villars, 1893. Settled in Paris after her marriage. Encouraged to write by her husband, but four of her novels – the “Claudine series” (1900–03) – were published under his pen-name “Willy”. Separated from her husband, 1905 (divorced 1910). Worked as an actress and music-hall performer until 1927, touring Europe while continuing to write. Published La Vagabonde (The Vagabond), 1911. Married Henry de Jouvenal, editor of Le Matin, 1912 (some sources give 1910; separated 1923, divorced 1934): one daughter. Columnist, 1910–19, and literary editor, 1919–24, Le Matin. Established her reputation as a writer with the publication of the novel Chéri (1920). Drama critic, La Revue de Paris, 1929, Le Journal, 1934–39, L’Eclair, and Le Petit Parisien. Ran a beauty clinic in Paris, 1932–33. Married Maurice Goudeket, 1935. Elected member of the Belgian Royal Academy, 1936. Published her last novel, Gigi, 1944, but continued to write until her death. Appointed first woman president of the Académie Goncourt, 1949. Chevalier, 1920, Officier, 1928, Commandeur, 1936, and Grand Officier, 1953, Légion d’honneur. Died in Paris, 3 August 1954.

Selected Writings (with Willy) Claudine à l’école (autobiographical fiction), 1900; as Claudine at School, translated by Antonia White, 1956 (with Willy) Claudine à Paris (autobiographical fiction), 1901; as Claudine in Paris, 1931; as Young Lady of Paris, translated by Antonia White, 1958 (with Willy) Claudine amoureuse (autobiographical fiction), 1902; as Claudine en ménage, 1902; as The Indulgent Husband, translated by Frederick A. Blossom, 1935; as Claudine Married, translated by Antonia White, 1960

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(with Willy) Claudine s’en va (autobiographical fiction), 1903; as The Innocent Wife, translated by Frederick A. Blossom, 1934; as Claudine and Annie, translated by Antonia White, 1962 La Vagabonde (autobiographical fiction), 1911; as Renée la vagabonde, translated by Charlotte Remfry-Kidd, 1931; as The Vagabond, translated by Enid McLeod, 1954 L’Envers du music-hall, 1913; as Music-Hall Sidelights, translated by Anne-Marie Callimachi, 1957 Les Heures longues 1914–1917, 1917 La Maison de Claudine, 1922; as The Mother of Claudine, translated by Charles King, 1937; as My Mother’s House, translated by Enid McLeod and Una Vicenzo Troubridge, with Sido, 1953 Le Voyage égoïste, 1922; translated in part by David Le Vay as Journey for Myself: Selfish Memoirs, 1971 Rêverie du nouvel an, 1923 Aventures quotidiennes, 1924; translated by David Le Vay in Journey for Myself: Selfish Memoirs, 1971 La Naissance du jour (autobiographical fiction), 1928; as A Lesson in Love, translated by Rosemary Carr Benét, 1932; as Morning Glory, 1932; as The Break of Day, translated by Enid McLeod, 1961 Renée Vivien, 1928 Sido, 1929; as Sido, translated by Enid McLeod, with My Mother’s House, 1953 Mes apprentissages, 1936; as My Apprenticeships, translated by Helen Beauclerk, 1957 Mes cahiers, 1941 De ma fenêtre, 1942; enlarged edition as Paris de ma fenêtre, 1944; translated by David Le Vay in Looking Backwards, 1975 Une amitié inattendue (correspondence with Francis Jammes), edited by Robert Mallet, 1945 L’Etoile vesper, 1946; as The Evening Star: Recollections, translated by David Le Vay, 1973 Journal intermittent, 1949 Le Fanal bleu, 1949; as The Blue Lantern, translated by Roger Senhouse, 1963 En pays connu, 1949 Paysages et portraits, 1958 Lettres à Hélène Picard, edited by Claude Pichois, 1958 Lettres à Marguerite Moréno, edited by Claude Pichois, 1959 Lettres de la vagabonde, edited by Claude Pichois and Roberte Forbin, 1961 Lettres au petit corsaire, edited by Claude Pichois and Roberte Forbin, 1963 Earthly Paradise: An Autobiography Drawn from Her Lifetime Writings, edited by Robert Phelps, translated by Herma Briffault et al., 1966 Lettres à ses pairs, edited by Claude Pichois and Roberte Forbin, 1973 Letters from Colette, edited and translated by Robert Phelps, 1980

Further Reading Deltel, Danielle, “Journal manqué, autobiographie masquée: Claudine à l’école de Colette”, Revue des Sciences Humaines, 192 (1983): 47–71 D’Hollander, Paul, Colette: ses apprentissages, Montreal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, and Paris: Klincksieck, 1978 Eisinger, Erica and Mari McCarty (editors), Colette: The Woman, the Writer, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981 Flieger, Jerry Aline, Colette and the Fantom Subject of Autobiography, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1992 Giry, Jacqueline, Colette et l’art du discours intérieur, Paris: La Pensée Universelle, 1980 Goudeket, Maurice, Près de Colette, Paris: Flammarion, 1956 Henke, Suzette A., Shattered Subjects: Trauma and Testimony in Women’s Life-Writing, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998 Huffer, Lynne, Another Colette: The Question of Gendered Writing, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992 Marks, Elaine, Colette, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1960 Miller, Nancy K., Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing, New York: Columbia University Press, 1988 Sarde, Michèle, Colette, libre et entravée, Paris: Stock, 1978 Slawy-Sutton, Catherine, “Lies, Half-Truths, Considerable Secrets: Colette and Re-Writing the Self” in Redefining Autobiography in

Twentieth-Century Women’s Fiction, edited by Janice Morgan and Colette T. Hall, New York: Garland, 1991 Stewart, Joan Hinde, Colette, Boston: Twayne, 1983 Ward, Nicole Jouve, Colette, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, and Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1987

Collaborative Autobiography Collaborative autobiography occupies an awkward position between more established, more prestigious forms of life writing. On one side is solo autobiography, in which the writer, the narrator, and the subject (or protagonist) of the narrative are all the same person – or at least they share the same name. On the other side is biography, in which the writer and narrator are one person, while the subject is someone else. In the middle, combining features of the adjacent forms – and thus challenging the common-sense distinction between them – is collaborative autobiography. There are different kinds and degrees of collaboration, but in the most familiar arrangement, “as-told-to” autobiography, the writer is one person, while the narrator and subject are someone else. (In this scenario, then, one partner supplies the “life” while the other provides the “writing”.) Although the process by which the text is produced is dialogical, the product is monological; the two voices are permitted to engage in dialogue only in supplementary texts – forewords and afterwords – and even there the dialogue is managed and presented by the nominal author. Collaborative autobiography has a nearly oxymoronic status, and the single narrative voice – a simulation by one person of the voice of another – is always in danger of breaking, exposing differences and conflicts of interest that are not present in solo autobiography. Collaborative autobiography may be understood as occupying a continuum from ethnographic autobiography, in which the writer outranks the generally anonymous subject, to celebrity autobiography, in which the famous subject outranks the generally anonymous writer. (So-called “ghostwritten” autobiography – which involves a covert collaboration – generally occurs at the latter end of the continuum. However, when ghostwriting is suspected in the ethnographic scenario, it is generally considered more corrupt, perhaps because ethnographic autobiographies are supposed to be purer – i.e. less commercial – than celebrity “autobiographies”.) Although most collaborative narratives are situated at the ends of the continuum, significant numbers of texts can be found closer to the middle. At the very centre are those texts produced by partners who are true peers – for example, dual autobiographies, in which each partner contributes a separate narrative, and truly co-authored (rather than “as-told-to”) autobiographies. (An example of the former would be Cancer in Two Voices, 1991, by Sandra Butler and Barbara Rosenblum.) Near the centre would be found those single-author texts that not only focus on someone close to the author – usually a family member – in the manner of memoir, but also rely heavily on the participation of that person in the storytelling. (Paul John Eakin calls these “relational lives”; they are also sometimes called “auto/biographies”.) In these texts there is more than one subject, and the act of collaboration may itself be presented in the foreground of the narrative rather than confined to the background or to supplementary texts.

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Collaborative autobiography is especially interesting because it raises ethical issues distinct from those inherent in biography and autobiography. Ethical problems are most likely to arise where there is a significant differential between the partners in power, educational attainment, or socio-economic status. Different ethical issues tend to arise depending upon where the texts are located on this continuum. For example, violation of privacy tends to be more of an issue in relational lives, where the partners know each other intimately, than in most other forms of collaborative autobiography. Ethical violations – inequities – occur mainly in two distinct but interrelated aspects of the project: the portrayal and the partnership. The justice of the portrayal has to do with whether the text represents its subject the way the subject would like to be represented, whether that portrayal is in the subject’s best interests, with the role the subject played in determining it, and with the degree and kind of harm done by any misrepresentation. Harm can be done to the subject’s privacy, to his or her reputation, even to his or her integrity as an individual. Problems with portrayal are most likely to crop up when the subject’s ability to audit and edit the manuscript is limited – that is, mainly in the ethnographic scenario. There is also the possibility of conflict between the writer’s obligation to portray the subject as he or she would wish and the writer’s obligation to the historical record. Lapses in – or creations of – memory can force collaborators to choose between serving as scribes and functioning as reality checks, between loyalty to their subjects and fidelity to historical truth. The biographer’s position is different: the biographer has a clear obligation to check the record and has no necessary obligation to the subject – except in the case of the authorized biographer. Autobiographers are generally not viewed as obliged to research their own lives; the presumed subjectivity of the genre gains them a degree of latitude when it comes to fact checking. The equity of the partnership has to do with the conditions of, and the division of, labour and the distribution of the proceeds. A prime concern with any partnership is whether collaboration is truly voluntary or somehow coerced. Inequities of partnership are difficult to avoid in the ethnographic scenario, which is often shaped by colonial relationships, but they may occur in the celebrity scenario as well. There the relation (which is generally contractual) between subject and writer is effectively that between employer and employee, with all the potential for conflict that lies in such arrangements. Collaborative autobiography is inherently ventriloquistic. Naive readers may assume that the writer serves as the subject’s dummy, but the text often owes more to the writer than to the subject. The danger of reading collaborative autobiography is of attributing solely to the subject a narrative not originating with him or her and not edited by him or her. Since celebrities are more likely to have the opportunity to review the prose ascribed to them, ethnographic subjects are more likely to be unwittingly misrepresented in a kind of well-intentioned forgery. In celebrity autobiography, there is a different dynamic at work, in which the subject may assume, or be given, more credit for the writing than is legitimate (which is tantamount to plagiarism). If we broaden our scope beyond those practices usually deemed literary or anthropological, we can see that ventriloquistic autobiography may take less benign forms. As Margreta de Grazia has pointed out, a false confession obtained by means

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of torture might euphemistically be described as “collaborative autobiography”; such a text would obviously involve inequity in portrayal as well as of “partnership”. In such cases, both the process and the product may be extremely harmful to the subject. The extortion of a true confession – that is, a confession to a crime that the confessor did commit – could also be described only euphemistically as a collaborative autobiography. Further examples of subtly coercive – and thus unethical – collaborative life writing may be found in abuses of psychiatric practice. Most forms of psychotherapy involve what might be seen as “collaborative autobiography”. What is ideally a benign and therapeutic process, however, is liable to ethical misuse. Obvious examples may be found in the “recovery” of false memories of abuse or other trauma, except that this is not coerced confession but coerced accusation – autobiography as character assassination. Autobiographical collaborations are rather like marriages and other domestic partnerships: partners enter into a relationship of some duration, they “make life” together, and they produce an offspring that will derive traits from each of them. Each partner has a strong interest in the fate of that offspring, which will reflect on each in a different way. Much of this is true of any collaborative authorship, of course; with autobiography, however, the fact that the joint product is a life story raises the stakes – at least for the subject. G. Thomas Couser Further Reading Butler, Sandra, and Barbara Rosenblum, Cancer in Two Voices, San Francisco: Spinsters Ink, 1991 Couser, G. Thomas, “Making, Taking, and Faking Lives: The Ethics of Collaborative Life Writing”, Style, 32/2 (1998): 334–50 de Grazia, Margreta, “Sanctioning Voice: Quotation Marks, the Abolition of Torture, and the Fifth Amendment” in The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature, edited by Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1994 Eakin, Paul John, “‘The Unseemly Profession’: Privacy, Inviolate Personality, and the Ethics of Life Writing” in How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1999 Eakin, Paul John, “Relational Selves, Relational Lives: Autobiography and the Myth of Autonomy” in How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1999 Lejeune, Philippe, “The Autobiography of Those Who Do Not Write” in his On Autobiography, edited by Paul John Eakin, translated by Katherine Leary, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989

Collective Lives Collections of biographies are more pervasive and varied than individual biographies. Saints’ lives, baseball cards, celebrity magazines, dictionaries of national biography, the Gospels, databases of census data, Halls of Fame, oral histories, Who’s Who, genealogies, ethnographies, obituaries, cemeteries, or a file folder of job applications – all are lives placed or woven together for a purpose. Scores of terms have been coined for the different kinds of gatherings. Complete lives collected for devotional purposes can be hagiographies, martyrologies, or the necrologies of religious

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orders. Secular collections include biographical dictionaries organized by nationality, gender, race, profession, or historical moment. Individual biographies can also come in series, whether the English Men of Letters, or Gangster week on the A&E Biography Channel in the United States. And in rare cases – most notably the Christian Gospels – several lives of the same person can appear in a multiple biography. Those responsible for such collections often remain anonymous. In other instances, though, the biographer is also identified with the method of gathering. Chinese historian Sima Qian’s (145–c.90 bce) gallery of biographies in Shiji (Historical Records), or the discrete narratives printed together in Izaak Walton’s Lives (1670), or the biographical introductions that make up Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets (1779–81), all famously display the writer’s shaping hand. The Greek biographer Plutarch’s Vitae parallelae (2nd century ce; Parallel Lives) knit Rome and Greece together, while the perspective of an insightful observer links the biographical impressions in the 17th-century antiquary John Aubrey’s Brief Lives (published in 1813). Single-author multiple biographies such as Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians (1918) gather lives to explore some shared characteristic or historical moment. In composite biographies, or prosopographies, a professional field or a specific event may determine the subjects. And dual, family, and group biographies provide accounts of their subjects’ relations, instead of the full sweep of their individual lives. From their earliest appearance, collective biographies have reflected, and even embodied, a community’s sense of itself. Sima Qian’s massive dynastic history of China also contains separate portraits of that history’s principal figures, lending support to Thomas Carlyle’s claim that “History is the essence of innumerable biographies” 2000 years before he made it. Plutarch’s parallel lives often provide assessments of how notable Romans measure up against illustrious or infamous Greeks who faced similar political, intellectual, or personal challenges. Revelation binds together the Christian Gospels. Gathering together lives composed over the course of a century, this multiple biography relates the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus four times to the same theological effect. The Gospels then inform the saints’ lives that proliferated during Christianity’s steady ascendancy in Europe. Chronological and figural in themselves, these holy lives are providential in their ordering: the liturgical calendar sets the most fitting day to meditate upon a particular saint’s example. Many world religions have established similar groupings of exemplary individuals who embody virtues or vices to embrace or shun. The ostensibly didactic purpose of such collections has, however, also functioned as an excuse for reader voyeurism. A series such as England’s Newgate Calendar can justify graphic and entertaining accounts of criminal lives by placing them under the mantle of moral instruction. Two impulses inform the many kinds of biographical collections that became increasingly prominent from the 16th century onwards. The first is the distinctive talent of the biographer – Aubrey’s engaging eclecticism, Johnson’s magisterial power, William Hazlitt’s lively, iconoclastic tone in those biographical essays that together reveal The Spirit of the Age (1825), or Carlyle’s prophetic vision of history as a series of shifts in

favoured biographical subjects, proclaimed in his lecture series On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841). The second impulse is the same institutional imperative that produced the great encyclopedias and national dictionaries. In France the Biographie universelle (1843–61), in Britain the Dictionary of National Biography (1882–1901; continuing and under extensive revision), and the Dictionary of American Biography (1928–36; continuing) all assume that history, nationhood, and culture can be understood by studying notable lives. This same conviction paradoxically led to the recording and collecting of “ordinary” or “marginal” lives. In his periodical series London Labour and London Poor (1851–62), Henry Mayhew provided an increasingly detailed anatomy of a domestic population by publishing representative lives drawn from interviews – a practice with implications for the future of oral history and ethnography. Collective biographies also asserted the significance of marginalized or unrecorded populations. Anna Jameson’s volumes of distinguished women (1830s), or the many collections of distinguished African-American lives, or even the mug books, containing biographies actually paid for by their American subjects, all assume that recording individual lives can bring a group into history. Perhaps the most frequently discussed of all modern collective biographers, Lytton Strachey famously used the four brief lives in Eminent Victorians to strike at the foundations of monumental biography, and to write an obituary for the troubled spirit of that age. Though not one itself, Strachey’s book strongly influenced the writing of group biographies, which Margot Peters defines as “the interweaving of a number of lives by one writer to show how they interact with each other”. Both Peters and Ira Nadel declare that this genre is a modern development. Heretofore, collective biographies presented lives in sequence, not simultaneously. Such works as Leon Edel’s Bloomsbury: A House of Lions (1979), Stanley Weintraub’s London Yankees (1979), and Peters’s own Bernard Shaw and the Actresses (1980), however, follow Darwin’s, Marx’s, Freud’s, and the modern European novel’s example by regarding individuals as constructs of community. Even listing the many methods practised for gathering lives in the 20th century would be impossible. Every strategy already mentioned is still being employed, and more appear each year. Two trends should, however, be mentioned. First, biographies no longer necessarily, or even primarily, come together in books. Audio and videotape have transformed ethnography and oral history; television and the internet have produced collections such as the Biography Channel, or the gatherings created on computer by spontaneously browsing through available links. Second, the success of widely distributed “bio” magazines such as People and Hello, or of works collected and performed by a single figure, such as On the Road, Anna Devere Smith’s ever-changing oral history of America, confirm that collective biographies are attracting different, ever-larger audiences. Craig Howes Further Reading Casper, Scott E., Constructing American Lives: Biography and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999 Hazlett, John Downton, My Generation: Collective Autobiography and Identity Politics, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998

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Nadel, Ira Bruce, Biography: Fiction, Fact and Form, New York: St Martin’s Press, and London: Macmillan, 1984 Parke, Catherine Neal, Biography: Writing Lives, Boston: Twayne, 1996 Peters, Margot, “Group Biography: Challenges and Methods” in New Directions in Biography: Essays, edited by Anthony M. Friedson, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1981 Whittemore, Reed, Pure Lives: The Early Biographers, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988 Winslow, Donald J., Life-Writing: A Glossary of Terms in Biography, Autobiography, and Related Forms, 2nd edition, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995 (first edition, 1980) Yelton, Donald Charles, Brief American Lives: Four Studies in Collective Biography, Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1978

Computers and Life Writing Computer technology has affected life writing in a wide range of ways. Apart from the pervasive influence of this technology on virtually every aspect of our lives, the computer shapes life writing both as a tool and as a medium of expression. From simple word-processing to the electronic book, from self-representation in the MUDs and MOOs (object-oriented multi-user domains) and chatrooms of the internet to the hypertextual, multimedia, and interactive works on the World Wide Web, computer technology intervenes in important ways in the production of life writing. As a tool, the computer offers us a new “writing space”, to use the term proposed by Jay David Bolter. Bolter argues that, like the papyrus roll, the codex, and the printed book before it, electronic writing has distinct conceptual and practical characteristics: “Each physical writing space fosters a particular understanding both of the act of writing and of the product, the written text”. In short, the computer as a writing space shapes the structure and style of writing and, along with it, the experience of reading. Networked computers, as a medium of communication, provide new venues for the “publication” of life writing and new forms in which people can represent themselves and their lives. Social scientists have been particularly interested in self-representation in internet MOOs and chatrooms. MOOs generally allow the participant to create a role and assign himself or herself a gender, physical characteristics, a history, a personality. In Sherry Turkle’s interpretation, MOOs are laboratories for the self in which people can enact dramas of self-repair, refashioning their real identities by inhabiting multiple virtual identities. Allucquere Rosanne Stone similarly suggests that the internet holds out the possibility for a nontraumatic multiplicity of selves. The “virtual personae” created on the internet constitute a mode of life writing that is not possible in the print medium: a dynamic and interactive “alternative life writing”. The World Wide Web combines the interactivity of the internet with the hypertextual and multimedia capabilities of the electronic book and CD-ROM, providing the widest range of computer-mediated options for life writing. Indeed, although the Web is increasingly dominated by commercial sites, the proliferation of personal homepages, online diaries, life writing anthologies, webcams, and other acts of personal expression demonstrates that many people are using the Web as a medium and venue for personal storytelling. Several websites are devoted

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to soliciting and publishing (online) personal narratives: the Center for Life Stories Preservation site offers an extensive collection of links to military memoirs, genealogy sites, oral histories, and family history writing on the Web; the Center for the Study of Lives, under construction from 2000, aims to provide an online archive of life stories to which readers can contribute. Websites such as these also offer guidelines, questions, and interactive prompts for aspiring life writers; the Center for the Study of Lives promises “an interactive version of the life story interview” that people can use to develop their life stories. As access to the internet becomes more widespread and as Webauthoring software becomes easier to use, we may expect more people to publish life writing in this medium. Few autobiographical texts currently on the Web are masterpieces, although some do have literary merit. They seem rather to fit the definition of “everyday autobiography” proposed by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson in Getting a Life: “the practices through which people assemble narratives out of their own experiential histories”, taking up models of identity that are culturally available and institutionally constrained. In Webbased writing, the constraints are also medium-specific – that is, the medium facilitates and constrains certain structures and forms of expression. In this sense, life writing on the Web makes us aware that life writing as we know it is shaped and defined to some extent by the medium of print (Elizabeth Bruss makes a similar point about autobiographical film in “Eye for I”). What are the forms and characteristics of life writing on the Web? First, the Web’s hypertextual structure enables a nonlinear, non-chronological, and multiple ordering of the life story and thus readily represents the writer’s subjectivity as dispersed and discontinuous. The linearity of the book, on the contrary, encourages a representation of the autobiographical subject as unified, coherent, developmental, and organic. The book as a medium encourages writers and readers to take a single line through the narrative of a life, with causal and rational connections made between discrete events, whereas the Web’s hypertextual organization diminishes chronology and causality as organizing principles of the life story, in favour of a structure defined by themes, preoccupations, and multiple continuities. We see this clearly in personal homepages, which are often organized by the different roles that the author takes on in his or her life: professional, hobbyist, family member, friend. A more extensive example comes from Shelley Jackson’s autobiographical website, entitled My Body: A Wunderkammer &. The homepage of the site contains an image map of Jackson’s drawing of her body; this image constitutes a flexible table of contents, as an initial click on any body part begins a narrative in which stories are interlinked not by chronology or causality but by the multiple, mostly theme-based choices offered by the writer and made by the reader. A second distinguishing characteristic of life writing on the Web is its open and dynamic nature. The Web is perpetually updatable and in this sense is quite different from the book, which must be finished and fixed at a certain point in order to exist. The Web’s openness to addition and revision enables the representation of an evolving and emerging sense of self and of a life story perpetually in formation and under revision. It is no surprise that much life writing on the Web takes the form of journals or diaries, in which the act of reflection is ongoing and the autobiographical project is anything but a final statement on

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a life. One Web diarist, Terry Baker, calls his site “an appendage to my life”; life writing occurs alongside the life rather than after it, as it were. Life writing on the Web thus seems less concerned with remembering the past than with sorting through the present. A third significant feature of Web-based life writing is its potential interactivity. Many websites include a “mailto” – that is, a feature that allows readers to contact the author of a site. At In the Fray, a hypertextual anthology of short autobiographical stories, this interactive potential is exploited by having each story end with a question directed to the reader and focused on the theme of the story (e.g. “When have you felt afraid?”; “What makes you joyful?”). The question links to a page on which readers can submit responses, and all of these responses are then published on subsequent linked pages. In other words, after each mini-autobiography are autobiographical responses submitted by readers. In sheer volume, the readers’ stories overwhelm the main story (they often number in the hundreds), although the readers’ submissions are not illustrated and are not as accessible, since one has to read to the end of the main story to get to them. Still, the chance for interaction undoubtedly yields a different kind of reading and a different kind of writing. James Olney has suggested that the reader of autobiography in print is a “vicarious or a closet autobiographer … able to participate fully if vicariously in the self-creation going on in autobiography”. At In the Fray and at other life-writing websites, the reader is invited to come out of the closet, as it were, to publish his or her own life writing and thereby to enter into a dialogue with the author and with other readers. A final important characteristic of Web-based life writing is its capacity to include multimedia. Personal homepages often include photographs of the author and of his or her friends and family. Authors of life writing on the Web experiment with other forms of multimedia expression. At Terrapindream, Terry Baker’s Web diary, some of the entries are collages of text and image composed in Photoshop. There are two “webrings” (a linked group of websites) devoted to online journal sites that combine image and text: Archipelago and The Mandelbrot Set. At these sites, the Web’s multimedia features allow for a story that is told in images, video, and sound as much as in language, and for a sense of subjectivity that is not formed and represented primarily in language. Computer technology enables a mode of life writing that combines voice and video with text and image to produce a subject mediated in a variety of ways. In more general terms, the interplay of computers and life writing provides an interesting paradox. It is clear that computer technology has rendered quite problematic our sense of privacy and of control over our own personal histories. Data that constitute fragmented “profiles” of ourselves (financial, medical, educational, psychological) are collected, stored, and dispersed without our knowledge, and this is, as Smith and Watson note in Getting a Life, a profoundly alienating and objectifying, or “othering”, experience: “Collecting autobiographical data is, perversely, a central instrument in the othering machinery of modern technological culture.” The extent to which the Web and the internet might be used to counter this technological “othering” with playful and provisional self-constructions of identity is yet to be determined, although it would seem that forums for life writing offer particularly substantive opportunities for this.

A study of life writing on the Web and the internet returns us to the familiar terrain of print life writing with new questions to ask about what had previously seemed to be a natural, inevitable understanding of who we are and how our life stories might be told. Further, such a study suggests the crucial issues of identity but also agency that arise in the ongoing project to understand the impact of computer technology on the way we live and represent our lives. Madeleine Sorapure Further Reading Selected websites: Archipelago, edited by Lucy Huntzinger, www.spies.com/~islands Baker, Terry, Terrapindream, www.terrapindream.com Bibliography of texts concerning virtual identity, hanbat.chungnam.ac.kr/~leejh/VIdentity.html Center for Life Stories Preservation, www.storypreservation.com/ Center for the Study of Lives, www.usm.maine.edu/coe/csl/ Chandler, Daniel, “Personal Home Pages and the Construction of Identities on the Web”, www.aber.ac.uk/~dgc/webident.html Donea, Magdalena, Moments, moments.org Gergen, Kenneth, “Technology and the Self: From the Essential to the Sublime”, www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/kgergen1/text11.html In the Fray, edited by Derek Powazek, www.fray.com Jackson, Shelley, My Body: A Wunderkammer &, www.altx.com/thebody Kelly, Paul, “Human Identity Part 1: Who Are You”, www-home.calumet.yorku.ca/pkelly/www.idl.htm The Mandelbrot Set, edited by Gingko, www.jade-leaves.com/mandelbrot_set Miller, Hugh and Russell Mather, “The Presentation of Self in WWW Home Pages”, www.sosig.ac.uk/iriss/papers/paper21.htm My Story Software, www.mystorywriter.com/home.htm Nelson-Kilger, Max, “The Digital Individual”, www.cpse.org/conferences/cfp93/nelson-kilger.html The Personal Home Page Institute, www.asc.upenn.edu/USR/sbuten/phpi.htm

Books: Baty, S. Paige, E-Mail Trouble: Love and Addiction @ the Matrix, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999 Bly, Robert W., The Encyclopedia of Business Letters, Fax Memos, and E-Mail, Franklin Lakes, New Jersey: Career Press, 1999 Bolter, Jay David, Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing, Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991 Bruss, Elizabeth, “Eye for I: Making and Unmaking Autobiography in Film” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by James Olney, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Civin, Michael A., Male, Female, Email: The Struggle for Relatedness in a Paranoid Society, New York: Other Press, 2000 Lejeune, Philippe (editor), “Du Cahier à l’ordinateur”, special issue of Récits de Vies et Médias, 20 (1999) Lejeune, Philippe, Cher Ecran: journal personnel, ordinateur, internet, Paris: Seuil, 2000 Olney, James, “Autobiography and the Cultural Moment,” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by Olney, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson (editors), Getting a Life: Everyday Uses of Autobiography, Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1996 Stone, Allucquere Rosanne, The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995 Turkle, Sherry, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995

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Conduct Books The conduct book is a form of autobiographical life writing in which the author draws from his or her personal experience with the conscious intention of instructing or advising younger, less socially experienced readers on issues of personal behaviour. Often writing from a position of authority, either social or spiritual, authors generally cite a combination of age and wisdom as justification for their credibility as advisers to their readers. This form of life writing is similar to courtesy books, etiquette guides, and letter manuals, but differentiates itself by content that is usually focused on inner, rather than outer, improvement. This genre, which dates back to the Middle Ages, first gained popularity in England during the Elizabethan Renaissance with a readership that was primarily aristocratic in origin. Conduct books had their English-language genesis in The Boke Named the Governour, published in 1531 by Sir Thomas Elyot. This period’s contribution to the developing genre was distinguished by courtiers’ concerns with how best to affect their social position at court. This interest led to the popularity of both publicly and privately distributed pamphlets and longer prose works dealing with the topic, as well as to the translation of Continental tracts dealing with court life. (Perhaps the most well-known today of Continental conduct books was Badassarre Castiglione’s Il libro del contegiano (1528), translated as The Book of the Courtier in 1561.) As Jacques Carré describes it in The Crisis of Conduct (1994), these works were generally published by writers marked by “social superiority … parental responsibility, professional experience or positions of trust”. Early works focused primarily on issues of upper-class masculine social concern, rather than on the improvement of the individual’s inner soul or the domestic realm. During the 17th century, topics discussed in conduct books began to include issues of greater interest to the rising British merchant classes, rather than those relating to life at court. With the Reformation, the advocacy of the courtier as the “beauideal” found less and less of a place in the literature. Works by aristocratic writers, such as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Bacon, made way for those penned by advisers of a lesser social standing. The Restoration period provided a ripe environment for debating issues of gentility, particularly as they related to masculinity, and pamphleteers, satirists, and dramatists all found inspiration in exploring the topic of proper conduct. Daniel Defoe and John Dunton became notable contributors to this new phase in conduct literature, as well as such notable prose writers as Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele in the periodicals The Tatler and The Spectator (1709–12). The genre also began to make its mark on the evolving prose form of the epistolary novel. Incorporating elements of the 17thcentury letter-manual, many 18th-century conduct books were formatted as a series of letters of advice between an elder mentor and their younger protégé. This created a sense of intimacy and immediacy with the reader, which the epistolary novel attempted to imitate. Two particularly noteworthy examples of this cross-genre borrowing can be found in Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747–48), both of which evolved out of the author’s concern with conduct books. These early novels both stress the importance of proper moral conduct

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between classes and genders, particularly for young women. Conduct became a means of establishing social stratification among the newborn middle classes, and Puritan virtues, such as time management, spiritual development, and a work ethic, provided new emphases in the literature of manners. This was particularly the case in the conduct books favoured by the American colonies, where aristocratic ideals held little sway over daily life. At the beginning of the 18th century the gender focus of conduct literature shifted, and the proper education and behaviour of the female reader came into play, along with issues of domesticity. Richard Allestree’s The Lady’s Calling, published anonymously in 1673, was one of the first widely read conduct books aimed at a female audience, and was followed by works such as George Berkeley’s The Ladies Library (1714) and the more secular and liberal Reflections on Courtship and Marriage by Benjamin Franklin (1746) and The Female Spectator by Eliza Haywood (1744–46). For the next two centuries and, as some critics maintain, well into the 20th century, women in both Britain and America would provide the primary focus for the author of the conduct book. Topics included everything from education to recreation, with an emphasis on maintaining the proper social decorum for one’s gender and class position in every situation. The window that such life writing provided into the everyday lives and expectations of middle-class women has since provided gender theorists with significant cultural material for study. Conduct books are often used synonymously with “courtesy” or “etiquette” literature by theorists, but certain distinctions can be made to distinguish them from similar genres. Generally, courtesy or etiquette books are linked only to those works aimed at replicating aristocratic behaviour, and while early conduct literature had this as its purpose, the genre as a whole aims at more middle-class pursuits and the holistic development of the self, rather than simply surface actions (see the introduction to The Ideology of Conduct by Armstrong and Tennenhouse). As a result, scholars of conduct books tend to disagree as to which historical period witnessed the climax of the genre. For those who equate the field solely with courtesy literature, the Renaissance is often seen as the focal point of the genre’s history (see Carré), or the early 17th century (see Noyes). For those who view conduct more holistically, the 18th century is often viewed as the zenith of this literature, particularly as it relates to women (see Armstrong and Tennenhouse, or Jane Rose in Catherine Hobbs). Regardless of which historical period is seen as primary to the development of the genre as a whole, the most important critical studies of this literature revolve around the work that conduct books do as a part of popular culture. Few, if any, conduct books are noteworthy in themselves from a canonical point of view. What is important about this aspect of life writing, however, is the first-hand role it plays in perpetuating social codes and cultural ideology. The conduct book has played a significant role in the creation, maintenance, and control of the middle class from the Restoration period to the present day. Like the Bible, works in this genre could be found on most families’ bookshelves and were consulted for personal advice nearly as religiously as their spiritual counterpart. As conduct writing went through the process of being disseminated from the world of the courtier into the middle classes and the domestic realm of women, it became a powerful

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tool in the hands of often conservative authors for the maintenance of cultural and gender norms in times of rapidly occurring social and economic change. The upper classes were encouraged to maintain the outer affections of their superiority, the middle classes the signs of their spiritually driven work ethic, and the increasingly educated female gender to apply their growing intellect in the subservient sphere of domesticity. In 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman became the first work to question the conservative recommendations towards women advocated by many writers in the genre. Recent studies continue to provide new critical perspectives on the ideological dimensions of conduct as it relates to gender. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse’s collection, examines the genre as it applies to female readers from its earliest moments to the present day, and works by Kevin Hayes and Jane Rose specifically look at the ramifications of the conduct book for American audiences. The autobiographical content and conscious nature of the conduct book as a form of life writing make it both an important record of individual lives and of the first-hand perpetuation of social mores between generations. Caroline Elizabeth Wiebe See also Ethics; Handbooks and Guides

Further Reading Armstrong, Nancy and Leonard Tennenhouse (editors),The Ideology of Conduct: Essays on Literature and the History of Sexuality, London and New York, Methuen, 1987 Carré, Jacques (editor), The Crisis of Courtesy: Studies in the ConductBook in Britain, 1600–1900, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994 Hayes, Kevin J., A Colonial Woman’s Bookshelf, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996 Newton, Sarah E., Learning to Behave: A Guide to American Conduct Books before 1900, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994 Noyes, Gertrude E., Bibliography of Courtesy and Conduct Books in Seventeenth-Century England, New Haven, Connecticut: Tuttle, Morehouse and Taylor, 1937 Rose, Jane E., “Conduct Books for Women, 1830–1860: A Rationale for Women’s Conduct and Domestic Role in America” in Nineteenth-Century Women Learn to Write, edited by Catherine Hobbs, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995

Confessions Two landmark books bear the title Confessions. Saint Augustine established the prototype confessional autobiography at the end of the 4th century ce, while Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions appeared in 1782–89. These pivotal works mark respectively the religious origin and the secular transformation of the genre. By giving his project the very same name as its ancient counterpart, Rousseau at once paid homage to Augustine and signalled a new departure. This paradoxical strategy enabled the Swiss-French thinker to stake his claim to originality even as he invoked the literary lineage of his personal story. Confessional life writing accordingly owes its long history to these defining models. Augustine provides the first Western paradigm for a literary self-presentation in a retrospective narrative structure. His “confessio peccati et laudis” (confession of sin and praise [of

God]) follows the biblical pattern of two selves in conflict, the old and the new, the one imprisoned in sin, the other released by grace. The split subjectivity between “what I once was” and “what I am now” produces a discontinuous account in which “an atemporal and nonlocalized writing self … accusingly confronts a self lost in time” as Hans Robert Jauss has described it. To resolve the problem of personal identity Augustine turns towards the immutable God, “never new, never old”, who continually gathers the fragmented self into one. A coherent story becomes possible for Augustine because the human narrator enters into an I / Thou relationship with the divine Author. Such a story can be told only if an allegory of the self displaces autobiography. Any assertion of selfhood and autonomy, in modern terms, is illicit and, in fact, constitutes the essence of sin in Augustine’s view (see Freccero). A memorable incident from his early life, which involves the theft of pears in an orchard, illustrates the point well. The crime itself is petty, yet it holds great symbolic significance. “No sooner had I picked them than I threw them away,” Augustine relates, “and tasted nothing in them but my own sin, which I relished and enjoyed.” As a character in his own small story, Augustine repeats a momentous act in the biblical “grand narrative”: Adam’s eating of the forbidden fruit in Eden. The re-enactment of the primal desire to be godlike renders him a type of the fallen human race: “All who desert you and set themselves up against you merely copy you in a perverse way.” Fittingly, Augustine’s conversion also takes place in a garden when he hears voices of children calling him to “take it and read” (“tolle, lege”). On reading the text to which they have directed him – Paul’s Epistle to the Romans – Augustine changes his life for good by opting to imitate the life of Christ. Rousseau counters the premises and method of Augustine in the famous opening to his Confessions: I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent, and which once complete, will have no imitator. My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray will be myself. Simply myself. I know my own heart and understand my fellow man. But I am made unlike anyone I have ever met; I will even venture to say that I am like no one in the whole world. I may be no better, but at least I am different. (Cohen’s translation) In contrast to Augustine’s portrait of a soul made in the image and likeness of a Maker, Rousseau depicts himself as a unique individual who breaks the mould of his species. No longer identified by his relation to God and other human beings, he withdraws into what Anne Hartle calls “the isolated selfsufficiency of the essentially private self”. His declaration of independence makes him “impatient of any sort of restraint”. What corrupts natural human goodness, according to Rousseau, is not original sin but institutions. The undeserved punishment he receives as a child for breaking a comb acts as a metaphor for his fall from innocence: “[I] lived as we are told the first man lived in the earthly paradise, but [I] no longer enjoyed it.” This initial experience of the world’s injustice serves as a backdrop for a later incident that parallels Augustine’s theft of pears. Although Rousseau feels remorse for falsely accusing a servant girl for a crime he committed (stealing a piece of ribbon), he

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absolves himself of responsibility by confessing directly to his readers rather than to God. Honesty covers a multitude of sins. Society is to be blamed first for preventing him from becoming “a good man in every way”, and then for presumptuously censuring him on that account. In fact, Rousseau boldly challenges anyone to say, “I was a better man than he” after reading his Confessions. Despite his shortcomings, Rousseau’s writing self remains the measure of all things and his own sovereign judge. By usurping God’s privity, Rousseau unveils the secrets of his innermost being and holds the disparate moments of his life together in one eternal glance. No divided self ruptures his narrative. The esemplastic power of the imagination maintains the “then as now” (Jauss) in a unified life experience. His epiphany on the road to Vincennes – the equivalent to Augustine’s garden scene – initiates him into a new life. Upon reading the question proposed by the Dijon Academy for its annual prize, he “beheld another universe and became another man”. The catalyst of renewal in this case is not the Bible but Rousseau’s own words. Twice denounced as the Antichrist, he counters by preaching a “new Gospel”. As Ann Hartle puts it, “Rousseau finds an eternal model in himself and holds out his Confessions saying ‘tolle et lege’.” Salvation comes from imitating the life inscribed by the self as secular scripture. Rousseau’s act of showcasing his own story spawned a host of revisionary readings of Augustine’s Confessions in the 19th and 20th centuries. The figure of the sinner as “Romantic hero”, who appears in works as diverse as Alfred de Musset’s La Confession d’un enfant du siècle (1836; The Confession of a Child of the Century), Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis (1905), and countless contemporary “true confessions”, can be traced back to Petrarch’s “turning Augustine against himself, making sin the principle of individuation” (Freccero) in his Renaissance works. The eponymous author of The Education of Henry Adams (1907; public edition, 1918) and T.E. Lawrence in his two autobiographies, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922) and The Mint (1963), both follow Rousseau in reversing Augustine’s method of working from a fragmented to a unified self. The same impulse drives modern fictional autobiography such as The Confessions of a Young Man (1889), George Moore’s story of an “art-tortured soul” as opposed to Augustine’s “God-tortured soul”, and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). These writers all echo in their own way Wilde’s comment, “Humanity will always love Rousseau for having confessed his sins, not to a priest, but to the world” (“The Critic as Artist”, 1891). Autobiographers since the Middle Ages have also returned to Augustine as a positive model for imitation. Notable examples include the poet Dante, who tells his own love story in La vita nuova (written 1292–94; The New Life), and Teresa of Avila, who mentions no author except Augustine in her Libro de la vida (1588; The Book of Her Life) and is deeply impressed by the garden scene in his Confessions. The English Puritans, perhaps more than any other group, revived the Augustinian conversion narrative over the next two centuries. Like their illustrious predecessor, both John Bunyan in Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) and William Cowper in The Memoir of an Early Life (1765) cite the reading of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans as critical turning points in their lives. Samuel Taylor Coleridge takes up Augustine’s practice of biblical exegesis in his Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (1840), while John Henry

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Newman in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864) pays tribute to Augustine’s own words as a new “tolle, lege”. Pieter [Pierre] Van der Meer de Walcheren, in his Dagboek (1917; translated into French as Journal d’un converti), marvels at how Augustine, despite a gap of centuries, can still speak forcefully about the vicissitudes of the inner life to a modern man like himself (see Courcelle). François Mauriac perhaps best captures the essence of the original Confessions: “ For a saint, the object of his study, which is himself, annihilates itself before God. Before He who is, he becomes he who is not.” For Mauriac, Rousseau misunderstands the great secret of confessional autobiography that Augustine discloses: “To die to oneself in order to be reborn in Christ” (introduction to Rousseau’s Confessions). Dominic Manganiello See also Conversion and Turning Points; Religious Autobiography; Religious Biography; Repentance and Life Writing; Revelation and Life Writing; Spiritual Autobiography

Further Reading Augustine, Confessions, translated by R.S. Pine-Coffin, Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 1961 Courcelle, Pierre, Les Confessions de Saint Augustin dans la tradition littéraire: antecedents et posterité, Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1963 Freccero, John, “Autobiography and Narrative” in Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, edited by Thomas C. Heller et al., Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1986 Hartle, Ann, The Modern Self in Rousseau’s Confessions: A Reply to St Augustine, Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983 Jauss, Hans Robert, Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics, translated from the German by Michael Shaw, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982 Jeffrey, David Lyle, People of the Book: Christian Identity and Literary Culture, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, and Cambridge: Institute for Advanced Christian Studies, 1996 Manganiello, Dominic, “Confession” in A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature, edited by David L. Jeffrey, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1992 Manganiello, Dominic, “Reading the Book of Himself: The Confessional Imagination of St Augustine and Joyce” in Biography and Autobiography: Essays on Irish and Canadian History and Literature, edited by James Noonan, Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1993 Mauriac, François, introduction to Les Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Paris: Cité des Livres, 1929 Mauriac, François, Commencements d’une vie, Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1932 Moore, George, Confessions of a Young Man, edited by Susan Dick, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1972 (first edition, 1888) O’Donnell, Thomas J., The Confessions of T.E. Lawrence: The Romantic Hero’s Presentation of Self, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1979 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Confessions, translated by J.M. Cohen, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1953; Baltimore: Penguin, 1963 Spender, Stephen, “Confessions and Autobiography” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by James Olney, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Wilde, Oscar, “The Critic as Artist” in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, London: Collins, 1966 (essay first published 1891)

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Confucianism and Life Writing In the Confucian scheme of things historiography ranks high. The great sage himself (551–479 bce) is believed to have edited extensively the Ch’un Ch’iu [Spring and Autumn Annals], the oldest of Chinese chronicles. That the foremost purpose of this book as well as all subsequent historical writings is didactic has remained a tenet of Confucianism. Furthermore, Confucius frequently expressed his great admiration of the cultural heroes of antiquity and he insisted that the elite be the exemplars for the rest of the nation. All these contributed to the decision on the part of historians, beginning with Ssu-ma Ch’ien [Sima Qian] (145-c.90 bce), to make biography the chief vehicle of their works. As historical writings proliferated, biography prospered in subsequent centuries. One of the primary tenets of Confucianism is filial piety (hsiao). This led to the reverence for the dead, which in turn was expressed in elaborate funeral rites. The result was a vast number of necrologies (literary commemorations of the dead), most of which contain biographies. If sentimental reasons caused them to proliferate, antiquarian interests and appreciation of calligraphy, growing rapidly from the 10th century onwards, converged in the preservation of thousands of inscribed necrologies in the form of rubbings, even though, as in most of the cases, the stone had long since crumbled away. If biography benefited from Confucianism, the same cannot be said about autobiography. The Confucian emphasis on modesty and self-effacement may have discouraged would-be autobiographers from revealing or expressing the self. An illustration for this can be found in the Shih-t’ung [Universals in History] written by the great historiographer Liu Chih-chi (661–721), a steadfast upholder of Confucian values. He chose to include in his authoritative book a chapter on autobiography. This was probably the earliest discourse on this topic and his feat was not repeated in China or elsewhere until modern times. Liu Chih-chi is stern in his criticism of autobiographers who boast of themselves. A modest form of self-expression he will tolerate, for he quotes with approval a few instances from the Lunyu (Analects) – sayings of Confucius transcribed by his disciples in the 6th century bce— in which the sage speaks of himself or encourages his disciples to express their wishes. But Liu finds faults in almost all autobiographers. “Whatever good deeds or talents they had, however minor or trivial, they insisted on recording in detail and with great verbosity.” The worst offender is Wang Ch’ung (27–97 ce), who commits the double sin of boasting of himself and doing so at the expense of his ancestors. Wang Ch’ung in the self-account section of his Lun heng [Balanced opinions] tells about how his forebears were despised by the local people because of their wrongdoings. He then compares himself to the two sage kings who had evil fathers. We must censure such behaviour in the name of Confucianism and consider it as an act of unfiliality, the worst of all crimes. Liu also frowns upon too much revelation.

tion, then what he writes is a veritable record. Yet Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju [179–117 bce] in his self-account mentions his unlawful acquisition of his wife Cho while travelling in Lin-ch’iung. What the “Spring and Autumn Annals” would have treated with reticence he boasts about. Although the episode may well have been true, there is nothing commendable about it. Is it not shameful to include such an episode in a self-account? One element of Confucianism, however, may have inspired one particular type of autobiography. The theme of selfcultivation abounds in all canonical works. For some, the goal is not merely knowledge and good conduct but an ultimate understanding of existence that borders on mysticism. Confucius himself gives support to this interpretation when he says in the Analects that if he succeeded in learning about the Tao in the morning he could die that night without regret. The quest for the Tao gradually became more and more fervent, and there was a parallel development among the Ch’an (Zen) Buddhists, who roamed the country ardently searching for enlightenment. A number of reasons, among them the lack of a suitable literary model, hindered the seekers from writing about their endeavours in detail. Several 13th-century Buddhist masters overcame the difficulties by narrating orally their tortuous life stories as a part of their sermons. Transcribed verbatim by their disciples, the published versions in turn inspired some Confucians, especially those of the Wang Yang-ming school, who in the 16th and 17th centuries wrote long accounts of their struggles – initial stirrings, brief breakthroughs, doubts, setbacks, and the final attainment of the truth. These themes are also shared by the Buddhists. The similarity between the two groups goes further. Their eagerness for self-transformation is often matched by their wanderlust, travel literature having provided them with a literary model. They report their quest as a double journey: strenuous upward locomotion accompanying spiritual progress. The hazardous ascent brought each to a salient point, where a sudden illumination struck the seeker. A common experience at this moment is the vision of enveloping bright light and the sense of complete union of the self with the universe. The most notable among what might be called spiritual autobiographers are the Buddhist master Tsu-ch’in (1216–87), the Confucian apostate Teng Huoch’ü (1498–1570), and Kao P’an-lung (1562–1626), otherwise an orthodox Confucian. After the conquest of China by the Manchus in 1644, Confucianism continued to hold sway, but the new dynasty was vigilant and efficient. Censorship and literary inquisition were carried out on a scale unsurpassed until the 20th century. Autobiographies flourished in the new climate, but they were no more than a month-by-month charting of an official career. Gone was the individual voice and moral fervour. Pei-yi Wu All Chinese names and titles rendered in the Wade-Giles transliteration sytem in this entry. See also China: to the 19th Century

Further Reading What should a self-account be? If the author conceals his shortcomings and presents his good deeds without falsifica-

Confucius, The Analects, translated by Raymond Dawson, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993

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Goodrich, L. Carrington and Chao-ying Fang (editors), Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1368–1644, New York: Columbia University Press, 1976 Huang, Tsung-hsi, Ming-ju hsüeh-an [Philosophical Records of Ming Confucians], Taipei: Shih-chieh shu-chü, 1965 Kuo, Teng-feng (editor), Li-tai tzu-hsü-chuan wen-ch’ao [An Anthology of Autobiographies], Shanghai: Shang wu yin shu Kuan, 1937 Liu Chih-chi, Shih-t’ung t’ung-shih: 20 chuan [Universals in History with Collected Annotations], edited by P’u Ch’i-lung, Taipei: Shihchieh shu-chü, 1962 Tu Lien-che (editor), Ming-jen tzu-chuan wen-ch’ao [An Anthology of Ming Autobiographies], Taipei: I-wen yin-shu-kuan, 1977 Tu Mu (editor), Wu-hsia chung-mu i-wen [Necrologies Recovered from Wu Area], Taipei: T’ai-wan shu-chü, 1969 Wang Chin-kuei, Chung-kuo chi-chuan-t’i wen-hsien yen-chiu [A Study of Chinese Biographical Writings], Beijing: Beijing ta-hsüeh ch’u-pan-she, 1996 Watson, Burton, Ssu-ma Ch’ien: Grand Historian of China, New York: Columbia University Press, 1958 Wu Pei-yi, “Varieties of The Chinese Self”, Designs of Selfhood, edited by Vytautas Kavolis, Rutherford, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, and London: Associated University Presses, 1984 Wu Pei-yi, The Confucian’s Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990

Conversations, Dialogues, and Table Talk Conversations, dialogues, and table talk may be defined as conversational types of biography, usually literary biography. In some of these works the mode of self-representation can become strongly pronounced, the narrator is reduced to the role of an amanuensis faithfully recording the views of his or her subjects, and the real “authorship” is cloaked. These genres bear the mark of a colloquial and informal representation of self and others. Dialogues often lean towards philosophical discourse, when they do not address others but meditate on the relationship between self and surroundings. In the context of their relevance to life writing, conversational poems may be seen more as fictional forms of writing than as auto/biographical narration modes. Thus, several conversational blank-verse poems written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth display qualities more contemplative than biographical. Dialogue (Greek for “conversation”) as a genre involves a discussion between characters. The earliest example is represented by Plato’s dialogues of Socrates (4th century bce) and this kind of writing has been revived from time to time. In the tradition of Plato, Walter Landor constructed his Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen (1824–29) as fictional discussions between famous living and dead persons. Paul Valéry’s collected Dialogues, considered by many to be his prose masterpieces, engage Socrates and Phaedrus in many religious and philosophical discussions, although the author admits that he was speaking in two voices. The two speakers invented by Valéry represent two aspects of the self, and therefore the work is characterizable as interior dialogue. Iris Murdoch’s Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues (1986) also consists of imaginary conversations. Dialogues became popular with biographers across various

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cultures in the 20th century. The most successful examples of non-imaginary documentary writing include Michael Ignatieff ’s Isaiah Berlin: A Life (1998), Solomon Volkov’s Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitrii Shostakovich, as Related to and Edited by Solomon Volkov (1979), Richard Burgin’s Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges (1969), Dialogues: Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet (translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, 1987), and Pierre Cabanne’s Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (1971, translated from the French by Ron Padgett). Generally speaking, dialogue is characterized by an exchange between two persons or groups, each acting alternately as speaker (I , we) and interlocutor (you). Critics usually identify three types of dialogue according to their functional characteristics: expositional dialogue (aimed at informing the first addressee), tonal dialogue (intended to portray character), and scenic dialogue (based on the confrontation of two main characters). Conversations are similar to dialogues. General conversations involve several speakers. Some biographers name their work “conversations”, underlining the dialogical nature of their discourse even if there is no literal dialogue but rather the double actualization characteristic of dialogism. The subject of such biographies appears to be talking to several speakers, and his or her general sayings and conversations are presented. Several important literary biographies fall into this category. One of the most famous and influential such biographies in European literature is Johann Eckermann’s Gespräche mit Goethe (1836– 48; Conversations with Goethe). Fine examples of this genre include Conversations of Lord Byron (compiled by Thomas Medwin, 1824), Daniel Smythe’s Robert Frost Speaks (1966), Arthur Power’s Conversations with James Joyce (1974), J.I. Biles and W. Golding’s Conversations with William Golding (1970), André Malraux: Past, Present, Future: Conversations with Guy Suares (1974), and Gustav Janouch’s Conversations with Kafka (translated by Goronwy Rees, 1971). Lidiia Chukovskaia’s The Akhmatova Journals: Volume 1, 1938–43, based on recorded conversations of Akhmatova with Chukovskaia and other contemporaries, stands close to the genre of conversations. Lack of biographical data concerning Akhmatova’s life during this period gives this historical document of Stalinism in Russia special significance. Sometimes the historical background is recreated by the writer’s imagination. Vivid examples are two works by Mark Twain: Date 1601: Conversation As It Was (1880) and Is Shakespeare Dead? From My Autobiography (1909) in which Twain invented imaginary conversations taking place in the Tudor period. Imaginary conversations and dialogues are also widely used in philosophical discourse. It is difficult to exclude from a list of the finest examples of the conversational tradition Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle’s Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686; Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds). Fontenelle began the tradition of éloges, brief biographies of all the recently deceased prominent scientists of the day. His conversations with the marquise on cosmological issues express advanced scientific ideas of the Enlightenment period, especially the new cosmology of the Copernican world view. A progressive feature of Fontenelle’s informal dialogues is allocating a woman as interlocutor, inviting female participation in the hitherto exclusively male domain of scientific discourse.

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The origin of table talk lies in ancient times. In France and Italy it was known as “ana”. This name is derived from Scaligerana (1669), a collection of the sayings of the physician Joseph Scaliger as recorded by his friend François Vertunien. John Selden’s Table-Talk appeared in 1689, and was followed by 17 prominent foreign examples. There are numerous examples of “ana” in Greek and Roman literature, for example Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae (The Deipnosophists, or, Banquet of the Learned) from c.200 ce and Aulus Gellius’ Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights) from the 2nd century ce. Various collections exist in Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, and European literature. The most important collection in the 16th century was Martin Luther’s Tischreden (Table Talk), also known and translated as Colloquia Mensalia. The conversations and dialogues of kitchens and dining rooms of the 20th century had been preceded by informal discussions – table talks. Leigh Hunt, a famous British theoretician and practitioner of table talk, defined the specific qualities of the genre in his Table Talk of 1851. He broke the unwritten rule prohibiting the writing of one’s own table talk. Table talk is a form of literary biography consisting of the sayings and opinions delivered informally by a famous person. Such personal opinions are recorded by their interlocutor. As Hunt put it, “Table-talk, to be perfect, should be sincere without bigotry, differing without discord, sometimes grave, always agreeable, touching on deep points, dwelling most on seasonable ones, and letting speak and be heard.” Some table talk stands closer to the autobiographical essay, for example William Hazlitt’s essays published as Table Talk (1821–22). Table talk differs from the essay insofar as the speaker in table talk shares equal importance with the subject. Future biographers are provided with invaluable contemporary material. Occasionally table talk itself grows into full biography. The finest example of such a biography may be James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). Another early example in English literature is William Drummond’s record of Ben Jonson’s visit to him in 1618 (published in Drummond’s Works, 1711). The genre of table talk was especially popular in the 18th century, mostly in France. Fragments of conversation and anecdotes are not table talk in the usual sense, but they provide a resource for future biographers. Thus, Sydney Smith and Sheridan were considered to be great conversationalists and diners-out in their time, and the record of their conversations provides great insight into their personalities and lifestyles. Coleridge produced a collection of useful observations on life, religious topics, and literature; his Specimens of the Table Talk (1835) has remained unsurpassed in English literature as a document of the Romantic period. The conversational type of biography continues to play an important role in contemporary culture, especially because of its mimetic function. It participates in the oral literary tradition, too, explaining a situation or pattern of behaviour, and providing a model for imitation. Alexandra Smith See also Gossip; Scandal; Interviews; Reminiscence and Life Story

Further Reading Biles, J.I. and W. Golding, Talk: Conversations with William Golding, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970

Broadhead, Glenn J., “A Bibliography of the Rhetoric Conversation in England, 1660–1880”, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 10 (1980): 43–48 Broadhead, Glenn J., “Samuel Johnson and the Rhetoric of Conversation”, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 20 (1980): 461–74 Burgin, Richard, Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges, New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1969; London: Souvenir Press, 1973 Cabanne, Pierre, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, translated from the French by Ron Padgett, London: Thames and Hudson, and New York: Viking Press, 1971 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Table Talk, and the Rime Of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, with an introduction by Henry Morley, London and New York: Routledge, 1884 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Table Talk, recorded by Henry Nelson Coleridge, edited by Carl Woodring, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990 Davies, Robertson, The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks, Toronto: Clarke Irwin, 1949; London: Chatto and Windus, 1951 Deleuze, Gilles and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, New York: Columbia University Press, and London: Athlone Press, 1987 (French edition, 1977) Eckermann, Johann, Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret, translated from the German by John Oxenford, London: Bell, 1913 Filloy, Richard A., “Deciding the Authorship of a Doubtful Text: The Case of John Selden’s Table Talk”, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70/1 (1984): 41–52 Gillespie, Katharine-Marie, “Table Talk: 17th-Century English and American Women Writers and the Rhetoric of Radical Domesticity” (dissertation), Buffalo: State University of New York, 1996 Hazlitt, William, Table Talk, or, Original Essays, London: Dent and New York: Dutton, 1930 (first published, 2 vols, 1821–22) Janouch, Gustav, Conversations with Kafka, 2nd edition, revised and enlarged, translated from the German by Goronwy Rees, New York: New Directions, and London: Deutsch, 1971 Jenkins, Nicholas (editor), The Table Talk of W.H. Auden and Alan Ansen, with an introduction by Richard Howard, New York: Sea Cliff Press, 1989; London and Boston: Faber, 1990 Landor, Walter Savage, Selected Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, edited by Charles L. Proudfit, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969 Leibich, Amia, Conversations with Dvora: An Experimental Biography of the First Modern Hebrew Woman Writer, edited by Chana Kronfeld and Naomi Seidman, translated by Naomi Seidman, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997 Macaulay, James, Doctor Johnson: His Life, Works and Table Talk, New York and London: Unwin, 1884; reprinted, Folcroft, Pennsylvania: Folcroft Library Editions, 1977 Marcus, Judith and Zoltan Tar (editors), Georg Lukács: Selected Correspondence, 1902–1920: Dialogues with Weber, Simmel, Buber, Mannheim, and Others, New York: Columbia University Press, 1986 Medwin, Thomas (compiler), Conversations of Lord Byron, edited by Ernest J. Lovell, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1966 (original edition, 1824) Power, Arthur, Conversations with James Joyce, edited by Clive Hart, New York: Barnes and Noble, and London: Millington, 1974 Ready, Robert, Hazlitt at Table, Rutherford, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, and London: Associated University Presses, 1981 Selden, John, Table-Talk, edited by Edward Arber, London: Murray, 1868; reprinted, Philadelphia: Saifer, 1972 Stern, Guy, “A Case for Oral Literary History: Conversation with or about Morgenstern, Lehmann, Reinacher and Thomas Mann”, German Quarterly, 37 (1964): 487–97 Thornton, James Cholmondeley, Table Talk: By Various Writers from Ben Jonson to Leigh Hunt, London: Dent, and New York: Dutton, 1934 Valéry, Paul, Dialogues, translated by William McCausland Stewart, with two prefaces by Wallace Stevens, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989

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Conversion and Turning Points The identification of turning points often plays a major role in autobiographies and biographies as well as in other life-writing forms such as the diary. This is clearly related to the Christian origins of much Western life writing, and to the model of conversion supremely represented by the Confessions of Augustine (written c.397–400 ce). Yet although narratives of religious, philosophical, or political conversion are common in the autobiographical tradition (Newman, Mill, Gandhi, Malcolm X), it is misleading to see this in isolation, or to limit turning points to this mode. In life writing, conversion is inevitably bound up with the way lives are given narrative shape. It is therefore fruitful to view turning points as part of the language of autobiography, with full-blown conversion narrative as one possible outcome. This has the advantage of underlining the central question raised by the prevalence of conversion structures and turning points in life writing: do they belong to the life itself, or principally to its recounting? The interconnections between conversion and turning points, and the problems they raise, are in fact at the heart of Augustine’s Confessions. The centrepiece of the saint’s conversion is the ultimate turning point: the famous “Tolle, lege” incident when Augustine, responding to children’s voices, felt commanded to open the Bible at random, and there read a passage he interpreted as a final incitement to embrace Christianity. But what is the status of this turning point? Did the “Tolle, lege” experience have a determining effect, or was it merely a catalyst? Did God intervene? Did chance play a hand? Or is it largely a symbolic event, a manner of speaking, a metaphor? In reality, Augustine’s conversion is a fact: at some point he abjured heresy and became a Christian. But if, in the narrative, fact becomes part of a story, a pattern, we may ask if the conversion itself, once narrated, belongs more to the story than to the events. The “Tolle, lege” incident pulls Augustine’s life into focus, giving form to inchoate experiences. Factually true or not, does the narrative event do justice to what actually happened? If this matters it is because one view of life writings is to see them as necessarily dependent on the identification of decisive moments and conversions. An attentive reading of Augustine’s text in the light of these questions is revealing. The richly detailed account of the period leading up to his conversion, in the pages before and after the “Tolle, lege”, may suggest that it would be reductive to attach too much weight to the incident itself. Augustine portrays himself as living for weeks in an agony of indecision. All practical and intellectual obstacles to his conversion have been removed, yet still he feels incapable of embracing change. In psychological terms, Augustine’s account of his feelings and actions during this period, as he edged towards change, is compelling. An important contribution is made by the narratives, spoken and written, of other conversions, including those of two men for whom a text read by chance had proved decisive. Against the background of this closely textured circumstantial account, the “Tolle, lege” turning point seems rather crude and oversimplified. And it so happens that Augustine’s commentators have discovered that most of its ingredients were in fact conventional, and belonged to the general repertoire of miraculous conversions. But if the incident is in that sense artificial, can the

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same not be said for the whole of Augustine’s narrative, at a formal level? The accounts of other converts contribute to a powerful effect of foreshadowing and narrative over-determination. Should they too be regarded with suspicion? Or is it not just as appropriate to suggest that in Augustine, as in life writing generally, conversions and turning points are ways of talking about less perceptible processes at work in human beings? With extraordinary skill Augustine recreates a gradual process taking place simultaneously at various levels of human reality. How does the “Tolle, lege” scene square with this? As a clearly marked turning point, does it not drastically oversimplify, and so betray, the complex process at work in Augustine’s conversion? Is it primarily a literary and rhetorical device, designed to make palpable what is otherwise almost impossible to capture, but thus inevitably a travesty of what happened in reality? Or does it express in concentrated symbolic form some of the complexity of the experience? A possible answer is that the turning point is a way of speaking about changes in human lives that, whether gradual or sudden, are primarily inner. To identify a turning point – or “pivot experience” as Rudyard Kipling put it in Something of Myself (1937) – is to locate retrospectively a fundamental change of direction, and then to associate this with a segment cut out from the broader continuum of our experience. This may be a fruitful instrument in the excavation of buried truth, but inevitably too much focus on turning points can neglect the fact that to live one’s life is to be involved in a constant process of transformation. In Rousseau’s Confessions turning points and moments of conversion proliferate but they are not supported by an overarching providential framework. Again and again, Rousseau’s rhetoric aims to persuade the reader that he was “never the same” after this punishment or that peccadillo. But in the secularized autobiographical tradition that he inaugurated Rousseau addresses fellow mortals – the reader in the first instance, not God as in Augustine – and turning points become part of the lingua franca of a particular form of discourse. The consequences are potentially disastrous. First, because the currency of turning points can become debased by overuse: in the memoirs of the composer Berlioz, for example, every other chapter has a phrase such as “Here we approach the greatest drama of my life”. And second, because too great an emphasis on turning points may lead to excessive emphasis on the aesthetic dimension of life writing. The prevalence of turning points and conversion structures has led some critics to see autobiography largely in terms of the imposition of form on the formlessness of life. Clearly there is some truth in this picture, but taken too far it severely limits the scope for seeing a variety of motives and processes at work in life writing. (It is notable that children’s life writings tend not to include turning points.) A remarkable fragment by Henry James, entitled “The Turning Point of My Life” (date unknown) shows that he was aware of all the pitfalls just outlined. Recounting how a friend had tried to persuade him that his life “must have had” a turning point, James expresses both his relish and his scepticism at the idea, and wonders if on close inspection he might not find such “momentous junctures” in his own past. He makes it plain that he sees turning points as the products of ratiocination and semifictive construction. A cognitive device that puts one’s life under scrutiny in a certain way, the turning point fosters a particular kind of attention to the self.

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When possible naiveties, and purely aesthetic considerations, are recognized and avoided, conversion structures and turning points are treated in a sceptical but constructive way in many major examples of 20th-century life writing. If, like William Wordsworth, autobiographers and biographers enjoy singling out “spots of time”, or what Marcel Proust called “privileged moments”, they tend to do so in a tentative and investigative spirit. The influence of Sigmund Freud has tended to endorse Walter Benjamin’s view of the autobiographer as an archaeologist who is not afraid of returning “again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil” (“A Berlin Chronicle”). Pictured this way, autobiographical enquiry very gradually uncovers or unfolds past experiences: the authenticity of turning points is something that can only be established painstakingly, hypothetically, with due regard to the multiple uncertainties that necessarily attend the quest. A corollary of this is that the real turning point may ultimately be located in the act of uncovering and analysis itself, in the reanimation of buried truth. To unearth a decisive moment in the past may be to change one’s present direction. In 20th-century autobiography, conversion – in the sense very often of liberating change or self-discovery – is something that autobiographical writing seeks to bring about rather than simply report. The work of Michel Leiris is an excellent example of this. Another is the Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), which sets out initially to be the account of Malcolm’s salvation through conversion to the Black Muslim faith, but which, in the process of composition (orally, to an amanuensis), turns into the account of a second conversion for which the turning point (although as in Augustine we are dealing with a cumulative process of inner transformation) is a visit to Mecca where Malcolm X discovered the true face of Islam. In recent life writing, then, conversions and turning points are as likely to belong to the present as the past. Or rather, in texts as different as JeanPaul Sartre’s Les Mots (1964; The Words), J.R. Ackerley’s My Father and Myself (1968), Janet Frame’s An Angel at My Table (1984), or Marguerite Duras’s L’Amour (1971; Love), it is the dialectic of then and now, of memory and writing, that brings to light the past and present reality of change. Michael Sheringham See also Confessions; Religious Autobiography; Religious Biography; Repentance and Life Writing; Revelation and Life Writing; Spiritual Autobiography

Further Reading Augustine, Confessions, translated by R.S. Pine-Coffin, Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 1961 Benjamin, Walter, “A Berlin Chronicle”, in One-Way Street and Other Writings, translated by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter, London: New Left Books, 1979 Clark, Gillian, Augustine: The Confessions, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993 James, Henry, “The Turning Point of My Life” in The Complete Notebooks of Henry James, edited by Leon Edel and Lyall H. Powers, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987 Kipling, Rudyard, Something of Myself: For My Friends, Known and Unknown, edited by Richard Holmes, Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 1987 (first published 1937) Lejeune, Philippe and Claude Lery (editors), Le Tournant d’une vie, Nanterre: Université Paris X, 1995 Malcolm X, with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, New York: Grove Press, 1965; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986

Newman, John Henry, Apologia pro Vita Sua, edited by Martin J. Swales, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967 (first published 1864) Sheringham, Michael, French Autobiography: Devices and Desires, Rousseau to Perec, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993 Sheringham, Michael, “Le Tournant autobiographique: mort ou vif” in Le Tournant d’une vie, edited by Philippe Lejeune and Claude Leroy, Nanterre: Université Paris X, 1995 Sturrock, John, The Language of Autobiography: Studies in the First Person Singular, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993

Conway, Jill Ker

1934–

Australian/American academic and autobiographer Jill Ker Conway’s The Road from Coorain (1989) is, along with A.B. Facey’s A Fortunate Life (1981) and Sally Morgan’s My Place (1987), a pre-eminent contemporary Australian autobiography. Conway, like feminist and scholar Germaine Greer, writer Clive James, and comedian and satirist Barry Humphries, is an expatriate, and her autobiographical writing suggests the impetus behind the exodus of young intellectuals from Australia in the 1960s, a phenomenon discussed by Ian Britain in his book Once an Australian (1997). Most of this departing generation went to Britain. However Conway, like the art critic Robert Hughes, has made a stellar career for herself among the east coast intelligentsia of the United States. The international success of The Road from Coorain has been attributed to its status as a heroic narrative of girlhood. The autobiography begins with an extraordinary and lyrical description of the landscapes of the Australian interior, a description that stresses the strange vegetation, creatures, and birds, which have always confounded European expectations. Conway identifies the bush ethos that distinguished early Australian settlement, an ethos that stresses the heroism of the early pioneers and which makes it clear that the bush is “no place for a lady”. Despite these distinctly non-European features, Conway characterizes the ongoing connections with Britain in this colonial culture, connections that were renewed in the aftermath of World War I. With this emphasis on the legacies of that war, and her birth into a settler family trying to generate wealth as pastoral farmers in a hostile landscape, the first volume of Conway’s autobiography can be compared to novelist Doris Lessing’s recollections of her childhood in a pioneering settler family in another southern colony of the British Empire, Southern Rhodesia. Like Lessing’s family, the Ker family also endured extreme poverty and hardship on a bush farm. Although the child responded to the world of nature in profoundly sensory ways, nevertheless the paradise of the bush landscapes was purgatorial for these soldier-settler families. Ker is like Lessing too in that throughout her life she had a prickly, deeply ambivalent relationship with her mother. Despite Conway’s profound spiritual and emotional attachment to the bush, which she regards as constitutive of her character in many respects, ultimately it is the exclusion of women in general, and academic women in particular, that is the dominant note of her memoir. In her school and her undergraduate years at the University of Sydney in the 1950s she began her training as a professional historian, a passion

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grounded in her desire to understand Australian settlement, and to understand the workings of free will and determinism. However, a woman with “big” ideas was regarded as “unAustralian” in the 1950s, a decade renowned for its idealization of domestic, suburban life in Australia. At the end of this first volume of her autobiography Conway, like many of her generation, rejects what seems to be an irretrievably insular society and becomes an expatriate in search of a community of kindred souls. The second volume, True North: A Memoir, suggests that she found this kinship in two institutions. From her arrival at Harvard University (1960), Conway was immediately at home in the North American Ivy League environment, where she remained as a scholar and, eventually, a senior administrator for the rest of her career. More unexpectedly, she also tells the story of her marriage to John Conway, a fellow academic, who was an important part of her socialization into this academic elite. Ker Conway was one of the few academic women with the authority to pioneer women’s studies as it emerged out of the feminist movement in the 1960s, and in this respect her memoir can be read alongside those of Gloria Stenheim and Kate Millett, for example, who also wrote autobiographically of this period of extraordinary social change through the feminist movement. Conway came to women’s studies through her research as a historian into the lives of eminent American feminist campaigners of the 19th century. This research is an interesting counterpoint to her autobiographical narrative, for she is particularly interested in the memoirs of eminent women reformers, and the way that these writings reflect the unyielding social pressure to define women in romantic, sexual, and emotional terms. Her own autobiography resolutely resists these as determinate themes of her own life. Her interest in the writing of autobiography and biography is evident in some of her academic work, for example her three editions of women’s autobiographical writings Written by Herself (2 vols, 1992–96) and In Her Own Words (1999), and her study When Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography (1998). Gillian Whitlock Biography Born Jill Kathryn Ker in Hillston, New South Wales, Australia, 9 October 1934. Brought up on a sheep station in the outback of western New South Wales. Educated by correspondence from 1942. Moved to Sydney with her mother after her father drowned, 1945. Educated at the private Abbotsleigh Girls’ School from 1945. Awarded Commonwealth scholarship to University of Sydney, 1952; studied history and graduated in 1958 (BA). Visited England and worked as a model for a couturier, 1958–59. Returned to Australia and worked as a teaching assistant at the University of Sydney while studying for MA in Australian history, also helping to supervise the family sheep station at Coorain, 1959–60. Left Australia to take up a teaching fellowship in history at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1960. Studied history at Harvard, 1960–64. Married John James Conway, a history professor at Harvard, 1962. Moved to Toronto, Canada, 1964. Lecturer at University of Toronto, 1964–75. Gave series of lectures, “Myth and National Culture”, for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1966. Received PhD in history from Harvard University, 1969. Associate professor, University of Toronto, 1970–75. First vicepresident for internal affairs at University of Toronto, 1973–75; helped to obtain equal salaries for women at the university. First woman president and Sophia Smith Professor of History, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, 1975–85; taught gender studies and women’s history. Named as one of Time magazine’s Women of the Year, 1976. Helped to establish the reputation of Smith College as the premier women’s college in the US. Established education programme

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for older women and developed Smith College Project on Women and Social Change. Helped to launch “The Society of Scholars Studying Women’s Higher-Education History”. Published The Female Experience in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century America, 1982. Became naturalized citizen of the US, 1982. Visiting scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, from 1985. Served on directorial boards of Colgate-Palmolive, Merrill Lynch, Nike, and other corporations from 1985.

Selected Writings The Road From Coorain, 1989 True North: A Memoir, 1994 When Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography, 1998 Has also edited Written by Herself: An Anthology (2 vols, 1992–96) and In Her Own Words: Women’s Memoirs from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States (1999).

Further Reading Steele, Peter, “The Geography of the Heart: Current Australian Autobiography”, Overland, 118 (1990): 50–54 Whitlock, Gillian (editor), Autographs: Contemporary Australian Autobiography, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1996

Crèvecoeur, Michel-Guillaume Jean de 1735–1813 French agricultural expert and epistolary writer Michel de Crèvecoeur is known primarily for the seminal Letters from an American Farmer (1782), which has received critical acclaim as “the fullest literary description of America’s coming into being” (Manning edition). This semi-autobiographical epistolary narrative, initially written and published in English, attempts to describe for a European audience the creation of an American identity. The author, a member of the French aristocracy who fought in the French and Indian Wars in Canada before moving to New York and settling down on a farm with his family, seems to have willingly assumed his hybrid identity as a way of thinking through the development of a new American subjectivity. The Letters was enthusiastically received, both in its English and French versions; Crèvecoeur wrote the French translation (Lettres d’un cultivateur américain, 1783) himself, choosing to abandon the epistolary form in favour of a more straightforward documentary style. In 1780, he returned to France, where the success of his book soon made him a literary celebrity in the salons of Paris. He quickly came to be seen as an authority on America, ultimately serving there as the official representative of Louis XVI at the end of the Revolutionary War (War of Independence). Questions of authority and veracity are raised at the very beginning of the text – the narrator feels compelled to justify the act of writing, considered suspect by his wife, minister, and local community. The letters are purportedly written at the request of an English friend seeking information on life in the colonies, and it is the detailed depiction of American society that rapidly established the book as a valuable historical document, providing information – often in long digressions and repetitious passages – on topics such as agricultural techniques and whaling. The protagonist, an immigrant from Europe, portrays himself as a representative American who speaks as a father, a husband,

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and a citizen, thus grounding his authority as autobiographical subject in the universality of his experiences. The first letters, with their Rousseau-esque celebration of nature and of the simple life, create an idealized picture of an egalitarian society where people live in harmony with the land, free from the constraints imposed by a despotic government. In the often anthologized letter entitled “What is an American?”, for example, this idyllic rural culture contrasts favourably with a Europe divided by class and sectarian interests, and Crèvecoeur’s contented, independent farmer stands in opposition to the oppressed European peasant. Although the Letters are often presented primarily as an early formulation of the American dream, the farmer’s experience ends in disillusionment and despair. The vision of chaos and cruelty presented in the final letters as the farmer confronts the realities of slavery and the turmoil of the revolution undermines his optimistic view of America and invalidates many of his earlier conclusions. Both his encounter with the misery of an imprisoned slave and his horror at the destruction and deaths caused by civil strife lead him to question whether the New World does indeed embody humanistic and democratic values. The reception of the Letters over the years reflects its problematic status as an overt autobiography. Initially, Crèvecoeur was perceived as respecting the autobiographical pact in which narrator and author are the same, and the letters were interpreted as conveying the voice of a simple farmer whose descriptions were based on personal experience. More recently, however, critics who have examined the literary aspects of the Letters see the work rather as a semi-autobiographical fiction or even as a symbolic fable. Besides noting factual discrepancies between Crèvecoeur’s life and the farmer’s, these scholars have also pointed to literary sources for many of the “authentic” episodes described by the farmer. Similarly, it has been observed that the text displays many of the conventions of the 18thcentury letter novel, thus raising the question whether the Letters should be viewed as an example of the epistolary-fiction genre rather than as real correspondence. The thematic emphasis on hybridity, which characterizes the epistolary form in general, underscores the role that letter writing plays in the construction of new identities, be they individual or collective. Indeed, critic Nancy Ruttenburg posits a potential link between emigration and the project of writing the self and the nation: “implicit in both emigration and autobiography is the cominginto-being, or the naturalization, of America itself”. Regardless of the extent to which the Letters is autobiographical, it played a pivotal role in shaping the image of America in Europe and certainly contributed to creating the myth of “the American dream”. Susan Ireland and Patrice J. Proulx Biography Born Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur in Caen, Normandy, France, 31 January 1735. His father was a substantial landowner of the provincial Norman nobility. Grew up near the village of Creully, Normandy. Studied mathematics, surveying, cartography, and literature at the Jesuit Collège Royal de Bourbon in Caen, graduating in 1750. Continued his education in Salisbury, England, and probably visited Lisbon, Portugal, early 1750s. Surveyed and mapped French territory in Canada during the French and Indian War, 1750s. Served as a cadet with colonial troops, fighting in the Battle of Fort George, 1757. Commissioned lieutenant in French regiment, 1758. Wounded

and resigned commission; went to New York under the name of Hector St John, changing his language to English, 1759. Travelled around Ohio and the Great Lakes region, early 1760s. Naturalized citizen of the colony of New York, 1765. Lived in Ulster County. Married Mehitable Tippet, from a prominent Dutchess County family, 1769: one daughter and two sons. Started farming in Orange County, 1769. Neutrality in the American Revolution resulted in fines, imprisonment, and hostility, 1775–79. Attempted to return to France with his son, but arrested as a suspected patriot or collaborator, 1779. Succeeded in sailing to France, 1780. Lived in Normandy, joining influential French intellectual society. Described his farming experiences in Orange County in Letters from an American Farmer (1782). Commissioned by Louis XVI as French consul to New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut to provide economic information on these areas. Returned to New York to find his house burned down and his wife dead, 1783. Established home with his children in New York and worked to increase imports of French goods to America, 1783–85. Established packet-boat service between America and France, initiated scientific and cultural exchanges, and fostered projects such as botanical gardens, a medical school, and the first Catholic church in New York. Returned to France, 1785–87. Co-founded the Société Gallo-Américaine, an export association. Published significant paper on the American acacia tree, resulting in extensive planting of the species in Europe, 1786. Elected to the Royal Agricultural Society in Paris, 1786. Returned to America, 1787. Assisted John Fitch with his work on steam navigation; corresponded with George Washington and James Madison. Elected to the American Philosophical Society, 1789. Published many letters and articles on agricultural and botanical subjects under the pen-name “Agricola”. Granted leave in France for health reasons, 1790. Lived in obscurity in Normandy and Paris during French Revolution. Elected to membership of the Institut Français (formerly French Academy), 1796. Lived quietly on a farm in Lesches, east of Paris, writing essays and journal articles, from 1800. Went to live with his daughter and son-in-law, French minister to Bavaria, in Munich, 1806. Escaped with them to Paris when Austrian army invaded Bavaria, 1809. Died in Sarcelles, Paris, 12 November 1813.

Selected Writings Letters from an American Farmer, 1782; edited by Susan Manning, 1997; in French as Lettres d’un cultivateur américain, translated by Crèvecoeur, 1783 Le Voyage dans la haute Pennsylvanie et dans l’Etat de New-York, 1801; as Eighteenth-Century Travels in Pennsylvania and New York, edited and translated by Percy Adams, 1961; as Journey into Northern Pennsylvania and the State of New York, translated by Clarissa Spencer Bostelmann, 1964 More Letters from an American Farmer, edited by Dennis D. Moore, 1995

Further Reading Allen, Gay Wilson and Roger Asselineau, St John de Crèvecoeur: The Life of an American Farmer, New York: Viking, 1987 Beidler, Philip D., “Franklin’s and Crèvecoeur’s ‘Literary’ Americans”, Early American Literature, 13 (1978): 50–63 Beranger, Jean F., “The Desire of Communication: Narrator and Narratee in Letters from an American Farmer”, Early American Literature, 12 (1977): 73–85 Chevignard, Bernard, “St Jean de Crèvecoeur in the Looking Glass: Letters from an American Farmer and the Making of a Man of Letters”, Early American Literature, 19 (1984): 173–90 Cook, Elizabeth H., Epistolary Bodies: Gender and Genre in the Eighteenth-Century Republic of Letters, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996 Philbrick, Thomas, St John de Crèvecoeur, New York: Twayne, 1970 Putz, Manfred, “Dramatic Elements and the Problem of Literary Mediation in the Works of St Jean de Crèvecoeur”, Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature, 3 (1985): 111–30 Ruttenburg, Nancy, Democratic Personality: Popular Voice and the Trial of American Authorship, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998 Stone, Albert E., “Crèvecoeur’s Letters and the Beginnings of American Literature”, Emory University Quarterly, 18 (1962): 197–213

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Criminal Autobiography Any definition of criminal autobiography will necessarily be a fraught one, owing to the problems surrounding the definition of criminality. Because “the criminal” is defined in relation to the laws (and /or mores) of a particular society, and because those laws will change over time, notions of criminality (and therefore generic conceptions of criminals’ autobiographies) are never fixed, and translating them between societies, time periods, or even neighbourhoods is inherently problematic. This is not to say that such a genre does not exist, however; one can simply define it as consisting of those autobiographies whose authors live and write beyond the legal strictures of their particular cultures and societies. The fluctuations of this definition, though, make criminal autobiographies a rich area for literary, theoretical, and social study. The contemporary Western criminal autobiography has its roots in 17th- and 18th-century criminal narratives, including biographies, ballads, and novels. These narratives, as Lincoln B. Faller (1987) argues, depict the criminal as “an emblem of the general human condition”, while at the same time use the criminals’ stories in “an effort at exorcising the devilish principle in human nature”. These popular narratives, in conjunction with the transformation of the punishment industry in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as discussed in detail by Michel Foucault (1980), gave rise to the formation of the contemporary Western criminal autobiography in the 19th century. Moving from Foucault’s conclusions and detailing the ways in which “new systems of criminal justice were structured to meet the requirements of industrial capitalism”, Marie-Christine Leps (1992) argues that “During the course of the nineteenth century, Western ways of perceiving and processing criminals underwent radical transformations”. Accompanying these transformations was a new interest in crime and criminals as “ordinary commodities made for daily consumption”. This interest made itself known, in part, through the demand for first-person accounts of criminal activity, as portrayed in, among others, A Narrative of the Life and Conversion of Alexander White (1784?), The Mysterious Stranger, or, Memoirs of Henry More Smith alias Henry Frederick Moon, alias William Newman (1817), The Female Prisoner: A Narrative of the Life of Josephine Amelia Perkins (1839), The Life and Confessions of John Eli Cannaday, alias John Eli Sneedom (1876?), The Life of Sile Doty, 1800–1876, the Most Noted Thief and Daring Burglar of His Time (1880), Samuel A. Bailey’s Ups and Downs of a “Crook’s” Life, by an Ex-Convict (1889), and the Mémoires (Memoirs) of Pierre François Lacenaire (1800–36). Using the generic conventions of detective fiction (which also arose at this time), of the sensational novel, and of its 17th- and 18th-century criminal narrative predecessors, the 19th-century criminal autobiography describes in detail (and often with a certain braggadocio) the everyday aspects of criminal life, while generally maintaining a moralistic ending that relies either on the punishment of the criminal or on his or her redemption (or both). Such narratives have continued – with slight alterations reflecting changes in the understanding of psychology, sociology, and other such fields – to be written and published throughout the 20th century (generally under the populist genre of “True Crime”): see, for example, I, Willie Sutton: The Personal Story of the Cleverest

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Bank Robber of Modern Times (1954, as told to Quentin Reynolds), Brian D. Boyer’s Prince of Thieves: The Memoirs of the World’s Greatest Forger (1975), John Allen’s Assault with a Deadly Weapon: The Autobiography of a Street Criminal (1977), John Kiggia Kimani’s Life and Times of a Bank Robber (1988), and Michele G. Remington’s The Cradle Will Fall (1996, with Carl S. Burak). A new type of criminal narrative arose in the 20th century, especially in America, with the growth in visibility of organized crime. Most of these memoirs were written after the conclusion of the authors’ association with the criminal organization (for obvious reasons). While these texts generally rely on the longestablished confessional and redemptive format, they also tend to highlight the notion that the criminal world (especially as it is constructed by the organization to which the writer belonged) functions as a mirror image, or sinister parody, of the larger social structure. Texts in this category include: Killer: Autobiography of a Hit Man for the Mafia (1973), by the pseudonymous “Joey”, A Man of Honor: The Autobiography of Joseph Bonanno (1983, with Sergio Lalli), George “Machine Gun” Kelly’s Machine-Gun Man: The True Story of My Incredible Survival into the 1970s (1988, as told to Jim Dobbins and Ben Jordan), Joseph Cantalupo’s Body Mike: An Unsparing Exposé by the Mafia Insider Who Turned on the Mob (1990, with Thomas C. Renner), and Sam Giancana’s Double Cross: The Explosive, Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America (1992, with Chuck Giancana). An intriguing group of these texts circles around the London-based Kray family: Charles Kray’s Me and My Brothers (1976, with Jonathan Sykes), Doing the Business by Charlie Kray and Colin Fry (1994), and Kate Kray’s Natural Born Killers: Britain’s Eight Deadliest Murderers Tell Their Own True Stories (1999). Many contemporary criminal autobiographies are published under the rubric of the populist genre of “True Crime”. However, rather than rely completely on traditional autobiographical formats, many of these texts, either through design or happenstance, challenge the boundaries of generic identification by using both autobiographical and other materials to create a narrative. Bill G. Cox’s Born Bad (1996), which concerns the teenage murderer Jason Massey, incorporates sections of Massey’s diaries; similarly, Lawrence D. Klausner’s Son of Sam (1981), about the infamous David Berkowitz, is (as we are told, importantly, in the subtitle) “based” not only on Berkowitz’s diaries, but also on “authorized transcriptions [and] official documents”. Even texts that are ostensibly novels, although based on historical occurrences, such as Merilyn Simonds’s The Convict Lover: A True Story (1996) and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song (1979), rely heavily on letters and other autobiographical material by the criminals who form the centre of the narratives (The Executioner’s Song is doubly interesting in this way because of its connection to Jack Henry Abbot’s prison text, In the Belly of the Beast, of 1981). In addition to generic complications and other formal matters, criminal autobiographies also deal with the relation of text to society. This is especially true of narratives composed in prison, which can be seen as a sub-genre of criminal autobiography. These narratives tend explicitly to complicate social understandings of criminality and its relation not only to the justice system, but also to the larger “free” world. Such auto-

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biographies as the suffragette Constance Lytton’s Prisons and Prisoners (1914), Caryl Chessman’s Cell 2455, Death Row (1954), The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965, as told to Alex Haley), Breyten Breytenbach’s The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (1984), James Tyman’s Inside Out: An Autobiography of a Native Canadian (1989), and Mumia AbuJamal’s Live from Death Row (1995) and Death Blossoms: Reflections from a Prisoner of Conscience (1997) delineate the oppressive nature of the legal system, as well as the injustice of the ways in which criminality is defined in terms of gender, race, and class. By complicating the definitions of criminality (and therefore of the criminal autobiography), these texts, and indeed the genre as a whole, provide valuable insights into the functioning of social institutions. Jason Haslam Further Reading Davies, Ioan, Writers in Prison, Toronto: Between the Lines, and Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1990 Davis, Angela Y., “Race and Criminalization: Black Americans and the Punishment Industry” in The House That Race Built: Black Americans, US Terrain, edited by Wahneema Lubiano, New York: Pantheon, 1997 Faller, Lincoln B., Turned to Account: The Forms and Functions of Criminal Biography in Late Seventeeth- and Early EighteenthCentury England, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987 Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan, New York: Pantheon, and London: Allen Lane, 1977 Foucault, Michel, “Prison Talk” in his Power /Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, edited and translated by Colin Gordon, New York: Pantheon, and Brighton, Sussex: Harvester, 1980 Franklin, H. Bruce, The Victim as Criminal and Artist: Literature from the American Prison, New York: Oxford University Press, 1978 Harlow, Barbara, Resistance Literature, London and New York: Methuen, 1987 Leps, Marie-Christine, Apprehending the Criminal: The Production of Deviance in Nineteenth-Century Discourse, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1992 Tobias, J.J., Nineteenth-Century Crime in England: Prevention and Punishment, Newton Abbot, Devon: David and Charles, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1972 Weiner, Martin J., Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture, Law, and Policy in England, 1830–1914, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990

Criminal Biography Probably the earliest criminal biographies were the plays, songs, and tales that created and sustained the legends of outlawheroes such as the 12th-century Englishman Robin Hood, whose actual existence remains unverified. His story was first documented in ballad form in the 15th century, making him among the earliest of criminals whose lives were recorded in written literature. It is likely, however, that oral accounts of Robin Hood and other legendary characters of his type, who steal from the rich and give to the poor, and comprise a type of criminal (characteristic of agrarian societies) known as “social bandits”, significantly predate the era of the printing press. The identity of a social bandit among unlettered peasants tends to be short-lived. Its survival depends upon the making of some

durable record that will mitigate against the erosion and confusion of details, which explains why most social bandits we can identify today date from the 15th century or later, when the printing press facilitated the manifold documentation and relatively broad knowledge of their lives. Among the betterknown bandits are Louis-Dominique Cartouche (France, ?1693–1721), Johannes Bückler (Germany, 1783–1803), Sandor Rozsa (Hungary, 1813–78), Panayot Hitov (Bulgaria, 1830–1918), Jesse James (United States, 1847–82), Giuseppe Musolino (Calabria, Italy, 1875–1956), Virgulino Ferreira da Silva (Brazil, ?1898–1938), and Pancho Villa (Mexico, 1877– 1923). Narratives of the lives of several of these figures have been rendered in many literary forms, among them ballads, plays, poems, novels, literary biographies, comic books, trading cards, and pulp fiction and non-fiction narratives – the material of collective memory in an age of both popular and elite readers. A few bandit stories have appeared not only in print versions but also in other media, such as radio and television plays, and documentary and feature films. Robin Hood, Jesse James, and Pancho Villa now each have several websites dedicated to them, which include brief written biographies in their multimedia representations of the bandit’s legend. The mass reproduction and consumption of the lives of social bandits, outside their original social class, rural locale, and oral medium, remains a curious and astonishing fact. It is partly explained as a symptom of nostalgia shared by urban, industrial, and postindustrial cultures – a longing for lost innocence, adventure, and a common ideal of freedom, heroism, and justice. This explanation does not apply, however, to the broad interest enjoyed by the biography of the notorious criminal, especially the murderer, the details of whose life have been an object of both fascination and fear among entire populations, upper to lower class, rural, suburban, and urban, for as long as documentary evidence is available. The tradition of ordinary criminal life writing consists of a mutually influential parallel evolution of fiction and nonfiction narratives, the separate lines of which often lie so close as to appear as one. The most significant among the early works in Europe appear in the genre of the picaresque novel, in particular Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas’s Historia de la vida del Buscon llamado Don Pablos (1626; The Pleasant History of Paul of Segovia), Charles Sorel’s La Vraye Histoire comique de Francion (1622–41; The Comical History of Francion), and Alain-René Le Sage’s Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane (1715–35; The Adventures of Gil Blas, of Santillane), each of which uses fictional rogues – usually perpetrators of theft or graft – to present relatively realistic views of contemporary low life while satirizing the manners of the high. At roughly the same time in England there appeared an increasing number of true-life accounts of executed criminals written in the vein of spiritual biography, of which the several pamphlets treating the life of the highwayman Captain James Hind, hanged in 1652 for high treason, are exemplary in their imitation of the picaresque form. By the early 18th century, particularly in the works of Daniel Defoe (Captain Singleton, 1720; Moll Flanders, 1722; Colonel Jack, 1722; and Roxana, 1724), the novel of rogue life had successfully appropriated aspects of the quasiconfessional criminal pamphlet literature to render it even more realistic in form and content. In 1684, at the behest of the London Court of Aldermen, a licensed, comprehensive, printed report of every execution

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began to be published, which by 1700 came to be known as The Ordinary of Newgate His Account of the Behaviour, Confessions, and Dying Words of the Malefactors Who Were Executed at Tyburn. The contents of this penny folio broadsheet ostensibly introduced the tradition of criminal biography to the modern discourse of fact, and secured a place for the criminal life in the burgeoning empirical universe of newsworthy information. Throughout most of the 18th century the ordinary’s serial remained popular, and inspired many pirate pamphlets and spin-offs in other genres, such as John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera (1728); William Hogarth’s three series of engraved images, The Harlot’s Progress (1732), The Rake’s Progress (1733–35), and Industry and Idleness (1747); and Henry Fielding’s satirical short novel, The Life and Death of Jonathan Wild the Great (1743). It also formed the basis of several encyclopedic compendia of criminal biography, including Captain Alexander Smith’s Complete History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highwaymen (1714), Captain Charles Johnson’s General History of All the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Street-Robbers, &c. (1734), and a variety of multi-volume Calendar or Annals of Newgate works, the most accessible of which is Knapp and Baldwin’s Criminal Chronology, or, New Newgate Calendar (1809–10). Although capital sentences continued to be executed publicly in Britain until 1868, the ordinary’s reports ceased in the 1760s, when the daily newspapers succeeded in making them redundant. By the end of the 18th century, the commodity value of criminal biography as a form of intellectual property was apparent to all concerned in its production. Besides its commodity value (which is perhaps so obvious that students pondering the tradition’s ubiquity seldom consider its importance), criminal biography is thought to possess cultural value in its capacity to display the limits of the socially permissable, especially in regard to matters of private property, selfpossession in particular. Until about 1750 criminal biographies encouraged their audience’s identification with or at least empathy for the criminal as a depraved sinner. Thereafter, a secular ideology prevailed, with an increasing emphasis on the criminal’s physical and intellectual monstrosity: from petty thief to serial murderer, the criminal appears as Other. Such alienation is partly an effect of the declining role of the clergy in criminal life writing and the increasing role of research in both policing and journalism in the 19th century, which gave birth to the science of criminology. Among the most ambitious early examples of journalistic enquiry into criminal life is the fourth volume of Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (1861–62), a comprehensive exposé of “Those That Will Not Work, Comprising Prostitutes, Thieves, Swindlers, and Beggars”. Mayhew began his investigations as a series of “letters” in the daily Morning Chronicle of 1849–50, offering the paper’s middle-class readers minutely detailed, melodramatic, and often autobiographical narratives of the lives of the denizens of London’s slums, which strongly linked criminality with chronic poverty. It is likely that Mayhew was influenced by Eugène Sue’s fictional Les Mystères de Paris (1842–43; The Mysteries of Paris) and its hugely popular English imitation, G.W.M. Reynolds’s The Mysteries of London (1845–48), which presented personal “histories” narrated by criminal characters, often in dialect embroidered with underworld slang. The French journalist Émile Zola’s “experimental” novels of criminal life, in

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particular L’Assommoir (1877) and Nana (1880), were based on his extensive investigation of low life in the light of medical science, in a serious but methodologically flawed attempt to explain contemporary social ills. Innovations in crime detection by police, especially in tracing the genius (or lack of it) of the criminal mind, were revealed in the mystery story and novel, such as Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The Purloined Letter” (1845), and “The Facts in the Case of M. Waldemar” (1845), Fedor Dostoevskii’s Prestuplenie i nakazanie (1866; Crime and Punishment), Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868), and most explicitly, in the Sherlock Holmes detective stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, of which The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) is the first collection. All of these texts, fiction and nonfiction alike, participated in the discursive construction of an epistemology of crime and criminality. Though it was seldom acknowledged, the plots of 19thcentury criminal fictions often found inspiration in contemporary newspaper accounts. By the late 20th century, however, a few ambitious writers were deliberately and explicitly mingling verifiable and unverifiable details of mundane experience to form a “new” hybrid genre of academically respected literature dubbed “faction”, among the best of examples of which are two criminal biographies, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (first published as a series of articles for the The New Yorker magazine in 1966, and later the same year as a novel) and Norman Mailer’s “non-fiction novel”, The Executioner’s Song (1979). In many respects, these works resemble the earlier biographies by Defoe and his contemporaries, who like Capote and Mailer drew upon extensive interviews with real criminals and those with whom they had contact, to create the effect of a “true” yet larger-than-life history. The postmodern texts differ from their forerunners in their attempt to humanize their subjects by means of judicious, unsentimental interpretation, in addition to the report of intimate detail, a staple of early criminal biography. Immediate precedents to the complex interpretive portraits by Capote and Mailer can be found in two “case studies” of the moral conscience of Nazi war criminals, Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963; an amplification of a series of articles written for the The New Yorker magazine that same year), and Gitta Sereny’s analysis of Franz Stangl, the Kommandant of the Sobibor and Treblinka death camps, in Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (1974). More recently Sereny, a frequent practitioner of a kind of life writing that some term “pathography”, published Cries Unheard: The Story of Mary Bell (1998), which self-consciously revisits a psyche on which Sereny reflected before Stangl’s, that of the Newcastle child-murderer, in The Case of Mary Bell (1972). Not surprisingly, however, the success of “faction” writing opened the way to a host of blatantly salacious, exploitative “true crime” biographies, many by persons professionally involved with the legal processing of the criminal in question, for example the chief prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s account of the mass murderer Charles Manson, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (1974). The ethics of such publications have been thoughtfully and somewhat autobiographically addressed in Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer (1990), which was also first published as a series of articles in The New Yorker.

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Michael Mascuch Further Reading Chambers, Frank Wadleigh, The Literature of Roguery, London: Constable, and Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1907; reprinted New York: Franklin, 1958 Faller, Lincoln B., Turned to Account: The Forms and Functions of Criminal Biography in Late Seventeenth- and Early EighteenthCentury England, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987 Faller, Lincoln B., Crime and Defoe: A New Kind of Writing, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993 Gatrell, V.A.C., The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People, 1770–1868, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994 Halttunen, Karen, Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998 Himmelfarb, Gertrude, The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age, London: Faber, and New York: Knopf, 1984 Hobsbawm, E.J., Bandits, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, and New York: Delacorte Press, 1969; revised edition, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2000 Knelman, Judith, Twisting in the Wind: The Murderess and the English Press, Toronto and Buffalo, New York: Toronto University Press, 1998 Lesser, Wendy, Pictures at an Execution, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993 Mandel, Ernest, Delightful Murder: A Social History of the Crime Story, London: Pluto Press, 1984; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986 Mascuch, Michael, Origins of the Individualist Self: Autobiography and Self-Identity in England, 1591–1791, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996; Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997 Rawlings, Philip, Drunks, Whores, and Idle Apprentices: Criminal Biographies of the Eighteenth Century, London and New York: Routledge, 1992 Rawlings, Philip, “True Crime”, British Criminology Conferences: Selected Proceedings (electronic journal), 1 (September 1998): www.lboro.ac.uk/ departments/ss/BSC/bccsp/ vol01/vol01_13.htm.

Crisp, Quentin

1908–1999

English autobiographer Quentin Crisp’s life was largely spent in obscurity and chronic penuriousness until the publication, when he was 60 years old, of his autobiography The Naked Civil Servant (1968). The reception of this book – a work of exceptional candour, even by the standards of the newly permissive 1960s – bestowed upon him a considerable celebrity in connection with which it is difficult to avoid the phrase succès de scandale; subsequently he was active as a writer, actor, and media personality. The Naked Civil Servant itself was successfully adapted for television, and Crisp energetically took up the opportunities offered by a variety of media, including radio, television, theatre, and cinema, as well as publishing. The structure of the work is broadly chronological, with its starting-point the author’s unhappy childhood and difficult adolescence. During the latter he contended heroically (and, as narrated, hilariously) with reactions to his instinctive modes of expressing his homosexuality and effeminacy in a period when outward signs of these orientations in Britain were likely to be greeted by ridicule and insults, if not hostility, violence, and threats of legal sanctions. There followed the inevitable move to

London and the cultivation of a lifestyle, including an appearance, that effectively rendered Crisp an outcast and a misfit so far as social life and employment opportunities were concerned. All this is narrated with verve and a total absence of selfpity – indeed, with a humour that ranges from epigrammatic wit to broad farce. In creating his own public personality, Crisp seems to have conceived of himself as a latter-day Oscar Wilde, though in a setting of poverty and squalor rather than affluence and elegance. The stylistic preference for epigram, paradox, and pun, like the brilliant thumbnail sketches of personalities and scenes and the inventive revitalizing of hackneyed expressions and quotations, constitute both an act of homage to Wilde and a literary counterpart to the sartorial and other outward manifestations of an affinity with the most notable saint and martyr among English homosexual writers. There is a picaresque quality in Crisp’s recounting of a series of loosely linked adventures during his decades of hardship, and it is difficult to resist the suspicion that many of the extended anecdotes have undergone a process of fictionalization. Indeed they seem at times to be implicitly offered as fantasy rather than history. The emphasis is almost exclusively subjective, with virtually no attention being paid to public history during the long period in question: such events as the Depression and World War II are touched on only in hints and implications. In 1981, and on the heels of the fame brought by his earlier book, Crisp published a second and somewhat shorter volume of autobiography, How to Become a Virgin, the opening sentence of which immediately establishes, or at least seeks to establish, a continuity of tone and style with the earlier book: “I am not a drop-out: I was never in”. This opening leads the author to suggest that his social nonconformity has not merely led to ostracism but has represented a kind of existential freedom. Despite this promising beginning, however, the book is something of a disappointment: the narrative élan and stylistic panache of its predecessor are hardly matched, nor is the earlier book’s appealing mixture of comedy and sadness. As often, success and fame seem to have provided less promising copy for the autobiographer than failure and obscurity, and the accounts of travels in America and elsewhere lack the brilliance of the earlier narrative of a series of dead-end jobs and short-lived “careers” in the grimier districts of London. One notable feature of this second volume is a description of responses to the earlier one. Norman Page Biography Born Dennis Charles Pratt in Sutton, Surrey, England, 25 December 1908. His father was a lawyer. Educated at Kingswood Preparatory School, Sutton, from 1919. Awarded scholarship to study at Denstone College, Staffordshire, 1922. Left to take up a course in journalism at King’s College, London, 1926. Attended art classes at Battersea and Regent Street Polytechnics, London. Worked in London: tracer with a firm of electrical engineers, teacher of tap dancing, and freelance designer in advertising and publicity companies. Wrote Lettering for Brush and Pen (1936) and Colour in Display (1938). Exempted from conscription for army in World War II (on grounds of homosexuality). Lived in a bed-sitting room in Chelsea, London, 1940–late 1970s. Became art-school model, 1942. Wrote his autobiography, The Naked Civil Servant (1968), and appeared on television and radio, talking about his life, 1970s. Launched one-man show, An Evening with Quentin Crisp, in the West End of London, 1978. Moved to New York, 1981. Reviewed films for Christopher Street magazine and

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contributed to New York Native. Settled in tenement in Lower East Side of New York. Wrote How to Have a Life-Style (1979), How to Become a Virgin (1981), and How to Go to the Movies (1989). Played Queen Elizabeth I in film version of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando by Sally Potter, 1993. Delivered Alternative Queen’s Speech on Channel 4 television (UK), 1993. Resident Alien, a theatre performance based on his diaries, opened in London, 1999. Died in Manchester, 21 November 1999.

Selected Writings The Naked Civil Servant (autobiography), 1968 How to Become a Virgin (autobiography), 1981 Resident Alien: The New York Diaries, 1996

Further Reading Chermayeff, Catherine, Jonathan David, and Nan Richardson, Drag Diaries, San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1995 Cleto, Fabio (editor), Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, and Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999 Hall Carpenter Archives, Gay Men’s Oral History Group, Walking after Midnight: Gay Men’s Life Stories, London and New York: Routledge, 1988 Robinson, Paul, Gay Lives: Homosexual Autobiography from John Addington Symonds to Paul Monette, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999 Sinfield, Alan, The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde and the Queer Moment, London: Cassell, and New York: Columbia University Press, 1994

Criticism and Theory: 16th to 18th Centuries The development of mass-distribution information technology such as the printing press made the theory of biography unusually important in Western cultures during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. High-quantity press production and an emerging reading public created a need for original, or at least previously unexplored, subject matter. The endless stream of lives that comprise human history promised an almost inexhaustible fountain of topics for both the popular and the educated audiences. Theories about the free press and free enquiry not developing until the end of the 18th century, the functions, consequences, theory, and criticism of biography was largely a central concern of governments and scholars throughout early modern Europe. Political regimes of the 16th century were in a state of flux owing to the decline of manorial agriculture, the upsurge in (and influence of) international shipping and trade, and the political and religious vagaries of apostate monarchs like Henry VIII of England. In France, the highly personalized and philosophically sceptical Essais (1580–; Essays) of Michel de Montaigne suggested that a life story was a series of sceptical moments. The function of a biography was to explore the endless series of doubts that perplexed a thinking person in an unpredictable age. In Henrician and Elizabethan England, the theoretical justification for biography therefore tended to take a political and historical turn. Works like Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577) or the historiographical jottings of François de Belleforest recited a series of monarchs’ lives, all with the purpose of illustrating the nature of proper (and improper) kingship and

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thereby affirming the desirability of the existing regime. The politicization of historical biography reached its zenith in William Shakespeare’s darker historical plays, pageants about troubled sovereigns whose stories implicitly signified the superiority of first the Elizabethan and then the Stuart orders. Poets, too, used biographical ideas to make political points. William Warner’s epic poem Albions England (1586, 1592, 1612) and Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion (1612, 1622), among many others, serialized the lives of monarchs for propagandistic purposes. Audiences of the era never regarded this literary behaviour as unfortunate or offensive, for the popular understanding – and theory – of biography was a modified Aristotelian-Horatian one in which the purpose of a story was to teach as well as to delight. Sixteenth- and early 17th-century life writing can thus be conjugated under the larger heading of “exemplary” history, in which the writing of a story or the recounting of a biography is justified by its ability to set a good or explain a bad example. The biographical theory of this period is highly didactical. In the popular press, there was no end to the publication of the compelling stories of religious personages. Although Britain and parts of Europe had broken from the Roman Catholic church, there was still no shortage of venerable persons to celebrate: the apostles, the theologians of the patristic age, the crusaders, and assorted “Protestant martyrs” were still fair game. Bookstalls abounded with titles such as The Famous History of the Seven Champions of Christendom (1597?), chapbooks that recounted the exemplary deeds of defenders of the faith. On the other side of the moral spectrum, the criminal biography was beginning its gradual rise as hack biographers recounted the dreadful deeds of heinous thugs, murderers, and treasoners. The exemplary biography attained an almost canonical form in Actes and Monuments (1536; more commonly known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs) by John Foxe, a somewhat paradoxical exercise in Protestant hagiography celebrating those who had died for either the Protestant cause or some precursor of Protestant theology. Along these same lines, the turn of the 17th century saw the emergence of a sort of counter-biography in which postulated lives were composed in order to explain the putative public misdeeds of certain marginalized groups. Most often this took the form of secret lives of the members of Catholic orders who allegedly posed an imagined threat to English sovereignty – a genre underlying, for example, John Donne’s Conclave Ignati (1611; Ignatius’s Conclave), a satiric examination of the Jesuitical lifestyle. Another, more personal version of this approach that enjoyed high popularity during the Renaissance was the public, verse, or prose letter. In such an epistle, a gentleman spoke from his own experience on a moral topic, showing how the events in his life illustrated some point useful for the recipient and for the general public. In all these cases, the “theoretical” goal was the highly utilitarian affirmation of the social, moral, and didactic significance of the individual life, the claim that study of biography provided lessons about the proper ordering of society and the (emerging) state. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, this quest for biographical evidence in support of this or that political theory or regime breathed new life into translation. Elizabethan and Caroline biography had no theoretical commitment to originality or modernity; timeless in its commitment to perennial didacticism, the genre worked just as well with old as with new texts.

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Translators working for noble lords or even by monarchical commission combed through such sources as Philostratus, Herodotus, and Plutarch for biographical materials that seemed to bear on contemporary times. Translation often branched into transcription as authors developed biographical narratives of persons who couldn’t speak for themselves in any language. Complete failure was no disqualification. King Charles I was taken prisoner and executed during the English civil war, yet the Eikon Basilike (1649), a largely fabricated and highly aphoristic account of Charles’s last days in prison, was a runaway bestseller, at least among disenfranchised Royalists. In Eikon Basilike we see what might be called “biography as icon”, the image of a life that instructs visually and allegorically as well as with respect to what is actually said in the text. Izaak Walton used this same procedure in his literary biographies of English poets, The Lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hocher, Mr. George Herbert (1670). Walton offers a capsule life of each literatus as a tangible sign of his combined literary and religious ideal in which the literary career (and by extension any career) leads to reconciliation with God and salvation. Autobiographical elements of this kind appeared in the verse writings of one of Walton’s topics, George Herbert, who, in poems like “The Pulley” and “The Collar”, recounted his own spiritual struggle through a vocational methodology by devoting special attention to the spiritual situation of a two-career writer and churchman. Biography of the mid-17th century was thus highly intellectualized. Writers like Robert Burton and Thomas Browne presented their stories as intellectual compendia, as vast amalgamations of anecdotal knowledge gathered in a lifetime of mental meandering. The anecdote itself became an essential tool for biographical narrative. Francis Bacon, for one, was a great collector of anecdotal stories about both the ancients and the Elizabethans; his pithy prose reduced whole lives into pointed paragraphs illustrating one or another moral points. Later in the century, would-be theologians like John Bunyan made recourse to the spiritual biography, the tale of a soul en route to salvation, to encapsulate their own experiences into anecdotal as well as allegorical form. From a theoretical standpoint, these authors took a highly purposive approach to biography. They focused the individual life on some point or points that they regarded as crucial to the success or even salvation of their audience. The liberalization of censorship in the Restoration period and 18th century brought about an efflorescence in biographical approaches and theories. Under the influence of John Locke’s developmentalist theories of education and perception, in which the shaping of the mind, and by extension the shaping of a life, influenced the ability to perceive and assimilate knowledge productively and even creatively, biographers began examining all kinds of lives and all manner of interpreting them. Most conservatively, Poet Laureate John Dryden developed the “verse portrait” as a verse condensation of the lives of his various allies and enemies, his aim being either to exorcise or enshrine the persons in question, his theoretical justifications being those developed in his essay A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (1693). Second, Dryden developed the literary-critical life in which the details of a writer’s life were presumed to shed light on his literary compositions. Third, Dryden cultivated the art of “imitation” in which, according to Augustan literary theory, a modern writer could so completely

psychologically identify with an ancient poet that he or she could write as if he or she were that poet, only living in modern times. “Imitation” became a kind of living biography in which the modern writer lived out sequels to some precedent writer’s career. Because the era was to become one of extensive experimentation, it is not surprising that biographers developed theoretical justifications for sensational stories and other extreme life experiences. Bishop Gilbert Burnet, for example, recounted, in Some Passages in the Life and Death of the Right Honourable John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1680), the lascivious life and deathbed conversion of the courtier and poet. Gilbert justified his endeavour by hoping to offer a useful example of repentance. Less piously, Edward Ward offered his History of the London Clubs (1709–10) to tell the story of those who belonged to London’s more extreme social sets, including the atheists and the farters. This kind of sensational biography became one foundation of the early novel. Novelists such as Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, and Henry Fielding used the solid theoretical grounding of biography to justify, in turn, the emerging novel; if a story were true, that is, if it were biographical, the novel could be justified on didactical and journalistic grounds. Characters like Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, Fielding’s Tom Jones and Jonathan Wild, and even Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa, were assumed to have real-life counterparts. A theoretical circle developed in which novels justified biographies and biographies justified novels. And because many of these characters, especially rogues like the real-life Jonathan Wild, offered sensational stories, often with gallows conclusions, there developed the implicit connection between recounting the life and sensation. Other theoretically minded biographers were more reserved. Samuel Johnson, in his Rambler essays and his Lives of the English Poets (1779–81), redirected attention to the lives of ordinary persons, again on the moralistic grounds that there is more to be learned from the life of a virtuous country parson or a simple farmer than from all the stampeding terrors perpetrated by an Alexander the Great or a Charles XII of Sweden. Johnson refocused attention on the ordinary dimensions and common human frustrations in the lives of authors and other notable persons. Benjamin Franklin, in his Autobiography (1793), took the same approach, setting forth his life as absolutely ordinary and completely paradigmatic, as a model that anyone could imitate and from which almost anyone could learn. Unexpectedly, Johnson’s neoclassical concern for the common factors of human experience ended up animating what might be called the “landscape biography” of the mid- to late 18th century, that highly sentimental approach in verse to abandoned towns and neglected yeomen whose lives draw the melancholy spectator’s interest but whose biographies never quite get written. Oliver Goldsmith, George Crabbe, and William Cowper give us prospect after prospect of deserted villages, forgotten parish registers, and empty hamlets that once contained dozens of compelling lives and life stories but that now can only be appreciated as a prospect. These authors practise a kind of “biography manqué” in which the forgotten life story is more emotionally compelling and sublimely evocative than is any old coarse tale of some clamorous famous person. The upper registers of auto/biographical theory in the mid- to

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late 18th century lift us into the world of auto/biographical interdisciplinarity. Portrait painter and Royal Academy president Joshua Reynolds, in his 15 Discourses (from 1769 to 1790), explained that portrait painting was not simply a matter of capturing the likeness of a person, but rather of exposing the character, life story, and indeed general human nature underlying that image. Any good portrait tells an entire life (and affirms an entire ideology) while it also serves its photographic, documentary purpose. Philosophers such as David Hume and Adam Smith introduced autobiographical comments or even whole autobiographical works into their treatises, apparently convinced that the century demanded the presence of the whole person in order to credential philosophical works. David Hume, for one, wrote a capsule autobiography (The Life of David Hume, 1777), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau offered an entire volume of Confessions (1782). In its most extreme form, auto/biography became itself a literary-philosophical work and event. William Blake’s visionary poems were cast as the common life story of cognitively adept persons; Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (1817) presented literary theory, philosophy, and biography as a single, unified movement of the imaginative mind. By the beginning of the 19th century, life writing had lost its clearly defined methods, while it simultaneously penetrated other genres. Kevin L. Cope Further Reading Amelang, James, The Flight of Icarus: Artisan Autobiography in Early Modern Europe, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998 Anderson, Judith H., Biographical Truth: The Representation of Historical Persons in Tudor–Stuart Writing, New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 1984 Andrews, William L. (editor), Journeys in New Worlds: Early American Women’s Narratives, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990 Banes, Ruth A., “The Exemplary Self: Autobiography in EighteenthCentury America”, Biography, 5 (1982): 226–39 Batchelor, John (editor), The Art of Literary Biography, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995 Beasley, Faith E., Revising Memory: Women’s Fiction and Memoirs in Seventeenth-Century France, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1990 Bercovitch, Sacvan, The Puritan Origins of the American Self, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1975 Caputo, Rino and Matteo Monaco (editors), Scrivere la propria vita: l’autobiografia come problema critico e teorico, Rome: Bulzoni, 1997 Clifford, James, Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism 1560–1960, New York: Oxford University Press, 1960 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Biographia Literaria, edited by George Watson, London: Dent, and New York: Dutton, 1960 Delaney, Paul, British Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and New York: Columbia University Press, 1969 Edkins, Carol, “Quest for Community: Spiritual Autobiographies of Eighteenth-Century Quaker and Puritan Women in America” in Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism, edited by Estelle C. Jelinek, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980 Elliott, Emory, “New England Puritan Literature: Personal Narrative and History” in The Cambridge History of American Literature 1: 1590–1820, edited by Sacvan Bercovitch, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994 Forti-Lewis, Angelica, Italia autobiografica, Rome: Bulzoni, 1986 Graham, Elspeth et al. (editors), Her Own Life: Autobiographical Essays by Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen, London and New York: Routledge, 1989

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Greenblatt, Stephen J., Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980 Guglielminetti, Marziano, Memoria e scrittura: l’autobiografia da Dante a Cellini, Turin: Einaudi, 1977 Guillén, Claudio, “Notes toward the Study of the Renaissance Letter” in Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History, and Interpretation, edited by Barbara Lewalski, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986 Hamilton, Ian, Keepers of the Flame: Literary Estates and the Rise of Biography, London: Hutchinson, 1992; Boston: Faber, 1994 Hampton, Timothy, Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1990 Ijsewijn, Jozef, “Humanistic Autobiography” in Renaissance: Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, edited by Anthony Molho and John A. Tedeschi, Florence: Sansoni, 1970; Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971 Imbarrato, Susan Clair, Declarations of Independency in EighteenthCentury American Autobiography, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998 Jardine, Lisa, Erasmus: Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in Print, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993 Mascuch, Michael, Origins of the Individualist Self: Autobiography and Self-Identity in England, 1591–1791, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996; Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997 Mayer, Thomas F. and D.R. Woolf (editors), The Rhetorics of LifeWriting in Early Modern Europe: Forms of Biography from Cassandra Fedele to Louis XIV, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995 Sayre, Robert F., “Autobiography and the Making of America” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by James Olney, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Shea, Daniel B., Spiritual Autobiography in Early America, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968 Stauffer, Donald A., English Biography before 1700, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1930; reprinted, New York: Russell and Russell, 1964 Steussy, Fredric S., Eighteenth-Century German Autobiography: The Emergence of Individuality, New York: Lang, 1996 Taves, Ann, “Self and God in the Early Published Memoirs of New England Women” in American Women’s Auobiography: Fea(s)ts of Memory, edited by Margo Culley, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992 Weintraub, Karl, The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978 Wright, Louis B., The Cultural Life of the American Colonies: 1607–1763, New York: Harper, 1957

Criticism and Theory: Romanticism and the 19th Century Romantic theories of autobiography fall within the concept of the “imagination”. For the Romantics, order was not inherent in the universe as it was for empiricists in the 18th century, but rather was an effect of human perception, especially of the faculty they termed “imagination”. Order emanated from the human mind, or from the imagination’s ability to organize the impressions from the senses into a coherent narrative. The English Romantic movement, exemplified by the work of Wordsworth and Coleridge, was part of a wider European tendency to redefine identity as subjective experience: Immanuel Kant (1772–1804) founded his philosophy on the intuitive perception of order by the perceiving subject; Jean-Jacques Rousseau published what amounted to a Romantic manifesto in his Confessions (1782–89); and Goethe in Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774; The Sorrows of Young Werther)

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provided a template for the moody, introspective Romantic hero. These texts inaugurated the exploration of a territory that was to become the chief residence of the modern alienated and isolated self. In England the shift in emphasis was announced in the introduction to Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads (1798). In his preface he states that in his poems “I proposed to myself to imitate, and, as far as is possible, to adopt the very language of men”. Wordsworth attempted to imitate everyday speech, and to present many of his poems as if they were conversations. This same ambition is evident in Wordsworth’s definition of the poet when he asks “What is a Poet? To whom does he address himself? And what language is to be expected from him? – He is a man speaking to men.” Wordsworth’s ideal is a language that is transparent and allows for unmediated communication; he repudiates the elevated diction of previous models in favour of a form of poetry that does not draw attention to itself as a formalized use of language but rather comes across as pure selfexpression. The Preface is in many ways a revolutionary document. The radical, democratic approach to poetry that it announced was coupled in Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem The Prelude (written 1805, published 1850) with an attention to the minutiae of everyday life simply because they were part of Wordsworth’s experience, not because they fitted into a larger divine plan that led to conversion, as was the idea behind the earlier autobiographical form of the confession. Wordsworth’s Preface, while it ostensibly deals with poetry, can also be seen as a justification for autobiography as a new way of writing, which assumes that the writer is an ordinary person addressing other ordinary people. The only thing that distinguishes the poet from his fellow citizens is that the poet is “endowed with more lively sensibility”, and thus has a much richer and more complex inner life. It becomes the task of autobiographical writing in the 19th century to convey a sense of this rich inner life to the less wellendowed members of the public. An alternative to the Wordsworthian projection of self upon nature was suggested by John Keats (1795–1821) in a number of his letters. Keats objected to the “Wordsworthian or egotistical sublime” and posited a form of writing that “had no self” and exercised “negative capability”. Keats’s letters can be read as sketching an approach to poetry that, in its emphasis upon the loss of self, was anti-Wordsworthian in its desire to fuse the subject with the object. Because Keats died so young, his theory remained only a brief sketch in his personal writings; however, subsequent critics and scholars have found in it the seeds of a rich and complex aspect of Romantic theory. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s most complete expression of his ideas on autobiography is his Biographia Literaria (1817). Coleridge drew upon the early 19th-century psychological theory of “association” that posited an accumulation of “associations” between words and things over time as the basis for identity and memory. David Hartley (1705–57) is credited with formulating the theory of associationism as a unifying principle in psychology, and Coleridge followed his model. Biographia Literaria was begun as a short preface to Coleridge’s poems, but developed into a longer philosophical treatise on poetry and the difference between what he termed the “fancy” and the “imagination”. Large sections of Biographia Literaria form part of a continuing debate with William Wordsworth on

the very nature of poetry. While the text may seem disorganized and discordant to many readers, its final structuring principle is Coleridge’s own belief in “association” as the basic principle of the human mind. Thus, the text develops through accretion and repetition rather than through linear argument. It is a highly idiosyncratic mixture of autobiography, philosophy, and theories of the human mind. Romantic theories of autobiography tend to be dominated by a (masculine) conception of the self as masterful and unified. For women autobiographers, either a new way of representing the self had to be formulated or the dominant myth of the self had to be criticized. Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818) can be read as a critique of the Romantic projection of self and of the hubris of the Romantic poet who felt his perceptions created the world. More pertinently, Dorothy Wordsworth, in her diaries, does not attempt to provide a coherent autobiography, writing instead in discrete and discontinuous journal entries. Her brother William would then take these entries and turn them into apparently autobiographical poems ostensibly by himself alone. In this he shows the more troubling aspect of Romantic male appropriation of another’s experience in autobiography. Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus (1836) is a combination of novel, philosophical rumination, and mock autobiography that has some similarities to Biographia Literaria in that Carlyle, like Coleridge, was deeply influenced by German philosophy. Carlyle creates a model life story in which the central figure, Teufelsdröck (or “Devil’s dung”), goes through the stages of the “Everlasting No”, “The Centre of Indifference”, and the “Everlasting Yea”. The book embodies Carlyle’s belief that biography was the most important vehicle for conveying ideas and inspiration. Thus, in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841) he proposed the biographies of great men (but not women) as models of conduct for everyone else. In Sartor Resartus Carlyle introduces what seems in many ways a postmodern approach to identity, through a theory of clothes (hence the title, Sartor Resartus or “The Tailor Re-Tailored”), and the self seen as a construction mediated though social conventions. The book is often referred to as a fictional autobiography, but its premises and multiple layers of irony represent a critique of the possibility of representing the self in language. In fact, rather than a fictional autobiography Sartor Resartus might better be considered a fictional biography, since this is the genre that Carlyle most admired. The most sustained and complex autobiographical project in the Victorian period was undertaken by the critic and art historian John Ruskin, whose ambivalent attitude to autobiography was typical of Victorian attitudes towards the self. Early in his career Ruskin promulgated the theory of the “pathetic fallacy” (Modern Painters, vol. 3), in which he argued that artists and writers should not project their own emotions on to nature. He wished to preserve a Wordsworthian sense of nature as an autonomous agency, and to maintain the boundary between subject and object. As his career progressed, however, Ruskin found this boundary to be increasingly eroded as his writing became more and more autobiographical. His Fors Clavigera (1871–84), for example, written as a series of 96 letters describing his St George’s Guild project and addressing the working classes of England, was frequently autobiographical in nature, as he used the letter format as a way of exploring his own memory and consciousness. His lecture on The

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Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century (1884), while a classic piece of early environmental writing, offers as much insight into Ruskin’s state of mind as it does into the climate of industrialized England. This autobiographical series of texts culminated in Praeterita: Oulines of Scenes and Thoughts Perhaps Worthy of Memory in My Past Life (1886–89), a beautiful and haunting autobiography written in between bouts of madness. John Stuart Mill in his Autobiography (1873) showed the deep influence of Carlyle on his thought. He adopted from Carlyle what he termed the doctrine of “anti-self-consciousness”. Mill’s theory is that one can only achieve happiness through not thinking about happiness. While Mill propounds this theory in relation to his “mental crisis” (his term for a bout of deep depression), he is in fact explaining his own modus operandi. Mill believed that he must repress his self-consciousness, and his text is a model of repression at work, as he studiously avoids discussing his negative emotions towards his father, who was solely responsible for his upbringing and education. Mill credits his father for making him an astute analyst, but also implicitly blames him for his depressions. This blame, however, is never consciously articulated. Mill’s ambivalence towards his father was paralleled a generation later in Edmund Gosse’s seminal autobiography study of childhood, Father and Son (1907). Women’s autobiographies of the Victorian period in Britain include those of Margaret Oliphant (1899) and Harriet Martineau (1877). As with women’s autobiographies in the Romantic period, these can be read as critiques of the dominant, male-centred social and intellectual milieu. Oliphant’s autobiography, for instance, demystifies the process of writing and focuses on her role as breadwinner and mother. Unlike Mill’s autobiography, which is modelled on the concept of a “career”, Oliphant’s autobiography sees her work as subsidiary to her family. Martineau’s autobiography reveals the difficulty for a Victorian deaf woman writer who wished to break into the male-dominated sphere of literary cultural production. Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean (1885) is another form of experimental autobiography. Marius is an autobiographically based study of a Roman youth who is a follower of Marcus Aurelius. The book follows Marius’ efforts to harmonize his inner state of being with the outer world. The text combines Pater’s interest in history and mythology with his vision of the artist as a writer of spiritual, but not direct or unmediated, autobiography. Pater tries to represent in his text the “perpetual weaving and unweaving of ourselves” and to capture in writing the evanescent atmosphere of an inner life. Pater’s concern with consciousness over plot and reality prefigures the later “stream- of-consciousness” writing of early 20th-century experimentalists such as Virginia Woolf. Woolf ’s autobiographical writings show the shift from Victorian to Edwardian and 20th-century theories of identity and autobiography. Woolf’s “A Sketch of the Past” (written 1939–40), much of which concerns her Victorian childhood and young adulthood, eschews the effort to provide a coherent, overarching narrative of a life. Instead Woolf focuses on epiphanic “moments of being” that stand as relatively isolated experiences outside the usual course of existence. Woolf is sharply critical of Victorian society and views herself as a modern, enlightened Edwardian who has left behind Victorian certainties for the relativism and scepticism of the Bloomsbury group. At the very end of the Victorian age, Samuel Butler’s autobio-

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graphical fiction The Way of All Flesh (1903) has its narrator Edward Overton saying that “every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him”. Like Pater, Butler experiments with the stream-ofconsciousness technique later used by Woolf; all three writers show the transition from Victorian to Edwardian and modernist approaches to autobiography at the beginning of the 20th century. By the time T.S. Eliot wrote “The Waste Land” (1922), Victorian belief in, and representations of, the unified and coherent self had given way to a much more radically contingent view of identity and life writing. Martin A. Danahay See also Britain: Romanticism and Life Writing; France: 19th-Century Auto/biography; Germany, Austria, Switzerland: Romanticism and Life Writing; Hungary; Individualism and Life Writing; Italy: 19th-Century Auto/biography; Poland; The Self; United States: 19th-Century Auto/biography

Further Reading Barros, Carolyn A., Autobiography: Narrative of Transformation, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998 Danahay, Martin, A Community of One: Masculine Autobiography and Autonomy in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993 Gagnier, Regenia, Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain, 1832–1920, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 Hamlin, Cyrus, “Poetics of Self-Consciousness in European Romanticism”, Genre, 6 (1973): 142–77 Jay, Paul, Being in the Text: Self-Representation from Wordsworth to Roland Barthes, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1984 Krell, David Farrell, Of Memory, Reminiscence and Writing: On the Verge, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990 Lecarme, Jacques, L’Autobiographie, Paris: Armand Colin, 1997 Lejeune, Philippe, L’Autobiographie en France, Paris: Armand Colin, 1971 Loesberg, Jonathan, Fictions of Consciousness: Mill, Newman, and the Reading of Victorian Prose, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1986 Machann, Clinton, The Genre of Autobiography in Victorian Literature, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994 Peterson, Linda H., Traditions of Victorian Women’s Autobiography: The Poetics and Politics of Life Writing, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999 Raitt, A.W., Life and Letters in France, vol. 3, The Nineteenth Century, London: Nelson, and New York: Scribner, 1970 Rigby, Brian (editor), French Literature, Thought and Culture in the Nineteenth Century: A Material World: Essays in Honour of D.G. Charlton, London: Macmillan, 1993 Rzepka, Charles J., The Self as Mind: Vision and Identity in Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986 Sheringham, Michael, French Autobiography: Devices and Desires, Rousseau to Perec, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993 Stanton, Domna C. (editor), The Female Autograph, New York: New York Litarary Forum, 1984

Criticism and Theory: 1900 to 1950s In many ways, the themes of Henry Adams’s autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams (published privately, 1907), set the tone for the critical dialogues that emerged in the first half of the 20th century. Adams attempted – if only metaphorically – to

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trace a line from the unity he saw embodied in the Virgin of Chartres to the multiplicity he perceived in the dynamo at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900. But Adams could neither explain nor contain modernity’s “multiverse”. He saw a world whose meaning had become overdetermined and untranslatable. Adams’s sense of chaos prefigured the “incredulity toward metanarratives” that François Lyotard located as part of the postmodern condition in the 1970s, a breakdown of belief that might be applied to modernism as well. The groundbreaking theories of Freud, Darwin, Nietzsche, Jung, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard necessarily complicated views on life writing and called into question what approaches should be used to present a life reliably. However unsettling scholars may have found theories that challenged religion, the coherence of selfhood, or the existence of God, early 20th-century life-writing theory largely concerned itself with determining the best methods to reveal the life in question. In contrast to the theories that emerged in the last half of the 20th century, Western culture continued to view the subject as a knowable self, one that might pose challenges for a biographer to portray, but nonetheless a subject about whom the truth might be revealed. The word “biographer” is emphasized deliberately, for the focus of the century’s first half was on biography far more than on autobiography. Accordingly, though later theorists problematized selfhood (autos) and the referentiality of language (graphe), early 20th-century theorists focused on how to depict life (bios). In part, the reason for autobiography’s relative absence in early 20th-century theory was, as Charles Berryman stated in “Critical Mirrors: Theories of Autobiography” (1999), the result of its uneasy position “between the departments of history and literature”. Though biography was in a similar position, autobiography was classified as a “sub” category of biography, considered less reliable (thus less useful historically), and judged inferior to biography as a literary art form. In Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical (1980), James Olney asserted that theoretical and critical literature on autobiography did not begin in earnest until 1956, following the publication of Georges Gusdorf’s essay, “Conditions and Limits of Autobiography”. Olney did, however, cite some earlier autobiographical studies: the collected texts of Wilheim Dilthey’s Pattern and Meaning in History (1962), Georg Misch’s multi-volume Geschichte der Autobiographie (1907–69; part as History of Autobiography), Anna Robeson Burr’s The Autobiography: A Critical and Comparative Study (1909), J. Lionel Taylor’s The Writing of Autobiography and Biography (1926), and A.M. Clark’s Autobiography: Its Genesis and Phases (1935). William Spengemann in The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre (1980) chided other theorists for acknowledging their predecessors inadequately. Accordingly, Spengemann provided an extensive list of autobiographical criticism (primarily essays) from the first half of the century but then conceded that with the exception of the studies being done in Germany, most of the work produced in America and Europe was unknown and not particularly innovative or systematic. Many of the early critical works produced were collections of life writing, discussions of autobiography’s value as history and /or as art, attempts at defining autobiography, or practical guides on how to write autobiographies. In contrast to the conservative critical output, several auto-

biographers of the same period experimented with the genre’s conventions, recognized autobiography’s potential as a literary form, and heralded the genre’s inherent collision with language and subjectivity that would dominate autobiographical debates in the last decades of the century. Henry Adams used artifice (the manikin, the masks), revealed his scepticism about selfknowledge, and presented himself ironically throughout The Education. In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), Gertrude Stein subverted the autobiographical process by presenting her life via what she “imagined” was Toklas’s point of view. In The Inner I: British Literary Autobiography in the Twentieth Century (1985), Brian Finney noted that Michel Leiris, in his autobiography Biffures (1948; Scratches), deliberately foregrounded the fictive nature of life writing and even began the work like a fairy tale: “Once upon a time”. Similarly, Mary McCarthy in Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957) paused after each chapter to question its veracity, and at one point stated flatly: “There are several dubious points in this memoir.” That these autobiographers often demonstrated more critical sophistication than the theorists of their day supported James Olney’s contention that autobiography’s self-reflexive nature produced a body of criticism “within the literature rather than alongside it”. In terms of dominant critical trends, however, the “battlefield” of early 20th-century discourse on life writing concerned biography. Traditionally, biography was viewed as a form of history. The biographer amassed reams of notes, letters, diaries, and historical data to document the subject’s life as factually and completely as possible. Whether these large, often multi-volume biographies were well written or artistic was judged secondary to their value as a historical resource. Many biographies were commissioned in advance and designed specifically to present the subject as favourably as possible – an agenda that challenged the biographer’s ability to remain objective. Shortly after World War I, the emphasis that biography placed on facts and breadth took an abrupt turn following the publication of Lytton Strachey’s three biographies: Eminent Victorians (1918), Queen Victoria (1921), and Elizabeth and Essex (1928). Strachey’s technique exemplified the so-called genre of “New Biography”, and prompted a flurry of biographies using similar techniques, as well as books and essays clarifying its critical framework. In A History of American Biography 1800–1935 (1935), Edward Hayes O’Neill referred to Strachey as “the father of modern biography”. In lieu of presenting the subject’s entire life in painstaking detail, O’Neill explained, Strachey “revolutionized” biographical technique by selecting only the events and details that revealed the subject’s dominant characteristics. Strachey, according to O’Neill, acquired extensive knowledge about his subject and then produced “the essence of the material” or, as Strachey put it, “a becoming brevity … which excludes everything that is redundant and nothing that is significant” (from Strachey’s preface to Eminent Victorians). Strachey’s impressionistic method also relied on psychology. Freud’s theories heavily influenced the “new biography”, and the insights that psychology uncovered were thought to produce a “truer” portrait of a subject than that gained by a litany of facts. In addition to Strachey, George F. Bowerman in “The New Biography” (1929), and Edward Hayes O’Neill recognized Harold Nicolson, Philip Guedalla, André Maurois, Emil

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Ludwig, and Gamaliel Bradford as the eminent writers of the “new biography”. Though the works of the six biographers listed above typified the techniques of the “new biography”, in Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism 1560–1960 (1962), James Clifford observed that its critical structure was articulated by works such as André Maurois’s Aspects de la biographie (1928; Aspects of Biography), Emil Ludwig’s Genie und Charakter (1924; Genius and Character), Sir Harold Nicolson’s “The Practice of Biography” (1954), Virginia Woolf’s “The New Biography” (1927), and Lord David Cecil’s An Anthology of Modern Biography (1936). Ludwig and Maurois rejected the “laboriously collated facts” of scientific life writing in favour of a biography that adhered to facts but presented a more artistically “shaped” portrait. Ludwig contended that a biographer must “be versed in the study of man, must be a psychologist and an analyst. He must be skilled, through both intuition and training, in interpreting a character by the symptoms of its behaviour.” Maurois placed more emphasis on the biographer’s need to be factual, but also cited the importance of finding a pattern and “discovering the main themes” in the life being studied. Like Ludwig, Maurois stressed the importance of selecting and arranging facts to reveal a life’s “essence”. Virginia Woolf remained guarded, maintaining that biography was a craft, not an art. Woolf illustrated her point by referring to Strachey’s Queen Victoria as a well-crafted but factual account in contrast to Strachey’s later biography Elizabeth and Essex, which contained a blend of fact and fiction that Woolf saw as “unworkable”. A condition of biography, Woolf insisted, was that it must rest on verifiable facts. Nonetheless, the debates that “new biography” aroused probed larger issues such as the integrity of fact, the tenuous line between biography and fiction, and the subjectivity involved in any life writing – all issues taken up in more complexity later in the century. Not surprisingly, the more impressionistic – often psychoanalytic – literary technique of “new biography” provoked immediate criticism. Of all the attacks levelled at the “new biography” perhaps none was more vitriolic than Bernard DeVoto’s in “The Skeptical Biographer” (1933), where he stated: “Literary people should not be permitted to write biography.” DeVoto continued by asserting that the literary biographer was naive, simple, ignorant, undisciplined, and tempted to use techniques such as psychoanalysis that had “no value whatever as a method of arriving at facts in biography”. The debates in the second and third decades of the century hinged largely on whether life writing should be written artistically or historically. With the advent of New Criticism, the proper “focus” of life writing became less important than rescuing it from critical oblivion in the face of such theorists as John Crowe Ransom, T.S. Eliot, Cleanth Brooks, William Empson, Robert Penn Warren, and I.A. Richards, to name a few. Though not entirely in agreement with one another, these critics proposed a number of shared – and highly influential – “antiauto/biographical” principles. A literary work should be studied as an independent verbal artifact. The author’s life, artistic or moral intentions, social climate, and historical determinants were all extraneous to the study of a work of art. The tenets of New Criticism hampered the growth and study of life writing in at least two ways: the genre itself fell even lower in critical esteem (biographies and autobiographies were not characterized by the tight verbal constructs favoured by the New Critics),

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and life writing no longer served as an important critical resource. Although New Criticism remained a dominant force well into the 1960s and effectively stifled discussion of self (autos) and life (bios) in favour of language (graphe), other, less socially disconnected theories, such as existentialism, also emerged. Existentialists including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus (although he later claimed he was not an existentialist), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty revived interest in the self and its role in existence. To simplify, atheistic existentialists viewed the world as essentially devoid of any inherent meaning and thus absurd. In a world without sense, all choices were possible, a situation that Sartre viewed as a human being’s salient dilemma and burden: “Man is condemned to be free.” Individuals, then, had to define themselves by the choices they made at every moment in their lives. Given Sartre’s philosophy, selfhood could never be stable but would always be in process, as the self defined and re-defined himself or herself with every new choice. By this standard, the traditional goal of a biography or autobiography – to present the truth and sense of a life – could result only in failure and self-deception. Curiously, though Sartre’s existential philosophy would seem to make any attempt at presenting a knowable and coherent self impossible, Sartre wrote an autobiography Les Mots (1964; The Words) and Simone de Beauvoir wrote several. Paul John Eakin in Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of SelfInvention (1985) pointed out the use of (existential) choice in Sartre’s four life studies (his own autobiography as well as his biographies of Baudelaire, Genet, and Flaubert). Nevertheless, it is easier to consider how existentialism’s “indeterminate” view of self would impact on auto/biographical theory than it is to determine precisely which life writings were influenced by existentialism (see Marcus, 1987, for some later examples). Despite the large amount of life writing produced in the first half of the 20th century, the critical output was relatively small. Biography prompted more critical study, though the most prolific debate centred on how a biography should be written. By the 1950s, autobiography was just beginning to be viewed as a separate genre but had not received any sustained critical attention. Given the under-examined status of “landmark” works of life writing (written primarily by and about men), studies of biographies and autobiographies focusing on gender, race, or ethnicity were all but nonexistent. Yet, the life-writing theories and trends that were initiated questioned the divide between fact and fiction, challenged the possibility of presenting a life objectively, and examined how the shaping force of language prohibited any simple attempts at truth and reference. In the structuralist and poststructuralist periods that followed, the opaque quality of language and the auto/biographical subject became a dominant concern. Kristi Siegel See also New Biography

Further Reading Works from 1900 to the 1950s: Bowen, Catharine Drinker, Adventures of a Biographer, Boston: Little Brown, 1959 Burr, Anna R., The Autobiography: A Critical and Comparative Study, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909

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Clark, Arthur Melville, Autobiography: Its Genesis and Phases, Edinburgh, London: Oliver and Boyd, 1935; reprinted, Folcroft, Pennsylvania: Folcroft Press, 1969 Edel, Leon, Literary Biography, London: Hart-Davis, 1957; republished with additional material, New York: Doubleday, 1959 Johnson, Edgar, One Mighty Torrent: The Drama of Biography, New York: Stackpole, 1937 Maurois, André, Aspects of Biography, translated by S.C. Roberts, London: Cambridge University Press, and New York: Appleton, 1929 Merrill, Dana Kinsman, The Development of American Biography, Portland, Maine: Southworth Press, 1932 Misch, Georg, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity, 2 vols, translated by E.W. Dickes, London: Routledge, and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1950 Nicolson, Harold, The Development of English Biography, London: Hogarth Press, 1927; New York; Harcourt Brace, 1928 Pascal, Roy, Design and Truth in Autobiography, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960 Shumaker, Wayne, English Autobiography: Its Emergence, Materials, and Form, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954

Later Works: Bruss, Elizabeth W., Autobiographical Acts: The Changing Situation of a Literary Genre, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976 Clifford, James L. (editor), Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism 1560–1960, New York: Oxford University Press, 1962 Cockshut, A.O.J., The Art of Autobiography in 19th and 20th Century England, New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 1984 Finney, Brian, The Inner I: British Literary Autobiography in the Twentieth Century, London and Boston: Faber, 1985 Lejeune, Philippe, On Autobiography, edited by Paul John Eakin, translated by Katherine Leary, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989 Marcus, Laura, “‘Enough About You, Let’s Talk about Me’: Recent Autobiographical Writing”, New Formations, 1 (1987): 77–94 Marcus, Laura, Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994 Olney, James, Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972 Spengemann, William C., The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980

Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Structuralism and Poststructuralism Structuralist and poststructuralist theories of autobiography challenged our understanding of autobiography in the last three decades of the 20th century. At the beginning of a new millennium, however, we may be emerging from poststructuralist cynicism about autobiography’s capacity to represent the self in order to account for beliefs in autobiography never fully dispelled by theory. The institutionalization of autobiography studies in the academy, begun in the 1970s, owes much to structuralist and poststructuralist theory. “Theory”, in shorthand, effectively detached autobiography from life and aligned it with literature. If the contribution of structuralist and poststructuralist theory in general has been to prioritize the mode of representation over the thing represented (following Saussure’s theory of language from which much structuralist and poststructuralist theory

derives, to cast the signifier as productive of the signified), theory in application to autobiography has prioritized the graphe (writing) and rendered it creative of the autos (self) and the bios (life). As in structuralist theories of language, writing is seen to precede and construct reality, not to reflect it. The key terms here are “referent” and “figure”, and their relation is particularly important. Autobiography’s claim to represent, or reference, the self has been overtaken by an attention to writing’s figurative or constructive qualities. It was precisely this development that detached autobiography from the realm of factuality and history and propelled it, albeit ambivalently, into the realm of literature and literary studies. The focus on autobiography in this discussion is deliberate, for theory has overwhelmingly made its proper object autobiography above other forms of life writing. This concentration is undoubtedly because autobiography came to theory as already opaque and unlocatable; less generically elusive forms of life writing have simply not attracted the same degree of theoretical problematization as autobiography (the obvious comparison here being with biography). The earliest attempts at generic definition of autobiography are in ideal structuralist, for distinguishing autobiography involved attending to the rules and form of writing, analysing the relations between textual structures, and drawing up resultant typologies; structuralism considers the relations between structures, locating meaning in the system or langue – generic conventions rather than particular examples. Georges Gusdorf’s attempt in “Conditions and Limits of Autobiography” (1956) to circumscribe the genre thus has a theoretical undertow, as was recognized by James Olney when he cited this essay as seminal in his Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Cultural (1980), a collection that is itself a theoretical landmark. Yet Gusdorf’s essay is not strictly structuralist, for it delimits autobiography less through its intratextual properties than through its historical and cultural conditions. Structuralist theories prioritize language and writing over, and indeed in the most radical instances to the exclusion of, historical context. It is thus Philippe Lejeune’s Le Pacte autobiographique (1973; “The Autobiographical Pact”) and Elizabeth Bruss’s Autobiographical Acts: The Changing Situation of a Literary Genre (1976) that properly initiate the structuralist project on autobiography, particularly since both explicitly draw on linguistic theories to refine that task of autobiographical definition. In Lejeune these are the theories of Emile Benveniste on utterance and enunciation; in Bruss, John Searle on speech-acts: in both, structuralism dictates the approach to autobiography as analogous to, and formed by, the structures of language. Lejeune’s “The Autobiographical Pact” represents the classic structuralist statement on autobiography. Not only does Lejeune suspend history and context (the method through which he was formerly working) to define autobiography exclusively through text, but his mode of argument and conveyance is itself highly structured, his essay punctuated with mathematical formulae and schematic diagrams reminiscent of Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale (1916; Course in General Linguistics). Working through a series of oppositions in order to isolate autobiography’s properties, Lejeune considers autobiography in relation first to fiction and then to biography. He extends this network of intertextual relations into an analysis of the structural relations within the text, and argues that auto-

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biography may be distinguished by the “identity of proper name” between author, narrator, protagonist, and model. This identity – and thus autobiography – Lejeune reduces to an algebraic formula: “Autobiography: N is to P as A is to M (A = author; N = narrator; P = Protagonist; M = model)”. This reduction of textual variation to a deep and definitive structure is archetypically structuralist. The “identity of proper name” sets up a relation between author and reader that ensures that the autobiography will be approached invariably as distinct. The “autobiographical pact” is autobiography’s ultimate structural relation. Poststructuralist theories begin with the foundering of these neat structures and concomitantly show a growing uncertainty about autobiography’s distinctness and indeed possibility. This doubt Lejeune himself best exemplifies in his return to the autobiographical pact in “The Autobiographical Pact (bis)” (1982). “Bis” performs a brilliant reversal of the former essay’s structuralist ode. In “Bis” Lejeune writes that “The Autobiographical Pact” had failed to take into account what happens when the ideal structures of the text encounter the unstable contexts of its reception. The problem was that the autobiographical pact had approached autobiography “from an essentially linguistic and formal point of view”; the problem was precisely the essay’s structuralism, its desire to systematize the text. Lejeune acknowledges here that there is no pure text, that real readers can and do read differently, and that autobiography therefore cannot be definitively isolated. Indeed, the hybrid form of autobiographical fiction illustrates the blurred distinctions between autobiography and fiction. The blurring of these distinctions between autobiography and fiction has constituted poststructuralism’s key contribution to autobiography studies (poststructuralism pushes on structuralism’s neat structures). As poststructuralism has espoused writing as fluid and intransitive, autobiography has been recast as a project of poesis, constructive and self-referential, and thus never fully distinct from fiction. The poststructuralist position on autobiography is encapsulated in Paul de Man’s famous conclusion in “Autobiography as De-facement” (1979) that “the distinction between fiction and autobiography is not an either /or polarity but … finally undecidable”. De Man’s deconstruction of the generic distinctness of autobiography is achieved by deferring autobiography’s referent. Using the metaphor of autobiography as prosopoeia, a face- or figure-making, de Man regards autobiography not as a reflection but as a created product: autobiography not as revelatory, but as a form of mask or persona – “the illusion of reference”, “a correlation of the structure of the figure”, “something more akin to a fiction”. This distinctively poststructuralist displacement of autobiographical reference / truth might have collapsed autobiography into fiction altogether had not the very notion of autobiography’s fictionality proved so useful for the poststructuralist enterprise. For in seeming to create a self rather than reflect one, autobiography appeared to literalize the subject of poststructuralism. The self in autobiography that was at best imaginary and split dramatized the constructed, split subject of poststructuralism; autobiography staged the death of the author and the fictionality of the self. As Michael Sprinker’s “Fictions of the Self: The End of Autobiography” (1980) apocalyptically portended, poststructuralism’s most extreme encounter with autobiography threatened the very end of the genre.

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Yet autobiography is not at an end, and the fact that it continues as a form irreducible to fiction shows the limitations of poststructuralist theory with regard to explaining the experience of autobiography. Even autobiographies manifestly crossfertilized by fiction, such as Philip Roth’s The Facts (1988) and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1976), remain, in our experience of reading them, categorically distinct from works of fiction by these same authors. In spite of theory’s deployment of autobiography to illustrate a Lacanian fragmentation and imaginariness of selfhood and a Derridean conception of writing as selfreferential, autobiography remains a mode vital in and out of theory. Indeed, Lejeune’s “The Autobiographical Pact (Bis)”, although archetypically poststructuralist in tipping those structures into each other, refuses to accept fully the poststructuralist cynicism about autobiography’s demise: “in spite of the fact that autobiography is impossible”, Lejeune writes, “this in no way prevents it from existing”. Lejeune’s sustaining of contradictory beliefs, his recognition of the theoretical impossibility of autobiography while continuing to read it, may be what characterizes the experience of reading and writing an autobiography since poststructuralism. His “I know but” ambivalence is certainly in evidence in what is wrongly considered the most poststructuralist of autobiographies, Roland Barthes’s roland BARTHES par roland barthes (1977; Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes). In spite of Barthes’s fragmentation of his self into writerly vignettes and his genre-crossing epigraph that tells us “It must all be considered as if spoken by a character in a novel”, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes also refuses to discount the referent and the real: “Do I not know that, in the field of the subject, there is no referent?” Insofar as Barthes writes the autobiography and insofar as we continue to read it as such, he and we refuse to know just this; and we all participate in a fetishism towards the referent. Like Freud’s fetishistic little boy who denies what he knows to be true in order to go on living, after theory we accept the impossibility of autobiography and go on reading and writing (and writing about) autobiography as if we still believed it had something of the real to offer us that fiction does not. The most recent theoretical encounters with autobiography are concerned with this reality. Paul John Eakin’s Touching the World: Reference in Autobiography (1992) heralds what we might see as the return of poststructuralism’s repressed referent, a return that appears to be carrying autobiography out of poststructuralist cynicism about reference and the real. Asking the pivotal question of why it is that autobiography has not disappeared into fiction in spite of poststructuralism’s pronouncements (“Why … with its pretensions to reference exposed as illusion, does autobiography as a kind of reading and writing continue and even prosper? Why do we not simply collapse autobiography into the other literatures of fiction and have done with it?”), Eakin concludes that autobiography’s “referential aesthetic” keeps it distinct. Autobiography has a definitive capacity to refer to the real. Yet as an “aesthetic”, autobiography’s reference is thoroughly bound up in representation. While Touching the World seeks to “reopen the file on reference in autobiography”, it does not seek a return to a naive prestructuralist reference. Instead Eakin urges that we recognize in autobiography itself a fetishistic dynamic concerning the real: “The fundamental paradox of a referential aesthetic resides precisely

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in this simultaneous acceptance and refusal of the constraints of the real.” Recent work in poststructuralist autobiography theory practises this paradox concerning the real, displaying the same fetishism as Barthes and Lejeune but less of their angst, recognizing both the unrealizability of the real and that every autobiography is on some level an attempt to represent it. Work on quotidian autobiographical practices (Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s Getting a Life: Everyday Uses of Autobiography, 1996), on Holocaust testimonies (Shoshana Felman’s and Dori Laub’s Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, 1991, and Marianne Hirsch’s Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory, 1997), on memoirs about dying parents (Nancy K. Miller’s Bequest & Betrayal: Memoirs of a Parent’s Death, 1996), and on illness narratives (Anne Husaker Hawkins’s Reconstructing Illness: Studies in Pathography,1993, and G. Thomas Couser’s Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, Life Writing,1997), all have in common the goal of recovering the autobiographical real, whether in the form of the body, everyday life, or traumatic experience, while attending to the narrative shape this real takes in writing. The acknowledgement of a real experience behind autobiography’s figurative form is of political importance since, as Smith and Watson note, “[t]his assertion of agency is particu larly compelling for those whose personal histories include stories that have been culturally unspeakable”. The very latest development in poststructuralist autobiography theory uses autobiography to intervene in theory’s politics of representation. Personal criticism or autobiographical criticism, which consists of the theorist’s interpolation of his or her self into theory and thus sees autobiography and theory working together most literally, calls a halt to poststructuralism’s abdication of the referential subject. As Nancy K. Miller suggests in Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts (1991), which defines and illustrates this mode, “the autobiographical act – however self-fictional” can serve to “constitute an internal limit on discursive irresponsibility, a brake on rhetorical spinning”. If autobiography works, as Miller says, as “the resistance particularity offers to the grandiosity of abstraction that inhabits … the crisis of representativity”, the “referential aesthetic” of autobiography has not only survived poststructuralist theory. In the form of personal criticism, it may be getting its own back. Jay Prosser See also Agency; Identity; The Self

Further Reading Barthes, Roland, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, translated by Richard Howard, New York: Hill and Wang, and London: Macmillan, 1977 Bruss, Elizabeth W., Autobiographical Acts: The Changing Situation of a Literary Genre, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976 de Man, Paul, “Autobiography as De-facement” in The Rhetoric of Romanticism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984 Derrida, Jacques, The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation: Texts and Discussions with Jacques Derrida, edited by Christie V. McDonald and Claude Levesque, translated by Peggy Kamuf, New York: Shocken Books, 1985 Dodd, Philip, “Criticism and the Autobiographical Tradition” in Modern Selves: Essays on Modern British and American Autobiography, edited by Dodd, London: Frank Cass, 1986

Eakin, Paul John, Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of SelfInvention, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985 Eakin, Paul John, Touching the World: Reference in Autobiography, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992 Lejeune, Philippe, “The Autobiographical Pact” and “The Autobiographical Pact (bis)” in On Autobiography, edited by Paul John Eakin, translated by Katherine Leary, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989 Miller, Nancy K., Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts, London and New York: Routledge, 1991 Olney, James, Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972 Olney, James (editor), Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Sprinker, Michael, “Fictions of the Self: The End of Autobiography” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by James Olney, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980

Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Feminism In the last third of the 20th century feminist criticism offered new ways of reading and analysing life writing, particularly women’s life writing. Before the 1970s, women’s autobiographical writing was not considered “complex” enough for academic dissertations, critical study, or inclusion in the literary canon. Women’s autobiography is now a privileged site for thinking about issues of writing at the intersection of feminist, postcolonial, and postmodern critical theories. In the 1970s two interrelated projects emerged: building an archive of women’s writing and revising the dominant theories of autobiography. The archive of women’s writing involved the recovery of earlier women’s texts, above all by historians and bibliographers using archival materials such as diaries, journals, and unpublished autobiographical narratives. At the same time feminist literary critics began to question the masculinist bias of mainstream theorists, and to intervene in what they saw as traditional reading practices that assumed the autobiographer was male and reproduced cultural stereotypes of gendered difference. The first feminist critical anthology to look at women’s texts specifically was Estelle C. Jelinek’s Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism (1980). In the wake of this collection, several books and essays provided gendered readings of specific texts and theoretical issues. Two American critics, Nancy K. Miller and Domna C. Stanton, who were well versed in French feminism and literature, laid important groundwork for the revision of gender essentialism through Second Wave theories of difference. They each argued that theorizing in women’s autobiography should not simply invert the exclusionary logic of the dominant tradition, but should map women’s dialectical negotiations with a history of their own representation as idealized or invisible. Sidonie Smith’s A Poetics of Women’s Autobiography (1987) argued that, in an androcentric tradition in which autobiographical authorization was unavailable to most women, they found complex rhetorical means to authorize their claims to writing. With Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture (1989), Françoise Lionnet staked out an intercultural territory of writing by women of colour and proposed a theory of métissage to articulate how marginalized subjects give

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voice to their lives in “braided” and multivocal texts. Collections such as Brodzki and Schenck’s Life / Lines: Theorizing Women’s Autobiography (1988) and Benstock’s The Private Self (1988) expanded the scope of women’s autobiographical forms to include poetry, film, and painting. Subsequent explorations of women’s writing were grounded in analyses of specific national or regional traditions or in specific historical periods, among them Felicity Nussbaum’s The Autobiographical Subject (1989) on 18th-century British writing and Regenia Gagnier’s Subjectivities (1991) on 19th-century British working-class writing. The important work of reclaiming ethnic traditions also helped to amplify the canon and to hone the critical lens of feminist theory. Critics such as Joanne Braxton, bell hooks, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Doris Sommer, and Hertha D. Sweet Wong compiled anthologies, disseminated, and theorized about ethnic and postcolonial women’s writing. Other works, among them Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s De /Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography (1992), Lionnet’s Postcolonial Representations (1995), and Carole Boyce Davies’s Black Women, Writing and Identity (1994), examined emergent literatures and reframed women’s subjectivities at diasporic sites globally. Discussions of women’s autobiographical writing have always required either explicit or implicit theorizing about subjectivity and its relationship to writing, some of which is summarized here. By the early 1980s the psychoanalytic category of “sexual difference” elicited reformulations of what it meant to be “woman”. In the United States the work of Nancy Chodorow influenced the rethinking of early developmental dynamics, proposing that, because of differences in developmental patterns, young girls have less strictly individuated concepts of self and thus more fluid ego boundaries. Chodorow’s framing of difference provides a foundational category informed by ego psychology and language-acquisition theories, while accounting for the formation of women’s social roles within patriarchy. Susan Stanford Friedman is one of several feminist critics to apply relationality to women’s autobiographical writing. European feminist theorists approached subject formation from another direction, and began to draw upon the work of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and his theories of the mirror stage and the split subject, the privileged phallus, sexual difference, the function of the Other, and the Law of the Father. With Lacan, they replace the old notion of “self” – now understood as an illusory ego construct – with the concept of “the subject”, always split, always in the process of constituting itself through its others. The French feminists Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva responded in markedly different ways to Lacan. Cixous urges women to resist their silencing within the Law of the Father and to “steal” the language in order to write towards their embodied difference. Irigaray calls for the creation of a non-phallogocentric language through which women can articulate their difference in a logic transgressive of stable boundaries, unity, sameness. Kristeva maps the realm of the maternal semiotic, as opposed to the paternal symbolic, as a space of jouissance, the non-verbal effluence of subjectivity outside the Law of the Father, logocentric thinking, and practices of representation. For many critics, psychoanalytic claims about female subjectivity too thoroughly erase the defining imprint of history itself.

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For materialist historians, subjectivist psychoanalysis universalizes sexual difference and ignores the very different material circumstances of people’s lives over time. Materialist analyses, informed by the theories of Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault, focus on the dynamic imprint of cultural formations. Althusser’s analysis of the interpellation of the subject, the ways in which ideology, understood broadly, calls persons to be certain kinds of subject, contributed to feminist critiques of the West’s romance with the free, autonomous “individual” and their exploration of the subject as a historically specific site of ready-made identities. Foucault’s emphasis on the power of discourse, the “technologies of self” through which the subject materializes, and historically specific regimes of truth and knowledge has prompted more critical feminist analyses of women’s experience, the romance of the “authentic” woman’s voice, and the problematic nature of “truth” in autobiography. Other materialist analyses of women’s life writing attend to the production and circulation of texts, the commodification of genres and economic systems of exchange. British scholars such as Julia Swindells, Liz Stanley, and Carolyn Steedman in particular have examined the intersection of autobiographical practices with class politics and consciousness. On another front, women of colour focus attention on the critique of any universal “woman” and the cultural productions of subjects marginalized by virtue of their race and /or ethnicity. In proposing accounts and countercanons of women’s autobiography, theorists of difference have explored alternative notions of subjectivity based not on the unique individual but rather on complex collective identifications. Such collective identity may be an indigenous one or the kind of diasporic, “pan”collectivity posited by feminist critics such as Gayatri Spivak, Trinh Minh Ha, and Chandra Talpade Mohanty. Feminist theorists of postcoloniality have explored how autobiography, one of the cultural formations in the West, has been implicated in processes of colonization. Postcolonial critics consider how the colonized subject speaks in or through cultural formations of an “I” other than the colonial master – in Caren Kaplan’s concept (1992), “out-law genres”. The question becomes especially vexed in collaborative texts, narratives emerging from the joint project of an informant lacking literacy and an interlocutor or editor interested in bringing the informant’s story to a broad audience. Such texts raise issues of power, trust, and narrative authority, as well as the importance of oral cultural forms. In postcolonial critiques new terms have emerged to designate subjects situated at the “in-between” spaces of de/colonization, such as hybrid, marginal, migratory, diasporic, multicultural, border, minoritized, mestiza, and nomadic. Employing the familiar metaphors of “coming to voice” and “voicing female subjectivity”, other theorists of the 1980s such as Mae Gwendolen Henderson look to the concepts of dialogism and heteroglossia provided by Mikhail Bakhtin, who understood subjectivity as dialogical, always implicated in the language of social groups. Particularly illuminating for feminist discussion of women’s autobiographical voices, heteroglossia assumes a pervasive heterogeneity in human subjectivity and a multivocal textuality. In the 1990s queer studies erupted on the academic scene to shift the terms of debate from sexual difference to issues of

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“performativity”. Theorists such as Judith Butler argued against any simplistic recourse to essentialized differences of identity politics, appealing instead to the concept of performativity, understood as the “power of discourse to produce effects through reiteration”. For Butler, an “I” does not precede the social construction of gender identity; rather, the “I” comes into being through that social construction. If gender identity, and identity more generally, is a performative process, then masculinity and femininity are not fixed attributes of the “self ”. Nor are they monolithic differences, coherent and unified. Consequently, concepts of gendered voices, gendered bodies, and gendered texts must be deconstructed. All along, feminist critics have paid attention to everyday forms of life writing – letters, diaries, journals, and memoirs. But more recently two trends have shifted notions of autobiographical texts and cultural practices. Scholars who have turned to everyday forms of life writing such as talk shows and family albums signal a move towards reading of all kinds of cultural production as textual. And the turn of feminist theorists to autobiographical writing – to “getting personal” – has offered critics a means of reframing the critical act through feminist pedagogy and praxis and critiquing claims to universal judgement and the objectivity of any universal “I”, including their own. In summary, the real legacy of the last 20 years of feminist autobiographical theorizing has been the emergence of a heterogeneous welter of conflicting positions about subjectivity and the autobiographical. Now little can be asserted about women’s autobiography without qualification. Whether to read the “women” in women’s autobiography as referring to writers, subjects, readers, communities, performances, or other entities and processes is a question under debate. Virtually every feminist critic of women’s autobiography has challenged or modified its perceived definitional parameters to fit an evolving feminist sense of subjects in process and the system of gender in flux. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson See also Gender and Life Writing; Women’s Autobiographies; Women’s Biographies; Women’s Diaries and Journals; Women’s Letters

Further Reading Benstock, Shari (editor), The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writings, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, and London: Routledge, 1988 Braxton, Joanne, Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition within a Tradition, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989 Brinker-Gabler, Gisela and Sidonie Smith (editors), Writing New Identities: Gender, Nation, and Immigration in Contemporary Europe, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997 Brodzki, Bella and Celeste Schenck (editors), Life /Lines: Theorizing Women’s Autobiography, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988 Broughton, Trev Lynn and Linda Anderson (editors), Women’s Lives / Women’s Times: New Essays on Auto/biography, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997 Brownley, Martine Watson and Allison B. Kimmich (editors), Women and Autobiography, Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 1999 Bunkers, Suzanne L. and Cynthia A. Huff (editors), Inscribing the Daily: Critical Essays on Women’s Diaries, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996 Buss, Helen M., Mapping Our Selves: Canadian Women’s Autobiography in English, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993

Butler, Judith, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”, New York and London: Routledge, 1993 Corbett, Mary Jean, Representing Femininity: Middle-Class Subjectivity and Victorian and Edwardian Women’s Autobiographies, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992 Culley, Margo (editor), American Women’s Autobiography: Fea(s)ts of Memory, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992 Davies, Carole Boyce, Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject, London and New York: Routledge, 1994 Felski, Rita, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, and London: Hutchinson Radius, 1989 Friedman, Susan Stanford, “Women’s Autobiographical Selves: Theory and Practice” in The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writings, edited by Shari Benstock, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, and London: Routledge, 1988 Gagnier, Regenia, Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain, 1832–1920, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 Gilmore, Leigh, Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women’s SelfRepresentation, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1994 Goldman, Anne E., Take My Word: Autobiographical Innovations of Ethnic American Working Women, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996 Goodman, Katherine, Dis/Closures: Women’s Autobiography in Germany Between 1790 and 1914, New York: Peter Lang, 1986 Heilbrun, Carolyn G., Writing a Woman’s Life, New York: Norton, 1988; London: Women’s Press, 1989 Henderson, Mae Gwendolyn, “‘Speaking in Tongues’: Dialogics, Dialectics, and the Black Woman Writer’s Literary Tradition” in Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women, edited by Cheryl A. Wall, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1989 Henke, Suzette A., Shattered Subjects: Trauma and Testimony in Women’s Life-Writing, New York: St Martin’s Press, and London: Macmillan, 1998 Hewitt, Leah D., Autobiographical Tightropes: Simone de Beauvoir, Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig and Maryse Condé, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990 Jelinek, Estelle C. (editor), Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980 Kaplan, Caren, “Resisting Autobiography: Out-Law Genres and Transnational Feminist Subjects” in De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography, edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992 Lim, Shirley Geok-lin, “Semiotics, Experience, and the Material Self: An Inquiry into the Subject of the Contemporary Asian Woman Writer” in Writing S.E./Asia in English: Against the Grain, Focus on Asian-English Literature, London: Skoob Books, 1994 Lionnet, Françoise, Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, SelfPortraiture, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1989 Lionnet, Françoise, Postcolonial Representations: Women, Literature, Identity, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1995 Miller, Nancy K., Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts, New York: Routledge, 1991 Molloy, Sylvia, At Face Value: Autobiographical Writing in Spanish America, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991 Neuman, Shirley (editor), Autobiography and Questions of Gender, London: Frank Cass, 1991 Nussbaum, Felicity A., The Autobiographical Subject: Gender and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century England, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989 Parati, Graziela, Public History, Private Stories: Italian Women’s Autobiography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996 Perreault, Jeanne, Writing Selves: Contemporary Feminist Autography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995 Personal Narratives Group, Interpreting Women’s Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989 Polkey, Pauline, Women’s Lives into Print: The Theory, Practice and

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Writing of Feminist Autobiography, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999 Smith, Sidonie, A Poetics of Women’s Autobiography: Marginality and the Fictions of Self-Representation, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987 Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson (editors), De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992 Smith, Sidonie, Subjectivity, Identity, and the Body, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993 Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson (editors), Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998 Sommer, Doris, Proceed with Caution, When Engaged by Minority Writing in the Americas, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998 Spacks, Patricia Meyer, The Female Imagination, New York: Knopf, 1975 Stanley, Liz, “Biography as Microscope or Kaleidoscope? The Case of ‘Power’ in Hannah Cullwick’s Relationship with Arthur Munby”, Women’s Studies International Forum, 10/1 (1987b): 19–31 Stanton, Domna C. (editor), The Female Autograph, New York: New York Literary Forum, 1984 Steedman, Carolyn, Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives, London: Virago Press, 1986; New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1987 Steedman, Carolyn, Past Tenses: Essays on Writing, Autobiography and History, London: Rivers Oram Press, 1992 Swindells, Julia S., Victorian Writing and Working Women: The Other Side of Silence, Cambridge: Polity Press, and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985 Swindells, Julia (editor), The Uses of Autobiography, London and Bristol, Pennsylvania: Taylor and Francis, 1995 Wong, Hertha D. Sweet, “First–Person Plural: Subjectivity and Community in Native American Women’s Autobiography” in Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998

Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Postcolonialism Postcolonialism refers to culture in the wake of decolonization and globalization. Any more historicizing usage must take on board the objections summarized by Anne McClintock (1995) – that is, that geopolitical reality demands the use of “neocolonialism”, and certain “postcolonial” subjects consistently refuse the term “postcolonialism”. Accepting the difficulties of the term, postcolonialism can be related to autobiography in two significant ways. First, there are specific postcolonial theories of autobiography. Second, postcolonial theory is itself developing, in light of autobiography, as a Western construct to be revised by the singularity (i.e. that which is radically nonrepeatable) of autobiography. There are postcolonial theories of autobiography and there is autobiography in postcolonial theory. These phenomena highlight political and epistemological tensions shaping autobiography and its theorization. Postcolonial critics’ development of a form of theoretical autobiography emphasizes and even formalizes the instabilities of both postcolonial theory and autobiography. Postcolonial theory as a critique of culture’s implication in imperialism is generally associated with Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978). However, its concerns are evident in earlier anti-colonial writings in several genres, e.g. Frantz Fanon’s Peau noire, masques blancs (1952; Black Skin, White Masks) and Les

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Damnés de la terre (1961; The Wretched of the Earth), and Aimé Césaire’s Discours sur le colonialisme (1955; Discourse on Colonialism). Earlier anti-colonial texts have been reconsidered in light of postcolonialism’s theoretical statements. Alongside this reconsideration, there has been a widespread re-evaluation of colonial discourse. Robert Young’s Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, Race (1994) identifies a “Holy Trinity” of postcolonial theorists – Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Homi K. Bhabha. Other critics have followed this identification, not always approvingly. That Spivak writes on feminist alongside postcolonial themes implies the potential crossover between postcolonial and feminist autobiography. Postcolonialism also crosses over into African American writing. This difficulty in circumscribing postcolonial theory is derived at least partially from problems arising from life writing: however much one attempts to write as one kind of subject, one is always more than just that subject. Postcolonial theory arguably develops within poststructuralist literary criticism. This provenance has come under increasing scrutiny from a Marxist perspective, which has criticized a perceived reliance on concepts derived from literary criticism (see Arif Dirlik’s “The Postcolonial Aura” (1994), Aijaz Ahmad’s In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (1992) and “The Politics of Literary Postcoloniality” (1995), and Benita Parry’s “Signs of Our Times” (1994)). However, such Marxist critics themselves blur theory and literature, which they identify as monopolistic in their assertion that historicism concerns itself with matters more pressing than “mere” textuality. They argue that postcolonial theory must rethink itself to match the rigour of historicist analysis. Relatedly, their historicism positions autobiography as unproblematic testimony. Although this polarization of Marxists versus literary critics is a drastic simplification, it highlights a mutual concern – the status of testimony – and a basic incompatibility of approach. Although it is true that postcolonial theory has produced no single work devoted to questions of autobiography, it clearly exerts constant theoretical pressure on the field. Beyond autobiography’s theorization and transformation there is a large body of postcolonial texts (e.g. novels, poetry, cinema) that draws on techniques and themes usually associated with autobiography, but that is difficult to name as postcolonial autobiography in any strict sense. Many of the theoretical issues relating to structure and singularity that are so problematic for Said in Orientalism are more or less explicitly addressed in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981): the “autobiography” of Saleem Sinai is both absolutely singular and also “selfconsciously” striving towards an exemplarity. Similarly, questions about testimony and voice, considered by Spivak in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988), but a general theme in postcolonial theory, are thematized by J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986) and Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987): who has the right to give voice to the victims of history? Also, there are complex and suggestive techniques at work in Isaac Julien’s film about Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Mask (1995): Julien interweaves elements of straightforward biography, readings from Fanon’s works, dramatizations, and interview footage, to create a hybrid form to match the complex that is life and work. Each of these forms is just as revealing a meditation on the meaning of life writing as any theoretical consideration. It is, of course, notable that much of this material derives from academic contexts (e.g.

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Morrison and Coetzee both work in English literature departments), even if it is not strictly academic. The literary-critical provenance of postcolonial theory forces postcolonial autobiography into a variety of complex fictional modes: the postcolonial experience itself (if one could finally determine its content) would be no guarantee of this complexity. This non-theoretical thinking of autobiography doubles back on theory itself. Said’s Orientalism describes the overwhelming architectonics of orientalist discourse, and at various points illustrates this through analysis of colonial autobiography, e.g. T.E. Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926). But this association of overarching and (arguably by Foucauldian definition) irresistible discourse with individual instance demonstrates the difficulties facing postcolonial theory in its attempt to explain the relation between individual (whether colonialist or colonized) and social structure. Here the question of the possibility of individual resistance is insistent. Said arguably allows little scope for resistance. The many critiques of Orientalism (see, for example, Young, and Clifford have often focused on an incommensurability between structures derived from Gramsci and from Foucault. However, close reading of Lawrence suggests a more nuanced interpretation of his colonial complicity. Autobiography thus destabilizes any straightforward fixity of subjectivity. A return to close reading of colonial or colonized people’s life writings therefore, perhaps ironically, seems to work against the “testimonial” frameworks of historicist analysis in their destabilizing effect. This view is powerfully supported by Spivak’s pivotal “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. After noting Deleuze’s and Foucault’s lack of a theory of ideology and their consequent problems in analysing macrological phenomena (e.g. imperialism), Spivak considers the historiographical work of the Subaltern Studies group, concluding that it forces the subaltern to speak. For Spivak the subaltern speaks only by becoming other than the subaltern. Yet the final section of this long and difficult essay is an empirical example – is this the subaltern being made to speak? The questions addressed by this essay are central to any understanding of postcolonial life writing; that there is significant difficulty does not indicate failure on Spivak’s part. Spivak’s problems derive from the inherent limitations of a postcolonial theoretical writing that wants to transcend (or at least wishes to transcend in a traditional theoretical manner) what might just be untranscendable: singularity. Spivak has taken on board these difficulties and attempts to work with them through a form of autobiographical theory, e.g. Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993). Never comfortable, by her own account, when writing in English, she has made this discomfort almost a mode of her writing. Yet, as she has recently indicated (e.g. “Lives”, 1996), there is a danger in the unproblematic elevation of autobiographical theory: it becomes just another academic fashion. Alongside this drive towards an autobiographical mode of academic discourse, postcolonial theorists have produced more conventional autobiographical texts, exemplified by Sara Suleri’s Meatless Days (1989), Henry Louis Gates, Jr’s Colored People: A Memoir (1994), and bell hooks’s Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood (1996), and Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life (1997). There is no necessary convergence of forms and themes between these texts, but there is a shared attempt to work outside academic discourse and address the questions posed by theory.

As previously indicated, this literary-theoretical framework has been criticized for aestheticizing politics. There is, however, a growing attempt to justify the philosophical and political grounds for such an emphasis, which finds its expression in Homi Bhabha’s more recent writings. “Unpacking My Library, Again” (1995) alludes to Walter Benjamin’s “Unpacking My Library” (1931) and embodies as well as thematizes a complex form of literary autobiographical practice in which literary singularity is identified with autobiographical singularity. The essay also presents itself as the literal example of the accident from which is derived theory: necessity from contingency, system from the collation of individual instances. It addresses the complex of questions that surround historicism’s problems with the absolutely singular, without suggesting that we can simply step outside the historicist urge into a realm of unabashed and poetic individuality. With Bhabha then, life writing becomes the locus of an attempt to think in a historical manner that does not always and everywhere attempt to reduce the singular to the simple, radically predictable instance of structure: the example. What is the specific relation of these questions to postcolonialism? The debate deriving from Frederic Jameson’s “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism” (1986) is instructive. Jameson argues that “Third World Literature” inevitably embodies a form of “national allegory”, the individual always blurring (being actively transformed) into the structural. Ahmad (In Theory) responds by deconstructing the “Three Worlds Theory” and refusing to be named Jameson’s “civilizational other”. This refusal relates to the previously mentioned dislike of the term “postcolonial” so frequently and generally voiced. Clearly questions of nation are highly emotive in this context, focusing the debate about the individual’s relation to collectivity: individuals’ relations to nations change, as the identities of nations themselves change in response to globalization. There is a tension derived from the meeting of postcolonial Marxism and postcolonial poststructuralism, inflected by the question of that contested prefix “post-”, which plays itself out suggestively but unpredictably through the refusal of the very term “postcolonial”. David Huddart See also Africa entries; Australia entries; Canada entries; Ethnicity, Race, and Life Writing; Indian Subcontinent entries; Migration, Diaspora and Life Writing; New Zealand and Polynesia entries

Further Reading Bhabha, Homi, The Location of Culture, London and New York: Routledge, 1994 Chambers, Iain and Lidia Curti (editors), The Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons, London and New York: Routledge, 1996 Clifford, James, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988 Hassan, Ihab, “Counterpoints: Nationalism, Colonialism, Multiculturalism, etc., in Personal Perspective”, Third Text, 41 (Winter 1997–98): 3–14 hooks, bell, Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery, Boston: South End Press, 1993 hooks, bell, Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work, New York: Holt, and London: Women’s Press, 1999 Hornung, Alfred and Ernstpeter Ruhe (editors), Postcolonialisme et autobiographie: Albert Memmi, Assia Djebar, Daniel Maximin, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998

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McClintock, Anne, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, London and New York: Routledge, 1995 MacDermott, Doireann (editor), Autobiographical and Biographical Writing in the Commonwealth, Barcelona: AUSA, 1984 Moore-Gilbert, Bart, Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics, London and New York: Verso, 1997 Said, Edward, After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives, New York: Pantheon, and London: Faber, 1986 Said, Edward, Out of Place: A Memoir, New York: Knopf, and London: Granta, 1999 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, London and New York: Methuen, 1988 Veeser, H.A., Confessions of the Critics, London and New York: Routledge, 1996 Young, Robert, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West, London and New York: Routledge, 1990

Croatia see Yugoslavia and Former Yugoslav Territories

Croce, Benedetto

1866–1952

Italian philosopher, historian, autobiographer, and letter writer The philosopher and historian Benedetto Croce was the most distinguished and influential Italian man of letters of the 20th century. An autodidact, he spent most of his life in Naples where he devoted himself to intellectual pursuits. Croce was named a senator in 1910 and served as minister of education from 1920 to 1921. After almost twenty years of silence during the fascist regime, he returned to politics as a leader of the Italian Liberal party after the fall of Mussolini in 1941. So much attention has been paid to his magnificent works on history, philosophy, and aesthetics that his autobiography, diaries, and letters are not as well known as they might be. The Contributo alla critica di me stesso (1918; An Autobiography) is a historical consideration of Croce’s life and work, originally written in 1915 when the philosopher and historian had reached the peak of his career and was profoundly concerned by Italy’s imminent entry into World War I. It was also a time of change in his personal life. He was 50 years old and had married for the first time the previous year. Croce’s intellectual autobiography follows the tradition established by a fellow Neapolitan, Giambattista Vico’s celebrated Vita scritta da se medesimo (1728; Autobiography). The very personal and intimate nature of the autobiography is evident from the fact that it was not published until 1918, in a limited edition of 100 copies. A second edition followed for public sale in 1926 and further aggiunte were added in 1934 and 1941. Croce views autobiography as a historical act. Indeed, he eventually arrives at the conclusion that all historiography is in some way an autobiographical reflection of the historian. Croce’s view is based upon his concept of history as the direct result of the immanent Spirit in the world and in the human race.

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This means that everything is part of history as it relates to ongoing human endeavour. This is divided into two harmonious activities: practical activity, such as economics, and contemplative activity, such as poetry and philosophy. Croce sees historicism as a contemporary response to the questions and issues of the past and believes all history to be the fruit of subjective re-elaboration. Thus autobiography is both the author’s understanding of his or her past and an act of rendering his or her consciousness into a historical document. It is therefore both history and personal reflection. Not only is autobiography history, but every history is an autobiography. As the work of every scholar results from his or her personal curriculum vitae studiorum, made up of books, professors, schools, and methods, thus intellectual autobiography is the illustration of that which otherwise might be deduced from a close reading of the scholar’s production. In his autobiography, Croce does not underscore the narrative structure of the personal voyage of self-discovery, but rather participation of the autobiographical act in la storia universale, as one of the many tiles in the mosaic of world history. Croce believed all history to be the fruit of subjective reelaboration. Thus the Contributo was a history of the development of his thought rather than a history of his eventful life. The Taccuini [1992; Notebooks], his daily journal, was recently published in a private, limited edition by his family. Covering the period from 1906 to 1952, this daily journal, which began as an instrument for self-discipline in ordering his studies and achieving his intellectual goals, is a fascinating document. In particular it is interesting for the portrait it provides of Italy and Europe in the years leading up to the turmoil of World War II. Under the direction of Gennaro Sasso, the Istituto Italiano di Studi Storici in Naples, founded by Croce, is working on a vast editorial project to publish the senator’s correspondence with some of Italy’s most important thinkers and politicians as a further instrument of research into the philosopher’s life and thought. The institute has also made a significant contribution to the understanding of Croce through the re-issue of the Memorie della mia vita [originally 1966; Memoirs of My Life] in a private, limited edition. The memoirs, drawn from a series of notes from his private papers used in the compilation of the autobiography of 1915, serve as an appendix to his other life writing. The private publication of many of these works reflects the private nature of the man. Indeed, as Croce rightly affirms, his writings are his real life story. Jordan Lancaster Biography Born in Pescasseroli, Abruzzi, southern Italy, 25 February 1866. His father was a landowner. Educated at a boarding school from the age of nine. Lost his parents and sister in an earthquake on the island of Ischia, 1883. Moved to Rome to live with his uncle, Silvio Spaventa, a prominent intellectual and conservative politician, 1883. Studied law and philosophy at the University of Rome, 1883–86. Returned to Naples, 1886. Administered the family estates, devoted himself to literature and antiquarian pursuits, amassing a large library, and travelled widely in Europe. Wrote a critique of Marxism, Materialismo storico ed economia marxistica (1900; Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx), and Estetica come scienza dell’espressione e linguistica generale (1902; Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic), the first of the four-volume series Filosofia dello spirito (1902–17), his best-known philosophical work. Founder, with Giovanni Gentile, and editor of the bi-monthly cultural review La Critica, 1903–44, and Quaderni della “Critica”, 1945–51. Adviser to

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Laterza publishers, Bari, from 1904. Appointed senator for life by the Italian government, 1910. Married Adèle Rossi, a history student from Turin, 1914: four daughters. Minister of public instruction, 1920–21. Published a manifesto attacking the fascist dictatorship of Mussolini, 1925. Over the next decade produced his principal historical works, including Storia d’Italia dal 1817 al 1915 (1928; A History of Italy), as well as works of literature. Helped to resurrect liberal institutions in Italy after the fall of Mussolini in 1943. Served as president of the Liberal party, 1943–47; minister without portfolio of the new democratic government, 1944; and member of the Constituent Assembly, 1946–47. Subsequently retired from politics. Founder, Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici, Naples, 1947. Died in Naples, 20 November 1952.

Theories of Art, Literature and History, Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1987 Roberts, David, Benedetto Croce and the Uses of Historicism, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987 Sasso, Gennaro, Per invigilare me stesso: i Taccuini di lavoro di Benedetto Croce Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989

Cullwick, Hannah see Munby, Arthur and Hannah Cullwick

Selected Writings La filosofia di Giambattista Vico (biographical study), 1911; as The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico, translated by R.G. Collingwood, 1913 Contributo alla critica di me stesso, 1918; edited by Guiseppe Galasso, 1951; as An Autobiography, translated by R.G. Collingwood, 1927 Goethe (biographical study), 1919, revised 1939; as Goethe, translated by Emily Anderson, 1923 Giosuè Carducci (biographical study), 1920 Giovanni Pascoli (biographical study), 1920 Ariosto, Shakespeare e Corneille (biographical studies), 1920; as Ariosto, Shakespeare, and Corneille, translated by Douglas Ainslie, 1920 Frammenti di etica, 1922; as The Conduct of Life, translated by Arthur Livingston, 1924 Alessandro Manzoni (biographical study), 1930 Nuovi saggi sul Goethe (biographical study), 1934 Croce, the King and the Allies: Extracts from a Diary by Benedetto Croce, July 1943–June 1944, translated by Sylvia Sprigge, 1950 (first published in Italian in Quaderni della critieri, 1946–47) “L’autobiografia come storia e la storia come autobiografia” in his Filosofia, poesia, storia, 1951 (with Karl Vossler) Carteggio Croce–Vossler 1899–1949 (correspondence), 1951; edited by Emanuele Cutinelli Rèndina, 1991? Memorie della mia vita, 1966 Ritratto di Carlo Sforza: col carteggio Croce–Sforza, edited by Livio Zeno, 1975 (includes correspondence) (with Manara Valgimigli) Carteggio: Croce–Valgimigli (correspondence), edited by Marcello Gigante, 1976 (with Adolfo Omodeo) Carteggio Croce–Omodeo (correspondence), edited by Marcello Gigante, 1978 Carteggio fra Benedetto Croce e Francesco Torraca (correspondence), 1979 (with Giovanni Amendola) Carteggio Croce–Amendola (correspondence), edited by Roberto Pertici, 1982 (with Luigi Einaudi) Carteggio (1902–1953) (correspondence), edited by Luigi Firpo, 1988 (with Giuseppe Prezzolini) Carteggio (correspondence), edited by Emma Giammattei, 2 vols, 1990 Il carteggio di Benedetto Croce con la Biblioteca del Senato 1910–1952 (correspondence), edited by Giovanni Spadolini, 1991 Taccuini [Notebooks], 1992 Carteggio Croce–L.A. Villari (correspondence), edited by Elio Providenti, 1993 (with Carlo Antoni) Carteggio Croce–Antoni (correspondence), edited by Marcello Mustè, 1996 (with Rudolf Borchardt) Carteggio Croce–Borchardt (correspondence), edited by Emanuele Cutinelli Rèndina, 1997 Also edited L’autobiografia, il carteggio e le poesie varie of Giambattista Vico, 1911, revised, with Fausto Nicolini, 1929; and Lettere a Virginia, by Francesco de Sanctis, 1997

Further Reading d’Antuono, Nicola, Contributo alla storia dell’autobiografia in Italia, Salerno: Laveglia, 1980 Moss, M.E., Benedetto Croce Reconsidered: Truth and Error in

Czech and Slovak Life Writing Czech literature developed from the introduction of Christianity into Moravia in the 10th century. Slavonic texts then coexisted with Latin writings for several centuries. Tomᢠ¤títn∫ ze ¤tínéno (1333–1405), the author of religious and moral works – “Six Books on General Christian Matters” (1374), “Talks” (1385), and “Talks for Sundays and Holy Days” (1392) – used Czech for his didactic essays and sermons. (Titles generally rendered in literal English equivalents in this essay.) They contain conversations between a father and his children about religion, family, and the relationship between the nobility and commoners. In 1412 the popular Bohemian preacher John Huss (1370– 1415) produced the “Czech Orthography”. Huss was burnt at the stake as a heretic. His book “Postil” (1413) and emotional letters sent from prison to friends were written in Czech and influenced many ordinary people, modernizing the literary language. The next development in Czech literary style was the Protestant Kralice Bible. In 1468 printing came to Bohemia, helping to spread Renaissance culture throughout the country during the next 150 years. During the years 1620–1774 the Czechs lost political independence and became subjects of the Holy Roman Empire, whose emperor Ferdinand II proclaimed Roman Catholicism as the state religion. John Amos Comenius [Komensk∫] (1592–1670), the most important writer of this period, continued in exile the suppressed Hussite tradition. In Václav Havel’s opinion, stated in “Summer Meditations” (1990), the major figures of the country’s past “lived in truth” and fought for freedom “with the constant need to defend their own identity”, and much Czech and Slovak writing – including life writing – responds to this preoccupation with national identity. Two main traditions in Czech literature can be summarized as the poetic (from medieval poetry to Karel Hynek Mácha and the Symbolists) and the intellectual. Mácha is representative of the National Revival period (1774–1918), his romantic narrative poem “May” (1836) inspiring both Czech and Slovak authors throughout the 19th century. The Slovak writer and poet Ján Kollár (author of “Daughter of Slava”, 1824) expressed similar concerns of national identity. From the beginning of the Romantic period Czech and Slovak literatures helped to maintain Czech and Slovak as literary languages against the prevalence of German, the language of the Austrian empire to which Bohemia and Moravia belonged.

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A Slovak language grammar and a dictionary were produced by Anton Bernolák in 1790 and 1825–27 respectively. The language was greatly refined in the 19th century, especially by the romantic poet Janko Král’. Many Slovak writers used Czech for their work, especially for writing humorous letters, madrigals, and songs. The rise of realist literature in the 19th century influenced Czech and Slovak autobiographical writing. The Czech poet and essay writer Joseph Friπ (1829–90) played an important role in disseminating realist and revolutionary ideas in his country. He befriended Aleksandr Herzen, the Russian revolutionary and autobiographer, whose memoirs he greatly admired. In 1885– 87 Friπ published his four-volume memoirs (in Czech, Pameti), which portray Czech literary and social life in the second half of the 19th century. The Bohemian writer Jirˇí Karásek ze Lvovic (1871–1951) subverted the positivist understanding of life as objective reality that was pivotal to the realist tradition, and in his collection of essays “Art as Criticism of Life” (1906) opposed the principle of subjective truth and sexual transgression to the main discourse in Czech culture. Some Slovak women writers also advocated liberal views, including Elena Maróthy-¤oltésová (1855–1939), who is well known for her novel “Against the Stream” (1894) and memoirs containing a valuable account of the period. After the creation of an independent Czechoslovakia in 1918 Czech writers continued to defend democracy and social welfare in their work, promoting humanist ideals. President Masaryk’s memoirs, in Czech Svétová revoluce za války a ve válce, 1914–1918 (1925; The Making of a State: Memoirs and Observations: 1914–1918), tell of the process of Czechoslovak redemption from Hapsburg subjection and of the war as a whole. The philosopher-statesman ThomᢠMasaryk (1850– 1937) urged his fellow-countrymen to de-Austrianize themselves. In his memoirs Masaryk presents himself as a truthseeker and ponders pan-slavism, the Russian revolution, European and American social frameworks, and humanist and moral values. Masaryk reminds his readers that from the beginning of the 14th century to the end of the 18th the Czech question was in essence about religion and humanity. Masaryk argued that Catholicism was losing ground in his republic, pointing to the fact that three leading figures of the Czech renaissance (historian Franti¢ek Palack∫, poet Jan Kollár, and scholar Pavel ¤afarˇ ík) were Protestants and that all Czech Protestant churches were linked with the Czech Reformation and the Hussite tradition. The question of national identity is also pronounced (although in a light-hearted manner) in Karel ∑apek’s (1890– 1938) book Anglické listy (1924; Letters from England), which is partly imitative of the reportages of travels in Europe and the Middle East of the well-known Czech writer and journalist Jan Neruda (1834–1991). ∑apek travelled to England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. His book includes sketches and witty observations on H.G. Wells, G.K. Chesterton, and George Bernard Shaw. ∑apek’s art of the short literary portrait is even better expressed in his book Ratolest a vavrˇ in (1947; Twig and Laurel) and influenced such memoir writers as Franti¢ek Kubka (b. 1894), Karel Konrád (1899–1971), Edmond Konrád (1889– 1957), and Franti¢ek Langer (1888–1965). Kubka’s memoirs “With My Own Eyes” evoke the colourful cultural atmosphere of the 1920s–1930s, as well as life in German prisons during the

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war. Karel Konrád’s “Anti-memoirs” (1963) represent short biographies of deceased or departing friends in a sentimental vein. Langer’s “They Were and It Was” (1963) has a lively conversational style, providing its readers with good psychological profiles of such important Czech writers as Jaroslav Hasek, ∑apek, and Jirˇ ∫ Langer (friend of the Prague German Jewish writers Franz Kafka and Max Brod). Langer’s collection of stories and legends about Chassidic Rabbis and their followers in Poland – “Nine Gates” (1959–61) – is an important historical account of a community largely destroyed by the Nazis. During the German occupation (1939–45) there were fewer works of great merit. In 1948 the communist regime was established and socialist realism introduced into Czech and Slovak cultures by Soviet sympathizers. The popular Slovak writer Peter Jilemnick∫ (1901–49) went to Russia in the late 1920s, portraying his experience in the autobiographical study “Two Years in the Land of the Soviets”. Jilemnick∫’s better-known memoirs “The Chronicle” (1951) describe the uprising against the Germans and their Slovak collaborators. A liberal atmosphere developed in the late 1960s, notably during the Prague Spring (January to August 1968), a period ended by the Soviet invasion. Censorship intensified from summer 1970 until the end of the Cold War, compelling many writers to emigrate, among them Josef ¤kvoreck∫ and Milan Kundera. Václav Havel (b. 1936), a founder of the dissident group Charter 77 and later Czech president, became the most widely known internal opponent of the regime. His Dopisy Olze (1983; Letters to Olga: June 1979 to September 1982) exemplify a philosophical journey to self-discovery and spirituality, vividly displaying the Czech “martyr complex” (see Pynsent, 1994). Ludvíc Vaculík’s A Cup of Coffee with My Interrogator: The Prague Chronicles (1986) – a collection of lively feuilletons translated into English – sheds light on the Charter 77 group and its members. In Spring 1968 Vaculík, the best-known Czech writer of the 1960s, wrote the “2000 Words Manifesto”, calling for a humanization of the communist regime. In his autobiographical essays The Spirit of Prague and Other Essays (1994) Ivan Klíma, another member of Charter 77, reflects on experiences from the 1930s to the 1980s, posing philosophical questions about personal freedom and the commercialization of culture. A recent collection Literature and Tolerance: Views from Prague (1994) addresses the burning issue of Czech identity, reflecting on the role of Czech and Slovak writers against fascism and communism (see Lumír Civrny’s essay in this collection, “Good and Bad Times: Seventy Years of the Czech PEN club”). Following the Velvet Revolution (1989), which overthrew communism, the separate Czech and Slovak republics emerged in 1993, giving way to another wave of national cultural revival. The innovative Czech postmodernist playwright and novelist Daniela Fischerová has produced an interesting post-totalitarian palimpsest of different cultural traditions. Like Havel, Fischerová is concerned with the question of identity and individual responsibility. Her plays present history as a cycle of stories about destroyed creativity, transforming Havel’s principle of “living in truth” into a symbiosis of intellectual and emotional discourse. In Fischerová’s view, drama played the most important cultural role in 20th-century Czech society, a genre that “was political and proclamatory” and which “substituted the roles of other mass media, culture,

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and moral education”. Thereby Fischerová inscribes the Czech martyr complex into the reinvented format of European hagiography. Alexandra Smith Further Reading ∑apek, Karel, Letters from England, translated by Paul Selver, London: Geoffrey Bles, and Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1925 Fischerová, Daniela, “Interview”, Theatre Czech and Slovak, 4 (1992): 16–24 Goetz-Stankiewicz, Marketa, The Silenced Theatre: Czech Playwrights without a Stage, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979 Havel, Václav, Letters to Olga: June 1979 to September 1982, translated by Paul Wilson, London: Faber, and New York: Knopf, 1988 Klima, Ivan, The Spirit of Prague and Other Essays, translated by Paul Wilson, London: Granta, 1994; New York: Granta, 1995 Literature and Tolerance: Views from Prague, Prague: Czech Center of International PEN Readers International, 1994 Makin, Michael and Jindrich Toman (editors), On Karel ∑apek, Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1992

Masaryk, T.G., The Making of a State: Memories and Observations, 1914–1918, translated by H.W. Steed, London: Allen and Unwin, and New York: Stokes, 1927 Pynsent, Robert B., “The Liberation of Woman and Nation: Czech Nationalism and Women Writers of the Fin de Siècle” in The Literature of Nationalism: Essays on East European Identity, edited by Pynsent, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996 Pynsent, Robert B., Questions of Identity: Czech and Slovak Ideas of Nationality and Personality, Budapest, London, and New York: Central European University Press, 1994 Rudinsky, Norma L., Incipient Feminists: Women Writers in the Slovak National Revival, Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1991 Thomas, Alfred, The Labyrinth of the Word: Truth and Representation in Czech Literature, Munich: Oldenbourg, 1995 Vaculík, Ludvík, A Cup of Coffee with My Interrogator: The Prague Chronicles of Ludvík Vaculík, London: Readers International, 1987 Vladislav, Jan (editor), Václav Havel, or, Living in Truth: Twenty-Two Essays Published on the Occasion of the Award of the Erasmus Prize to Václav Havel, London: Faber, 1986 Wellek, René, Essays on Czech Literature, The Hague: Mouton, 1963 Wright, Cornelia B. (editor), A Thousand Years of Czech Culture: Riches from the National Museum in Prague, Winston-Salem, North Carolina: Old Salem, 1996

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and therefore worthy of examination. These selected experiences that form the core of Dante’s retrospective reflection, although rooted in local circumstances and personal background, are not elaborated to conform with strict history but rather to probe their allegorical significance. Accordingly, Dante never identifies Florence directly, referring only to “la sopradetta cittade” (“the above-mentioned city”), nor does he inscribe his own name in the text. He charts instead the stages that mark the growth of his “inner life” as prompted by his changing perceptions of love. A series of epiphanic encounters with his beloved Beatrice, some real, some oneiric, some mystical, punctuate Dante’s narrative. As in Augustine’s Confessions (written c.397–400), memory serves as the catalyst for an intense introspective analysis. In retrospect, the memorable moments seem providentially arranged, each illuminated by the spiritually symbolic number nine. La vita nuova tells the story of how a poet-lover turns from secular theories of love, inspired mainly by troubadour conventions, to a theological understanding of charity, or a poetics of conversion. The first sight of Beatrice elicits a powerful physiological response that affects the poet’s heart, brain, and liver, the three centres of the human body that govern a person’s intellect and natural emotions, including sexual desire. Gradually, Dante learns to refer Beatrice’s physical beauty to its divine source and to see his beloved as a “new creation”, that is, as the expression of God’s grace. Beatrice is consequently “gracious”, “miraculous”, and always accompanied by the number nine because, by analogy, “she was a nine, that is, a miracle, whose root … is solely the wondrous Trinity”. In Dante’s unique view, a man can reach God through love of a “wise woman”. The “salutation” (meaning both “greeting” and “salvation”) of Beatrice connects the story of Dante’s life in time to the plot the divine Author writes in eternity. As a result, even the death of Beatrice and Dante’s impending exile are no longer traumatic when viewed providentially: human tragedy becomes part of a divine comedy.

1265–1321

Italian poet The greatest poet of the Middle Ages never wrote an autobiography in the modern sense of the term. And yet the major works for which he is most remembered, La vita nuova (written 1292–94; The New Life) and La divina commedia (written 1321; The Divine Comedy), both revolve around the pivotal events of his life. In the first, Dante records the profound impact a Florentine girl named Beatrice made on him in his youth, while in the second he becomes a middle-aged pilgrim whose journey to the three worlds of the afterlife (hell, purgatory, and paradise) enable him to discover that he will be banished from his native Florence. His youthful love in particular serves as the mainspring for his poetic spiritual autobiography. The prologue to Dante’s first “novel of the self”, as John Freccero (1965) called La vita nuova, marks the scope and parameter of the life events to be narrated: In that part of the book of my memory before which little could be read, a rubric is found, which says: Incipit vita nova [Here begins the new life]. Beneath this rubric I find written the words that it is my intention to transcribe into this little book; if not all of them, at least their substance. As in all autobiography, the process of reconsidering the past from the perspective of the present compels the reader to distinguish between the protagonist who was and the narrator who is. The narrator-protagonist here, therefore, plans to gloss, “by means of graphia, that segment of his human bios that he finds written in the book of his memory under the rubric Incipit vita nova” (Cervigni and Vasta). The word “vita” refers both to the totality of Dante’s life from its inception and to the act of writing about it. The adjective “nova” limits the project, however, to a section of the life, namely, to those interconnected turning points out of which a new self emerges. This type of textual self-accounting enables Dante to make sense of the past in the light of the present up to the moment of writing and to project a “new life” into the future. Dante’s intention, then, is not to offer readers “confessions” in Rousseau’s later sense of a literal account of oneself. As T.S. Eliot remarked, the medieval poet had important experiences not because “he, Dante Alighieri was an important person who kept press-cutting bureaux busy; but important in themselves”

Dominic Manganiello Biography Born Durante Alighieri in Florence, Italy, 1265 (probably in late May). His family was of noble origin, although living in reduced circumstances. The exact chronology of his life and writings is uncertain. Little is known of his youth and education in Florence, but he may have trained as a notary and was an avid student of philosophy and poetry. Met Beatrice Portinari, the source of inspiration for his poetry, 1274 (died 1290). Friend of Guido Cavalcanti from 1283, and associated with group of dolce stil nuovo poets around him. Served in

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the Florentine cavalry in campaign against Arezzo, 1289; fought in battle of Campaldino. Wrote La vita nuova, a series of love poems in memory of Beatrice, c.1292–94. Married Gemma di Maretto Donati, 1285(?): three sons and one daughter. Active in Florentine political life from 1295; supported the Guelph (pro-papal) party, which became divided into two factions, the Whites and Blacks. Served on various councils, and sent on diplomatic missions to San Gimignano; one of the six priors governing Florence in 1300. Exiled while on a mission to Pope Boniface VIII in Rome in 1301 when his party (the White Guelphs) was defeated by the Blacks. Sought refuge at the courts of various Ghibelline lords in northern Italy at San Godenzo, Forlì, and Verona. Broke with other White exiles, 1304, and probably went to the university town of Bologna. Wrote the philosophical treatise Convivio (Feast), 1304–07. Also wrote an unfinished treatise on the Italian vernacular, De vulgari eloquentia, during this period. Agent at court of Franceschino Malaspina in the Lunigiana, c.1306. Lived in Lucca, c.1306–08. Began his greatest work, La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy), c.1307. Strongly supported the Holy Roman emperor, Henry VII of Luxemburg, 1309–13; probably wrote De monarchia [On World Government], about the concept of a universal Roman empire and the relations between emperor and pope, at this time. Lived in Lucca again, c.1314–16. Refused conditional amnesty from Florence, 1316. At court of Can Grande della Scala in Verona, c.1317, and then at court of Guido Novello da Polento in Ravenna, c.1317–21. Sent by Guido on diplomatic mission to Venice, 1321. Died in Ravenna, 13 or 14 September 1321.

Selected Writings La vita nuova (written 1292–94); edited by Michele Barbi, 1907, by Jennifer Petrie and June Salmons, 1994, and by Guglielmo Gorni, 1996; as The New Life, with The Early Italian Poets, translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1861; as The New Life, translated by Charles Eliot Norton, 1867, and by William Anderson, 1964; as Vita Nuova, translated by Dino S. Cervigni and Edward Vasta, 1995 Epistolae; as Dantis Alagherii epistolae: le lettere di Dante, edited by Arnaldo Monti, 1921; as The Letters, translated by P.H. Wicksteed, 1902; as Dantis Alagherii epistolae: The Letters of Dante, edited and translated by Paget Toynbee, 1920, revised by Colin Hardie, 1966

Further Reading Cervigni, Dino S. and Edward Vasta (editors), “Introduction” in Vita Nuova by Dante, Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995 Eliot, T.S., “Dante” in Selected Essays, 3rd edition, London and Boston: Faber, 1951 (original edition 1932) Freccero, John, “Dante’s Medusa: Allegory and Autobiography” in By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought, edited by David L. Jeffrey, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979 Freccero, John (editor), “Introduction” in Dante: A Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1965 Mazzotta, Giuseppe, “The Life of Dante” in The Cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by Rachel Jacoff, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993 Singleton, Charles, An Essay on the Vita Nuova, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1949

Darwin, Charles

1809–1882

English naturalist and autobiographer The Autobiography of Charles Darwin belongs to a tradition of life writing that expresses the development of selfhood. But, in surveying the development of his “mind” and “character” (his stated aim), Darwin was concerned neither with justifying himself nor with symbolically transcending experience (see de Beer’s and Barlow’s editions). Instead, he simply desired to interest and

amuse his family, having no explicit need to publish his work. His primary focus was the governing laws of nature. It was precisely in the establishment of natural law – in the protracted and painstaking endeavour of hypothesis and deduction – that Darwin found self-realization and mediated between himself and the world. In the Autobiography, Darwin employs a writing style that is personal, humorous, and unpretentious. Throughout, he fastidiously recounts the facts of his early life and the process of discovery, not as a unilinear progression, but rather as an inscrutable, unpredictable experience, depending upon fortuitous events, conversations, readings, and social interaction; ironically, academic instruction often figures as an impediment to natural revelation. The personal and affective modality used in the Autobiography complements the analytical modality that can be found in published treatises. In as much as Darwin’s analytical writing incisively recounts the development of theory – from hypothesis, through observation, to interpretative synthesis – it differs from his autobiographical style. Although the published writings are impersonal, ordered, and authoritative, this is not to imply a widely didactic intent on Darwin’s part. Even though Darwin believed that precise natural descriptiveness was indispensable, he sometimes expresses doubts and avoids hasty conclusions or loose inferences. Often, in his analytical discourse, he poses questions at critical junctions in his exposition in order to engage the reader in the deductive process. Although these and other rhetorical elements reveal Darwin’s self-effacing humility before the mysteries of nature, his analysis proceeds, nonetheless, with ordered determination. A passage from the Journal of Researches (9 January 1834) exemplifies the analytical mode. At this time, Darwin had been making great strides in his formulation of an evolutionary doctrine. His experiences in Uruguay and Argentina had led him “to question the received view that species were fixed” (Glick and Kohn’s edition of On Evolution, 1996). The fossil remains of an unknown species of quadruped in Patagonia led him to detail, systematically, the geographical features of the immediate area and, through comparative and analogical methods, to deduce that the fossil belonged to an ancestor of the present-day guanaco, a camelid related to the llama. For Darwin, evidence establishing geological time and zoological classification supports the theory that existing animals are formally related to “extinct species”; in other words, what would appear to the untrained eye as a rubble-strewn gully contains compelling evidence of evolution. The first-person narrator of the Autobiography avoids reinventing or embellishing his early experiences. Yet in contrast, the student whom we accompany on field excursions is present in all of his youthful enthusiasm and unorthodox inventiveness. Three passages exemplify the autobiographical experience of discovery and distinguish it, in certain respects, from analytical discourse. In one instance, a tidal-pool excursion conducted by Dr Robert Edmund Grant, professor of comparative anatomy and zoology at London University, yielded little in the way of marine specimens. Darwin abandoned this approach, befriending fishermen who allowed him to pick and choose from an abundance of marine life in their nets. This abundance more than compensated for the author’s admitted inexpertise in dissection and for his “wretched” microscope. Darwin’s strategy

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panned out: he made the genuine discovery that the ova of the Flustra was mobile, a small but original insight he communicated to the Plinian Society in an 1825 paper. In another experience, this time at Edinburgh in 1826, Darwin recounts, affectively and personally, how the stuffiness of Professor Robert Jameson’s lectures on zoology and geology drove him out of the lecture hall for some air. Once again, he uses his own initiative, even though his experience in Jameson’s sessions had discouraged him from geology. While walking in Shrewsbury in central England, he was intrigued by a boulder that seemed to have been transplanted to that location. Its geological incongruence to the region, Darwin puns, “produced a deep impression” on him, so he was determined to discover its origin. In this case, earlier readings in geology (probably of Sir Charles Lyell) provided the answer: over millennia, icebergs can indeed move boulders over extraordinary distances. From this moment of personal insight on, Darwin “gloried in the progress of Geology”, which he now appreciated in dynamic, temporal, and uniform terms. While at Cambridge, Darwin recalls his passion for beetle collecting. On one excursion he exhibited thoughtless zeal when, with one rare beetle in each hand, he grasped a third – by popping one insect in his mouth. However, the specimen secreted a caustic fluid, burning his mouth, forcing him to spit it out. As it turned out, he was to make some rare finds, by employing a labourer to gather mulch and debris from which he could pick and choose insects. Darwin remarks, with tongue (or bug) in cheek, that “a taste for collecting beetles is some indicator of future success in life”. The Autobiography allows us to appreciate the emotional extremes accompanying the great intellectual turning points in his life. Indeed, expressions of elation, of anxiety, and of satisfaction, perhaps inappropriate in analytical contexts, are in the Autobiography aspects of scientific experiences stimulating a range of emotions. Above all, this shows that the discovery, even for a penetrating naturalist, reveals moments of doubt and bewilderment. This is illustrated when Darwin connected Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population to his own speculations on “the struggle for existence”. In the earliest stages of this theory’s development, Malthusian principles on population allowed Darwin to conclude that “favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed”. Although Darwin was elated by this concept, he was nonetheless “anxious” about prejudicial criticism from those who advocated the idea that species were divinely fixed and unalterable. So inhibited was he by the prospect of an orthodox furore that he determined to forgo even the briefest sketch of his theory. But, in June 1842, he overcame his reticence and allowed himself the “satisfaction” of writing “a very brief abstract” of the theory that he would greatly expand in 1844. Darwin’s autobiography demonstrates that scientific discovery is not the exclusive province of the academician. Furthermore, he conveys this notion in an unpretentious and conversational style. Both the analytical and affective modalities in Darwin’s discourse share an abiding respect for the natural world. Charles De Paolo

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Biography Charles Robert Darwin. Born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England, 12 February 1809. His father was a country physician; his mother, daughter of the potter Josiah Wedgwood, died when he was aged eight. Educated at Dr Butler’s boarding school, Shrewsbury, 1818–25. Studied medicine at Edinburgh University, 1825–27, then theology at Christ’s College, Cambridge, 1828–31 (BA). Began investigating biological, zoological, and geological phenomena. Sailed to South America as a naturalist on board HMS Beagle, 1831–36. Suffered from ill health after his return, and for the rest of his life could work for only a few hours a day. Lived in London, 1837–42. Secretary of the Geological Society, 1838–41. Elected a member of the Royal Society, 1839. Married a first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, 1839: six sons and four daughters (two children died young). Settled in Downe, Kent, 1842. Became famous with the publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), in which he argued controversially for the concept of natural selection, not divine origin of species. Published The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, in which he proposed that humans had evolved from the higher primates, 1871. Died in Downe, Kent, 19 April 1882.

Selected Writings Life and Letters, 3 vols, edited by Francis Darwin (his son), 1887; as The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters, 1929; Autobiography edited by Nora Barlow (his granddaughter), 1958; edited by Gavin de Beer (with T.H. Huxley’s Autobiography), 1974 Correspondence, 9 vols, edited by Frederick Burkhardt and Sydney Smith, 1985– (5 vols to 1999) Charles Darwin’s Letters: A Selection, 1825–1859, edited by Frederick Burkhardt, 1996 Also wrote Journal and Remarks, 1832–1836 (1839), containing essays and scientific observations from his travels on the Beagle

Further Reading Brent, Peter, Charles Darwin: “A Man of Enlarged Curiosity”, New York: Harper and Row, and London: Heinemann, 1981 Browne, Janet, Voyaging, vol. 1 of Charles Darwin, New York: Knopf, and London: Jonathan Cape, 1995 Darwin, Charles, Darwin, 2nd edition, edited by Philip Appleman, New York: Norton, 1979 (first edition, 1970) Darwin, Charles, On Evolution: The Development of the Theory of Natural Selection, edited by Thomas F. Glick and David Kohn, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 1996 de Beer, Sir Gavin, Charles Darwin: Evolution by Natural Selection, London and New York: Nelson, 1963 Himmelfarb, Gertrude, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, New York: Doubleday, and London: Chatto and Windus, 1959 Hopkins, Robert S., Darwin’s South America, New York: John Day, 1969 Milner, Richard, Charles Darwin: Evolution of a Naturalist, New York: Facts on file, 1994 Moorehead, Alan, Darwin and the Beagle, New York: Harper and Row, and London: Hamilton, 1969 Weismann, August, “Charles Darwin” in The Golden Age of Science: Thirty Portraits of the Giants of 19th-Century Science by Their Scientific Contemporaries, edited by Bessie Zaban Jones, introduced by Everett Mendelsohn, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966

Das, Kamala

1934–

Indian poet, fiction writer, and autobiographer The literary renown of Kamala Das rests upon three interrelated bodies of work: her poetry in English, the large number of short stories she wrote in Malayalam under the pseudonym Madhavikkutty, and a series of autobiographical texts written in

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Malayalam of which one has been translated into English. While many of Das’s poems and stories draw on her personal experiences, her autobiographical texts seem to pose difficulties in distinguishing between biographical fact and metaphorical representations of an “inner” truth. Kamala Das’s first autobiography, Ente katha (1973; My Story), is, in some sense, her only major attempt at a coherent autobiographical narrative. It begins with Das’s childhood in Kerala and in Calcutta, and traces her growth into womanhood, marriage, relationships, and creative writing. Ente katha locates the instance of writing in relation to two major tropes that run through the narrative and shape its orientation: death and love. Writing – self-revelation – takes place under the shadow of impending death, but it is in the experience of love that moments of self-understanding arise. Das opposes a morality of the soul – based on love – to socially accepted moral judgements made on the basis of the behaviour of the body. Relying on the resources of premabhakti or devotional love from the Indian religious and poetic traditions, Das presents love as the locus of a non-bodily authenticity and its ethics. The figure of Krishna, recurring in the narrative, unites the idioms of unconstrained, illicit love and of chaste devotion. One may see three parallel modes of desire in the text: a discourse of longing and union at the level of the physical body, a spiritual desire informing the language of premabhakti, and an autobiographical desire aimed at an authentic figuration of the self in language. Written in a simple and terse poetic idiom characteristic of Das’s creative writing, Ente katha combines an imagistic delineation of events with introspection. The English translation My Story (1976) privileges a straightforward narrative of events and reduces the importance of the idiom of premabhakti. The Malayalam version gives free rein to the poetic, not merely in the language but also in the narrative and temporal organization of the text, while in the English it is largely confined to the use of a metaphoric or imagistic idiom. What drew public attention to Ente katha and My Story was the exploration of the experience of sexuality in these texts through the protagonist’s pursuit of love, both in and outside her marriage. However, these texts also bear testimony to Das’s ability to recapture the texture of the different worlds that inhabit her universe – that of the matrilineal household (tharavadu) in northern Kerala, the intellectual and spiritual resources of tradition and of modernity, the urban middle class of Calcutta and Bombay, and the world of the servants. Das explored some of these textures in her later autobiographies, a series of memoirs in Malayalam – Balyakalasmaranakal [1987; Childhood Memories], Varshangalku munpu [1989; Years Ago], and Neermathalam pootha kalam [1993; When the Neermathalam Tree Blossomed]. These texts recount Das’s years in Kerala during her childhood and early adolescence. They abandon narrative coherence and chronological continuity to imitate the logic of recollection. The centre of these texts is occupied by memory – images, tenuous and fragile and intensely concrete, resisting appropriation into a totalizing narrative structure. Detailed conversations from the past are recounted, creating an impression of immediacy. Conversations also induce a digressive logic to the narration, bringing it closer to the associational structure of reminiscence. In all these three texts, discourse and its representative, speech, seem to differentiate varied spaces within the matrilineal

household (tharavadu) – the front verandah where men discuss politics and literature, the inner rooms where the women of the house read poetry and speak about Gandhi, and the kitchen and the back courtyard where servants indulge in gossip and in displays of emotion. The child protagonist connects these different worlds by traversing them and presenting them in the text in a loose structure. These texts abandon the linear narratives of selfunderstanding of Ente katha and My Story. One could argue that this represents a female form of autobiographical narration, which relies on the poetic and digressive logics of reminiscence and conversation rather than on a teleological narrative of male apprenticeship. Kamala Das has also published three collections of autobiographical essays: Diarykkurippukal [1992; Entries in a Diary], Ottayadippata [1997; The Narrow Path], and Ente pathakal [1999; My Paths]. Many of these pieces were first published in columns that she wrote for periodicals in Malayalam. In these texts, recollection is subordinated to responses to the present, to the cultural and the political realms, to the family and friends, to the experience of widowhood and aging, and to the growth of grandchildren. They make use of several narrative resources: meditations on the experience of living, an informal conversational immediacy in expression, and a relishing of the everyday in terms of sensations and emotions. These texts present the author as an honest, outspoken woman whose spontaneity has not been blunted by formal scholarship, which gives the effect of connecting the different levels of statement in these essays, and conferring authenticity on them. Udaya Kumar Biography Born Kamala Nair in Punnayurkulum (Kerala), Malabar, southern India, 31 March 1934. Her mother, Nalapat Balamani Amma, was a well-known poet. Educated privately. Entered an arranged marriage with K. Madhava Das, 1949: three sons. Chair, Forestry Board, Kerala. Published her first book of poems, Summer in Calcutta, 1965, followed by The Descendants (1967) and Old Playhouse and Other Poems (1973). Poetry editor, Illustrated Weekly of India, Bombay, 1971–72 and 1978–79. Edited Pamparam, Trivandrum, Kerala. Served as director of Book Point, Bombay; president, Jyotsha Art and Education Academy, Bombay; and member, Governing Council, Indian National Trust for Cultural Heritage, New Delhi, and State Planning Board Committee on Art, Literature, and Mass Communications. Independent candidate for Parliament, 1984. President, Kerala Children’s Film Society. Awarded Kerala Sahitya Akademi award, 1969; Asian World prize for literature, 1985. Has written many of her works of autobiography and fiction in Malayam, under the pseudonym Madhavikkutty.

Selected Writings (as Madhavikkutty) Ente katha (autobiography), 1973; (as Kamala Das) as My Story, 1976 Balyakalasmaranakal [Childhood Memories] (memoirs), 1987 Varshangalku munpu [Years Ago] (memoirs), 1989 Dairykkurippukal [Entries in a Diary] (autobiographical essays), 1992 Neermathalam pootha kalam [When the Neermathalam Tree Blossomed] (memoirs), 1993 Ottayadippata [The Narrow Path] (autobiographical essays), 1997 Ente pathakal [My Paths] (autobiographical essays), 1999 (as Kamala Das) “Rediff On The NeT Life /Style: Columnist Kamala Das’ section home page”, online, www.rediff.com/style/das.htm

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de quincey

Further Reading Das, Kamala, A Doll for the Child Prostitute, New Delhi: India Paperbacks, 1977 Das, Kamala, The Best of Kamala Das, edited by P.P. Raveendran, Kozhikode: Bodhi, 1991 Das, Kamala, Padamavati, the Harlot and Other Stories, New Delhi: Sterling, 1992 Harrex, S.C. and Vincent O’Sullivan (editors), Kamala Das: A Selection with Essays on Her Work, Adelaide: CRNLE, 1986 Kaur, Iqbal (editor), Perspectives on Kamala Das’s Prose, New Delhi: Intellectual Publishing House, 1995 Kohli, Devindra, Kamala Das, New Delhi: Arnold–Heinemann, 1975 Ramakrishnan, E.V. (editor), Sthree, Swathwam, Samooham: Madhavikkutty Padanangal [Woman, Identity, Society: Studies on Madhavikkutty], Kozhikode: Poorna, 1994 Raveendran, P.P., “Text as History, History as Text: A Reading of Kamala Das’s Anamalai Poems”, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 30/1 (1994): 47–54 Sachidanandan, K., “Transcending the Body”, introduction to Only the Soul Knows How to Sing: Selections from Kamala Das, Kottayam: D.C. Books, 1996 Sangari, Kumkum and Uma Chakravarti (editors), From Myths to Markets: Essays on Gender, Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, and New Delhi: Manohar, 1999 (contains two essays on Indian women’s autobiographies) Tharu, Susie and K. Lalita (editors), Women Writing in India: 600 BC to the Present, 2 vols, Delhi: Oxford University Press, and New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1991–93

De Beauvoir, Simone see Beauvoir, Simone de De Gaulle, Charles see Gaulle, Charles de De Quincey, Thomas

1785–1859

English journalist, essayist, and autobiographer Thomas De Quincey’s most successful and enduring work is undoubtedly his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, first published in the London Magazine in 1821 (in book form in 1822) and substantially revised in a later version of 1856 for his collective edition of his works, Selections Grave and Gay. The 1821 Confessions sensationally launched De Quincey’s career as a writer in the leading magazines of the day, and determined his popular signature as “XYZ” or the “English Opium-Eater” in numerous periodical articles. This was a signature linked to his identity, a kind of personal “brand image” that was clearly a selling-point in the already fiercely competitive world of 19thcentury journalism. De Quincey’s collected writings have often been considered in this light as a vast autobiographical undertaking representing various facets of the Opium-Eater’s versatile intellectual persona – such as metaphysician, political economist, literary critic, German translator, philosopher, social historian, and so on. More explicitly in terms of narrating his life, however, the Confessions in its two versions, as well as the Suspiria de Profundis of 1845 (subtitled “A Sequel to the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater”) and the Autobiographic Sketches (with which he began his collective edition Selections

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Grave and Gay in 1853), may be regarded as his most significant autobiographical works. There is also a Diary that survives from 1803, when De Quincey was only 17, which provides a fascinatingly unguarded picture of the young man, an early worshipper of the Lake poets and a recalcitrant fugitive from school already in the habit of visiting prostitutes, who used the Diary to record his daily reading, conversations, sexual encounters, diet, and nocturnal emissions among many other details. Such details are of genuine interest in understanding the adolescence that De Quincey later often sentimentalized for his public persona. The Confessions are often regarded now as a typical description of the nature of opium addiction. It is largely De Quincey’s persuasiveness that must be blamed for this misconception, as sociologists of opium use and abuse in the 19th century are at pains to point out. While dependency on opium (as opposed to “addiction” which is better understood as a cultural phenomenon) became widespread in England during the 19th century as a cheap alternative to alcohol until opium was outlawed in 1868, the drug seemed to have provoked few of the personal crises and visionary experiences that De Quincey claimed to have experienced on its account. In an important sense, then, De Quincey’s Confessions is a crucially defining work of present drug culture, in so far as modern-day addictional experiences often repeat the terms of De Quincey’s narrative of his “enthralment” to opium. Considered in the contemporary context of the 19th century though, De Quincey’s Confessions reveal other more deeply historical aspects of the Opium-Eater’s psychological make-up. For instance, De Quincey’s insistence in the title on his Englishness as an Opium-Eater betrays his anxieties regarding the Eastern associations of opium as a drug originating in Turkey and India. Negative stereotypes of the East as connoting luxury and idleness are challenged by his lively self-portrait as philosopher, aesthetician, and moralist, although by the end of the work the Eastern implications of the drug return to haunt De Quincey in the bizarre oriental nightmares that besiege him. In terms of literary influence, De Quincey’s Confessions has been related to the secular transformations of the Christian autobiographical tradition accomplished in the Romantic period in works such as Rousseau’s Confessions (1782–89), Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (1817), and Wordsworth’s The Prelude (1850), read in manuscript by De Quincey by 1811. While the Confessions of 1821 remains a strangely fragmented though compelling bio-narrative, De Quincey’s success in this line ensured a public interest in his life that encouraged him to develop a writerly persona as the Opium-Eater and to return to the explicitly autobiographical mode in numerous other pieces of writing. Of these the Suspiria de Profundis is of vital interest as a kind of meditative sequel to his earlier Confessions, although the Suspiria returns to De Quincey’s childhood, providing us with a crucial account of the death of his sister as a deeply traumatic formative moment in his consciousness. In the Suspiria, De Quincey develops his famous comparison, anticipatory in some ways of Freudian psychology, of the human brain as a palimpsest, or a vellum manuscript overwritten by successive generations of scribes, but fully recoverable in each successive layer. While the palimpsest of vellum, however, may reveal thematic inconsistency in its various layers, the human life as etched on the brain, according to De Quincey, revealed no such inconsistencies. De Quincey’s conception of the brain as recording “everlasting layers of ideas, images, feelings” that could

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reveal the “grandeur of human unity” is linked clearly with his opium experiences, which he claimed to have given him access to such a retrospective glimpse of the totality of his own life compressed within a single, infinite, moment of time. Towards the end of his life, spurred on by the publisher James Hogg, De Quincey embarked on a full-scale collection and revision of his work, aided by the earlier efforts of an American publisher, Ticknor and Fields, in collecting his works. The two opening volumes, entitled Autobiographic Sketches, of De Quincey’s edition of his own works, collect material from serialized articles in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine and other sources and provide the fullest continuous narrative of his early life. There are significant differences between the earlier and later versions of the text, too complex for rehearsal within a short span, but essentially displaying a more elaborate literary effort on De Quincey’s part by way of embellishment and stylistic effect. Certain controversial portions from Tait’s such as De Quincey’s disparaging description of the Liverpool literary society consisting of figures such as William Roscoe, James Currie, Samuel Shepherd, and other well-known Whig liberals of the time are dropped and new passages are incorporated. A similar process of extensive revision may be glimpsed in the 1856 Confessions, which is a more conventionally autobiographical work than the sketchier and more rhapsodic 1821 Confessions. Some additions of note include De Quincey’s descriptions of his visit to the whispering gallery in St Paul’s Cathedral as well as his mocking description of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s opium habit: a vexed point of comparison inducing a form of identity crisis in De Quincey, since Coleridge’s literary and philosophical interests as well as his well-known opium addiction tended to parallel and overshadow De Quincey’s personality and achievements in many respects. De Quincey’s autobiographical writings remain elusively scattered through his works, but it is possible to construct a more or less plausible narrative of his life by piecing together various strands of his vast oeuvre. A more difficult task facing a critical reader of De Quincey today might be to separate the various versions of his life writings and to sift them for their veracity and comparative significance. Daniel Sanjiv Roberts Biography Born in Manchester, Lancashire, England, 15 August 1785. His father was a merchant. Educated at Bath Grammar School, Somerset, 1796–99; at a private school in Winkfield, Wiltshire, 1799–1800; and Manchester Grammar School, 1801–02. Ran away from Manchester to Wales and then claimed to have lived in London with a prostitute named Ann. Studied at Worcester College, Oxford, 1803–08. First took opium for toothache, 1804: later became addicted for life. Met poet William Wordsworth, 1807, and became associated with him, his sister Dorothy Wordsworth, and the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. Settled near them in Grasmere, Westmorland, 1809. Often stayed in London. Entered Middle Temple, London, 1812. Married Margaret Simpson, daughter of a Lakeland farmer, 1817 (died 1837): five sons (three died) and three daughters. Editor, Westmorland Gazette, 1818–19. Contributed to various journals, including London Magazine, 1821–25; Edinburgh Saturday Post and Evening Post, 1827–28; Edinburgh Literary Gazette, 1828–30; Blackwood’s Magazine, 1826–49; and Tait’s Magazine, 1832–51. Became famous with Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822, revised 1856), first serialized in the London Magazine, 1821. Moved to Edinburgh, 1828. Contributed entries on German and British writers to the Encyclopaedia Britannica from 1837. Died in Edinburgh, 8 December 1859.

Selected Writings Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 1822; revised in Selections Grave and Gay, vol. 5, 1856; edited by Alethea Hayter, 1971; edited by Grevel Lindop in Confessions of an English Opium Eater and Other Writings, 1985 Suspiria de Profundis: A Sequel to the Confessions of an English Opium Eater, 1845 Autobiographic Sketches, 1853 Selections Grave and Gay, 14 vols, 1853–60 The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, edited by David Masson, 14 vols, 1889–90 De Quincey Memorials, Being Letters and Other Records Here First Published, edited by Alexander H. Japp, 2 vols, 1891 A Diary of Thomas De Quincey 1803, edited by Horace A. Eaton, 1927 De Quincey at Work, Seen in 130 Letters, edited by Willard Hallam Bonner, 1936 New Essays by De Quincey: His Contributions to the Edinburgh Saturday Post and the Edinburgh Evening Post, 1827–28, edited by Stuart Tave, 1966 Recollections of the Lake Poets, edited by Edward Sackville-West, 1948; as Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets, edited by David Wright, 1970 Unpublished Letters of Thomas De Quincey and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, edited by S. Musgrove, 1954 De Quincey to Wordsworth: A Biography of a Relationship, edited by John E. Jordan, 1962 (includes correspondence) The Works of Thomas De Quincey, edited by Grevel Lindop et al., 21 vols, 2000–

Further Reading Abrams, M.H., Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, New York: Norton, 1971 Barrell, John, The Infection of Thomas De Quincey: A Psychopathology of Imperialism, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1991 Baxter, Edmund, De Quincey’s Art of Autobiography, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1990 Berridge, Virginia and Griffith Edwards, Opium and the People: Opiate Use in Nineteenth-Century England, London: Allen Lane, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1981 Bruss, Elizabeth W., Autobiographical Acts: The Changing Situation of a Literary Genre, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976 Cafarelli, Annette Wheeler, “De Quincey and Wordsworthian Narrative”, Studies in Romanticism, 28/1 (1989): 121–47 Clej, Alina, A Genealogy of the Modern Self: Thomas De Quincey and the Intoxication of Writing, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995 Eaton, Horace Ainswroth, Thomas De Quincey: A Biography, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1936 Lindop, Grevel, The Opium-Eater: A Life of Thomas De Quincey, London: Dent, and New York: Taplinger, 1981 Maniquis, Robert, “Lonely Empires: Personal and Public Visions of Thomas De Quincey” in Mid-Nineteenth Century Writers: Eliot, De Quincey, Emerson, edited by Eric Rothstein and Joseph Anthony Wiltreich, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976 McDonagh, Josephine, De Quincey’s Disciplines, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994 Morrison, Robert, “Opium-Eaters and Magazine Wars: De Quincey and Coleridge in 1821”, Victorian Periodicals Review, 30/1 (1997): 27–40 Porter, Roger, “De Quincey and the Autobiographer’s Dilemma”, Studies in English Literature, 20 (1980): 591–609 Roberts, Daniel Sanjiv, Revisionary Gleam: De Quincey, Coleridge and the High Romantic Argument, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000 Rzepka, Charles, Sacramental Commodities: Gift, Text and the Sublime in De Quincey, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995 Snyder, Robert Lance (editor), Thomas De Quincey: Bicentenary Studies, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985 Symonds, Barry, “‘Do not suppose that I am underwriting myself’: The

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Labyrinth of De Quincey’s Manuscripts”, Wordsworth Circle, 29/2 (1998): 137–40 Whale, John, Thomas De Quincey’s Reluctant Autobiography, London: Croom Helm, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1984

De Richelieu, Cardinal see Richelieu, Cardinal

Denmark The first example of life writing in Denmark is the short curriculum vitae by Jørgen Rosenkrantz (1523–96), a distinguished statesman of the period and the guardian of the king, Christian IV, whose letters reflect his strong and violent temperament. During Christian IV’s reign (1588–1648) voyagers in his service left diaries and notes about their adventures in the Far East and the Arctic. The most memorable of these is Jens Munk’s report, Navigatio septentrionalis (1624; The Journal of Jens Munk), of his ill-fated expedition to Hudson Bay in 1619–20. After losing most of his men in the winter camp, he managed to cross the North Atlantic to Norway in the summer, in a yacht. Christian IV’s daughter, Leonora Christina Ulfeldt (1621–98), is the author of the most famous example of 17th-century life writing in Denmark, her memoirs of grief in captivity, Jammers minde (published 1869; Memoirs). The self-glorification typical of 17th-century life writing is taken to extremes in Henrik Bielke’s (1621–96) megalomaniac tales of his exploits as a warrior and a hunter. Equally self-congratulatory is the smug autobiography of Johan Monrad (1638–1709). A remarkable adventure story is that of Rasmus Aerebo (1685–1744), who, from a background of poverty, entered the service of the royal Danish Resident with the tsar’s court, who sent him as an emissary from Denmark in an open boat across the Baltic to Finland to contact Peter the Great of Russia. The Age of Reason is reflected in the autobiographical writings of the dramatist Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754). Holberg’s contemporary, Erik Pontoppidan (1698–1764), the DanishNorwegian pietist churchman, novelist, and topographer, bears witness in his autobiography to his piety, but also to his humour and tolerance. In her autobiography (1771) Holberg’s would-be successor as a writer of comedies for the Danish stage, Charlotte Dorothea Biehl (1731–88), describes her struggle to be accepted as a writer as a woman. The sentimentalism of the 18th century had an exponent in the poet Johannes Ewald (1743–79), in his Levned og Meeninger [1774–75; Life and Opinions]. Here he conflates three periods: his childhood in Schlesvig (1754–58); his truancy in 1759, when he enlisted in the Austrian army as a drummer-boy; and finally the immediate time of writing, when he confesses to his drunkenness and disappointment in love, but also proudly asserts his faith in the divine vocation of a poet. Ewald’s type of digressionary style, in the manner of English novelist Laurence Sterne, is also evident in the travelogue Labyrinthen (1792–93) by Jens Baggesen (1754–1826), where the author describes his tour of Germany and Switzerland, which is also a quest for cure, love, and individuation. Baggesen left a number of letters, as did Biehl, Ewald, and Knud Lyne

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Rahbek (1760–1830), the leading critic of the last decades of the 18th century, who was the author of significant memoirs, Erindringer af mit liv [5 vols, 1824–29; Memoirs of My Life]. The Romantic era in Denmark, roughly the first half of the 19th century, is amply documented in diaries, letters, and autobiographies. On-the-spot records of the Romantic breakthrough are, for example, the diary entries and other notes from the 1790s by the poet A.W. Schack von Staffeldt (1769–1826) and the diary fragments written by N.F.S. Grundtvig during his poetic and erotic awakening during the years 1805–08. Reminiscences of the rise of Romanticism in Denmark in 1802 were written by its principal advocate, the philosopher Heinrich Steffens (1773–1845) in his memoirs: Was ich erlebte (1840–44; abridged as The Story of My Career). Romantic autobiographies are characterized by the idea of the individual’s organic development as a person. One model example is the life story of the poet Adam Oehlenschläger (1779–1850) in his Levnet fortalt af hamselv [2 vols, 1830–31; Life Written by Himself] and in his letters of 1798–1809 (5 vols). A similar pattern is to be found in the memoirs of Romantic writers, such as those of Jakob Peter Mynster (1846), Carsten Hauch (1867–71), and B.S. Ingemann (1862). The memoirs of Hans Christian Andersen, Mit livs eventyr (1855; The Story of My Life), are the foremost piece of life writing of the period. A vision of order and harmony in the design of his destiny, combined with a preoccupation with the idea of nemesis, has been traced by Meir Aron Goldschmidt in his Livserindringer og Livsresultater [1877; Memories and Accomplishments of Life]. Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) found divine guidance and a sense of destiny – if no harmony – in his tormented life as it can be detected in his journals, which have appeared in English as Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers (7 vols), translated and edited by E.H. Hong and G. Malanschuck, 1967–78. Two prominent representatives of the era of spirituality and idealism brought out their memoirs long after it had expired: the leading actress of the day Johanne Luise Heiberg (1812–90), in her book Et liv gienoplevet i erindringen [4 vols, 1891–92; A Life Relived in Memory], and Hans Lassen Martensen, a bishop and theologian – and Kierkegaard’s object of aversion – with his vita, Af mit levned (2 vols, 1882–83). Two autobiographies of note stand out. One is the memoirs (Erindringer) by Eline Birgitte Boisen (1813–71). These outspoken recollections, first published in 1999, describe her deeply unhappy marriage to a prominent churchman and politician. In addition, they give a picture of the religious revivalism of the day, as well as impressions of Boisen’s contacts with famous contemporary figures, for example, Kierkegaard and N.F.S. Grundtvig. The other work is the autobiography of Ole Kollerød (1802–40), a thief and convicted murderer, who wrote about his life and fate just before his execution in 1840. Kollerød’s story offers an insight into the life of the criminal underworld and a picture of the brutality, filth, and depravity of prison life. In the later decades of the 19th century Danish cultural life was influenced strongly by radical political ideas, as well as by Darwinism and atheism. A testimony to the intellectual currents of the period is to be found in the correspondence of two important critics, Georg Brandes (1842–1927) and Edvard Brandes (1847–1931), Brevveksling mellem nordiske forfattere og videnskabsmænd (8 vols, written after 1870, published

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1939–42), including letters by J.P. Jacobsen, Holger Drachmann, Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, and August Strindberg. Georg Brandes published memoirs of his early years and youth, Levned (3 vols, 1905–08; Recollections of My Childhood and Youth). Several of his contemporaries also produced memoirs, for instance Henrik Pontoppidan (1931–40, collected as Erindringer), Herman Bang (1891), and Harald Høffding (1928). Johannes Jørgensen (1866–1956), a symbolist poet and a leading critic of the 1890s, gives an unflattering self-portrait and an account of his intellectual development, leading up to his conversion to Roman Catholicism, in Mit livs legende I–VII [1915–28; Legend of My Life]. An autobiography of equal stature is Martin Andersen Nexø’s Erindringer [4 vols, published under separate titles, 1932–39; Memoires]. His description of the poverty of his boyhood in rural surroundings has counterparts in the composer Carl Nielsen’s autobiography Min fynske barndom (1927; My Childhood), and in the memoirs of the regional poet Jeppe Aakjaer, Fra min bittetid [1931; From When I Was Tiny]. The half-century after the adoption of a representative democracy in Denmark in 1849 produced several memoirs by politicians, such as A.F. Krieger’s Dagbøger 1840–80 (edited by E. Koppel et al., 1920–43), H.P. Hanssen’s Et tilbageblik (4 vols, 1928–34), and I.C. Christensen’s Fra min barndom og ungdom [1925; From My Childhood and Youth]. A collection of minor autobiographies and selections of letters from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries was edited by Julius Clausen and P. Fr. Rist: Memoirer og Breve I–L (1905–27). During the 20th century there was an unprecedented flowering of autobiography. A general easing of taboos meant that writers were more outspoken about their private lives and their relationships with contemporaries who were still alive. As did the Romantics, they laid great emphasis on childhood experiences, but under the influence of Freudianism the moderns focus on early traumas and irredeemable child–parent conflicts. One example of this trend is the autobiographical novel Et barn blev korsfaestet [1937; A Child Was Crucified] by Carl Hansen Fahlberg (1870–1939), in which he confesses to being a homosexual and a victim of child abuse. Likewise, marital problems and the break-up of relationships are laid completely bare, as in Tove Ditlevsen’s Gift [1971; Married /Poison – with a double entendre], which is a sequel to the memoirs of her childhood in a working-class district of Copenhagen, Det tidlige forår (1976; Early Spring). With unabashed egocentricity autobiographers relate their individual lives to the instability and anguish of the interwar years. An example of this is the writings of the novelist and critic Elsa Gress (1919–94) in her autobiographies Mine mange hjem (1965) and Fuglefri og fremmed (1971). Chronological development is not always observed in the structure of autobiographies. The later events may be at the beginning of the text, as in Henrik Stangerup’s Fjenden i forkøbet [1978; Stealing a March on the Enemy], which also, like Suzanne Brøgger’s Creme fraiche (1977), seems to use provocative mythomania as an artistic device. The 20th century still featured a number of autobiographies in traditional patterns. Prominent both in quality and quantity are the eight volumes (1941–55) by Agnes Henningsen (1868– 1962). In her books she draws a variegated picture of the intellectual scene in Denmark from the 1890s onwards. While

praising free love, she contends that polygamous relationships should be the natural practice of women. Another champion of a particular lifestyle was the teetotal publicist Larsen-Ledet (1881–1958) who, in his entertaining memoirs Mit livs karussel (1945–57), describes his lifelong career as a politician and temperance agitator. A woman’s dedication to a cause is the theme of the autobiography Teater og tempel [1935; Theatre and Temple] by Anna Larsen Björner (1875–1955). It tells the story of her brilliant career as an actress, cut short, however, at its very height, when she chooses to become a pentecostal preacher. A noteworthy life story about an idyllic childhood is told by the dramatist-priest Kaj Munk (1898–1944), Foraaret saa sagte kommer [1942; Gently Comes the Spring], where the author nevertheless shows his impish humour and awareness of the grim facts of mortality. A memorable example of the many stories about a rise from the hardship of a poor and a disharmonious parental background is offered by the two books of memoirs by Karl Bjarnhof (1898–1980), Stjernerne blegner (1956; The Stars Grow Pale) and Det gode lys (1957; The Good Light), describing how as a teenager the author goes blind, but, against all odds, has a successful career as a journalist and broadcaster. A special chapter in the life writing of the period consists of the letters and memoirs of the German occupation of Denmark during World War II. Among the letters written by condemned resistance fighters before their execution by the Gestapo, those by Kim Malthe Bruun (1923–45) in Uddrag af dagbog og breve (edited by his mother V. Malthe Bruun, 1945; Heroic Heart: The Diary and Letters of Kim Malthe-Bruun) stand out. H. Flemming B. Muus (1907–82) gave an account of his activities as an agent of the British army, parachuted into occupied Denmark, in Gjort Gerning [2 vols, 1979; Done Dead]. Erling Foss (1897–1982) records his personal role in the leadership of the Danish resistance movement in Fra aktiv til passiv modstand [1946; From Active to Passive Resistance], as does Mogens Fog (1904–90) in Efterskrift 1904–45 (1976). An outstanding example among the many accounts of the sufferings of Danish political prisoners in concentration camps is the book of recollections by Martin Nielsen (1900–62), a communist leader who was deported to Germany, in his Rapport fra Stutthof (1947). In the 1990s letters and memoirs by the survivors among the 9000 Danes who volunteered as soldiers in the German army on the eastern front have been published. In recent years some significant autobiographies of the postwar period have appeared. There are the memoirs of the two major poets Ole Wivel’s (b. 1921) Romance for valdhorn [3 vols, 1972–89; Romance for French Horn] and Thorkild Björnvig’s (b. 1918) Erindringer 1918–48 [1983–87; Memoirs]. Björnvig also looks back on his troubled friendship with Isak Dinesen in Pagten (1974; The Pact). The novelist and polemicist Klaus Rifbjerg (b. 1931), in Sådan: en livsreportage (1999), takes a mellowed look at his past, while Hans Edvard Nörregaard Nielsen (b. 1945), a distinguished art historian and head of the Carlsberg Foundation, has offered a remarkable story of a poor and unstable childhood in a backward rural area on the west coast of Jutland: Mands minde [1999; A Man’s Recollection]. Niels Lyhne Jensen

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Further Reading Kondrup, Johnny, Levned og tolkninger: studier i nordisk selvbiografi, Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1982 Kondrup, Johnny, Livsvaerker: studier i dansk litterar biografi, Valby: Amadeus, 1986

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sciousness confronted with the blood-stained absurdities of 20th-century history. Ildikó Melis Biography

Déry, Tibor

1894–1977

Hungarian novelist, dissident, and memoirist Tibor Déry’s Itélet nincs [1969; There is No Judgement] is the life writing of a man in his late sixties. It is a series of essays composed into a life narrative with fears of death and aging as the main thread. Yet each chapter can stand on its own, commemorating a small episode, a fatal event, an unblushing love affair, the portrait of a great friend, an eccentric artist, a memorable acquaintance, or an unforgettable mother. Déry’s ultimately moralizing inclinations place his fragmented and selective memories under the scrutiny of reinterpretation, rephrasing, and re-evaluation. The present is marked by Déry’s observations of the small events surrounding his legendary cottage on Tamás Hill, near the picturesque Lake Balaton. Déry’s small talk with his neighbours, or his concerns about the well-being of his garden create a perspective of unreflectivity, a mundane sense of life going on. This is the backdrop against which the narratives of the past are re-created with reflective rigour. One of the most memorable pieces in “There is No Judgement”is dedicated to his mother’s adorably eccentric personality. With her regimented routines, her passion for Goethe’s prose, Kant’s philosophy, and truth-telling, this woman has a strong presence in Déry’s consciousness. She is a formidable point of departure from which Déry makes his readers judge the atrocities of history and human weakness alike. However, Déry’s analytical mind mercilessly reveals this old lady’s rigid ideas of class and social distance as well. Déry’s mother is 94 years old when the writer begins his nineyear sentence in prison in 1957. To save his mother from a truth too complex and absurd to be intelligible, until the day his mother dies, Déry’s wife makes up lie after lie about her husband shooting a movie in America and rubbing shoulders with celebrities in Hollywood. In the meantime, Déry is being fed another pack of lies about his mother being well and in good spirits. He even keeps getting letters from her after she is dead because she has written more than an inmate is allowed to receive at one time. These events inspired other short stories in Déry’s oeuvre, and form the basis of the film script Szerelem [Love] directed by Károly Makk. Although “there is no judgement”, no consistent system of beliefs to serve as a universal measure of past and present, the autobiography emanates a deep-rooted belief in dignity, love, and the possibility of happiness. These beliefs never grow into dogmas, or unabashed certainty. Instead, Déry’s spirit is always questing and questioning; his responses are tentative and indirect, which perfectly suits the loose essay format. One of Déry’s key metaphors is the “thinking onion”. It refers to us, human beings who are composed of many layers, each trying to make sense of the world and our own actions. “There is No Judgement” is an account of these multiple layers of con-

Born in Budapest, Hungary (then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire), 18 October 1894. His father was a middle-class Jewish lawyer. Became ill at the age of 4 or 5 with tuberculosis of the bones, and spent four years suffering from the disease. Went to sanatorium in Germany to recover. Educated at the Lateinische Gymnasium and the Handelsakademie, and subsequently at a collegium in Switzerland, where he studied European languages. Began work in the office of his uncle’s large timberworks and sawmill, and organized a strike at the sawmill. Called up for service in World War I, 1918. Joined the underground Communist party, 1919. Travelled as emigré with his first wife to Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Yugoslavia, trying to escape police harassment and working as a journalist, labourer, and teacher, 1919–39. Went into hiding in Budapest during World War II; involved in distributing forged passports among persecuted Jews and earned living by translating books. Wrote his first and most significant novel, A befejezetlen mondat [1945; An Unfinished Sentence], 1930s and early 1940s. Escaped capture and transport to Auschwitz by Hungarian Nazis, 1945. Supported Imre Nagy’s reform movement of 1953. Joined Hungarian artists’ Pet?fi Circle, an important organization in the anti-Stalinist rebellion of 1956. Married second wife, Elisabeth Hulman, 1955. Arrested for involvement in October Revolution of 1956, and sentenced to nine years’ hard labour, 1957. Wrote Kafkaesque novel G.A. úr X.-ben [1964; Mr A.G. in X] while in prison. Released after campaigning by PEN International and the formation of “Tibor Déry committees” in several countries, 1960. Lived in Budapest after his release. Died in Budapest, 18 August 1977.

Selected Writings Itélet nincs, 1969; part translated as “Origin” by Elizabeth Szász in New Hungarian Quarterly, 71 (1978): 50–65 Három asszony: Déry Tibor leveleszése Pfeiffer Olgával, Oravecz Paulával és Kunsági Máriával (correspondence), edited by Ferenc Botka, 1995 Liebe Mamuskám! Déry Tibor leveleszése édesanyjával (correspondence), edited by Ferenc Botka, 1998

Further Reading Déry, Tibor, “Report to My Doctor”, New Hungarian Quarterly, 71 (1978): 66–68 Földes, Anna, “The Three Faces of Tibor Déry”, New Hungarian Quarterly, 55 (1974): 80–88 Hegyi, Béla, “Tibor Déry Talks on Faith, Hope and Human Nature”, New Hungarian Quarterly, 40 (1970): 115–21 Lukács, György, “Preserving the Human Substance: On Tibor Déry’s 70th Birthday”, New Hungarian Quarterly, 71 (1978): 69–73 Réz, Pál, “Homage to Déry: The Questing Writer”, New Hungarian Quarterly, 71 (1978): 36–49

Diaries and Journals: General Survey “But then this does not count as writing. It is to me like scratching; or, if it goes well, like having a bath”, conjectured Virginia Woolf in her diary (1922). It is, perhaps, because it “does not count as writing” that most of the work on genre theory omits to consider the diary, or, at best, dismisses it in a single sentence. Woolf described her diary as a “capacious hold-all”. This accommodating description admits of many of the features of the diary: it is an “elastic” – and expanding – stow, which a diarist often carries, and into which s /he casts life’s materials

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and loose ends, ostensibly without arrangement. Often, the diary is written in a compulsive attempt to “hold” and store literally all of the diarist’s experience. Both on an individual level and as a class of writing, the diary is characterized by its hybridity and diversity (it is a mixed bag). It may be an intimate confessional or a family album; a collection of historical events (most notably Samuel Pepys’s diaries of 1660–69, or, 300 years later, those of British writer Harold Nicolson during the years 1939–45, or in the late 20th century of British politician Tony Benn) or an introspective attempt to capture mood; detached short notes (the form often chosen by Anaïs Nin); or a narrative account of a particular life episode (such as Edith Wharton’s “story” of her relationship with Moreton Fullerton, 1907–08). It may or may not be dated. In British English, it scarcely has an unequivocal name: “diary” is also used for a forward planner; “journal” for a newspaper or magazine. Both these words are derived from roots meaning “day”, but only rarely is a diary written daily. (In French, the more descriptive term journal intime tends to be used, and the word for a forward planner is agenda. In American English, future and past reminders become “calendar” and “diary” respectively.) While the diary is itself difficult to confine, it also unsettles the boundaries upon which other genre distinctions are usually made. Indeed, it lies on the border between life and its representation, supplementing both. It may be classified as art, or as document. On the one hand, it is continuous with the lived life: it is source material, used to explain the diarist’s other writing (including other life writing). It is an artless presentation of the self, a text that can be looked through, to catch a glimpse of undistorted life. On the other hand, it is an unfinished art form that engenders (but is subordinated to) the polished “work of art”. (A twist on this is provided by Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals, written in 1798 and 1800–03, which were most probably used as source material by her brother, William, for his poetry.) The diarist is expected to write with immediacy, using the language of everyday (spoken) colloquy. In addition, whereas most published forms attempt to render what are seen as the preparatory phases of the work invisible, the diarist leaves a trail of revisions, which creates the effect of a work executed with a slapdash vigour. The same tropes are used, to similar effect, in fictional genres (perhaps most famously in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, 1962). Often, the diary is written in an attempt to master experience, and to contain the self – as a closed book. As both forward planner and retrospective chronicle, the diary becomes a balance sheet, auditing the days lived and administering those remaining, sometimes in a sparse, but obsessive manner. Parson James Woodforde wrote his diaries for 43 years (1758–1802), recording that he had “breakfasted” and “dined”, that he had “read Prayers and preached”. Yet the subject of the text is not neatly extractable: its meaning remains in excess of its readable content, for the diary is both text and habitual, repeated practice. Where retrospective autobiography is constituted as a “work”, a detached product of the lived life, the diary exposes a more complicated relationship between life and its narrative. From a position of immersion in the present, the writing of the text forms an integral part of the life, and of the subject’s engagement with language and ideology. The recording may itself become a part of the recorded.

The diarist continually rereads and amends his or her text, as recent experiences create novel adaptations of the past. Text and context (reader and writer) remain in continuity, and this contributes to a pronounced drift and regeneration of meaning. The self, both lived and written, is fashioned and maintained through a continual process of self-adjustment – or self-editing – directed by the writing and reading of the self by itself. Thus the diarist becomes bound to his or her own emerging story. In the creation of a published diary, the annotations and arrangements of the editor create one of many possible “Lives” from the debris of the lived life: the shape of the subject is determined by the particular story the editor tells. For example, John Middleton Murry’s edition of The Journal of Katherine Mansfield is constructed as a document of artistic development. In a similar way, Leonard Woolf created A Writer’s Life as a text to “throw light upon Virginia Woolf’s intentions, objects and methods as a writer”. The editor may include both versions of any passages that the diarist has reworked. Such an apparent disregard for the borders of the work marked out by the diarist is partly the result of uncertainty as to the status of such an apparently “preliminary” text: is it a fragment of a greater body of “work” or, rather, a relic of life, perhaps, even, best cast to oblivion? The reproduction of every ink mark also reinforces the documentary status of the text. The Russian émigré painter Marie Bashkirtseff proclaimed that she would write her diary “without any attempt at concealment, as if no one in the world were ever to read it, yet with the purpose of being read”. This comment encapsulates another distinguishing feature of the diary: it is a communication-that-isnot-to-be-communicated. Secrecy defines the diary as both text and practice. As a regular practice, it becomes a part of the secret familiarity of the self. The diarist writes out his or her secret thoughts and impressions, and also conceals what he or she is doing, for there is something secret, and potentially shameful, about diarizing as an activity. Indeed, the guilty pleasures that result are an important part of this compulsive, clandestine habit. As a text, the diary comes to stand as an embodiment of the paradoxical and elusive self, revealed yet always remaining hidden, simultaneously public and private. The diarist often exhibits the fact that he or she has something to give away, and then refuses to divulge it. Deletions or omissions are, of course, a means of negotiating, and simultaneously revealing, personal or socio-cultural expectations and restrictions. Sometimes the secrecy of a diary is reinforced by the use of a special language or code. Pepys, for example, wrote of his adulteries in a private language derived from French, English, Spanish, and Latin. Yet it is frequently easy to decipher and would seem to be adopted out of a diarist’s own sense of unease over the activities being related: to distance the self from itself. Although any autobiographical writing is necessarily a record of one self by another, the seclusion of one self – in a code – reinforces the intrasubjective schism. The use of a code also encapsulates the paradoxical nature of the diary, for diarists simultaneously reveal themselves to, and conceals themselves from, themselves. Often, diaries are not published in “complete” form and therefore their reading (and their use as models by other diarists) involves a surmise as to what parts may have been excluded. Indeed, hanging over the published diary there is always the question, “Did s / he really intend to publish?”. The diarist who

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writes for an audience is considered insincere and thus not considered to be writing a “proper” diary. This creates an interesting problem with respect to the diary as a genre, for if diarists write only for themselves, they are answerable to nobody, and therefore any autobiographical “contract” of the sort proposed by Philippe Lejeune in On Autobiography (1980) is rendered meaningless. Nonetheless, the secrets of any diary, published or unpublished, have, in being written out, been made an external reality, with all the implications of an audience. Their writtenness demands at least the possibility of their being read. The diary “contract” would perhaps be one, then, that legitimizes the illicit nature of the reader: I subscribe not to be writing for you. The result is a reading that is acknowledged by writer and reader as implicitly furtive. It is often suggested that the diary is a feminine genre, in both form and content. The same formal and stylistic features also appear in the literary experiments of many modernist writers, and have similarly been classed as feminine. It is argued that the subversion of traditional linguistic structures and conventions of representation – in particular, through nonlinearity, interruption, and lack of closure – allow meanings to emerge that have been repressed by (phallocentric) realist discourses, and call into question the patriarchal order those discourses sustain. In an analogous way, it has been suggested that by revealing the indeterminacies and aporias in traditional, closed life stories, the diary decentres the unified, “universal” subject, which has always been referred to the male individual. Such disruptive practices are also related to the écriture feminine idealized by various French writers in the 1970s (notably Hélène Cixous and Michèle Montrelay). In almost all its guises, feminine writing thus viewed is seen to provide direct access to a truer reality – or self – that has not been constrained or distorted by the symbolic order: the feminine comes to be characterized as spontaneous, “natural”, and aligned with that which has been repressed by culture. As a capacious genre, which elaborates an open, improvised self, the diary has, over many centuries, been readily pulled into a variety of shapes to embrace new forms and widely various experiences of subjectivity. For the individual diarist, too, it lends itself to a multiplicity of functions, and makes room for diverse selves, taken up at various times and places, distinct yet mutually dependent. Rachel Cottam Further Reading Bashkirtseff, Marie, The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, translated by Mathilde Blind, London: Virago, 1985 Benstock, Shari (editor), The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writings, London: Routledge, and Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988 Cullwick, Hannah, The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant, edited by Liz Stanley, London: Virago Press, and New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1984 Didier, Béatrice, Le Journal intime, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1976 Felski, Rita, The Gender of Modernity, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995 Girard, Alain, Le Journal intime, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963 Kagle, Steven Earl, “The Diary as Art: A New Assessment”, Genre, 6 (1973): 416–27 Langford, Rachael and Russell West (editors), Marginal Voices,

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Marginal Forms: Diaries in European Literature and History, Amsterdam and Atlanta, Georgia: Rodopi, 1999 Lejeune, Philippe and Catherine Bogaert, Un journal à soi, ou, la passion des journaux intimes, Lyon: Association pour l’Autobiographie et le Patrimoine Autobiographique and the Amis des Bibliothèques de Lyon, 1997 Mansfield, Katherine, The Journal of Katherine Mansfield, edited by John Middleton Murry, London: Constable, and New York: Knopf, 1927 Moffat, Mary Jane and Charlotte Painter (editors), Revelations: Diaries of Women, New York: Random House, 1974 Nin, Anaïs, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 7 vols, edited by Gunther Stuhlmann, New York: Swallow Press, 1966–80 Pepys, Samuel, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 10 vols, edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews, London: Bell, and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970–83 Ponsonby, Arthur, English Diaries: A Review of English Diaries from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century, London: Methuen, and New York: Doran, 1923 Simons, Judy, Diaries and Journals of Literary Women from Fanny Burney to Virginia Woolf, London: Macmillan, and Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990 Waldron, Philip, “Katherine Mansfield’s Journal”, Twentieth Century Literature, 20 (1974): 11–18 Watts, Carol, “Releasing Possibility into Form: Cultural Choice and the Woman Writer” in New Feminist Discourses: Critical Essays on Theories and Texts, edited by Isobel Armstrong, London and New York: Routledge, 1992 Wiener, Wendy J. and George C. Rosenwald, “A Moment’s Monument: The Psychology of Keeping a Diary” in The Narrative Study of Lives, vol. 1, edited by Ruthellen Josselson and Amia Lieblich, Newbury Park, California: Sage, 1993 Woodforde, James, The Diary of A Country Parson, edited by John Beresford, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1949 Woolf, Virginia, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 5 vols, edited by Anne Olivier Bell, London: Hogarth Press, and New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977–84

Díaz del Castillo, Bernal

c.1492–1584

Spanish conquistador, memoirist, and historian Bernal Díaz del Castillo started composing his memoirs – Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España (c.1575; True History of the Conquest of Mexico) – when he was more than 80 years old, living as a landowner in the territory of what is now Guatemala; the text covers, however, only the time he spent in the colonial expeditions, and especially his five years under the orders of Hernán Cortés in the conquest of Mexico and the campaign against the Aztecs (1519–24), noting in detail the division of the Aztec empire brought about by Cortés, the imprisonment of Montezuma and his subsequent death, the long combat for the conquest of Tenochtitlán, and the capture of the emperor Cuauhtémoc. The rest of Bernal’s biography is not mentioned in the Historia, as if the only episodes worthy of remembrance in it were to be found in his participation in the expansion of the Spanish empire. This is a biography, therefore, centred on the evocation of a military enterprise which, in Bernal’s account, acquires distinctly epic proportions. Towards the ninth chapter of the Historia verdadera, Bernal states his main reason for writing: he had, in fact, started and abandoned an earlier version of the text, but he felt the need to complete it when he came across the version of the invasion of Mexico given in the Historia general de las Indias (1554) by

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Francisco López de Gomara (1511–64), who had been Cortés’s chaplain during the war against the Aztecs. The lack of realism of that chronicle, and especially the fact that it tended to concentrate the whole responsibility for the conquest, and the consequent sense of heroism, on Cortés himself, while ignoring the work of the soldiers, was what motivated the writing of the Historia verdadera. This is, therefore, a polemical text: one that asserts its truthfulness from its very title, in implicit contrast to previous accounts of the conquest. While Gomara’s version had taken Livy and Tacitus as models of history writing, Bernal’s writing tried to rely on authenticity and personal experience. The presential quality of the narrator’s position towards his narration is thus a crucial element in this text. There is a special insistence on Bernal’s having directly witnessed everything that is described, and on his having kept a vivid impression of the whole: the function of memory here is not so much to evoke a past that has disappeared but simply to note down what the narrator is constantly recalling “as vividly as if it was before my very eyes”. The narrator’s self, however, tends to merge with the rest of the adventurers: the narration is authorized by an “I”, a self, who has experienced the events, but the protagonist does not correspond either to himself or to Cortés, but to the entire group. There is a strong sense of selfhood informing the whole of the text, but that self is always contextualized collectively; indeed, Bernal’s claim to personal distinction is based on his pride as the oldest, most experienced expeditionary in the company: “And among the strong conquerors, my companions … I was counted, as the oldest one. And I say again that I, I, and I, I … am the oldest one, and I have served his majesty as a good soldier.” This speaker, therefore, does not want to be characterized by his distinct subjectivity, but rather by his experience among the 400 soldiers in the expedition; he is speaking as the most authoritative member of a vast collective that has been ignored and silenced by historians. The most distinctive characteristic of Bernal’s account, consequently, is his insistence on the worth of the soldiers; Cortés and Montezuma are the central figures in the war between the Spanish and the Aztecs, but most of the hyperboles in the text are used in the description of the expedition as a whole rather than in references to any individual figure. The soldiers are rhetorically ennobled and magnified, acquiring a mythical dimension that would not have been given to them in Spain (where Cervantes would soon publish the first part of Don Quixote). The Historia is thus informed throughout by a sense of dignity that does not come from a noble inheritance, but on the assumption of an inherent worth that is ascribed to the whole of the company, because of the epic quality of the conquest: And those who say that never a Roman Captain among the most renowned ones achieved such great feats as we did, say a great truth indeed. And now and in the future, God willing, much more will be said about this adventure than ever was said about the ancients. The rhetoric of the Historia verdadera relies occasionally on parallels between illustrious figures from antiquity and the members of Cortés’s company: Bernal quotes from Julius Caesar, or compares some of his fellow soldiers to historical or mythological figures, so as to emphasize their nobility. He tries,

however, not to insist too much on these parallels and to rely constantly on a direct, unadorned narration of the facts as the best guarantee of the truth of his account: he chooses a variety of sermo humilis, not because of a lack of rhetorical resources, but because a simple, direct narrative will convey the truth of the adventure without altering any of the details: The careful reader will see the difference between veracity and lies, in my relation, as I state literally what took place, and they should not consider the rhetoric and ornate … The truth resists my poor style and the unclean rhetoric with which I write. The absence of rhetorical effect and the attention to visual detail are, indeed, especially effective when conveying the horror of the executions practised by Cuauhtémoc’s priests: With knives made of stone they cut their breasts, and took out their palpitating hearts, and offered them to the idols that were present there … , and other Indian butchers were waiting there, who cut their hands and feet, and skinned the faces, and prepared the skin to be used as leather for gloves. But Bernal’s account is, in general, notably fair and respectful towards the enemy: the brutality of the Spaniards is presented as prominently as that of the Aztecs, but not in so much detail (which is perhaps an indication of the author’s own fears during the war), and Montezuma himself is presented as a wise and well-educated monarch, who had to be imprisoned and manipulated because of strategic reasons. There is a remarkable absence of value judgements on the part of the narrator, who tends to consider military action and war from a tactical or practical perspective, never expressing open disagreement or setting up a moral perspective that could set him apart from the rest of the group. His claim to distinction, indeed, lies in his participation in the collective adventure along with the rest of the soldiers. And it is direct participation in the making of history that authorizes Bernal to become a historian himself: Should this be explained by the birds who were flying while we were in battle … or by the clouds on high, or only by us, the captains and soldiers that found ourselves there? … And still I do not praise myself as much as I should. This same fluctuation between the “we” and the “I” is the key to the understanding of both Bernal’s pride and his authority: his perspective can be legitimized only to the extent that he played a part in the military enterprise he evokes. Joan Curbet Biography Born in Medina del Campo, Spain, c.1492. Went to the “Indies” (i.e. central America), eventually serving as a conquistador on several expeditions, most notably the conquest of Mexico under Hernán Cortés in 1519. Returned to Spain twice to claim compensation, 1540 and 1550. Eventually settled in Guatemala, where he married Teresa Becerra, daughter of a fellow conquistador, retired to his encomendero, and wrote his historical memoirs. Died in Santiago de los Caballeros, Guatemala, 3 February 1584.

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Selected Writings Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, written 1568, published c.1575; edited by Carmelo Sáenz de Santa María, 1982, and Miguel León-Portilla, 2 vols, 1984; as The True History of the Conquest of Mexico, translated by Maurice Keatinge, 1800; as The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, translated by John Ingram Lockhart, 2 vols, 1844; as The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517–1521, translated by A.P. Maudslay, 1928; as The Conquest of New Spain, translated by J.M. Cohen, 1963

Further Reading Greenblatt, Stephen, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, and Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991 Rublúo, Luis, Estética de la “Historia Verdadera” de Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Pachuca: Universidad Autónoma de Hidalgo, 1969 Sáenz de Santa María, C., Introducción crítica a la “Historia Verdadera” de Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Madrid: CSIC, 1967

Dictionary of American Biography Inspired by the desire for the United States to have an authoritative biographical dictionary similar to the British Dictionary of National Biography (DNB), the newly formed American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) appointed a committee to formulate a plan in 1922. This committee decided that the American work would emulate the quality and many characteristics of the British one, containing impartial and objective biographies carefully characterizing their subjects while eschewing sentiment and rhetoric. They would be based on original sources and written by those persons “most specifically qualified”. Funding for the project was obtained as a loan from Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of the New York Times. The first task faced by Allen Johnson, the editor, was to decide whom to include in the dictionary. As he pointed out in his introduction, the word “American” was fraught with ambiguities. The committee had restricted him to deceased individuals who had lived in the US territories for at least part of their lives, but positive qualifications beyond this were up to Johnson, who again followed a DNB principle that only those who had made some significant contribution to American life should be included. He did, however, expand the range of contributions beyond the usual professions of soldier, statesman, and clergyman to include men and women prominent in the arts and sciences. Johnson was praised by his contemporaries for his inclusiveness, but more recent commentators have criticized the Dictionary of American Biography (DAB) for its glaring omissions. Johnson’s next task was the matching of contributors with subjects. These were chosen with care, resulting in a contributor’s list that John A. Garraty has described as a “Who’s Who of the historical profession at that time”. Since another standard for the DAB was a high degree of factual accuracy, Johnson hired a staff including fact checkers, who did their work in the Library of Congress, and a team of literary editors. In this goal he succeeded quite well; for her master’s thesis of 1948, Nancy Bird compared a sampling of entries for subjects found in both the DNB and the DAB, and found that the degree of accuracy where they differed was actually higher for the DAB.

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In 1929 Johnson enlisted one of his former students, Dumas Malone, as his associate. When Johnson was killed in a road accident in 1931, Malone became chief editor. He finished assigning the articles and continued the practices established by Johnson, which included a heavy load of correspondence with contributors. The main set, published in 1936 by Scribners, contained 13,633 articles written by 2243 contributors. Scribners continued to publish supplements until the 1990s under various editors for a total of ten supplements, also producing an abridged “concise” version, a comprehensive index, and, more recently, a CD-ROM. More than just a “cornerstone of the American reference room”, as its publisher has called it, the DAB can also be seen as the cornerstone of an American national identity. Narrating exemplary lives, including the notorious as well as the famous, its selection of subjects, contributors, incidents in the lives, and subjects’ accomplishments acquire political importance as a portrayal of what it means to be American, and what values go into the construction of an American ethos. For this reason the compiling of the dictionary was assailed by its share of controversy. For example, Dunbar Rowland, a Southern contributor, published two pamphlets accusing Johnson and Malone of partisanship and sectarianism, largely because Nathanial Stephenson was assigned the article on Jefferson Davis, a figure on whom Rowland regarded himself as the expert. Other controversies arose when members of certain religious groups, such as the Theosophists, Christian Scientists, and Mormons, objected to the depictions of their leaders. John Garraty has interesting comments to make on the inclusion or exclusion of women and African Americans (a debate that continues). He notes that the original DAB and its first two supplements had only 706 biographies of women (about five per cent of the contents), and that even the later volume Notable American Women located less than twice this number that would fit its criteria for inclusion. And while the DAB had at least two African American contributors (W.E.B. DuBois – who wrote on Frederick Douglass – and Carter Woodson), there are surprising omissions in coverage, such as Sojourner Truth and Scott Joplin. Garraty identifies neither conscious racism nor gender exclusivity as the underlying causes for omissions, but instead an inclusion policy so weighted towards fields of activity that tended to be peopled by white males, that attempts to locate women and minorities in the same fields inevitably met with limited success. The most recent controversy involved the ACLS with Macmillan, Scribners’ new owners, in a lawsuit over who should own the trademark Dictionary of American Biography, or DAB. This ensued long after the ACLS had approached Scribners about publishing a whole new edition in the mid-1980s. By then the DAB had begun to seem dated, not only in regard to omissions but also because of new methods of historiography. Scribners, however, was not interested, so the ACLS then turned to Oxford University Press. In the meantime, Scribners was bought by Macmillan, changed its mind, and stated its intention to update the DAB and publish it on CD-ROM. Fearing unfair competition, the ACLS then sued Macmillan for infringement. In 1999 the Macmillan Reference group of companies, including Scribners, was acquired by Gale Research of Detroit. Although Scribners as an imprint continues to publish American biographies under a different title, the successor of the DAB, the

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American National Biography, under the editorship of John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, was published in print in 1999 (24 volumes) under the aegis of the ACLS, and, at the time of writing, it was planned that it should appear on the World Wide Web, where it would be regularly updated. It won the 1999 Dartmouth Medal, a prestigious American reference award. Kristine J. Anderson Further Reading Bird, Nancy, “The Comparative Authoritativeness of The Dictionary of American Biography and the Dictionary of National Biography” (dissertation), New York: Columbia University, 1948 Garraty, John A., “The Dictionary of American Biography”, Reviews in American History, 16/4 (1988): 668–76 Johnson, Allen, “Introduction”, Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 1, New York: Scribner, 1928 McCalman, Iain, Jodi Parvey and Misty Cook (editors), National Biographies & National Identity: A Critical Approach to Theory and Editorial Practice, Canberra: Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, 1996 Malone, Dumas, “Brief Account of the Enterprise”, Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 20, New York: Scribner, 1936 Malone, Dumas, The Reminiscences of Dumas Malone, Glen Rock, New Jersey: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1972 (transcript of interview conducted by Louis M. Starr in 1954) Rowland, Dunbar, The Dictionary of American Biography, a Partisan, Sectional, Political Publication: A Protest, Jackson, Mississippi: no publisher, 1931 Rowland, Dunbar, The Dictionary of American Biography: A Protest Continued Against the Editorial Methods of Its Board of Editors and Its Committee of Management, Jackson, Mississippi: no publisher, 1932

Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire biographique du Canada The Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire biographique du Canada is one of the largest and most significant reference works published in Canada. The English version of the first volume of the dictionary was begun in 1959, a few years after the Toronto businessman James Nicholson (1861–1952) left a bequest to the University of Toronto with the instructions that the funds go toward the creation of a Canadian reference work similar to the British Dictionary of National Biography (DNB). In 1961 the presses of the University of Toronto and Université Laval, in Quebec City, agreed that the dictionary would be published in both English and French, and the project became a truly national enterprise. The resulting project, to date comprising 14 volumes and an index, contains approximately 5,000 biographies of Canadians, or individuals of Canadian significance, from numerous walks of life, and the dictionary includes many biographies of Canada’s aboriginal people. Most of the entries are between 500 and 1500 words in length, although a few individuals of special significance receive more lengthy consideration. The entries are connected by means of thorough cross-referencing, and bibliographies direct readers to original sources that are often obscure and /or newly discovered. While the structure and methodology of the DCB / DBC has much in common with two of its predecessors, the DNB and the Dictionary of American Biography (DAB), one crucial departure from the model established by these works is its

chronological organization, a practice later adopted by similar projects in Australia and New Zealand. A recent editor of the dictionary, Francess G. Halpenny, remarked that chronological arrangement – the most recent volume includes individuals who died between 1911 and 1920 – ensures that “each volume … becomes a great cross-section of society, a complex web of people whose lives are connected by virtue of their personal interactions or the simple fact of their living through the same events and responding to similar pressures”. Accordingly, the DCB /DBC makes a significant contribution to both Canadian biography and Canadian history. The importance of these contributions to scholarship is intensified by the fact that there are relatively few up-to-date Canadian biographies, even of many individuals of major national significance, and in many cases the biographies in the DCB / DBC are the only ones available. The reliance of DCB /DBC researchers on documentary sources means that the biographies published in the dictionary are rarely summaries of readily obtainable materials, but rather constitute significant original research in their own right. In addition to the biographies themselves, there are several other noteworthy features of the DCB /DBC, including the lengthy introductory sections that accompany many of the volumes. In addition to outlining these introductions, methodological considerations often provide socio-historical summaries of the periods documented within their respective volumes. These summaries contribute to the narrative unity of the dictionary, outlining a communal experience that always offers contextualization, and at times subsumes the individual entries into a national epic. Similarly, the cross-referencing strategy does more than provide links for the scholar: it invites a particular interpretive strategy for readers of the dictionary: in Halpenny’s words, “one way to read the DCB /DBC volumes … is to take up a biography and trace all the leads that the cross-references can provide to make a fuller story”. Also, contributors to the DCB /DBC make use of quotations, allowing the individuals who are considered, and the periods they lived in, to speak to the reader directly. The resources required to fulfil the mandate of the DCB / DBC, including the costs of translation and research (the research team needs to undertake an inordinate amount of original research, much of it outside Canada since those nonaboriginal peoples who played important roles in Canada’s early development were usually European), has meant that the project’s coordinators have had to seek out considerable funds to ensure the integrity of their research. The funds provided by the Nicholson bequest have been supplemented by grants from the universities that host the project, the Canada Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as well as by funds from other government agencies and numerous private sources. In recent years, cuts in government grants have forced the DCB /DBC to reduce the size of its operations. Nevertheless, it remains an ongoing national project of major significance, and has received special acknowledgement from several organizations, including the Royal Society of Canada. Colin Hill Further Reading Halpenny, Francess G., “The Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire biographique du Canada” in Canadian Studies: Papers Presented at a Colloquium at the British Library, 17–19 August

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1983, edited by Patricia McLaren-Turner, London: British Library, 1984 Halpenny, Francess G., “Twenty Years of Canadian Biography”, Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, series 4, 24 (1986): 193–201 Halpenny, Francess G., entry on the Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire biographique du Canada in Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, 2nd edition, edited by Eugene Benson and William Toye, Toronto, New York, and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997 McCalman, Iain, Jodi Parvey and Misty Cook (editors), National Biographies & National Identity: A Critical Approach to Theory and Editorial Practice, Canberra: Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, 1996

Dictionary of National Biography After making a fortune publishing much of the best midVictorian literature, George Smith resolved in 1880 to repay his debts to the intellectual community with a grand gesture that was to cost him more than £50,000. Soon abandoning his original idea for a “Dictionary of Universal Biography”, he settled for the more patriotic and manageable alternative of a Dictionary of National Biography recording the achievements of all Britons worthy of commemoration. Previous 19th-century attempts to improve on the unsatisfactory and by then outdated Biographia Britannica of 1747 had failed, and Smith was perhaps spurred on by the progress of comprehensive national biographies for continental countries, notably Sweden, the Netherlands, and Austria. Smith chose wisely in appointing Leslie Stephen first editor of what was to become widely known as the DNB. A Cambridge graduate who relinquished a college fellowship on losing his religious faith, Stephen had so far had a modest literary career in London, and was unsuccessful as editor of Smith’s Cornhill magazine. He succeeded, however, in giving the DNB a good start. He enlisted eminent contributors, set enduring standards in scholarship, style, and, equally importantly, scale and scope, and established a rhythm of production that, after some initial delay, maintained the rate of one stout volume every three months over nearly 16 years. His impetus gave confidence to publisher, contributors, and subscribers alike. Sidney Lee also worked on the DNB from the start. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, he began as an assistant, became joint editor as Stephen’s health failed (possibly through overwork), and finally became the editor, though Stephen continued to give support. The Athenaeum, the leading literary periodical of the age, was used by Stephen from the earliest stages in DNB planning. Seeking support as well as publicity, he outlined his intentions, presented for comment and improvement lists of persons under consideration for inclusion, and invited potential contributors to state their interests. In his editorial instructions he emphasized both factual accuracy, backed by sources, and stylistic terseness. Staff were employed to check details, and he, like Lee, laboured to abbreviate articles by others while perhaps undertaking rather too many entries himself. The prose of the DNB, though judged by some stark at first, today seems simply workmanlike, but its scholarship now attracts criticism. It is, however, only fair to recall the context of the mediocrity

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of historical studies generally in British universities during Victoria’s reign. The first volume of the DNB appeared in 1885; the title page of Volume 22 shows Lee sharing editorship with Stephen; with Volume 27 Lee became sole editor. Volume 63 triumphantly completed the alphabetical sequence in 1900 with the entry on William Zuylstein. A three-volume Supplement followed in 1901. Of its thousand entries only around 200 are for persons inadvertently omitted from the main volumes; the remainder treat contemporaries dying too late for inclusion in the ongoing sequence, which accounts for apparent skewing towards the start of the alphabet. Lee issued the Index and Epitome, a stout volume summarizing the entries in both the DNB and the Supplement, in 1904; a 300-page volume of Errata was published the year after. A three-volume Second Supplement, covering Edward VII’s reign, appeared in 1912. The 1912–21 volume, edited by H.W.C. Davis and J.R.H. Weaver, was published in 1927 by Oxford University Press, to which George Smith’s widow had in 1914 bequeathed the DNB, to ensure its survival, and in appreciation of the honorary MA conferred on her husband by the university. Also editing the 1922–30 volume, Weaver commented that as the DNB now dealt with contemporaries, rather than historical figures, the nature of the entries was changing. Contributors, named now at the end of entries – instead of being indicated, as formerly, with initials that were spelled out only in a list in each volume – were generally writing from personal experience. Obvious advantages might, despite efforts at objectivity, be offset by want of perspective and fear of offending. “Private information” and “personal knowledge”, though precious sources, elude scholarly verification. Corroboration or correction often comes, however, from obituaries in the quality press and in Who Was Who (published by A. & C. Black), which were to replace The Gentleman’s Magazine as a prime source. A decennial volume remained the pattern until the first of two quinquennial volumes appeared in 1981. The Concise DNB (1992) is an updated epitome. Readers need a lens when consulting the photographically reduced text of the 1975 twovolume “compact edition” of the complete work up to that date. Allowing easier access to all 37,000 articles, the 1995 CD-ROM also facilitates sophisticated searches across the whole work. Supported by Oxford University and the British Academy, Oxford University Press is currently preparing a New DNB. Colin Matthew was editor until his death in 1999; his successor is Brian Harrison. Thorough revision to highest historical standards is planned, and vast numbers of historians and other scholars are involved in (re)writing the entries. Looking back over his labours, Stephen recalled that early reviewers, who generally were favourable though sometimes tempted to wonder whether it was worthwhile to rescue some minor personages from oblivion, remarked on the lack of a preface setting out the principles for inclusion in the Dictionary. The omission, according to Stephen, was deliberate. At the outset he had few hard and fast ideas, no grand design apart from an idea of the scale of the enterprise (which turned out to be around 25 per cent bigger than initially envisaged). He only gradually came to see his way more clearly. Essentially his plan was to include all those who had figured in earlier works of a similar type and add others who appeared to match them in importance or interest. This rule of thumb served, as he neatly

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put it, well enough in discreet hands. Though a number of persons of limited significance slipped in, especially in the early volumes, selection became more judicious as the editors gained experience. Holders of the highest offices had a prescriptive right of entry, while others were generally required to have exceeded the norm expected in their lowlier stations. A role on the national stage was a passport to inclusion, and even local distinction might win a place, but domestic virtues generally would not, unless outstanding. Stephen’s personal interests are revealed in a fondness for literary figures, some of whom are treated at disproportionate length. The social and political definition of the Dictionary has come under increasing scrutiny. In the case of gender, for example, Gillian Fenwick, in her excellent Women and the Dictionary of National Biography, shows that, though women’s lives are reflected in notices from the earliest volumes, and though a few women were enlisted as contributors from the start, the original volumes of the Dictionary nonetheless appear predominantly to be a work by men about men’s achievements. In some measure this is the reflection of the way in which women were largely denied public roles in the society that was chronicled. The entries on, for example, Letitia Barbauld, Elizabeth Billington, Elizabeth Fry, and Eleanor (“Nell”) Gwyn – all in early volumes – do not appear to reveal marked prejudice against women whose lives qualified them for inclusion under the criteria then existing. By the same token, it is arguable that the editors, who at the outset had difficulty in recruiting suitably qualified male contributors, found it even harder to find women able and willing to undertake such work. Educational and social developments since Victorian times, coupled with determined investigations that have considerably redefined and expanded women’s historical role, are increasing reflected, in both entrants and contributors, in the more recent volumes of the DNB. This more equitable gender balance is certain to be one of the most marked features of the New DNB. Christopher Smith Further Reading Annan, Noel, Leslie Stephen: The Godless Victorian, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984 Fenwick, Gillian, Women and the Dictionary of National Biography, Aldershot, Hampshire: Scolar, 1994 Fritze, Ronald H., “The Dictionary of National Biography and Its Early Editors and Publisher”, Reference Services Review, 16/4 (1988): 21–29 Lee, Sidney, “National Biography”, Cornhill Magazine, new series, 26 (January–June 1896): 258–77 Maitland, Frederick W., The Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen, London: Duckworth, 1906; reprinted, Detroit: Gale Research, 1968 McCalman, Iain, Jodi Parvey and Misty Cook (editors), National Biographies & National Identity: A Critical Approach to Theory and Editorial Practice, Canberra: Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, 1996 Stephen, Leslie, “National Biography” in his Studies of a Biographer, vol. 1, London: Duckworth, and New York: Putnam, 1898

Dictionary of New Zealand Biography The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography is a multi-volume, multi-author work still in progress. Work began on it in 1983, and the first volume, covering the years 1769–1869, appeared in

1990, edited by W.H. Oliver. Since then four more volumes have appeared: 1870–1900 (1993), 1901–20 (1996), 1920–40 (1998), and 1941–60 (2000) all edited by Claudia Orange. A major national research project, funded by the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs, the Dictionary has employed a large full-time staff aided by more than 1000 writers of biographies and by a number of working parties and networks involved in the selection of subjects and the building up of a database. From the outset its policy has been, as defined by Oliver, to “modify, but not to ignore, traditional criteria of selection” for national biographical dictionaries. In this regard it is radically different from its predecessor, A Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (1940), likewise government-funded, but the work of primarily one man (G.H. Scholefield), concentrating on Who’s Who-type entries for mostly Pakeha (European) male politicians and businessmen. In contrast, the new dictionary has attempted to balance the “unavoidable weight” of “major figures” with “a sizeable representation of those who were not in their lifetimes imposing presences, but who might, given the nurture of research and writing, become memorable historical presences” (Oliver, introduction to volume 1). The editorial policy has been, then, to include a large proportion of essays about Maori, about women, about those involved in the full range of activities characterizing the society, and about those living outside the main centres. In these aims it has been remarkably successful, despite the difficulties in finding evidence of the lives of “the powerless as well as the powerful, the victims as well as the victors, the poor as well as the rich, the obscure as well as the eminent”. The browser through the volumes will find not only a central historical figure like James Cook, “Naval officer, cartographer, navigator, explorer”, but also James Cox, “labourer, flax worker, swagger, agricultural worker”, about whom “the only thing distinctive … is his complete lack of distinction” (but who left full diaries of his very ordinary and humble life between 1888 and 1925). The first volume of the Dictionary, which won the Goodman Fielder Wattie award in 1991 as the outstanding New Zealand book of 1990, set the tone. The makers and shakers are there in very full biographies, both Pakeha and Maori: for example, Keith Sinclair’s biography of George Grey, “soldier, explorer, colonial governor, premier, scholar” and Judith Binney’s of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, “Rongowhakaata leader, military leader, prophet, religious founder”. But the unspectacularly good, the notoriously unrespectable, and the forgotten failures are there also: Jessie Crawford, “barrack matron”; Martin Cash, “convict, policeman, brothel-keeper”; Joseph Zillwood, “policeman, farmer, innkeeper”, who “feloniously voluntarily and of malice aforethought himself killed” when he lost his job and his money. This rich representativeness continues through the other volumes. The more than 3000 biographical essays to date present a varied panorama of a country moving from exploration and settlement through conflict and frontier stages to modernization, a … small compact society, one with the memory of a pioneer dream which a quite recent upsurge of tensions and threats has determined is not, after all, likely to be realised, and with a record of racial conflict which has been, from the beginning of colonisation, a contradiction of much that was good and decent in the dream. (ibid.)

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Included are war heroes and conscientious objectors, factory owners, and woollen-mill workers, cabinet ministers and the longest-serving charwoman in the government’s employ, scientific researchers and abortionists, religious leaders and prostitutes, reformers and racists, labour leaders and a strikebreaker. Indexes by activity, region, and Maori tribal and hapu affiliation allow for the full range of subjects to be traced. Each volume of the dictionary has an accompanying Maorilanguage volume of the Maori biographies. In addition, there have been many subsidiary publications: volumes of Englishlanguage versions of the Maori biographies from each volume; illustrated selections from the Maori-language volumes; an illustrated A People’s History (1992) selected from volume 1; and The Suffragists: Women Who Worked for the Vote (1993), selected from volumes 1 and 2. Democratic in its inclusiveness and in its method of selection, determinedly bicultural and non-sexist, drawing on a large pool of both academic and nonacademic writers, the project is very much an expression of the cultural aspirations of the New Zealand of the 1980s and 1990s. Lawrence Jones Further Reading Davis, Colin, “Review of vol. 2”, New Zealand Journal of History, 28/2 (October 1994): 214–16 Griffiths, George, “Rites of Entry”, Quote Unquote, 36 (June 1996): 27–28 Learning Media, Using the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography: A Guide for Teachers, Wellington: Ministry of Education, 1991 McCalman, Iain, Jodi Parvey, and Misty Cook (editors), National Biographies & National Identity: A Critical Approach to Theory and Editorial Practice, Canberra: Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, 1996 Macdonald, Charlotte, “Review of vol. 3”, Women’s Studies Journal, 13/2 (1997): 155–61 McLeod, Marion, “History from the Bottom Up”, Listener and TV Times, (16 June 1990): 14–17 Orange, Claudia, “The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography”, New Zealand Libraries, 46/5 (June 1990): 13–15 Roberts, John, “The Dictionary in Retrospect”, New Zealand Books, 2/1 (1992): 7–8

Diderot, Denis

1713–1784

French encyclopedist, philosophe, novelist, and letter writer Diderot is known principally for the works of literature and philosophy that established him as one of the 18th century’s great philosophes. Nevertheless, certain clues as to Diderot’s thinking about his own life and identity can be found in some of his greatest works such as Le Neveu de Rameau (begun c.1760; Rameau’s Nephew), Jacques le fataliste (written 1778–80; Jacques the Fatalist), and Le Rêve de d’Alembert (written 1769; D’Alembert’s Dream). The dreaming D’Alembert, the wandering, rambling Jacques, and the unpredictable, ever-changing nephew of Rameau all develop elements of Diderot’s own philosophies and perspectives on the world, including the belief that the constant motion and transformation of matter determine the nature of human life. However, it remains extremely difficult to decide where Diderot’s supposed identity speaks in these highly complex and ironic texts and where this skilled

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author used the resources of fiction to extend his thinking far beyond the range of his own lived experiences. A more personal dimension to Diderot’s writing can, however, be found in his correspondence, especially with Sophie Volland, a woman for whom Diderot’s passionate love evolved, through numerous intimate letters (the earliest of which date from 1759), into an enduring friendship that brought the philosopher solace in the midst of his own unhappily married life. From indulging a “beautiful dream” of conjugal bliss with Sophie Volland in one letter (21 July 1765), he would complain in a later letter to his friend Grimm that the only way he could avoid explosive scenes with his actual wife was to remain silent whenever he could (7 October 1772). Although his married life left much to be desired, Diderot cherished his daughter Angélique. Diderot’s love and admiration for his strong-willed sister Denise, whom he characterized as a “female Diogenes”, takes its place in the letters alongside frustration with his brother Didier-Pierre, a humourless zealot whose intransigence may have inspired some of the biting satire of La Religieuse (1796; The Nun). The harsh voice of discord enters the correspondence again in regard to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Diderot’s fellow philosophe and friend of more than 18 years, with whom a dispute over matters of thinking and personal conduct had caused a permanent estrangement, leaving Diderot angry and disillusioned. The personal tone of Diderot’s correspondence combines with the stylistic finesse common to all of this philosopher’s writings to create poignant epistolary accounts of a rich emotional life. Diderot reflected in his letters on the follies and libertine escapades of his own youth in fond, apologetic remembrance of his parents. He regretted having caused them grief with his follies, and remembered these bourgeois from the province of Langres, and especially his father, whose death becomes the subject of a philosophical elegy in a letter to Sophie Volland (14 August 1759). Diderot also looked ahead to his own death, comparing the approach of his life’s end to the desire for rest at the end of a hard day’s work. Along with the personal experience of death, Diderot pondered posterity, in his writings and even in paintings of him. In his Salon of 1767, Diderot’s views of himself take the shape of art criticism, of which he was a renowned practitioner. Contemplating Michel van Loo’s portrait of him (1767, Louvre, Paris), Diderot complained: But what will my grandchildren say, when they compare my sombre works with this laughing, effeminate old flirt? My children, I must warn you that this does not represent me as I was. I could take on a hundred different appearances in a single day, according to the thoughts that I was having. I could be serene, sad, dreamy, tender, violent, passionate, enthusiastic; but I was never the way that you see me here. Might we not see Rameau’s nephew in this autoportrait that Diderot creates in his writing, as an alternative to the visual misreading of van Loo? The multiplicity of thoughts and feelings evoked by Diderot in this Salon refer to a profoundly agitated life of the mind. Ideas would drive him to distraction, making an active social life at times difficult to pursue, requiring times of isolated intellectual labours. Diderot left behind him, partly in

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his philosophy, fiction, and art criticism, and mostly in his letters, a fragmented and complex account of a life of the mind.

Dillard, Annie

1945–

American essayist and autobiographer

Roland Racevskis

Biography Born in Langres, eastern France, 5 October 1713. His father was a master cutler. Educated at a Jesuit school in Langres, 1723–28, where he became an abbé, and then studied in Paris, at the Collège d’Harcourt or the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, or possibly at both. Studied theology and law at the University of Paris, 1732–35 (master of arts 1732). Worked for the attorney Clément de Ris, 1732–34. Refused to become a lawyer or physician and worked instead as a tutor, freelance writer, and translator, 1734–46. Married Antoinette Champion, 1743: two daughters and two sons (all but one daughter died young). Had liaison with Madeleine d’Arsant de Puisieux, 1745–51. Wrote his bestknown philosophical work, Pensées philosophiques (1746; Philosophical Thoughts). Was invited to edit an expanded edition of Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia (1727) with Jean d’Alembert, transforming it into the 35-volume Encyclopédie (published 1751–72); was also its main contributor. Imprisoned for three months for writing Lettre sur les aveugles (An Essay on Blindness), 1749. Elected member of the Prussian Royal Academy, 1751. Began affair with Sophie Volland, 1755. Contributed to F.M. Grimm’s private periodical Correspondance Littéraire from 1759. Rescued from financial difficulties by the patronage of Catherine the Great from 1765. Visited Russia, 1773–74; elected foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1773. Wrote novels (e.g. Jacques le fataliste, 1796 [Jacques the Fatalist]) and the earliest example of modern aesthetic criticism, the Salons (4 vols, 1957–67). Died in Paris, 31 July 1784.

Selected Writings Jacques le fataliste et son maître (dialogue novel), 1796; edited by Simone Lecointre and Jean Le Galliot, 1976; as Jacques the Fataliste, edited by Martin Hall and translated by M. Henry, 1986; as James the Fatalist and His Master, translated anonymously, 3 vols, 1797; as Jacques the Fatalist, translated by J. Robert Loy, 1962 Le Neveu de Rameau (dialogue), in German, 1804 or 1805; in French, 1821; edited by Jean Fabre, 1950; as Rameau’s Nephew, translated by Sylvia M. Hill, 1897; also translated by Mrs Wilfrid Jackson, 1926; Jacques Barzun and Ralph H. Bowen, 1956; and Leonard Tancock, 1966 Le Rêve de d’Alembert (dialogues), 1830; edited by Jean Varloot, 1962; as D’Alembert’s Dream, translated by Leonard Tancock, 1966 Mémoires, correspondances, et ouvrages inédits de Diderot, 4 vols, 1830–31, revised 1834 Lettres à Sophie Volland, edited by André Babelon, 3 vols, 1930, revised 1938; edited by Jean Varloot, 1984; selection as Diderot’s Letters to Sophie Volland, translated by Peter France, 1972 Correspondance, edited by Georges Roth, 16 vols, 1955–70

Further Reading Anderson, Wilda, Diderot’s Dream, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990 Chouillet, Jacques, Denis Diderot, Sophie Volland: un dialogue à une voix, Geneva: Slatkine, and Paris: Champion, 1986 Fellows, Otis, Diderot, Boston: Twayne, 1977; updated edition, 1989 France, Peter, Diderot, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983 Guyot, Charly, Diderot par lui-même: images et textes presentés par Charly Guyot, Paris: Seuil, 1953 Kafker, Frank A., The Encyclopedists as Individuals: A Biographical Dictionary of the Authors of the Encyclopédie, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation at the Taylor Institution, 1988 Lepape, Pierre, Diderot, Paris: Flammarion, 1991 Undank, Jack, Diderot, Inside, Outside, and In-between, Madison, Wisconsin: Coda Press, 1979

Annie Dillard’s contributions to life writing include her own autobiographies, critical commentary on autobiography, and an anthology of autobiographical works she co-edited. Dillard’s reticent “I”, evident in her autobiographies and nearautobiographies, subverts the preoccupation with “self” that autobiographies typically demonstrate. As if in response to Milan Kundera’s assertion that “the only truly serious questions are ones even a child can formulate”, Dillard’s writings explore the unanswerable: “What does it mean to be alive?”, “How can God create a world both beautiful and cruel?”, “Was the world created in jest?”. In seeking answers to the questions she poses, Dillard looks to the world around her. And it is perhaps Dillard’s ability to look – to see – that is her greatest gift. Dillard sees, and describes what she sees, with impeccable clarity, and the most memorable moments in Dillard’s writing occur in her descriptions. One remembers her child’s-eye view of her mother’s skin, the crippled Polythemous moth, or the teeming life at Tinker Creek. Though most of Dillard’s books could be viewed as autobiographies, few are categorized as such. In catalogues, A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) and Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (1982) are classified as “Nature” writings, Holy the Firm (1977) as “Meditations”, For the Time Being (1999) as “American essays”, Living by Fiction (1982) as “Fiction – History and Criticism”, and Encounters with Chinese Writers (1984) as “Authors, Chinese”. Even in An American Childhood, arguably her most autobiographical work, Dillard herself remains veiled, and she wrote in a later essay that her liminal presence was intended. An American Childhood, Dillard states, is not so much about her particular life but “a child’s interior life” and “a child’s growing awareness of the world”. Dillard asserts that she chose, for “a private interior life” her own, “almost at random”. Later, in citing what she omitted from the autobiography, she states that “another thing I left out, as far as I could, was myself”. In writing about A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Dillard’s position as narrator, the “I” of the text, sounds similarly reluctant and accidental. After first trying to write the book from the viewpoint of an older man, Dillard gives up, but cautions nevertheless: “I just didn’t like the idea of writing about myself. I knew I wasn’t the subject”. The books cited above – whether designated as autobiographies or not – thus share Dillard’s disinclination to occupy the subject position. In An American Childhood Dillard traces her life from early childhood into adolescence. Her self-stated project is to show how a child “wakes up” to life, moving from the self-absorbed now-ness of early childhood to the rumblings of consciousness, the awareness that one is alive. As if to underscore Dillard’s position as an “example” of childhood rather than the work’s actual subject, she begins her autobiography by describing the topography and history of Pittsburgh, followed by a chapter about her father’s trip down the Mississippi to find the origins of jazz. As she proceeds to describe her mother, her neighbourhood, her relentless energy and interest in books, art, rocks, flora, fauna, and consciously “seeing”, she repeatedly describes the sense of awakening:

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I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again. I woke at intervals until, by that September when Father went down the river, the intervals of waking tipped the scales, and I was more often awake then not. I noticed this process of waking, and predicted with terrifying logic that one of these years not far away I would be awake continuously and never slip back, and never be free of myself again. As Samual Hazo and other critics have noted, Dillard’s autobiography works best in its earlier chapters where she focuses on her childhood; her depiction of her adolescence often comes closer to caricature than characterization. The Writing Life (1989) depicts the challenges that writing presents for Dillard (or any writer) and probes the question: “Why write?”. Although Dillard interjects personal anecdotes throughout the book, it is telling that more often than not she uses the pronoun “you” or the more general “the writer” rather than “I”. Writing, Dillard tells us, is hard work. Contrary to popular myth, typically writing does not “flow” but emerges slowly, painfully – a few words or lines at a time – over a period of years. Given the difficulty of the task and the amount already written, Dillard ponders why anyone should write at all: “Why not shoot yourself, actually, rather than finish one more excellent manuscript on which to gag the world?”. Dillard answers by analogy. Much like the stunt pilot she describes at the book’s end, one writes to penetrate the world, to create language that exceeds possibility in the same way that the pilot’s manoeuvres defy reason: “he furled the line in a thousand new ways, as if he were inventing a script and writing it in one infinitely recurving utterance until I thought the bounds of beauty must break”. In an essay about the autobiographical process entitled “To Fashion a Text”, Dillard uses the word “fashion” deliberately, for, once written, a memory is both shaped and impoverished. Dillard’s point parallels Paul de Man’s, who posits in his essay “Autobiography as De-Facement” that autobiography, supplanting the “shape and sense of a world” through language, is never about self-restoration or faithful referentiality. Similarly, Dillard explains how language reduces and alters one’s memories: “If you prize your memories as they are, by all means avoid – eschew – writing a memoir. Because it is a certain way to lose them. You can’t put together a memoir without cannibalizing your life for parts. The work battens on your memories. And it replaces them”. For Dillard, the value of autobiography lies in its art, not in its ability to capture reality. Kristi Siegel Biography Born Annie Doak in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, 30 April 1945. Her father was a business executive. Attended the Ellis School, a private school for girls in Pittsburgh, until 1963. Studied English and creative writing at Hollins College, Roanoke, Virginia (BA 1967, MA 1968). Married Richard Dillard, 1964 (divorced 1974). Columnist, Living Wilderness, 1974–76; contributing editor, Harper’s, 1974–81 and 1983–85; contributor to many other journals and magazines. Scholar-in-residence, Western Washington University, Bellingham, 1975–79 and 1981–82. Married Gary Clevidence, 1980 (later divorced): one child and two stepchildren. Visiting professor, 1979–81, full adjunct professor, from 1983, and writer-in-residence, from 1987, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. Married Robert D. Richardson Jr, 1988. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), her most popular book, 1975.

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Selected Writings An American Childhood, 1987 The Writing Life, 1989 “To Fashion a Text”, in The Art and Craft of Memoir, by Russell Baker et al., edited by William Zinsser, 1987, revised 1995 (editor, with Cort Conley) Modern American Memoirs, 1995

Further Reading Clark, Suzanne, “The Woman in Nature and the Subject of Nonfiction” in Sentimental Modernism: Women Writers and the Revolution of the Word, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991 Hammond, Karla M., “Drawing the Curtains: An Interview with Annie Dillard”, Bennington Review, 10 (1981): 30–38 Johnson, Sandra Humble, The Space Between: Literary Epiphany in the Work of Annie Dillard, Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1992 Keller, Joseph, “The Function of Paradox in Mystical Discourse”, Studia Mystica, 6/3 (1983): 3–19 Parrish, Nancy C., Lee Smith, Annie Dillard, and the Hollins Group: A Genesis of Writers, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998 Smith, Linda L., Annie Dillard, Boston: Twayne, 1991 Smith, Sidonie, Subjectivity, Identity, and the Body: Women’s Autobiographical Practices in the Twentieth Century, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993 Scheick, William J., “Annie Dillard / Narrative Fringe” in Contemporary American Women Writers: Narrative Strategies, edited by Catherine Rainwater and Scheick, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985 Yancey, Philip, “A Face Aflame: An Interview with Annie Dillard”, Christianity Today, 22 (1978): 14–19

Dinesen, Isak see Blixen, Karen

Disability and Life Writing Western culture, whether high or low, has been generally unfavourable in its representation of disability; in literature and film, disability is often epitomized as physical deformity and associated with corruption, perversion, and obsession. (In the modern period, disabled people are more likely to be seen as the embodiment of trauma, personal disaster, and failure.) Such representations reveal powerful – because unconsciously held – attitudes toward the body: Our culture idealizes the body and demands that we control it. Thus, although most people will be disabled at some time in their lives, the disabled are made “the other,” who symbolize failure of control and the threat of pain, limitation, dependency, and death. (Wendell) While disability is often central in dramatic and fictional texts – such as Shakespeare’s Richard III and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick – it is typically present as a trope rather than as a lived experience, and disability was under-represented in life writing until at least the middle of the 20th century, when the spread of polio stimulated a number of memoirs. In the last several decades, people with disabilities have been increasing in visibility, independence, assertiveness, and political

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power – as well as in numbers. Indeed, the disability rights movement is one of the major civil rights movements of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. One important aspect of this development is the adoption of a new paradigm of disability. Whereas the “moral” paradigm of disability – from the Bible onwards – conceives of disability as divinely ordained and thus assigns a moral valence to it (sometimes positive, as in the sentimental mode, but usually negative , as in the Gothic mode, for example), and the medical paradigm – from the foundation of the clinic onwards – has conceived of disability as a defect in the individual body, to be repaired or rehabilitated, the social or political paradigm locates disability not in the individual body but in the body politic. According to the new paradigm, disability is whatever imposes restrictions on people with anomalous bodies: prejudice, discrimination in education and the workplace, inaccessible buildings, unusable transport systems – that is, social and cultural constructions. In the mass media, the lives of people with disability are often represented in terms of the narrative of triumph over adversity, and this formula has become a conventional one for personal narratives of disability from Helen Keller onwards. The narrative of personal heroism, however, is at best a variant of the moral paradigm; in effect, the subjects of such narrative are singled out, congratulated for “overcoming” adversity, and thus exempted from the stigma that still attaches to others with their condition. The narrative of triumph is thus an exclusive subgenre, and the popularity of this formula has caused considerable frustration in the disability community. Recently, critics have deconstructed this formula, and contemporary narratives often seek ways of re-presenting disability. A relevant development is the oeuvre of the neurologist Oliver Sacks, who has made a career of writing literary case studies of people with neurological abnormalities. While they are rooted in the medical paradigm, Sacks’s cases often challenge it as well, insofar as they acknowledge that neurological anomaly may constitute a distinctive and valuable sensibility and that those with such anomalies may consider them essential and desirable parts of their identities (so much so that they may decline to control them with medication). Insofar as his cases are biographical in genre, however, Sacks speaks as an expert about or for someone constructed as Other (and implicitly characterized as incapable of selfrepresentation); he operates within the ethnographic scenario. Today, as disabled people struggle for political empowerment, they seek to control their own representation. Among literary genres, autobiography is particularly well suited for this insofar as it involves self-representation by definition. Because print masks the body, it can deflect the objectifying gaze to which many disabled people are subjected in everyday life and in visual media; as a verbal rather than visual form, it may offer a kind of neutral space for self-presentation and the renegotiation of status. Moreover, insofar as autobiography is the literary expression of the self-determined life, the genre that may be said to manifest personal autonomy, it seems the ideal mode for contesting the association of disability with dependence. Contemporary disability narratives turn to novel strategies of representation in order to disturb the conventional understanding of disability – presenting disability as an identity and source of pride. The most obvious examples of this phenomenon are narratives that explore deafness as an identity, contesting the

idea that hearing impairment is necessarily a “disability” (see Bragg, and Sidransky). People with other disabilities have also explored the positive ways in which identity and life narrative are shaped by disability, the ways in which disability may create community and culture. This trend is exemplified by books by Nancy Mairs, Robert Murphy, and Irving Zola, who speak as members of a disability community; these are first-person plural accounts of disability. (Zola’s book is also, in effect, a narrative of “coming out” as disabled, of owning publicly and affirmatively an identity he previously had tried to ignore, conceal, or “transcend”; as such, it represents a significant new subgenre in disability life writing.) Such life writing can be regarded as a form of autoethnography, which Mary Louise Pratt has defined as postcolonial discourse “in which colonized subjects undertake to represent themselves in ways that engage with the colonizer’s own terms”. Another significant contemporary development has been life writing, sometimes collaborative, by people whose disabilities would seem to impede or preclude the writing of autobiography – and who might otherwise remain invisible and inaudible. A prime example of this is I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes (1989), the narrative of Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer, whose cerebral palsy prevented her from talking or writing; classified as mentally disabled and confined to an institution for many years, she moved out with the help of the disability rights movement and collaborated in the labour-intensive writing of her life story. To the extent that it speaks for others in her previous condition of near-invisibility, and insofar as its production involves the assistance of an advocate, it serves as a kind of disability testimonio. Equally remarkable, perhaps, is the cleverly titled Count Us In: Growing up with Down Syndrome (1994), in which Jason Kingsley and Mitchell Levitz tell the story of their lives. Though various in degree, cause, age of onset, and manifestation – and far more widespread than is usually assumed – disability is often epitomized in literary representation by a small number of paradigmatic conditions – blindness, deafness, mobility impairment, mental or cognitive disability, and deformity. All of these conditions have been given innovative representation in recent decades. Equally significant is the emergence of narratives addressing a large range of disabilities, from Alzheimer’s (McGowin), asthma (Brookes), and autism (Williams) to stroke (West), stuttering (Jezer), and Tourette syndrome (Handler). At the beginning of the 21st century, print representation has been supplemented by visual representation in the form of documentary films and videos that more directly challenge the gaze of the normal (see Chiten, and Mitchell and Snyder). G. Thomas Couser See also The Body and Life Writing; Illness and Life Writing; Medical Autobiography

Further Reading Bérubé, Michael, Life as We Know It: A Father, A Family, and an Exceptional Child, New York: Pantheon, 1996 Bragg, Bernard, Lessons in Laughter: The Autobiography of a Deaf Actor, as signed to Eugene Bergman, Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1989 Brookes, Tim, Catching My Breath: An Asthmatic Explores His Illness, New York: Times Books, 1994 Chiten, Laurel (director), Twitch and Shout: A Documentary about Tourette Syndrome, New DayFilms, 1994

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Couser, G. Thomas, Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and LifeWriting, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997 Handler, Lowell, Twitch and Shout: A Touretter’s Tale, New York: Dutton, 1998 Hull, John M., Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness, New York: Pantheon, 1990 Jezer, Marty, Stuttering: A Life Bound up in Words, New York: Basic, 1997 Keller, Helen, The Story of My Life, New York: Doubleday Page, 1903 Kingsley, Jason and Mitchell Levitz, Count Us In: Growing up with Down Syndrome, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994 Klages, Mary, Woeful Afflictions: Disability and Sentimentality in Victorian America, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999 McGowin, Diana Friel, Living in the Labyrinth: A Personal Journey through the Maze of Alzheimer’s, New York: Delacorte, 1993 Mairs, Nancy, Waist-High in the World: A Life among the Nondisabled, Boston: Beacon Press, 1996 Major, William, “This is … Not My Autobiography”: The Paralyzed Body and Cultural Critique in Robert Murphy’s The Body Silent”, a /b: Auto/Biography Studies, 14/2 (1999): 241–53 Mitchell, David T. and Sharon Snyder (directors), Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back, Brace Yourselves Productions, 1996 Murphy, Robert, The Body Silent, New York: Holt, 1987 Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London and New York: Routledge, 1992 Sacks, Oliver, An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales, New York: Knopf, 1995 Shapiro, Joseph P., No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement, New York: Times Books, 1993 Sidransky, Ruth, In Silence: Growing up Hearing in a Deaf World, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1990 Sienkiewicz-Mercer, Ruth and Steven B. Kaplan, I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989 Stiker, Henri-Jacques, A History of Disability, translated by William Sayers, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999 Wendell, Susan, “Toward a Feminist Theory of Disability” in Feminist Perspectives in Medical Ethics, edited by Helen Bequaert Holmes and Laura M. Purdy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992 West, Paul, A Stroke of Genius: Illness and Self-Discovery, New York: Viking, 1995 Williams, Donna, Nobody Nowhere: The Extraordinary Autobiography of an Autistic, New York: Times Books, 1992 Zola, Irving Kenneth, Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of Living with a Disability, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982

Djebar, Assia see Africa: North Döblin, Alfred

1878–1957

German doctor, fiction writer, and autobiographer “I am not an autobiographer”, Döblin wrote in 1950. And yet his life’s work, from the beginning to the very end, is accompanied by commentaries on his works and autobiographical statements and narratives. Döblin was one of the major novelists of the 20th century, remembered primarily for his big-city novel of 1929, Berlin Alexanderplatz. He had written seven major epic works before Berlin Alexanderplatz, plus a sizable number of short stories, novellas, and some plays, and he would write five more novels, two of them in three volumes each. His first major personal account was his travelogue Reise in Polen (Journey to Poland) of 1926. In 1924, Döblin had travelled to Poland and was deeply impressed by the life of the orthodox Jews, the

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first “real Jews” he encountered, and three themes – Judaism, Christianity, and a religion of nature – began to preoccupy him. For his 50th birthday, Döblin (with Oskar Loerke) wrote the first extended text on himself, his upbringing, and his occupations as a physician and a writer, entitled Alfred Döblin: Im Buch, zu Haus, auf der Strasse [1928; Alfred Döblin: In the Book, at Home, on the Street]. In his American exile, after his escape from the German army in the French debacle in 1940, he wrote an account of his flight, “Robinson in France”, which he published eventually in postwar Germany in 1949, together with the story of his American years and his return in 1945. This Schicksalsreise (Destiny’s Journey) stands out among the hundreds of autobiographies of German exiles as an “account and confession”, the confession being of his encounter with Jesus Christ. Döblin wrote “diaries” in the last years of his life, reflecting on his fate and his family’s destiny, and meditating on death and its aftermath. Döblin’s shorter “personal” texts throughout his career make up a volume of 500 pages in small print, Schriften zu Leben und Werk (1986). Until 1933, Döblin was primarily known as a prolific writer of (mostly) narrative texts and as a political activist with views of an independent left-wing socialist, rather unpredictable in his positions. After 1918, he had written short glosses on the political events of the German “revolution”, collected as Der deutsche Maskenball [1921; The German Masked Ball], under the pseudonym of “Linke Poot” (left hand), and in 1931, at the urging of a student, he wrote letters on the political crisis and the role of the intellectual in society, collected as Wissen und Verändern! [Knowing and Changing], which he considered “autobiographical”. Taken together therefore, these and the aforementioned texts amount to a considerable body of important life writing. One might even include Döblin’s major statement on his philosophy of nature, Unser Dasein [1933; Our Existence]. This life writing can best be categorized by themes – medicine, paternal abandonment, search for a Jewish homeland, politics, Christian conversion, and espousal of his new faith. Döblin completed his medical studies in 1905 and practised medicine until 1933. He worked in psychiatric hospitals and a hospital for internal medicine, he published scientific articles, and he had a private practice as a family doctor and psychiatrist from 1911 to 1933, interrupted by his service as an army doctor in World War I. He subscribed to his mother’s contempt for artists and writers and her esteem for “solid” work, yet he could not help writing fiction. This dichotomy and inner conflict is presented in a number of texts, especially from the 1920s, with “dialogues” between Döblin the physician and Döblin the writer. His writings were thus decisively shaped by his medical and scientific outlook. He sorely missed his work with patients and medical problems when he was unable to practise medicine in his exile after 1933. Döblin grew up with four siblings. When he was nine years old, his father abandoned the family and ran away to America (to return later to Germany, but not to the family). The mother and children moved to Berlin and had to rely on the charity of the mother’s brothers, and later on the work of the oldest son. They lived in poverty in the proletarian areas of Berlin, east of the Alexanderplatz. Döblin never forgave his father, and, in a comparable situation, he stayed with his family. This father–son conflict, or rather, the father’s absence, figures prominently in all accounts of his youth, and in the two novels with a clear

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personal background, Pardon wird nicht gegeben (1935; Men without Mercy), and Hamlet, oder, die lange Nacht nimmt ein Ende (1956; Tales of a Long Night). As a consequence of this catastrophe, Döblin was late in attending the Gymnasium, three years older than the other students, hating school and finishing his Abitur at age 22, another lifelong trauma. While his parents still celebrated some Jewish holidays, Döblin grew up as an assimilated Jew. He had left the Jewish congregation in 1912, and his sons were baptized in a Protestant church. Following the experience with Jewish refugees in Berlin after World War I and especially his trip to Poland, Döblin immersed himself in the question of a Jewish homeland. He sided with the “territorialists”, the non-Zionists looking for a place other than Palestine. He was active in the movement and wrote books on the question until the end of 1937, when he grew disenchanted. The question of a Jewish homeland was, for Döblin, a matter of Jewish “renewal”, the “conversion” to a new Judaism. It was after the abandonment of this hope that he was searching for a new, a personal faith. Döblin, who grew up among working-class people, had socialist ideas, and had high hopes for the new Germany of 1918 born out of the revolution. But when the Social Democrats sided with the army, and the Left was crushed in 1919, Döblin drew back from political parties. It was not until Wissen und Verändern!, however, that he drew the line between himself and Marxism, as it was practised both by the Soviet Union and the German Social Democrats. He advocated an independent stand for intellectuals above political parties, and an ideology close to that of Kropotkin that might be defined as anarchist. He was active in small political groups before 1933, and once more in Paris in 1938–39, among disenchanted communists like Arthur Koestler and Willi Münzenberg. Döblin’s major text on himself, however, is Schicksalsreise. On the surface, it is one of the many accounts of an exile’s fate during the French defeat in 1940, followed by the story of the lonely years of an unsuccessful writer in Hollywood and the failed attempt to return to Germany in 1945 and to make a difference in the reconstruction of its cultural life. Whereas the second and third parts of the book come close to such a typical autobiography, retelling one’s life, and trying to uncover its meaning, the first part deals with a unique inner event for which the dramatic happenings of the war are nothing but background noise. The narrator states his purpose as wanting to recapture the extraordinary illumination he experienced. Searching for his wife and son and stranded in a camp in the small town of Mende in the Massif Central, Döblin realized that all human endeavours are in vain, and that fulfilment and grace come to us when we have given up, when we give ourselves to higher powers. Stopping by the medieval cathedral, he saw the crucifix and entered into a dialogue with it: he experienced Christ. In Los Angeles, in 1941, Döblin and his family, after instruction, converted to Catholicism. In the United States, Döblin’s one-year contract as a scriptwriter for MGM was not renewed. None of his manuscripts was accepted for publication at the time. He felt totally rejected and isolated, and departed for Germany in 1945 to work for the cultural section of the French military government in BadenBaden. However, in postwar Germany, he experienced another rejection, in his own view. The Germans, who had expected a left-wing socialist, found a fervent Catholic Christian. The

conservative Catholicism of the German CDU (Christian Democrats), on the other hand, considered Döblin’s faith too unorthodox and socialist. Döblin’s new books, when published, were not received well. He was compared to the author of Berlin Alexanderplatz and found wanting. Whereas Döblin’s Christian faith is forcefully expressed in a number of very personal texts, notably Der unsterbliche Mensch [1946; The Immortal Human Being], Der Oberst und der Dichter [1946; The Colonel and the Writer], and Unsere Sorge der Mensch [1948, The Human Being: Our Concern], his private notations, such as his “Diary” of 1952–53, and “Vom Leben und Tod, die es beide nicht gibt” [1955–57; About Life and Death That Don’t Exist] express many doubts about his life’s work, its impact, and its meaning, and even about his faith. With the exception of Schicksalsreise, these texts are not outstanding and enduring in themselves, but they are a necessary complement to the extraordinary epic work and achievement of Döblin, and indispensable for its proper understanding. Taken as a whole, they are unique documents of the convoluted life of a German Jewish exile writer and his physical and spiritual odyssey. Wulf Koepke Biography Born in Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin, Poland), 10 August 1878. His father deserted the family when he was aged nine. Moved with his mother and siblings to Berlin, where they lived in poverty. Educated at the Gymnasium, Stettin, 1888, and Berlin 1891–1900 (Abitur). Studied medicine at Berlin University, 1900–04; Freiburg University, 1904–05 (medical degree). Worked in a psychiatric hospital in Regensburg and Berlin-Buch, and as a general practitioner in Berlin, 1911–14. Married Erna Reiss, 1912: four sons. Left Jewish congregation; sons were baptized as Protestant Christians. Served as a medical officer in the German army during World War I. Subsequently resumed work as a general practitioner and psychiatist. Published stories before writing epic novels, notably Die drei Sprünge des Wang-Lun (1915; The Three Leaps of Wang Lung), Wallenstein (1920), and Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929), his masterpiece. Member, 1920, and president, 1924, Schutzverband deutscher Schriftsteller. Theatre reviewer, Prager Tageblatt, 1921–24. Visited Poland, 1924. Member of the Gruppe, 1925, a discussion group, with Bertolt Brecht. Escaped from the Nazi regime to Switzerland, 1933, and ceased medical practice. Settled in Paris; became a French citizen, 1936. Worked at the French Ministry of Information, 1939–40. Fled to the United States, 1940. Worked as a Hollywood scriptwriter, 1940–41; lived in Los Angeles until 1945. Converted to Roman Catholicism, 1941. Returned to Germany, 1945. Worked for the cultural section of the French military government in Germany in Baden-Baden, 1945–49. Editor, Das Goldene Tor, 1946–51. Moved to Mainz, 1949. Co-founder, 1949, and vicepresident of literature section, 1949–51, Academy for Science and Literature, Mainz. Moved to Paris, 1953. With declining health, was frequently in hospitals and nursing homes in Baden, 1954–57. Entered sanatorium at Freiburg in Breisgau, 1956. Died in Emmendingen, Baden-Württemberg, 26 June 1957.

Selected Writings (as Linke Poot) Der deutsche Maskenball (essays), 1921 Reise in Polen, 1926; edited by Heinz Graber, 1968; as Journey to Poland, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, 1991 (with Oskar Loerke) Alfred Döblin: Im Buch, zu Haus, auf der Strasse, 1928 Wissen und Verändern! (political letters), 1931 Unser Dasein (essays), 1933 Pardon wird nicht gegeben (autobiographical fiction), 1935; as Men without Mercy, translated by Trevor and Phyllis Blewitt, 1937 Der Oberst und der Dichter, oder, das menschliche Herz (religious fiction), 1946; with Die Pilgerin Aetharia, edited by Anthony W. Riley, 1978

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Der unsterbliche Mensch: ein Religionsgespräch (religious prose), 1946; with Der Kampf mit dem Engel, edited by Anthony W. Riley, 1980 Unsere Sorge der Mensch, 1948 Schicksalsreise: Bericht und Bekenntnis, 1949; as Destiny’s Journey, edited by Edgar Pässler, translated by Edna McCown, 1992 Hamlet, oder, die lange Nacht nimmt ein Ende (autobiographical fiction), 1956; as Tales of a Long Night, translated by Robert and Rita Kimber, 1984 Briefe, edited by Heinz Graber, 1970 Doktor Döblin: Selbstbiographie, edited by Heinz Graber, 1970 Autobiographische Schriften und letzte Aufzeichnungen, edited by Edgar Pässler, 1980 Schriften zu Leben und Werk, edited by Erich Kleinschmidt, 1986 Kritik der Zeit: Rundfunkbeiträge 1946–1952, edited by Alexandra Birkert, 1992

Further Reading Dollenmayer, David B., The Berlin Novels of Alfred Döblin: Wadzek’s Battle with the Steam Turbine, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Men without Mercy, and November 1918, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988 Critchfield, Richard, When Lucifer Cometh: The Autobiographical Discourse of Writers and Intellectuals Exiled During the Third Reich, New York and Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1994 Graber, Heinz, “Politisches Postulat und autobiographischer Bericht: zu einigen im Exil entstandenen Werken Alfred Döblins” in Die deutsche Exilliteratur 1933–1945, edited by Manfred Durzak, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1973 Jaeger, Michael, Autobiographie und Geschichte: Wilhelm Dilthey, Georg Misch, Karl Löwith, Gottfried Benn, Alfred Döblin, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995 Kiesel, Helmuth, Literarische Trauerarbeit: das Exil- und Spätwerk Alfred Döblins, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1986 Kleinschmidt, Erich, “Schreiben und Leben: zur Ästhetik des Autobiographischen in der deutschen Exilliteratur”, Exilforschung: Ein Internationales Jahrbuch, 2 (1984): 24–40 Koepke, Wulf, “Die Flucht durch Frankreich: die zweite Erfahrung der Heimatlosigkeit in Berichten der Emigranten aus dem Jahre 1940”, Exilforschung, 4 (1986): 229–42 Meyer, Jochen (editor), Alfred Döblin 1878–1978: eine Ausstellung des Deutschen Literaturarchivs im Schiller-Nationalmuseum Marbach am Neckar, Munich: Kösel, 1978 (exhibition catalogue; contains a “Döblin-Chronik” and documents) Müller-Salget, Klaus, Alfred Döblin: Werk und Entwicklung, 2nd edition, Bonn: Bouvier, 1988 (first edition 1972) Müller-Salget, Klaus, “Alfred Döblin und das Judentum” in Deutschjüdische Exil- und Emigratensliteratur im 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Itta Shedletzky and Hans-Otto Horch, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993 Müller-Salget, Klaus, “Verfehlte Heimkehr – Alfred Döblin im Deutschland der Nachkriegszeit” in Ruckkehr aus dem Exil: Emigranten aus dem Dritten Reich in Deutschland nach 1945: Essays zu Ehren von Ernst Loewy, edited by Thomas Koebner and Erwin Rotermund, Marburg: Text und Kritik, 1990 Prangel, Matthias, Alfred Döblin, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1973; 2nd edition 1987 Further contributions are included in the volumes of the Internationale Alfred-Döblin Kolloquien, published in series A of the Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik, Kolloquien Basel / New York / Freiburg, 1980, 1981, 1983; Marbach /Berlin, 1984, 1985; Kolloquium Lausanne, 1987; Münster /Marbach 1989/91; Paris, 1993; Leiden, 1995; Leipzig, 1997; Bergamo, 1999

Dolgorukaia, Natali’ia

281

1714–1771

Russian autobiographer Natali’ia Dolgorukaia was the first Russian female autobiographer. Her Svoeruchnye zapiski (Memoirs), which were published posthumously in 1810, reveal the fate of the 15year-old orphan Natali’ia Sheremeteva, who married Ivan Dolgorukii, one of the richest bachelors of her times, and a month later followed Dolgorukii’s family into Siberian exile. Shortly after their wedding, following Tsar Peter II’s death in 1730, some of the family tried to seize power, but they were unsuccessful. The Dolgorukiis were disgraced and sent to Siberia by Empress Anna. After her husband’s barbaric execution in 1739 in Novgorod, Natali’ia returned to Moscow to bring up her two sons, until she entered a convent in Kiev in 1758. There, ten years later, she began to write her memoirs. The basic text of the manuscript is some 7500 words long. Dolgorukaia describes her wedding, the vividly recollected funeral of Peter II, and the misery of the journey to the Siberian village of Beriezov. The 1500-word supplement reproduces variants of some early passages, a number of prayers, and laments. There are five printed editions in Russian, and one translation of the Memoirs in French and one in English. The English translation contains Charles Townsend’s useful historical and linguistic notes. The language of the narrative is close to presentday spoken Russian. In Townsend’s view, “the text immediately strikes the reader as much more similar to modern Russian and much easier to read than 18th-century literary works of this period”. Its rich stylistic qualities reveal a skilled writer who combines religious with autobiographical and philosophical discourse. Dolgorukaia’s narrative resembles the work of Aleksandr Radishchev in displaying moral, humanist, and liberal ideals that downplay social standing. She portrays in a satirical vein the high society that first welcomed her marriage to Ivan Dolgorukii and later denounced her after his political failure. The world-view offered by Dolgorukaia recalls the poet Gavril Derzhavin’s ode “God” and the image of nobles and commoners equal in the eyes of eternity. As she puts it, “the nobly born are not always happy, and most people from distinguished homes come to misfortune, while those of humble origin become prominent people” since it is God who determines this. Dolgorukaia states her desire to preserve her memories to help others survive life’s misfortunes, thereby anticipating the 19thcentury image of the writer to whom a moral authority is ascribed: “Lord, give me the strength to clarify my woes so that I may describe them for those who want to know of them and console those whom my story might console.” Through the use of various rhetorical devices, especially negation, Dolgorukaia presents herself as a martyr, voicing such alarms as “a mortal being could not have borne such blows, had not the Lord lent his strength”, “it is not possible to describe how chaotic my life was then”, and “I do not know how I survived it”. Such a use of negation appears to reflect female discourse as it appears in Russian folk-songs and women’s poetry. The Memoirs also incorporate occasional humour, which adds drama to the narrative, especially in the story about the mock gunfight with robbers, and that of tents being erected in the marshes at night. The narrator describes with affection and

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sympathy some servants and peasants. One of the servants saved Natali’ia’s brother-in-law from drowning in the river into which his horse fell. By contrast Dolgorukaia portrays the guards and officers in charge of the family’s transportation in a satirical way, revealing their stupidity and selfishness. The absurdity of their situation at the end of the journey to exile finishes on a philosophical note, with Dolgorukaia asking: “What were they afraid of? That we would try to escape? Why pick such a person to watch us? It wasn’t our guards that kept us from trying to escape, but our innocence.” The liberal spirit that permeates the Memoirs proves the point made by some Russian historians that fear and resentment of the Dolgorukiis and other nobles played an important role in the restoration of autocracy in Russia. In the 19th century Dolgorukaia’s life was used as a theme in romantic poems and tales by Konstantin Ryleev, Ivan Kozlov, and Sergei Glinka. In the 1870s she served as an ideal for the construction of self-sacrificial womanhood in Ekaterina Novosiltseva’s historical novel and in the drama Dve nevesty [Two Brides] by Olga Golokhvastova. The reassessment of Dolgorukaia’s Memoirs as the beginning of a dissident literary tradition is long overdue. Its subjective historical experience can be revealingly juxtaposed with the autobiographical narratives of many Soviet dissidents. Alexandra Smith Biography Born Natali’ia Borisovna Sheremeteva into an aristocratic family in Lubny, Russia, 17 January 1714. Elderly father died when she was five; mother died when she was 14. Became engaged at the age of 15 to Ivan Dolgorukii, a close companion of Tsar Peter II, grandson of Peter the Great, 1729. After Peter II’s death in 1730, the wealthy Dolgorukii family made an unsuccessful attempt to seize power. Married Dolgorukii, 1730: two sons. Sent into exile with her husband to Beriezov, Siberia. Returned to Moscow to bring up her children after her husband’s execution in 1739. Entered the Frolov Convent in Kiev, 1758. Started writing memoirs of her early life, 1767. Died in Kiev, 3 July 1771.

Selected Writings Svoeruchnye zapiski, 1810; as Pamiatnyia zapiski kniagini Natali Borisovny Dolgorukovoi, 1867; as Svoeruchnye zapiski kniagini Natali Borisovny Dolgorukoi, 1913; edited by E. Anisimova, 1992; as The Memoirs of Princess Natal’ja Borisovna Dolgorukaja (bilingual edition), edited and translated by Charles E. Townsend, 1977

Further Reading Nakhimovsky, Alice, “A Syntactic, Lexicological and Stylistic Commentary on the Memoirs of Princess Natalja Borisovna Dolgorukaja”, Folia Slavica, 8/2–3 (1987): 272–301 Pushkareva, Natalia, Women in Russian History: From the Tenth to the Twentieth Century, translated and edited by Eve Levin, Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1997

Dostoevskii, Fedor

1821–1881

Russian novelist, letter writer, and diarist Although Dostoevskii announced his intention of writing an autobiography, he did not in fact do so, and his most complete account of his own life is to be found in his letters, some 900 of which survive. His main early correspondent was his brother

Mikhail, with whom he discussed his life as a student and his literary projects of the 1840s. This correspondence was cut off when Dostoevskii was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for participation in the seditious Petrashevskii circle, but resumed on his release into Siberian exile, and continued until Mikhail’s death in 1864. In the 1860s and 1870s, for health and financial reasons, Dostoevskii spent long periods abroad, chiefly in Germany, and from this period there remain a large number of letters to literary contacts, notably Apollon Maikov and Nikolai Strakhov, and more personal ones to Dostoevskii’s niece, Sonia Ivanova. From 1867 a major correspondent was Dostoevskii’s second wife, Anna Grigor’evna, to whom Dostoevskii notably relates his mid-life obsession with gambling. The letters of the last ten years of Dostoevskii’s life show his growing status in literary society and his eventual achievement of relative domestic stability. Constantly recurring themes in Dostoevskii’s letters of all periods are money difficulties and concerns about his epilepsy, yet he is always a lively correspondent, adapting his tone to his addressee. Indeed, many of his letters – as Dostoevskii foreshadows objections to his own arguments – show the same “dialogic” approach to narrative that Bakhtin and others have identified in his fiction. As sources for Dostoevskii’s biography the letters can be supplemented by autobiographical fragments published in the serial Dnevnik pisatelia (1873, 1876–77, 1880–81; The Diary of a Writer) (which is, however, far from being a diary in any normally accepted sense, as it consists mainly of essays on contemporary social and literary themes interspersed with short stories), and by the sketch Zimnie zametki o letnikh vpechatleniiakh (1863; Winter Notes on Summer Impressions), an account of Dostoevskii’s first visit to western Europe in 1862, which is again less a memoir of the voyage than a sociological survey of the evils of French and British bourgeois society. Dostoevskii’s principal contribution to the genre of life writing, however, is his autobiographical Zapiski iz mertvogo doma (1860, and 1861–62; Memoirs from the House of the Dead). This is a lightly fictionalized account of the four years spent by Dostoevskii as a convict in the Siberian town of Omsk. The work is presented as the memoir of a certain Aleksandr Petrovich Gorianchikov, who had served a ten-year sentence for murdering his wife, but beyond this fictional device – forgotten as the work continues and presumably introduced largely to satisfy the tsarist censor – lies the story, substantially corroborated by independent evidence, of Dostoevskii’s own imprisonment. The memoir is structurally diffuse, following the popular mid-century genre of the literary sketch, to emphasize the verisimilitude of its content. The principal narrator is almost inhumanly dispassionate in his account, favouring an anthropological focus on narrative and description to the near total exclusion of psychological analysis or moral judgement. Yet the relentless accumulation of detail about the gratuitous cruelty of the prison system and its ineffectiveness as a tool for social reform cannot but make its impression on the attentive reader. The history of floggings, petty theft, drunkenness, and depravity that defines life among the convicts is, moreover, offset by momentary yet persistent visions of an alternative, life-affirming discourse. Events like the convicts’ Christmas theatricals, their joy at the release of a captive eagle, individual acts of religious devotion, or personal friendship undermine those admittedly more numerous scenes – like the description of the prisoners’

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bathhouse, which Turgenev called Dantéesque – in which personal dignity and indeed identity are submerged in the collective. One theme that pervades the work is the gulf between educated Russians, represented by Gorianchikov, and the Russian peasants who made up the vast majority of prisoners. The peasants hate the upper classes as representatives of the regime under which they suffer, but are also better able to bear the prison environment because of the communal traditions and arduous conditions of peasant society. The romanticized picture of the peasants as long-suffering yet indomitable, with their own inner strength, was to become a constant theme in Dostoevskii’s later works. Memoirs from the House of the Dead was the first of many Russian and, later, Soviet prison memoirs, but its bold portrayal of prison life remains striking even today. At the time of its first publication it engendered much debate about the excesses of the criminal justice system and the moral redemption of the convict class; it also ensured Dostoevskii’s re-establishment in the literary world after his return from Siberia, and it remains, after his four major novels, one of his most widely read works.

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Impressions, 1954, and Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, 1985; translated by Richard Lee Renfield, 1955, and by David Patterson, 1988 Dnevnik pisatelia, 1873, 1876–77, 1880–81; as The Diary of a Writer, translated by Boris Leo Brasol, 2 vols, 1954; as A Writer’s Diary, translated by Kenneth Lantz, 2 vols, 1993 Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to His Family and Friends, translated by Ethel Colburn Mayne, 1914 New Dostoevsky Letters, translated by Samuel Solomonovitch Koteliansky, 1929 The Letters of Dostoyevsky to His Wife, translated by Elizabeth Hill and Doris Mudie, 1930 (Russian original, 1926) Sobranie sochinenii (collected works), 10 vols, 1956–58 Neizdannyi Dostoevskii: Zapisnye knizhki i tetradi 1860–1881, 1971; as The Unpublished Dostoevsky: Diaries and Notebooks, 1860–81, edited by Carl R. Proffer, translated by T.S. Berczynski et al., 3 vols, 1973–76 Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (complete collected works), 30 vols, 1972– 90 Selected Letters of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, edited by Joseph Frank and David I. Goldstein, translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew, 1987 Complete Letters, edited and translated by David Lowe and Ronald Meyer, 5 vols, 1988–91

Further Reading David N. Wells Biography Born in Moscow, Russia, 11 November 1821. His father was a physician; his mother came from a family of Moscow merchants. Educated at home to the age of 12. Attended Chermak’s School in Moscow. Studied at the Military Engineering Academy, St Petersburg, 1838–43 (commissioned as ensign 1839, as second lieutenant 1842; graduated in 1843 as War Ministry draughtsman). Father died, 1839 (Dostoevskii always believed that he had been murdered by his serfs). Resigned commission, 1844. Translated Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet, 1844. Achieved critical success with the publication of his first novel, Bednye liudi (Poor Folk), 1846. Associated with the circle of Mikhail Petrashevskii, where utopian socialist ideas were discussed: arrested for sedition along with many of his associates, 1849. Sentenced to death, but sentence commuted at the last moment to penal servitude then exile. Imprisoned in Omsk, Siberia, 1850–54. Wrote about his experiences in Zapiski iz mertvogo doma (1860, 1861–62; The House of the Dead). Exiled as a soldier to Semipalatinsk in Siberia, 1854 (corporal 1855, ensign 1856); health became undermined. Read Dickens and rejected socialism for Russian Orthodoxy. Married Mar’ia Dmitrievna Isaeva, 1857 (died 1864): one stepson. Resigned commission when his exile ended and he was able to return to European Russia, 1859. Co-founder, with his brother, Vremia [Time], 1861–63; editor of Epokha [Epoch] after his brother’s death, 1864–65. Failed journalistic enterprises left him deep in debt. Became a compulsive gambler. Visited Poland with a young woman, Polina Suslova, hoping to retrieve his fortune at roulette. Published Prestuplenie i nakazanie (Crime and Punishment), his first great work, 1866, followed by Idiot (1868; The Idiot). Married his stenographer, Anna Grigor’evna Snitkina, 1867: two daughters and two sons. Lived in western Europe to avoid his creditors, 1867–71. Wrote Besy (1871–72; The Devils). Suffered from epilepsy. Editor of Grazhdanin [Citizen] 1873–74, and Dnevnik pisatelia [Diary of a Writer], 1876–77. Wrote his last great work, Brat’ia Karamazovy (1879–80; Brothers Karamazov). Died in St Petersburg, 9 February 1881.

Selected Writings Zapiski iz mertvogo doma (autobiographical fiction), 1860 (first parts); reprinted in Vremia, 4, 9–11 (1861) and 1–3, 5, 12 (1862); as The House of the Dead, or, Prison Life in Siberia, translated by H.S. Edwards, 1911; as The House of the Dead, translated by Constance Garnett in The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1915, and by David McDuff, 1985; as Memoirs from the House of the Dead, translated by Jessie Coulson, 1956 Zimnie zametki o letnikh vpechatleniiakh (autobiographical sketch), in Vremia, 2–3 (1863); translated by Kyril FitzLyon as Summer

Bakhtin, Mikhail, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, translated by Caryl Emerson, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, and Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984 Carr, E.H., Dostoevsky, 1821–1881, London: Allen and Unwin, and Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931 Catteau, Jacques, Dostoyevsky and the Process of Literary Creation, translated by Audrey Littlewood, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989 De Jonge, Alex, Dostoevsky and the Age of Intensity, London: Secker and Warburg, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1975 Dostoevsky, Anna, Dostoevsky: Reminiscences, edited and translated by Beatrice Stillman, New York: Liveright, and London: Wildwood House, 1975 Frank, Joseph, Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt, 1821–1849, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976; London: Robson, 1977 Frank, Joseph, Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850–1859, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, and London: Robson, 1983 Frank, Joseph, Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 1860–1865, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986; London: Robson, 1987 Frank, Joseph, Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865–1871, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, and London: Robson, 1995 Grossman, Leonid, Dostoevsky: A Biography, translated by Mary Mackler, London: Allen Lane, 1974; Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1975 Hingley, Ronald, Dostoyevsky: His Life and Work, New York: Scribner, and London: Elek, 1978 Holquist, Michael, Dostoevsky and the Novel, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977 Jones, John, Dostoevsky, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983 Jones, Malcolm, Dostoyevsky after Bakhtin: Readings in Dostoyevsky’s Fantastic Realism, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990 Morson, Gary Saul, The Boundaries of Genre: Dostoevsky’s Diary of a Writer and the Traditions of Literary Utopia, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981 Mochulsky, Konstantin, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work, translated by Michael A. Minihan, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1967 Peace, Richard, Dostoyevsky: An Examination of the Major Novels, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975 Steiner, George, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, New York: Knopf, 1959; London: Faber, 1960

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Suslova, Apollinaria, Gody blizosti s Dostoevskim, Moscow: Izd. M. i S. Sabashnikovykh, 1928 Wasiolek, Edward, Dostoevsky: The Major Fiction, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1964

Douglass, Frederick

1818–1895

American autobiographer Born into slavery, Frederick Douglass was to liberate his mind and body to become one of the pre-eminent Americans of the 19th century. A journalist, editor, lecturer, and tireless apostle of human freedom, he recorded the extraordinary events of his life in three autobiographies. The first, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (1845), is today acknowledged as one of the greatest “I” narratives of world literature, and one of the principal texts in the genre of the slave narrative. After speaking on the abolitionists’ lecture circuit for more than three years, Douglass published his Narrative in June 1845 to refute critics who claimed that he was a fraud. An immediate critical and popular success, it sold 4500 copies by that autumn and 30,000 copies by 1850. A critic for the Liberator pronounced the work “thrilling” and “full of the most burning eloquence”, then asserted that “the book as a whole, judged as a mere work of art, would widen the fame of Bunyan or Defoe”– an assessment that still rings true today. The Narrative follows the traditional three-part pattern of the slave narrative, describing Douglass’s life in bondage, his escape north, and his rising fortunes as a free man. James Olney argues that, while representative of its genre in form and content, the Narrative transcends conventions to be the premiere example of its type. This is partly on account of its incomparable style, but the text is more than an eloquent indictment of slavery. It expresses what William L. Andrews calls “the fundamental theme of Douglass’s greatest writing … his own evolving sense of selfhood”. William S. McFeely, Douglass’s best biographer, agrees, ranking the Narrative with the other fine “I” narratives of mid-19th-century America: Herman Melville’s novel MobyDick, Walt Whitman’s poem Leaves of Grass, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays, and even Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, whose author Douglass may have inspired. After years of neglect in the early 20th century, the Narrative came into its own again during the resurgence of African American literature in the 1960s. It has since taken its place as an authoritative text in the American literary canon. A decade after the Narrative, Douglass published My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), which sold well (15,000 copies in two months) and was also enthusiastically reviewed. If his earlier autobiography achieves power through headlong narrative drive, then My Bondage and My Freedom derives authority from the author’s carefully considered analyses of the people, events, and institutions that affected his life both as a slave and as a free man. But within this masterful depiction of slavery’s debasement of both slave and master, Douglass again focuses on his great theme. Describing his victory over the slave breaker Covey, he declares: “I was nothing before; I WAS A MAN NOW”. This triumph marks the true end of his bondage – his defeat of the slave mentality within himself.

Besides its depth of analysis, My Bondage introduces Douglass’s exposure of the colour prejudice endemic to the Northern United States.The passing years dampened the dazzled enthusiasm he first felt upon achieving freedom; the nation, South and North, had much to do to overcome racism. Long overshadowed by the Narrative, My Bondage has recently received critical acclaim (notably from Andrews, who asserts its superiority, in some ways, even to the earlier autobiography). In 1881 Douglass wrote the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass; the text was revised and expanded in 1892. Neither edition did well; in fact, Life and Times apparently sold only 463 copies in seven years. The work often reads like a tired retelling of its predecessors; as if fatigued himself, Douglass incorporates large sections of My Bondage into it virtually unchanged. But he also adds much new material, including his involvement in events leading up to and during the civil war. The latter parts of the work recount Douglass’s postwar activities, including the largely honorary positions he held and the recognition he received as the acknowledged leader of African Americans.Yet many considered his politics outdated, and the nation, dedicated to the pursuit of wealth, was tired of hearing about slavery, which Douglass believed that America could never afford to forget. His was a message that few wanted to hear, and this last autobiography was largely ignored. Frederick Douglass is now generally acknowledged to have been an extraordinary and heroic man, whose life of service to his nation and his self-realization as a free man have both participated in and redefined the ideals of American citizenship. With Harriet Jacobs’s account of her life, Douglass created one of the two archetypes in the genre of the slave narrative, and a document lying at the heart of American and world autobiography. David L. Dudley Biography Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in Tuckahoe, Talbot County, Maryland, United States, February 1818. His mother was a slave, his father a white man. Spent the first seven years of his life with his grandmother, seldom seeing his mother, who was sent to work off the plantation. Worked as a house servant in Baltimore, where he learned to read and write, as a field hand in St Michael’s, Maryland, 1833–36, and as a labourer in Baltimore shipyards, 1836 or 1837,. Planned an escape from slavery, 1836; sent back to Baltimore and trained as a ship’s caulker, 1837–38 (allowed to do some freelance work). Escaped from slavery to New York, 1838. Married a free woman, Anna Murray, 1838: two daughters and three sons. Moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, and worked as a labourer there, 1838–42; changed his name to Douglass to elude the slave catchers. Met William Lloyd Garrison, owner of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, 1841, and began to lecture for the abolitionist movement. Published the first of three autobiographical volumes, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845. Moved to England to avoid capture, 1845; lectured in Britain and Ireland, 1845–47. Returned to the United States with enough money to buy his freedom, 1847. Moved to Rochester, New York, continuing to write and lecture, 1847. Published his own abolitionist newspaper, North Star, 1847–60 (name changed to Frederick Douglass’s Paper, 1851). Also worked on women’s rights campaigns from 1848. Founded, edited, and contributed to Frederick Douglass’s Monthly, 1858–63. Escaped to Canada after being named as an accomplice to John Brown in Harper’s Ferry raid, 1859, then moved to Britain, returning to the United States in 1860. Recruited black regiments (Massachusetts 54th and 55th) to help the Union army in 1863, during the civil war, and worked for civil rights during the Reconstruction period. Founded the New National Era newspaper, Washington, DC, 1870 (published until 1874). President, Freedman’s

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Savings and Trust Company, 1873–74. Served in a number of government appointments: as assistant secretary of the Santo Domingo annexation commission, 1871; US marshal, 1877–81, and recorder of deeds, from 1881, District of Columbia. First wife died, 1882. Married Helen Pitts, a white woman who had been his secretary, 1884. Served as US minister to Haiti, 1889–91. Died in Washington, DC, 20 February 1895.

Selected Writings Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, 1845; edited by Benjamin Quarles, 1960, Houston A. Baker, Jr, 1982, David W. Blight, 1993, William L. Andrews and William S. McFeely, 1996, and Deborah E. McDowell, 1999 My Bondage and My Freedom, 1855; edited by William L. Andrews, 1987 The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, 1881, revised 1892; abridged as Escape from Slavery, edited by Michael McCurdy, 1994 The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, edited by Philip S. Foner, 5 vols, 1950–75 A Black Diplomat in Haiti: The Diplomatic Correspondence of US Minister Douglass from Haiti 1889–1891, edited by Norma Brown, 2 vols, 1977 Frederick Douglass in His Own Words, edited by Milton Meltzer, 1995 The Frederick Douglass Papers, series 2: Autobiographical Writings, edited by John W. Blassingame et al., 1999–

Further Reading Andrews, William L., To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of AfroAmerican Autobiography, 1760–1865, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986 Butterfield, Stephen, Black Autobiography in America, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974 Dudley, David L., My Father’s Shadow: Intergenerational Conflict in African American Men’s Autobiography, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991 Jacobs, Harriet A., Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, edited by Jean Fagan Yellin, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987 McFeely, William S., Frederick Douglass, New York: Norton, 1991 Olney, James, “‘I Was Born: Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature” in The Slave’s Narrative, edited by Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985

Drama and Life Writing Drama is not an obvious medium for autobiographical elaboration. The dialogic nature of mainstream Western dramatic traditions, not to mention the collaborative or conventionalized nature of most traditions of theatrical production, militate against authorial self-reflexivity. There are some exceptions, of course (such as August Strindberg, whose tortured relationships with women were occasionally vented through his plays, and the modern manifestations of the one-person show and performance art); but most dramatists have reverted to narrative, diary, and letter to reflect on their lives. On the other hand, biography has frequently been appropriated as material for dramatic representation, in particular a form of history conceived as biography of the powerful. Many cultures have such traditions. The Western tradition goes back to 5th-century Athens. One of the extant Greek tragedies, Aeschylus’ Persae (performed in 472 bce; Persians), dramatizes the defeat of Xerxes’ Persian navy at the hands of the Greeks, at

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the Battle of Salamis – a battle in which the author, and doubtless many of the audience, took part: the play works through the effects of defeat on Xerxes and the Persian court. And Aristophanes’ Ranae (405 bce; The Frogs), a dramatized fantasy debate between the tragedians Aeschylus and Euripides, amounts to a kind of popular biographical sketch of the two. Moreover, in a society without discrete conceptions of myth, history, and religion, mythical figures such as Oedipus or Medea could be regarded “historically”, and thus treated almost quasibiographically – although the sheer variety evident in ancient dramatic plots and character treatments suggests audiences were never simplistic about historical “truth”. English drama before the 16th century frequently personified abstract moral qualities and sins – sometimes sombrely and reverentially, sometimes farcically. Perhaps the best-known and most enduring English-language examples are Mankind (written c.1465–70) and the late Everyman (c.1520, but adapted from the 14th-century Dutch Elkerlijc), a play which, as its title implies, aspires to be a kind of universal exemplary biography in dramatic form. In what the 19th century called the “mystery plays”, the medieval guilds exerted their civic pride and wealth through outdoor productions of freely adapted Old and New Testament events merged with often comic scenes evocative of everyday life, and perhaps even specific individuals in the community. The plays were part exemplary, part festive, part self-congratulatory on the part of the guilds; but they also vibrantly articulated a form of communal biography. In China, too, medieval drama exhibited a biographical impetus. During the Mongol Yuan dynasty (13th and 14th centuries), dramas of the zaju type often portrayed heroically conceived figures of the Three Kingdoms era (220–65), while others focused on law cases, including some based on a famous living judge (whose real-life severity was, it seems, transformed theatrically into wise benevolence). Sixteenth- and 17th-century European drama, increasingly political and secular in its concerns, witnessed an expanded willingness to make dramatic capital out of the lives of real-life historical personages. Early examples include John Bale’s King John (first version c.1538) and lost anti-Catholic characterassassinations such as Bale’s The Knaveries of Thomas Beckett. As professional theatres became established, and the profession of playwright emerged – a profession that often required patronage from powerful figures, including the monarchy – pro-Tudor hagiographic plays proliferated, while other dramatists picked safe historical material, such as the 15th-century pretender Perkin Warbeck, who provided the subject for several writers. Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great (performed c.1587), a huge success, was sourced from the dimly known Central-Asian warrior Tamerlane. If, as many critics have thought, the play was deliberately anti-establishment in its portrayal of a crude shepherd vanquishing mighty kings, it also suggests the limitations of the time, in that so distant a figure had to become a vehicle for Marlowe’s ideas rather than a figure from English history. By far the most influential exponent of biographical drama in the English-speaking world has been, of course, Shakespeare, whose plays based on English, Scottish, and Ancient monarchs and emperors (and the “improvements” and interpretations of them by generations of actors and producers) fed back into popular historical conceptions of the individuals, perhaps most

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notably in the cases of Richard III, Henry V, and Macbeth. The plays remain elusive in their political orientation, however, with some critics regarding the English history plays as a collective justification of the Tudor regime as laudable and inevitable, while others see them as slyly subversive. (In the case, for example, of his Henry VIII, modern directors often structure productions to expose Henry as a prototypical tyrant, an interpretive stance that could have been life-threatening at the time.) It is perhaps Shakespeare’s ability to dramatize political figures while, through his craft, making their life events have universal and private-psychological resonance, that allows such persistent ambiguity and richness. And he was not so foolhardy (or he was too self-serving, depending on one’s view) as to tackle contemporary politics or political figures head on. The contemporary figures of Shakespeare’s world are either small-town and comic (The Merry Wives of Windsor), or situated in foreign or fantasy lands. The temptation to read The Tempest autobiographically, with the creator of fantasy and magic Prospero /Shakespeare laying down his powers in the autumn of his life, has proved strong to producers and critics alike; but the reading remains at the level of conceit, and however likely psychologically, there is no documentary evidence of any autobiographical intent. After the restoration of Charles II to the English throne in 1660, and the reinvigoration of a defunct London theatre, John Dryden and others created a vogue for heroic tragedy, often historically based. Once again, the obvious sources were classical history (notably Dryden’s All for Love, 1677, his version of the Antony and Cleopatra amour fou), with the subjects ennobled through the strictures of continental neoclassical style and decorum. Elsewhere, Shakespeare’s influence was felt widely, and contributed especially to the rise of historical drama in the German states, the most notable examples being Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand (1773; Goetz von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand), which Goethe based on the autobiography of the eponymous 16th-century knight, Friedrich Schiller’s Maria Stuart (1800; Mary Stuart) – in which the unusual historical confluence of two powerful women at the epicentre of politics produced a kind of dual psycho-biography of England’s Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots – and the same author’s three-part Wallenstein, centring on this Austrian leader during the Thirty Years’ War (on which subject Schiller was a specialist). Since the Romantic era, whose fascination with the overweening individual complemented the history-as-biographyof-the-powerful underpinnings of earlier periods, this type of historical drama petered out by the 20th century, ironically as many of the earlier plays were being rediscovered for performance. In the 20th century, stage interpretations of real lives developed in a number of disparate styles, many of which are relatively small scale. Grandiose portrayals of the lives of the famous (or notorious) have largely become the territory of film and television. Something of the historical tradition in theatre has survived though. The American South, for example, continues to maintain the quaint genre of the “outdoor historical drama”. In a similar manner to Shakespeare’s history plays, these rural anthologies mythologize the lives of historical figures. Usually based on the lives of American frontier heroes such as Daniel Boon and Davie Crocket, outdoor historical dramas typically reinforce the American myths of rugged individualism, rural

simplicity, and manifest destiny. Paul Green stands out as perhaps the most prolific and successful playwright of this form. Seemingly beneath the radar of the theatre elite, the elaborate spectacle of outdoor historical drama routinely dwarfs other forms of American theatre in audience attendance and loyalty. “Documentary drama”, a less provincial and more highbrow form of biographical theatre, encompasses a wide range of texts and styles. Many dramas identified as documentary drama maintain a traditional “well-made” theatrical structure; this despite the fact that they are composed almost exclusively of material compiled – often verbatim – from historical sources. Others take on a more free-form narrative style. The Federal Theatre Project’s controversial and quickly censored Living Newspaper survives as an early example of documentary drama in the United States. The form achieved notable success in postwar Germany as a means of grappling with recent history and contemporary events: Heinar Kipphardt’s In der Sache J. Robert Oppenheimer (1964; In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer) examined the 1954 American hearing that accused the scientist of delaying progress in developing the hydrogen bomb; Peter Weiss’s Die Ermittlung (1965; The Investigation), based on court records and accounts, dramatized the trial of the perpetrators of events at Auschwitz – a play simultaneously premiered by 14 German theatres and by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London; and Rolf Hochhuth’s Soldaten (1967; The Soldiers) controversially posited Winston Churchill’s complicity in the death of World War II Polish leader General Sikorsky (Britain’s National Theatre banned its own production of the play). In more recent practice, Emily Mann’s acclaimed plays Still Life (1980) and Execution of Justice (1983) use theatre to explore highly charged political and social problems. The tradition continues in such dramas as Martin Duberman’s In White America (1964) and Steven Dietz’s God’s Country (1994). Whereas Duberman’s play uses speeches, oral histories, and other historical documents to explore the African American experience, Dietz employs similar dramaturgical strategies to investigate the phenomenon of white supremacy. In the solo form, Anna Deveare Smith’s Fires in the Mirror (1993) and Twilight (1994) represent two powerful examples of personal narratives scripted into theatrical texts. More arranged than written, documentary drama provokes powerful responses from audiences. The controversial points of view that emerge from this style of theatre indicate that the method of placement of texts often matters as much as the selection of the texts themselves. The tradition of the “one-person show” is another important form of dramatic life writing. The origins of this vibrant form date back to the Victorian practice of “platform performance”. In this 19th-century tradition, elocutionists performed selections of poetry and prose in churches and recital halls in Britain and the United States. These platform performers provided an alternative for those Victorians who were too pristine for the seedy associations of the 19th-century professional theatre. Gradually, writers began reading their own work at venues pioneered by platform performers. Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, and Mark Twain all supplemented their incomes by “playing themselves” in these venues. These cultivated expressions of literary persona eventually inspired the formation of a lecture circuit, the Redpath Lyceum. Platform performers also

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found opportunities on the Chautaugua platform, and, to a lesser degree, in vaudeville houses. Although platform performance no longer exists as a vibrant form, the legacy of the movement continues to flourish. The phenomenon of Mark Twain Tonight (performed from 1954) provides a good example. In 1947 a young actor named Hal Holbrook began to research Twain’s career as a platform performer. He soon developed a one-person show in which he impersonated Twain. Thousands of performances and more than 50 years later, he still performs his acclaimed work. Hundreds of similar biographical shows followed suit. Literary figures remain popular subjects, as do politicians, lawyers, scientists, and virtually any talented person connected to public life. Prominent examples include William Luce’s The Belle of Amherst (1976), first performed by Julie Harris; The Importance of Being Oscar (first performed, 1961), scripted and performed by Michael MacLiammoir; David Rintels’s Clarence Darrow (1975), performed by, among others, Henry Fonda; and Give ‘em Hell Harry (1975), conceived and performed by James Whitmore. Through dramas such as these, biographical writing continues to flourish in the form of the one-person show. The colossal expense of mounting shows on Broadway even encourages the form: a cast of one – especially if a star – combines audience appeal with a ceiling on costs. The appeal of the life of letters is not limited to the oneperson show form. Multi-character “literary dramas” thrive as yet another important, if under-recognized, form of biographical drama. Similar to literary biography, literary drama depicts the lives of writers. Although not widely identified as a subgenre of biographical drama, literary dramas number in the hundreds and include many very popular and respected plays. In terms of stage success, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail (1970) was the most produced play in the United States during the 1970s. Other examples of this genre include William Nicholson’s Shadowlands (1989), based on the marriage late in life of C.S. Lewis; Michael Hastings’s Tom and Viv (1985), depicting T.S. Eliot’s troubled first marriage; and, more recently, John Guare’s Broadway drama, Judas Kiss (1999), about the Oscar Wilde scandal. Many film versions of literary drama also exist. The Oscar-winning film Shakespeare in Love (1998) is a prominent example. The texts for “performance art”, unusually, draw mostly on autobiographical sources. With its roots in futurism, dadaism, surrealism, and conceptual art, the eclectic range of performance forms lumped under the term “performance art” makes easy definitions difficult. Still, the frequent tendency to perform the “body as text” (Chris Burden, Karin Finley, and Ron Athey, among others), combined with the increasingly common practice of transforming autobiographical stories into dramatic texts (Spalding Gray, Laurie Anderson, Holly Hughes, and Michael Kearns, to name a few), locate performance art as a noteworthy form of theatrical life writing. Most performance art pieces are solo works. But unlike the one-person show, performance art usually features the performer’s life experience as the central core of the theatrical text. finally, the genre frequently described as “community-based theatre” straddles the line between biographical and autobiographical writing. Currently practised extensively in Britain and the United States, community-based theatre represents a modern incarnation of what might once have been referred to as “folk

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drama”. Both terms describe what happens when tightly knit groups of people dramatize the stories that define their communities. Community-based theatre, or “grassroots theatre”, as it is also called, differs from traditional forms of folk drama in that it often has as its goal an explicitly empowering and therapeutic performance. Facilitated by artists and scholars in the fields of performance studies, drama in education, and psychotherapy, community-based theatre often deals with marginalized communities seeking social justice and civic recognition. Although widely different in terms of their cultural background, most community-based dramas share the characteristic of being produced by, for, to, and about a given community. Because of an emphasis on both the individual and the group, communitybased theatre exists at the crossroads of biographical and autobiographical forms of theatre. As is evident, these dramatic forms of life writing comprise a very broad spectrum of theatrical texts. Although widely different in form, they unite under a common focus: the representation of biography and autobiography through the art of theatrical presentation. Robert Hubbard Further Reading Cocke, Dudley, Harry Newman, and Janet Salmons-Rue (editors), From the Ground Up: Grassroots Theater in Historical and Contemporary Perspective, Ithaca, New York: Community-Based Arts Project of Cornell University, 1993 Dawson, Gary Fisher, Documentary Theatre in the United States: An Historical Survey and Analysis of Its Content, Form, and Stagecraft, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999 Filewod, Alan D., Collective Encounters: Documentary Theatre in English Canada, Toronto and Buffalo, New York: University of Toronto Press, 1987 Gentile, John S., Cast of One: One-Person Shows from the Chautaugua Platform to the Broadway Stage, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989 Goldberg, RoseLee, Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present, revised edition, New York: Abrams, and London: Thames and Hudson, 1988 Hillman, Richard, Self-Speaking in Medieval and Early Modern Drama: Subjectivity, Discourse and the Stage, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997 Holderness, Graham, Shakespeare Recycled: The Making of Historical Drama, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, and Lanham, Maryland: Barnes and Noble, 1992 Hubbard, Robert J., “The Author on the Boards: Intertextuality and Literary Biographical Drama” (dissertation), Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University, 1996 Jellicoe, Ann, Community Plays: How to Put Them On, London and New York: Methuen, 1987 Johnson, Walter, Strindberg and the Historical Drama, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1963 Kuftinec, Sonja, “A Cornerstone for Rethinking Community Theatre”, Theatre Topics, 6/1 (1996): 91–104 Lamport, F.J., German Classical Drama: Theatre, Humanity, and Nation, 1750–1870, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990 Lindenberger, Herbert, Historical Drama: The Relation of Literature and Reality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975 Mackerras, Colin, Chinese Drama : A Historical Survey, Beijing: New World Press, 1990 McConachie, Bruce, “Approaching the ‘Structure of Feeling’ in Grassroots Theatre”, Theatre Topics, 8/1 (1998): 33–53 Paget, Derek, True Stories?: Documentary Drama on Radio, Screen, and Stage, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990 Patterson, Michael, German Theatre Today: Post-War Theatre in West

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and East Germany, Austria and Northern Switzerland, London: Pitman, 1976 Redmond, James (editor), Historical Drama, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986 (Themes in Drama series) Russell, Mark (editor), Out of Character: Rants, Raves, and Monologues from Today’s Top Performance Artists, New York: Bantam, 1997 Sherman, Jason (editor), Solo, Toronto: Coach House Press, 1994 Stern, Carol Simpson and Bruce Henderson, Performance: Texts and Contexts, London and New York: Longman, 1993 Subiotto, A.V., German Documentary Theatre, Birmingham, England: University of Birmingham, 1972 (lecture) Young, Jordan R., Acting Solo: The Art of One-Man Shows, Beverly Hills, California: Moonstone Press, 1989

Du Bois, W.E.B.

1868–1963

American historian, sociologist, and autobiographer W.E.B. Du Bois occupies a distinctive position in life-writing traditions, as he wrote three autobiographies – Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil (1920), Dusk of Dawn: An Essay toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (1940), and The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (1968). Having been born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois in all three autobiographies recounts his life as a youth there along with his family history and the circumstances that led to his graduating first in his class, one of few African Americans in his high school; attending Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and winning a scholarship to Harvard University, where he was the first African American to earn a PhD. These academic achievements primed Du Bois for professorships at Wilberforce and Atlanta Universities and a long career as a scholar and an activist working to enlighten people concerning African American history and to change the direction of race relations in the United States. Well known for his differences of opinion with Booker T. Washington, Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and editor of its journal The Crisis. Du Bois’s socialist sympathies resulted in his passport being revoked in 1959 and in related political pressures that led him in 1963 to renounce his US citizenship and to become a citizen of Ghana. Having written his first autobiography, Darkwater, following his 50th year, Du Bois used first-person narrative and his personal experiences to focus attention on racial issues. The firstperson voice had previously enabled him, in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), to illustrate the connection between his development as an intellectual and ideas prevalent in the society that pertained to racial identity and the living conditions of African Americans. Darkwater combines prose, poetry, and a meditative tone, examining what Du Bois saw as major problems of his epoch, placed in the context of his first-hand experiences and observations. In passionate language, Du Bois communicates his sense of the damage that racial inequality does not only to the individual but also to the society as a whole, particularly in a United States attempting to uphold its reputation as an exemplary, representative democracy. Du Bois considered practices in the United States such as lynching as a direct contradiction to the ideals expounded by liberal democratic traditions, and he devoted the main focus of Darkwater to making his

objections explicit. Consequently, his first autobiography has been called his most angry. Similarly, Dusk of Dawn, as its subtitle suggests, examines the larger context of Du Bois’s ideas about race in relation to developments in his youth as well as in his professional life. The autobiographical details are more tempered and more dispassionately presented than in Darkwater. Whereas each chapter of Darkwater is followed by a poem, in Dusk of Dawn an essay form is sustained. The chapter titles are more broadly conceptual in the later book, although in some instances the same topics are explored. His final autobiography is the most traditional in its style. In it Du Bois summarizes episodes of his life, and attempts to be comprehensive; he conveys his personal thoughts and interprets the meaning of events with reference to specific choices he made without as much recourse to philosophical arguments as he provides in the preceding autobiographies. Du Bois brought his considerable skill in a variety of genres and styles to bear on his life writing and found ways to imbue much of his prose with his very distinctive narrative voice. He understood the power that the first-person voice has in essay writing and used it in Darkwater and Dust of Dawn in chapters concerning such topics as reconstruction, science, race, and beauty. His talent as an orator, with a command of rhetorical debate, is evident in these two books, particularly in passages that touch upon sensitive issues at the time thought highly controversial, such as the treatment of African American soldiers during World War I or the status of women. His academic training, which was interdisciplinary, provided him with the ability to analyse situations from historical, sociological, and philosophical perspectives. Even when his main point is to illuminate the outcome of developments in his personal life, these developments are linked with larger concerns to illustrate the effects that social and historical circumstances have on the individual. The personal and the universal are interwoven and given equal treatment. When his personal perceptions reach a level of emotional depth that will not sustain analytic or rhetorical language, Du Bois shifts into a form of poetic prose or into verse. Lynda Hill Biography William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, United States, 23 February 1868, into a family of mixed African, French Huguenot, and Dutch descent. Brought up by his mother after his father’s early death. Educated at public schools in Great Barrington. Studied at Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, 1885–88 (BA); Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1888–92 (BA 1890, MA 1891). Studied at the University of Berlin, funded by a fellowship, 1892–94; travelled around Europe in the summers. Returned to Harvard and completed his doctoral thesis, 1894–95; published as The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America (1896). Taught Greek and Latin at Wilberforce College, Ohio, 1894–97. Married Nina Gomer, 1896 (died 1950): one son (died young) and one daughter. Instructor in sociology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1896–97. Wrote The Philadelphia Negro (1899). Professor of economics and economic history, Atlanta University, 1897–1910. Published his best-known work, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903. Co-founder of the Pan-African Congress, 1900, and the Niagara Movement, 1904 (leader 1905–09). Editor, Moon Illustrated Weekly, Memphis, Tennessee, 1906–07, and Horizon, Washington, DC, 1907–10. Co-founder, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 1910, and editor of its magazine, The Crisis, 1910–34. Wrote a number of

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important works on slavery and the “colour problem”, including The Negro (1915), Black Reconstruction in America (1935), and Color and Democracy (1945); also wrote novels, for example, Dark Princess (1928). Editor, with A.G. Dill, of Brownies’ Book, 1920–22. Resumed teaching position at Atlanta University, 1934 (retired 1944). Columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier, 1936–38, Amsterdam News, New York, 1939–44. Editor of Phylon, Atlanta, 1940–44. Returned to the NAACP, serving as director of Special Research, 1944–48. Columnist for Chicago Defender, 1945–48, and People’s Voice, 1947–48; also wrote for Current History, Journal of Negro Education, Foreign Affairs, and American Scholar. Vice-chair, Council on African Affairs, 1949–54. Candidate for US Senate for New York, 1950. Married Shirley Lola Graham, 1951. Awarded the International Peace prize, 1952; and Lenin International Peace prize, 1959. Joined the Communist party and emigrated to Ghana, 1961; renounced US citizenship and became a citizen of Ghana, 1963. Died in Accra, Ghana, 27 August 1963.

Selected Writings John Brown, 1909; as John Brown: A Biography, edited by John David Smith, 1997 Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil, 1920 Dusk of Dawn: An Essay toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept, 1940 The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century, 1968 The Correspondence of W.E.B. Du Bois, edited by Herbert Aptheker, 3 vols, 1973–78, revised 1997

Further Reading Byerman, Keith E., Seizing the Word: History, Art, and Self in the Work of W.E.B. Du Bois, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994 DeMarco, Joseph, The Social Thought of W.E.B. Du Bois, Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1983 Du Bois, Shirley Graham, His Day is Marching On: A Memoir of W.E.B. Du Bois, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1971 Horne, Gerald, Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the AfroAmerican Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986 Lester, Julius (editor), The Seventh Son: The Thought and Writings of W.E.B. Du Bois, New York: Random House, 1971 Lewis, David Levering, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919, New York: Holt, 1993 Logan, Rayford (editor), W.E.B. Du Bois, A Profile, New York: Hill and Wang, 1971 West, Cornel, Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America, New York: Routledge, 1993

Duras, Marguerite

1914–1996

French novelist, playwright, film-maker, and autobiographer Marguerite Duras’s life infuses all of her work, from her more traditional earlier novels to her experimental fiction and more openly autobiographical texts, each individual work contributing to a larger whole that is constantly retold and reworked in different forms. Although Duras published her first work in 1943, it was her autobiographical L’Amant (The Lover) that brought her international fame and the prestigious Goncourt prize in 1984. The texts that can be considered autobiographical deal with three main periods of Duras’s life: her childhood in colonial Indochina (Vietnam), her work for the French Resistance during Nazi occupation, and her relationship with Yann Andréa. The topic of the author’s childhood first appeared in fictional form in

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the highly successful Un Barrage contre le Pacifique (1950; The Sea Wall), and was subsequently retold in two autobiographical works, L’Amant and L’Amant de la Chine du nord (1991; The North China Lover). A kind of colonial counter-narrative, the former draws heavily upon her formative years, focusing on her family’s poverty, her relationship with her mother and a violent older brother, and her critique of the colonial administration that had sold worthless land to her mother. Duras takes up the same setting and events 30 years later in L’Amant, this time with a very different style and emphasis. In this new version, the subject matter is presented as autobiographical in nature; a primarily first-person narrator replaces the third person of Un Barrage contre le Pacifique, and the text centres on a 15-yearold white girl’s affair with an older Chinese lover. With its frank depiction of a transgressive interracial relationship and its emphasis on eroticism, violence, and illicit desire, L’Amant became a literary phenomenon and was promoted in the media as a form of confession revealing the intimate secrets of a famous writer. The final text in the childhood sequence, L’Amant de la Chine du nord, was written after Duras’s dispute with Jean-Jacques Annaud over the film version of L’Amant and reflects her desire to reclaim her story. In it, she expands some episodes while revising others, developing in particular her portrayal of power relations within the family and society, and building on the theme of incest suggested earlier in L’Amant. Although it contains elements of both fiction and film script, this text has nonetheless been described by Duras as her most autobiographical work. La Douleur (1985; The War: A Memoir), which appeared soon after L’Amant, is based on notebooks Duras wrote during the war years and is composed of a series of fictional and nonfictional texts related to the Occupation – the physical and psychological recovery of Duras’s husband when he returned from Dachau concentration camp, the interrogation and torture of a prisoner by a female member of the Resistance, and Duras’s own involvement with the Resistance, particularly her contacts with the Gestapo officer who had arrested her husband. Appearing as it did in the mid-1980s when the period of the Occupation was being reassessed, La Douleur constitutes a form of testimony that foregrounds the complexities of the era and criticizes the policies of the postwar Gaullist administration. More recently, in works such as La Pute de la côte normande (1986; The Slut of the Normandy Coast), Emily L. (1987), and Yann Andréa Steiner (1992), Duras again combines elements of autobiography and fiction to evoke the beginnings of her relationship with Yann Andréa, her companion during the last years of her life. Although certain conventions of the autobiographical genre are apparent in Duras’s texts – specific historical and geographical references, the focus on formative experiences, and the writer herself as both narrator and character – the problematic nature of classifying her generically diverse oeuvre is reflected in the author’s own lack of interest in the consistency of biographical detail. As many critics have noted, the blurring of boundaries between fact and fiction in Duras’s narratives is highly selfconscious and has led to her work being variously classified as novel, autofiction, Bildungsroman, and autobiography. Furthermore, as a seminal practitioner of what Raylene Ramsay calls “the French new autobiography”, Duras, like other authors associated with the nouveau roman (Nathalie Sarraute and

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Alain Robbe-Grillet), incorporates into her autobiographical writing the same formal experimentation that characterizes her fictional work – a fragmented, non-linear structure, associative logic, intertextual references, multiple points of view, and metatextual commentary. In her individual texts, as in her corpus as a whole, Duras explores multiple and conflicting identities, thereby refocusing the traditional autobiographical search for self-knowledge in order to emphasize the inner world of the unconscious and the role played by writing in the construction of the self. Susan Ireland and Patrice J. Proulx Biography Born Marguerite Donnadieu in Gia Dinh, near Saigon, French Indochina (now Vietnam), 4 April 1914. Her father was a mathematics professor; her mother taught at a village school. Moved to the Dordogne region of France, with her mother, after her father’s death c.1918; returned to Indochina at the age of 12. Educated at the Lycée de Saigon (baccalauréat 1931). Returned to France, 1932. Studied law and political science at the Sorbonne, Paris, 1933–34 (degree 1935). Secretary, Ministry of Colonial Affairs, Paris, 1935–41. Married Robert Antelme, 1939 (divorced 1946). Had one son with the political philosopher and critic Dionys Mascolo. Worked as a freelance writer after the publication of her first novel, Les Impudents [The Shameless], 1943. Journalist, Observateur; also a film writer and director. Member, French Communist party, 1940s: expelled 1950. Began to attract serious critical attention with the novel Un barrage contre le Pacifique (1950; The Sea Wall); other well-known works include the novels Le Vice-consul (1965; The Vice-Consul) and Détruire, dit-elle (1969; Destroy, She Said) and the play La Musica (1965). Wrote the film script for Hiroshima, mon amour [Hiroshima, My Love], 1960. Awarded the Prix Goncourt for her autobiographical novel L’Amant (The Lover), 1984. Wrote her final work, C’est tout (No More), 1995. Died in Paris, 3 March 1996.

Selected Writings Un Barrage contre le Pacifique (autobiographical fiction), 1950; as The Sea Wall, translated by Herma Briffault, 1950; as A Sea of Troubles, translated by Antonia White, 1953 L’Amant (autobiographical fiction), 1984; as The Lover, translated by Barbara Bray, 1985 La Douleur, 1985; as The War: A Memoir, translated by Barbara Bray, 1986 La Pute de la côte normande (autobiography and fiction), 1986; as The Slut of the Normandy Coast, in Two by Duras, translated by Alberto Manguel, 1993

Emily L. (autobiographical fiction), 1987; as Emily L., translated by Barbara Bray, 1989 L’Amant de la Chine du nord (autobiography), 1991; as The North China Lover, translated by Leigh Haffrey, 1991 Yann Andréa Steiner, 1992; as Yann Andréa Steiner: A Memoir, translated by Barbara Bray, 1993 C’est tout (autobiographical fiction) 1995; as No More, translated by Richard Howard, 1998

Further Reading Armel, Aliette, Marguerite Duras et l’autobiographie, Paris: Le Castor Astral, 1990 Baisnée, Valérie, Gendered Resistance: The Autobiographies of Simone de Beauvoir, Maya Angelou, Janet Frame and Marguerite Duras, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997 Chester, Suzanne, “Writing the Subject: Exoticism / Eroticism in Marguerite Duras’s The Lover and The Sea Wall” in Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography, edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992 Cohen, Susan D. (editor), “Marguerite Duras”, special issue of L’Esprit Créateur, 1 (1990) Fauvel, Maryse, “Photographie et autobiographie: Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes et L’Amant de Marguerite Duras”, Romance Notes, 34/2 (1993): 193–202 Glassman, Deborah, “Images of the Heart: Marguerite Duras’s Autobiographies”, a / b: Auto/Biography Studies, 5/1 (1989): 26–47 Gorarra, Claire, “Bearing Witness in Robert Antelme’s L’Espèce humaine and Marguerite Duras’s La Douleur”, Women in French Studies, 5 (1997): 243–51 Hewitt, Leah D., Autobiographical Tightropes: Simone de Beauvoir, Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig, and Maryse Condé, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990 Higgins, Lynn A., New Novel, New Wave, New Politics: Fiction and the Representation of History in Postwar France, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996 Jacobs, Gabriel, “Spectres of Remorse: Duras’s War-Time Autobiography”, Romance Studies, 30 (1997): 47–57 Morgan, Janice, “fiction and Autobiography / Language and Silence: The Lover by Marguerite Duras” in Redefining Autobiography in Twentieth-Century Women’s Fiction: An Essay Collection, edited by Morgan and Colette T. Hall, New York: Garland, 1991 Ramsay, Raylene L., The French New Autobiographies: Sarraute, Duras, and Robbe-Grillet, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996 Schuster, Marilyn R., Marguerite Duras Revisited, New York: Twayne, 1993 Willis, Sharon, Marguerite Duras: Writing on the Body, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987

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e Eckermann, Johann

an appropriate honorarium. After Goethe’s death, Eckermann continued to stay almost exclusively in Weimar until his own death in 1854. The publication of Eckermann’s Gespräche did not bring him great financial reward. In fact, he sued the publisher Brockhaus, but lost the lawsuit. Menial assignments at the grand-ducal court in Weimar and as grand-ducal librarian did not alleviate his financial misery, and he died in poverty. Eckermann’s Gespräche are based on his actual conversations with Goethe and on Eckermann’s notes, taken with Goethe’s permission, as well as on notes taken by the tutor of the Weimar ducal princes, F.-J. Soret. The Gespräche do not report Goethe’s remarks verbatim, yet Eckermann attempted to be truthful and accurate, and tried to render Goethe’s manner of expressing himself as closely as possible. Eckermann’s conversations are not mere unedited records of interviews; instead they represent a talented and creative arrangement of selected information on Goethe’s esprit and thought, on his character, as well as on numerous aspects of his everyday life. Eckermann was perhaps stimulated to write his Gespräche through Karl August Varnhagen von Ense’s anthology Goethe in den Zeugnissen der Mitlebenden [1823; Goethe in the Reports of Those who Have Known Him]. In a review, Eckermann maintained that Goethe’s own statements as contained in this work seemed especially noteworthy and deserved to be continued and expanded. Furthermore, Eckermann’s fiancée urged him in a letter of 1823 not to fail to communicate to her any and all of Goethe’s remarks. Already in the winter of 1823–24, Eckermann began writing down his conversations with Goethe, first in letters to his fiancée, then also in the form of a diary. In 1825 Eckermann approached Goethe about publishing his Gespräche. Goethe, however, postponed publication until a later date, and in 1830 decided that they should not be published until after his death. Since Eckermann was very disappointed at this decision, Goethe tried to comfort him with the promise that they would together work through and “rectify” the Gespräche. This was certainly not an empty promise, yet sickness and the feeling that he had to husband the time left to him kept Goethe from fulfilling it. The first part of Eckermann’s Gespräche finally came out in 1836 and received instant acclaim. Perhaps no other contemporary work on Goethe has shaped our picture of the man as much as this. It constitutes the most important contribution to our understanding of the views that Goethe held during his last ten years. It almost took on the character of a kind of gospel. It was Eckermann who created the vision of Goethe’s inner harmony,

1792–1854

German biographer Friedrich Nietzsche says in Menschliches, Allzumenschliches: “Apart from Goethe’s works and especially apart from Goethe’s conversations with Eckermann, the best German book that exists: what then is there left from among the German prose literature that would deserve to be read again and again?” Indeed, no other work devoted by contemporaries to the memory of Goethe has captured readers from all over the world as much as Eckermann’s Gespräche mit Goethe (1836–48; Conversations with Goethe). Eckermann was reared in great poverty as the son of a pedlar. His spent his youth under considerable privation and acquired his knowledge through private study. In 1812 he became Mairie-Secretary in Bevensen near Lüneburg. In 1813–14 he served in the German war of liberation against Napoleon, and up until 1821 he was a clerk in various offices of the war department in Hanover. Only when he was 25 was he finally able to attend the “Gymnasium,” studying literature and aesthetics at the University of Göttingen from 1821 to 1823. Yet already at an early age he admired Goethe. When he sent his Beiträge zur Poesie mit besonderer Hinweisung auf Goethe [Contributions to Poetry with Special Reference to Goethe] to Goethe in 1823 he attracted Goethe’s attention through his sensitive evaluation of the master’s work. Later that year, Eckermann went to Weimar to meet Goethe. The encounter was very cordial, the attraction mutual, and Goethe invited Eckermann to stay. Thereupon, Eckermann remained in Goethe’s vicinity until Goethe’s death. Eckermann gave up his own aspirations of becoming an original poet and became Goethe’s closest associate. It was thanks to Eckermann’s urging that Goethe completed the second part of his Faust and also the last part of his Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth). This notwithstanding, he was never Goethe’s officially hired salaried employee. Through Goethe’s negotiations, he was able to earn his living teaching German to Englishmen. Between 1823 and Goethe’s death in 1832, Goethe and Eckermann had more than a thousand personal encounters. From 1829 to 1835 he was the tutor of the later grand duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Carl Alexander. In 1830 he set out on a journey to Italy with Goethe’s son August, broke it off prematurely, and returned to Weimar. In 1831 a contract was signed between Eckermann and Goethe that would make Eckermann the editor of Goethe’s posthumous works at 291

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of Goethe the Olympian. In his early Beiträge zur Poesie mit besonderer Hinweisung auf Goethe Eckermann asserted that “Goethe is like sunshine in a clear sky, everything is lucidity, tranquillity, compassion”. He reaffirmed these images throughout his Gespräche. In 1926 André Gide suggested in his diary that Eckermann was perhaps Goethe’s greatest stroke of luck. In a letter to the composer Karl Friedrick Zelter of 1830, Goethe called Eckermann “getreuer Eckart” (faithful Eckart) after the legendary figure of early German literature, and Goethe’s relationship to Eckermann always remained that of master and disciple. In his conversations with Goethe, Eckermann assumes throughout a humble, self-effacing attitude. It was only later in the 20th century that the myth of the Olympian Goethe as created by Eckermann was gradually deconstructed. Eckermann’s Gespräche of 1823–32 belong to the group of biographical writings that are written from first-hand knowledge of the subject. While it may be ranked among the masterpieces of biographic writings, it is most obviously comparable to contemporary European examples such as John Gibson Lockhart’s biography of his father-in-law Sir Walter Scott (1837–38), Thomas Medwin’s Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron (1824), and James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). Together with F.W. Riemer, Eckermann also prepared and edited the first complete publication of Goethe’s works: Vollständige Ausgabe letzter Hand (1827–30, 40 vols). He also acted as Goethe’s literary executor and published Goethe’s posthumous works (1832–33). In 1982 the German writer Martin Walser wrote a tribute to Goethe and to Eckermann: In Goethe’s Hand: Szenen aus dem 19. Jahrhundert [In Goethe’s Hand: Scences from the 19th Century] that was broadcast in the same year and again in 1999 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Goethe’s birth, 28 August 1999. In this work, Walser argues that the relationship between Goethe and Eckermann can still be considered as a model for German culture. Eckermann’s Gespräche has been translated into many languages. The first English translation, Conversations with Goethe (1839), was prepared by the American critic Margaret Fuller. This translation offered only a selection of the Gespräche, yet went through several editions. In 1850 a translation by John Oxenford of the complete work appeared. An abbreviated French translation by J.N. Charles came on the market in 1862 and was followed by a complete translation by Emile Délerot in 1863.

Reference to Goethe], which included an analysis of Goethe’s Elective Affinities. Sent Goethe a manuscript of his Beiträge, and was invited to become his unpaid literary assistant in Weimar, 1823. Served in this position until Goethe’s death in 1832, then acted as his literary executor and published his books (1832–33). Married Johanna Bertram, early 1830s: one son (wife died in childbirth 1834). Also taught English and acted as tutor to Prince Karl Alexander, son of the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. Appointed librarian at Weimar court, 1838. Published Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens (Conversations with Goethe), based on notes made during meetings with Goethe, 1836–48. Appointed grand-ducal councillor, Weimar, 1842. Died in Weimar, 3 December 1854.

Selected Writings Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, 1823–1832, 3 vols, 1836–48; edited by H.H. Houben, 1909, Fritz Bergemann, 1955, and Otto Schönberger, 1994; as Goethes Gespräche mit J.P. Eckermann, edited by Franz Deibel, 2 vols, 1908; as Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life (selections), translated by Margaret Fuller, 1839; as Words of Goethe, 1949; translated by John Oxenford as Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret, 2 vols, 1850, revised 1883, Conversations with Goethe, 1930, Conversations with Eckermann, 1823–1832, 1984, and Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann, edited by J.K. Moorhead, 1998; as Conversations with Goethe (selections), translated by Gisela O’Brien, 1964

Further Reading Gröll, Walter und Günther Hagen (editors), Johann Peter Eckermann: Leben und Werk: zum 200. Geburtstag am 21.9.1992, Winsen, Luhe: Museum im Marstall, 1992 Henscheid, Eckhard, Eckermann und sein Goethe: getreu nach der Quelle, Zurich: Haffman, 1994 Houben, Heinrich Hubert, “Nachwort des Herausgebers” in Eckermann’s Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1949 Houben, Heinrich Hubert, J.P. Eckermann, Sein Leben für Goethe, nach seinen neuaufgefundenen Tagebüchern und Briefen dargestellt, Leipzig: Haessel, 1925 Lüth, Erich, Johann Peter Eckermann: Zwischen Elbe, Heide und Weimar, Hamburg: Christians, 1978 Petersen, Julius, Die Entstehung der Eckermannschen Gespräche und ihre Glaubwürdigkeit, Frankfurt: Diesterweg, 1925 Ronell, Avital, Dictations: On Haunted Writing, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986

Edel, Leon

1907–1997

American biographer and critic

Gerlinde Ulm Sanford Biography Born in Winsen an der Luhe, near Lüneburg, Hanover (now in Germany), 21 September 1792. His family were poor, and he had little schooling before the age of 14. Became government clerk, 1808; subsequently promoted to town clerk of Bevensen, near Lüneburg. Stationed in Belgium in volunteer army corps at the start of the War of Liberation, 1812–13. Visited art galleries, notably those in Brussels, and wanted to study art on his return to Hanover, but lacked the funds. Became clerk in quartermaster section of Hanoverian War Department, 1813. Studied Schiller and Goethe. Took private Latin lessons and enrolled in Gymnasium in Hanover, 1817. Became engaged to Johanna Bertram, 1819. Published Gedichte, a volume of poems, 1821. Studied law, history, and literature at Göttingen, 1821–22. Moved near to Hanover, and wrote Beiträge zur Poesie mit besonderer Hinweisung auf Goethe [1823; Contributions to Poetry with Special

The author of essays on biography, and of the group portrait Bloomsbury: A House of Lions (1979), Leon Edel is best known for his five-volume biography of Henry James. Appearing over 19 years, and celebrated long before its completion, it has been called “the greatest biography of the [twentieth] century” (Epstein), and “one of the truly distinguished works of creative scholarship of our time, perhaps all time” (Adridge). Edel had strong opinions about biography. Though contemptuous of “hacks” who “cash in on a new reputation or a horrendous crime”, he felt, as Lyall Powers notes, “a closer affinity with artists than with scholars and critics”. Edel found heavily documented academic biographies distasteful. Convinced that “critical and poetical vanity relegates biography to second-class citizenship”, he returned the favour by calling

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“critical biography” a “contradiction in terms”. By connecting “the life that went into the making of the art, and the art itself”, the biographer escapes Proust’s definition of the critic as “an incomplete man who completes himself with the work of another”. And though sometimes seen himself as “a parable of the modern literary biographer’s self-immolation in his subject” (Holmes), Edel held that the biographer cannot be a hagiographer. “Biography tells the truth”, he wrote, “but it also dispels the mystery; it rubs off the magic”. These attitudes arose from professional pride, for as Richard Holmes writes, Edel “defended the modern genre of biography” as “a noble and adventurous art, as noble as the making of painted portraits, poems, statues”. Although biography “cannot be fiction”, but must “explain and examine the evidence”, the biographer is “as much of a storyteller as the novelist or historian”. Selection is crucial. Like Marie Curie, the biographer melts down “tons and tons of pitch-blende residues” to get “a tiny glowing particle, the radium of human personality”. Then, by exercising “the biographical imagination”, the artist “takes the fragments and creates a mosaic”. Though each biography “needs the form best suited to its subject”, the form of Edel’s Henry James was a virtue of necessity. Since most of his research for the entire Life still remained to be done when he was writing the first volume, he developed what he called a “retrospective method”. Like a playwright, he created suspense early by planting “pistols” that would go off later. Like the episodic novelist, he would start one thing, then turn to another. Flashbacks let him update the record while illuminating the present. And from such novelists as Proust, Joyce, Woolf, and James himself, Edel learned, as he said himself, “how to recapitulate, to summarize, to plan transitions from volume to volume, and to watch my pace while using the scenic method”. The links he forged between biography and psychology have provoked debate. Though Edel was praised by analyst Joseph Lichtenberg for synthesizing a “thorough knowledge” of James “with the developmental focus and spirit of inquiry of psychoanalysis”, Richard Ellmann charged that Edel’s psychologizing rejected obvious explanations, was idiosyncratic when discussing ordinary affairs, and often seemed closer to Alexander Pope than Sigmund Freud. Edel himself insisted that as “a method of treatment” psychoanalysis could not be applied to dead authors or static texts, but that “psychology and psychoanalytic concepts” could help us study “mankind’s ability to create and use myths and symbols”. Literature is no “mere anodyne, or ‘escape’ or a symptom of neurosis”, but “a work of health” and “a force for life-enhancement”. Biographers must therefore describe how authors employ “the health-giving dreams and disciplines of transcendent imaginations” to write works that maintain “well-being when communicated to the culture and the race”. By connecting these “universal works” to those “personal parables”, the biographer celebrates “victories of life over death, triumphs of art over despair”. Edel compared this “personal parable”, this “inner sense of self” that shapes and expresses “the personality that is our subject and our art”, to “the figure under the carpet”, or to the true life-myth behind “a given mask”. Since Edel believed that portraits by painters like Picasso, Matisse, and Modigliani also penetrated masks, the biographer studying modern artists was, in his view, often seeking the life-myth behind artworks that

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themselves seek to get behind masks. Though such unmasking can resemble pop psychology, in Edel’s own life of James and his Bloomsbury group biography, the readings are complex, finely nuanced, and often moving. Edel once wrote that “the recreation in words of a life” is “one of the most beautiful and most difficult tasks a literary artist can set himself”. His success at this task, and in articulating its principles, has led many to consider him the foremost literary biographer of his time. Craig Howes Biography Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, 9 September 1907. Studied at McGill University, Montreal, Canada (BA 1927, MA 1928); University of Paris (Litt.D 1932). Appointed assistant professor, Sir George Williams College, Montreal, 1932. Turned to a career in journalism, 1934. Served with the US Army in France and Germany, 1943–47: decorated with the Bronze Star. Chief of information control, News Agency, in the United States Zone of occupied territory, 1946–47. Subsequently held academic positions at Princeton University, New York University, Indiana University, the University of Hawaii, Harvard University, Purdue University, and Dartmouth College. Established his literary reputation with his biography of Henry James (5 vols, 1953–72). Awarded the Pulitzer prize in biography, 1963. Also wrote literary histories, including Bloomsbury: A House of Lions (1979), and a critical study of biography, Writing Lives (1984), as well as continuing to produce numerous biographical essays. Died in Honolulu, Hawaii, 5 September 1997.

Selected Writings James Joyce: The Last Journey (biographical study), 1947 (with E.K. Brown) Willa Cather (biographical study), 1953 Henry James (biographical study), 5 vols, 1953–72; revised as The Life of Henry James, 2 vols, 1977; 1-volume edition, as Henry James: A Life, 1985 1. The Untried Years, 1843–1870, 1953 2. The Conquest of London, 1870–1881, 1962 3. The Middle Years, 1882–1895, 1962 4. The Treacherous Years, 1895–1901, 1969 5. The Master, 1901–1916, 1972 Henry D. Thoreau (biographical study), 1957 Bloomsbury: A House of Lions, 1979 Also wrote the studies Literary Biography, 1957, and Writing Lives: Principia Biographica, 1984; and edited Selected Letters of Henry James, 1956; The Diary of Alice James, 1964; Henry James: Letters, 4 vols, 1975–84; and four volumes of the diaries and notebooks of Edmund Wilson, The Twenties, 1975, The Thirties, 1980, The Forties, 1983, and The Fifties, 1986

Further Reading Aldridge, John, “The Anatomy of Passion in the Consummate Henry James”, Saturday Review, (12 February 1972): 65–68 Anderson, Quentin, “Leon Edel’s ‘Henry James’”, Virginia Quarterly Review, 48 (1973): 621–30 Clarke, Gerald, “The Many Lives of Leon Edel”, Connoisseur, 222/960 (July 1992): 52–55, 108–11 Edel, Leon, Literary Biography, London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1957; New York: Doubleday, 1959 Edel, Leon, introductions to his Henry James, vols 3–5, London: Rupert Hart-Davis, and Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1962–72 Edel, Leon, “The Poetics of Biography” in Contemporary Approaches to English Studies, edited by Hilda Schiff, London: Heinemann, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1977 Edel, Leon, “The Figure under the Carpet” in Telling Lives: The Biographer’s Art, edited by Marc Pachter, Washington, DC: New Republic Books / National Portrait Gallery, 1979 Edel, Leon, “How I Came to Henry James”, Henry James Review, 4 (1982): 160–64

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Edel, Leon, “Shaping and Telling: The Biographer at Work”, Henry James Review, 3 (1982): 165–75 Edel, Leon, Stuff of Sleep and Dreams: Experiments in Literary Psychology, New York: Harper and Row, and London: Chatto and Windus, 1982 Edel, Leon, Writing Lives: Principia Biographia, New York: Norton, 1984 Edel, Leon, “Confessions of a Biographer” in Psychoanalytic Studies of Biography, edited by George Moraitis and George H. Pollock, Madison: International Universities Press, 1987 Edel, Leon, “Reply to Dr. Lichtenberg” in Psychoanalytic Studies of Biography, edited by George Moraitis and George H. Pollock, Madison: International Universities Press, 1987 Edel entry in Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series, vol. 22, Detroit: Gale Research, 1988 Ellmann, Richard, Golden Codgers: Biographical Speculations, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1973 Epstein, Joseph, “The Greatest Biography of the Century”, Book World (6 February 1972): 1 Fogel, Daniel Mark, “Leon Edel and James Studies: A Survey and Evaluation”, Henry James Review, 4 (1982): 3–30 Fromm, Gloria G. (editor), Essaying Biography: A Celebration for Leon Edel, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987 Holmes, Richard, “A Literary Obsession”, New York Times Magazine, (4 January 1998): 42 Honan, Park, Authors’ Lives: On Literary Biography and the Arts of Language, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1990 Krupnick, Mark L., “Henry James: The Artist as Emperor”, Novel: A Forum on Fiction, 6 (1973): 257–65 Lichtenberg, Joseph D., “Henry James and Leon Edel” in Psychoanalytic Studies of Biography, edited by George Moraitis and George H. Pollock, Madison, Wisconsin: International Universities Press, 1987 McCulloch, Jeanne, “The Art of Biography I: Leon Edel”, Paris Review, 27 (1985): 156–207 Miller, James E., Jr, “The Biographer with the Blue Guitar” in Psychoanalytic Studies of Biography, edited by George Moraitis and George H. Pollock, Madison, Wisconsin: International Universities Press, 1987 Novarr, David, The Lines of Life: Theories of Biography, 1880–1970, West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1986 Ozick, Cynthia, “The Lesson of the Master” in Leon Edel and Literary Art, edited by Lyall H. Powers, Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988 Petrie, Dennis W., Ultimately Fiction: Design in Modern American Literary Biography, West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1981 Powers, Lyall H. (editor), Leon Edel and Literary Art, Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988 Powers, Lyall, entry on Leon Edel in American Literary Biographers: First Series, vol. 103 of Dictionary of Literary Biography, edited by Steven Serafin, Detroit: Gale Research, 1991 Rollyson, Carl, “Leon Edel” in Biography: An Annotated Bibliography, Pasadena: Salem Press, 1992 Whittemore, Reed, Whole Lives: Shapers of Modern Biography, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989

Edmond, Lauris

1924–

New Zealand poet and autobiographer Lauris Edmond’s critical reputation rests primarily on her prolific output as a poet and on her autobiography. She published the first of 11 volumes of poetry at the age of 51. Her three volumes of autobiography, Hot October (1989), Bonfires in the Rain (1991), and The Quick World (1992), were also been published in a slightly abridged single volume entitled An Autobiography (1994). In addition to her autobiography, excerpts of

which have been included in magazines and anthologies, Edmond discussed her life and work in interviews and essays. In the tradition of classic autobiographies, Edmond’s tone is confessional, reflecting her desire “to go down to the dark and steamy kitchen of the soul, to lift the lids of cooking pots and examine the contents”. In response to readers of Hot October who took the subtitle, An Autobiographical Story, to mean the events were fictional, Edmond stated that her autobiography was as “true as I can make it”. While asserting the “truth” of her narrative, Edmond acknowledged her subjectivity, saying that “others would tell the story differently”. This difference is highlighted in The Autobiography of My Father (1992), where Edmond’s son, Martin, attempts to tell his father’s version of events. Edmond’s autobiography documents her journey towards professional and personal independence. Hot October charts her progress through a relatively untroubled childhood, adolescence, and student career at Wellington Teachers’ Training College. In Bonfires in the Rain Edmond describes how she fulfilled the social expectations of wife and motherhood. Here Edmond sees her life as following “the familiar pattern” of her generation. The pattern is altered, however, when Edmond experiences an epiphany or “conversion” while watching her family play cricket and realizes that she has no identity independent of her family. The later volumes record her return to university study, overseas travel, the disintegration of her marriage, her sense of fragmentation as she attempts to make “a new person out of old materials”, and, after years of writing in secret, her burgeoning career as a poet. While Edmond’s autobiography documents her personal journey, her story also functions as a social commentary on New Zealand culture and world events. Edmond’s childhood occurs during the Depression; her time at teachers’ college is coloured by World War II; and she begins to gain a sense of independence in conjunction with the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s. Edmond’s “literary map”, which is central to The Quick World, also provides a commentary on the New Zealand literary scene, complementing other New Zealand literary autobiographies, such as those by Frank Sargeson and Janet Frame. Edmond presented her autobiography in chronological order, embellishing her recollections with the inclusion of diary and journal extracts, letters, and poems. Part Two of Hot October consists almost entirely of letters Edmond wrote to her mother during her time at teachers’ college. These letters, like the extracts from Edmond’s travel journal in The Quick World, give the reader a sense of recapturing “authentic” past experiences. While this section from Hot October appears to lack any sense of self-reflection, Edmond admitted that she “slightly rearranged and abridged” the letters. This suggests that our impression of this period of her life is still shaped by the voice of the mature Edmond. As well as providing insight into her past experience through letters and diary and journal entries, Edmond also included poems in her text. She explained the genesis of these poems in relation to personal experience, such as those exploring her grief in response to the death of her daughter, Rachel. For critics Ken Arvidson and Peter Whiteford this confirms that Edmond’s poetry, often narrated in the first person, can be read in closer conjunction with her life than an assumed first-person poetic voice would usually allow.

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While some reviewers feel that Edmond’s autobiography suffers from the absence of the perspectives of others, such as her husband, it has received a mainly favourable critical reception. Edmond has been praised for her clear and elegant prose, and candour. Her autobiography has also been commended for its perceptive study of small-town New Zealand life in the 1950s and 1960s and for Edmond’s ability to place her story of personal development within larger patterns of social change, particularly concerning the role of women. Edmond’s interest in life writing was not restricted to her own experiences. She edited The Letters of A.R.D. Fairburn (1981) and co-edited a collection of New Zealand women’s war stories, Women in Wartime: New Zealand Women Tell Their Story (1986). Catherine Silverstone Biography Lauris Dorothy Edmond. Born in New Zealand, 2 April 1924. Educated at Napier Girls’ High School, 1937–41. Married Trevor Edmond, 1945: six daughters and one son. Studied at the University of Waikato, Hamilton (BA 1968), and Victoria University, Wellington (MA 1972). Taught at Huntly College, 1968–69, and Heretaunga College, Wellington, 1970–72. Editor, Post-Primary Teachers Association, Wellington, 1973–80. Published her first volume of poetry, In Middle Air, 1975. Off-campus tutor and lecturer, Massey University, Palmerston North, from 1980. Writer-in-residence, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia, 1985. Received the Commonwealth poetry prize for Selected Poems (1984), 1985. Published In Position, 1997. OBE (Officer, Order of the British Empire), 1986. Died in Wellington, 28 January 2000.

Selected Writings Hot October: An Autobiographical Story, 1989; abridged in An Autobiography, 1994 Bonfires in the Rain, 1991; abridged in An Autobiography, 1994 The Quick World, 1992; abridged in An Autobiography, 1994 An Autobiography, edited by Anna Rogers, 1994 Has also edited The Letters of A.R.D. Fairburn (1981) and Women in Wartime: New Zealand Women Tell Their Story (with Carolyn Milward, 1986).

Further Reading Arvidson, Ken, “Affirming Lucidity – Edmond’s ‘Wisdom Poetry’”, New Zealand Books, 6/4 (1996): 1–3 Broughton, William, “Simple Fact or Subtle Fiction?”, New Zealand Books, 2/3 (1992): 12–13 (review of The Quick World) Edmond, Lauris, “Only Connect: The Making of an Autobiography”, Landfall, 188 (1994): 247–54 Edmond, Martin, The Autobiography of My Father, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1992 Gibbons, Peter, entry on “Non-Fiction” in The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature, 2nd edition, edited by Terry Sturm, Auckland, Oxford, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 (first edition, as The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English, 1991) Hankin, Cherry, “Hot October: An Autobiographical Story”, Landfall, 173 (1990): 101–04 (review) Slaughter, Tracey, “The Per /son Authorised: Married Women’s Autobiography and the Death of the Author, 1882 & 1992”, Women’s Studies Journal, 14/2 (1998): 31–60 Whiteford, Peter, entry on Lauris Edmond in The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, edited by Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie, Melbourne, Oxford, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998

Edwards, Jonathan

295

1703–1758

American Congregational minister and prose writer The profusion of writings by the 18th-century American revivalist and theologian Jonathan Edwards are systematically being published as The Works of Jonathan Edwards by Yale University Press. For those who need a more accessible point of entry, the editors of the collected works have also published A Jonathan Edwards Reader (1995). This reader divides his writings between the public Edwards (e.g. his sermons and accounts of revival) and the personal Edwards (e.g. his notebooks and “Personal Narrative”). While this distinction is rather arbitrary, it provides a useful framework for exploring Edwards’s contribution to life writing. Having experienced revival at his own congregation in New England, Edwards wrote about it on a number of occasions. In one of these works, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737), his empirical methodology is particularly visible. Edwards’s interest in empiricism has been attributed to his reading of John Locke, although recent scholars have been keen to temper the enthusiasm that Perry Miller showed for this connection in his biography of Edwards. Edwards’s interest in religious conversion can also be found in works such as The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741), Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England (1742), and A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746). Edwards not only described religious conversions; he also analysed them, and this has encouraged many to view him as an early religious psychologist. One of the reasons Edwards wrote about revival was that he wanted to answer those who questioned the authenticity of the conversions involved. Thus Edwards offered various criteria by which genuine religious affection might be identified. As Wayne Proudfoot explains, “Edwards is well aware that sincere firstperson reports of a new sensation or perception carry no guarantee that affections are ‘truly spiritual or gracious’”. In A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Edwards suggested 12 signs by which a genuine work of God might be measured. In doing so, he played down the subjective and personal nature of religious experience. This is evident when we examine the second sign: “The first objective ground of gracious affections, is the transcendentally excellent and amiable nature of divine things, as they are in themselves; and not any conceived relation they bear to self, or self-interest”. A further example of Edwards’s desire for objectivity can be seen in Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion, where he used his wife (Sarah Pierpont) as a model of conversion without disclosing her identity – instead referring to her as “the person”. Yet while Edwards looked for an objectivity by which revival might be judged, he also described God’s works as mysterious and ultimately beyond human understanding. This can be explained with reference to his Calvinism, which affirmed the total depravity of the human heart and mind. Edwards defended this position in The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended (1758). In An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr David Brainerd (1749), Edwards edited the journals of Brainerd, a missionary who tried to evangelize the American Indians between 1743 and 1747. On one level, this account of the “true

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nature of religious life” is another example of the public Edwards. At the same time, Norman Pettit tells us that “in no other work is the reader made so vividly aware of Edwards’ personal response to the events at the time”. Moreover, the Life of Brainerd straddles the border between autobiography and biography: it is autobiographical in its reproduction of large sections of Brainerd’s diary, biographical in the sense that it is heavily edited by Edwards, and autobiographical in the way that Edwards reveals a great deal about his own experiences through a third person. Although critics such as William Scheick have rightly argued that Edwards’s public writings reveal considerable concern about his own spiritual condition, his personal writings offer a unique insight into his inner life. His personal writings take many different forms, from the extant portion of his diary (1722–35) to works such as his “Personal Narrative” (1765). In these writings Edwards appropriated the genre of spiritual autobiography, a genre often considered to have originated with Augustine’s 4th-century Confessions. As many writers have noted, Edwards’s use of spiritual autobiography can also be traced back to the classic Puritan conversion narratives that were prevalent in the 17th century, while George Claghorn goes on to note this influence in Edwards’s other works: “‘On Sarah Pierpont’ is an excellent example of the Puritan plain style. Its lyric qualities invite oral recitation”. Mark Knight

A Jonathan Edwards Reader, edited by John E. Smith, Harry S. Stout, and Kenneth P. Minkema, 1995 (includes his notebooks and “Personal Narrative”) Letters and Personal Writings, edited by George S. Claghorn, 1998

Further Reading Claghorn, George, Introduction in Letters and Personal Writings, vol. 16 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, edited by Perry Miller, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1998 Lesser, M.X., Jonathan Edwards: A Reference Guide, Boston: G.K. Hall, 1981 Lesser, M.X. (editor), Jonathan Edwards: An Annotated Bibliography, 1979–1993, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994 Miller, Perry, Jonathan Edwards, New York: Sloane, 1949 Pettit, Norman, Introduction in An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr David Brainerd, vol. 7 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, edited by Perry Miller, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1985 Proudfoot, Wayne, “Perception and Love in Religious Affections” in Jonathan Edwards’s Writings: Text, Context, Interpretation, edited by Stephen J. Stein, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996 Scheick, William J., The Writings of Jonathan Edwards: Theme, Motif, and Style, College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1975 Smith, John E., Harry S. Stout, and Kenneth P. Minkema, Introduction in A Jonathan Edwards Reader, edited by Smith, Stout, and Minkema, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1995

Egypt see Arabic entries

Biography Born in East Windsor, colony of Connecticut, North America (now in the United States), 5 October 1703. Educated by his father, a minister, at home. Studied at Yale College (later Yale University), Wethersfield, then New Haven, Connecticut, 1716–20 (BA); studied theology in New Haven, 1720–22. Served as a Presbyterian minister, New York, 1722–23. Tutor at Yale, 1724–25. Ordained, 1726. Assistant minister under his grandfather, Solomon Stoddart, at the Congregational church, Northampton, Massachusetts, 1726–29. Married Sarah Pierpont, 1727: 11 children. Succeeded his grandfather as minister of Northampton Congregational church, 1729. His powerful hardline Calvinist preaching and writing gave rise to a religious revival, 1734–35, which spread through the Connecticut valley and turned into the “Great Awakening”. Wrote A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746). Was dismissed by his congregation because of his overzealous orthodoxy, 1750. Missionary to the Mahican and Mohawk Indians, and minister in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, from 1751. Published Careful and Strict Enquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of That Freedom of the Will, his most famous work in its day, 1754. President, College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), 1757–58. Regarded as the greatest theologian of American puritanism. Died in Princeton, 22 March 1758.

Selected Writings A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton, 1737; edited by C.C. Goen in The Great Awakening, 1972 The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, 1741; edited by C.C. Goen in The Great Awakening, 1972 Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England, 1742; edited by C.C. Goen in The Great Awakening, 1972 A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, 1746; as Religious Affections, edited by John E. Smith, 1959 An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr David Brainerd, 1749; as The Life of David Brainerd, edited by Norman Pettit, 1985 Works (Yale edition), vol. 4: The Great Awakening: A Faithful Narrative, The Distinguishing Marks, Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival, Letters Relating to the Revival, edited by C.C. Goen, 1972

Elegies It may sound paradoxical to claim that life writing is an important part of death writing or elegy. But in performing what Freud calls “the work of mourning” (“Mourning and Melancholia”, 1917), most great elegists prove the truth of Rainer Maria Rilke’s saying that rightly to celebrate death is also to magnify life. Without slighting the love and friendship of the person who has died, elegists have to inaugurate their own journey back to life. Their life writing has to include commemoration of the dead within the celebration of a gift much larger than mere living. This is the gift of self-consciousness, which only the autobiography of a mourner can dramatize in all its subtlety and range. If eternity is in love with the productions of time, it is because in the midst of death we are in life and consciousness as well. The mourner’s own life story is an active but suppressed subtext of the great classical elegies from John Milton’s “Lycidas” (1637) down to Matthew Arnold’s “Thyrsis” (1866). Unless we assume that Milton was half-afraid of finding his own story written in Edward King’s thwarted ambitions and premature death, nothing in the traditional language and ancient symbols of “Lycidas” will quite prepare us for its intemperate attack upon a corrupt clergy and its inquisition of fate. Since King’s death is not a distressing accident but the result of God’s will, the mourner’s energetic rebuke of the nymphs for neglecting Lycidas may take us by surprise. We feel the shock of “the blind Fury’s” slitting “the thin-spun life” with her “abhorred shears” (“Lycidas”, 75–76). As Douglas Bush says, “Atropos, the third Fate, is not enough; God’s providence seems to act with more malign irresponsibility.” Equally shocking is Percy Bysshe

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Shelley’s bitter attack upon the reviewers in “Adonais” (1821), his elegy for the poet John Keats, or the contempt that Arnold expresses for the philistines who jeopardize the contemplative life of his friend Clough in “Thyrsis”. Only in a mourner’s full-scale autobiography can life writing become the principal subject of an elegy. The greatest example in English literature is Tennyson’s In Memoriam (1850), which has as much in common with the life writing of Augustine’s Confessions as it has with “Lycidas”. Just as Augustine and John Bunyan (in Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 1666) use biblical situations to order their present experience, and just as Dante uses the history of Israel as a figure of his own pilgrimage in the Divina Commedia, so Tennyson keeps referring his personal experience in In Memoriam to Hallam’s life, death, and afterlife as a kind of continuing Bible or paradigm of his own spiritual history. An obvious example of this practice is Tennyson’s habit of observing the anniversaries of Hallam’s death and of reorganizing the calendar into the first, second, and third Christmas, spring, or other season after the event. Another characteristic of life writing is its use of a second person or “mediator”, who helps make accessible to Augustine or Tennyson the truths he is trying to reach. Tennyson’s views of immortality, art, and love are determined for him in advance by Arthur Hallam, the man he “held as half-divine” (14.10). Equally important is the pattern of conversion in confessional writing. The conversion may be explicitly religious, as in Augustine’s conversion from pagan rhetoric to Christian theology in his Confessions, or only implicitly so, as in Tennyson’s climactic experiences in sections 95 and 130 of In Memoriam. Confessions also tend to be circular in form, ending where they begin, though on a higher plane. The resolutions of the speaker’s problems are often evident, at least by analogy, at very early stages of the confession. Thus just as Augustine finds unsuspected relations between rhetorical words and the theological Word, so Tennyson discovers in the coded language he must use an important principle: the truth of the “lucid veil”, which “half reveal[s]” and “half conceal[s]” its meaning (5.3–4). Indeed it is just as anomalous for the reserved, inarticulate elegist of In Memoriam to write an elegy as it is for John Henry Newman, an autobiographer who says his secret is his own (“Secretum meum mihi”), to write Apologia pro vita sua (1864). A grievously reticent mourner, Tennyson believes that any fully disclosed life story is usually a lie. What a mourner genuinely feels, he cannot express: and what he expresses tends to falsify what he feels. Equally elliptical is the life writing of such women poets as Christina Rossetti and Emily Dickinson, whose favourite topic is the thinly disguised drama of their own dying. As Alfred Kazin says, “What fascinated Dickinson in all her greatest poems about death coming was exactly its coming … Death has lost its promise, but it is still the one mystery.” The female elegist most obsessed with the failure of traditional male elegies to provide a model for the experience of women mourners is the American poet Amy Clampitt. In her poem “A Procession at Candlemas” (1985), a dehumanizing male culture tries to tame fire, the carrying of new life, by inventing the Mosaic insult of religion perpetuated in such feasts as the Virgin’s Purification, the feast of Candlemas. Every culture lives by fictions, including supreme fictions that God “might actually need a mother”. Though such fictions make the tender-minded

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happy, there is a need to refine them, making them worthier of tough-minded feminists who want “the terror and the loveliness entrusted / into naked hands”. The bird that carries the “nucleus of fire” shows the mourner how to repossess the past and make “the lost connection” with more truly feminine ways of mourning. Such acts are peculiar, Clampitt believes, to the life writing of women poets, mainly because they are recoverable only by instinct – the way “an exquisite blunderer”, some stumbling migrant bird, rediscovers a flyway it had forgotten it knew. Of course, the therapeutic success of a strong mourner is no guarantee of aesthetic success. It is possible to master grief in a bumptious elegy like Robert Browning’s “Prospice” (1861) and still write a defectively strident poem. Conversely, Henry King’s desire to marry his wife’s dust in “An Exequy” (1657) condemns him to psychological failure. But though he is a weak mourner, few poetic testaments are more honest and affecting. Critics of life writing and elegy may find it less important to discriminate between strong and weak mourners or between tough- and tender-minded attitudes than between life styles that are genuine and those that are spurious. A so-called tender-minded mourner such as Robert Frost’s Amy in “Home Burial” (1914) may be stronger in the end than her tough-minded husband. She knows that sadness, even tragedy, can etch her more sharply and that we are all defined by what we have lost. Since the most unbearable parts of Frost’s life writing in “Home Burial” are also the subtlest and most tenderly counterpointed – the most antiphonal – few elegies are at once so honest and so wrenching, so full of what Randall Jarrell calls “the grimness and the awfulness and the untouchable sadness of things”. W. David Shaw See also Epitaphs; Loss, Bereavement, and Life Writing; Obituaries

Further Reading Ariès, Philippe, The Hour of Our Death, translated by Helen Weaver, New York: Knopf, 1981 Bush, Douglas, Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition in English Poetry, revised edition, New York: Norton, 1963 Freud, Sigmund, “Mourning and Melancholia” in A General Selection from the Works of Sigmund Freud, edited by John Rickman, London: Hogarth Press, 1937; New York: Liveright, 1957 Jarrell, Randall, Poetry and the Age, New York: Knopf, 1953 Kazin, Alfred, God and the American Writer, New York: Knopf, 1997 Kristeva, Julia, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, translated by Leon S. Roudiez, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989 Lipking, Lawrence, The Life of the Poet: Beginning and Ending Poetic Careers, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981 Peltason, Timothy, Reading In Memoriam, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985 Sacks, Peter M., The English Elegy: Studies in the Genre from Spenser to Yeats, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985 Shaw, W. David, “In Memoriam and the Rhetoric of Confession”, English Literary History, 38 (March 1971): 80–103

Ellmann, Richard

1918–1987

American biographer and literary scholar Widely acclaimed as the leading literary biographer of the later 20th century, Richard Ellmann is remembered for his studies of three major Irish writers, Yeats: The Man and the Masks (1948),

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James Joyce (1959; revised, 1982), and Oscar Wilde (1987). His biography of Yeats grew out of a doctoral dissertation at Yale; later he held professorships at Northwestern, Oxford, and Emory universities, and his life of Wilde was published very shortly after his death. Ellmann’s other publications include numerous critical editions (notably, of Joyce’s letters), biographical and critical essays, literary anthologies, and translations. James Joyce, which is the longest and most celebrated of his books, was a landmark of scholarship and critical understanding that made all previous biographies of 20th-century writers look amateur. Ellmann was a lifelong academic, whose originality lay in his profound fusion of literary criticism with historical research. He first visited Ireland in the summer of 1945, while on secondment from the US Navy. Yeats had died in 1939, Joyce in 1941, and Ellmann was the earliest postwar scholar to seek out the surviving witnesses of their lives. Returning to Dublin to study at Trinity College, he pored over the rich horde of Yeats’s unpublished manuscripts and personal papers to which he was granted access by the poet’s widow. Later, the reminiscences of Joyce’s cantankerous brother Stanislaus were to exert a heavy (and, some have felt, excessive) influence on James Joyce. But Ellmann’s researches were extensive as well as timely; his Joyce biography acknowledges more than 300 people in 13 countries. His own archives, now at Tulsa, will be a significant resource for future scholars of Irish literature. When Ellmann began working on Yeats and Joyce, their association with modernism and literary experiment was seen as outmoded, and much of their later writing had been dismissed as unreadable. Yeats’s dabblings in the occult seemed at once grandiose and frivolous. Joyce, frightened by the banning of Ulysses (1922), had supposedly retreated into impenetrable obscurity. Both writers were suspected of incipient megalomania. Ellmann not only met these challenges to interpretation head-on, but he refused to romanticize the modernists’ hostility to bourgeois society. Unlike many more recent critics, he tended to play down (rather than to play up) the writers’ literary and political radicalism. On the one hand, his meticulous biographical reconstructions stressed the sheer ordinariness of much in these artists’ lives, and their complex involvement in the society around them; on the other hand, Ellmann patiently sought in their lives and works a unity and central meaning compatible with the values of postwar liberal democracy. Ellmann’s Yeats and, especially, his Joyce were neither literary saints nor saviours, but they were, however paradoxically, fit embodiments of cultural and civic heroism. Influential as Ellmann’s model of the modern scholarly biography has been, his narrative methods and his attitude of tolerant, amiable humanism have had their detractors. His use of anecdote and reminiscence, however carefully sourced, occasionally gives authority to what his scholarly rival Hugh Kenner has called “Irish facts”’ – that is, colourful but unsubstantiated legend. His portraits of Yeats and Joyce as more or less dedicated family men involve a certain idealization, as feminist biographers in particular have come to insist – though just how far Ellmann went in idealizing them may never be known. There are dark sides to these lives that Ellmann, the least censorious of biographers, may have been insufficiently concerned to probe. Nevertheless, for his time he was remarkably frank. Like many of his generation, he is moderately yet pervasively Freudian in

his unravelling of sexual and family relationships. Thanks partly to his work, filial revolt in Yeats, sibling rivalry in Joyce, and Wilde’s devotion to his once-famous mother have become significant biographical topics. Yet Ellmann’s wit, urbanity, and devotion to scholarly detail hold ideology at a distance. Given his eminence as a critic and scholar, Ellmann was remarkably untouched by the “theory wars” that raged in literary criticism during his lifetime. He reached out to a general readership and won a number of prestigious literary prizes. His last major book on Wilde differs from its predecessors in being confined to the use of documentary evidence already available to earlier scholars. Oscar Wilde kept pace with, but did not decisively influence, the late 20th-century critical rehabilitation of its subject. Once again Ellmann set out to trace the intimate relationship between the work and the life and, in his conclusion, he offered a succinct restatement of liberal humanist values. Wilde’s struggle, so Ellmann affirmed, was to “achieve supreme fictions in art, to associate art with social change, to bring together individual and social impulse, to save what is eccentric and singular from being sanitized and standardized, to replace a morality of severity by one of sympathy”. True and admirable though this is, it would be hard to draw a less Wildean-sounding moral from Wilde’s tragic story. Patrick Parrinder Biography Richard David Ellmann. Born in Highland Park, Detroit, Michigan, United States, 15 March 1918. His father, a lawyer, was a Jewish Romanian immigrant; his mother came from Kiev in the Ukraine. Educated in Detroit. Studied English at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (BA 1939, MA 1941). Joined the US Navy, 1943. Seconded to the Office of Strategic Services in London, England, 1945. Visited Dublin and became friends with Georgie Yeats, widow of W.B. Yeats, 1945: given unrestricted access to Yeats’s library and papers. Returned to Dublin as soon as World War II ended, studying at Trinity College (Litt.B). Simultaneously studied for a doctorate on Yeats at Yale University (1947), publishing his dissertation as Yeats: The Man and the Masks in 1948. Began teaching career at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1947. Met the Irish-American feminist critic Mary Donaghue, 1947; married her shortly afterwards. Professor of English at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, 1949–68; also held several visiting appointments. Wrote further biographies, including James Joyce (1959). Moved to New College, Oxford, 1968; Goldsmiths’ Professor of English Literature at Oxford, 1970–84. Appointed to Woodruff chair, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, 1984. Contracted motor neurone disease. His biography of Oscar Wilde (1987) was published posthumously, to great acclaim. Died in Oxford, 13 May 1987.

Selected Writings Yeats: The Man and the Masks (biographical study), 1948 James Joyce (biographical study), 1959, revised 1982 Joyce in Love (lecture), 1959 Literary Biography (lecture), 1971 Golden Codgers: Biographical Speculations, 1973 Four Dubliners: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett, 1986 Oscar Wilde (biographical study), 1987 “Freud and Literary Biography”, in a long the riverrun: Selected Essays, 1988 Also edited vols 2 and 3 of Joyce’s Letters (3 vols, 1957–66) and My Brother’s Keeper: James Joyce’s Early Years (1958) by Stanislaus Joyce

Further Reading Dick, Susan et al. (editor), Omnium Gatherum: Essays for Richard Ellmann, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe, 1989

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Kelly, Joseph, “Stanislaus Joyce, Ellsworth Mason, and Richard Ellmann: The Making of James Joyce”, Joyce Studies Annual, 3 (1992): 98–140 Kenner, Hugh, “The Impertinence of Being Definitive”, Times Literary Supplement (17 December 1982): 1383–83 McGinley, Bernard, Joyce’s Lives: Uses and Abuses of the Biografiend, London: University of North London Press, 1996

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

1803–1882

American essayist, critic, and diarist Ralph Waldo Emerson was among the most influential cultural and literary figures in 19th-century America. An essayist, lecturer, and poet who also wrote voluminous journals and notebooks, he is best known as a Transcendentalist whose writing deeply questioned the moral authority of church, government, and tradition while advocating nonconformist individualism and asserting the divinity of the natural world. In a number of famous essays and addresses such as “The American Scholar”, Emerson further argued that Americans should resist the influence of European cultural forms in order to develop a distinctively American arts and letters. Although Emerson’s published writings are often more metaphysical than personal, they are usually based on journal entries that are explicitly autobiographical. Furthermore, Emerson’s celebration of the individual in such influential works as “Self-Reliance” (1841) articulated the philosophical rationale for the American exploration of the self, thus privileging the introspective literary mode that was to become a staple of subsequent life writing in America. It is hardly a coincidence that Walden (1854), one of the monuments of 19th-century American life writing, was composed by Emerson’s protégé, Henry David Thoreau. Part of Emerson’s legacy to life writing comes, indirectly, from the strong nationalism of his work. Before the early 19th century, Americans routinely looked to Europe for models of cultural genius, and they worried that their young and undeveloped nation might not be a fit subject for great art or literature. Arguing in his lecture of 1837, “The American Scholar”, that “we have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe”, Emerson rejects European cultural influence, and calls upon his readers to investigate and express their own American lives rather than deferring to then-popular narratives of European lives. “The scholar loses no hour which the man lives”, insists Emerson, who further asserts that the duties of the scholar “may all be comprised in self-trust”. Indeed, he goes so far as to suggest that great cultural accomplishments are contingent upon an exploration of the self. The American scholar must learn, he writes, “that in going down into the secrets of his own mind, he has descended into the secrets of all minds”. Emerson’s habits of composition also suggest the vital connection between lived experience and literary accomplishment. He began keeping journals and notebooks in 1819, while a sophomore at Harvard College. Ultimately filling 182 notebooks and covering the more than 60 years before his death in 1882, Emerson’s journal offers an unusually detailed picture of what Socrates would certainly have considered an examined life. Unavailable to readers during Emerson’s lifetime, these journals were posthumously published in the 10-volume Journals of

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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1909–14), which was succeeded by the 16-volume Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960–82), and later augmented by the threevolume The Topical Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1990–94). Emerson mined his journals regularly and extensively to construct the essays and lectures for which he is most famous. Indeed, it is often possible to trace passages from Emerson’s published works directly to his journals, thus connecting the philosophical speculation of his essays with the life events that inspired them. Though Emerson usually kept his life experiences just beneath the surface of his text, his voluminous journal makes it clear that daily life writing was vital to his literary insights and achievements. Emerson’s most important legacy to life writing, however, is neither his essays, nor his addresses, nor even his journals. Rather, it is the remarkably influential way in which his celebration of the individual privileged the idea that literature could and should be inspired by the carefully examined life of the author. While all of Emerson’s work depends upon his belief in the moral, intellectual, and even cultural value of the individual, the 1841 essay “Self-Reliance” is his best-known and most eloquent articulation of this foundational belief. In it, he offers a series of self-celebrating aphorisms such as “imitation is suicide”, “whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist”, and “to be great is to be misunderstood”, all of which lead to his uncompromising, if extreme, thesis that the only appropriate standard for moral and aesthetic good is the individual’s intuitive conviction on these matters. In effect, Emerson replaces church, government, and an immense body of received cultural wisdom with the self, an imperial creative force upon which he bases his optimistic philosophy. In so successfully offering the individual as the highest subject of study, Emerson opened the way for later writers who wished to make their own life the primary subject of their art. Michael P. Branch Biography Born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 25 May 1803. His father, Unitarian minister of the First Church in Boston, died in 1811, when he was aged eight, and his mother subsequently ran a boarding house. Attended Boston Public Latin School, 1812–17. Studied at Harvard College (later University), Cambridge, Massachusetts (BA 1821). Worked as a schoolmaster during the 1820s, and studied at Harvard Divinity School, 1825 and 1827. Ordained pastor of the Unitarian Second Church in Boston, 1829. Married Ellen Louisa Tucker, 1829 (died 1831). Began to have increasing doubts about his faith and resigned his post, 1832. Travelled to Europe, 1832–33, meeting and becoming a lifelong friend of Thomas Carlyle. Began Lyceum lectures, 1833. Received the first instalment of his wife’s legacy, which helped him to live independently, 1834. Married Lydia “Lidian” Jackson, 1835: two sons (one died as a child) and two daughters. Moved to Concord, Massachusetts. Became leader of the Transcendentalist Club, 1836. Contributed to the Club’s periodical The Dial, 1840–44 (editor 1842–44). Published a pamphlet, Nature, 1836, and Poems, 1847. Became the leading American man of letters of his day, when Concord and its environs attracted like-minded writers and activists, including Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. Gained an international reputation with his two volumes of Essays (1841, 1844). Lectured in England, 1847–48. Published three important works based on his lectures: Representative Men (1850), English Traits (1856), and The Conduct of Life (1860). Was active as an abolitionist during the 1850s. Travelled to Europe and the Middle East, 1873. Died in Concord, 27 April 1882.

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Selected Writings The American Scholar, 1837; edited by C. David Mead, 1970 “Self-Reliance” in Essays, 1841; revised as Essays: First Series, 1847 Representative Men (biographical sketches), 1850 The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson 1834–1872, edited by Charles Eliot Norton, 2 vols, 1883; supplement, 1885; as The Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle, edited by Joseph Slater, 1964 Correspondence between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Grimm, edited by Frederick William Holls, 1903 Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson 1820–76, edited by Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes, 10 vols, 1909–14 The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Ralph L. Rusk et al., 1939– Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by William H. Gilman et al., 16 vols, 1960–82; as Emerson in His Journals (selection), edited by Joel Porte, 1982 The Topical Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Susan Sutton Smith, 3 vols, 1990–94 The Selected Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Joel Myerson, 1997 Also edited The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, with others, 1963, and Henry David Thoreau’s Letters to Various Persons, 1865; translated Dante’s Vita nuova, edited by J. Chesley Mathews, 1960

Further Reading Allen, Gay Wilson, Waldo Emerson: A Biography, New York: Viking Press, 1981 Bercovitch, Sacvan, “Emerson, Individualism, and the Ambiguities of Dissent”, South Atlantic Quarterly, 89/3 (1990): 623–62 Buell, Lawrence, Literary Transcendentalism: Style and Vision in the American Renaissance, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1973 Cayton, Mary K., Emerson’s Emergence: Self and Society in the Transformation of New England, 1800–1845, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989 Harding, Brian, “Transcendentalism and Autobiography: Emerson, Whitman, and Thoreau” in First Person Singular: Studies in American Autobiography, edited by A. Robert Lee, New York: St Martin’s Press, and London: Vision Press, 1988 Hodder, Alan D., Emerson’s Rhetoric of Revelation: Nature, the Reader, and the Apocalypse Within, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989 Jehlen, Myra, American Incarnation: The Individual, the Nation, and the Continent, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986 Keller, Karl, “Emerson and the Anti-Imperialist Self”, American Transcendental Quarterly, 18 (1973): 23–29 Lang, Amy Schrager, “‘The Age of the First Person Singular’: Emerson and Antinomianism”, ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, 29/4 (1983): 171–83 Masur, Louis P., “‘Age of the First Person Singular’: The Vocabulary of the Self in New England, 1780–1850”, Journal of American Studies, 25/2 (1991): 189–211 Packer, Barbara, Emerson’s Fall: A New Interpretation of the Major Essays, New York: Continuum, 1982 Petruzzi, Anthony P., “Emerson, Disclosure, and the ExperiencingSelf”, Philosophy and Rhetoric, 29/1 (1996): 51–64 Porte, Joel, Representative Man: Ralph Waldo Emerson in His Time, New York: Oxford University Press, 1979 Richardson, Robert D., Jr, Emerson: The Mind on Fire: A Biography, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995 Roberson, Susan L., Emerson in His Sermons: A Man-Made Self, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995 Robinson, David, Apostle of Culture: Emerson as Preacher and Lecturer, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982 Ronda, Bruce A., “Literary Grieving: Emerson and the Death of Waldo”, Centennial Review, 23 (1979): 91–104 Steele, Jeffrey, “Interpreting the Self: Emerson and the Unconscious” in Emerson: Prospect and Retrospect, edited by Joel Porte, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1982

Von Frank, Albert, “The Composition of Nature: Writing and the Self in the Launching of a Career” in Biographies of Books: The Compositional Histories of Notable American Writings, edited by James Barbour and Tom Quirk, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996

Epistolary Fiction Janet Gurkin Altman defines epistolary fiction as a kind of fiction that actualizes the letter’s potential to create narrative, figurative, and other kinds of meaning. A desire for exchange, directionality, and narrative sequentiality of letters, inherent in the epistolary contract, distinguishes epistolary fiction from the diary novel, memoir novel, and theatrical dialogue, as well as from such forms of the familiar letter as the biblical epistle, with which it has the closest affinities. Such a broad definition of the genre, hinging on the pivotal role of the letter rather than the centrality of the novel, invites substantial revisions of traditional epistolary canons narrowly associated with the late 17th- and 18th-century sentimental novel. New approaches to epistolarity challenge teleological accounts of both the genre’s evolution and its formal transformations (see Cook, Favret, and Beebee). Inspired by new historicist, feminist, and cultural studies criticism, contemporary rewritings of the canon defamiliarize the generic status of epistolary fiction as a hybrid form and politicize the genre by focusing on the public dimension of the letter instead of equating it reductively with the private, domestic sphere. Epistolary fiction tends to be viewed nowadays more as a broad spectrum of texts that borrow their discursive power from the letter. The widened geographical, historical, and generic boundaries of epistolary fiction can accommodate different traditions springing from the heterogeneous uses of the letter, including such categories as amatory / sentimental, polemical / political, and philosophical / cultural (often combined within the same narrative). The sentimental novel, the best-known tradition, offers models of impassioned and suffering femininity, generated by early 17th-century translations of Ovid’s Heroides and of Héloïse’s 12th-century letters to Abélard. Although the genre is thoroughly feminized in the 18th century, usually enacting a heterosexual plot of seduction and betrayal and casting the letter-writing heroine in the victim’s role, its canonical examples have been created by male writers / editors: Vicomte de Guilleragues’s Lettres portugaises (1669; Portuguese Letters), Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1748), JeanJacques Rousseau’s Julie, ou, la nouvelle Héloise (1761; Julie, or, The New Eloise), Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774; The Sorrows of Young Werther), and Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782; Dangerous Liaisons). Feminist critics offer mixed views of sentimental fiction seen, on the one hand, as complicit in perpetuating oppressive gender stereotypes and forms of containment of female subjectivity and voice, while, on the other, providing a discursive community for women to criticize and subvert patriarchal power structures: Mme de Graffigny’s Lettres d’une Péruvienne (1747; Letters from a Peruvian Woman) and Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni’s Lettres de Mistress Fanni Butler (1757). The increased valorization of sincerity and emotion associated with women’s letters in the “age of sentiment” overshadows another line of development

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of epistolary fiction, which might be traced back to the 16thcentury polemical tradition of Epistolae obscurorum virorum (1515). It continues in the 17th and 18th centuries, until the French Revolution, in the spy novels and fiction of political intrigue, often written by women: Aphra Behn’s Love Letters from a Young Nobleman to His Sister (1684), Mary Manley’s Court Intrigue (1711), Eliza Haywood’s Spy upon the Conjuror (1724), Isabelle de la Charrière’s Lettres écrites de Lausanne (1785), Helen Maria Williams’s Letter Written in France in the Summer of 1790, to a Friend in England (1791), Madame de Genlis’s Les Petits Emigrés (1798), and Madame de Staël’s Delphine (1802). Finally, the conte philosophique genre and travel writing have given rise to numerous epistolary fictions (sometimes based on real correspondences) combining aspects of moralistic preaching, orientalist fascination with difference, news, gossip, and satire: Paolo Marana’s Esploratore turco (1684; Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy), Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes (1721; Persian Letters), Voltaire’s Lettres écrites de Londres sur les Anglais (1733; Letters on England), Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters (1763), Oliver Goldsmith’s The Citizen of the World (1762), Tobias Smollett’s Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (1771), Michel de Crèvecoeur’s Letters of an American Farmer (1782), the Marquis de Sade’s Aline et Valcour (1795), and Nikolai Karamzin’s Pis’ma russkogo puteshestvennika (1797–1801; Letters of a Russian Traveller). Using either foreign locales or exotic correspondents in familiar settings, such fictions produce unfamiliar, often critical, perspectives of received cultural notions. Some recent studies de-emphasize particular national histories of the genre, noting a huge amount of cross-border influences (see Alliston, and Beebee). The letters of Petrarch and Aretino, in which the epistolary subject emerges as a unifying presence, influenced writers in Golden-Age Spain, where the first epistolary novel was created (Juan de Segura’s Processo de cartas de amores, 1548). There has been a constant travelling and exchange of epistolary motifs across borders, as, for example, with the motif of the rifled mailbag – as in Ferrante Pallavicino’s Il corriero svaligato [1641; The Courier Robbed of His Mail] and Abbé d’Aubignac’s Roman des lettres (1667; The Novel of Letters). In contrast, Altman (1982) makes an attempt to differentiate epistolary fiction according to national specificities, tying the appearance of the genre in France to the tradition of conversational and rhetorical arts and aristocratic salons in, for example, Mlle de Scudéry’s Les Femmes illustres (1642) and Marie de Lafayette’s La Princesse de Cleves (1678; The Princess of Cleves); in Germany to the emergence of the bourgeoisie and the popularity of the diary form; and in England to the aesthetics of realism seeking seemingly unmediated description of internal and external reality. The three canonical writers who illustrate this model – Laclos, Goethe, and Richardson – have all enjoyed a tremendous international celebrity. The European influence also reached across the ocean to North America in works such as William Hill Brown’s Power of Sympathy (1789) and Eliza Whitman’s The Coquette (1797). After years of relative eclipse, from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, epistolary fiction was resurrected in the second half of the 20th century. Examples include John Barth’s Letters (1979), Novas cartas portuegesas (1979; The New Portuguese Letters) by the Three Marias, Joy Kogawa’s Obasan (1981), Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982), Kathy Acker’s Great Expect-

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ations (1982), J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986), Dacia Maraini’s Lettere a Marina (1988; Letters to Marina), Ana Castillo’s The Mixquiahuala Letters (1992), A.S. Byatt’s Possession (1990), and Nick Bantock’s Griffin and Sabine series (1991). Several non-European examples have also appeared: Manuel Puig’s Boquitas ointadas (1969; Heartbreak Tango), Miriama Bâ’s Une si longe lettre (1980; So Long a Letter), Li Ang’s An Unsent Love Letter (1986), and Amoz Oz’s Black Box (1987). Epistolary fiction seems congenial to postmodernist aesthetics because of the epistolary features that unsettle epistemological stability, for example openness, dialogism / polyphony, antiauthoritarianism, defamiliarization, self-referentiality, and the Lacanian and Derridean concepts of “triangulation” (as in letters intercepted or readdressed) and “purloining” (letters stolen). Epistolary fiction involves at least three points of view, that of the letter’s author, its intended or actual recipient, and the external reader. Its dialogical nature is predicated on both intertextual dialogue and the illusion of speech in the exchange of letters. It dispenses with the omniscient narrator, presenting instead multiple perspectives and thus problematizing any claims to objective truth or authority. It also displaces the boundary between fact and fiction, by means of using an “authentic” genre in a fictional context and by foregrounding the intricate apparatus of editorial mediation through prefaces, postscripts, footnotes, and commentaries. It has been noted that the genre has self-reflexivity built into its structure, in that the problems of writer–reader communication are at the core of its form. It is thus particularly suitable as a vehicle for parody and the challenging of fictional conventions. Through their open, fragmentary, pluralist textual forms, epistolary fictions have the ability to demonstrate an interrogative stance in relation to received structures of thought, a characteristic that 18thcentury epistemology shares with postmodernism. Accordingly, epistolary writing is perceived in terms of polarities and paradoxes inherent in the letter form, functioning simultaneously as a bridge and a barrier to communication and poised at the intersections of absence and presence, private and public, artifice and truth. All this reflects the ambiguous value historically assigned to the letter as purveyor of love and deceit, of sincerity and dissimulation, as well as an instrument of democracy and treason. The letter’s ability to signify and supplement absence accounts for its figurative appeal in relation to writing in general. For Derrida, the letter “is not a genre, but all genres, literature itself”. A material signifier and a posted missive, the letter becomes a palpable sign of discursive uncontrollability. Epistolary fiction, in its ability to transgress cultural and generic norms, can force the reader to confront issues of power, agency, and mobility in the constructions of subjectivity, gender, and authority in different historical and cultural contexts. It crosses all kinds of boundaries, including those of gender and class. It thus becomes emblematic of the potential for subversion and revolt in literature; as the letter itself resists essentializing, the shape of epistolary fiction too becomes capable of many transformations and renewals. Eva C. Karpinski See also Britain: Restoration and 18th-Century Auto/biography; France: 18th-Century Autobiography; Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 17th- and 18th-Century Auto/biography

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Further Reading Abbott, H. Porter, Diary Fiction: Writing as Action, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1984 Alliston, April, Virtue’s Faults: Correspondences in Eighteenth-Century British and French Women’s Fiction, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996 Altman, Janet Gurkin, Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1982 Beebee, Thomas O., Epistolary Fiction in Europe, 1500–1850, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999 Bray, Bernard, L’Art de la lettre amoureuse: des manuels aux romans 1550–1700, Paris and The Hague: Mouton, 1967 Calas, Frédéric. Le Roman épistolaire, Paris: Nathan, 1996 Cook, Elizabeth Heckendorn, Epistolary Bodies: Gender and Genre in the Eighteenth-Century Republic of Letters, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996 Day, Robert Adams, Told in Letters: Epistolary Fiction before Richardson, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966 Derrida, Jacques, La carte postale: De Socrate à Freud et au-delà, Paris: Flammarion, 1980; as The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, translated by Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987 Favret, Mary, Romantic Correspondence: Women, Politics, and the Fiction of Letters, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993 Goldsmith, Elizabeth C. (editor), Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolary Literature, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989 Herman, Jan, Le Mensonge romanesque: parametres pour l’étude du roman épistolaire en France, Leuven: Leuven University Press, and Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989 Howland, John W., The Letter Form and the French Enlightenment: The Epistolary Paradox, New York: Peter Lang, 1991 Jensen, Katharine Ann, Writing Love: Letters, Women, and the Novel in France, 1605–1776, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995 Kauffman, Linda S., Discourses of Desire: Gender, Genre, and Epistolary Fictions, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1986 Kauffman, Linda S., Special Delivery: Epistolary Modes in Modern Fiction, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 MacArthur, Elizabeth Jane, Extravagant Narratives: Closure and Dynamics in the Epistolary Form, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990 Perry, Ruth, Women: Letters, and the Novel, New York: AMS Press, 1980 Porter, Charles A. (editor), “Men / Women of Letters”, special issue of Yale French Studies, 71 (1986) Singer, Godfrey Frank, The Epistolary Novel: Its Origin, Development, Decline, and Residuary Influence, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1933 Versini, Laurent, Le Roman épistolaire, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979 Zaczek, Barbara Maria, Censored Sentiments: Letters and Censorship in Epistolary Novels and Conduct Material, Newark: University of Delaware Press, and London: Associated University Presses, 1997

Epistolary Poetry Epistolary poetry covers a variety of verse epistolary sub-genres whose boundaries are fluid and sometimes overlapping. Historically, specific forms of epistolary poetry are variously called the poetic epistle, heroic epistle, verse epistle, verse letter, letter poem, or lyrical address (the German Anredelyrik, i.e. a poem “To …”). In different historical periods, the epistolary form or traces of epistolarity appear in such related genres as satire, elegy, sonnet, panegyric and occasional poetry, ode, epigram, familiar prose letter, or simply personal lyric. This generic

hybridity is what epistolary poetry seems to share with epistolary fiction. Critical references to the poetic epistle can be found in the treatises of Scaliger, Pontanus, and Opitz; in Thomas Sebillet’s L’Art poétique françoys (1548); and in Renaissance epistolographic theory and practice (Heinrich Bebel’s Commentaria epistolarum conficiedarum, 1503; Erasmus’s De conscribendis epistolis (On the Writing of Letters), 1522; Juan Luis [Ludovicus] Vives’s De conscribendis epistolis, 1536; Justus Lipsius’s Epistolica institutio, 1591). The most consistently recognized feature of the genre is its thematic heterogeneity. Another common generic characteristic is the inclusion of the addressee in the formal and semantic structure of the epistle, which accounts for such constant elements as the apostrophizing of the addressee; expressions of well-wishing, greetings, dedication, and praise; insertion of direct speech and staging the imagined reception. These motifs give epistolary poetry a dialogic coloration by establishing the relationship between writer and recipient. Moreover, epistolary poetry, like epistolary writing in general, is entrenched in a paradox. It is a private, intimate communication to a distant addressee; however, if published, the letter poem is intended for public consumption. These selfrevelatory and voyeuristic qualities of epistolary poetry make it akin to life writing. Since the Renaissance, the letter poem has been an important vehicle for (auto)biography, often revealing personal and circumstantial detail. It contains names, surnames, allusions to shared experiences, and facts from the lives of both the letter writer and the addressee. Much of the confessional appeal of the letter poem comes from its intimate, “inside” information. Epistolary poetry has a long tradition in the East, especially in China, going back to the anonymous poet of the Shih Ching (600 bce) and culminating in the great masters of T’ang poetry (618–906 ce), Li Bai [Li Po] (translated by Ezra Pound) and Du Fu [Tu Fu]. In the Western tradition, there are two basic types of classical verse epistles derived from Horace’s Epistolae (1st century bce) and Ovid’s Heroides, Tristia, and Epistolae ex Ponto (1st century ce). The Horatian kind, associated with moral and philosophical themes, has been widely used since the Renaissance in both prose and verse epistles. The Ovidian kind, introducing spiritual and melancholy as well as romantic and sentimental topics, was popular in the Middle Ages, influencing the discourses of courtly love, and later contributed to the rise of 17th-century epistolary fiction. Well-known examples of medieval epistolary poetry are the friendship letters of Alcuin and his circle in the Carolingian period. Petrarch’s 14th-century Epistolae metricae mark a departure from rhetorical models formalized by medieval ars dictaminis, moving towards a more personal, more humanist letter form. During the Renaissance and the Reformation, the poetic epistle played a role in disseminating ideas on a wide range of subjects. It was composed mostly in Latin, with the exception of France, where Clément Marot wrote in the vernacular. L’épitre en vers was popular among French neoclassical authors. The expanding role of the letter was confirmed by the popularity of epistolary manuals which peaked in the 17th century. The first such English letterwriting manual in verse is William Fulwood’s The Enemi of Idlenesse (1568). In Restoration and Augustan England, writers of verse epistles, such as the Earl of Rochester, John Dryden, Joseph Addison, William Congreve, Jonathan Swift, and

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Alexander Pope, exhibit a similar indebtedness to classical models. Pope’s Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (1735) represents the most accomplished example of the form which, under the system of patronage, showed a tendency to deteriorate into outpourings of flattery, servitude, and admiration. The verse letter was neglected by the Romantic poets, resulting only in a small body of poems such as John Keats’s epistle to John Hamilton Reynolds or Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Letter to [Sara]”. By contrast, in early 19th-century Russia, verse epistles were one of the favoured forms of poetry, especially in the hands of Pushkin. The letter poem has experienced a revival in Europe and America since the advent of modernism (witness the work of W.H. Auden, Allen Tate, Yvor Winters, Robert Penn Warren, Robert Lowell, Louis MacNiece, Elizabeth Bishop, Galway Kinnell, John Logan, Denise Levertov, Kenneth Rexroth, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, George Seferis, Earl Birney, and Betsy Struthers). Like any discourse, epistolary poetry is interesting in the ways it has historically encoded privileges of class and gender. The tradition has been gendered from its classical beginnings, with the Ovidian epistle linked to femininity through passion and spontaneity, encouraging male authors to assume a female persona. The Horatian variant was considered “masculine”, associated with wit, mastery, control, and good sense. The systematic “feminization” of the letter in epistolary theory and practice proceeds from the domesticating premise that epistolary writing in general is a site of the personal and the private, and hence particularly suitable for the female voice. Women’s epistolary poetry has challenged this premise at least from the early Middle Ages, in the writings of Radegund, the Beguine Hadewijch, Christine de Pizan, and their numerous successors. However, at the high periods of epistolary production in the Middle Ages (the 12th, the late 14th and 15th centuries), there was but a handful of significant women letter writers. Similarly, because of the highly formalized nature of neoclassical epistolary poems, which required specialized education available only to men of privileged classes, women were excluded from authorship (with the rare exception of the aristocratic Mlle de Scudéry (1608–1701), who wrote under her brother’s name) and placed instead in the position of addressee. Perhaps this exclusionary character of the genre partly explains why women have turned in greater numbers to writing epistolary fiction. Eva C. Karpinski Further Reading Brownlee, Marina S., The Severed Word: Ovid’s Heroides and the Novela Sentimental, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990 Cherewatuk, Karen and Ulrike Wiethaus (editors), Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993 Citroni, Mario, Poesia e lettori in Roma antica: forme della communicazione letteraria, Rome: Laterza, 1995 DeJean, Joan, Fictions of Sappho 1546–1937, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989 Dorrie, Heinrich, Der heroische Brief: Bestandsaufnahme, Geschichte, Kritik einer humanistisch-barocken Literaturgattung, Berlin: De Gruyter, 1968 Dowling, William C., The Epistolary Moment: The Poetics of the Eighteenth-Century Verse Epistle, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991 “L’Epître en verse”, special issue of Littératures Classiques, 18 (1993)

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Fajardo-Acosta, Fidel (editor), The Influence of the Classical World on Medieval Literature, Architecture, Music, and Culture: A Collection of Interdisciplinary Studies, Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992 Kadar, Marlene (editor), Reading Life Writing: An Anthology, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993 Kauffman, Linda S., Discourses of Desire: Gender, Genre, and Epistolary Fictions, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1986 Malherbe, Abraham J., Ancient Epistolary Theorists, Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1988 Schweik, Susan C., A Gulf So Deeply Cut: American Women Poets and the Second World War, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991 Sperberg-McQueen, Marian R., “Martin Opitz and the Tradition of the Renaissance Poetic Epistle”, Daphnis, 11/3 (1982): 519–46

Epitaphs Epitaphs are often defined as any funerary inscription commemorating the deceased. However, some scholars of the genre wish either to expand the definition to include not only memorials that are actually inscribed but also “brief characterizations of a life written as though [they] could be placed on a grave” (see Rees, 1993) or, to narrow it to exclude the actual record of death (see Kippax, 1877). Whatever one’s ultimate definition, epitaphs are extraordinary both in their revelations of a culture’s views on death and burial and in their preservation of biographical information on citizens, from the most obscure artisan to the most celebrated statesman. As Leigh Hunt states, “Records on tombstones are introducers of the living to the dead; makers of mortal acquaintances; and ‘one touch of nature’ in making the ‘whole world kin,’ gives them the right of speaking like kindred to and of, one another.” While there is evidence of prehistoric societies as early as 70,000 bce burying and leaving offerings for the dead, and while cultures began to mark burial with stones around 35,000 bce, writing did not appear on these markers until about 3100 bce, in Egypt. The Egyptians often decorated sarcophagi, and sometimes even the bodies themselves, with the deceased’s name and characteristics. There is no evidence that other cultures in the period maintained similar practices. Around the 7th century bce, the Greeks began to memorialize their dead with epitaphs. Initially, these writings included only the names, the particulars of death, and occasionally the name of the person who commissioned the tomb. By the next century, however, grave writing in both Greece and Rome had become more complex, now heavily sprinkled with imagery from poets and phrases borrowed from rhetoricians. Battle casualties were often buried as a group, with a group epitaph listing the names of those entombed. A woman could be furnished with an epitaph, usually detailing the names of her father or husband. Roman epitaphs were more likely to be detailed, sometimes mentioning the physical characteristics of the deceased. Richmond Lattimore’s extensive study of Greek and Latin epitaphs finds that both cultures held the dualistic notion of a soul that releases itself from the body at death. However, the epitaphs do not generally demonstrate a belief in the immortality of this soul. Other values held by the Greeks and Romans are apparent in their inscriptions. Biographical details are widely

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evident, as in the following Greek example, composed as a dialogue between the deceased and the reader: “You may ask, ‘Who was I and whose son?’ – My name was Cladus. – ‘And who reared me?’ – Menophilius. – ‘And what did I die of?’ – Fever. – ‘At what age?’ – Thirteen.” Other epitaphs demonstrate sentimentality and a sense of deep personal loss, as in this Greek inscription: “Chaerestrate lies in this tomb. Her husband loved her as long as she lived, and when she died he grieved for her.” Greek and Roman epitaphs are also notable for their more unique qualities. One such distinctive feature is the boast. A Greek courtesan reveals, “All desired me, for I pleased them all,” while another epitaph boasts, “Before me all my antagonists in the stadium trembled.” Curses are also common in Latin and Greek epitaphs. One that appears in the inscriptions of both cultures is the Judas curse, as evidenced by the following: “May he share the lot of Judas the betrayer.” Another speaks to a belief in an apocalypse: “He shall be responsible before the wrath to come” (see Lattimore, 1942). Although there was a proliferation of epitaphs of textual complexity in 6th-century Africa, few areas in Europe were employing funerary writing in this period. While an original runic funerary language appears in 9th- to 11th-century Sweden, other European early medieval epitaphs are rare and almost entirely dedicated to clergy in urban areas. Martyrs’ tombs were the sites of unusual “epitaphs”. Visitors would record their own names and invocations in a sort of “dialogue with the dead” (see Petrucci). The prized positions for such memorials were those closest to the body itself. Thomas Pettigrew noted in the 19th century that epitaphs in England were rare before the 11th century, and those that existed were typically in Latin. In France, the use of the vernacular for tombs was not widespread before the 13th century. From the Renaissance onwards, epitaphs have varied in length and seriousness. Some famous epitaphs have been (either allegedly or actually) penned by the honoree himself. Shakespeare’s famous “Bleste be ye man that spares these stones, / And curst be that moves my bones” has been alternately suggested to have been either written or selected by the author. Percy Bysshe Shelley noted that John Keats created his own epitaph: “Here Lies one / Whose Name was writ in water.” Some notable persons have composed epitaphs for others. Samuel Johnson wrote a lengthy Latin inscription for Oliver Goldsmith. Benjamin Franklin was even alleged to have penned a memorial for a deceased squirrel: “Here Skugg / Lies Snug / as a bug / in a rug.” Some epitaphs are notable for their wit. Sir John Strange’s epitaph of 1754 quips, “Here Lies an Honest Lawyer, – / And that is Strange.” The actor Richard Burbage’s inscription (1619) reads simply, “Exit Burbage” (see Rees, 1993). Collections of epitaphs, including those by John Stow (1598), William Camden (1610), and John Weever (1631), have long been popular for purposes both historical and anecdotal. Amusing epitaphs have been the subject of many collections – some of dubious origin – but have also been the source of much controversy. To counter a perceived trend in less-than-solemn inscriptions, books of “appropriate” epitaphs (such as Alpheus Cary’s A Collection of Epitaphs, Suitable for Monumental Inscriptions, from Approved Authors, 1865) have appeared. Furthermore, Thomas Pettigrew stipulated that “an epitaph should unquestionably be brief and should combine beauty of

expression with tenderness of feeling”, and noted, “True and genuine sorrow is never loquacious.” John Kippax claimed that the “silly conceits and untimely witticisms” that appear on tombs “are the shame of mankind”, believing that the “tomb is no place for a biography” and that Latin remained the best language for funerary writing. He preferred the short “Here lies rare Ben Jonson” or the brief, yet strikingly emotional, “My mother!”. These responses demonstrate a cynicism towards and dismissal of the often-panegyric, almost universally praising remarks on graves, a sentiment shared by Alexander Pope, who penned, “Praises on tombs are trifles vainly spent, / A man’s good name is his best monument.” Debra Taylor See also Elegies; Loss, Bereavement, and Life Writing; Obituaries; Suicide and Life Writing

Further Reading Cary, Alpheus, A Collection of Epitaphs, Suitable for Monumental Inscriptions, from Approved Authors, Boston: Cary, 1865 Hunt, Cecil, Here I Lie, London: Jonathan Cape, 1932 Hunt, Cecil, More Last Words: A Collection of Singular Authentic Epitaphs, London: Sampson Low, 1946 Kippax, John Robert, Churchyard Literature: A Choice Collection of American Epitaphs, Chicago: Griggs, 1877 Lattimore, Richmond, Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1942 Lindley, Kenneth, Of Graves and Epitaphs, London: Hutchinson, 1965 Petrucci, Armando, Writing the Dead: Death and Writing Strategies in the Western Tradition, translated by Michael Sullivan, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998 Pettigrew, Thomas Joseph, Chronicles of the Tombs, London: H.G. Bohn, 1857; reprinted, New York: AMS Press, 1968 Rees, Nigel, Epitaphs: A Dictionary of Grave Epigrams and Memorial Eloquence, London: Bloomsbury, 1993; New York: Carroll and Graf, 1994 Wordsworth, William, “Essays on Epitaphs” in his Prose Works, 3 vols, edited by Alexander B. Grosart, London: Moxon, 1876; reprinted, New York: AMS Press, 1967; also in The Prose Works of William Wordsworth, 3 vols, edited by W.J.B. Owen and Jane Worthington Smyser, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974

Equiano, Olaudah

1745–c.1801

African / British slave, autobiographer, and abolitionist The fame and literary importance of Olaudah Equiano rest on his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself. First published in London in 1789 and New York in 1791, the Interesting Narrative eventually went through nine editions in Equiano’s lifetime, the last appearing in 1794. Drawing on the well-established tradition of spiritual autobiography and the more recent vogue of travel writing, Equiano recounted his life as a slave, his years at sea aboard both military and commercial vessels, his religious conversion, and his final return to England, where he achieved a level of wealth and social status unparalleled by other Afro-Britons. In the process of recording this turbulent history, he gave dramatic testimony to the human capacity for perseverance and made a major contribution to the burgeoning transatlantic anti-slavery movement. Equiano was one of a number of Afro-British and African

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American figures who represented what Paul Gilroy has called the “Black Atlantic”, a world characterized by syncretic cultural expressiveness and by a complex relationship to the major tenets of the European Enlightenment. Determined to enlist his story in the assault on slavery and the slave trade, Equiano provided an indispensable perspective on the tragic, yet dynamic, encounter of black and white in the late 18th century, and helped to establish the major themes and conventions of the slave-narrative genre, the foundational literary tradition for African American letters. The principal strength of the Interesting Narrative was, simply, its autobiographical form, because a first-person account had the power to move as well as to convince the reader, by embodying polemical and ethical purpose in the telling of an individual life. Yet this strength depended on the reader’s trust in the narrator – hence the prefatory letters attesting to Equiano’s veracity and good character, and hence the title’s reminder that the narrative was “written by himself”, a reminder signalling immediacy and personal authenticity. Those three words, moreover, indicate the crucial importance of literacy for Equiano, which represented both a practical skill and a symbolic form of emancipation, and implicitly refuted the pro-slavery claim that Africans lacked the capacity for more than hard labour. They also reflect the upward trajectory of the narrator’s life, his material and spiritual ascent (though buffeted by adversity) from slavery to freedom, from ignorance to knowledge, and from heathenism to Christian enlightenment. The forward momentum of the Interesting Narrative has racial as well as individual significance, for Equiano seeks to emblematize the ability of Africans to contribute to the progression of civilization. In this sense, Equiano’s cultural loyalties are divided, in so far as he conceives of “civilization” in British terms. His simultaneous allegiance to the crown and to his race – the fundamental tension of his double consciousness – means that Equiano views Africa partly through a lens of European values; but it also enables him to level a powerful critique against the racial attitudes and policies of his adopted country, and to do so from a position of genuine authority, as an eyewitness to slavery and a living refutation of its ideological premises. Measured against later slave narratives, several aspects of Equiano’s autobiography stand out in sharp relief. He gives limited space to descriptions of physical violence or deprivation, and remains relatively non-militant himself. Psychological concerns are generally muted, in contrast to the internal dramas that we associate with Romantic-era accounts of individual suffering and heroism. What interiority Equiano reveals mainly involves his conversion to Methodism, arguably the central episode of the text, for, having escaped physical slavery, he is now freed from the fiercer bondage of spiritual darkness. This unusually powerful religious orientation of the autobiography, finally, is matched only by its mercantilist ethos, as Equiano rises from being property to acquiring enough property to purchase himself and enter the mainstream of bourgeois capitalism. Equiano’s self-conscious participation in the drama of historical and spiritual progress carried more significance than his own salvation or liberation, for he wrote as the most visible representative of an oppressed racial group. In a narrative that is implicitly and explicitly progressivist, Equiano seeks to create of himself a living, speaking, acting testament to the human

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capacity for transformation, through both individual agency and divine grace. More than two centuries later, it is that achievement that has enabled the Interesting Narrative to transcend its immediate utility as an anti-slavery text and to take its place among the ranks of enduringly significant literary autobiography. Ian Finseth Biography Born in Essaka (?), Benin Province (now in Nigeria), Africa, 1745. Kidnapped at the age of 11 and forced into slavery. Worked as a servant in houses in Africa for a short period. Sold to British slavers and sent to Barbados, 1756. Sent on immediately to Virginia, where he became personal slave to Lieutenant Michael Henry Pascal of the British Royal Navy. Given name of Gustavus Vassa. Travelled with Pascal around the Americas, Europe, and Turkey, 1757–63. Sent back to West Indies for resale after serving in the Seven Years’ War, 1763. Bought by Robert King, a Quaker merchant. Worked on trading and slave ships as clerk and captain’s assistant; allowed to earn money by trading for himself. Offered opportunity to buy his freedom, for £40, 1766. Went to London, England, where he became a barber and musician and received some education. Worked as a seaman again, and participated in the exploration of the Arctic, 1768. Converted to evangelical Christianity, 1774. Returned to London and became active in abolitionist movement, 1777. Tried unsuccessfully to become a missionary for service in Africa. Instrumental in bringing to public attention the case of the Zong atrocity, in which slaves were thrown overboard and insurance claimed for their lives, 1783. Appointed commissary steward of the Vernon, a ship taking freed slaves from London to form a community in Freetown, Sierra Leone, c.1787. Dismissed from this position by the sponsors of the expedition after he was accused of theft and ill-treatment of blacks. Wrote his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1789), to redeem his name. Married an Englishwoman from Ely, Susan (or Susanne) Cullen, 1792. Lectured widely in Britain on the evils of the slave trade during the 1790s. Died in London, c.1801.

Selected Writings The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, 1789; edited by Paul Edwards, as Equiano’s Travels (abridged), 1967; edited by Robert J. Allison, 1995; edited by Vincent Carretta, in The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings, 1995

Further Reading Aravamudan, Srinivas, Tropicopolitans: Colonialism and Agency, 1688–1804, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1999 Baker, Houston A., Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984 Braidwood, Stephen J., Black Poor and White Philanthropists: London’s Blacks and the Foundation of the Sierra Leone Settlement, 1786–1791, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1994 Carretta, Vincent, “Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa? New Light on an Eighteenth-Century Question of Identity”, Slavery and Abolition, 20/3 (1999): 96–105 Clingham, Greg (editor), Questioning History: The Postmodern Turn to the Eighteenth Century, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, and London: Associated University Presses, 1998 Curtin, Philip, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780–1850, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964 Duffield, Ian and Paul Edwards, “Equiano’s Turks and Christians: An Eighteenth-Century African View of Islam”, Journal of African Studies, 2 (Winter 1975–76): 433–44 Fichtelberg, Joseph, “Word between Worlds: The Economy of Equiano’s Narrative”, American Literary History, 5/3 (1993): 459–80 Gates, Henry Louis, Jr, and William L. Andrews (editors), Pioneers of the Black Atlantic: Five Slave Narratives from the Enlightenment, 1772–1815, Washington, DC: Civitas, 1998

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Gilroy, Paul, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, and London: Verso, 1993 Lee, A. Robert, “Selves Subscribed: Early Afro-America and the Signifying of Phillis Wheatley, Jupiter Hammon, Olaudah Equiano, and David Walker” in Making America / Making American Literature: Franklin to Cooper, edited by Lee and W.M. Verhoeven, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996 Northrup, David (editor), The Atlantic Slave Trade, Lexington, Massachusetts: Heath, 1994. Sandiford, Keith A., Measuring the Moment: Strategies of Protest in Eighteenth-Century Afro-English Writing, Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, and London: Associated University Presses, 1988 Walvin, James, An African’s Life: The Life and Times of Olaudah Equiano, 1745–1797, London and New York: Cassell, 1998 Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe and Ezekiel Kalipeni (editors), Sacred Spaces and Public Quarrels: African Cultural and Economic Landscapes, Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1999

Erasmus

1467?–1536

Dutch religious reformer, scholar, and letter writer The chief contributions of Erasmus to life writing include his important work on the art of letter writing, the publication of his own correspondence, and a biography of St Jerome. In his treatise of 1521 on the art of letter writing, De conscribendis epistolis, Erasmus both adheres to and departs from definitions of the letter stipulated in classical and medieval theories of epistolography. Indeed, his greatest addition to the form is his attempt to synthesize the two seemingly irreconcilable traditions while condemning the more troublesome components of each. In many ways, Erasmus follows the classical model of applying rhetorical principles to the letter. Like his predecessors, he identifies five components of the letter: salutatio (salutation), exordium (introduction), narratio (narration), petitio (petition to reader), and conclusio (conclusion, or closing). He also recognizes a three-part rhetoric of letter writing, culled from the requirements imposed upon oratory: style, organization, and argument. He is critical, however, of strict adherence to these divisions, expressing disagreement with strict neoclassicist practitioners, such as Francesco Negro, who declared that all letters must contain an exordium and, on the other extreme, with medieval writers who tended to expand these loose structures into more specific, and often widely elaborate, practices that he found “barbaric”. He attacks the medieval traditions pertaining to the direct address: the overuse of flattery and the common practice of referring to individuals in the plural were particularly problematic. Erasmus expands the definition of the letter, adding the “familiar” letter to the three traditional categories – judicial, deliberative, demonstrative – established by Aristotle. Stressing the intimate nature of the letter as an essential quality, he comments: For this ought to be the character of the letter: as if you were whispering in a corner with a dear friend, not shouting in the theatre, or otherwise somewhat unrestrainedly. For we commit many things to letters, which it would be shameful to express openly in public (quoted in Jardine).

Furthermore, Erasmus states that the letter should express only actual emotion and should represent “the very life itself” of a person and should attempt to make the “absent writer almost physically present to the recipient” (also in Jardine). However, the classicists limited the letter to “written conversation between absent friends” and stipulated that this familiarity demanded a style both brief and stylistically plain. This narrow definition imposed unreasonable confines on the letter and ignored the potential rhetorical power of the form. Erasmus specifies that “we must take pains to be clear, yes, but clear to the educated” (see Rummel) and adds the qualification that letters should be “simple and even a bit careless, in the sense of studied carelessness” (see Henderson). For example, Erasmus agrees with neither the classical tradition that a sender’s name should precede that of the recipient nor the medieval attempts to “flatter” the recipient by listing him or her first. Pragmatically, he claims that situation should dictate word order. Further, he states that subject matter should dictate length and that style should be adapted to the recipient. Thus, Erasmus promotes a fluidity in the definition and application of the letter. He agrees with the classicists’ concentration on the intimate nature of the form but also recognizes the rhetorical possibilities. Judith Rice Henderson reports Erasmus’s conclusion that “those who either require or prescribe one certain style in letters . . . seem to me to treat that undoubtedly great multiplicity of subject matter . . . too narrowly and briefly” (Henderson, 1983). Erika Rummel concludes that, ultimately, Erasmus “is not entirely original” in his theories of letter writing, but that he certainly “brings a new zeal to the subject”. The publication of Erasmus’s own letters between 1515– 1607 embodies his theory (and even perhaps his concern) that correspondence presents an authentic source for potential biographers. Although Erasmus himself attempted to control tightly the publication of the Opus epistolarum Erasmi, several unauthorized editions appeared. Even the sanctioned versions, edited by admirers, troubled the scholar who preferred to present the work in the most beneficial arrangement possible in a clear attempt at Renaissance self-fashioning. Ironically, Erasmus, as editor of the letters of Jerome, was generally displeased with the idea of someone other than himself participating in the construction of his own legacy. Lisa Jardine notes Erasmus’s complaints: … at every point in the publication of his own correspondence, that the editor (Gilles, Barlandus, or Rhenanus) was never quite up to the task of presenting Erasmus’s own letters to the public – that no editor ever made Erasmus his own, that indeed Erasmus exceeded any editor’s attempt at capturing him via his epistolae. Or perhaps it is Erasmus’s fear that the letters do become the editor’s own that makes him protest so vigorously that each and every editor has done a poor job. In 1516 Erasmus published the four-volume Vita Hieronymi, his biography and edition of the letters of St Jerome. The biography was innovative in its use of source material; Erasmus relied heavily on Jerome’s letters as an account of his life. This approach differed from the anecdotally based works that had preceded him. Erasmus defended his decision to base the Life on

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letters rather than legend, commenting: “For who knew Jerome better than Jerome himself?” (Jardine). True to his humanistic devotion to accurate and exhaustive scholarship, Erasmus presented the first biography that was not wholly panegyric, but represented instead the exemplary life – the saint and scholar whom one can emulate. Thus, Erasmus’s biography is not merely a veneration but also a call for self-improvement. Debra Taylor Biography Born in Rotterdam, or possibly Gouda, northern Netherlands (then a Burgundian territory), in the late 1460s, probably on 27 or 28 October 1467. He was one of the two illegitimate sons of a priest and his housekeeper, a physician’s daughter. Brought up in his father’s house in Gouda. Educated in Gouda until c.1478, then in Deventer at a school run by the Brethren of the Common Life until 1483 or 1484, when both parents died. Sent by his guardians to study at another of the Brethren’s schools in Hertogenbosch. Entered an Augustinian priory in Steyn, c.1487; ordained as priest, 1492. Served as secretary to Henri, bishop of Cambrai, 1493–95; sent by the bishop to study at the Collège de Montaigue, Paris, 1495. Invited to England by William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, 1499; met Thomas More and other humanist scholars. Returned to France and resumed studies in Paris, 1500. Wrote Adagia, a collection of proverbs, 1500, and Enchiridion militis Christiani (The Manual of the Christian Knight), 1503. Visited England again, 1505–06. Studied at the University of Turin, receiving a doctorate of divinity in 1506. Lived in Italy until 1509, then moved to England. Wrote his most famous work, Moriae encomium morale (1511; Praise of Folly), a satiric attack on the corruption and superstition of society and the church, while staying with More. Taught Greek at Cambridge University, 1511–14. Based in Basle (Basel), 1514–17, visiting England in 1515, 1516, and 1517, and staying in Antwerp, 1516–17. Published a new Latin translation of the New Testament, exposing the errors in the Vulgate, 1516; also edited the works of the early church fathers. Lived in Louvain, 1517–21. Wrote Colloquia familiaria (1518; The Colloquies of Erasmus), a collection of dialogues. Lived mainly in Basle, 1521–29, where he was general editor of John Froben’s press. Lived in Freiburg, 1529–35, and again in Basle, 1535–36. Opposed priestly power and dogmatism, but refused to leave the Catholic church to join Martin Luther’s Protestant movement. Declined the offer of becoming a cardinal. Died in Basle, 12 July 1536.

Selected Writings Eximii doctoris hieronymi stridonesis vita (biography with letters), 4 vols, 1516; as Patristic Scholarship: The Edition of St Jerome, edited and translated by James F. Bradley and John C. Olin, 1992 De conscribendis epistolis, 1521; as On the Writing of Letters, edited and translated by Charles Fantazzi, in Collected Works of Erasmus, 1985 Life and Letters of Erasmus, translated by James Anthony Froude, 1894 Opus epistolarum, edited by P.S. Allen et al., 12 vols (in Latin and English), 1906–58; as Selections from Erasmus, Principally from His Epistles, edited by Allen, 1908; as The Epistles of Erasmus, edited and translated by Francis Morgan Nichols, 3 vols, 1901–18; as The Correspondence of Erasmus, translated by R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson, annotated by Wallace K. Ferguson et al. in Collected Works of Erasmus, vols 1–11, 1974–92 Erasmus and His Times: A Selection from the Letters of Erasmus and His Circle, edited by G.S. Facer, 1951 Erasmus and Cambridge: The Cambridge Letters, edited by H.C. Porter, translated by D.F.S. Thomson, 1963 Erasmus and Fisher: Their Correspondence 1511–1524, edited by Jean Rouschausse, 1968 Erasmus and His Age: Selected Letters of Desiderius Erasmus, edited by Hans J. Hillerbrand, translated by Marcus A. Haworth, 1970

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Further Reading Fantazzi, Charles, “The Evolution of Erasmus’ Epistolary Style”, Renaissance and Reformation, 13/3 (1989): 261–85 Gerlo, Aloïs, “The Opus de conscribendis epistolis of Erasmus and the Tradition of the Ars epistolica” in Classical Influences on European Culture AD500–1500, edited by R.R. Bolgar, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971 Henderson, Judith Rice, “Erasmus on the Art of Letter Writing” in Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric, edited by James J. Murphy, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983 Henderson, Judith Rice, “The Enigma of Erasmus’ Conficiendarum epistolarum formula”, Renaissance and Reformation, 13/3 (1989): 313–30 Jardine, Lisa, Erasmus, Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in Print, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993 Rummel, Erika, “Erasmus’ Manual of Letter-writing: Tradition and Innovation”, Renaissance and Reformation, 13/3 (1989): 299–312

Ethics Ethics in its most inclusive sense (and as the ancient Greeks understood it) is concerned with the ethos (or character) of the good life. Its broad organizing question is: “How should a human being live?” (see Nussbaum). This sense may be taken loosely also to embrace those post-Enlightenment ethical theories and practices that focus either on the moral claims of others or on the consequences of actions, and so find their way into codes of professional ethics. The organizing question here is a narrower one: “What is it right to do in the given case?” Both broad and narrow senses are important to life writing. If ethics is taken in the inclusive sense, then every act of life writing and commentary on it implicitly raises ethical questions. Whether or not life writers recognize the fact, their narratives will inevitably embody an ethos constituted by such things as their imaginative openness to others, their truthfulness, their capacity for humour or resilience in the face of adversity, or the consistency of their moral judgements as between self and other. The responses of reviewers and non-professional readers such as undergraduate students are often preoccupied with such qualities of narrated lives. In the same way, all criticism and theory of life writing will have a character, which will be underpinned by at least implicit commitments (or otherwise) to such goods as self-realization, authenticity, social justice, or care for the disadvantaged. It might be argued then (for example by Wayne Booth) that recent criticism of life writing, because of the predominant concern with issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual preference, has been dominated by ethical preoccupations. On the other hand, there are good reasons to reserve the term “ethical criticism” for those approaches that are explicitly ethical (see, for example, Parker). The ethical criticism of autobiography and that of biography need to be treated separately because their respective defining subjects of attention, self, and other give rise to rather different ethical problematics. This is so even though there are important commonalities and overlaps between the two genres, particularly in “relational” autobiographies, as Paul John Eakin shows in his seminal essay, “The Unseemly Profession: Privacy, Inviolate Personality and the Ethics of Life Writing” (1998). Despite the fact that the origins of autobiography, in both West and East, seem to lie in forms of religious and moral self-

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reflection (see Delany, and Pei-yi Wu), attention has turned only relatively recently to ethical aspects of autobiography. The trailblazing study here is Barbour’s, which explores conscience as both sponsor and monitor of the writing of autobiography. Barbour shows the centrality for autobiographers of such issues as the narcissism of self-scrutiny, self-deception, parading guilt as a virtue, appealing to conscience as a rhetorical strategy to win the reader’s regard, and the wishful or wilful distortion of the past. In all these ways, truthfulness (as opposed to theoretical issues of truth and fictionality) emerges as a major ethical problem of self-writing. Another is volition, which is the focus of Freadman’s major study. This shows the importance to autobiography of such ethical issues as moral luck, contingency, freedom, determinism, and weakness of will. In spite of these substantial studies, there is both need and space for future work in the ethics of autobiography. Substantial studies of biography tend to be anthologies of essays rather than monographs and most of them consider the ethical issues raised by writing the lives of others. These issues can roughly be divided into two categories: problems of representation and the invasion of privacy. The issue of how we can know and represent others has been especially highlighted by recent Western theoretical movements such as deconstruction, which have questioned all epistemological projects and their corresponding representational practices. However, such questioning is not exclusively postmodern. Similar concerns about the adequacy of biographical representation have been expressed in cultures as disparate as those of ancient China and postwar Britain (see Wu, Clifford). Concerns about the invasion of privacy are similarly widespread, though modern Western biographies, with their tendency to focus on the “inner” or the “private”, are particularly controversial in this regard. Diane Middlebrook’s biography of the American poet Anne Sexton, for example, included transcripts of many hours of audiotapes with Sexton’s psychiatrist, recorded before Sexton committed suicide (see Salwak). This biography indicates the extent to which ethical problems in biography overlap with those in other areas of life writing, such as the publication of private letters and diaries. A 1992 essay by David Jopling is instructive in raising both sorts of problems together. Contrasting Jean-Paul Sartre’s goal of complete understanding (and his practice of writing totalizing biographies) with Emmanuel Levinas’s stress on the mysteriousness of the Other, Jopling suggests that a Sartrean approach to biography may be both misleading (because no representation of another can claim to be either complete or entirely accurate) and cruelly invasive. He notes that Jean Genet (the subject of one of Sartre’s biographies) found Sartre’s totalizing approach so psychologically destructive that he was unable to write for several years afterwards. Many of the commentators on the ethical problems of biography are working biographers, who frequently draw attention to the way in which biographical techniques (such as narrative) can be deceptive, concealing what Victoria Glendinning has called the “lies and silences” of biography. Other biographers attempt to defend the practice of biography, especially against the perennial charges that biographical knowledge is irrelevant and that biographical curiosity is merely a form of malicious gossip. The comments of practising biographers, even (or perhaps especially) when they dismiss ethical problems, such as

the potential harm done by biography to living subjects or witnesses, should provide a rich vein for future work in this area. David Parker and Susan Tridgell See also Authenticity; Conduct Books

Further Reading Aaron, Daniel (editor), Studies in Biography, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978 Barbour, John O., The Conscience of the Autobiographer: Ethical and Religious Dimensions of Autobiography, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992 Batchelor, John (editor), The Art of Literary Biography, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995 Booth, Wayne C., The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988 Clifford, James L. (editor), Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism 1560–1960, New York: Oxford University Press, 1962 Delany, Paul, British Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century, London: Routledge, and New York: Columbia University Press, 1969 Eakin, Paul John, “The Unseemly Profession: Privacy, Inviolate Personality and the Ethics of Life Writing” in Renegotiating Ethics in Literature, Philosophy, and Theory, edited by Jane Adamson, Richard Freadman and David Parker, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998 Epstein, William H. (editor), Contesting the Subject: Essays in the Postmodern Theory and Practice of Biography and Biographical Criticism, West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1991 Freadman, Richard, Threads of Life: Autobiography and the Will, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000 Glendinning, Victoria, “Lies and Silences” in The Troubled Face of Biography, edited by Eric Homberger and John Charmley, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988 Homberger, Eric and John Charmley (editors), The Troubled Face of Biography, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988 Jopling, David, “At the Limits of Biographical Knowledge: Sartre and Levinas” in Shaping Lives: Reflections on Biography, edited by Ian Donaldson, Peter Read and James Walter, Canberra: Humanities Research Centre, 1992 Nussbaum, Martha C., Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990 Parker, David, “The Turn to Ethics in the 1990s” in Renegotiating Ethics in Literature, Philosophy, Theory, edited by Jane Adamson, Richard Freadman and David Parker, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998 Rhiel, Mary and David Suchoff (editors), The Seductions of Biography, New York: Routledge, 1996 Salwak, Dale (editor), The Literary Biography: Problems and Solutions, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, and London: Macmillan, 1996 Wu, Pei-yi, The Confucian’s Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990

Ethnicity, Race, and Life Writing What marks a whole range of life writings, biographical, autobiographical, and discursive, as racial or ethnic? Is it simply that the life writer who is born of the underside of colonialism, or of a proscribed religious tradition, or of one or another kind of indigenism or migrancy, or of “colour” in all its pre-emptive plays and counterplays, assumes literary voice within, and usually against, a supposed mainstream culture? Does the biogra-

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phy of such a writer equally fall into an ethnic category? How does gendering add a further complexity, rarely with greater challenge than in Alice Walker’s African American credo of womanism? Has not the very association of race or ethnicity in life writing minoritized it, especially when the canons against which it is judged (and their academic interpretation) more often than not turn out to be mainly European-American and Western? These questions, of late, have all drawn upon a lexicon of autoethnography, postcoloniality, orientalism, subalternism, multiculturalism, and, as if to reverse past emphases, “whiteness studies”. An account such as Toni Morrison’s Playing in The Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992) adds its own call to awareness when it speaks of “representing one’s race to … a race of readers that understands itself to be ‘universal’ or race-free”. The issue of who designates whom “ethnic” in life writing turns a number of ways. The teachings of the Buddha, for example, are generally taken to indicate the pathway into universal transcendentalism. But the footfalls of his Himalayan princely beginnings as Sidhartha Gautama remain unmistakeable, from the style of asceticism to the Bodhi tree, wheel, and elephant imagery. If St Paul’s epistles give shape to early Christianity there can be little doubting the impress of, and synchronicity with, his Jewish scriptural heritage and life (and militant orthodoxy) as Saul of Tarsus. The Augustine of the Confessions, church father and exponent of theological doctrine, coexists with the “native” Algerian African who was converted at Hippo, and who became bishop there in 395 ce. Columbus, born Cristoforo Colombo in Genoa, finds his eventual self-inscription not through Italian, or the Portuguese of his years in Lisbon studying wind and ocean wave cycles, but the Spanish language of the logs of 1492 and other Atlantic journeys edited by Bartolomé de Las Casas. Debate might well join as to why the life writings of any, or all, of these, do not customarily invite an ethnic, a racial, construing. Similarly it should be noted that many of the best-known modern diagnostic texts that have made ethnicity, or race, their focus, at the same time, and figurally, carry the silhouette of their authors’ own “ethnic” lives. Fanon’s Peau noire, masques blancs (1952; Black Skin, White Masks), for instance, has long become the classic case study of African Arab colonial psychosis. Yet it can hardly escape attention that, throughout, the book intimately reflects Fanon’s own life story, underwritten at every turn by each shaping close encounter with francophone oppression in his native Martinique. This same “double” telling equally holds for a contemporary pantheon of scholarship. Edward Said’s landmark study of cultural imperialism, Orientalism (1978), draws obliquely, but no less hauntingly, on his own life experience as a diasporic Palestinian (later described overtly in his 1999 autobiography Out of Place). Gayatri Spivak’s In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (1987), her anatomy of subalternism, bears the stamp of the anything-but-buried memory of a Calcutta birth and a bilingual English / Bengali young womanhood lived, for all of Indian independence in 1947, under the continuing echoes of the British Raj. Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture (1994) tracks the dialectic of mainstream and racial and ethnic “othering” while reflecting its author’s own rite of passage as both a First World and a Third World intellectual. In From Exile to Diaspora: Versions of the Filipino Experience in the United

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States (1998) Epifanio San Juan, Jr, veteran Filipino exile in the USA and scholar of the radical writer activist Carlos Bulosan (himself the author of a vintage worker-migrant “ethnic” autobiography, America is in the Heart, 1946), tells nothing if not a self-story within his neo-Marxist assaults on internal colonialism and, as he sees it, a fake or cosmetic American multiculturalism. Another kind of locus classicus would be The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written By Himself (1789). Equiano, who was born an Ibo-Benin royal sibling in 1745, and then named as a slave after a medieval Scandinavian monarch, was an escapee from a Dixie plantation, a Christian convert and Calvinist, and an itinerant black presence from Georgia to Gibraltar and from the Antilles to England, and became one of the most travelled men of his time. If indeed ethnic, or racial, his Narrative at the same time signifies a rare internationalism, the historic writing is not simply of the one kind of world but diversely of the many. Is, then, to apply the terms “ethnic” or “racial” to a work of life writing to have the tail wag the dog, or is it not? Political autobiography supplies another testing ground, typically with Mahatma Gandhi’s An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927–29), the Dalai Lama’s Freedom in Exile (1990), or Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk To Freedom (1994). All three arose from an “ethnicity” believed inferior by those in power, respectively the British imperium, the Chinese occupying Tibet, and apartheid Anglo-Dutch South Africa. They make the one self-story the story of a nationhood. A generosity, however, also shows through: no one ethnic / racial governance, certainly not their own, is to prevail, but all ethnicities are to coexist in the making of nationhood. The point extends in another related direction: that of how perfectly mainstream life writing for one tradition becomes “ethnic” for another. Vintage cases would be the ranking of C.L.R. James’s Beyond the Boundary (1963) as only an “outpost of empire” text, Anne Frank’s diary (first version, 1947) as only a victim story of Dutch Jewry, Wole Soyinka’s A Shuttle in The Crypt (1972) as only a Third-World Nigerian prison diary, or Michael Arlen’s Passage to Ararat (1975) as only a work of Armenian reminiscence and roots. Ethnicity or race, again, affords only a partial key to the Turkish Gastarbeiterliteratur (guest-worker literature) of Güney Dal or Aysel Ozakin, the Caribbeanism and exile writing of George Lamming of Barbados, a Japanese Canadian autobiography such as Joy Kogawa’s Obasan (1981), or the Samoan-Pacific writings of Albert Wendt. Equally resistant to the single category are the life writings of so called “ethnic transvestites”. The circuit includes a selfreinventing Lafcadio Hearn in a memoir such as Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894), John Howard Griffin’s white-as-black American chronicle Black Like Me (1961), Forrest Carter’s fake Cherokee autobiography in The Education of Little Tree (1976), and perhaps, however startlingly, Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1924; My Struggle) as Austrian-written urGerman manifesto. Complication also grows with what, in all its paradox, has been termed “ethnic metropolitan” writing, whether by a Joseph Conrad or Aimé Césaire, V.S. Naipaul or Edmond Jabès, Jean Rhys or Bharati Mukherjee. Even more conventionally designated ethnic or racial life writing invites shared other perspectives. Me llamo Rigoberta

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Menchú (1983; I, Rigoberta Menchú), written by the daughter of a Guatemalan Mayan leader (and at the centre of a controversy about its authenticity), has justly won feminist, postcolonial, and bi-hemispheric readings. Keri Hulme’s The Bone People (1983), drawn from sources in New Zealand’s Maori life and belief systems, and albeit a novel, offers an indigenist companion piece and comparison. The United States, it has to be said, perhaps offer the fullest map of “ethnic” life writing, in part as a culture from the outset historically taken up with the dynamics of identity – self, community, gender, religion, region. Native America, to which the single self-account was traditionally not a cultural norm, looks to latterday reflexive classics of place and memory such as The Names: A Memoir (1976) by Scott Momaday (Kiowa), Storyteller (1981) by Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo), or Interior Landscapes: Autobiographical Myths and Metaphors (1990) by Gerald Vizenor (Anishinabwe / Ojibway) in which being “ethnically” identified is put under comic trickster rules. Each leaves no doubt of an ethnicity further seamed, and compounded, by issues of cross-blood ancestry or métissage. Afro-America offers its own litany, self-inscription from slaveholding’s ban on access to the written word to an era of Black Power. Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) or Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) thereby anticipate Malcolm X’s Autobiography (1965) or the five volumes of Maya Angelou’s autobiography, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). This link of ethnic and scriptural identity recurs, whether in Maxine Hong Kingston’s genealogy of female descent from ancestral China to West Coast Chinese America in The Woman Warrior (1976), or Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory (1982) with its teasing negotiation of chicano (Mexican American) and mainstream divides. Nor is this to overlook “white ethnicity” in Italian American life writing such as Jerry Mangione’s An Ethnic at Large: A Memoir of America in the Thirties and Forties (1978), or Irish American records such as Frank McCourt’s funny and affecting Angela’s Ashes (1996), or Jewish American texts including Mary Antin’s immigrant chronicle, From Plotzk to Boston (1899), Alfred Kazin’s landmark urban trilogy A Walker in the City (1951), Starting Out in the Thirties (1962), and New York Jew (1978), and Jay Neugeboren’s inward and contemplative Parentheses: An Autobiographical Journey (1970). Is classic WASP life writing, moreover – such as Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (1793) or Henry Adams’s Education (published privately, 1907) – somehow to continue to be considered unethnic, as against, say, Richard Wright’s southern and African American Black Boy (1945), Luther Standing Bear’s Sioux My Indian Boyhood (1931), Monica Sone’s Japanese American war intern account Nisei Daughter (1953), or Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez’s chicano, and appropriately panoramic and bilingual, I Am Joaquín / Yo Soy Joaquín (1967)? Ethnicity and race indeed enter almost every manner of life writing, but in quite varying and often oblique ways. Yet however unmistakeable the signs, the writing should not be located only under those dispensations, in part because the very terminology of ethnicity and race is itself partial and Westernized as is the emphasis on the confessional self. For however the “ethnic” or “racial” are to be located in life (and other) writing, and however complex, or consequential

they are in their own right, they take their place at the same time as dynamics within a necessarily more faceted ply of language and consciousness – the greater, expressive whole. A. Robert Lee See also African American Life Writing; Asian American Life Writing; Australia: Indigenous Life Writing; Autoethnography; Canada: Aboriginal Life Writing; Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Postcolonialism; Ethnography; Hispanic American Life Writing; Jewish American Life Writing; Migration, Diaspora and Life Writing; National Identity and Life Writing; Native American Life Writing; New Zealand and Polynesia: Indigenous Life Writing; Slave Narratives; Spanish America: Indigenous Life Writing

Further Reading Allen, Theodore W., The Invention of The White Race, 2 vols, New York and London: Verso, 1994–97 Appiah, Anthony, In My Father’s House: Africa in The Philosophy of Culture, New York: Oxford University Press, and London: Methuen, 1992 Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (editors), The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, London and New York: Routledge, 1989 Bell, Susan Groag, and MarilynYalom (editors), Revealing Lives: Autobiography, Biography, and Gender, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990 Bhabha, Homi (editor), Nation and Narration, London and New York: Routledge, 1990 Buell, Frederick, National Culture and The New Global System, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994 Césaire, Aimé, Discourse on Colonialism, translated by Joan Pinkham, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972 Frankenberg, Ruth (editor), Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1997 Gates, Henry Louis, Jr, Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992 Gilroy, Paul, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, London: Verso, and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993 Jones, Eldred D. (editor), African Literature Today: Myth, History and the Contemporary Writer, New York: Holmes and Meier, 1980 King, Russell, John Connell and Paul White (editors), Writing across Worlds: Literature and Migration, London and New York: Routledge, 1995 Lee, A. Robert (editor), First Person Singular: Studies in American Autobiography, London: Vision Press, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988 Lee, A. Robert (editor), Other Britain, Other British: Contemporary Multicultural Fiction, London and East Haven, Connecticut: Pluto Press, 1995 Lewis, David Levering, “From Eurocentrism to Polycentrism”, Historians and Race: Autobiography and the Writing of History, edited by Paul A. Cimbala, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996 Lionnet, Françoise, Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, SelfPortraiture, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1989 Moraga, Cherrié and Gloria Anzaldúa (editors), This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Watertown, Massachusetts: Persephone Press, 1981 Mostern, Kenneth, Autobiography and Black Identity Politics: Radicalization in Twentieth-Century America, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999 Naipaul, V.S., The Enigma of Arrival, London: Viking, and New York: Knopf, 1987 Olney, James, Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972 Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London and New York: Routledge, 1992

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Ethnography Ethnography is a form of writing based upon anthropological fieldwork. Ethnographic fieldwork involves intensive everyday interactions over a period of usually a year or more between the anthropologist and the people being studied. The classic “realist” ethnographies developed in the early 20th century in tandem with methods of participant observation, especially in the tradition of British structural functionalism. Bronislaw Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) marks the beginning of this genre. There has long been disagreement in anthropology about the degree to which ethnography should report on the culture of the people studied, on these people as individuals, and / or on the ethnographer’s personal experiences in the field. There is also, more recently, debate about representation in ethnography – should the report be written solely by the outside ethnographer or should it reflect the collaborative nature of field research and represent the “native” voice? There is a long history of ethnographic writing that incorporates the self of the ethnographer into cultural analysis, but this approach remained marginal to the discipline until quite recently. That the ethnographic monograph should be an “objective” account that details the “native point of view” rather than the subjectivity of the ethnographer is central to the approach of ethnographic “realism” that prevailed during the early period of ethnographic writing (see Marcus and Cushman). Personal narratives usually represented parallel worlds to the ethnographic writing products, which established a scholar’s reputation through ethnographic theory and description. In other cases, there was a division of labour among the many married couples working in ethnography, whereby husbands often produced the ethnographic monographs and wives produced more personal genres of writing on the experience of fieldwork. It was in American anthropology, and among female anthropologists, that the use of personal narratives of fieldwork experiences became established as a separate genre from the ethnographic monograph. Early examples of this include Alice Marriott’s Greener Fields: Experiences among the American Indians (1953), Hortense Powdermaker’s Stranger and Friend (1966), and De Frederica Laguna’s Voyage to Greenland: A Personal Initiation into Anthropology (1977). Elenore Bowen [Bohannan] whose Return to Laughter was published in 1954 and Jean L. Briggs (Never in Anger, Portrait of an Eskimo Family, 1970) used fictionalized portrayals of their fieldwork to illustrate personal experience. Elizabeth Fernea’s Guests of the Sheikh (1969) and A Street in Marrakech (1975) were written from the point of view of the wife of an anthropologist who accompanies her husband on fieldwork but who is herself a keen observer of the local culture as well as the ethnographic encounter. Many ethnographers intensified their efforts to chronicle their fieldwork experiences in ways that foregrounded the researcher as a person after the dislocations and disruptions of postcolonial situations in the 1960s led to a questioning of the anthropologist’s role and motives in the field. The publication of Malinowski’s A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term (1967) also fuelled criticism of the supposed “objectivity” of the ethnographer. There are now scores of volumes written by ethnologists who explore their fieldwork experiences in candid accounts. Some of the first to appear were Gerald Berreman’s

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Behind Many Masks (1962), Paul Rabinow’s Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco (1977), Jean-Paul Dumont’s The Headman and I (1978), Jeanne Favret-Saada’s Les Mots, la mort, les sorts (1977; Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage), and Marjorie Shostak’s Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman (1981). There is a blending of cultural analysis and personal experience in each of these texts. More recent examples include Manda Cesara’s [i.e. Karla Poewe’s] Reflections of a Woman Anthropologist: No Place to Hide (1982), Nigel Barley’s Ceremony: An Anthropologist’s Misadventures in the Bush (1986), Edith Turner’s The Spirit and the Drum (1987), Martha C. Ward’s Nest in the Wind (1989), and Barbara Gallatin Anderson’s First Fieldwork: The Misadventures of an Anthropologist (1990). The fieldwork narrative serves to help prepare neophytes, to convey the humanistic qualities of anthropology, and to establish the authority of the ethnographer (who was really “there”). Numerous edited collections of fieldwork stories began to appear in the 1960s and 1970s. Most accounts of fieldwork have been published in the form of essays in collections rather than as monographs, reflecting the continued distinction between the ethnographic monograph (as cultural analysis and description) and the personal narrative of field experience. The first, Joseph Casagrande’s In the Company of Man: Twenty Portraits of Anthropological Informants (1960), and Bruce Grindal and Frank Salamone’s more recent Bridges to Humanity: Narratives on Anthropology and Friendship (1995), took up the issue of relationships between informants and ethnographers. Other examples include D.G. Jongmans and C.W. Gutkind’s Anthropologists in the Field (1967), Morris Frielich’s Marginal Natives: Anthropologists at Work (1970), George D. Spindler’s Being an Anthropologist (1970), Solon T. Kimball and James B. Watson’s Crossing Cultural Boundaries: The Anthropological Experience (1972), André Beteille and T.N. Madan’s Encounter and Experience (1975), Phil DeVita’s The Humbled Anthropologist: Tales from the Pacific (1992), Bruce Jackson and Edward D. Ives’s The World Observed (1996), Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner’s Composing Ethnography (1996), and Annette Lareau and Jeffrey Shultz’s Journeys through Ethnography (1996). Several volumes deal with particular themes in fieldwork. Peggy Golde’s Women in the Field: Anthropological Experiences (1970) drew attention to the particular issues facing female anthropologists, and opened discussions about gender issues in fieldwork. It was followed by Tony Larry Whitehead and Mary Ellen Conaway’s Self, Sex, and Gender in CrossCultural Fieldwork (1986), Soraya Altorki and Camillia Fawzi El-Solh’s Arab Women in the Field (1988), and Diane Bell, Pat Caplan, and Wazir Jahan Karim’s Gendered Fields: Women, Men and Ethnography (1993). Sexuality in the field has been addressed in Don Kulick and Margaret Wilson’s Taboo: Sex, Identity and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork (1995), Ellen Lewin and William L. Leap’s Out in the Field: Reflections of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists (1996), and Fran Markowitz and Michael Ashkenazi’s Sex, Sexuality and the Anthropologist (1999). Other themes that have prompted edited collections include issues of children and family in the field, such as Joan Cassell’s Children in the Field: Anthropological Experiences (1987) and Barbara Butler and Diane Turner’s Children and Anthropological Research (1987); and the personal and professional aspects of long-term fieldwork are reflected

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in Don D. Fowler and Donald L. Hardesty’s Others Knowing Others (1994). Another set of collections focuses on autobiography, ethnography, and narrative forms of writing, and on the intersections of literature and ethnography. The essays in Judith Okely and Helen Callaway’s Anthropology and Autobiography (1992) bring issues of theory, method, and writing together. The present author’s collection Auto /Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social (1997) deals with ethnographic approaches to forms of self writing among both “natives” and ethnographers. Other volumes that relate to these issues include Eduardo Archetti’s Exploring the Written (1994); Smadar Lavie, Kirin Narayan, and Renato Rosaldo’s Creativity / Anthropology (1993); and Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon’s Women Writing Culture (1995). One biographical genre that is often overlooked in discussions of ethnography and autobiography is that of the intellectual autobiography written by the professional anthropologist. Two of the most famous autobiographies in anthropology are Blackberry Winter (1972) by Margaret Mead and Tristes Tropiques (1955) by Claude Lévi-Strauss. Clifford Geertz’s recent After the Fact (1995) is his own contribution to this genre. Another memoir of an anthropological career is Edward Hall’s An Anthropology of Everyday Life (1992). Barbara Tedlock in 1991 identified a trend of movement from the “ethnographic memoir” to the “narrative ethnography”. She pointed out that “in contrast to memoirs, narrative ethnographies focus not on the ethnographer herself, but rather on the character and process of the ethnographic dialogue or encounter”. Anthropologists who are prominent in this trend include Judith Okely (Own or Other Culture, 1996), Ruth Behar (The Vulnerable Observer, 1996), and Renato Rosaldo (Culture and Truth, 1989). Collaboration between researchers and informants, and convergence between the personal narratives of each, are among the issues that one can notice in recent work – for example, Esther Burnet Horne and Sally McBeth’s Essie’s Story (1998). Recent attention to native forms of autobiography, biography, and ethnography have led to hybrid forms and to experimentations with established genres of life history and ethnography. Two edited volumes, Henk Driessen’s The Politics of Ethnographic Reading and Writing (1993) and Caroline Brettell’s When They Read What We Write (1993), both address the encounters, particularly through published ethnographic writing, between professional anthropologists and the subjects of their research. Michael Herzfeld’s Portrait of a Greek Imagination (1997) is an “ethnographic biography” that uses genres of life history, biography, and ethnography to discuss the life and work of the Greek novelist and left-wing political figure Andreas Nenedakis. Other experimentations with autobiography, biography, and ethnography include Karen McCarthy Brown’s Mama Lola: A Voudou Priestess in Brooklyn (1991), Kirin Narayan’s Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels (1989), Laurel Kendall’s The Life and Hard Times of a Korean Shaman (1998), and Caroline Brettell’s Writing against the Wind: A Mother’s Life History (1999). An interest in the practices of ethnography and self-disclosure among those who were traditionally the subject of the ethnographic gaze has produced several important models of collaborative research and understandings of the “practical knowledge” (Bourdieu) of both researchers and their informants. There is a growing tendency to produce texts that are presented

as autobiographical, first-person accounts by the “native”, which also provide ethnographic descriptions. Ethnographers increasingly view informants as collaborators and ethnographers / autobiographers in their own right. Deborah E. Reed-Danahay See also Anthropology and Life Writing; Autoethnography; Ethnicity, Race, and Life Writing

Further Reading Archetti, Eduardo P. (editor), Exploring the Written: Anthropology and the Multiplicity of Writing, Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1994 Atkinson, Paul, Understanding Ethnographic Texts, Newbury Park, California and London: Sage, 1992 Behar, Ruth and Deborah A. Gordon (editors), Women Writing Culture, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995 Benson, Paul (editor), Anthropology and Literature, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993 Bourdieu, Pierre, Le Sens pratique, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1980 Brettell, Caroline B. (editor), When They Read What We Write: The Politics of Ethnography, Westport, Connecticut: Bergin and Garvey, 1993 Clifford, James, “On Ethnographic Authority”, Representations, 2 (1983): 118–46 Clifford, James and George E. Marcus (editors), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986 Driessen, Henk (editor), The Politics of Ethnographic Reading and Writing: Confrontations of Western and Indigenous Views, Saarbrucken: Breitenbach, 1993 Ellis, Carolyn and Arthur P. Bochner (editors), Composing Ethnography: Alternative Forms of Qualitative Writing, Walnut Creek, California: Altamira Press, 1996 Lavie, Smadar, Kirin Narayan, and Renato Rosaldo (editors), Creativity / Anthropology, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1993 Marcus, George E. and Dick Cushman, “Ethnographies as Texts”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 11 (1982): 25–69 Okely, Judith, Own or Other Culture, London and New York: Routledge, 1996 Okely, Judith and Helen Callaway (editors), Anthropology and Autobiography, London and New York: Routledge, 1992 Reed-Danahay, Deborah E. (editor), Auto/ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social, Oxford and New York: Berg, 1997 Rosaldo, Renato, Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis, Boston: Beacon Press, 1989 Tedlock, Barbara, “From Participant Observation to the Observation of Participation: The Emergence of Narrative Ethnography”, Journal of Anthropological Research, 47/1 (1991): 69–94 Van Maanen, John, Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988

Evelyn, John

1620–1706

English diarist, prose writer, and biographer In addition to his numerous utilitarian writings on gardens, reforestation, engraving, city planning, and the evils of coal smoke over London, John Evelyn produced a celebrated biography, the life of Margaret Blagge, a saintly young Maid of Honour to the Queen, who died in childbirth at the age of 25, three years after her marriage to Sidney Godolphin. Moved by the conflict between this young woman’s religious devotion and her love for Godolphin, between her personal purity and the libertine values of Charles II’s court, Evelyn, during the last

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decade of Blagge’s life, became deeply attached to her. Mrs Blagge “regards me”, he wrote, “as a father, a brother, and what is more, a friend”. He regarded her as “the most excellent and inestimable friend that ever lived”. Addressed throughout to Mrs Blagge’s friend, Anne Howard, at whose request it was written, The Life of Mrs. Godolphin (first published in 1847) is a private memorial of this friendship. Evelyn is remembered chiefly, however, for his Diary, which, in its entirety, is virtually a history of his own times. Much of it is written in a retrospective and more finished manner than the record kept by his contemporary and “particular friend”, Samuel Pepys. Indeed, Evelyn’s Diary begins autobiographically (“I was born … in 1620”; “The very first thing I can call to memory was …”, etc.) and continues to within weeks of his death in 1706. Pepys’s Diary was written to be read only by Pepys himself: in his breathless shorthand accounts of even his most trivial pursuits and fleeting interests, he was making a personal audit of his progress in life. Evelyn’s selective and more formally composed diary entries suggest that he wrote for a reader. A member (often a disapproving one) of the court, Pepys merely served; Evelyn needed no running reminder of who he was. By the same token, there is little expression of spontaneous feeling and no unguarded revelations of personal indiscretion in Evelyn’s diary. In 1641, following the execution of the Earl of Stafford, and sensing “our calamities but yet in their infancy”, Evelyn left England for the Hague, and over the next ten years carried out an exhausting tour of the cities, churches, gardens, great houses, and galleries on the continent. Almost a third of the Diary chronicles this itinerary, in which long entries cover several days of busy sight-seeing at a time and sequential entries overlap one another to make a dense narrative, each retaining, nevertheless, a contemporary freshness. Later entries chronicling momentous events are treated in a similar fashion. The account of the death of Charles II, for instance, is dated 4 February 1685, when Evelyn “went to London, hearing his Majesty had been the Monday before (2nd February) surprised in his bed-chamber with an apoplectic fit”. The entry was written, however, after the King’s death (6 February), and concludes with Evelyn’s recollection of Charles’s dissolute revelry on the previous Sunday night, “this day se’nnight”. So, like many of Evelyn’s death notices, this account includes a frank but considered appraisal of the subject’s character. Evelyn’s correspondence with the important figures of his time is voluminous. A recent study of his letters finds evidence, in Evelyn’s latter years, of his “interest in self-recreation”, in transforming his “Interregnum millenarianism” into “Restoration utopianism”. There is little if any evidence of such “biographical skepticism” in the Diary, however, nor does he appear to have been very sympathetic to deliberate selftransformations in others. In 1686, he reported that John Dryden (who had recently converted to Catholicism) celebrated mass with his two sons, remarking tartly that “such proselytes were no great loss to the Church”. Evelyn accepted change as a natural thing (see, for example, his annual birthday entries on 31 October). His interest in the new science (he was an early promoter and member of the Royal Society and a translator of Lucretius) was lifelong and not untypical of men of his station. The diarist had enormous curiosity, but it was of a practical sort, aimed at civic improvement and beautification. There is a rich variety in his

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long record of social and political change, but the responsible beliefs and firm values of the man who produced it are, from beginning to end, unchanging. George Wasserman Biography Born at Wotton House, near Dorking, Surrey, England, 31 October 1620. Brought up by his grandparents in Lewes, Sussex, 1625–37; educated at Southover school, Lewes. Studied at Balliol College, Oxford (fellow), and Middle Temple, London, 1637. Spent long periods on the Continent after his father’s death in 1640. Began his diary, 1641. Lived in the Netherlands, 1641; London and Wotton, 1641–43 (served in the royalist army during the civil war, 1642); France and Italy, 1643–47. Married Mary Browne, daughter of the king’s ambassador in Paris, 1647: six sons and three daughters. Stayed in England, 1647–49, in Paris from 1649. Lived at Sayes Court, Deptford, 1652–94. Toured England, 1654. Wrote Fumifugium (1661), on the air and smoke of London; Sculptura (1662), on engraving; Sylva (1664), an influential work on arboriculture; and Navigation and Commerce (1674). Founding fellow and council member, 1662, and secretary, 1672–73, Royal Society. Appointed to the London streets commission, 1662, and the Mint committee, 1663. Commissioner for seamen wounded in the Dutch wars, 1664–67 and 1672–74. Member, Council for Foreign Plantations, 1671–74. Commissioner for the Privy Seal, 1685–87. Settled on Wotton estate, 1694, which he inherited after his brother’s death in 1699. Treasurer, Greenwich Hospital, 1695–1703. Died at Wotton, 27 February 1706.

Selected Writings Memoirs Illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn, Esq., F.R.S. … Comprising his Diary, from the Year 1641 to 1705–6, and a Selection of His Familiar Letters, 2 vols, edited by William Bray and William Upcott, 1818; revised 1819; revised as The Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, edited by William Bray, 1850; as The Diary of John Evelyn, edited by E.S. de Beer, 1955, and by Guy de la Bédoyère, 1994; selections as John Evelyn’s Diary, edited by Philip Francis, 1963, and The Diary of John Evelyn, edited by John Bowle, 1983 The Life of Mrs. Godolphin, edited by Samuel Wilberforce, 1847; edited by Harriet Simpson, 1939 Memoirs for My Grandson, edited by Geoffrey Keynes, 1926

Further Reading Keynes, Geoffrey, John Evelyn: A Study in Bibliophily and a Bibliography of his Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, and New York: Grolier Club, 1937 Marburg, Clara, Mr Pepys and Mr Evelyn, London: Oxford University Press, and Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935 Marshall, W. Gerald, “John Evelyn and the Construction of the Scientific Self” in The Restoration Mind, edited by Marshall, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997

Ewald, Johannes

1743–1781

Danish poet, playwright, and autobiographer Best known as one of Denmark’s greatest lyric poets, Johannes Ewald also wrote in other genres including life writing. Indeed, one of his earliest poems was an elegy for King Frederik V. His autobiography Levnet og meeninger [1804–08; Life and Opinions], published posthumously, is, however, his most important contribution to the life-writing genre. Ewald’s short life was chaotic, plagued by illness and alcoholism. Nevertheless, he was the first Dane to make poetry his profession by attempting to earn a living solely by his pen. “Life and Opinions” contributes to his mythic image as a poet, an

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archetype drawn on by Karen Blixen and other later writers. Portraying his young self as sensitive, self-conscious, and a Romantic lover of freedom and wonder, Ewald draws on numerous literary influences to delineate the personal characteristics and early experiences that determined his destiny. Although his education did not neglect the works of classic autobiographers such as Augustine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, both of whose Confessions had set the autobiographical standard of the 18th century, Ewald turned to fiction for his own models. The influence of the English novelist Laurence Sterne, evident in Ewald’s very title, which echoes The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, is also stylistically apparent throughout the work. “Life and Opinions” begins in medias res in Hamburg just as Ewald is about to defy his older brother Enevold by joining up with the Prussian army. It was Enevold who talked Johannes into running away in the first place, and now he wants to go back home. Johannes, however, sneaks off to the Prussian Resident to enlist in the Seven Years’ War; the Resident sends him on a ship to Magdeburg with a sealed letter for the major. At one of the ship’s ports of call, Johannes gets drunk on a bottle of wine he stole from the captain. Then the ship sails away while he is dreaming and admiring nature from the top of a hill. Despite his initial despair at being left behind, the next ship obligingly picks him up and delivers him to Magdeburg, where the narrative ends in medias res just as it began, with his promise to tell us next about his visit to the major. Like Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Ewald frequently interrupts his narrative with asides to the reader, explanations of the state of his soul, flashbacks to his earlier childhood, lyrical prose odes to nature, women, and wine, and accounts of his first loves, all written with humour and irony. Other characters that Ewald borrows from European literature to build a picture of himself as poet are Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, in his obliging admiration of women, Voltaire’s Thunder Ten-Tronck in his love of wine, and Cervantes’s Don Quixote in his unreasonable romantic desire to distinguish himself through bravery in battle. Ewald wrote “Life and Opinions” at the inn at Rungsted, where his mother and her priest, J.C. Schönheyder, had sent him to cure his drinking in 1773. Although an earlier manuscript fragment titled “Adskilligt til Johannes Ewald’s Levnet og Meeninger” indicates that Ewald had already begun to plan his autobiography during his previous stay in Copenhagen, Schönheyder’s urging that he should write his confessions was no doubt a precipitating factor. The traces of religious confession as established by Augustine, however, are to be found only in the form of parody in the book. Ewald’s only analogue to a conversion experience is his falling in love with Arendse, his stepfather’s niece, who was eventually to marry someone else, but who functioned for a time as his Dulcinea. It is true that this was a life-changing event, for it prompted his military adventures, which in turn resulted in his ill-health and alcoholism. It did not, however, fundamentally change his personality or outlook on life. The Ewald writing “Life and Opinions” from an easy chair propped up by pillows is no wiser than the young boy he used to be, drinking wine and admiring the world from the top of a hill. As Peer Sørensen points out, he even cites Augustine blasphemously by including him in the brotherhood of drinkers. Ewald’s novella “Den unge Herr von Frankhuysens historie” [1805; The Story of Young Mr Frankhuysen] parallels Ewald’s

school years closely enough to be considered autobiographical fiction, and many of his lyrical poems describing and expressing his inner life may also be considered autobiographical. Although “Life and Opinions” contains many humorous passages, there was also a deeply religious side to Ewald’s nature, expressed in confessional lyrics such as Rungsteds Lyksalighedheder [1773; The Joys of Rungsted], another work produced during his extremely fertile sojourn at Rungsted. Kristine J. Anderson Biography Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, 18 November 1743. His father was an orphanage priest. Started attending the cathedral school in Slesvig (Schleswig) after the death of his father in 1754. Educated in the home of the school’s principal, where he learned German. Studied theology at the University of Copenhagen from 1758. Went to live with his mother, who had remarried. Interrupted his theological studies to embark on a career as a soldier in the Prussian army during the Seven Years’ War, having fallen in love with his stepfather’s niece, Arendse Hulegaard, in 1759. Deserted to the Austrian army; became ill and returned to Copenhagen. Graduated from the University of Copenhagen, and received a stipend for Valkendorf’s Collegium 1762. Started to become addicted to alcohol, possibly when Arendse Hulegaard married another man, 1764. Began studying European literature, 1765. Wrote the dramatic poem Adam og Eva, 1769. Came under the influence of the pietistic German writer Friedrich Klopstock. Published the tragedy Rolf Krage (1770), based on a Danish legend that was also the source of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Moved by his mother from Copenhagen to the isolated coastal area of Rungsted, northern Zeeland [Sjaeland], 1773. Wrote Rungsteds Lyksaligheder [1773; The Joys of Rungsted] and Balders Dod (1774; The Death of Balder), and started his memoirs. Was moved to a more isolated home near Elsinore, 1775. Underwent spiritual crisis, 1775–76. Returned to Copenhagen, 1777. Became increasingly affected by rheumatic illness. Wrote his last work, Fiskerne [The Fishermen], 1779. Died in Copenhagen, 17 March 1781.

Selected Writings Levnet og meeninger [Life and Opinions], 1804–08; edited by Jens Aage Doctor, 1969, and Johny Kondrup, 1988 Den unge Herr von Frankhuysens historie [The Story of Young Mr Frankhuysen] (autobiographical fiction), 1805

Further Reading Andersen, Vilhelm, “Johannes Ewald” in Den Danske Litterature i det attende aarhundrede, vol. 2 of Illustrevet Dansk litteraturhistorie, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1934 Janzén, Assar, entry on Ewald in European Authors: 1000–1900: A Biographical Dictionary of European Literature, edited by Stanley J. Kunitz and Vineta Colby, New York: Wilson, 1967 Rossel, Sven H., entry on Ewald in Dictionary of Scandinavian Literature, edited by Virpi Zuck, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, and London: St James Press, 1990 Sørensen, Peer E., Håb og erindring: Johannes Ewald i oplysningen [Hope and Memory: Johannes Ewald Illuminated], Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1989 Zeruneith, Keld, Soldigteren: en biografi om Johannes Ewald [The Sun Poet: A Biography of Johannes Ewald], Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1985

Exemplary and Model Lives People in the West are no longer ancestor-worshippers, and seem able to see only the feet of clay of earlier heroes and heroines. But before Freud, Lytton Strachey’s mocking Eminent

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Victorians (1918), and the long 20th-century history of disillusionment with leaders and the causes they betrayed, it had largely been assumed, for at least 2000 years, that the lives of the “great” – usually “great men” – did hold positive lessons for all subsequent generations, and were certainly a model for the young. Even if the Old Testament patriarchs, lawgivers, prophets, and kings – Abraham, Noah, Moses, Isaiah, and David – were too distant culturally to assume any immediate relevance, and even if Christ’s self-sacrificial example, however widely taught, has not proved generally imitable, the literate have always had other “great lives” to reflect upon and to emulate. Plutarch’s Vitae parallelae (2nd century ce; Parallel Lives), for instance, the earliest Western classical example, has been enormously influential – not least upon Shakespeare – ever since it was written. One and a half thousand years later the Lives were judged, in Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary (c.1800), to be “the most entertaining, instructive and interesting of all the [writings] of ancient history”. Exemplary biography naturally mirrors the dominant culture of succeeding ages. Once Christianity had become the official and almost universal religion of Europe, it was the lives of the saints, whether transmitted by the Venerable Bede (c.700 ce), or anonymously in the 1610 Lives of Women Saints of Our Contrie of England (first published, 1886), or by Alban Butler in his Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints (1756–62), which readers were told to imitate for their “humility, meekness and … patience”. Given the internecine ideological and actual wars between Christians, however, rival exemplary pantheons came into being. Foxe’s immensely important and much reprinted Acts and Monuments (1563; subsequently known as the Book of Martyrs) testified to the heroism of the early Christians, medieval Lollards, and 16th-century Protestant martyrs in England. Its Catholic counterpart, Challoner’s Memoirs of Missionary Priests and of Other Catholics of Both Sexes, that have suffered death in England on religious accounts, 1577–1684, could only be published, anonymously, in 1741. Other collections of sectarian exemplary lives were read by generations of separate religious readerships in Britain – whether Anglican, Congregational, Presbyterian, Methodist, Unitarian, or Quaker – from the 17th century until the end of the 19th century, when the decay of faith among the educated became widespread. More secular in its influence was Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697–1702; Historical and Critical Dictionary), which covered not only religious but also philosophical figures and prefigured much 18th-century collective biography. Examples include the Biographica Britannica; or, The Lives of the Most Eminent Persons Who Have Flourished in Great Britain and Ireland, compiled by William Oldys and others. T. Ffloyd’s Bibliotheca Biographica (1760), Joseph Towers’s British Biography; or, An Accurate and Impartial Account of the Lives of Eminent Persons (1772), and Andrew Kippis and Towers’s Biographica Britannica (1778–93), one of whose five volumes was almost entirely devoted to Captain Cook. The prevalent ideological perspective of 18th-century life writing was that of anti-Papist Enlightenment disgust at bigoted religious persecution and the cruelties of personal, if not of social, injustice. The 19th century was the great age for “great lives”, with Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History

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(1841) as the outstanding Victorian example. In keeping with Britain’s confident position as the dominant world imperial power, British boys were reared on Clive and Nelson, on heroism during the Indian Mutiny, and on Gordon of Khartoum. School and Sunday school prizes most often took the form of lives of heroes and heroines – such as Joseph Johnson’s Clever Boys of Our Time (1861) and Clever Girls of Our Time (1863), W.H.D. Adams’s A Book of Earnest Lives; or, Good Samaritans (1894), and Frank Mundell’s Stories of The Victoria Cross (1890) and his Heroines of Mercy (1896) and Heroines of the Cross (1897). The social reformer Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help (1859), with its biographical illustrations of the triumph of personal attributes, including self-education, industry, and thrift, over social disadvantage, had enormous popularity with the respectable, aspiring “upper” working class and “lower” middle class – although it is now castigated for telling the poor to rely on pulling themselves up by their own bootlaces. Inventors, entrepreneurs, and reformers at home, as well as explorers, missionaries, and soldiers abroad, were all held up as exemplars by the Victorians, but there was also a long tradition, going back to the early 18th century, of veneration for actors, actresses, and other great performers. If the lives of most of these could hardly be called exemplary, their sheer popularity ensured their fame. The apotheosis of collective biography in Britain, including both models and anti-models, has been, of course, the cumulative Dictionary of National Biography, from 1885 to the present. The problem with exemplary and model life writing as a genre is its tendency towards hagiography and monotonous enthusiasm for its subjects. Donald Stauffer (1930) chronicled how the exemplary lives of the 17th century produced a school of “polite” biography in England that related only the subjects’ good points: “The suppression of faults can easily lead to the suppression of peculiarities … [and] study of eminent virtue includes only the typical, not individual traits, for they alone are to be emulated”. The problem with creating spotless heroes and heroines is that it idealizes them unrealistically, producing models whose apparent super-humanity makes them impossible even to believe in, let alone try to imitate. Nevertheless, the dearth of exemplary and model lives by the end of the cynical 20th century leaves a moral vacuum for many that is not compensated for by the mass media’s creation of instant, transient, merely glamorous “celebrity”. That each new generation of humans needs serious exemplars is attested to by literary history. Every socially subordinate or culturally disadvantaged group looks to positive examples who have triumphed over their unjust circumstances. To instance the case of women, probably the first book of women’s history was Biographies of Several Thousand Women (64 bce) in China. In Europe by the 15th century Christine de Pizan was championing virtuous and gifted women in her Livre de la Cité des dames (Book of the City of Ladies). In 1780 Ann Thicknesse published her Sketches of the Lives and Writings of the Ladies of France, the first book of collective biography by a named woman author in Britain, and in 1853 (revised 1855) the American Sarah Josepha Hale brought out her monumental Woman’s Record; or, Sketches of All Distinguished Women from the Creation. In 1869 the German feminist Luise Otto-Peters wrote Einflussreiche Frauen aus dem Volke [1869; Influential Women of the People], and in the late 19th century Zainab Fawawaz and

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Maryam al-Nahhas catalogued biographies of Arab women pioneers going back to early Islam. Not only the subordinate sex but also classes, nations, and races that have been historically oppressed (or have felt themselves to be oppressed) have demonstrated their need for exemplary lives – G.L. Craik’s The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties (1830–31, revised 1858), Richard Ryan’s Biographica Hibernica: A Biographical Dictionary of the Worthies of Ireland (1819), Stephen P. Mizwa’s (edited) Great Men and Women of Poland (1941), and Joel A. Rogers’s The World’s Great Men of Color (1947) are all notable examples. It is, by and large, only the lives of women, of black people, of martyred political dissidents, and of the formerly colonized who constitute the acceptable face of exemplary biography today. The return of the repressed, or at least of the oppressed, need not always be pernicious; indeed the lives of such moral leaders as Lucretia Mott, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Mahatma Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sophie Scholl, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela may prove a saving remnant of the genre well into the 21st century. Sybil Oldfield See also Hagiography; Religious Autobiography; Religious Biography; Spiritual Autobiography; Women’s Biographies

Further Reading Amigoni, David, Victorian Biography: Intellectuals and the Ordering of Discourse, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993 Cubitt, Geoffrey and Alan Warren, Heroic Reputations and Exemplary Lives, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000 Fenwick, Gillian, The Contributors’ Index to the Dictionary of National Biography 1885–1901, Winchester: St Paul’s Bibliographies, and Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1989 Fenwick, Gillian, Women and the Dictionary of National Biography: A Guide to DNB Volumes 1885–1985 and Missing Persons, Aldershot, Hampshire: Scolar Press, and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate, 1994 Gurko, Leo, Heroes, Highbrows and the Popular Mind, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1953 Lubin, H., Heroes and Anti-Heroes: A Reader in Depth, San Francisco: Chandler, 1968 Nicolson, Harold, The Development of English Biography, London: Hogarth Press, 1927; New York: Harcourt Brace, 1928 Oldfield, Sybil, Collective Biography of Women in Britain, 1550–1900: A Select Annotated Bibliography, London and New York: Mansell, 1999 Stauffer, Donald A., English Biography before 1700, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1930 Stauffer, Donald A., The Art of Biography in Eighteenth-Century England, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941 Tuttle, Lisa, Heroines: Women Inspired by Women, London: Harrap, 1988 Uglow, Jenny, The Macmillan Dictionary of Women’s Biography, London: Macmillan, 1982; 3rd revised edition 1998

Exploration Writings Exploration narrative is among the most popular forms of life writing: few in the West have escaped school lessons in which the dotted lines of explorers’ tracks slowly transformed the “wilderness” of the “New World” into “civilization”, and few people have not had related to them in one form or another the

brave and romantic exploits of small bands of white, male explorers in difficult terrain. Exploration narrative is a genre with a substantial history of textual and political power. It is only relatively recently, however, that exploration narratives have moved out of the disciplinary realm of history and have been treated as literary, rhetorical, and discursive documents. Studies such as Paul Carter’s The Road to Botany Bay (1987), Mary B. Campbell’s The Witness and the Other World (1988), Mary Louise Pratt’s Imperial Eyes (1992), and Simon Ryan’s The Cartographic Eye (1996) are among the significant critical works that have participated in the productive study of exploration narratives as literary texts, and as strategic discursive constructions of both the figure of the explorer and of the lands through which explorers travel. As highly politicized documents, exploration narratives provide a fertile source for the study of the intersections of life and nation-state writing. Exploration narrative is a restricted and regulated genre of writing, and needs to be segregated from the broader and more heterogeneous field of travel writing. Exploration writing is not simply the stories of travellers in lands that are new to them: it consists of edited documents of territorial appropriation by authorized agents of an official body such as a state, an empire, a company, or a trade or geographical organization. The acquisitive power of exploration writing cannot be overlooked: while travellers’ tales produce accounts of geographies, exploration narratives produce possessions. Along with legislative acts and ritual acts such as flag planting, exploration narratives are a central component of the imperial process of territorial annexation. Yet unlike flag planting and legislative acts, exploration narratives not only stake a claim to the New World but also define it; exploration narratives are granted the power to invent, textually, the lands and peoples of the New World, as well as the relations between them and the explorers’ cultures. Exploration writing emerged along with European imperialism at the end of the 15th century as an uneasy amalgam of other literary genres. Significantly, it was not until the emergence of the heroic first-person persona and the voice of the explorer as the narratives’ organizing centre that exploration writing as a discrete genre came into existence and into a position of substantial political and ideological power. Medieval pilgrimage accounts, clear precursors of exploration narrative, place little importance on the subjectivity of their authors; even Christopher Columbus’s account of his “discovery” of the New World was published anonymously, in 1493. Two factors drove the insertion of the first-person explorer into the hitherto depersonalized travel chronicle or account: the growing early modern demand for eyewitness empiricism and the desire for sovereign autonomy, particularly in Elizabethan England, among nation states of the 16th century. As Baconian empiricism and organized imperialism mounted, the first-person figure of the explorer emerged into accounts of the New World, not only as a verifying eyewitness to the accuracy of the report, but also, and more importantly, as a tangible representative of abstract national values, power, and desire. The “I” of the exploration narrative is thus a complex persona: he is at once an individual whose phenomenological experiences and impressions fulfil the criteria of “proof”, and a representative of an entire nation or culture. While exploration narratives cannot be read as simplistic compilations of imperial discourses, it is also impossible to read

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them as solely autobiographical. Exploration narratives are highly edited documents; many were written not by the explorers themselves, but by editorial teams who wrote up the explorers’ rough field notes or nautical logs into generic narratives. For example, Sir Douglas Mawson’s celebrated Antarctic exploration narrative, The Home of The Blizzard (1915), was substantially edited and written up by one of his expedition team, Archibald McLean; Alexander Mackenzie’s Voyages from Montreal (1801) was written by the professional writer William Coombe (whose authorship was unacknowledged); and the celebrated 1825 edition of Christopher Columbus’s Journal of his 1490s voyage was largely written by Bartolomé de Las Casas. A further prohibition to a treatment of exploration narratives as unmediated autobiographies is the fact that institutions of exploration such as the British Royal Geographical Society made their publication contingent on strict generic regulations and expectations. Autobiography and exploration narrative thus intersect in a complex manner: the autobiographical “I” of the explorer defines, validates, and organizes the genre, but writing that is “too” autobiographical or subjective fails to gain the powerful status accorded to exploration writing. Exploration writing is highly generic. The first-person point of view is of primary importance in its ability to personify a culture’s idealized image, and to organize the impressions of the area being explored through a single, uncontested, unitary viewpoint. This authority of the single viewpoint is so important that a standard practice of 19th-century expeditions was the confiscation of expedition members’ journals at the conclusion of trips. A second generic requirement of exploration writing is that it is narrative, and thus determined by a plot or master narrative. This plot both lends a sense of organized purpose to the expedition, and connects it to the larger plot of expansionism. Other generic requirements of exploration narrative include verifying illustrations and maps, scientific appendices, ethnographic observations, and introductory chapters which recount the achievements of earlier explorers in the region, thus suturing the narrative into a lengthy history of ongoing imperial expansionism. For a genre so firmly situated in the realm of the factual, exploration narrative deploys a panoply of literary allusions and genres. Primary among these are the Grail quest, the Adamic narrative, the picturesque, the Romantic sublime, and the epic. The Grail-quest narrative is particularly evident in Victorian Northwest Passage narratives such as John Ross’s Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search of a North-West Passage (1835), Australian Inland Sea searches, such as Charles Sturt’s Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia (1849), and searches for the headwaters of the Nile, such as Henry Stanley’s Through the Dark Continent (1890). Unlike most life-writing categories, exploration narrative is generically masculine, and is almost entirely written by men. Not only have women historically been denied the official sponsorship that would enable and authorize their travels, but the writing of women travellers has also been consigned to the somewhat lesser and more subjective category of “travel writing”. Travel writing lacks the legislative, the authoritative, and the metonymic powers of exploration narrative: it is not the basis for territorial annexation; it is considered more subjective than objective; and rather than representing a nation or culture,

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women’s travel writing is typically read as relevant only to the woman herself. This is a point at which autobiography enters clearly into the generic equation as a diminishment: women’s travel writing is “autobiographical”, while that of male explorers is a national Bildung authorized by the experience of the explorer. Many critics suggest that exploration writing represents a form of male rebirthing ritual, in which women’s generative power is replaced by the drama of masculine spatial production and narrative self-styling. Femininity, however, is not absent from exploration writing: since Columbus, the explorer’s generative masculinity has often been reiterated via the trope of the virile explorer tearing the veil from, penetrating, and fertilizing the feminized “virgin” of the land. Because of its imperial history, exploration narrative is also a genre that is occupied almost entirely by those identified as racially white. This is not, of course, to argue that only whites have ever explored, but it is to note the racial homogeneity of most exploration discourse. Exploration writing is as much concerned with the definition of whiteness as it is with the ethnographic production of “others”. Few explorers could have achieved their missions without the assistance and the knowledge of those indigenous to the lands they were “discovering”, and many explorers were sensitive to the cultural specificity of non-European cultures and individuals. This sympathy is at odds with the overall mission of explorers, which is territorial annexation; this conflict underpins narratives such as Edward John Eyre’s Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia and Overland from Adelaide to King George’s Sound (1845). Despite the fact that the idea of “new” lands available for the taking is no longer supportable, exploration narratives remain in cultural circulation. This circulation takes two forms: the republication of early exploration narratives, and new narratives that are unmistakably exploration narratives in their generic style. As the contest for the only remaining non-sovereign landmasses has grown in intensity, outer space and Antarctica have now become the foci of exploration, the new “final frontiers”. Texts such as Ranulph Fiennes’s Mind over Matter: The Epic Crossing of the Antarctic Continent (1984), and Walking on Ice: The History-Making Journey to the South Pole (videotape, 1998), Vivian Fuchs’s Antarctic Adventure: The Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1955–58 (1959), Will Steger’s Crossing Antarctica (1992), and Roger Mear and Robert Swan’s In the Footsteps of Scott (1987) demonstrate that exploration narrative is not simply a historical genre, but one that continues to produce “new” landscapes, as well as cultures’ relations to them. Arguably there have always been elements to exploration and its narration that exceed the imperialist project. Just as exploration narratives cannot be read uncritically as individuals’ personal stories, they also cannot be read cynically as impersonal documents of formulaic imperialism. The new final frontiers of ice and space are sites around which the complex synthesis of self, space, and state produced by exploration writing will continue to be generated. Christy Collis See also Arabic Travel Writing; Britain: Travel, Exploration, and Imperialism; Africa: European Exploration and Travel Writings; Travel Diaries, Journals, Log Books; Travel Narratives

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Further Reading Bloom, Lisa, Gender on Ice: American Ideologies of Polar Expeditions, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993 Campbell, Mary B., The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing 400–1600, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988 Carter, Paul, The Road to Botany Bay: An Essay in Spatial History, London and Boston: Faber, 1987 Certeau, Michel de, “Writing the Sea: Jules Verne” in his Heterologies: Discourse on the Other, translated by Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986 Davis, Lennard J., “The Fact of Events and the Event of Facts: New World Explorers and the Early Novel”, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 32/3 (1991): 240–55 Davis, Richard, “History or His /Story? The Explorer cum Author”, Studies in Canadian Literature, 16/2 (1991): 93–111 Diski, Jenny, “Unneccessary Fortitude”, review of Francis Spufford’s I

May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination, in her Don’t, London: Granta, 1998 MacLaren, I.S., “Exploration / Travel Literature and the Evolution of the Author”, International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue Internationale d’Etudes Canadiennes, 5 (1992): 39–68 Mills, Sara, Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism, London and New York: Routledge, 1991 Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London and New York: Routledge, 1992 Ryan, Simon, The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers Saw Australia, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996 Spufford, Francis, I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination, London: Faber, 1996; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997 Todorov, Tzvetan, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other, translated by Richard Howard, New York: Harper and Row, 1984

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f Facey, A.B.

when he was severely wounded by a shell that exploded in his trench. Evacuated by hospital ship, he was back in Perth by the end of the year, his military career over. His close acquaintance with combat and killing wrought no dramatic change in Facey’s personality or attitudes. His capacity to endure pain and suffering, his self-reliance, were too deeply embedded to be undermined. In only one large way did his experience of two world wars (he lost a son in Singapore during the second) alter his beliefs: he lost any faith he might have had in the existence of God. Facey was wounded barely two weeks before his 21st birthday. The story of his life up to that date occupies well over threequarters of his autobiography, with the account of his remaining 61 years being compressed into a scant 50-odd pages. Those pages tell of recurring ill health caused by his wartime injuries, of wheat farming under the Soldier Settlement scheme, of returning to suburban Perth, of employment as a tram driver, and of significant contributions to the Union movement and to local government. All is sustained by his long and deeply happy marriage to Evelyn Gibson, to whom he had proposed soon after his return from Gallipoli. Facey makes of this partnership not so much the focus of his writing as the substratum to a warm and fulfilling family tale. He was right, in a sense, to skim so lightly over his later years, because their contentment and stability were clearly made possible by the testing experiences successfully negotiated by the illiterate and virtually orphaned child and youth. Facey regularly told stories of his early years to his own growing family. In retirement, encouraged by his wife, he started to write them down. A Fortunate Life bears all the hallmarks of this relaxed narrative tradition. Totally unaffected, it bears eloquent testimony to the spirit of a strong and upright man, who, looking back on all that he had suffered and endured, could still judge his life to have been fortunate.

1894–1982

Australian autobiographer Published only nine months before his death, Facey’s A Fortunate Life (1981) achieved immediate success. Within a year of publication it had sold 8000 copies; within three years, approximately 250,000. Much of its success was on account of its evocation of a way of life that, by the 1980s, had almost completely disappeared. Following the death of his father, Facey, then aged five, moved from his native Victoria to Western Australia, where, with one significant exception, he passed virtually the rest of his long life. Abandoned by a mother he describes as “unworthy”, he reserved his strongest affection for his grandmother. A Fortunate Life, however, gives no hint of self-pity. Indeed, among its most attractive features are unwavering self-reliance and simple decency. Required to earn his living from the age of nine, Facey encountered not only extraordinary physical cruelty but much emotional and moral hardship at the hands of his various employers. A nomadic existence denied him the possibility of attending school. Virtually illiterate even in adolescence, he grasped whatever opportunities for learning came his way, so that the style of A Fortunate Life, simple and direct, is a fine vehicle for the clear moral values it endorses. Facey’s judgements of men and women were based on their willingness to help others in distress, their capacity to endure hardship, and their refusal to break a promise or go back on their word. Living by these values, he was repaid by generosity as often as he was betrayed by self-interest or duplicity. From A Fortunate Life Facey emerges very much as a man of an earlier, pioneering Australia. His youthful adventures seem to spring from some of the archetypal myths accumulated around the white male Australian of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At the age of 14 he took part in a cattle drive across the northwest of Western Australia (in the course of which he was lost and without food for five days); later employment took him to the wheat belt, where he sank wells, cleared dams, and worked as a railway ganger. He played Australian Rules football for a Perth club, and fought successfully in a travelling boxing troupe. The supreme experience of his early years came during World War I, when, having enlisted in the army, he went ashore at Gallipoli on the first Anzac Day, 25 April 1915. He stayed there, losing two brothers to Turkish gunfire, until 19 August 1915,

H.P. Heseltine Biography Albert Barnett Facey. Born in Maidstone, Victoria, Australia, 31 August 1894. His father died when he was an infant, and his mother took him and his siblings to settle in Western Australia. Abandoned by his mother shortly afterwards; brought up in poverty by his grandmother, aunt, and uncle in the Coolgardie goldfields and in the outback of Western Australia. Sent out to start work at the age of eight and endured much hardship; work included droving, employment on the railways, and boxing in a travelling troupe. Taught himself to read and write. Served in World War I: badly wounded at Gallipoli,

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invalided out of the services, and sent back to Perth by hospital ship, 1915. Started keeping a written record of his life. Married Evelyn Gibson, c.1915: three sons (one killed in World War II). Worked as a driver on the tramways in Perth. Started farming under the auspices of the Soldier Settlement Scheme, 1922. Struggled to make a success of farming in the 1930s, but hampered by the economic depression and the effect of his wartime injuries. Returned to Perth with his family, 1934. Worked again on the Perth tramways, and became involved in the Tramways Union there. Died in Perth, Western Australia, 11 February 1982.

Selected Writings A Fortunate Life, 1981

Further Reading Cowan, Peter, Drift: Stories, Melbourne: Reed and Harris, 1944 Crowley, F.K., Australia’s Western Third: A History of Western Australia from the First Settlements to Modern Times, London: Macmillan, 1960; Melbourne: Heinemann, 1970 Durack, Mary, Sons in the Saddle, London: Constable, 1983 Ewers, John Keith, Men against the Earth, Melbourne: Georgian House, 1946 Hirst, J.B., The World of Albert Facey, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1992 Stuart, Donald, The Driven, Melbourne: Georgian House, 1961

Family Relations and Life Writing Most varieties of life writing include some reference to family relations as a major context for conflict and self-development. At the same time, a sense of decency has often prevented biographers and autobiographers from writing as frankly about their close relatives as they might wish. The family relationships least written about are those between (sexual) partners and those between parents and their children, when the parent is the author. However, there are exceptions, such as John Stuart Mill’s fulsome praise of his wife, Harriet Taylor, in his Autobiography (1873), and biographies of husbands such as Lucy Hutchinson’s Life of Colonel Hutchinson (written 1664–71) and Margaret Cavendish’s biography of the Duke of Newcastle (1667). As with most other kinds of life writing, a conscious interest in this area emerged in the 17th century, blossomed fully in the 19th, and has remained popular ever since. The central family relationship for most life writers is that of parent–child, as written from the point of view of the child, with fathers generally characterized by autobiographers as harsher and more domineering than mothers. Problematic parent–child relations were openly discussed from the 17th century onwards: for instance, The Memoirs of Anne, Lady Halkett (written 1677–78) recounts a 14-month serious argument with the author’s mother over her choice of suitor; and Charlotte Charke’s history of her separation from her father, Colley Cibber, in A Narrative of the Life of Mrs Charlotte Charke (1755), culminated in her sense of being “deem’d an Alien” from her family. John Stuart Mill, omitting all mention of his mother from the final version of his Autobiography, devotes many pages to his intense relationship with his father, who educated him at home; Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son (1907) describes his eccentric upbringing by his father Philip, a devout Plymouth Brother; while Jean-Paul Sartre, in Les Mots (1964; The Words), claimed: “There is no such thing as a good father; that is the law” – though Sartre was in fact raised by his mother

and her father. More recently, Beverley Nichols in Father Figure (1972) recalls a particularly troubled parent–child relationship; the Labour politician Roy Hattersley, in A Yorkshire Boyhood (1983), records his amazement at discovering that his father had been a Roman Catholic priest; the feminist critic Germaine Greer, in Daddy, We Hardly Knew You (1989), remembers wanting her father to be a hero, but discovering that both her parents were “bounders”; and J.R. Ackerley, in My Father and Myself (1968), takes up the detective form to write about his brother, Peter, as well as his father, a project he then extended to his difficult sister Nancy in his published diaries, My Sister and Myself (1982). Mother–daughter relations tend to be more complicated than those between mothers and sons, veering from intense love to bitter enmity. Harriet Martineau (Autobiography, 1877) says little about her father, but complains of her mother’s undemonstrative nature, and her own sense of being unloved, an impression shared by Hannah Lynch of her mother in Autobiography of a Child (1899). Many pre-20th-century autobiographers note their mother’s early teaching at home, and especially close relationships are mentioned by Annie Besant (Autobiography, 1893), Charlotte Yonge and Sara Coleridge (both in unfinished autobiographies), and Frances Power Cobbe (The Life of Frances Power Cobbe, 1894). Gwen Raverat (Period Piece, 1952) and Eleanor Farjeon (A Nursery in the Nineties, 1935) describe their mothers’ early lives before marriage. Maxine Hong Kingston’s mother in The Woman Warrior (1976) tells her daughter about an adulterous aunt who had a child and then committed suicide after being subjected to shaming rituals. As described by sons, on the other hand, mothers are often seen as heroic workers. Chateaubriand, in Memoires d’outre tombe (1849–50; Memoirs), remembers a mother struggling to cope; while strong mothers feature positively in Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie (1959), James Kirkup’s The Only Child (1957), and Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals (1956). Graham McInnes’s The Road to Gundagai (1965) is largely an extended portrait of his mother, the novelist Angela Thirkell. Anthony Trollope also pays tribute to his novelist mother Fanny’s support in An Autobiography (1883). Judah Waten’s mother is the central character of his Alien Son (1952), an account of Russian Jewish family life in Australia. John Ruskin’s Praeterita (1885–89) does praise the advantages given him by both his devoted parents – but suggests he was made too comfortable and had nothing to love. Where the parents died young, or were preoccupied with looking after other children, strong sibling relationships are well represented in life writing. One of the best-known examples is Dorothy Wordsworth’s dedication to her brother William’s welfare, recounted in the Grasmere Journals (1800–03). Harriet Martineau found compensation for her mother’s shortcomings in her devotion to her two youngest siblings, James and Ellen, though she later complained that brothers were to sisters what sisters could never be to brothers. Similiar devotion to brothers is also noted by “Charlotte Elizabeth” (Personal Recollections, 1841), Margaret Oliphant (Autobiography, 1899), Charlotte Yonge (incomplete Autobiography, 1877), Elizabeth Sewell (Autobiography, 1907), Vera Brittain (Testament of Youth, 1933), and Maya Angelou (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1969). T.B. Macaulay’s letters show him to have been passionately devoted to his sisters Hannah and Margaret, as Charles

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Lamb was to his sister Mary. Margot Asquith’s Autobiography (1920) devotes a chapter to her tragic sister Laura who died after childbirth. The Benson family – in particular Arthur Christopher and Fred (E.F.), who were sons of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson – were lifelong chroniclers of their intense and troubled domestic experiences. A.C. Benson recounted his sister Maggie’s life (Life and Letters of Maggie Benson, 1917) and Fred recalled both his school and home life in Our Family Affairs 1867–1896 (1920). Henry James’s A Small Boy and Others (1913) began as an “attempt to place together some particulars of the early life of William James”, Henry’s elder brother, but became a memoir of his whole family, “the blest group of us”. Eleanor Farjeon’s A Nursery in the Nineties (1935) recounts the elaborate makebelieve games she played with her three brothers; while John Lehmann’s The Whispering Gallery (1951) remembers life as the only brother in a family of older sisters. Though sibling relationships are usually viewed positively, there are occasional instances of bullying and abuse. Leigh Hunt, for example, remembers being teased and tormented by his elder brother Stephen. Some recent biographers have acknowledged the advantages of recounting the lives of a family conjointly. Juliet Barker’s The Brontës (1994) makes a point of doing this, as do John Pearson’s Facades (1978), a study of the three Sitwells, Jane Aaron’s A Double Singleness (1991), about Charles and Mary Lamb, and Brenda Wineapple’s Sister Brother (1996), a joint biography of Gertrude and Leo Stein. Hilary Spurling’s Ivy When Young (1974) traces the complex relationships within Ivy ComptonBurnett’s large family of half- and full siblings, and their tragic early deaths. Kathleen Jones’s A Passionate Sisterhood (1997) interweaves the lives of Edith Southey, Dorothy and Dora Wordsworth, Sara Coleridge, and the other female members of the Wordsworth circle, while Betty Askwith’s Two Victorian Families (1971) examines the personal dynamics of the Stracheys and the Bensons. With the lifting of much self-censorship in the 20th century, memoirs of family life became more widespread. M.V. Hughes’s series of London Childhood books, beginning with memories of the 1870s (1934), describe life at home as the only girl in a household of older brothers; Dannie Abse’s A Poet in the Family (1974) recounts the noisy and lively interaction of his Welsh Jewish family, with their enthusiasm for football and Marxism; Natalia Ginsburg, in Family Sayings (1963), presents a tragi-comic, semi-novelistic account of her Jewish–Catholic upbringing in Italy, including her father’s outbursts of temper, his exile to Belgium, and the uncles, aunts, and friends who contributed to the stock of practical and humorous “family sayings”. The Diary of Anne Frank (1947), written in hiding from the Nazis, details with passion and humour the domestic stresses and strains felt by her own family and the friends with whom they were forced to live in a confined space. The naturalist Gerald Durrell’s comic My Family and Other Animals (1956) describes five years in Corfu with his mother, sister, brothers, and assorted wildlife. A sense of living in a family that was in some way odd or peculiar is often the motive for writing this kind of memoir. Bloomsbury child Angelica Garnett’s Deceived with Kindness (1984) acknowledges the unsettling emotions she felt for her parents – emotions that her aunt Virginia Woolf also explored with reference to her own family in “A Sketch of the

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Past” (written 1939–40). Louise DeSalvo’s controversial investigation of the sexual abuse she believes was rife in Sir Leslie Stephen’s family is reported in her Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work (1989). A more relaxed family memoir is Gwen Raverat’s Period Piece (1952), which recalls the eccentricities of the invalidish Darwin family and the customs observed in late 19th-century middleclass Cambridge. Sylvia Plath’s Letters Home (1975), although compiled by the poet’s mother, is less than convincing in putting a cheerful gloss on the intense and turbulent relationship Plath had with her mother, Aurelia Schober Plath. With the late 20th-century development of what may be seen as a “crisis in the family”, forms of life writing that uncover the cross-currents of rivalry and misunderstanding between parents and children in particular, and to a lesser extent among siblings, have a renewed appeal among contemporary readers. Issues of taste, appropriateness, and disputed evidence have never ceased to be a problem, however, and this form of life writing is likely to remain controversial for as long as it continues to be written. Valerie Sanders See also Adolescence and Life Writing; Childhood and Life Writing; Fatherhood and Life Writing; Genealogy; Motherhood and Life Writing

Further Reading Askwith, Betty, Two Victorian Families, London: Chatto and Windus, 1971 Bank, Stephen P. and Michael D. Kahn, The Sibling Bond, New York: Basic Books, 1982 Bizzocchi, R., “Sentiments and Documents: Some Recent Historical Works on Family Life, Gender Relations and Correspondence”, Studi Storichi, 40/2 (1999): 471–86 Coe, Richard N., When the Grass Was Taller: Autobiography and the Experience of Childhood, New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 1984 Earle, Peter, The Making of the English Middle-Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London 1660–1730, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989 “The Family”, special issue of Granta, 37 (Autumn 1991) Fliedl, K., “The Return of the Family: Memoirs of Lives with Famous Spouses”, Sprachkunst, 20/1 (1989): 1–22 Follini, Tamara, “Pandora’s Box: The Family Correspondence in Notes of a Son and Brother”, Cambridge Quarterly, 25/1 (1996): 26–40 Goldthorpe, J.E., Family Life in Western Societies: A Historical Sociology of Family Relationships in Britain and North America, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987 Hall, Brian, Madeleine’s World: A Biography of a Three-Year-Old, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997; London: Secker and Warburg, 1998 (on parents writing about children) Houlbrooke, Ralph (editor), English Family Life 1576–1716: An Anthology from Diaries, Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1988 Jones, Kathleen, A Passionate Sisterhood: The Sisters, Wives and Daughters of the Lake Poets, London: Constable, 1997; New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000 (on the Wordsworth / Coleridge circle) Mintz, Steven, A Prison of Expectations: The Family in Victorian Culture, New York: New York University Press, 1983 Mintz, Steven and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life, New York: Free Press, and London: Collier Macmillan, 1988 Owen, Ursula (editor), Fathers: Reflections by Daughters, London: Virago Press, 1983 Payne, Karen (editor), Between Ourselves: Letters between Mothers and daughters 1750–1982, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983; London: Picador, 1984 Peterson, Linda H., Traditions of Victorian Women’s Writing: The Poetics and Politics of Life Writing, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999

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Williams, David, Genesis and Exodus: A Portrait of the Benson Family, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1979 Wunsch, Marie Ann, “Walls of Jade: Images of Men, Women and Family in Second Generation Asian-American Fiction and Autobiography” (dissertation), Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1977

Fatherhood and Life Writing The definition of “fatherhood” is intimately connected with the histories of the family, industrialization, and urbanization. In Family Fortunes (1987) Davidoff and Hall charted the effects on family organization of the Industrial Revolution, which moved the centre of production away from the family and into largescale industry. While the shift to the “nuclear family” was already underway before this period, during the 19th century the family became more of a consumer than a productive unit. The effect in Britain, the first country to experience largescale industrialization, was to create what Claudia Nelson has termed “invisible men”, men who were largely absent from the domestic sphere. The domestic sphere was assumed to be a feminine realm; men were supposed to inhabit the public realm of wealth and power. A manual, The Father’s Book (1835), urges men not to underestimate their influence in the family, betraying the underlying assumption that they would be largely absent from it. As an ideology of individualism replaced older economic models of the family and society, increasing emphasis was placed upon the emotional ties of the family and the role of parents in education. Previous models of the family had emphasized the father as a lawgiver, modelled on a Roman ideal of patria potestas, or the “power of the father”. However, the history of the father figure from the late 18th century seems to be one of increasing marginalization. In the late 18th century and early 19th century, greater emphasis was placed upon the relationship between mother and child than the “power of the father” within the family. While William Wordsworth, for example, refers to his father only indirectly in his autobiographical poem The Prelude (1805; published 1850), Nature is the nurturing influence that mixes with his mother’s presence to help form his adult personality. The maternal rather than the paternal is the most powerful force. Wordsworth’s famous “the child is father to the man” underscores the revolution that was taking place in domestic affections in this period; the statement makes no sense unless seen in the increasing romanticization of childhood in this period and the replacement of the “power of the father” with an idealized vision of children as free and innocent creatures whose experiences are crucial in the formation of adult identity. Rather than the father forming the child, the child is seen as a product of his or her childhood experiences. Whether intentionally or not, Wordsworth’s “the child is father to the man” places “father” in subordination to “child”. Many 19th-century autobiographies therefore focus on childhood and the role played by fathers in child development. For instance, John Ruskin in Praeterita (1885–89) talks about his father as an almost godlike presence in his life, but then goes on to complain that he did not feel loved and did not see his father express either affection or anger. He thus shows himself as poised between the two models of the parental role, one that

raised the father to a higher level in his position as a representative of God’s will, and the other placing a newer emphasis upon the education of the emotions in the domestic sphere. Ruskin’s complaint is echoed by John Stuart Mill in his autobiography (published posthumously, in 1873) when he asserts that his “mental crisis” in adulthood was the result of his father’s view of education, which emphasized analysis and reason at the expense of emotion. Mill was brought up by his father after his mother’s death, and his autobiography expresses his resentment at his father’s authority and lack of emotion. This rejection of the father’s authority is made even more explicit in Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son (1907), in which the author credits the birth of his own self-consciousness and autonomy to the moment when he realized that his father was not omnipotent and could make mistakes. A crucial moment in the formation of his identity is therefore his rebellion against “the power of the father”. After the death of his mother, Gosse felt trapped by his father’s will and perceived a lack of the intimacy that was increasingly felt to be necessary for a child’s development. Culturally, both in the United States and Britain in the 19th century, the mother was emphasized as the crucial educator who was primarily responsible for the development of children. Fathers were seen as emotionally distant at best, and a force of repression at worst. This is particularly apparent in Virginia Woolf’s “A Sketch of the Past” (written 1939–40; published in Moments of Being in 1985), in which she portrays her father as both overbearing and emotionally needy. Unable to acknowledge his own emotional needs, Woolf suggests, he bullied and exploited his daughters in a domestic tyranny. Like Samuel Butler in his fictional autobiography The Way of All Flesh (1903), Woolf is extremely critical of the Victorian family and the father’s role within it. Much American autobiography is shaped by a rejection of the family in the context of a dominant ethos of individualism and self-initiative. Classic American autobiographies such as those by Benjamin Franklin and Henry Thoreau emphasize individualism and self-reliance rather than the importance of close family ties. However, for many oppressed groups – most obviously blacks and slaves – the loss of family and especially of fathers was forced rather than chosen. Many American autobiographies, biographies, and memoirs record the corrosive effects of slavery on family life, such as Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) and Frederick Douglass’s The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (1845). This emphasis upon both escaping from and losing the family continued into the late 20th century in America. Desmond McCarthy’s observations on the ambivalence in American fiction towards the “nuclear family” also hold true for American life writing. In Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), for example, the father is portrayed as ineffectual and blustering; she has hardly any contact with him because he moves to California while she is being raised in Arkansas by her grandmother, and when she does visit him, she ends up driving him from Mexico to California because he is too drunk to drive himself. Richard Rodriguez’s Days of Obligation (1992) is subtitled “An Argument with My Mexican Father”, and in this autobiography Rodriguez uses his father’s status in Mexico and

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America as a way of understanding the effects of immigration both for his father and himself. Rodriguez in this book and his previous Hunger of Memory (1981) sees his father as disempowered by his move from Mexican to American culture. Rodriguez’s ambivalent attitude to his father is similar to that of James Alan McPherson in A World Unsuspected (1987), in which the author meditates on his father’s life as an African American male and on his ambivalence towards him. Rodriguez’s text shows that the narrative that started in the 19th century, with fathers in the domestic sphere becoming marginalized and the symbolic weight of emotional education falling on the shoulders of the mother, continues to unfold today. Fathers are remarkable for their relative absence in such autobiographies as Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1976) and Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club (1995); it is the mother who plays the central role for good or ill in these texts. There has been a shift in the perception of the father’s role in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The “men’s movement” in the United States and beyond, coupled with a slow shift towards a more equitable sharing of the work of childrearing, has led to an increased emphasis on men as nurturing parents. Philip Roth’s Patrimony (1992) and British author Blake Morrison’s And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1993), each an account of a father’s death, suggest a new interest in fathers’ emotional lives that bears comparison with the now-extensive corpus of mother–daughter autobiography. Martin A. Danahay See also Adolescence and Life Writing; Childhood and Life Writing; Family Relations and Life Writing; Motherhood and Life Writing

Further Reading Adams, Timothy Dow, Telling Lies in Modern American Autobiography, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990 Andrews, William L., To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of AfroAmerican Autobiography, 1760–1865, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986 Broughton, Trev, Men of Letters, Writing Lives: Masculinity and Literary Auto/Biography in the Late Victorian Period, London and New York: Routledge, 1999 Davidoff, Leonore and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, and London: Hutchinson, 1987 Finney, Brian The Inner I: British Literary Autobiography in the Twentieth Century, London and Boston: Faber, 1985 Hall, Brian, Madeleine’s World: A Biography of a Three-Year-Old, London: Secker and Warburg, 1998 (on parents writing about children) Imbarrato, Susan Clair, Declarations of Independency in EighteenthCentury American Autobiography, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998 McCarthy, Desmond, Reconstructing the Family in Contemporary American Fiction, New York: Peter Lang, 1997 Nelson, Claudia, Invisible Men: Fatherhood in Victorian Periodicals, 1850–1910, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995 Sartwell, Crispin, Act Like You Know: African-American Autobiography and White Identity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998

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Feminism see Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Feminism; Gender and Life Writing; Women’s Autobiographies; Women’s Biographies; Women’s Diaries and Journals; Women’s Letters

Fiction and Life Writing see Autofiction; Biography and Fiction; Bildungsroman; Epistolary Fiction; The I-Novel; Picaresque Novel

Film The autobiographical impulse is as fundamental to film as it is to literature, sharing the same preoccupations with time, memory, and point of view, and provoking the same debates about accuracy and distortion. However, uncertainty about the status of the seemingly realistic images projected on the screen, in tandem with the essentially collaborative nature of filmmaking, has frequently encouraged the notion that film is unable to articulate the subjective self-awareness of autobiography. Thus, while film’s ability to create biographical accounts of famous people has never been in doubt, with some 300 “biopics” being produced by mainstream Hollywood between 1927 and 1960, the more intimate and less well-defined parameters of filmic autobiography have, until recently, received limited critical recognition. However, in Europe, where cinema has long been dominated by issues of history, memory, and identity, the tradition of the autobiographical film stretches back at least as far as Jean Vigo’s Zéro de conduite (1932), and even further, to the earliest domestic tableaux filmed by the pioneering Lumière Brothers at the end of the 19th century. And if it is the case that, from the first, filmmakers delighted in using their cameras to explore the inner topographies of the self, the almost universal proliferation of autobiographical films since the early 1970s provides convincing evidence of the adaptability of the genre of autobiography to the cinema. Undoubtedly, the work of French New Wave directors such as Resnais, Truffaut, and Godard proved vital in revealing not only that film could, in fact, deal successfully with personal memories and subjective points of view, but that it could actually do so with an immediacy and power lacking in other media, and their theoretical writings on the auteur (the director as controlling author of the film), and the caméra stylo (film as a language as personal and creative as writing) went a long way to destroy earlier prejudice about the limitations of the medium. Indeed, in this context, Truffaut’s seminal 1958 account of childhood, Les 400 coups (The 400 Blows) – in many ways a reworking of Vigo’s Zéro de conduite – remains, even today, a central point of reference for filmic autobiography. Thus we can identify, across languages, continents, and decades, a well-established canon of autobiographical film. A select list would stretch from Les 400 coups to Les Roseaux sauvages (1994; The Wild Reeds, dir. André Téchiné, France)

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via the following: 8? (1963; dir. Federico Fellini, Italy), All That Jazz (1972; dir. Bob Fosse, USA), Mean Streets (1973; dir. Martin Scorsese, USA), Zerkalo (1974; Mirror, dir. Andrei Tarkovskii, USSR), Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (1974, Reason, Debate, and a Story, dir. Ritwik Ghatik, India), Annie Hall (1977; dir. Woody Allen, USA), Deutschland, bleiche Mutter (1979; Germany, Pale Mother, dir. Helma Sanders-Brahms, Germany), Fanny och Alexander (1982; Fanny and Alexander, dir. Ingmar Bergman, Sweden), Hope and Glory (1987; dir. John Boorman, Britain), Au revoir les enfants (1987; dir. Louis Malle, France), The Long Day Closes (1992; dir. Terence Davies, Britain), Caro diario (1993; Dear Diary, dir. Nanni Moretti, Italy), and La teta i la luna (1994; The Tit and the Moon, dir. Bigas Luna, Spain / France). It is also revealing to note the insistence with which directors favour the autobiographical trilogy (for example, Bill Douglas and Terence Davies in Britain, Márta Mészáros in Hungary, and Youssef Chahine in Egypt) as a way of developing or deepening their subjective histories. Any such lists can, however, provide only a partial and inadequate indication of either the range or the popularity of the genre. What is of particular significance today is the frequency with which autobiography offers a voice both to those who have been traditionally marginalized for reasons of gender, race, ethnicity, or class, and to nations, regions, or groups intent upon (re)defining their identity. Examples might include: Umut (1970; The Hope, dir. Yilmaz Güney, Turkey), Un Nos Ola Leuad (1991; One Full Moon, dir. Endaf Emlyn, Wales), Les Nuits fauves (1991; Savage Nights, dir. Cyril Collard, France), Blue (1993; dir. Derek Jarman, Britain), and Bíódagar (1994; Movie Days, dir. Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, Iceland). While the easiest and most obvious explanation for this trend is that the intimate discourse of autobiographical film readily lends itself to the lowbudget productions that independent filmmakers require, the issue is certainly more complex. For it is clear that in the search for personal identity the boundaries between memory and history or myth are destroyed; the remembering self is always a self in a remembered context; outer and inner worlds fuse. Autobiographical texts will therefore almost inevitably transcend their own specificity, individual identity being situated within national identity, or within issues of gender and sexuality. We can further recognize in the nature of the filmic image the key not merely to film’s ability to articulate the self, but to its unparalleled ability to do so. For what separates autobiographical films from their literary counterparts is not their objectives, since for both the open-ended and continuous exploration of the self is marked by the same shifting viewpoints and the same desire for understanding, reparation, or reconciliation, but the fact that the discourse of film is grounded in the visual, and that the correlation between eye and I, between seeing and identity, is therefore fundamental. Thus, film theory traditionally centres upon the gaze, and its treatment of subjective discourse and memory foregrounds the centrality of the image in the formation of identity. Visual images, particularly those of film, are increasingly thought not merely to articulate or represent our selves and our worlds, but actively to shape our vision and understanding, and thus the reality we perceive. This idea may account for the importance given to film by groups or individuals seeking to (re)affirm or (re)establish their identity. If the realism and immediacy of film images were traditional-

ly perceived to be a barrier to subjective discourse, they now emerge as one of the strengths of filmic autobiography, enabling the director to re-create the remembered world exactly on her / his terms, as an inner / outer landscape, contoured by experience. Moreover, the camera can show us that world from the shifting viewpoints of remembering adult and remembered child, first and third person. On screen, as in our memories, disparate locations can be brought together, and the artificial constructs of tense destroyed. Escaping the linearity of language, film functions like memory, depicting the remembered past as actual, as irrevocably contained within the present. Other devices too may be included in the film’s diegesis to re-create memory: music is undoubtedly the most powerful in its ability to recall distant times and places, although there are others such as period-specific objects or sounds, while documentary and fiction, newsreel footage and photographs all combine to create a personal vision. But the universality of filmic images ensures that this most personal of worlds will be recognized and reclaimed by other spectators, and autobiographical film is unique in its ability to cross both national and linguistic barriers and the traditional art / mainstream divide, making it of central importance to contemporary culture and society. Wendy Everett See also Photography; Television and Life Story; Visual Arts and Life Writing

Further Reading Bruss, Elizabeth W., “Eye for I: Making and Unmaking Autobiography in Film” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by James Olney, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Chartier, Jean-Pierre, “Les Films à la première personne et l’illusion de réalité au cinéma”, Revue du Cinéma, 1/4 (January 1947) Custen, George F., Bio /Pics: How Hollywood Constructed Public History, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992 Everett, Wendy, “The Autobiographical Eye in European Film”, Europa: An International Journal of Language, Art and Culture, 2/1 (1995): 3–10 Everett, Wendy (editor), European Identity in Cinema, Exeter, Devon: Intellect, 1996 Hill, John and Pamela Church Gibson (editors), Oxford Guide to Film Studies, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 Lejeune, Philippe, “Cinéma et autobiographie: problèmes de vocabulaire”, Revue Belge du Cinéma, 19 (Spring 1987) McCullough, Arthur, “National Identities in Auto/biographical Films”, Auto/Biography (British Sociological Association Study Group journal), 6/1–2 (1998): 15–22 Man, Glenn (guest editor), “The Biopic”, special issue of Biography, 23/1 (2000) Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, The Oxford History of World Cinema, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996 Orr, John, Contemporary Cinema, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998 Radstone, Susannah, “Cinema / memory / history”, Screen, 36/1 (1995): 34–47 Rosenstone, Robert A. (editor), Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995 Sobchack, Vivian (editor), The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television, and the Modern Event, New York and London: Routledge, 1996 Turim, Maureen, Flashbacks in Film: Memory and History, New York and London: Routledge, 1989

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Finland Finland is a small country with a population of only 5 million. It became independent in 1917, after a century of Russian rule, and, before that, some 600 years of Swedish rule. The most recent archaeological excavations reveal that Finland was inhabited as far back as 20,000 years ago. Yet Finnish became a written language only in the 16th century and the first novels were published in the 19th century, after the publication of the Finnish national epic, Kalevala. This famous epic, based on a collection of oral poems from the eastern regions of Finland, tells of characters who combine mythical qualities with quite down-to-earth ones. The lives of these heroes were extensively described in the Kalevala and can thus be said to represent the beginning of life writing in Finland. Two of the tales with the greatest resonance in Finnish culture are the tragic life story of Kullervo, combining Herculian strength and an Oedipal fatal attraction, and that of the strong and suffering mother of Lemminkäinen, who resurrects her son from the dead: elements of these archetypes reappear in later self-representations of Finnish men and women. Finnish literature has a strong autobiographical element. There are many writers whose production is based on very thinly veiled autobiography. Some of the best- known are: Toivo Pekkanen’s Tehtaan varjossa [1932; In the Shadow of the Factory], Pentti Haanpää’s Kenttä ja kasarmi [1928; The Field and the Barracks], and Väinö Linna’s Tuntematon sotilas (1955; The Unknown Soldier) and Täällä Pohjantähden alla 1–3 [1959–62; Under the Polar Star]. As these titles suggest, all these books describe events that have formed Finnish national identity, especially rapid industrialization and war experiences. Another type of autobiographical novel looks behind the facade of happiness of the bourgeoisie, such as Helvi Hämäläinen’s Säädyllinen murhenäytelmä [A Decent Tragedy] (the publication of Hämäläinen’s diaries was an important literary event of the 1990s). In the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland, which represents about six per cent of the population, life writing has been especially pronounced, and openly autobiographical texts abound, from Anders Ramsay’s From Years of Childhood to Silver Hair to Henrik Tikkanen’s autobiographical trilogy – Bävervägen 11 [1976; 11 Beaver Road], Brändövägen 8 [1976; 8 Bränd Road ], Mariegatan 26 [1977; 26 Mary Street]) – and Märta Tikkanen’s (translated as The Love Story of the Century), Jörn Donner’s, Christer Kihlman’s, and Tove Jansson’s autobiographically based texts. Merete Mazzarella has published both analyses of Swedish-language autobiographical novels and her own memoirs (Först sålde de pianot, 1993 [And They Sold the Piano First]). We should not forget the world-famous Moomin series by Tove Jansson, where the volume translated as The Exploits of Moominpappa gently parodies the whole autobiographical tradition, starting from Rousseau. Biography and memoirs of the famous remain a popular genre in Finland: among the most ambitious examples are Erik Tawastjerna’s Sibelius (1967–89; Life of Sibelius), Th. Rein’s classic Johan Vilhelm Snellman (1895–99), and Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim’s Muistelmat (1952–53; Memoirs). Lately, President Urho Kekkonen (1900–86) has had a five-volume biography dedicated to his life (by Juhani Suomi), and President

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Juho Paasikivi (1870–1956) one almost as extensive. This is of course not anything uniquely Finnish; however, the Finns’ appetite for both reading and writing autobiography probably is. There is a strong undercurrent of unpublished life writing: many more autobiographies are written than published. This has been obvious when publishers have organized special collections of new autobiographies, and when researchers have sent out calls for life stories. The earliest such competition dates from the beginning of the 20th century, and the one organized in the 1960s gave rise to a series of published popular autobiographies, as well as a valuable collection of unpublished manuscripts in the archives of the Finnish Literature Society. Thus there is already a long tradition of publications dedicated to the lives of ordinary people. They are mostly anthologies, but there is also a flourishing research tradition based on them. So far, Finnish biographical literature has been relatively free of the current Anglo-American fashion concerning intimate details, revelations of a sexual or political nature, etc. However, during the 1990s there were signs of such a development. The childhood memoirs by the daughter of the politician Ahti Karjalainen and the president’s wife Tellervo Koivisto, or the autobiographically based novels of Tuula-Leena Varis and Anja Kauranen, deal with alcoholism and mental illness. These are all works that have helped to overcome the social taboos of Finnish society. But so far, the fashion “to reveal everything” in a sensational manner has not spread to Finland. J.P. Roos Further Reading Alno, Olli (editor), Finland: A Cultural Encyclopedia, Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 1997 Mazzarella, Merete, Att skriva sin värld: den finlandsvenska memoartraditionen [To Write One’s World: The Finland-Swedish Memoir Tradition], Helsingfors: Söderströms, 1993 Roos, J.P., Suomalainen elämä: tutkimus tavallisten suomalaisten elmäkerroista [Finnish Life: A Study of the Autobiographies of Ordinary Finns], Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1986 Roos, J.P., “Miserable Men: Finnish Men’s Life Stories in a European Perspective” in Plurality and Individuality: Autobiographical Cultures in Europe edited by Christa Hämmerle, Vienna: IFK, 1995 Schoolfield, George C., A History of Finland’s Literature, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press and the American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1998

Fontane, Theodor

1819–1898

German fiction writer, poet, and travel and letter writer Among Theodor Fontane’s life writings, we find a variety of works. There are letters (nearly 1000 printed pages’ worth in the Jubiläumausgabe of 1920) written by Fontane to family, friends, business associates, and other German writers from the years 1846–98; autobiographical essays from various periods of his life; travelogues about Germany – including the monumental Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg [Journeys through the March of Brandenburg], written from 1862 to 1882 and filling four volumes when collected – France, and England; and two formal works of autobiography, Meine Kinderjahre [1894; My Childhood Years] and Von Zwanzig bis Dreissig: autobiographisches [1898; From Twenty to Thirty: Autobiographical].

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Fontane’s first work of intended autobiography, Meine Kinderjahre, begins with a problem that is also a mainstay of contemporary theory and criticism: how does the “other” become integrated into a society? For Fontane it was the question of how a member of the French colony in and around Berlin – descendants of Huguenots who had fled to Germany at the end of the 17th century – could also be a Prussian. Fontane’s father, born a century after the migration, nonetheless was named Louis Henri. Always a proud member of the “Colony”, Fontane nevertheless took pains to demonstrate his and his family’s loyalty to Prussia and ultimately the newly united Germany. In Meine Kinderjahre he relates that his grandfather, Pierre Barthélemy Fontane, “ein sehr gutes Französich sprechender Mann” (a man who spoke very good French), was drawing instructor to the eldest royal Prussian prince and became a Kabinettssekretär to Queen Louise. In 1813 Fontane’s father answered the call of King Friedrich Wilhelm, and on 2 May 1814 fought at the Battle of Gross-Görschen. In Von Zwanzig bis Dreissig Fontane gives a sketch of his peacetime service with the Kaiser-Franz-Regiment in 1844–45. He was a loyal Prussian in all things, and even though he was travelling in France as a civilian in 1870, he was proud to have been interned by the French and writes of this in great detail in his Kriegsgefangen [1871; Prisoner of War]. Class was also an important aspect of Fontane’s life writings, for the family had declined socially since the days of his grandfather’s service to the queen and his father’s ownership of an apothecary shop; Fontane, as a man who spent his entire adult life working in businesses owned by others and operated for their profit, still looked down on members of the working classes, although he was one among them. The beginning of “Der achtzehnte März” [The Eighteenth of March], part of Von Zwanzig bis Dreissig, demonstrates Fontane’s concerns with both class and otherness. Jung’s Apothecary, corner of New King’s and St George’s Church Streets, in which I was to experience the “18th of March”, was a splendidly well-established business, but of a suburban character, so that its customers were predominantly from the classes of mid-sized merchants and small tradesmen. Additionally much of the proletariat with their many children. For the latter, the charity physicians usually prescribed cod-liver oil – then, perhaps even now, a preferred medicament – and I never throughout my pharmaceutical career did pour half so much cod-liver oil into bottles as I did within a few months there. This mass consumption can be explained by the fact that the poor people who had the privilege of free medical care never considered administering this cod-liver oil to their more or less scrofulous children, but rather employed it quite economically as lamp fuel … The owner of Jung’s Apothecary, a member of the renowned Berlin family of the same name, was an older brother of the baker Jung on Unter den Linden, who stood in high esteem in our city on account of his excellent baked goods. Both brothers were unusually handsome people, black-haired, dark-eyed, of immediately recognizable French character, for their name was really Le Jeune, and their father was the first to adopt the German name … The grotesquely comic fear of me naturally rose

from that day on, when the news of the Parisian February Revolution arrived, and when in the second week in March hardly any doubt remained that something was also brewing in Berlin, even the management began to treat me with a certain care. They had concluded that I could be a secret revolutionary or even a secret agent, and the one was just as much feared as the other … One can see Fontane’s great care in providing and employing the fine detail that marks both his fiction and autobiographical writings – noting what was dispensed in the suburban apothecary and to what end it was putatively employed, and taking pokes at both the proletariat and at free medicine, explaining the origin of the Jung name and taking a jab at the Frenchmen who tried to pass as Germans (as he did) but could not hide their French features, and illustrating his discomfiture at being considered a Frenchman in Berlin during the 1848 revolution, while at the same time taking some pleasure in being feared by his bosses as a rebel or government spy – when he was neither – thus besting his supposed betters. Stylistically, all Fontane’s life writings are similarly detailed, showing the reader with painstaking specificity 19th-century Germany, England, and France as seen and lived by a French Prussian. James T. Simmons Biography Born Henri Théodore Fontane in Neuruppin, Brandenburg (now part of Germany), 30 December 1819. His father was an apothecary. Grew up in Swinemünde. Educated at the Gymnasium, Neuruppin, 1832–33, and Gewerbeschule K.F. Klödens, Berlin, 1833–36. Apprenticed to an apothecary in Berlin, 1836–40. Worked in Burg, Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin, 1841–49. Carried out military service, 1844. Freelance writer from 1849; his early literary works included ballads, poems, and travelogues. Married Emilie Rouanet-Kummer, 1850: three sons and one daughter. Worked for the Prussian government press bureau, 1851–55. London correspondent for Berlin newspaper, 1855–59. Editor for London affairs, Kreuzzeitung, 1860–70. Theatre critic, Vossische Zeitung, 1870–89. Secretary of the Berlin Academy of Arts, 1876 (resigned the same year). Became famous as a novelist, publishing his first novel, Vor dem Sturm (Before the Storm), in 1878, followed by ten further novels, including Effi Briest (1895). Awarded the Schiller prize (Prussia), 1891. Died in Berlin, 20 September 1898.

Selected Writings Ein Sommer in London, 1854 Bilderbuch aus England, 1860; edited by Friedrich Fontane, 1938; as Journeys to England in Victoria’s Early Days 1844–1859, translated by Dorothy Harrison, 1939 Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg, 4 vols, 1862–82; edited by Paul Fechter, 1952, Gotthard Erler and Rudolf Mingau, 1976– Kriegsgefangen, 1871 Meine Kinderjahre (autobiography), 1894; edited by Jutta NeuendorffFürstenau, 1961 Von Zwanzig bis Dreissig: autobiographisches, 1898; edited by Kurt Schreinert and Jutta Neuendorff-Fürstenau, 1967 (with Wilhelm Wolfsohn) Briefwechsel, edited by Wilhelm Walters, 1910 Briefe an die Freunde, edited by Friedrich Fontane and Hermann Fricke, 2 vols, 1943 Briefe an Georg Friedlaender, edited by Kurt Schreinert, 1954 Briefe, edited by Gotthard Erler, 2 vols, 1968 Briefe, edited by Kurt Schreinert and Charlotte Jolles, 4 vols, 1968–71 Briefe an Hermann Kletke, edited by Helmuth Nürnberger, 1969 Briefe an Julius Rodenberg, edited by Hans-Heinrich Reuter, 1969 Briefe an Wilhelm und Hans Hertz, 1859–1898, edited by Kurt Schreinert, 1972

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Der Briefwechsel zwischen Theodor Fontane und Paul Heyse, edited by Gotthard Erler, 1972 Briefe aus den Jahren 1856–1898, edited by Christian Andree, 1975 (with Theodor Storm) Briefwechsel, edited by Jacob Steiner, 1981 Ein Leben in Briefen (selections), edited by Otto Drude, 1981 Autobiographische Schriften, edited by Gotthard Erler, Peter Goldammer, and Joachim Krueger, 3 vols, 1982 Briefe an den Verleger Rudolf von Decker, edited by Walter Hettche, 1988 Unechte Korrespondenzen, edited by Heide Streiter-Buscher, 2 vols, 1996 Aus meinem bunten Leben (selections from correspondence), edited by Gabriele Radecke and Walter Hettche, 1998 “Eine Zeitungsnummer lebt nur 12 Stunden”: Londoner Korrespondenzen aus Berlin, edited by Heide Streiter-Buscher, 1998

Further Reading Alter, Peter and Rudolf Mohs (editors), Exilanten und andere Deutsche in Fontanes London, Stuttgart: Heinz, 1996 Attwood, Kenneth, Fontane und das Preussentum, Berlin: Haude and Spener, 1970 Barlow, D., “Fontane and the Aristocracy”, German Life and Letters, (1954–55): 182–91 Bemmann, Helga, Theodor Fontane: Ein preussischer Dichter, Berlin: Ullstein, 1998 Furst, L.R., “The Autobiography of an Extrovert: Fontane’s Von Zwanzig bis Dreissig”, German Life and Letters, (1956–57): 287–94 Robinson, Alan R., “Recollections in Tranquillity: An Examination of Fontane’s Autobiographical Novel” in Erfahrung and Überlieferung: Festschrift for C.P. Magill, edited by Robinson and Hinrich Siefken, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1974 Robinson, Alan R., Theodor Fontane: An Introduction to the Man and His Work, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1976 Zwiebel, William L., Theodor Fontane, New York: Twayne, 1992

Fontenelle, Bernard de

1657–1757

French scientist and biogapher Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle was one of the most influential of French 17th-century writers and scientists. He contributed immensely to the popularization of science. Admitted to the French Academy of Sciences in 1691, he worked as permanent secretary there from 1697. During his period at the Academy Fontenelle produced 69 panegyrics on deceased members, promoted its work, and wrote its history. Members praised his readings of obituary notices on prominent scientists of his time, including Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Fontenelle’s homage to Leibniz is especially remarkable, since the Academy of Berlin (which Leibniz had founded) ignored his death in 1716, as did the Royal Society of London. Using Viviani’s words, Fontenelle defines Leibniz as “the Phoenix of the spirits”. These words could be attributed to Fontenelle himself, with Voltaire describing Fontenelle’s mind as one of the most universal of Louis XIV’s time. In January 1685 Fontenelle published an obituary essay on Pierre Corneille, his famous dramatist uncle, whose tragedies he greatly admired. Fontenelle’s biographies are models of clarity, wit, and elegance of style, presenting the scientists as highly important and dedicated. The biographies discuss architecture, biology, astronomy, and mathematics, and implicitly discuss the question of the role of scientists in society. For Fontenelle the two

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blind astronomers Cassini and Galileo were great men and “resemble Tiresias, who lost his sight for having seen some secrets of the gods”. Fontenelle’s conversational art, wit, and charm made him a Parisian celebrity. His company was sought after, especially by numerous salon hostesses and organizers of informal gatherings, as well as by some talented female writers. His most acclaimed work Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686–87; Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds) was designed to bring the new astronomy “within the grasp of the feminine intelligence”. Fontenelle also initiated the organization of the first salon of literature and philosophy in 18th-century France, hosted by Madame de Tencin, who characterized him as the god of philosophy. Fontenelle’s Dialogues des morts (Dialogues from the Dead) and Nouveaux dialogues des morts (New Dialogues from the Dead) is a two-volume book containing 18 dialogues, published anonymously in 1683. New Dialogues from the Dead notably features female poets, goddesses, and queens. The work is highly innovative, eclectic, and stylistically rich in that Fontenelle “resurrects” for conversation mythological figures, politicians, important thinkers, and poets belonging to several temporal and cultural spaces. It attacks dogmatic discourses and presents plurality of opinions as something desirable rather than blasphemous. This approach made Fontenelle one of the most daring free-thinkers in Catholic France, comparable to Pierre Bayle and Cyrano de Bergerac. He successfully employs dialogue and “conversion” as his methods of persuasion. The narrative technique is similar to Pascal’s Pensées sur la religion (1669), in which the author views issues through the eyes of an interlocutor in order to lead him beyond the personal to a more complete view of truth. In Fontenelle’s view, the moderns could continue the tradition of the ancients, ascending to the light and removing obstacles on the path towards enlightenment. Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds promotes the Copernican system in a highly persuasive and engaging manner. The chat between a philosopher and a marquise during their evening stroll was a great success and appealed to Fontenelle’s readers, who preferred his pedagogical technique to the more formal dialogues of Plato and Galileo. This book enjoyed enormous popularity and was republished many times (Fontenelle revised it in 1708 and 1742), in spite of the fact that Newton refuted in 1689 the Cartesian theory of vortices that Fontenelle used for his dialogues. As Fontenelle states in his book, the truth should be pleasing – a belief reflected in his seductive style, which helped him immortalize popular science and his own relativistic world-view within the format of informal conversation. Fontenelle’s writing career lasted for most of the course of his long life: he continued writing his brief biographies and other works almost until his death in 1757. His work represents a link between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. He was a new phenomenon – the popular scientist – who used methods of biography and dialogue, and notably influenced French thinkers, particularly Condorcet. Alexandra Smith Biography Bernard le Bovier, sieur de Fontenelle. Born in Rouen, Normandy, France, 11 February 1657; nephew of the dramatist Pierre Corneille

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and the poet and dramatist Thomas Corneille. Educated at a Jesuit college in Rouen from 1664. Studied law on the insistence of his father, 1672–77, but abandoned it after practising briefly, and moved to Paris to pursue a career as a writer. Became a celebrity in literary circles and frequented many salons, especially those of Mesdames de Lambert, de Tencin, Geoffrin, and du Deffand. Sided with the Moderns in their literary quarrel with the Ancients. Contributed to Le Mercure Galant, 1677–81. Wrote libretti for operas, including Psyché (1678). Popularized the scientific theories of Isaac Newton and René Descartes in Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686; A Discourse on the Plurality of Worlds), for which, with Histoire des oracles (1686; The History of Oracles), he is best known. Elected to the Académie Française, 1691. Permanent secretary, Académie Royale des Sciences, 1697–1740. Edited its annual volumes Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, which published éloges on many eminent scientists, 1699–1740. Patronized by the regent, receiving a pension and a lodging in the Palais-Royal, early 1700s (until 1731). Elected to the Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles-Lettres, 1701. Member, Arcadian Academy of Rome, Royal Society of London, and the academies of Berlin, Nancy, and Rouen. Died in Paris, 9 January 1757.

Selected Writings Dialogues des morts and Nouveaux dialogues des morts, 2 vols, 1683; edited by Donald Schier, 1965, and Jean Dagen, 1971; as Dialogues from the Dead, translated by John Hughes, 1708; as Dialogues of Fontenelle, translated by Ezra Pound, 1917 Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, 1686; enlarged edition, 1687; edited by Robert Shackleton, 1955, and Alexandre Calame, 1966; as A Discourse of the Plurality of Worlds, translated by W.D. Knight, 1687; as A Discovery of New Worlds, translated by Aphra Behn, 1688; as A Plurality of Worlds, translated by John Glanvill, 1695; as Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, translated by William Gardiner, 1715, and H.A. Hargreaves, 1990 “Pierre Corneille” (elegy), 1685 Lettres galantes du Chevalier d’Her***, 1687; edited by Daniel Delafarge, 1961; as Letters of Gallantry, translated by John Ozell, 1715 Eloges historiques de tous les académiciens morts depuis ce renouvellement, 2 vols, 1709–20; revised edition, as Eloges des académiciens de l’Académie royale des sciences, 2 vols, 1731; selections as Choix d’éloges des savants, edited by D. Bourel and others, 2 vols, 1981; selections as The Lives of the French, Italian and German Philosophers, translated by John Chamberlayne, 1717

Further Reading Cosentini, John W., Fontenelle’s Art of Dialogue, New York: King’s Crown Press, 1952 Fayol, Amédée, Fontenelle, Paris: Debresse, 1961 Niderst, Alain, Fontenelle, Paris: Plon, 1991 Paul, Charles, Science and Immortality: The Eloges of the Paris Academy of Sciences 1699–1791, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980 Williams, Charles G.S. (editor), Actes de Columbus: Racine, Fontenelle: Actes du XXIe colloque de la North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, Paris and Seattle: Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, 1990

Fox, George

1624–1691

English religious leader and diarist Published posthumously in 1694, the Journal of George Fox was conceived by Fox but constructed by a fellow Quaker, Thomas Ellwood, who compiled and edited the manuscripts that Fox had occasionally dictated, along with Fox’s letters and papers, to produce a life that would reflect the vision of Fox as the inspiring but respectable leader that the second-generation Quaker leadership wished to present. This first edition included

a preface by William Penn, whose praise of Fox’s character and work provides an almost hagiographic frame. The modern edition by Nickalls stays closer to the surviving manuscripts dictated or written by Fox. Decidedly kinetic, the Journal narrates events in Fox’s public ministry throughout England, mainly in the 1640 and 1650s (and later to Ireland and the Americas). Only a few paragraphs at the beginning are devoted to a childhood already marked by religious experience, and by the third page we find Fox, at the age of 19, disgusted by heavy drinking at a fair, hearing God’s call to separate himself: “Then, at the command of God, on the 9th day of the Seventh Month [September], 1643, I left my relations and brake off all familiarity or fellowship with young or old”. From this point all of Fox’s movements, significant as part of his ministry, are recorded, as in the sentence following that above: “And I passed to Lutterworth, where I stayed some time; and from thence I went to Northampton, where also I made some stay, then passed from thence.” As John Knott, Jr, has noted, the emphasis on the bare facts follows from its purpose as a record of Fox’s ministry for the Society of Friends and posterity. To the modern reader this factual reporting, unsupported by any strong narrative direction, can seem flat and repetitious. However, the Journal gains dramatic interest when narrating its most common incident, confrontation with the authorities. Typically Fox arrives in a town and seeks an opportunity to challenge the “priests and professors” (Anglican clergy and theologians generally) with his iconoclastic message that “steeple-houses” (churches) and even the Bible are empty shells unless the searching soul hears the divine voice directly. Spoken to a crowd in or near a church, his message meets with various results: sometimes most of the people and even the authorities are “convinced”; at other times he is driven away, on several occasions suffering beatings or arrest for disrupting a church service. Many of these episodes culminate in trial scenes in which Fox amazes courtroom audiences by his boldness, confidence in his mission, and ability to exploit legal technicalities. The kinetic energy of these scenes is enhanced by a radically unadorned plain style with its multiple and exposed active verbs. The centrality of the trial scene recalls the Protestant life writings of John Foxe and John Bunyan but points ultimately to the broad influence of the New Testament. The contours of the life of Jesus are apparent in that of Fox, as he manifests a unique mission at a young age, begins to teach the teachers in and around the churches, and then repeatedly confronts and astounds the complacent religious and secular authorities of the day (like the audiences of Jesus, those of Fox are “astonished” at his answers). The pattern of Paul’s (post-conversion) life is also present from early on, most notably in stories of Fox’s jailers being converted, and it becomes primary as Fox’s work shifts from establishing the new faith to providing leadership to a growing network of believers. Entirely solitary in the early journeys, by the middle of the life Fox is often travelling with one or two other evangelists, sometimes returning to a town to encourage those converted on a previous trip; and into the latter sections are integrated his letters of pastoral advice, similar to Paul’s letters of exhortation and advice to the young church. Thus employing the embedded voices of Jesus and Paul, the text communicates to readers steeped in the New Testament a sense of George Fox as both founder and teacher.

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A distinctive and problematic feature of Fox’s voice in the Journal is the paucity of reflection and self-scrutiny usually associated with spiritual autobiography. In contrast to Augustine’s famous account of his remorse after stealing pears, Fox tersely claims a childhood that needed no conversion: “In my very young years I had a gravity and stayedness of mind and spirit not usual in children … When I came to eleven years of age, I knew pureness and righteousness.” Bunyan’s Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) recounts the author’s protracted struggle to experience assurance of salvation even while preaching to others; for Fox there is never a doubt expressed about either his calling or his own spiritual state. On several occasions Fox does experience what he calls “openings” – moments of spiritual recognition or knowledge – the most notable being a sensation of purity and innocence like that of Adam: “All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter.” But while this experience is certainly internal and personal, it is not connected to events that come before or after, or to any sustained analysis of the author’s spiritual or emotional progress. With the essential state of the author achieved at the outset (childhood righteousness), the progress recorded in the text is an entirely external one: the spreading effect of Fox’s ministry as seen in the growing number of converts to the Quaker faith. The book is neither a journal, properly speaking, since the manuscripts were composed not daily but much more occasionally, nor a spiritual autobiography in the Augustinian tradition. It is more akin to the memoirs of a public figure, one that shows its subject not in the study or at prayer but on the roads, in the midst of debates, suffering beatings and relishing triumphs. Stephen M. Adams Biography Born Drayton-in-the-Clay (now Fenny Drayton), Leicestershire, England, July 1624, the son of a well-to-do weaver. Brought up as a Puritan. Was probably apprenticed to a Nottingham cobbler in his early teens. Left his home town to wander in response to a divine call, eventually reaching London, 1643. Began to doubt that he was right to leave home and returned there, 1644. Suffered from depression and became increasingly alienated from the values of his society. Consulted ministers from various denominations. Experienced a religious conversion, which he described as “a great opening”, 1647. Began to preach to individuals and groups as he travelled on foot around the Midlands and northern England, criticizing ministers of the established church. Established local congregations, which became known as the Society of Friends or “Quakers”. Arrested for disrupting services, in Nottingham, 1649, and Derby, 1650. Experienced a second mystical vision on Pendle Hill in Lancashire, 1652, then travelled to Firbank Fell in the English Lake District, where he preached his message of an “inner light” to a large crowd. Moved on to Yorkshire, then London and other cities. Aroused public hostility and suffered persecution with his followers: was imprisoned on eight occasions, 1649–74 (the longest at Lancaster and Scarborough, 1663–66). Refused to take the oath of abjuration, 1655. Visited Wales and Scotland, 1657. Married Margaret, widow of Judge Thomas Fell of Swarthmore Hall, Ulverston, Lancashire, an early supporter of Fox, 1669. Went to Ireland, 1669, Barbados, Jamaica, and the American colonies, 1671–73, the Netherlands and Germany, 1677 and 1684, accompanied on the later trips by other Quaker leaders including William Penn and Robert Barclay. Spent most of his last years in London, where he wrote and published pamphlets. Died in London, 13 January 1691.

Selected Writings A Journal or Historical Account of the Life, Travels, Sufferings, Christian Experiences and Labour of Love in the Work of the

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Ministry of … George Fox, edited by Thomas Ellwood, 1694; as The Journal, edited by Norman Penny, 2 vols, 1911; edited by John L. Nickalls, 1952 (reprinted 1997); edited by Nigel Smith, 1998

Further Reading Hardin, Richard F., “Bunyan, Mr. Ignorance, and the Quakers”, Studies in Philology 69 (1972): 496–508 Knott, John R. Jr, “The Acts of George Fox: A Reading of the Journal”, Prose Studies, 6/3 (1983): 215–38 Morris, John N., “George Fox and Other Quakers” in his Versions of the Self: Studies in English Autobiography from John Bunyan to John Stuart Mill, New York: Basic Books, 1966 Nuttall, Geoffrey F., “Introduction: George Fox and His Journal” in The Journal of George Fox, edited by John L. Nickalls, revised edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952; Philadelphia: Religious Society of Friends, 1997 Olney, James, Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972

Frame, Janet

1924–

New Zealand fiction writer and autobiographer Frame is generally acknowledged to be New Zealand’s “greatest living writer” and has won virtually every literary award the country has to offer. In the mid-1980s she published an autobiographical trilogy (now published in one volume as An Autobiography), which has continued to be popular with readers all over the world and is invariably considered a canonical text in academic courses on 20th-century women’s life writing. The first volume, To the Is-Land (1982), is a meticulously detailed and vivid recollection of childhood, describing on the one hand Frame’s close-knit, intense, and idiosyncratic family life and on the other her increasing sense of isolation and exclusion, precipitated over the years by a series of family tragedies: her brother’s epilepsy; her elder sister’s death by drowning; her younger sister’s nightmarishly duplicate death by drowning ten years later. The second volume, An Angel at My Table (1984) (whose title is taken from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s Vergers), covers the decade of Frame’s 20s, when she spent nearly eight years in mental hospitals, her experiences “inside” and her classification as schizophrenic effectively denying her access to the “I” that is necessary for autobiographical writing. Indeed, Frame clings to the label “schizophrenic” as the one identity she can own. The brief but vivid descriptions of Electric Convulsion Therapy and the wry claim that ECT shreds the past, leaving only the memory of itself, are typical of Frame’s strategies for unhinging the “autobiographical pact” between reader and writer: if she has no memory, what is she telling here? In her final volume, The Envoy from Mirror City (1984), Frame is diagnosed as never having been schizophrenic and is “given permission” to become a full-time writer: we learn that her second novel, Faces in the Water (1961), was written on the advice of her London psychiatrist. (Faces is a poetic and moving account of psychiatric institutions and ECT, comparable to Sylvia Plath’s slightly later autobiographical novel The Bell Jar.) Indeed, Envoy provides illuminating insights into the nature of writing and what it means to be a writer. For Frame, the “I” of autobiography is inextricably bound to the “I” of fiction. She says she cannot help it being this way:

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Why? Because if I make that hazardous journey to the Mirror City where everything I have known or seen or dreamed of is bathed in the light of another world, what use is there in returning only with a mirrorful of me? In order to write, Frame transports herself into the world of the imagination, Mirror City, itself both a reflection and a transformation of reality. In writing her autobiography, she feels constrained to drag out an image of herself from the past, a “mirrorful of me”, without the sparkling content that comes from inhabiting the city of the imagination. It is Frame’s insistence on the value of the everyday, her capacity to create a sense of wonder and magic from the ordinary, that is distinctive in her writing. This characteristic has meant that readers from all over the world can identify with her descriptions even though few will have shared her life experiences. Frame’s impact has, in many ways, been typical of a postcolonial writer: telling her own story, in her own voice, about “here” rather than “there”, is equivalent to creating and confirming a national identity. The implicit frame of reference of most New Zealand writers up until the 1930s was to an idealized and outdated England, absorbed through the school curriculum and the media, inducing in both writer and reader the kind of “double vision” that comes from reading about snow at Christmas time. In the 1930s Frank Sargeson and others advocated the “provincial”, focusing on the local language and landscape. But whereas Sargeson self-consciously discovers and expresses a “New Zealand voice”, Frame is fascinated by words per se: their sound, their meaning, and equally importantly their mis-meanings, their ability both to classify and to deceive. Words become characters in Frame’s autobiography, mnemonics for the events of her life, events in themselves. The word-play of the title To the Is-Land is characteristic of her ability to encapsulate and transform meaning, suggesting the importance of time (is), place (island), identity (I), and the uncertain direction of movement (to the island) between the islands of New Zealand and Britain. Frame’s international reputation as an autobiographer is due in part to fellow New Zealander Jane Campion’s representation of the trilogy in the film An Angel at My Table (1989), which received instant acclaim. It is no small irony that the life story of the mythically reclusive Janet Frame should now be far better known than her writing: her highly accomplished and complex novels have been seriously neglected outside New Zealand. But this is also, perhaps, because her life story is an outstanding one by any standards. Tonya Blowers Biography Janet Paterson Frame. Born in Dunedin, South Island, New Zealand, 28 August 1924. Her father was an impoverished railway engineer. Educated at Oamaru North School; Waitaki Girls’ High School; University of Otago Teachers’ Training College, Dunedin. Spent much time in psychiatric hospitals after severe nervous breakdowns. Published her first book, a collection of short stories, The Lagoon, 1952, and her first novel, Owls Do Cry, 1957. Gained international recognition as New Zealand’s most widely known author, with the novels Scented Gardens for the Blind (1963), A State of Siege (1966), Intensive Care (1970), Living in the Maniototo (1979), and The Carpathians (1988), her autobiographical trilogy (subsequently filmed as An Angel at My Table). CBE (Commander, Order of the British Empire), 1983.

Selected Writings An Autobiography, 1989; as The Complete Autobiography, 1989 1. To the Is-Land: An Autobiography, 1982 2. An Angel at My Table: An Autobiography, 1984 3. The Envoy from Mirror City: An Autobiography, 1984

Further Reading Alcock, Peter, “Janet Frame: Two Notes and a Postscript – A Writer on the Edge: Janet Frame and New Zealand Identity”, Commonwealth [France], 1 (1974–75): 171–75 Alley, Elizabeth, “‘An Honest Record’: An Interview with Janet Frame”, Landfall, 45/2 (1991): 154–68 Alley, Elizabeth (editor), The Inward Sun: Celebrating the Life and Work of Janet Frame, Wellington: Daphne Brasell, 1994 Ash, Susan, “The Absolute, Distanced Image: Janet Frame’s Autobiography”, Journal of New Zealand Literature, 11 (1993): 21–40 Barringer, Tessa, “Frame[d]: The Autobiographies”, Journal of New Zealand Literature, 11 (1993): 90–106 Blowers, Tonya, “Madness, Philosophy and Literature: A Reading of Janet Frame’s Faces in the Water”, Journal of New Zealand Literature, 14 (1996): 74–89 Blowers, Tonya, “The Textual Contract: Distinguishing Autobiography from the Novel using Paul Ricoeur and Janet Frame” in Representing Lives: Women and Auto/biography, edited by Alison Donnell and Pauline Polkey, London: Macmillan, 2000 Broughton, W.S., “‘With Myself as Myself: A Reading of Janet Frame’s Autobiography” in The Ring of Fire: Essays on Janet Frame, edited by Jeanne Delbaere, Sydney: Dangaroo Press, 1992 Brown, Ruth, “Aspects of Frame: The Unravelling of a Mad Myth” in Aspects of Commonwealth Literature, edited by Liz Summer (Collected Seminar Papers, 3), London: Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, 1993 Delbaere, Jeanne (editor), The Ring of Fire: Essays on Janet Frame, Sydney: Dangaroo Press, 1992 Evans, Patrick, Janet Frame, Boston: Twayne, 1977 Evans, Patrick, “Janet Frame and the Art of Life”, Meanjin, 44 (1985): 375–83 Evans, Patrick, “The Case of the Disappearing Author”, Journal of New Zealand Literature, 11 (1993): 11–20 Finney, Vanessa, “What Does ‘Janet Frame’ Mean?”, Journal of New Zealand Literature, 11 (1993): 193–205 Henke, Suzette, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman: Janet Frame’s Autobiographies”, Journal of the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, 3/1 (1991): 85–94 Jones, Laura, An Angel at My Table: The Screenplay from the ThreeVolume Autobiography of Janet Frame, Auckland: Random Press, 1990 Jones, Lawrence, “The One Story, Two Ways of Telling, Three Perspectives: Recent New Zealand Literary Autobiography”, Ariel, 16/4 (1985): 127–50 King, Michael, Wrestling with the Angel: A Life of Janet Frame, Washington DC: Counterpoint, 2000 Mercer, Gina, “‘A Simple Everyday Glass’: The Autobiographies of Janet Frame”, Journal of New Zealand Literature, 11 (1993): 41–48 Mercer, Gina, Janet Frame: Subversive Fictions, Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1994 Petch, Simon, “Janet Frame and the Languages of Autobiography”, Australian and New Zealand Studies in Canada, 5 (1991): 58–71 Potter, Nancy, “The Voyage between Self and Society” in International Literature in English: Essays on the Major Writers, edited by Robert L. Ross, New York: Garland, 1991 Robertson, Robert T., “Bird, Hawk, Bogie: Janet Frame, 1952–62” in The Ring of Fire: Essays on Janet Frame, edited by Jeanne Delbaere, Sydney: Dangaroo Press, 1992 Sargeson, Frank (editor), Speaking for Ourselves, Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1945 Unsworth, Jane, “Why Does an Author Who Apparently Draws So Much on Autobiography Seem Committed to ‘Alienating’ the Reader? A Reflection on Theories of Autobiography with Reference

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to the Work of Janet Frame” in The Uses of Autobiography, edited by Julia Swindells, London and Bristol, Pennsylvania: Taylor and Francis, 1995

France: Medieval Life Writing The predominant form of life writing in France before 1500, in Latin and the vernacular, was saints’ lives or hagiography. This does not constitute a unified genre, even if defined purely by content, since with the exception of an edifying conclusion to the life common to all examples, the biographical trajectory implied or expressed is multiform: a precocious childhood in the manner of secular heroes may be found, a conversion crisis is frequent but not obligatory, miracles may be incorporated, but are often treated in a parallel document. A reaction to the increased importance of the marvellous in chivalric romances in the later Middle Ages produced a tendency to reduce interactions between the saint and the supernatural, and to concentrate on piety and asceticism. Thaumaturgical or miraculous biography might, indeed, be considered a separate sub-genre having specific legal status – related to canonization processes – as well as devotional application. Many vernacular texts are translated from Latin, in which language they are predominantly narrative, subdivided between stories of martyrs’ passions, concentrating on the final stages of the saint’s existence, and full biographies of confessors; in the vernacular, hagiography adopts all literary forms. The earliest, of Saint Eulalia (written c.900), is an ornamented extension of an Alleluia; the Occitan life of Saint Foy d’Agen (written c.1100) and the Old French lives of St Alexis (written c.1050) and St Thomas Becket (written 1176) are related to contemporary epic poetry in form and expression. Increasingly in the 13th and 14th centuries hagiography is dramatized, producing vast cycles of Passion and Mystery plays, but saints’ lives are mostly recorded in a form related to chronicle and verse romance. Frequently, as in the dramatized life of Saint Barbara or the romance-modelled life of Pope Gregory the Great, they are fictions incorporating a variety of myths, those of Oedipus and Perseus being the most frequently exploited. Secular life writing was initially inspired by classical models, especially Suetonius and Tacitus. Early biographies in Latin, like that of Louis VI by Abbot Suger of St-Denis (written 1137–44), freely mix humanistic and epic considerations. In a manner that was echoed by later writers, Suger incorporated autobiographical material alongside the biographical, and added reflections on the political situation in Europe in the first third of the 12th century. Two 12th-century autobiographies raise interesting problems: De vita sua (written c.1114; On His Life) by Guibert de Nogent, while appealing strictly to the Augustinian tradition by beginning with the word “Confiteor” (“I confess”), is more concerned with political and social issues in northeastern France than with the spiritual trajectory of the author-subject’s life; Historia calamitatum (written c.1133; Story of My Misfortunes) by Peter Abélard adopts the Ciceronian model of a letter to a friend, remaining controversial, like his associated correspondence with Héloïse, where autobiography and questions of ecclesiastical discipline and organization alternate, because its

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earliest known form is a translation by Jean de Meun (continuator of the Roman de la Rose, written c.1269–78) who also consistently problematizes questions of authorship and life writing. The first major vernacular biography, the Vie de Guillaume le Maréchal [written c.1220; Life of William Marshal], written by a clerk of Guillaume’s household for his heirs, has unmistakable romance models for its early parts, which incorporate legendary or fictitious material. While later sections relate more closely to chronicle and are more firmly based on family archives, the whole still tends to the celebration of an ideal subject, though in chivalric rather than hagiographic or humanistic terms. An even more complex blend of the chivalric, the hagiographic, and the didactic informs the prose Vie de Saint Louis (also called Mémoires) by Jean de Joinville, started as autobiography in c.1272 and finished as a hybrid reminiscence in 1309. Dictated by a literate and cultivated companion-in-arms of Louis IX, the Mémoires retain an easy conversational style as they interweave the lives of the two men with the moral and political sententiae of the late monarch. More formal is the biography by Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des faits et bonnes moeurs du roi Charles V le Sage [written c.1404; literally The Book of the Deeds and Good Customs of King Charles V the Wise], written to a commission from Philippe le Hardi, Duke of Burgundy. The work includes pen-portraits of other members of the royal family, and has several passages in which Christine discusses the nature and purpose of biographies of great men, her sources, and her role as an author. Panegyric is an important aspect of medieval biography, found in Adam de la Halle’s brief epic eulogy of Charles I of Anjou, King of Naples, La Chanson du roi de Sicile [written 1283–85; The Song of the King of Sicily], in Guillaume de Machaut’s romance-modelled, chivalric biography of Pierre de Lusignan, King of Cyprus, La Prise d’Alexandrie [written after 1369; The Capture of Alexandria], and in Christine de Pizan’s account of the triumphant career of Joan of Arc, Le Ditié de Jeanne d’Arc [written 1429; The Poem of Joan of Arc], in which Christine’s feminism is as apparent as her patriotism. The Hundred Years’ War produced many such works. One may consider large parts of Jean Froissart’s Chroniques (constantly revised between 1370 and 1400; Chronicles) as chivalric biographies of his two principal heroes, Edward III and the Black Prince. On the French side Cuvelier wrote a mammoth epic Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin (between 1380 and 1385) in praise of the obscure Breton knight who rose to be Constable of France, while the English Chandos Herald produced a Vie du Prince Noir [written c.1385; Life of the Black Prince], in which the Prince’s biography is overshadowed by a defence of John of Gaunt’s handling of the Castilian campaign of 1366–67. Vernacular autobiography became increasingly important in the 14th and 15th centuries. Precursors may be found in the Congés [Farewells] by Jean Bodel (written 1202) and Baude Fastoul (written 1272), in which the poets reflect on their lives and take leave of friends and family before entering leper colonies. The “pseudo-autobiographies” of Guillaume de Machaut, Le Voir-Dit [written 1364; The True Story], and Jean Froissart, Le Joli Buisson de jonece [written 1373; The Merry Bush of Youth], are also farewells, this time to poetry. Their aim, in a virtuosic display of mixed-media writing, is to reflect in a seamless blend of fact and fiction on the nature of literary creativity. Christine de Pizan produced two quasi-autobiographies,

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Le Livre de la mutacion de Fortune [written 1400–03; The Book of the Mutation of Fortune] and Le Livre du chemin de longue estude [written 1402–03; The Book of the Path of Long Study], both blending allegorized meditations on her own life with a political quest for an ideal society. The period closes with the monumental Mémoires of Philippe de Commynes (written 1489–98), which recount the history of France in the second half of the 15th century in terms of the personalities of the dukes of Burgundy and kings of France. Commynes’s work provides a fitting summation of French medieval life writing as he questions the chivalric and hagiographiceulogistic models, returning to humanistic patterns of psychological investigation, and placing the personality of the author, whose role in events the Mémoires seek to justify, at the centre of the book’s concerns. Philip E. Bennett Further Reading Ainsworth, Peter F., Jean Froissart and the Fabric of History: Truth, Myth, and Fiction in the “Chroniques”, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990 Bennett, Philip E., “The Mirage of Fiction: Narration, Narrator and Narratee in Froissart’s Lyrico-Narrative Dits”, Modern Language Review, 86 (1991): 285–97 Benton, John F. (editor), Self and Society in Medieval France: The Memoirs of Abbot Guibert of Nogent, translated by C.C. Swinton Bland, revised by Benton, New York: Harper and Row, 1970 Clanchy, M.T., Abelard: A Medieval Life, Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1997 De Looze, Laurence, Pseudo-Autobiography in the Fourteenth Century: Juan Ruiz, Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart and Geoffrey Chaucer, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997 Delehaye, Hippolyte, The Legends of the Saints, translated by Donald Attwater, Portland, Oregon and Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998; with new introduction by Thomas O’Loughlin (first edition, without introduction, 1962) Dufournet, Jean, La Destruction des mythes dans les Mémoires de Ph. de Commynes, Geneva: Droz, and Paris: Minard, 1966 Grant, Lindy, Abbot Suger of St-Denis: Church and State in Early Twelfth-Century France, London and New York: Longman, 1998 Hicks, Eric (editor), La Vie et les epistres: Pierres Abaelart et Heloys sa fame: traduction du XIIIe siècle attribuée à Jean de Meun, Paris: Champion, and Geneva: Slatkine, 1991 Richards, Earl Jeffrey, Joan Williamson, Nadia Margolis, and Christine Reno (editors), Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992 Robertson, Duncan, The Medieval Saints’ Lives: Spiritual Renewal and Old French Literature, Lexington, Kentucky: French Forum, 1995 Slattery, Maureen, Myth, Man, and Sovereign Saint: King Louis IX in Jean de Joinville’s Sources, New York: Peter Lang, 1985 Willard, Charity Cannon, Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works, New York: Persea Books, 1984

France: 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-Century Memoirs Memoirs are retrospective, autobiographical narratives of personal experience, sometimes published posthumously. Memoirs vary in modes of authorship and intended uses. They may be authored and composed by one person, by family members or secretaries. Many, like those of Louis XIV, were intended for the instruction of future generations. Others, like those of Cardinal Richelieu, also set out a theory, in this case, a political one.

Others still aimed simply to document events and life during a specific period, and almost all of them are interesting from the point of view of cultural, social, and political history, as they were written by those in political or social positions of power, or with access to those that were. Those described below are the major texts of the period. At the end of the 15th century, Philippe de Commynes (c.1446–1511), who served under Charles the Bold and Louis XI as an advisor, developed in his Mémoires (written between 1489 and 1498) a didactic discourse on the state (with religious overtones), involving moderation in taxation, fairness, and clemency in the reign of a king attuned to the needs of his people. Guillaume Du Bellay (1491–1543), military man and governor of Piedmont, and his brother Martin (c.1495–1559), soldier and administrator (both cousins of the poet Joachim Du Bellay), combined Mémoires (1569, 1908–09) of their times, covering 1513–47. Michel de Castelnau (1520–92), a diplomat, left political memoirs. François de la Noue (1531–91), a Huguenot soldier, wrote his Discours politiques et militaires [1587; Political and Military Discourses], which included his memoirs. Pierre de Bourdeilles, seigneur et abbé de Brantôme (c.1540–1614), was a youth in the court of Marguerite de Navarre, served as a soldier in the French civil wars, and was wounded by a fall from a horse. His memoirs, the Vies des hommes illustres et grands capitaines français et étrangers [written 1665–66; Lives of Illustrious Men and Great French and Foreign Captains] and the Vies des dames illustres [Lives of Illustrious Women], provide documentation of wars and of court life. Jean Héroard (1551– 1628), royal physician for Louis XIII, wrote a Journal (published in 1868) that offers glimpses into the life of the young King. Marguerite de Valois (1553–1615), daughter of Henri II and Catherine de Médicis, wrote memoirs including an account of the St Bartholemew’s Day Massacre. Maximilien de Béthune, baron de Rosny, later duc de Sully (1559–1641), minister under Henri IV, left the Economies royales, memoirs that were put together by secretaries in 1638. Edme, comte de la Châtre (d. 1645), court member under Louis XIII, concerned himself mostly with intrigues. François de Bassompierre (1579–1646), a soldier and diplomat, was imprisoned by Richelieu. In his memoirs, he gave accounts of own life and times. Armand du Plessis, cardinal de Richelieu (1585–1642), minister of Louis XIII, had his memoirs compiled by secretaries. These writings record his political activities as an uncompromising enemy of the Huguenots and one of the founders of centralized government. François du Val, marquis de Fontenay-Mareuil (c.1594–1665), who served under Richelieu and Mazarin, left historical memoirs of the years 1609–24. Valentin Conrart (1603–75), a Huguenot, was founding member and secretary of the Académie Française. His Mémoires (published 1824) are mostly historical in content. Antoine, duc de Gramont (1604–78), left Mémoires composed in fact by his second son; his brother Philibert, comte de Gramont (1621–1707) had memoirs written about his scandalous libertine lifestyle by his brother-in-law. Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne (1611–75), a major figure in Louis XIV’s European campaigns, left military memoirs. Paul de Gondi, cardinal de Retz (1613–79), who was involved in the Fronde, left Mémoires (1717) that discuss his career, produce portraits, and include aphorisms. François, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80), known as a moralist and aphorist, wrote

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memoirs including incisively accurate portraits of contemporary figures. Catherine Meurdrac Mme de la Guette (1613–1680) wrote memoirs documenting social life and customs and events of the Thirty Years’ War. Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux’s (1619–92) Historiettes (published in 1834) provide documentation of social life with no small amount of gossip. Françoise Bertaut, Mme de Motteville (1621–89), composed memoirs that include accounts of Anne’s regency, Mazarin’s power, and the Fronde. Marie de Longueville, duchesse de Nemours (1625– 1707), also left memoirs documenting the Fronde. Jean Hérault de Gourville (1625–1703), a businessman who started out as La Rochefoucauld’s valet de chambre (valet), left matter-of-fact memoirs rich in detail. Nicolas Fontaine (1625–1709), discusses Port-Royal, a society of which he was a member, in his memoirs. Louise d’Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier (1627–93), “la Grande Mademoiselle,” daughter of Gaston d’Orléans, frondeuse, left Mémoires that are interesting from historical and socio-historical points of view. Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, comtesse de Lafayette (1634–93), a great novelist, wrote Mémoires de la cour de France (1731), covering 1688–89. Nicolas de Catinat (1637–1712), who captured Nice and Savoy (1690–91) for Louis XIV, wrote military memoirs. Louis XIV, Le Grand (1638–1715), left Mémoires that are an account of statesmanship intended for the education of the dauphin. These texts were assembled by secretaries to the Sun King, and cover events in his reign from its beginnings in 1661 to the later, less felicitous 1690s. Philippe, marquis de Dangeau (1638–1720), gave in his Journal (1684–1714) detailed accounts of life in the court of Louis XIV. Louis-François du Bouchet, marquis de Sourches (1639–1716), left memoirs (published 1882) about the period 1681–1712 that describe life in the court of Louis XIV. François-Timoléon, abbé de Choisy (1644–1724), a crossdresser and free spirit, left Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Louis XIV (1727), noted for their portraits and a familiarity of style. Charles-Auguste, marquis de la Fare (1644–1712), wrote memoirs with portraits of characters of the time and some critical assessments of Louis XIV. Louis-Antoine, duc d’Antin (1665–1736), son of Mme de Montespan, director of royal buildings after Mansard, left memoirs. René Duguay-Trouin (1673–1736) left Mémoires (1740) of his days as lieutenant général des armées navales. Louis de Rouvroy, duc de SaintSimon (1675–1755), member of the royal council under Louis XIV, in his Mémoires provides a detailed record of the late years of Louis XIV and also of the Régence. These memoirs are well known for their extreme detail and attention to matters of etiquette and privilege in the life of the court; also for portraits of significant social and political figures in France at the time of their writing (1740–50). Marguerite Cordier, Mlle de Launay (1684–1750), friend of Fontenelle and Mme du Deffand, left letters and Mémoires about her youth and her imprisonment for having been implicated in a plot against the Regent. Charles-Jean François Hénault (1685–1770), a magistrate of the Paris parlement and member of the Académie française wrote memoirs that included historical accounts and interesting portraits. Marie-Marguerite de Villette-Murçay, marquise de Caylus (1673–1729), wrote Souvenirs of Louis XIV’s court (1770), including portraits. Letters by her to Mme de Maintenon, her cousin, have been published. René-Louis, marquis d’Argenson (1694–1757), served as

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minister of foreign affairs (1744–47). He wrote Essais emulating Montaigne and Mémoires setting out political views on reason, democracy, and political reform. Charles-Philippe d’Albert, duc de Luynes (1695–1758), grandson of Dangeau, left detailed accounts of life under the reign of Louis XV. Charles Pinot Duclos (1704–72), a historian and novelist, and secretary of the Académie, whose circle included Voltaire and Rousseau, wrote Mémoires secrètes sur les règnes de Louis XIV et de Louis XV (1790), mostly dealing with intrigue among prominent social figures of the day. François-Joachim, abbé de Bernis (1715–94), minister of foreign affairs and later abbé, left memoirs about Mme de Pompadour. Pierre-Victor, baron de Besenval (1722– 91), was a Swiss officer who lived at court, documenting court life in his memoirs. Jean-François Marmontel (1723–99), a literary figure of his time, wrote Mémoires d’un père (1804) that contain descriptions of the encyclopédistes and philosophes he knew. Louise-Florence d’Esclavelles, Mme d’Epinay (1726–83), was a noted writer of letters and wrote an autobiographical novel entitled Mémoires (1818). André, abbé Morellet (1727– 1819), a philosophe who worked on the Académie’s dictionary and lived through and witnessed the Revolution, left Mémoires (1822). Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732–99), the noted playwright, wrote four Mémoires (1773–74) about a lawsuit that was brought against him. Armand-Louis de GontautBiron, duc de Lauzun (later duc de Biron) (1747–93), left scandalous memoirs (1821) of military and amorous conquests. Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Genest, Mme Campan (1752–1822), lady-in-waiting of Marie-Antoinette, wrote Mémoires sur la vie privée de Marie-Antoinette (1823) during the time when she served that function (1770–92). Marie-Jeanne Phlipon, Mme Roland (1754–93), who held court at her salon, was guillotined during the Revolution. The memoirs and letters that she wrote are valuable documents of her times. Henriette-Lucie Dillon, marquise de la Tour du Pin (1770–1853), composed memoirs of the Revolution, Journal d’une femme de cinquante ans, 1778–1885 [Diary of a 50-Year-Old Woman], including major historical events and portraits of important historical figures. Roland Racevskis Further Reading Beasley, Faith E., Revising Memory: Women’s Fiction and Memoirs in Seventeenth-Century France, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1990 Choisy, Abbé de, The Transvestite Memoirs of the Abbé de Choisy and The Story of the Marquise-Marquis de Banneville, translated by R.H.F. Scott, London: Peter Owen, 1973; Chester Springs, Pennsylvania: Dufour, 1994 Freudmann, Felix Raymond, “Memoirs of the Fronde, A Literary Study” (dissertation), New York: Columbia University, 1957 Goldsmith, Elizabeth C. and Dena Goodman (editors), Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1995 Ranum, Orest, “Richelieu, the Historian”, Cahiers du Dix-Septième: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 1/1 (1987): 63–78 Retz, Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de, Memoirs, London: Dent, and New York: Dutton, 1917 Richelieu, Louis Francois Armand du Plessis, duc, Cardinal de, Memoirs of Duke de Richelieu, Paris: Société des bibliophiles, and New York: Merrill and Baker, 1903 Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de, The Age of Magnificence: The Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon, edited and translated by Sanche de Gramont, New York: Putnam, 1963 Wokler, Robert, “Saint-Simon and the Passage from Political to Social Science” in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern

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Europe, edited by Anthony Pagden, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987

France: 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters Following the strict definition given by Michel Gilot, the diary is “any text written above all for oneself (a matter often difficult to verify), composed of fragments, each of which could begin with ‘today’, ‘now’, or ‘just recently /soon’, and which poses the question of the destiny of the writer” (Del Litto). Thus diary writing is defined as writing anchored in the present of the author’s life, as opposed to the autobiography or the memoir, which are both products of memory and retrospection. Memorialistic life writing also takes account of a potential readership, whereas the diary, in its strictest definition, is an eminently private work. In its historical evolution, the French diary or journal intime went through numerous kinds of hybrid forms before assuming the form and function we associate with what has become a genre (with all of its semi-fictional levels) today. Early kinds of journal intime typically consisted of historical and societal documentation. A number of chronicles were written as daily accounts and bore the title journal in the 16th century, but unlike the journal intime as it is known today, these chronicles did not focus on their authors, but rather on historical events and circumstances. Examples include the Journal de Jean Barillon [written 1515– 21; Diary of Jean Barillon], secretary to the Chancellor Duprat; the Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris sous le règne de François Ier [written 1522–35; Diary of a Parisian Bourgeois under François I]; Pierre de L’Estoile’s Journal pour le règne de Henri III [1574–89; Diary of the Reign of Henri III]; and the Journal of Jean Héroard (1551–1628), Louis XIII’s personal physician. In the 17th century, Olivier Lefèvre d’Ormesson, the marquis de Dangeau (1638–1720), chronicled court life under Louis XIV. In the following century, the Journal of Mathieu Marais (1664– 1737) recounted the regency and the early years of the reign of Louis XV (1715–37). Accounts of Louis XV’s rule were also pseudo-diaristically given by the marquis d’Argenson (1697– 1757), Barbier (1718–63), and the duc de Croy (1718–84). However, none of these examples can be considered a journal intime, in the modern sense. Writing that is diaristic not only in its chronological form but principally in its focus on the writing self takes its modern shape in the late 18th century, when a new kind of self-awareness, partaking both of Rousseau’s explorations of sentimental life and of the Enlightenment’s project of studying humanity from all angles, made the written study of self possible. Joseph Joubert (1774–1824), who never published a single piece of writing, nonetheless spent his life writing in personal notebooks that served as a kind of meditation on, and exploration of, his life and thoughts. Restif de la Bretonne (1734–1806) wrote his Inscriptions, sometimes imaginative accounts of his life, between 1780 and 1787, following on his practice of inscribing personally important dates and occurrences on stones on the Ile Saint-Louis. The diary (written 1783–89; published 1792) of Lucile Duplessis-Desmoulins ranges from scenes of family life and elaborate expressions of

her love for her husband, Camille Desmoulins, to accounts of events during the revolution. Marie-François-Pierre Gonthier, known as Maine de Biran (1766–1824), used his Journal intime (written 1792–95) for philosophical and spiritual explorations that led him from scepticism to religious faith. As was the case with diaries, personal letters were not necessarily written with publication in mind. However, anthologies of early modern French correspondences were published posthumously and sometimes centuries after the deaths of their authors. Authorial self-consciousness in personal correspondence remains difficult to ascertain for any given writer, and volumes of correspondence that were actually published during an author’s lifetime vary in content and authorial intentions, or lack thereof, as is evident in the examples cited below. Hélisenne de Crenne’s Epistres familieres et invectives [written 1539; Familiar and Invective Epistles] contains highly personal letters, many to close friends, but also includes letters to the author’s husband, advancing uncompromising arguments for the rights of women. Gaspar de Saillans’s letter-book (1569) is made up of correspondence between him and his wife, centring on the recording of daily activities and on the development through writing of ties of love and friendship. Etienne Du Tronchet, secretary to prominent nobles and for a while to Catherine de Médicis, published his Lettres missives et familieres [1569; Posted and Familiar Letters], which were designed to serve as a model for letter writing in courtly society. Du Tronchet’s carefully edited volume was indeed a widely read letter manual until it was superseded by Puget de la Serre’s Secrétaire de la cour [1625; Courtly Letter Book]. Following on Du Tronchet’s innovation of consciously publishing letters to serve a didactic purpose, the lawyer Etienne Pasquier (1529– 1615), in his autobiographical, historical, and literary Lettres (1586), aimed to develop an art of epistolary eloquence for France, developing the theories set out by Erasmus in De conscribendis epistolis (1521; On the Writing of Letters). The correspondence of a mother and daughter known as Mesdames des Roches appeared in a volume (1586) that recounted life in the literary salon in Poitiers over which they presided. Both salon culture and the development of literary institutions would mark the practice of letter writing in the 17th century. Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (1594–1654), with the first volume of his Lettres du sieur de Balzac [1624; Letters of Monsieur de Balzac], exemplified a kind of highly codified eloquence, based on classical rhetoric and in continuity with oratory practices, that foregrounded notions of nobility and the sublime in epistolary expression. Nicolas Faret (c.1600–46) published an anthology of letters (1627) representing this art of high eloquence by future founding members of the Académie Française such as Balzac, Malherbe (1555–1628), Racan (1589–1670), Boisrobert (1592–1662), and Faret himself. Jean Chapelain (1595–1674), himself a prominent academician, wrote letters, which were only published in the 19th century, that avoided codification or literary composition as their primary goals and developed a personal account of relationships and daily life. Even more autobiographical were the Epistres spirituelles de la Mère Ianne Françoise Fremiot, Baronne de Chantal [1644; Spiritual Epistles of the Mother JeanneFrançoise Fremiot, Baroness of Chantal], which contained religious instruction by the founding Mother Superior of the Ordre de la Visitation Sainte-Marie, but also included letters to the

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nuns of the convent (who collected and published them) and to relatives. These letters formed a kind of diaristic personal history with a strong confessional dimension. With Les Oeuvres de Monsieur de Voiture [1650; The Works of Monsieur de [sic] Voiture] (1598–1648), letters served as an extension of refined salon conversation and as an experimental space for precious turns of phrase. La Fontaine’s Lettres à sa femme [Letters to his Wife], written in 1663, would be published in 1729, containing a record of the poet’s travels and of his relationship with his wife. Both personal and literary were the letters of Madame de Sévigné (1626–96), which were published starting in the 18th century. Mostly written to her daughter, but also to a number of friends and relatives, Sévigné’s voluminous correspondence explored matters of the heart and recorded both daily circumstances and historical events. Sévigné’s cousin Roger, comte de Bussy-Rabutin (1618–93), also produced an ample personal correspondence (published first in 1697), in which the autobiographical dimension was mediated throughout by the count’s attempts to regain favour with Louis XIV after having been exiled from court life. Mlle Desjardins, also known as Mme de Villedieu (1640–83), a playwright and novelist, had the misfortune of seeing two volumes of her passionate love letters published (1668) without her consent. Letters of other prominent women of the 17th century, like Mme de Lafayette (1634–93), Mme de Sablé (1599–1678), Mme de Maintenon (1635–1719), and Mlle de Scudéry (1607–1701), would only be published in the 19th and 20th centuries. With the end of the 17th century, a number of letter-writing manuals were published, including volumes by Furetière (1689), Richelet (1690), and Vaumorière (1690), continuing the classical tradition of epistolary codification that would be less dominant in the following century. The 18th century saw an explosion of letter writing by some of the most prominent intellectual figures of the time. Epistolary activity was a significant dimension in the development of the individual writer into an autonomous political force during the Enlightenment. Voltaire (1694–1778) wrote over 20,000 letters to over 1000 correspondents, exploring philosophical and political questions in a refined style, only occasionally including selfreflexive comments. More personal were the letters between Diderot (1713–84) and his intimate confidante, Sophie Volland. The great philosophe called these letters his journal intime, in which he wrote about thoughts and feelings from his everyday life. The correspondence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) contains numerous elements of his philosophies, both political and individualistic, and sharply polemical arguments with intellectual figures like Voltaire and Diderot, both of whom broke off ties with him. Mme d’Epinay (1726–83), a correspondent of Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau, as well as hostess to Rousseau (who stayed at her estate near Paris for 20 months), wrote a volume entitled Lettres à mon fils [1759; Letters to My Son], a didactic collection written to instill virtue, generosity, and self-discipline in her son. Julie de Lespinasse (1732–76) wrote numerous passionate love letters, which were published posthumously (starting in 1809), to the marquis de Guibert. Mme du Deffand (1697–1780), who presided with Mlle de Lespinasse over a salon frequented by many of the century’s greatest philosophes, was a noted epistolarian whose letters display great refinement and richly document social and intellectual life during the Enlightenment. Mme de Graffigny (1695–1758), author of the fictional Lettres d’une péruvienne (1747; Letters by a

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Peruvian Woman), also wrote many personal letters, characterized by spontaneity and ample indices of the conditions of life during her times, which have only begun to be published recently. Finally, Mme de Charrière (1740–1805) wrote a number of semi-autobiographical epistolary novels, such as the Lettres écrites de Lausanne [1785; Letters from Lausanne], which contain explorations of affective life and complaints about the difficulties of married life. Roland Racevskis Further Reading Altman, Janet Gurkin, Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1982 Altman, Janet Gurkin, “The Letter Book as a Literary Institution 1539–1789: Toward a Cultural History of Published Correspondences in France”, Yale French Studies, 71 (1986): 17–62 Del Litto, V. (editor), Le Journal intime et ses formes littéraires: actes du colloque de septembre 1975, Paris and Geneva: Droz, 1978 Farrell, Michèle Longino, Performing Motherhood: The Sévigné Correspondence, Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1991 Fumaroli, Marc, “Genèse de l’épistolographie classique: rhétorique humaniste de la lettre, de Pétrarque à Juste Lipse”, Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France, 78 (1978): 886–900 Girard, Alain, Le Journal intime, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963 Goldsmith, Elizabeth (editor), Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolary Literature, Boston: Northeastern University Press, and London: Pinter, 1989 Goodman, Dena, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1994 Jensen, Katharine Ann, Writing Love: Letters, Women, and the Novel in France, 1605–1776, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995 Viala, Alain, “La Genèse des formes épistolaires en français (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles)”, Revue de Littérature Comparée, 218/2 (1981): 168–83

France: 18th-Century Autobiography Life writing in early 18th-century France took the well-established form of the memoir, based on the privileged observation of social mores recorded by a person of some standing. Similar preoccupations were discernible in the contemporary vogue for letter writing which, with its sharply accented individual perspective, evolved in parallel with the epistolary novel, itself an instrument well suited, in formal terms, to the interplay and contrast of personal values and opinions. As the century progressed a new process of autobiographical exploration emerged, rooted predominantly in a desire for self-knowledge and legitimized by a simple yet intransigent belief in the value of individual selfhood. The dispassionate commentary on French military or court life, traceable back to Olivier de la Marche and Philippe de Commynes, was coloured by the personal, opinionated view of the observer, so that authors of 18th-century memoirs, in the wake of mémorialistes such as Blaise de Monluc (1502–77) and the Cardinal de Retz (1613–79), while chiefly concerned to record the intrigues and meanderings of the circles in which they move, were inclined to do so from a personal perspective which revealed as much about themselves as individuals as it did about

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the wider world they purported to observe. Chief among these was Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon (1675–1755), who made use of his career as a diplomat to paint in his Mémoires, which appeared posthumously from 1788 onwards, a vivid and revealing picture of court life during the reign of Louis XIV. Writing in 1699, Saint-Simon made clear his – somewhat tentative and exploratory – intention not merely to comment on events of the day, but to do so from a perspective very much his own, and thus to create “des espèces de Mémoires de ma vie, et aussi un peu en général et superficiellement une espèce de relation des événements de ces temps, principalement des choses de la cour” (“a sort of Memoir of my life, and also a sort of narrative, in a fairly general and superficial way, of the events of the time, mainly to do with the Court”). These are memoirs of an active participant in social affairs, his identity defined in relation to that society. Such was the success of these and similar memoirs that the form was frequently adopted by the emergent novel genre, as a guarantee of the authenticity of its narratives. The voluminous correspondence of leading Enlightenment figures such as Voltaire (1694–1778) and Diderot (1713–84), attest to a determination both to record and explore the complexities of the individual personality and its relationship with the surrounding world. The prolific correspondence of JeanJacques Rousseau (1712–78) displays an equally avid intellectual curiosity, and his landmark epistolary novel La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761; The New Heloïse) brings a subjective immediacy to the depiction of thought and feeling that has a significant influence on the development of autobiography and the novel, and on evolving definitions of selfhood. The spirit of enquiry – about the world and above all about the self – in evidence at this time is, however, perhaps best exemplified by the protean, restless intellect of Diderot, and expressed most limpidly in his fictional philosophical conversation Le Neveu de Rameau (written at intervals between 1760 and 1779, published posthumously in 1821; Rameau’s Nephew): “Que le diable m’emporte si je sais au fond qui je suis” (“The Devil take me if I really know who I am”). The widening philosophical, intellectual, and epistemological horizons that characterized the 18th century in France as elsewhere in Europe serve also to account for a transformation of attitudes to autobiographical narratives in the latter part of the century. In a process rooted in the post-Renaissance shift of emphasis from humans occupying a space allotted to them in a stable universe towards humans as objects of interest in their own right, autobiography became a vehicle for the expression of the individual’s importance in the stream of history. For the first time, the individual could be seen as having an autonomous role in the historical process and this, combined with the waning of religious certainty and increase in scepticism – which are typical of the 18th century – allowed the autobiographical quest to fill a vacant space in the human psyche. The Enlightenment project called for a fine balance between the expression of individual passions and an acceptance of broader social values, a fusion of personal freedom and social cohesion, and the ascendancy of the instinctive and natural created a climate in which the introspective, self-assertive, and self-defining autobiographical work could come to the fore. Political and economic developments played a part, too, as an increasingly parasitical and irrelevant aristocracy was supplanted by a mercantile middle class whose members owed

their position in society to individual achievement rather than inherited status. By the time of the Revolution of 1789, this new economic equality of opportunity found its political corollary in the “Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen” (1789; “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen”). All these factors can be adduced to explain the emergence of a mode of writing that determined the pattern of autobiographical expression for generations: defiantly individualistic, but also self-questioning and confessional in tone, above all intent on emphasizing the singularity of the subject. It is Rousseau who is the exemplary exponent of autobiography as the record of autonomous selfhood in the 18th century. By insisting on a unique individuality he paradoxically asserted his representative value: conscious of his personal isolation in what he regarded as a corrupt and corrupting society, he claimed for himself alone the right and the ability to pass judgement on his own actions and motives. “Je ne suis fait comme aucun de ceux que j’ai vus; j’ose croire n’être fait comme aucun de ceux qui existent. Si je ne vaux pas mieux, au moins je suis autre” (“I am like no one else that I have seen; I dare to believe that I am like no one else in existence. I may not be better, but I am at least different”). He thus exemplified and illuminated the modern experience of individual alienation in a hostile and uncomprehending world. His Confessions (written 1764–70, and published posthumously between 1782 and 1789) are a sustained exercise in self-revelation and selfjustification, in which his principal concern was to express a truth that has little to do with the accuracy of memory and everything to do with an innate sense of inalienable selfhood, a preoccupation reflected in his Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (1782; Reveries of a Solitary Walker) in which he attained an intensity of lyrical self-absorption unmatched elsewhere in the 18th century. Near-contemporaries of Rousseau, such as Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne (1734–1806), whose Monsieur Nicolas, ou, le coeur humain dévoilé (1794–97; Monsieur Nicolas, or the Human Heart Laid Bare) combines self-revelation and acute social observation with reflection on the writing process itself, consolidated the transition to a form of autobiography that, however revealing it may be about the society in which it is set, was to have at its core a concern for the primacy of feeling and the unique value of the individual consciousness. Peter Wagstaff Further Reading Bérubé, Georges and Marie-France Silver (editors), La Lettre au XVIIIe siècle et ses avatars, Toronto: Editions du Gref, 1996 Coirault, Yves, “Autobiographie et mémoires (XVIIe–XVIIIe), ou existence et naissance de l’autobiographie”, Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France, 75/6 (1975): 937–56 Elbaz, Robert, The Changing Nature of the Self: A Critical Study of the Autobiographic Discourse, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987; London: Croom Helm, 1988 France, Peter, Diderot, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983 Goodman, Dena, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1994 Gusdorf, Georges, “De l’autobiographie initiatique à l’autobiographie genre littéraire”, Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France, 75/6 (1975): 957–94 Lejeune, Philippe, Le Pacte autobiographique, Paris: Seuil, 1975

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May, Georges, L’Autobiographie, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979 Sheringham, Michael, French Autobiography: Devices and Desires, Rousseau to Perec, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993 Starobinski, Jean, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: la transparence et l’obstacle, suivi de sept essais sur Rousseau, Paris: Gallimard, 1971 Sturrock, John, The Language of Autobiography: Studies in the First Person Singular, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993 Wagstaff, Peter, Memory and Desire: Rétif [Restif] de la Bretonne, Autobiography and Utopia, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996 Wokler, Robert, Rousseau, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995

France: 19th-Century Auto/biography In France, the 19th century witnessed a significant development in the status of auto/biography, a considerable increase in its volume, and also a diversification of the types of life writing. Whereas the main forms of auto/biography had been established during the 18th century, their subsequent development was undoubtedly linked to the increasing pace of change, not only of a cultural nature, but also social, political, economic, and technical. By the end of the 18th century, it was generally recognized that the singular nature of an individual’s experience was an interesting subject, and one that was worthy of readers’ attention. The Romantic movement, which started slightly later in France than in England or Germany, celebrated the senses and the emotions, and therefore enhanced the importance of personal life experience. French society, as the 19th century progressed, took on a recognizably modern form. A significant development was in the growth of the reading public and a gradual decline of illiteracy, though one had to wait until the last years of the century for the establishment of universal free education. The 19th century was also a period of drastic political change, involving the Consulate and two Empires, restoration of the monarchy, the July Monarchy, and the Second and Third Republics. Such changes increased the need to record the lives of political leaders, not least when new democratic institutions developed. A factor that is sometimes underestimated is the changing nature of publishing. Whereas the major literary event of 1820, Lamartine’s Méditations, was produced by an edition of only 500 copies, the subsequent development of the rotary printing press enabled longer runs, eventually reducing the price of books and making them available to a greater proportion of the population. Looking first to the history of biography, from the early years of the 19th century, one perceives two main intentions: the first was to produce a comprehensive account of the lives of great men (and, to a lesser extent, women); the second, and one often connected with the growing importance of local government institutions, was to extend the account to important figures within a town, area, or profession. The result was a proliferation of biographical compendia. A four-volume work by Alphonse de Beauchamp, Baron Henri Louis Coiffier de Verseux, and others is illustrative of the first intention: Biographie moderne [1806; Modern Biography] covers only the 15 years to 1806, but is thorough and detailed. A more concise attempt is François Ignace Fournier’s Nouveau dictionnaire portatif de biographie

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[1809; New Portable Dictionary of Biography], in a single volume of just over 600 pages. In the following year, a prospectus appeared for what was later to be called the Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne [1811–54, with later revisions; Universal Ancient and Modern Biography], edited by LouisGabriel Michaud. Eventually consisting of 85 volumes, this represents a major landmark in the development of 19thcentury biography. Jean Augustin Amar du Rivier and others collaborated in a similarly entitled Biographie universelle classique, ou, Dictionnaire historique portatif [1829; Universal Classical Biography, or Portable Historical Dictionary], originally intended as a handy single-volume reference work, though eventually published in three volumes. The preface states that it was intended to follow in a tradition established across the English Channel by Lemprière, Watkins, and George Crabb, and affirms that biography was a fairly recent genre that was infinitely further advanced in France. The preface also insisted that one had to be dead to be included, though Alphonse Rabbe’s Biographie universelle et portative [1834; Universal Portable Biography] was mainly concerned with the living. J.A. Jacquelin’s Manuel de biographie, ou, dictionnaire historique [revised by Noel, 1835; Manual of Biography, or, Historical Dictionary] is a pocket-sized volume, specifically addressed to “young people in schools and men in society who need only superficial knowledge”. Women had been given brief equality with Madame Gabrielle de Paban’s L’Année des dames, ou, petite biographie des femmes célèbres [1823; The Women’s Year, or, Little Biography of Famous Women]. From the Baron Étienne Léon de Lamothe-Langon’s Biographie toulousaine [1823; Toulouse Biography] onwards, there are about 40 works accounting for the important figures of a town or region, from Lille to Grasse and from St Malo to the Vosges, though Ambroise Tardieu’s Dictionnaire iconographique des Parisiens [1885; Iconographic Dictionary of Parisians] appeared comparatively late in the century. The Biographie pittoresque des députés [1820; Picturesque Biography of Deputies] is the first of a number of biographies of members of the national assembly, renewed with successive elections and revolutions. There are also a good number of biographical handbooks of members of professions, from doctors to watchmakers and midwives. The first recorded use of the term autobiographie in France dates from 1842, and the Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle (1866) suggests that the word was originally used in English to describe memoirs that laid more emphasis on people than on events. Philippe Lejeune suggests that French autobiography proper did not begin before about 1760, and 19thcentury autobiographers often cite Rousseau as their predecessor. Like Rousseau, they tended to utilize the autobiographicalnovel genre, which became important during the century, blurring the barrier between fact and fiction. The title of Chateaubriand’s René (1802) is his second name and, rightly or wrongly, many readers have assumed that it is based on personal experience. Benjamin Constant’s Adolphe (1816) is a novel of psychological analysis which relates the story of his relationship with Madame de Staël. At the same time, memoirs survived as a genre, with Madame de Staël writing her Dix Années d’exil (1821; Ten Years of Exile) a few years later. Chateaubriand’s masterpiece, the Mémoires d’outre-tombe (1849–50; Memoirs), were written from 1811 to 1841 for publication after his death.

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As the century progressed, it became normal for authors to write some form of autobiography. Several prominent examples are worth citing. Lamartine’s Confidences [1849; Confidences] and Nouvelles Confidences [1851; New Confidences] are nostalgic and poetical reminiscences of his early life, and his Mémoires inédites [1870; Unpublished Memoirs] were published in the year following his death. Alexandre Dumas père may have written the most substantial example, his Mes mémoires (1852–55; My Memoirs) running to 22 volumes. George Sand’s Histoire de ma vie (1854–55; Story of My Life) provides interesting portraits of her contemporaries. Victor Hugo was untypical in that Victor Hugo raconté par un témoin de sa vie [1863; Victor Hugo told by a Witness of His Life] was written by his wife Adèle. Stendhal describes his Vie de Henri Brulard (1890; The Life of Henry Brulard) as resembling a franker version of Rousseau’s Confessions. John R. Whittaker Further Reading Bales, Richard, Persuasion in the French Personal Novel: Studies of Chateaubriand, Constant, Balzac, Nerval and Fromentin, Birmingham, Alabama: Summa, 1997 Eakin, Paul John, “Philippe Lejeune and the Study of Autobiography”, Romance Studies, 8 (1986): 1–14 Jefferson, Ann, “Beyond Contract: The Reader of Autobiography and Stendhal’s Vie de Henry Brulard”, Romance Studies, 9 (1986): 53–69 Lecarme, Jacques, L’Autobiographie, Paris: Armand Colin, 1997 Lejeune, Philippe, L’Autobiographie en France, Paris: Armand Colin, 1971 Raitt, A.W., Life and Letters in France, vol. 3, The Nineteenth Century, London: Nelson, and New York: Scribner, 1970 Rigby, Brian (editor), French Literature, Thought and Culture in the Nineteenth Century: A Material World: Essays in Honour of D.G. Charlton, London: Macmillan, 1993 Sheringham, Michael, “Chateaubriand and the Poetics of the Autobiographical Incident”, Romance Studies, 8 (1986): 27–40 Sheringham, Michael, French Autobiography: Devices and Desires, Rousseau to Perec, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993

France: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters Diaries and letters must be understood in terms of their status as texts, but also, importantly, as particular practices. While we have numerous 19th-century examples of the letters and diaries of well-known persons, these are also forms that are deployed extensively by the non-famous. The spread of these two genres across a wide band of population in the 19th century tells us an important sociological story about literacy rates, the development of the bourgeoisie, and the spread of middle-class attitudes and practices across a range of social and economic positions. The letter and the diary in 19th-century French culture are also important for another reason: as the century progressed, the two forms moved from being seen as predominantly private writing to fully fledged literary genres in their own right. After 1830, writers, politicians, composers, and others began to write with one eye on future publication. In 19th-century culture, diaries and letters also play a role in the development of modern conceptions of celebrity.

The term journal intime is commonly used to distinguish a personal diary of observations, reflections, and self-analysis from other kinds of diaries or journals, such as those recording professional appointments. The journal intime is inextricable from the history of the concept of the person. In the second half of the 18th century we find the roots of this modern form of personal writing in emergent understandings of the categories of the individual and the person. In Rousseau’s exaltation of sentiment and the uniqueness of the individual we see one aspect of this, while the work of other Enlightenment writers had placed sensory experience at the base of their philosophical systems and developed the concept of the person as a political category. It has been argued that the journal intime is a bourgeois form. In the sense that its rise as a practice coincides with the rise of the bourgeoisie this is correct. The journal intime is allied with the account book, as the numerous references to money in some of the most famous of them, for example those of Stendhal and Baudelaire, might suggest. It can be associated with a bourgeois focus on the self as a form of capital that can and must be always improved. But in 19th-century France the journal intime most often charts a sense of alienation from the dominant culture and sentiments which, while they may come from diarists of bourgeois origins, are in opposition to the society in which their authors live. Important 18th-century precursors of the 19th-century intimistes include Restif de la Bretonne (1734–1806) and the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814). French diarists struggled with a cultural injunction against an excessive focus on the self, coming on the one hand from the Pascalian “moi haïssable” and on the other embodied in the courtly tradition of the honnête homme. Restif asks: “Where does this come from, this idea that I oughtn’t speak of myself? Do I know anyone else better than I know myself? If I wish to anatomize the human heart, isn’t it best that I take my own as my subject?” In both Restif and Sade, we see an association between the personal journal and criminality, both in the sense of transgression and in the sense of a carceral mentality – and in Sade’s case, literal incarceration. In both these instances, intime is understood as specifically sexual, but it also has a more general meaning of personal or private. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, “a crisis of memory”, as one critic put it, shapes personal writing: a sense that in personal as well as in public life continuity is broken, identity destabilized. The personal journal’s development in 19th-century France must be understood in this context: itself a fragmented, discontinuous kind of writing of the self, it formally registers historical and personal disruption. Girard usefully breaks 19th-century diary writing down into generations. The first generation, of 1800–20, includes Maine de Biran, Joseph Joubert, Benjamin Constant, and Stendhal. These writers record quite explicitly the shock of the Revolution’s impact at first hand; they write without model and, in a sense, invent a mode of self-representation. The second generation, of 1830–60, a bit removed from direct experience of the Revolution and immersed in Romanticism, includes the poet Alfred de Vigny, the historian Jules Michelet, the painter Eugène Delacroix, Henri-Frédéric Amiel, and Maurice de Guérin. Crucially for the development of journal writing as a genre, and as it relates to the construction of celebrity, a French edition of the Memoirs of Lord Byron appeared in 1830, providing not only a model, but also foregrounding the idea of publication of this

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most personal of writing. In the following decades, publication of journaux intimes by famous persons became more commonplace: some of Joubert’s journals appeared in 1838, for example, and Constant’s Fragments des années 1812–1813 came out in 1861. Throughout the rest of the century, we see regular posthumous publication of personal journals and diaries of famous and not-so-famous writers and other public figures. Diary writing has often been associated with women, precisely because of its private and fragmentary character. Among the most well-known of the women diarists of the period are Madame de Staël, whose brief journal written in her youth appeared only in the 1930s, and George Sand, whose Journal intime and a brief diary she titled Sketches and Hints appeared in the 1920s. Eugénie de Guérin’s journal appeared in the course of the 19th century, first the volume titled Reliquae in 1855 and then in 1862 her Journal et lettres. The letter has a much longer literary history than the personal journal. The 17th-century example of Madame de Sévigné’s letters remained influential in the 19th century and beyond. Another influence on letters as a literary genre came from 18thcentury epistolary novels, exemplified by Rousseau (Julie, ou, la nouvelle Héloïse) and Choderlos de Laclos (Les Liaisons dangereuses). Celebrated 19th-century exchanges include those of Chateaubriand and Madame Récamier, the poets Alphonse Daudet and Frédéric Mistral, Honoré de Balzac and Madame Hanska, and the correspondence of Gustave Flaubert and George Sand. Through these epistolary exchanges, not only does one catch a glimpse into the lives of central figures in 19thcentury French literature, but also into major literary and cultural trends: Romanticism in the case of Chateaubriand and Récamier, regionalism in that of Daudet and Mistral, and the fate of the French novel and French realism in the cases of Balzac / Hanska and Sand / Flaubert: Sand is perhaps the most prolific correspondent among 19th-century literary figures: her published correspondence takes up 26 volumes. Like other 19thcentury autobiographers, she incorporated letters into her autobiography. Fully one third of the first volume of her Histoire de ma vie (1854–55; Story of My Life) is comprised of her father’s letters, making the autobiography an extraordinary example of the ways in which letters were understood as literary texts and as a mode of self-representation. Of course, the letter played an important role in the lives of “ordinary” French people during the century as well. In 1830 the French government instituted door-to-door postal delivery in much of the country. Before the postal reform of 1849, the receiver of a letter paid for it and the tariff was determined by the distance that the letter had travelled; the reform of 1849 meant that stamp costs were uniform and payable by the sender. Letter-writing manuals proliferated, reaching their pinnacle of popularity around the mid-1800s. These collections of model letters for diverse occasions had the goal of training people how to represent themselves to different audiences. As such, they provide an important insight into the special kind of literacy that the letter demanded. Letter writing required a specific set of skills, a command of certain niceties and figures of speech. Later in the century, as schools took over the teaching of letter writing, these manuals lost popularity. Sara E. Murphy

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Further Reading Allam, Malik, Journaux intimes: une sociologie de l’écriture personnelle, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996 Amiel, Henri-Frédéric, Journal intime, edited by Léon Bopp, Geneva: Cailler, 1948–58 (3 vols), and Paris: Gallimard (Journal intime de l’année 1866), 1959; edited by Philippe M. Monnier, 12 vols, Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1976–94; as Amiel’s Journal, translated by Mrs Humphry Ward, London: Macmillan, 1885 Bernard-Griffiths, Simone and Christian Croisille (editors), Difficulté d’être et mal du siècle dans les correspondances et journeaux intimes de la première moitié du XIXe siècle, Clermont-Ferrand: Université Blaise Pascal, 1998 Bossis, Mireille (editor), La Lettre à la croisée de l’individuel et du social, Paris: Editions Kimé, 1994 Chartier, Roger, Alain Boureau and Cécile Dauphin, La Correspondance: les usages de la lettre au dix-neuvième siècle, Paris: Fayard, 1991 Chartier, Roger, Alain Boureau and Cécile Dauphin, Correspondence: Models of Letter-Writing from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, translated by Christopher Woodall, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, and Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997 Chateaubriand, François and René and Juliette Récamier, Lettres à Madame Récamier, Paris: Flammarion, 1951 Constant, Benjamin, Oeuvres complètes, Tübingen: Niemayer, 1993–98 Del Litto, V. (editor), Le Journal intime et ses formes littéraires, Geneva: Droz, 1978 Delacroix, Eugène, Journal: 1822–1863, edited by André Joubin, Paris: Plon, 1980 Didier, Béatrice, Le Journal intime, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1976 Flaubert, Gustave and George Sand, Flaubert–Sand: The Correspondence, translated by Barbara Bray and Francis Steegmuller, New York: Knopf, and London: Harvill Press, 1993 Girard, Alain, Le Journal intime, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963 Guérin, Eugénie de, Journal et lettres, edited by G.S. Trebutien, Paris: Didier, 1862; Journal, Paris: Gabalda, 1934; as Journal of Eugénie de Guérin, London and New York: Strahan, 1865 Guérin, Eugénie de, Reliquae, edited by Edmond Pilon, Paris: Sansot, 1905 Joubert, Joseph, Les Carnets de Joseph Joubert, Paris: Gallimard, 1938; The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection, edited and translated by Paul Auster, with afterword by Maurice Blanchot, San Francisco: North Point Press, 1983 Lejeune, Philippe, On Autobiography, translated by Katherine Leary, edited by Paul John Eakin, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989 Lejeune, Philippe, Le Moi des demoiselles: enquête sur le journal de jeune fille, Paris: Seuil, 1993 Lejeune, Philippe, “French Girls’ Diaries in the 19th Century: Constitution and Transgression of a Genre” in Plurality and Individuality: Autobiographical Cultures in Europe edited by Christa Hämmerle, Vienna: IFK, 1995 Maine de Biran, Pierre, Oeuvres, edited by F. Azouvi, 13 vols, Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1984 Michelet, Jules, Journal, edited by Paul Viallaneix, 4 vols, Paris: Gallimard, 1959–76 Restif de la Bretonne, Nicolas-Edme, Mes inscripcions: journal intime de Restif de la Bretonne, edited by Paul Cottin, Paris: Plon, 1889 Sade, Marquis de, Oeuvres, edited by Michel Delon, 5 vols, Paris: Gallimard, 1990 Sand, George, Correspondance, edited by Georges Lubin, 26 vols, Paris: Garnier, 1964–95 Sand, George, Oeuvres autobiographiques, edited by Georges Lubin, 2 vols, Paris: Gallimard, 1970–71 Stendhal, Oeuvres intimes, edited by Henri Martineau, Paris: Gallimard, 1955 Vigny, Alfred Victor, comte de, Oeuvres complètes, 2 vols, edited by François Germain and André Jarry, Paris: Gallimard, 1986–93

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France: 20th-Century Auto/biography Despite the importance of French culture in the evolution of the autobiographical tradition and the major contributions of Montaigne, Rousseau, Stendhal, and Chateaubriand, the second half of the 19th century – the age of realism – did not favour life writing. However, as in other European countries, the autobiographical impulse asserted itself very strongly in early 20thcentury modernism, for example in Marcel Proust, Paul Valéry, André Gide, Guillaume Apollinaire, and André Breton. But of these writers it is only Gide who wrote an autobiography in the full sense. His Si le grain ne meurt (If It Die …), published privately in 1921 (publicly in 1926), is a beautifully written account of the emergence of his sexual identity in childhood and early adulthood, although Gide, who generally preferred indirect self-revelation, saw it primarily as the vehicle for a public declaration of his homosexuality. Autobiographical writing was a prominent feature in surrealism, a movement that opposed realism and fiction, and sought to find ways of giving expression to a latent selfhood expressed through poetic language and the liberation of unconscious desire. Breton’s Nadja (1928) is an autobiographical narrative focused on his relationship with a young woman encountered in a Paris street, who seemed the natural incarnation of surrealist aspirations. The work of 20th-century France’s most prolific and innovative autobiographer, Michel Leiris, is indebted both to surrealism and to the example of Gide. His first major autobiography, L’Age d’homme (1939; Manhood) makes a radical break with the traditional chronological approach and, in focusing primarily on sexuality, adopts a thematic method, partly inspired by surrealist collage. The influence of psychoanalysis and the emphasis on the power of language also reveal surrealist influences, but in an important essay “The Autobiographer as Torero”, appended to the work on its reprinting in 1946, Leiris underlined that for him the appeal of autobiography lay in the risks involved. Like Gide, Leiris saw that autobiographical confession, if carried out with total commitment and integrity, could constitute an act that crossed the divide between the literary and the public spheres. In Leiris, autobiography – which he pursued in the multi-volume work La Règle du jeu (1948– 76; Rules of the Game) – becomes a lifelong vocation for selfunderstanding and self-transformation. Michel Leiris was close to Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and, partly though Leiris’s example, these and other writers, all associated with the philosophy of existentialism, produced a group of major autobiographies. Jean Genet’s Journal du voleur (1949; The Thief’s Journal) combined a high degree of awareness of the pitfalls and dangers of autobiography with a radical approach to narrative and time. Sartre himself embarked on an autobiography in the early 1950s, but by the time it was published as Les Mots (1963; The Words), Beauvoir’s Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée (1958; Memoirs of a Dutiful daughter) and André Gorz’s Le Traître (1958; The Traitor) had appeared. These were to be followed by Violette Leduc’s La Bâtarde (1963), an important autobiography written, like Beauvoir’s, from a consciously feminist viewpoint. While all these autobiographies have common features that can be associated with existentialism (for example, a concern with choice, betrayal, and bad faith), Sartre’s Les Mots uses parody to question the

assumptions of traditional life writing, especially accounts of childhood, while disguising a complex dialectical argument behind a loosely chronological surface. Sartre’s interest in life writing had in fact first found expression in the sphere of biography, where he is perhaps one of the century’s major theoreticians and practitioners. The French tended (and to some extent still tend) to see Britain as the land of biography, and distinguished French practitioners have been rare (the anglophile André Maurois being a noted exception). Sartre saw that the issues raised by biography went to the heart of the existentialist problems of choice, freedom, and responsibility, and his first biographical study (Baudelaire, 1947) examined the poet’s life in the light of the hypothesis that, rather than being a victim of misfortune, he had chosen to suffer. Sartre’s next subject was the homosexual writer and convicted criminal Genet (Saint Genet, 1952), and his most substantial biographical study is the unfinished L’Idiot de la famille (1971–72; The Family Idiot) devoted to Gustave Flaubert. After Sartre, the next milestone is 1975, which saw the publication of a critical study, Philippe Lejeune’s Le Pacte autobiographique, that was to contribute immeasurably to the rise of serious interest in life writing, on the part of both writers and critics, and of two radically innovative texts, by Roland Barthes and Georges Perec. Barthes’s book, roland BARTHES par roland barthes (1975; Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes), is a fragmented work where the narrative voice oscillates between first- and third-person pronouns. It adapted concepts from structuralist and poststructuralist theory, and used autobiography to explore a new vision of the human subject. In Perec’s W ou le souvenir d’enfance (1975; W or the Childhood Memory), autobiographical questioning and fictional narrative alternately seek to comprehend the disappearance of the author’s mother in Auschwitz. The renewal of interest in identity, temporarily eclipsed by structuralism, and the upsurge of interest in autobiography in the late 1970s led leading novelists of the nouveau roman school to take an active interest in life writing. Nathalie Sarraute’s Enfance (1983; Childhood) used the stylistic and thematic range of her fiction to probe her childhood memories. With L’Amant (1984; The Lover) Marguerite Duras used memories of an illicit affair as the sounding board for a haunting exercise in memory. Alain Robbe-Grillet wrote Le Miroir qui revient (1984; Ghosts in the Mirror) and two subsequent volumes that fuse autobiography and fiction in a manner characteristic of what came to be known as “autofiction”, a term created by Serge Doubrovsky to describe his Un amour de soi [1973; A Love of Self] and other works. Autofiction deliberately blurs the lines between autobiographical revelation and fictional creation and has been used effectively in works where the exploration of identity occurs in a wider socio-political context: the experience of being HIVpositive in Hervé Guibert’s A l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie (1990; To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life); that of being a French Algerian woman in Assia Djebar’s L’Amour, la fantasia (1985; Algerian Cavalcade). Also prominent are new ways of writing lives where biography becomes a form of indirect autobiography, as in Pierre Michon’s Vies minuscules [1984; Minuscule Lives]. Annie Ernaux has moved, with marked success, from autobiographical fiction to works where biography – that of her father in La Place (1981; Positions), of her mother in Une femme (1988; A Woman’s Story) – provides

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the framework for autobiographical self-scrutiny. Along with other forms of life writing, autobiography, by virtue of its combination of the aesthetic and the factual, literary creation and social memory, is at the centre of French culture at the dawn of the 21st century. Michael Sheringham Further Reading Michel Beaujour, Poetics of the Literary Self-Portrait, translated by Yara Milos, New York: New York University Press, 1991 Evans, Martha Noel, Masks of Tradition: Women and the Politics of Writing in 20th-Century France, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1987 Lecarme, Jacques and E. Lecarme-Tabone, L’Autobiographie, Paris: Armand Colin, 1997 Hewitt, Leah D., Autobiographical Tightropes: Simone de Beauvoir, Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig and Maryse Condé, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990 Lejeune, Philippe, L’Autobiographie en France, Paris: Armand Colin, 1971; revised edition, 1998 Lejeune, Philippe, Le Pacte autobiographique, Paris: Seuil, 1975 Lejeune, Philippe, Je est un autre: l’autobiographie de la littérature aux medias, Paris: Seuil, 1980 Lejeune, Philippe, Moi aussi, Paris: Seuil, 1986 Lejeune, Philippe, Les Brouillons de soi, Paris: Seuil, 1998 Lejeune, Philippe, On Autobiography, translated by Katherine Leary, edited by Paul John Eakin, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989 Sheringham, Michael, French Autobiography: Devices and Desires, Rousseau to Perec, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993 Sheringham, Michael, “Changing the Script: Women Writers and the Rise of Autobiography” in A History of Women’s Writing in France, edited by Sonya Stephens, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000

France: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters Diaries and letters can be situated at the extremes of types of fragmented self narratives. Perhaps the fascination with them comes from their ambiguous status, hovering between the private and the public. They intrigue us as we wonder whether the writer considered that they might someday be made public. And we ponder what concessions to la révérence publique (respect for the public, to use Montaigne’s autobiographic disclaimer) might have been made. If any one French writer of the 20th century deserves the title of the master of life writing, it is surely André Gide. Among his novels are examples of autobiographical fiction; he produced an autobiography, Si le Grain ne meurt (1920–21; If It Die …), which describes his youth and his homosexual awakening. Yet his obsession with recording his life is nowhere more evident than in his monumental diary. Spanning more than six decades, the diaries that Gide himself published – Journal 1889 à 1939 (1939), Journal 1939 à 1942 (1948), and Journal 1942 à 1949 (1950) – offer insights into his life, mind, works, and literary and cultural milieus and represent a deliberate blurring of the boundaries between private record and public accounting. Gide’s letters follow a different model – hardly any appeared during his lifetime. Yet, as shown by Claude Martin’s inventory (1997) of Gide’s letters, citing more than 25,000 letters with

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more than 2100 correspondents, he was a prolific letter writer. For example, his Correspondance 1909–1925 (1998) with Jacques Rivière, comprising some 600 letters, sheds light on the background and development of the Nouvelle Revue Française, the enterprise that dominated serious literary production for much of the 20th century. However, not all of Gide’s letters survive. In 1918 his wife Madeleine burned his letters in an act of rebellion: three decades of what Gide categorized as “le meilleur de moi” (the best of myself) were lost. Diarists themselves often confront the ambiguities of personal narratives. Catherine Pozzi kept two diaries, her Journal de jeunesse: 1893–1906 [1995; Childhood Diary] and her Journal (1990), begun in 1913 after she had been diagnosed with tuberculosis and continued until her death in 1934. Illness lends itself to introspection and diary keeping. In that sense, Pozzi can be placed in a line from Proust, who chose autobiographical fiction, to Hervé Guibert’s Cytomégalovirus: Journal d’hospitalisation (1992; Cytomegalovirus: A Hospitalization Diary), the last volume relating his struggle with AIDS. Pozzi also reflects upon diary writing itself. She moves from the affirmation that her text will have “no readers” to sending two notebooks to her lover at the front in World War I. Later, Paul Valéry, with whom she had an eight-year affair, would not only read but comment on her works. As her diary developed, entries might bear the rubric “Pour Moi” (for me) or “Pour Eux” (for them), suggesting future readers. Pozzi may also have entertained the possibility that her letters would come to light, as indeed they have. Her 11-year correspondence with Rainer Maria-Rilke appeared in 1990, and the Jean Paulhan correspondence (1913–34) came out in 1999. The publication of Pozzi’s letters demonstrates not only the rising interest in women writers in the 1980s and 1990s, but also the marked upsurge in the publication of letters in these decades, especially those of major literary figures. Simone de Beauvoir provides an ideal site for examining a variety of approaches to life writing and for confronting the existential preoccupation with issues of identity, selfhood, and authenticity and the autobiographic. Her Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée (1958; Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter) figures among the “classic” autobiographies in the canon of French writers. Yet in the second volume of this autobiography, La Force de l’âge (1960; The Prime of Life), she abandons prose narrative for journal. Her account of her life during World War II becomes a diary of a life during a war. De Beauvoir felt that history outweighed the personal and that it was foolish for an individual to attempt a master narrative of such a period. JeanPaul Sartre, too, kept a diary during this period: Carnets de la drôle de guerre (1983; War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phony War: November 1939–March 1940). First published in 1983, three years after his death, it was re-edited in 1995 with the addition of a new “notebook”. The journal–narrative intersection appears at other moments in de Beauvoir’s writings. Not only did she mix diary with narrative in La Force des choses (1963; Force of Circumstance) but her edition of Sartre’s Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres [1983; Letters to Castor and Others] included excerpts from her diary commenting on the letters. De Beauvoir exploits this mixed technique when she recounts periods of emotional stress, rejecting the control of one’s life that a sustained narrative account suggests. After her death, her adopted daughter published the Journal de guerre: septembre 1939–janvier 1941

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[1990; War Diary: September 1939–January 1941] and also edited and published (1990) de Beauvoir’s Correspondance 1930–1939, 1940–1963 with Sartre, which did much to show her depth as a philosopher. However, the release of her Lettres à Nelson Algren: une liaison transatlantique 1947–1964 (1997; A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren) revealed a side of de Beauvoir that she preferred to keep secret since it expanded understanding of her complex character. Pierre Drieu La Rochelle’s Journal 1939–1945 (1992) was also revealing. Drieu’s fascist sympathies during the war ostracized him from the milieu of the French intellectual left, but he underwent a critical rehabilitation after his suicide in 1945. The journal exposed a troubled man filled with hatred of his friends as well as himself, whose anti-feminism was surpassed only by his anti-Semitism. How would this affect public evaluation of his work? Yet it is clear from the final pages of the journal that he envisaged its publication. Thus, the case of Drieu La Rochelle points to the diarist who writes with an eye to a public exhibition of private communication, whether or not the views expressed might be offensive. The recent “Affair Camus” again placed diary writing in the spotlight. Since the appearance of his Journal romain 1985– 1986 [1987; Roman Diary], Renaud Camus has published a volume of his diary each year. Accused of exhibitionism and selfpromotion, the controversial gay writer caused a scandal that shook the French publishing world. Within days of its release, Campagne de France [2000; French Countryside] was pulled by its publisher for its alleged anti-Semitism. Intellectuals on both the left and right, in France and the United States, entered into the fray, resulting in a decision to re-release the book in a selfcensored version, the offending passages excised. That Camus chose the diary as his preferred genre indicates the extent to which the personal narrative dominated literary expression in the latter decades of the 20th century. It also highlights the original dilemma posed by Montaigne: what are the limits of a private genre when it becomes a mode of public expression? Edith J. Benkov

Further Reading Didier, Beatrice, Le Journal intime, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1976 Hess, Remi, La Pratique du journal: l’enquête au quotidien, Paris: Anthropos, 1998 Hewitt, Leah Dianne, Autobiographical Tightropes: Simone de Beauvoir, Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig, and Maryse Condé, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990 Keefe, Terry and Edmund Smyth (editors), Autobiography and the Existential Self: Studies in Modern French Writing, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995 Langford, Rachael and Russell West (editors), Marginal Voices, Marginal Forms: Diaries in European Literature and History, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999 Lejeune, Philippe, Le Moi des demoiselles: enquête sur le journal de jeune fille, Paris: Seuil, 1993 Leleu, Michèle, Les Journaux intimes, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1952 Marty, Eric, L’Ecriture du jour: Le Journal d’André Gide, Paris: Seuil, 1985 Pachet, Pierre, Les Baromètres de l’âme: naissance du journal intime, Paris: Hatier, 1990 Rousset, Jean, Le Lecteur intime: de Balzac au journal, Paris: Corti, 1986

Sheringham, Michael, French Autobiography: Devices and Desires, Rousseau to Perec, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993 Smith, Robert, Derrida and Autobiography, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995

Frank, Anne

1929–1945

German / Dutch diarist On 12 June 1942, in the middle of World War II, the 13year-old Anne Frank received a diary as a birthday gift, shortly before the Frank family went into hiding in the annexe of her father Otto Frank’s business premises on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam. Anne’s diaries continued until 1 August 1944, when the annexe inhabitants were arrested and deported, first to Westerbork, later to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps. No other 20th-century text is so coloured by its readers’ hindsight: inevitably, Frank’s comments and thoughts are interpreted in terms of her final suffering and death. Critics such as Bruno Bettelheim have linked the diaries’ continued popularity to the absence of a frame of reference concerning the Holocaust for many readers and the implicit wish to suppress the desperate reality of Bergen-Belsen, focusing instead on Anne Frank as a symbol for the human spirit. On 29 March 1944, a radio speech by the Dutch minister in exile, Gerrit Bolkestein, invited the Dutch people to collect written documentation of their experiences of the German occupation. As a result, Anne started to edit and rewrite her earlier diaries (version A), intending to offer the edited version for publication (version B). Most specifically, she adapted her focus, highlighting the daily tensions in the annexe, for instance, and strengthening the self-analysis to show her mental growth: “I’ve been putting on an act for the last year and a half … now the battle is over. I’ve won! I’m independent … I’ve emerged from the struggle a stronger person” (5 May 1944). For the period December 1942–December 1943 only version B has survived. Otto Frank selected from both versions for Het achterhuis: dagboekbrieven 12 juni 1942–1 augustus 1944 [1947; The Annexe: Diary Letters 12 June 1942–1 August 1944] (version C), the earliest and most widely read published edition. Mirjam Pressler has recently expanded this “C” edition, to include Anne’s references to her emerging sexuality. In 1986 a critical edition was published, prepared by the Dutch State Institute on War Documentation, which presented versions A and B, some of Anne’s stories, and their report of the diaries’ authentication. Bereft of her friends, Anne Frank started her diary in the form of letters to imaginary friends, “Jetje, Emmy, Pop, Marianne”, and especially “Kitty”. Recently, these names were identified as intertextual references to characters in the popular Joop ter Heul series by Cissy van Marxveldt. Frank keeps “Kitty” entertained, for instance, by including documentary information on her daily life: short sketches and amusing, but at times harsh, portraits of other annexe inhabitants – her parents, her older sister Margot, Mr and Mrs van Pels, their son Peter, and the dentist Fritz Pfeffer. As the diaries progress, Anne’s relationship with her father becomes more distanced and we see emerging her incipient feminism and belief in herself as a writer. Under the pressures of close confinement, the fear of discovery, and the constant air raids, relations with the others are difficult and

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explosive, with the youngest, Anne, “the Annexe’s little bundle of nerves” (9 August 1943) feeling continuously criticized, at times depressed, and taking sedatives. Towards the end of 1943 and 1944, their security becomes increasingly fragile, with burglaries, illness among the helpers, and their own mistakes. This is alternated with moments of renewed hope and optimism, as they follow the Allies’ approach, and as her emerging love for Peter temporarily makes Anne’s life both more bearable and stressful. Throughout the diaries, a number of motifs return: the search for privacy in the overcrowded annexe, the weather outside, the memories of nature, with which she associates her happy, strong self. Fascinating is Anne’s appreciation of space. She describes “visits” to the rooms of the others and her daily schedule involves an itinerary through the cramped rooms of the annexe, which become “stretched” to a much larger psychological space. Most importantly, the diary is a rare published example of self-writing by an adolescent, moreover a perceptive and talented one. Typically, Frank registers her psychological development with fascination and insight, documenting the split between her popular, pre-annexe self and an older, more philosophical Anne: “a terrible flirt, coquettish and amusing … It’s a good thing that, at the height of my glory, I was suddenly plunged into reality” (7 March 1944). Frank’s alienation from her parents and sister is made more poignant by her inability to remove herself from them. In a situation where speech quickly turns into quarrels, where almost everything is overheard, writing strengthens the self, allowing Frank the concentration and privacy she needs. But she also ponders the more pressing issues of identity: as a German girl in exile, as a Dutch girl, as a Jewish girl. Through the diaries, moreover, she discovers a future as a writer or journalist: “I know I can write … I don’t want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death!” (5 April 1944). Ultimately, the most shocking aspect about these diaries is the contrast between Frank’s strong individual voice and the manner of her death in a camp of mass execution. Like the testimonies of Etty Hillesum and many others, Anne Frank’s text brings us into poignant contact with our own emotions concerning the outrage of the Holocaust. Sabine Vanacker Biography Born Annelies Marie Frank in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, 12 June 1929. Her father was a Jewish businessman. Escaped with her family from Nazi Germany to the Netherlands, 1933. Went to live in Amsterdam, where her father established a food business. Attended the public Montessori School, Amsterdam. Found that she had a talent for writing and decided to become a journalist. Forbidden to attend government schools after the Nazi occupation of Holland in 1940; enrolled in a Jewish school, 1941. Went into hiding with her family when Jews began to be deported from the Netherlands, 9 July 1942. Joined soon afterwards by four other Jews. Stayed in hiding, in a secret apartment in the warehouse of the family business, supplied with food and necessities by non-Jewish friends, 1942–44. Wrote diary during this time. (The manuscript was discovered later by friends and given to her father, Otto Frank, after the war.) Hiding-place discovered by the Gestapo, 4 August 1944. Arrested with her family and transferred to Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland, where her mother died, 1945. (Father survived Auschwitz and died in 1980.) Taken with her sister Margot to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they contracted typhus. Died in Bergen-Belsen, March 1945.

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Selected Writings Het achterhuis: dagboekbrieven 12 juni 1942–1 augustus 1944 (versions A and B), 1947; as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, translated by B.M. Mooyaart-Doubleday, 1952; expanded as Het achterhuis: dagboekbrieven 14 juni 1942–1 augustus 1944, edited by Otto Frank and Mirjam Pressler, 1991, and translated by Susan Massotty as The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition (version C), 1997; other editions: Anne Frank’s Tales from the Secret Annex, translated by Ralph Manheim and Michel Mok, 1983 (selection excluded from original edition); De dagboeken van Anne Frank, edited by Harry Paape, Gerrold van der Stroom, and David Barnouw (1986), and translated by Arnold J. Pomerans and B.M. Mooyaart-Doubleday as The Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition, 1989 (versions A and B with other material)

Further Reading Brenner, Rachel Feldhay, Writing as Resistance: Four Women Confronting the Holocaust: Edith Stone, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, Etty Hillesum, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997 Costa, Denise de, Anne Frank and Etty Hillesum: Inscribing Spirituality and Sexuality, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998 Diski, Jenny, “The Girl in the Attic” in her Don’t, London: Granta, 1999 Enzer, Hyman Aaron and Sandra Solotaroff-Enzer, Anne Frank: Reflections on Her Life and Legacy, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000 Gies, Miep with Alison Leslie Gold, Anne Frank Remembered, New York: Simon and Schuster, and London: Guild, 1987 Gold, Alison Leslie, Memories of Anne Frank: Reflections of a Childhood Friend, New York: Scholastic Press, 1997; as Hannah Goslar Remembers: A Childhood Friend of Anne Frank, London: Bloomsbury, 1997 Haviland, Jeanette and Deirdre Kramer, “Affect-Cognition Relationships in Adolescent Diaries: The Case of Anne Frank”, Human Development, 34 (1991): 143–59 Kopf, Hedda R., Understanding Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl: A Student Casebook, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1997 Kushner, Tony, “‘I want to go on living after my death’: The Memory of Anne Frank” in War and Memory in the Twentieth Century, edited by Martin Evans and Ken Lunn, Oxford and New York: Berg, 1997 Lejeune, Philippe, “Anne Frank: pages retrouvées”, La Faute à Rousseau, 19 (October 1998): 61–64 Lindwer, Willy, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank, translated by Alison Meerschaert, New York: Pantheon, 1991 Melnick, Ralph, The Stolen Legacy of Anne Frank: Meyer Levin, Lillian Hellman, and the Staging of the Diary, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1997 Müller, Melissa, Anne Frank: The Biography, translated by Rita Kimber and Robert Kimber, New York: Holt, 1998 Rittner, Carol (editor), Anne Frank in the World: Essays and Reflections, Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1998 Rosenfeld, Alvin, “Popularization and Memory: The Case of Anne Frank” in Lessons and Legacies: The Meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World, edited by Peter Hayes, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991 Van der Rol, Ruud and Rian Verhoeven, Anne Frank beyond the Diary: A Photographic Remembrance, New York: Viking Press, 1993 Van Maarsen, Jacqueline, My Friend Anne Frank, translated by Debra F. Onkenhout, New York: Vantage Press, 1989

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Franklin, Benjamin

1706–1790

American prose writer, printer, inventor, statesman, and autobiographer Although Benjamin Franklin never used the term “autobiography” in referring to the posthumously published narrative of his life (he generally preferred “memoirs”), it has long been considered the prototypical American autobiography for its account of the wholly self-made American’s “way to wealth” and world renown. Franklin’s Autobiography is most often approached by analysing the Franklinian persona forged therein as a “representative personality” – representative of the American Enlightenment, representative of the rise of print culture in 18th-century America, representative of the fledging American republic. Written in three discrete segments from 1771 to 1790, Franklin’s Autobiography is coloured by three very different periods in his life and in the American political milieu. The first section was composed in England in 1771, while Franklin was there serving as an envoy for the American colonies. Taking the form of a letter to his son, Part I chronicles the story of the youthful Franklin as prodigal son. After establishing the Franklin family’s paternal ancestry, Franklin details his flight from his apprenticeship in his brother James’s printshop (against his brother’s and father’s desires), details his arrival in Philadelphia, and traces his peregrinations in setting himself up as Philadelphia’s foremost printer. Part I is intimate, anecdotal, and even rather jocular in tone, as one might expect of a father’s letter to his grown son. The critics Hugh Dawson and Christopher Looby have noted that its preoccupation with paternal-filial rifts and reconciliations (which recur throughout the Autobiography) comment analogically upon the comparable breaches within the British empire in the revolutionary period. The shortest, yet perhaps most memorable, segment of the Autobiography, Part II, was not resumed until 1784 in Passy, during Franklin’s stint as American ambassador to France, and very soon after the Peace of Paris. Consequently, it reflects a major shift in tone and audience. No longer addressing his estranged biological son (who had remained loyalist), Franklin begins Part II by broadening his audience to encompass a more figurative and cosmopolitan set of “sons”. It accordingly adopts a more publicly oriented, didactic tone, culminating in the most famous and controversial portion of the Autobiography: Franklin’s “bold and arduous Project of arriving at Moral perfection”. Laying out his 13 secular “virtues”, Franklin details his methodical attempts successively to master each virtue and hence reach a plane of “moral perfection”. This secularization of virtue – one that displaces religious attributes (such as piety and prayer) as the means to heavenly salvation with more worldly virtues (such as industry, frugality, and temperance) as the means to an earthly salvation – is the point around which Franklin as representative personality has been alternately deified or demonized. On the one hand, he is lauded for embodying the spirit of American progress and self-improvement; on the other, critics such as Max Weber castigate him as the “spirit of capitalism” incarnate or, in the words of D.H. Lawrence, as the “first dummy American” – an automaton who saps all “soul and culture” out of the American consciousness in pursuit of material gain. Regardless, most critics agree that Franklin’s “project of arriving at moral perfection” effectively transforms a Puritan tradition of living

and life writing – one centred on abnegating self and glorifying God – into an Enlightenment tradition – one celebrating rationalism and the accomplishments of the individual. Franklin wrote Part III in Philadelphia between the summer of 1788 (after having just retired from his participation in the Constitutional Convention) and his death in April 1790. This final segment is generally characterized as the life of Franklin as a public figure. It maintains the prescriptive tone of a conduct book assumed in Part II, yet it further eradicates any intimacy in tone, and instead systemically enumerates Franklin’s civic accomplishments, especially in Philadelphia. Here, Franklin first identifies himself as the author of the many anonymous papers he had printed throughout his life; he thereby lays claim to his position as founder of the civic institutions those printed works engendered. Part III is thus the public site at which Franklin consolidates and publishes his good works to make himself and his life the ultimate work of print and virtue in the newly established American republic of letters. Michael Warner has argued that, in fusing a life lived in and through print with the virtuous, exemplary life, Franklin’s Autobiography irreversibly altered both the power of print and the ensuing tradition of life writing in America. It effectively endowed the print apparatus with the aura of truth and virtue; it therefore suggested that a life’s appearance in print would simultaneously sanction and effect its significance in the eyes of posterity. According to the logic of Franklin’s Autobiography, to live worthily is to appear in print; to appear in print is to have lived worthily. Margaret Parmenter Biography Born in Boston, colony of Massachusetts, North America, 17 January 1706. Educated at Boston Grammar School, 1714, and George Brownell’s School, Boston. Worked in his father’s tallow chandler business from the age of ten. Apprenticed to his half-brother James in his printer’s business from 1718; contributed the “Silence Dogood” articles to James’s newspaper, the New England Courant, 1721–23. Quarelled with James and went to work for printers in Philadelphia, 1723–24, and London, England, 1724–26. Returned to Philadelphia, 1726; worked as a clerk for Denham merchant, 1726–27. Established his own printing business, publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette from 1729, Philadelphische Zeitung from 1732, and the famous Poor Richard’s Almanack, published under the pseudonym of Richard Saunders, 1732–58. Married Deborah Read, 1730 (died 1774): one son and one daughter. Also had a son and daughter with another woman. Became clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly, 1736 (served in the Assembly until 1764). Served as postmaster for Philadelphia, 1737–53. Invented the Franklin Stove, 1739. Publisher and editor, General Magazine and Historical Chronicle, 1741. Began research into electricity, 1746. The commercial success of the Franklin Stove enabled him to retire from the printing business, 1748, and to study the natural sciences. Performed the famous kite, key, and lightning experiment, 1752. Became joint deputy postmaster of the colonies, 1753 (dismissed by the British in 1774). Elected a fellow of the Royal Society (London), 1756. Represented Pennsylvania at the Albany Congress (to unite colonies in French and Indian war), 1754, and in London, 1757–62, 1764–75; also became colonial agent for Georgia, 1768, New Jersey, 1769, and Massachusetts, 1770. Elected a member of the French Académie Royale des Sciences, 1772. Delegate to the Second Continental Congress, 1775–76. Member of the drafting committee and signatory of the Declaration of Independence, 1776. Sent to France as commissioner to negotiate with the French for their assistance against the British, 1776; lived in Passy, near Paris, where he established a press, 1776–85. Member of commission to negotiate peace with Britain, 1781 (treaty of Paris signed 1783). Remained US minister in Paris until 1785, when he returned to Philadelphia.

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Pennsylvania delegate to Philadelphia convention to frame the constitution of the US, 1787–88. Died in Philadelphia, 17 April 1790.

Selected Writings Autobiography, 1791; edited by John Bigelow, 1868, and Leonard W. Labaree et al., 1964; as The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: A Genetic Text, edited by J.A. Leo Lemay and P.M. Zall, 1979; as Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds, Criticism, edited by J.A. Leo Lemay and P.M. Zall, 1986; as The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Louis P. Masur, 1993; also in The Autobiography and Other Writings, edited by Peter Shaw, 1982, Kenneth Silverman, 1986, and Ormond Seavey, 1993 The Private Correspondence, edited by William Temple Franklin, 2 vols, 1817 A Collection of the Familiar Letters and Miscellaneous Papers, edited by Jared Sparks, 1833 The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, 10 vols, 1887–88 (includes Franklin’s correspondence) Letters to Madame Helvetius and Madame La Frete, edited by Luther S. Livingston, 1924 My Dear Girl: The Correspondence of Franklin with Polly Stevenson, Georgiana and Catherine Shipley, edited by James Madison Stifler, 1927 Autobiographical Writings, edited by Carl Van Doren, 1945 Letters and Papers of Franklin and Richard Jackson 1753–1785, edited by Carl Van Doren, 1947 Memoirs: Parallel Text Edition, edited by Max Farrand, 1949 Benjamin Franklin and Catharine Ray Greene: Their Correspondence 1775–1790, edited by William Greene Roelker, 1949 Letters of Franklin and Jane Mecom, edited by Carl Van Doren, 1950 Mr Franklin: A Selection from His Personal Letters, edited by Leonard W. Labaree and Whitfield J. Bell Jr, 1956 The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Leonard W. Labaree, 33 vols to date, 1959– The Autobiography and Other Writings, edited by Peter Shaw, 1982, Kenneth Silverman, 1986, and Ormond Seavey, 1993

Further Reading Breitwieser, Mitchell, Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin: The Price of Representative Personality, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984 Dawson, Hugh, “Fathers and Sons: Franklin’s ‘Memoirs’ as Myth and Metaphor”, Early American Literature, 14 (1979/1980): 269–92 Farrand, Max, “Benjamin Franklin’s Memoirs”, Huntington Library Bulletin, 10 (1936): 49–78 Ferguson, Robert, The American Enlightenment, 1750–1820, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997 Lawrence, D.H., Studies in Classic American Literature, New York: Seltzer, 1923; London: Secker, 1924 Lemay, J.A. Leo (editor), The Oldest Revolutionary: Essays on Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976 Looby, Christopher, “‘The Affairs of the Revolution Occasion’d the Interruption’: Self, Language, and Nation in Franklin’s Autobiography” in Voicing America: Language, Literary Form, and the Origins of the United States, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 Sanford, Charles, “An American Pilgrim’s Progress”, American Quarterly, 6 (Winter 1954): 297–310 Sayre, Robert F., The Examined Self: Benjamin Franklin, Henry Adams, Henry James, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1964 Seavey, Ormond, Becoming Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography and the Life, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988 Shea, Daniel B., Spiritual Autobiography in Early America, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968 Van Doren, Carl, Benjamin Franklin, New York: Viking Press, 1938; London: Putnam, 1939 Warner, Michael, “Franklin: The Representational Politics of the Man of Letters” in The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the

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Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990 Zall, P.M., “The Manuscript and Early Texts of Franklin’s Autobiography”, Huntington Library Quarterly, 39 (1975–76): 375–84

Freud, Sigmund

1856–1939

Austrian neurologist, psychoanalyst, and auto/biographer Sigmund Freud’s importance for the enterprise of life writing cannot be exaggerated. Ninety years ago he wrote the first psychobiography, Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci (1910; Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood) – and “biography has not been the same since” (Elms). Both in his immediate wake and still today – to the chagrin or the delight of many, depending on their allegiances – the biography of a person is largely the psychoanalytical biography of a person. The subject’s Oedipal crisis, her psychosexual development, early “object” relations, typical ego defences, history of repressions – all such questions constitute almost obligatory subjects for those taking up the study of any individual life. While it is possible from within personology to make a case for the dominance of newer theoretical models of life writing, especially life-story or script theories of personality (McAdams, Tomkins), psychoanalysis remains for many the theory of choice. The reasons are not hard to discern. It has unmatched scope; it assumes that everything – from the mundane to the miraculous – is interpretable; and in the essentials of dream theory (condensation, displacement, manifest and latent content, overdetermination) it provides a method for going beneath “text” to “subtext”, to the off-stage voices of the unconscious, a category of mental life now happily embraced by cognitive psychologists. Furthermore, in a way that would inspire those to come, Freud never dismissed the importance of the single case. As he once wrote: A single case does not give us all the information that we should like to have. Or, to put it more correctly, it might teach us everything, if we were only in a position to make everything out, and if we were not compelled by the inexperience of our own perception to content ourselves with a little (Three Case Histories). Finally, as Runyan has speculated, “perhaps psychoanalytic theory has a special relevance to the kinds of explanatory or interpretive problems encountered in psychobiography in that it seems effective in explaining just those odd or unusual patterns of behavior that the psychobiographer feels are most in need of explanation”, things like neurotic repetitions, puzzling inconsistencies, or traumatic life encounters. Why did Freud turn to biography? For a number of reasons, some personal, some academic. He disliked pathography and hagiography both, and wrote his Leonardo book as a corrective to such misguided endeavours. It would not do, said Freud, either to demean one’s subject or to idealize him or her. Freud also regarded lives as testing grounds for theoretical ideas. With Leonardo, for instance, he sought to fine-tune his thinking about

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topics like sublimation and homosexuality. In fact, it is worth noting here that Freud dismissed experimental confirmation of his concepts, calling it unnecessary. All the support he needed came from case histories – like those of Dora, the “Wolf Man”, and “Little Hans” – clinical evidence, his own life, and the analysis of historical figures. A few of the personal sources for Freud’s interest in biography are adduced by Alan Elms in his outstanding chapter on Freud’s Leonardo. It seems that, in writing of Leonardo, about whom precious little is known, Freud was also writing of himself. Though not acted on, Freud’s sexual feelings for both Wilhelm Fliess, an early mentor, and Carl Jung are well known. Consequently Leonardo is portrayed by Freud as “passively homosexual”. For a complex of reasons Freud’s sexual life with his wife came to an early end, one possible result (in Freudian terms) being a re-channelling of erotism into work. Consequently Leonardo is depicted as a “perfect and rare” type of individual who from earliest infancy sublimated all desire, funnelling it into art and scientific activity. A large body of research likewise finds evidence of identification in Freud’s work on Moses, a book that “plagued him like a ghost not laid” (see Alexander). Moses and Freud are both discoverers, but also “propagators and guardians of the law, recipients of important revelations” (Alexander). Like Moses, Freud too can be seen as an authoritative, competent patriarch protecting something whose value he appreciated and fostered. As Alexander notes, Freud speculates that Moses was killed because of the hardships his ideas imposed on people who then disowned them, while a small set of followers remained faithful, at least in memory. Freud wrote this in 1934, five years before his death, so it comes as little surprise that fears about the fate of psychoanalysis found their way into his examination of another “Great Man”. Additional psychobiographical writings by Freud include “The Moses of Michelangelo”, “Dostoevsky and Parricide”, and “Psychoanalytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dr. Schreber)”. Of course, most of Freud’s life writing did not concern itself with historical figures. His subjects were closer at hand, and far better known to him: they were his patients. What one notices first about these “case histories”, apart from their occasionally excessive reductionism or their evident tendentiousness, is Freud’s style of rhetoric. He is anything but dogmatic. He anticipates incredulity, marches ahead with self-proclaimed hesitation, and pleads for the reader’s patience. He often seems almost apologetic (see, for example, the “Wolf Man” case, in which Freud repeatedly expects the reader’s belief to “abandon” him). Despite all this, the reader’s trust is paradoxically increased, and Freud’s conclusions meet with less scepticism than predicted. Clearly Freud knew what he was up to. His choice of style, hardly accidental, increased his arguments’ persuasiveness. Introducing a set of the most famous case studies, Philip Rieff points to what he considers Freud’s supreme gift: offering an astonishingly clear yet also sufficiently complex analysis of a human life. Rieff’s is an important observation. It speaks to the artistic requirements for an effective biographical narrative. Freud succeeds where others fail precisely in combining historical, scientific, and literary approaches to human experience. Though he never tired of asserting the scientific validity of psychoanalysis, in his life writing Freud behaved like an artist.

He juggled clarity and complexity, detail and generality, mystery and mundanity with a skill rivalling the novelist’s. In biography Freud’s shadow clearly looms. The case is the same for autobiography. The very doing of psychoanalysis requires it. Freud’s innovative practice revolved around the reminiscences of his clients. Since then, in scenarios far beyond the analyst’s consulting room, psychoanalysis has continued to offer a ready-made superstructure, an implicit theory of self for those telling their lives. At the very least, a kind of “tabloid Freud” snakes its way into numberless mass-market and massmedia outpourings of identity. Confession seems to be that particular genre’s sine qua non, as if a life has not been adequately revealed unless some sordid memory gets uncovered or sexual practice disclosed. Less reductively, life – to some autobiographers – is the surreal Freudian dream we interpret or even “dream” through the act of writing. We do not necessarily understand it, and we do not even feel as though we authored it on occasion, but it must be made sense of if we seek selfliberation. The Freudian metaphor runs deep, and evading its determining influence can require active effort. For if we feel like a “mystery unto ourselves”, like a conflicted, warring “cast of characters”, like a “jumbled grouping” of “infantile motives” straining towards adulthood, we do so because Freud pictured personality in just those terms; he invented the narrative forms so seemingly irresistible to life writers. In fact, the fractured, split-up self of postmodernism arguably finds its central source in psychoanalysis, a theory assuming self-division along with self-inscrutability. Freud himself was an assiduous autobiographer. He wrote his life story for a series entitled “Contemporary Medicine in Self-Portrayals”, though that work’s aim was to reveal less his life than the tale of the birth of psychoanalysis. But Freud wrote letters, too, and through them left a clear impression of self. Especially revealing are those to Wilhelm Fliess and Jung. Both men Freud adored with an investment of admitted sexual energy, and both relationships fell into strained disrepair. As for autobiography and the institution of psychoanalysis, dogma asserts that analysts must be analysed before analysing. As Marcus notes, there is even a sense in which psychoanalysis itself is founded on autobiography. Freud “turned autobiography into science”. He was his own case study. In his life – his dreams, memories, and sexual history – he located psychological truths that seemed representative of human mental life in general. To Freud, the story of his life and the history of psychoanalysis were “intimately interwoven” (“An Autobiographical Study”). He writes: “Psychoanalysis came to be the whole content of my life … No personal experiences of mine are of any interest in comparison to my relations with that science” (ibid.). Moreover, “I have been more open and frank in some of my writings (The Interpretation of Dreams and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life) than people usually are who describe their lives for their contemporaries or for posterity” (ibid.). Is psychoanalysis Freud’s own life? Derrida asks: “How can an autobiographical writing, in the abyss of an unterminated selfanalysis, give to a world wide institution its birth?” (quoted by Marcus). Others wonder how a theory of the concealed nature of personality and the impossibility of autobiography could be derived from looking within. But then, all theory is arguably covert autobiography. Like those to follow, Freud first hoped to understand himself. Indeed, the truly unifying theory of person-

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ality ought to account not only for (1) the life of the theorist, and (2) the phenomena to which other theories address themselves, but for (3) other theories of personality as well. And as “each theory is the expression of the limits and biases of the theorist … other persons’ interest in and resonance to the theoretical ideas are equally strongly affected by subjective ideological factors” (Atwood and Tomkins). We invent theories to understand ourselves and we gravitate to theories that seem to tell our story. Freud’s push towards situating knowledge in terms of individual experience and fantasy perhaps represents the most general level at which his work continues to define autobiographical practice today. William Todd Schultz Biography Born in Freiberg, Moravia, Austro-Hungarian empire (now in the Czech Republic), 6 May 1856, into a Jewish family. His father was an impoverished wool merchant. Stayed in Leipzig with his family then settled with them in Leopoldstadt, the old Jewish section of Vienna, 1860. Attended Sperl Gymnasium, Vienna. Studied medicine at the University of Vienna, 1873–82 (MD 1881). Worked at the Brücke Institute, 1881–82. Entered the General Hospital in Vienna as a clinical assistant to the psychiatrist Theodor Meynert, 1882. Studied under neurologist J.M. Charcot at the Salpêtrière Clinic, Paris, 1885–86. Changed specialism from neurology to psychopathology. Appointed lecturer in neuropathology, 1885, and professor of neuropathology, 1902, University of Vienna. Began private practice in Vienna, 1886. Married Martha Bernays, 1886: three sons and three daughters (one the psychoanalyst Anna Freud). Wrote Studien über Hysterie (1895; Studies in Hysteria) with Josef Breuer. Subsequently developed his theory that neuroses were rooted in the suppressed sexual desires and experiences of childhood. Wrote his most significant work, Die Traumdeutung (1900; The Interpretation of Dreams). Founded, with Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and others, the Vienna Psycho-Analytic Society, 1902; the International Psycho-Analytic Congress, 1908; Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, 1908; Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, 1913; Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, and Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag. Bitter splits with Adler, 1911, and Jung, 1914. Visiting lecturer at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1909. Published Ego and Id (1923), elaborating his ideas on the unconscious mind. Diagnosed with cancer of the mouth, 1923. Awarded the Goethe prize, 1930. Huxley lecturer, University of London, 1931. Emigrated to England after the German Nazi regime annexed Austria, 1938; settled in London. Died in London, 23 September 1939.

Selected Writings Die Traumdeutung, 1900; as The Interpretation of Dreams, translated by A.A. Brill, 1913; translated by James Strachey, 1954 Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens (Über Vergessen, Versprechen, Vergreifen, Aberglaube und Irrtum), 1904; as Psychopathology of Everyday Life, translated by A.A. Brill, 1914 Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci, 1910; as Leonardo da Vinci: A Psychosexual Study of Infantile Reminiscence, translated by A.A. Brill, 1916; as Leonardo da Vinci: A Study in Psychosexuality, 1947; as Leonardo da Vinci and A Memory of His Childhood, 1957 “The Moses of Michelangelo” (1914), in vol. 13 of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, edited by James Strachey, 1953–74 Selbstdarstellungen, 1925; as “An Autobiographical Study” in The Problem of Lay-Analysis, 1927; as An Autobiographical Study, translated by James Strachey, 1935 “Dostoevsky and Parricide” (1928), in vol. 21 of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, edited by James Strachey, 1953–74 (with Albert Einstein) Why War? (correspondence), translated by Stuart Gilbert, 1933 Der Mann Moses und die monotheistiche Religion: drei Abhandlungen,

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1939; as Moses and Monotheism, translated by Katherine Jones, 1939; translated by James Strachey, 1964 Aus den Anfangen der Psychoanalyse: Briefe an Wilhelm Fliess, Abhandlungen und Notizien aus den Jahren 1887–1902, edited by Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, and Ernst Kris, 1950; as The Origins of Psycho-Analysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes, 1887–1902, translated by Eric Mosbacher and James Strachey, 1954 The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols, edited by James Strachey, 1953–74 Briefe 1873–1939, edited by Ernst L. Freud, 1960; as The Letters of Sigmund Freud, translated by Tania Stern and James Stern, 1960 Sigmund Freud / Oskar Pfister: Briefe 1909 bis 1939, edited by Ernst L. Freud and H. Meng, 1963; as Psychoanalysis and Faith: Dialogues with the Reverend Oskar Pfister, 1963 Three Case Histories: The “Wolf Man”, the “Rat Man” and the “Psychotic Dr Schreber”, edited by Philip Rieff, 1963 Sigmund Freud / Karl Abraham: Briefe 1907 bis 1926, edited by H.C. Abraham and Ernst L. Freud, 1965; as A Psychoanalytic Dialogue: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham, 1907–1926, 1965 Sigmund Freud / Lou Andreas-Salomé: Briefwechsel, edited by E. Pfeiffer, 1966; as Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé: Letters, translated by William Robson-Scott and Elaine Robson-Scott, 1972 (with William C. Bullitt) Thomas Woodrow Wilson, Twenty-Eighth President of the United States: A Psychological Study, 1967 Briefwechsel von Sigmund Freud und Arnold Zweig, 1927–1939, edited by Ernst L. Freud, 1968; as The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Arnold Zweig, edited by Ernst L. Freud, translated by Elaine Robson-Scott and William Robson-Scott, 1970 (with Carl Jung) Briefwechsel, edited by William McGuire and Wolfgang Sauerländer, 1974; as The Freud / Jung Letters: The Correspondence between Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung, translated by Ralph Manheim and R.F.C. Hull, 1974 Briefe an Wilhelm Fliess, 1887–1904, edited by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, 1986; earlier as The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1877–1904, edited and translated by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, 1985 Jugendbriefe an Eduard Silberstein, 1871–1881, edited by Walter Boehlich, 1989; as The Letters of Sigmund Freud to Eduard Silberstein, 1871–1881, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans, 1990 Freud on Women: A Reader, edited by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, 1990 (contains correspondence) (with Ludwig Binswanger) Briefwechsel, 1908–1938, edited by Gerhard Fichtner, 1992 The Diary of Sigmund Freud, 1929–1939: A Record of the Final Decade, edited and translated by Michael Molnar, 1992 The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones, 1908–1939, edited by R. Andrew Paskauskas, 1993 Sigmund Freud et Romain Rolland: correspondance 1923–1936, edited by Henri Vermorel and Madeleine Vermorel, translated by Pierre Cotet and René Lainé, 1993 The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, edited by Eva Brabant, Ernst Falzeder, and Patrizia Giampieri-Deutsch, translated by Peter T. Hoffer, 3 vols, 1993–2000 Psychological Writings and Letters, edited by Sander L. Gilman, 1995

Further Reading Alexander, Irving E., Personology: Method and Content in Personality Assessment and Psychobiography, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1990 Atwood, G. and S. Tomkins, “On the Subjectivity of Personality Theory,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 12 (1976): 166–77 Clark, Ronald W., Freud: The Man and the Cause, Norwalk, Connecticut: Easton Press, and London: Cape, 1980 Ellmann, Richard, “Freud and Literary Biography” in his a long the riverrun: Selected Essays, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988; New York: Knopf, 1989 Elms, Alan C., Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Alliance of Biography and Psychology, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994 Gay, Peter, Freud: A Life for Our Time, London: Dent, and New York: Norton, 1988

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Jones, Ernest, Sigmund Freud: Life and Work, 3 vols, London: Hogarth Press, and New York: Basic Books, 1953–57 Kaufmann, Walter, Freud Versus Adler and Jung, vol. 3 of his Discovering the Mind, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980 Kerr, John, A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, New York: Knopf, 1993; London: SinclairStevenson, 1994 McAdams, Dan P., The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self, New York: Morrow, 1993 Marcus, Laura, Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994 Runyan, William McKinley, Life Histories and Psychobiography: Explorations in Theory and Method, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982 Sulloway, F., Freud, Biologist of the Mind, New York: Basic Books, and London: Burnett Books, 1979 Tomkins, S., “Script Theory” in The Emergence of Personality, edited by J. Aronoff, A. Rabin, and R. Zucker, New York: Springer, 1987

Frisch, Max

1911–1991

Swiss playwright, novelist, and diarist The playwright and novelist Max Frisch came into his own at the end of World War II with the success of his play Nun singen sie wieder [published 1946; Now They Sing Again], which dramatizes the issues raised by the war and National Socialism. Together with Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Frisch made GermanSwiss literature internationally prominent during the first postwar decades. While his relationship with Switzerland was characterized by frequent conflicts, he remained in the eyes of the world the foremost representative of Swiss literature of his time. He was cosmopolitan and lived at times in Italy, Germany, and the United States, but he never gave up his ties to his native Zurich. Frisch was an indefatigable diarist. The connections between his life and his literary texts are so close that the line between fiction and autobiography is not always clear. This is most evident in a recent volume, Max Frisch in Amerika (1995), where essays and passages from diaries are mixed with passages from novels without noticeable differences in content and style. Frisch deserves special attention in life-writing studies as one of the principal literary diarists of the 20th century. Thoroughly discontented with his early novels and journalistic pieces, Frisch forswore literature and studied architecture, but his military duties in the Swiss army during the first months of World War II prompted him to keep a diary, which he published as Blätter aus dem Brotsack [1940; Leaves from My Knapsack]. In factual language, with precise observation of details, he recorded the daily activities of an artillery man, his experiences with comrades and superiors, and the mood of the soldiers at this critical time. There are few reflections on the war in general and no ruminations on the potential enemies, National Socialist Germany and fascist Italy. Frisch’s next published diary, in its revised title as Tagebuch 1946–1949 (1950; Sketchbook 1946–1949), found him in a very different position. He had his own architectural firm and was working on the construction of a large public swimming centre. Nun singen sie wieder had made him an internationally recognized figure in the postwar literary scene. His Tagebuch adheres to the same sober, seemingly factual style, stressing observation and avoiding generalities. He records the progress

of the work on the swimming pool; his postwar trips to other countries, especially Germany, for performances of his plays; encounters with important personalities, above all writers; and the many ideas for new works that emerged from his experiences in this chaotic postwar world. After the years of enforced isolation, the “neutral” writer Frisch could now visit East and West and was welcomed as a rare, non-hostile person. He was especially impressed by his experience of the devastated Germany and his encounters with its population, largely unable to come to grips with the enormity of the Shoah and its present catastrophic situation. In 1948 Frisch witnessed the communist takeover in Prague. The Tagebuch shows that even seemingly abstract parables, such as his plays Andorra (1961) and Biedermann und die Brandstifter (1958; The Firebugs), emerged from specific personal and political situations. Among his postwar acquaintances, it was the playwright and director Bertolt Brecht who had the most decisive impact on Frisch’s life and work. The major works sketched in the Tagebuch were the plays Andorra, Biedermann und die Brandstifter, Graf Öderland (1951; Count Oderland), and Als der Krieg zu Ende war (1948; When the War Was Over). There are other ideas that never coalesced into a literary text, notably the frequently mentioned figure of a marioneteer, aptly called Marion, and the ideas revolving around puppets and marionettes. There are, however, nuclei for Frisch’s best-known novel Stiller (1954; I’m Not Stiller). The first, and much larger, part of the novel consists of a diary written by Stiller while he is incarcerated in a Zurich prison for refusing to accept his former identity as Stiller. In the seemingly detached style of precise observation and distance from his own (former and present) self, Stiller records encounters with his former wife, his brother, his defence attorney, and his prosecutor (they almost exchange roles), and incorporates stories from Mexico and the United States almost identical with what Frisch had observed when visiting these countries in 1951–52. While the persona of Stiller allows the author to show Zurich, his home town, and Switzerland in general in a sarcastic light, and to enter into a sophisticated game with his readers, the closeness of author and narrator is unmistakable, and the attitude and style of the diarist prevail. The two subsequent novels Homo Faber (1957) and Mein Name sei Gantenbein (1964; A Wilderness of Mirrors) demonstrate the easy transitions between first-person narrative and the diary style. Frisch’s published diaries are carefully structured literary texts, based on the contrast of the public and private persona, experiences and nuclei for future works, and involving the reader in the processes of observation, reflection, and selfcriticism. The last diary, Tagebuch 1966–1971 (1972; Sketchbook 1966–1971), while seemingly focusing on the public life of Frisch, the by now famous writer, is in reality a more private and intimate document than the Tagebuch 1946–1949, which had little or nothing to say about Frisch’s family relations and his inner turmoil. The years 1966–71 were a period of political involvement, including Frisch’s harsh criticism of Switzerland in Dienstbüchlein (published 1974) and Wilhelm Tell für die Schule (1971). The Tagebuch records his public appearances and registration of momentous political events, such as the Vietnam War and student unrest. However, it seems to be dominated by the unfolding events in a “suicide club” of Frisch’s invention, and the problem of aging. One provoking feature is

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the recurring “Fragebogen” or “Verhöre”, self-scrutinies as well as invitations to readers to be self-critical. This diarist assesses his life and his life’s work. While most of the specific ideas for future works did not materialize, the Tagebuch 1966–1971 became the start for a new round of autobiographical novels in a diary style. The first and best-known of them is Montauk (1975), which records a weekend on Long Island of the famous writer Max and the much younger woman Lynn, generating the memories of previous relations with women and thoughts about the prospects of old age. The alienating effects of translating oneself into the English language, and a deliberate alternating between the firstand the third-person narration, indicate the novelistic element, yet the text preserves a careful balance between fiction and reality. The fictionalization is carried further in the subsequent tale Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän (1979; Man in the Holocene), the monologue of an isolated old man, which takes place in a house in the Swiss Ticino exactly like Frisch’s own. Max Frisch’s peculiar diary style is characterized by a close adherence to first-hand observation, as opposed to empty generalizations, as well as to the clichés and ready-made images of second-hand knowledge through the media and the slogans of political ideologies and advertising. He combats prefabricated views of the world as well as prefabricated identities of ourselves and others which lead to prejudices and hatred. He refrains from definitive conclusions, and he liked to rework the endings of his plays so as to keep them “open”. Keeping ourselves open requires sincerity and a self-critical attitude, but above all the careful recording of inner and outer events. In this sense, Frisch’s entire corpus of writing, published and unpublished, public and private, may be viewed as part of a lifelong diary. Wulf Koepke Biography Born in Zurich, Switzerland, 15 May 1911. His father was an architect. Educated at the Kantonale Realgymnasium, Zurich, 1924–30. Studied German literature and journalism at the University of Zurich, 1930–33. Abandoned studies after his father’s death in 1933 and became a freelance journalist, working especially for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Travelled through southeastern Europe, 1933. Published his first novel, Jürg Reinhart, 1934. Studied architecture at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Zurich, 1936–41 (diploma). Served periodically in the Swiss army, 1939–45, and began his diary. Married Gertrud Anna Constance von Meyenburg, 1942 (divorced 1959): two daughters and one son. Practised as an architect in Zurich, 1942–55. Visited Germany, France, and Italy, 1946; Poland and Czechoslovakia, 1948; Spain, 1950. Spent a year in the United States and Mexico, 1951–52. Attracted international critical attention with the novel Stiller (1954; I’m Not Stiller). Separated from his wife, sold his architecture firm, and became a full-time writer, 1955. Became internationally famous with the black comedy Biedermann und die Brandstifter (1958; The Firebugs). First foreigner to win the Büchner prize, 1958. Based in Rome, 1960–65. His play Andorra, a tragedy about anti-Semitism, first performed, 1961. Married Marianne Oellers, 1968 (divorced 1979). Awarded the Schiller prize (BadenWürttemberg), 1965; Schiller prize (Switzerland), 1974; Peace Prize (German book trade), 1976. Died in Zurich, 4 April 1991.

Selected Writings Blätter aus dem Brotsack (diary), 1940 Tagebuch mit Marion, 2 vols, 1947–50; revised as Tagebuch 1946–1949, 1950; as Sketchbook 1946–1949, translated by Geoffrey Skelton, 1977 Stiller (autobiographical fiction), 1954; as I’m Not Stiller, translated by Michael Bullock, 1958

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Tagebuch 1966–1971, 1972; as Sketchbook 1966–1971, translated by Geoffrey Skelton, 1974 Montauk (autobiographical fiction), 1975; as Montauk, translated by Geoffrey Skelton, 1976 Max Frisch Stich-Worte (anthology), edited by Uwe Johnson, 1975 Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän (autobiographical fiction), 1979; as Man in the Holocene, translated by Geoffrey Skelton, 1980 Max Frisch in Amerika, edited by Volker Hage, 1995 Jetzt ist Sehenszeit: Briefe, Notate, Dokumente 1943–1963, edited by Julian Schütt, 1998 (with Friedrich Dürrenmatt) Briefwechsel, edited by Peter Rüedi, 1998 Der Briefwechsel: Max Frisch, Uwe Johnson, 1964–1983, edited by Eberhard Fahlke, 1999 Der Briefwechsel mit Carl Jacob Burckhardt und Max Frisch: mit einer Dokumentation, edited by Claudia Mertz-Rychner et al., 2000

Further Reading: Begegnungen: Eine Festschrift für Max Frisch zum 70. Geburtstag, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981 de Vin, Daniel, Max Frischs Tagebücher, Cologne and Vienna: Böhlau, 1977 Hage, Volker, Max Frisch mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1983 Kieser, Rolf, Max Frisch: Das literarische Tagebuch, Frauenfeld / Stuttgart: Huber, 1975 Koepke, Wulf, Understanding Max Frisch, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991 Pender, Malcolm, Max Frisch: His Work and Its Swiss Background, Stuttgart: Hans-Dieter Heinz, 1979 Probst, Gerhard F. and Jay F. Bodine (editors), Perspectives on Max Frisch, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1982 Steinmetz, Horst, Max Frisch: Tagebuch, Drama, Roman, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973 Stephan, Alexander, Max Frisch, Munich: C.H. Beck, 1983

Froude, J.A.

1818–1894

English biographer, historian, and prose writer A controversial but often admired historian and man of letters, James Anthony Froude became notorious in the 1880s as the literary executor and biographer of Thomas Carlyle. If one had to name the key qualities that tended to occasion both the controversy and the notoriety throughout Froude’s writing life, one might well choose the way he dramatically enhanced historical, biographical, and autobiographical material to heighten contrasts, sharpen conflicts, and foreground larger-than-life characters to produce a gripping narrative, occasionally ignoring or misstating facts and mistranslating or misreading his source. Froude has few contemporaries whose life writing is more accessible to modern readers and provides more insight into the evolving perspectives and mores of his day. Introduced to the Carlyles in 1849, Froude became extremely close to the aging writer in the following two decades, especially after his wife’s death in 1866. In June 1871, Carlyle gave Froude an annotated collection of Jane Welsh Carlyle’s letters as well as Carlyle’s own essay of reminiscence about her. According to Froude, although Carlyle did not initially want the reminiscence published, eventually he left the decision to Froude and in 1873 gave Froude his remaining private papers. Aware that biographies would be written of him after his death despite his wishes to the contrary, Carlyle chose to give Froude the materials that would allow him to prepare one, made him an executor of his will, and bequeathed to Froude his wife’s letters as well as his

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memoir of her. The rest of Carlyle’s papers were left to his niece Mary Aitken. Unfortunately, Carlyle did not set down in writing exactly how Froude was to carry out his duties: how long, for example, he was to keep the papers, when he was to publish them, how they should be edited, what precisely should be omitted, and who should receive whatever proceeds publication might bring. When Froude published Carlyle’s Reminiscences (of Carlyle’s father James Carlyle, his wife, his friends Edward Irving and Francis Jeffrey, and his acquaintances Robert Southey and William Wordsworth) in March 1881, a month after Carlyle’s death, he touched off a terrible scandal. Contemporary readers who had regarded Carlyle as a kindly old sage were appalled by his contemptuous comments and often splenetic tone. His family were mortified, and Mary Aitken charged Froude with publishing the reminiscence “Jane Welsh Carlyle” against Carlyle’s own express command. Froude continued in 1882 with the publication of Thomas Carlyle: A History of the First Forty Years of His Life 1795– 1835. In attempting to write a biography of his mentor, Froude maintained that he chose to follow Carlyle’s own precepts, believing that he must delineate the faults that individualized his subject as distinctly as his virtues or else, in Carlyle’s words, produce only “a white, stainless, impersonal ghost hero” (Froude, First Forty Years). Froude also asserted that the greater part of the first two volumes of this biography were in fact written while Carlyle was still alive, presumably thus with Carlyle’s consent or approval. Rapidly following these volumes with the publication of Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle (1883) and the final two volumes of Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London (1884), Froude’s editions and biography shaped a dramatic and cohesive view of Carlyle, his works, and his domestic life that prevailed well into the 20th century and that still provokes fascination and controversy today. Froude’s Carlyle is the hero as man of letters, with all the defects of his strengths. Astonishingly brilliant, painfully honest, and admirably single-minded in his determination to articulate his views no matter what the cost, Froude’s Carlyle is often hypersensitive to his own state, piercingly insightful about society and the universe, and insensitive and blind to the woman who sacrifices her own health and genius to protect him and smooth his path. The final two volumes of Froude’s biography as well as the even more explicit My Relations with Carlyle (1903) gave evidence that Carlyle had possibly also abused his wife (Froude saw bruises on her arms) and testimony that Carlyle should not have married at all since he may well have been impotent and, thus, incapable of giving his wife children. While paying tribute to Carlyle’s genius as writer, historian, and social critic, Froude’s biography as well as his editions of Carlyle’s selected personal papers delineate an extended domestic tragedy, undercut Carlyle’s reputation as a venerable Victorian sage, and promote a view of Jane Welsh Carlyle as a martyr to her husband’s career. Naturally Carlyle’s relatives and other supporters took issue with Froude’s dramatic and idiosyncratic portrayal, and many attempts have been made to discredit him. Nonetheless his monumental four-volume work remains a staple in Carlyle studies and a landmark of life writing. Anne M. Skabarnicki

Biography James Anthony Froude. Born in Dartington, Devon, England, 23 April 1818. His father, the rector of Dartington, became archdeacon of Totnes in 1820; his oldest brother, Richard Hurrell Froude, became one of the leading members of the Oxford Movement. Educated at Westminster School, London, 1830–33; and privately in Merton, Devon, 1833–35. Studied at Oriel College, Oxford, from 1835 (BA 1842, MA 1843). Elected Devon fellow, Exeter College, Oxford, 1842. Contributed the life of St Neot to John Henry Newman’s Lives of the English Saints series, 1844–45. Ordained a deacon, 1844, but lost his faith and never became a priest (resigned deacon’s orders in 1872). Wrote the controversial Shadows of the Clouds (1847) and The Nemesis of Faith (1849), fictional accounts of this experience, which led to his resigning his fellowship and leaving Oxford, 1849. Met Thomas Carlyle and his wife Jane Baillie Welsh, 1849. Married Charlotte Maria Grenfell, 1849: one daughter. Lived at Plas Gwynant, Wales, then Bideford, Devon. Published many periodical essays, contributing to Fraser’s Magazine (editor, 1860–74) and Westminster Review. Moved to London after his wife’s death in 1860. Married Henrietta Elizabeth Warre, 1861: one son and one daughter. Lived at The Woolcot, Kingsbridge, Devon. Established his reputation as a historian with The History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada (12 vols, 1870), followed by The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (3 vols, 1872–74) and Caesar (1879). Elected rector of the University of St Andrews, Fife, 1868. Wife died, 1874. Toured South Africa, 1874–75; returned there as a delegate at Lord Carnarvon’s conference concerning the South African federation, 1875. Literary executor of Thomas Carlyle, 1881. Despite the controversy aroused by his publications on the Carlyles, was appointed Regius professor of modern history, Oxford University, 1892. Died at The Woolcot, Kingsbridge, Devon, 20 October 1894.

Selected Writings Bunyan (biography), 1880 Thomas Carlyle: A History of the First Forty Years of His Life, 1795–1835, 2 vols, 1882 Luther: A Short Biography, 1883 Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London, 1834–81, 2 vols, 1884 My Relations with Carlyle, 1886 Life and Letters of Erasmus (lectures), 1893 Froude’s Life of Carlyle, edited and abridged by John Clubbe, 1979 Also edited Carlyle’s Reminiscences, 2 vols, 1881

Further Reading Broughton, Trev, “Froude: The ‘Painful Appendix’”, Carlyle Studies Annual, 15 (1995): 65–80 Clubbe, John, “Grecian Destiny: Froude’s Portraits of the Carlyles” in Carlyle and His Contemporaries: Essays in Honor of Charles Richard Sanders, edited by John Clubbe, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1976 Dunn, Waldo H., Froude & Carlyle: A Study of the Froude-Carlyle Controversy, London and New York: Longmans Green, 1930 Dunn, Waldo H., James Anthony Froude: A Biography, 2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961 Fielding, Kenneth J., “Froude and Carlyle: Some New Considerations” in Carlyle Past and Present: A Collection of New Essays, edited by K.J. Fielding and R.L. Tarr, London: Vision, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1976 Trela, Dale J., “Froude on the Carlyles: The Victorian Debate over Biography” in Victorian Scandals: Representations of Gender and Class, edited by Kristine Ottesen Garrigan, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992 Wilson, David Alec, Mr Froude and Carlyle, London: Heinemann, 1898; reprinted, New York: Haskell House, 1970

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g spiritual experiments, but his real quest was “self-realization, to see God face to face, to attain moksha [salvation]”. Gandhi’s autobiography thus eschewed finality and infallibility but laid claim to the reader’s attention on the basis of his minute psychological observation and introspection which qualified his autobiographical endeavour as a narrative of scientific experimentation. It is important to understand the qualified sense in which Gandhi writes his autobiography, as in some ways it represents formally the very antithesis of the individualist secular Western genre that he adopts. Yet his spiritual yearnings link his work to the more traditional Christian roots of the form, rehearsing a linear spiritual development from early unconsciousness of his destiny to the gradual realization of his part in the great quest for Truth, of which his social and national struggles formed only a part. The autobiography begins traditionally enough with an account of Gandhi’s birth and parentage followed by several chapters describing his education and training as a lawyer in England. In his formal education, at least, Gandhi was a typically Anglicized creation, although he would later spurn Western clothes and manners for the basic khadi (homespun) clothing that would become a hallmark of his image and an essential aspect of his critique of the economic injustice of imperial commercial practices. A crucial early event described in his autobiography was his marriage at the age of 13, by no means an unusual age for marriage in his social milieu, but perhaps one of the first instances of social malpractice that drew Gandhi’s zeal for reform. Yet Kasturbai, his wife, was to remain deeply supportive throughout Gandhi’s extraordinary career, apparently accepting the rigours of his convictions with hardly a murmur of discontent, even when Gandhi conclusively took a vow of celibacy in 1906. The first intimations of Gandhi’s political career are to be gleaned in his experiences in South Africa where he came face to face with some of the more blatant injustices of British imperial rule. Despite the considerable community of Indians in South Africa, Gandhi discovered that they were held in contempt by the British authorities and locals alike and were denied basic rights in passing through affluent areas, travelling on the railways, and the like. A more sinister development was a new bill before the House of Legislature which sought to deprive Indians of the voting rights to elect members of the Natal Legislative Assembly. Gandhi vowed to fight the passage of this Bill, returning to South Africa and leading his first satyagraha there. The word “satyagraha” was a coinage (from satya meaning truth

Gandhi, Mohandas K. [“Mahatma”] 1869–1948 Indian social and political leader Gandhi’s autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, was originally written in Gujarati for the nationalist journal Navajivan [New Life] in weekly instalments in 1925. By the time of its appearance Gandhi had already established himself as a spearhead of the Indian National Congress, and the autobiography purports to recount his early life and development, chiefly in the spiritual realm, to which he attributed the strength of his political campaign. The English translation by Mahadev Desai appeared serially in Young India with Gandhi’s revisions, and the first edition was published in two volumes (1927 and 1929). The work was translated into several Indian languages simultaneously and has acquired the status of a classic foundational text of modern Indian nationhood. Printed on cheap paper and widely distributed, it took a prominent place in the nationalist stirrings and oral traditions that sprung up at this time around the figure of “Mahatma” Gandhi. Gandhi himself had some misgivings about the practice of writing an autobiography, as he confessed in his Introduction. A “God-fearing friend” had advised him along these lines: Writing an autobiography is a practice peculiar to the West. I know of nobody in the East having written one, except amongst those who have come under Western influence. And what will you write? Supposing you reject tomorrow the things you hold as principles today, or supposing you revise in the future your plans of today, is it not likely that the men who shape their conduct on the authority of your word, spoken or written, may be misled? Don’t you think it would be better not to write anything like an autobiography, at any rate just now? Acknowledging the strength of these objections, Gandhi proceeded to offer his autobiography as merely “the story of my numerous experiments with truth” and not a “real autobiography” at all. While by 1925 Gandhi had achieved world renown as a political leader and in India was popularly designated as the “Mahatma” (Great Soul), he himself denied spiritual eminence and sought to present his life story as a continuing search after Satya (Truth), which he equated with God. Such political success as had come to him was derived solely from his 351

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and agraha meaning firmness) to denote Gandhi’s novel method of resistance, eschewing hatred and violence but remaining implacably resolute on the real issues. By virtue of satyagraha Gandhi discovered an extraordinarily powerful way of asserting dissent while retaining the moral high ground in the battle for public opinion. This was to be the modus operandi for launching his national struggle for Indian independence, attracting even the moderate nationalists and embarassing the British authorities who could not but appear clumsy and oppressive in opposition to it. The autobiography ends in the early 1920s, nearly three decades before Indian independence, and while the outcome of the nationalist struggle remained obscure. Yet Gandhi’s real concerns were more spiritual than political, and his sober response to independence in 1947 (he spent the day, 15 August, in fasting and prayer and refused to celebrate it) is entirely in keeping with the principles laid out in the Experiments. The work would even now appear curiously unbalanced to many Western readers. It may seem that there is more about Gandhi’s dietary experiments (he was a vegetarian who lived almost entirely off fruits and nuts rather than any cooked food and who was ever ready to sacrifice even this meagre food in protest at any perceived injustice – often bringing himself to death’s door in the process) than about his political principles. Yet Gandhi saw these experiments as underlying such power as he wielded in the political arena and refused to distinguish between the spheres of politics, religion, and morality. As a Hindu who did much to reform Hinduism and define modern Hinduism on the basis of his “experiments”, Gandhi ran the risk of alienating many traditional Hindus as well as the sizable Muslim population of India. The partition of India for which he grieved deeply and his own death at the hands of a Hindu fundamentalist are sombre reminders of some of the less successful aspects of his experimentation, even while modern India can rightly revere him as its “father”. Daniel Sanjiv Roberts Biography Born Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in Porbandar, Kathiawar, India, 2 October 1869. His father was the prime minister of Porbandar. Married Kasturbai, 1882 (died 1944). Father died, 1885. Studied law in London, 1888–91. Ran a legal practice in his home region and then in Bombay, 1891–93. Stayed in South Africa, working for the rights of Indians there and making a few trips to India and Britain, 1893–1914; supported the British during the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902). Developed his philosophy of non-violent protest, satyagraha, “truth force”. Returned to India, already famous, 1914. Supported Britain in World War I but became increasingly involved in the Home Rule movement (Swaraj). Initiated civil disobedience campaigns, 1919–20, which gathered mass support throughout India. Was proclaimed a mahatma, “great soul”, c.1920. Became a leader of the Indian independence movement, serving as a bridge between rival religious factions, the various Hindu castes, the Westernized middle classes, and the workers. Imprisoned for conspiracy, 1922–24. President of the Indian National Congress, 1925–34. Led a 200-mile march to the sea to collect salt in a gesture of defiance against the government monopoly, 1930. Rearrested, then released, 1931. Negotiated truce between Congress and the British government, and attended the Round Table Conference in London, which met to discuss Indian constitutional reform, 1931. Returned to India and revived the civil disobedience campaign: was arrested, imprisoned, and began to “fast unto death” on several occasions. Helped to implement the constitutional compromise of 1937, in which Congress ministers accepted office in the new provincial legislatures. Refused to cooperate

with the Allies during World War II unless India was given its independence; imprisoned, 1942–44. Negotiated with the British Cabinet Mission, 1946. Opposed his former follower, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, who sought to set up a separate country for the areas with a Muslim majority. Tried to quell the religious unrest and violence associated with the partition of India, 1947–48. Assassinated by a Hindu fundamentalist in New Delhi, 30 January 1948.

Selected Writings “Satyana prayogo athava atmakatha” in Navajivan, 1925; as The Story of My Experiments with Truth, translated by Mahadev Desai, 2 vols, 1927–29 Famous Letters of Mahatma Gandhi, edited by R.L. Khipple, 1947 Bapu’s Letters to Mira, 1924–1948, 1949 Selected Letters, edited and translated by Valji Govindji Desai, 1949 Gandhi and Charlie: The Story of a Friendship, as Told through the Letters and Writings of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Revd Charles Freer Andrews, 1950; edited by David McI. Gracie, 1989 Gandhi’s Letters to a Disciple, 1950 Gandhi’s Letters from Prison, edited by R.N. Khanna, 1950 Bapuna patro; as Bapu’s Letters, edited by Kaka Kalelkar, translated by Arvindlal L. Mazmudar, 1952 Letters to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, edited and translated by Valji Govindji Desai and Sudarshan V. Desai, 1957 All Men Are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections, edited by Krishna Kripalani, 1958 The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 90 vols, 1958–84 “My Dear Child”: Letters from M.K. Gandhi to Esther Faering, edited by Alice M. Barnes, 1959 Letters to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, 1961 Letters to Manibahen Patel, 1963 Letters from Gandhi, Nehru, Vinoba, edited by Shriman Narayan, 1968 Romain Rolland and Gandhi Correspondence: Letters, Diary Extracts, Articles, etc., edited by R.A. Francis, 1976 Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy: Letters, edited by B. Srinivasa Murthy, 1987 Caliban and Gandhi: Letters to “Bapu” from Bombay, edited by M.R. Anand, 1991 (with Rabindranath Tagore) The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates between Gandhi and Tagore, 1915–1941, edited by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, 1997 The Mahatma and the Poetess: Being a Selection of Letters Exchanged Between Gandhiji and Sarojini Naidu, edited by E.S. Reddy and Mrinalini Sarabhai, 1998

Further Reading Amin, Shahid, “Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921–22” in Selected Subaltern Studies, edited by Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988 Bondurant, Joan V., Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1958; revised edition, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965 Brown, Judith M., Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope, New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 1989 Chatterjee, Margaret, Gandhi’s Religious Thought, London: Macmillan, and Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983 Fischer, Louis, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi, New York: Harper, 1950; London: Jonathan Cape, 1951 Gandhi, Leela, “Concerning Violence: The Limits and Circulations of Gandhian Ahimsa or Passive Resistance”, Cultural Critique, 35 (1996–97): 105–47 Moon, Penderel, Gandhi and Modern India, London: English Universities Press, 1968; New York: Norton, 1969 Nanda, B.R., Gokhale, Gandhi and the Nehrus: Studies in Indian Nationalism, London: Allen and Unwin, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1974 Pandey, Gyan, “Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism: The Peasant Movement in Awadh, 1919–22” in Selected Subaltern Studies,

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edited by Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988 Parekh, Bhikhu, Gandhi’s Political Philosophy: A Critical Examination, London: Macmillan, and Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989 Parekh, Bhikhu, Gandhi, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997 Tirumalesh, K.V., “Autobiography’s Search for Truth: Newman and Gandhi”, Centennial Review, 40/1 (1996): 99–123 Tirumalesh, K.V., “Autobiography’s Moment of Truth: The Experiments of Mahatma Gandhi”, Indian Journal of American Studies, 27/2 (1997): 15–20

García Márquez, Gabriel

1928?–

Colombian fiction writer, journalist, and testimonialist Gabriel García Márquez is a prolific writer, perhaps best known internationally for his fiction, though he is also a popular journalist. In both fiction and nonfiction, the author demonstrates a fascination with life stories; even his ground-breaking magicrealist novel, Cien años de soledad (1967; One Hundred Years of Solitude), which lacks fixed settings and emphasizes the ridiculous, is modelled on the author’s hometown of Aracataca, and features fictionalized versions of family history. Much of García Márquez’s life writing appears in the form of short crónicas – a literary form popular in Latin America, which blends essay, short story, auto/biography, and journalism. Two series of crónicas that appeared in the Colombian newspaper, El Espectador, were collected and published as books: Relato de un náufrago (1970; The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor) and De viaje por los países socialistas: 90 días en la “Cortina de hierro” [1978; 90 Days Behind the Iron Curtain]. Relato de un náufrago is a testimonial work that explores human weakness and strength through Luis Alejandro Velasco’s experience of surviving ten days at sea, alone on an unprovisioned lifeboat. The ironic truth that led García Márquez to reconstruct his subject’s story is that the destroyer on which Velasco had been serving lost eight sailors in calm weather and could not rescue them because it was too heavily weighed down with contraband to steer properly. The resulting narrative explores the nature of heroism, examining the role of fate and circumstance in making a man an unwitting hero. De viaje por los países socialistas is a more political, journalistic work, describing the author’s experiences in, and impressions of, various Eastern Bloc nations between 1955 and 1959. It is filled with humour, pathos, terror, and delight as the author goes beyond propaganda to find individuals and tell their stories. He is unflinching in his assessment of the poverty and despair he finds in East Germany, but delights in relating the excitement and hope evident in Czechoslovakia and Poland. As a whole, the collection highlights humanity and absurdity on both sides of the Iron Curtain. La aventura de Miguel Littín clandestino en Chile (1986; Clandestine in Chile) continues García Márquez’s political writings, telling of exiled director Miguel Littín’s secret return to Chile to shoot a documentary film about the Pinochet regime. From 18 hours of interviews, García Márquez reconstructs Littín’s six weeks in Chile, exploring the director’s motivations, his enthusiasm, fear, and naivety. While Littín dismisses his own

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heroism, the book makes plain that capture would have resulted in imprisonment and probably death, and seeks to explain what makes 32,200 metres of film worth the risk. It is a text full of nostalgia and terror, chance encounters and revelations, which puts a personal face on exile, with its anxiety of absence and hope for return. García Márquez’s most extended piece of life writing is Noticia de un secuestro (1996; News of a Kidnapping), which began as the story of Maruja Pachón’s abduction by Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. As the work evolved, it came to include the tales of nine other kidnap victims, also casualties of the drug trafficker’s efforts to force the Colombian government to repeal an extradition ordinance. The finished text is a personal account, pulled together from letters, diaries, and personal testimonies, of the experiences of those abducted. At the same time, it is an outline of the difficulties the Colombian government faced in formulating a consistent drug policy and a journalistic report of the events motivating the kidnappings in an effort to understand the kidnappers’ perspectives. Ranging from intensely personal details of the mindset and physical deterioration of the kidnap victims to broad discussions of the political issues at stake, the book combines essay, journalism, and biography. In a nation torn by the struggle between the government and drug traffickers, wherein each group feels justified in its atrocities, this book gives faces and voices to the victims, making the personal political and denying the refuge of anonymity to those responsible for their suffering. García Márquez’s life writing, like his journalism and fiction, demonstrates the author’s fascination with people and their stories, and his drive to bring out the extraordinary in every sort of experience. He has a passion for justice, a powerful sense of empathy, a rousing sense of irony, and a talent for comedic timing that comes through in each page of powerful prose, daring the reader to look for the heroes in everyday life. Jennifer C. Rodgers Biography Born in Aracataca, a village in the banana-growing coastal region of Colombia, 6 March 1928(?). Brought up by his maternal grandparents; his grandfather was a retired colonel. Educated at Jesuit schools, the Colegio San José, Barranquilla, 1940–42, and Colegio Nacional, Zipaquir, to 1946. Studied law at the National University of Colombia, Bogotá, 1947–48; journalism at the University of Cartagena, 1948–49/50. Journalist for El Universal, Cartagena, 1948–50, and for El Heraldo, Barranquilla, 1950–54. Returned to Bogotá and worked for the newspaper El Espectador, 1954. Published his first novel, La hojarasca (Leaf Storm and Other Stories), 1955. Sent to Rome then Paris to work as European correspondent for El Espectador, 1955; lost his post when the newspaper was closed down by the dictator Rojas Pinilla. Travelled to the USSR, 1957. Returned to Venezuela to work for the newspaper Momento in Caracas, 1958. Married Mercedes Barcha, 1958: two sons. Founder of Prensa Latina (Cuban press agency), Bogotá, 1959; worked in the Prensa Latina office in Havana, Cuba, and New York, 1959–61. Lived in Mexico, 1961–67, working as a journalist, advertising agent, and scriptwriter. Published his bestknown work, the novel Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude), 1967. Thereafter devoted himself to writing full time. Lived in Spain, 1967–75. Returned to Mexico, 1975, to Colombia, 1982. Founder, 1979, and since 1979 president, Fundación Habeas. Also founder of Film School near Havana. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1982. Published the bestselling El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Love in the Time of Cholera), 1985.

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Selected Writings Relato de un náufrago (testimonial), 1970; as The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, translated by Randolph Hogan, 1986 De viaje por los países socialistas: 90 días en la “Cortina de hierro” (autobiography / travel writing), 1978 La aventura de Miguel Littín clandestino en Chile: un reportaje (testimonial), 1986; as Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littín, translated by Asa Zatz, 1987 Noticia de un secuestro (testimonial), 1996; as News of a Kidnapping, translated by Edith Grossman, 1997

Further Reading Arango, Gustavo, Un ramo de nomeolvides: Gabriel García Márquez en El Universal, Cartagena, Colombia: El Universal, 1995 Bell, Michael, Gabriel García Márquez: Solitude and Solidarity, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993 Collazos, Oscar, García Márquez: la soledad y la gloria: su vida y su obra, Barcelona: Plaza y Janes, 1983 Janes, Regina, Gabriel García Márquez: Revolutions in Wonderland, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981 McNerney, Kathleen, Understanding Gabriel García Márquez, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989 Saldívar, Dasso, García Márquez: el viaje a la semilla: la biografia, Madrid: Alfaguara, 1997 Sims, Robert L., El Primer García Márquez: un estudio de su periodismo de 1948 a 1955, Potomac, Maryland: Scripta Humanistica, 1990; as The First García Márquez: A Study of His Journalistic Writing from 1948 to 1955, Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1992 Ulchur, Iván Collazos, García Márquez: del humor y otros dominios: ensayo, Quito, Ecuador: Eskeletra Editorial, 1997 Williams, Raymond L., Gabriel García Márquez, Boston: Twayne, 1984

Garibaldi, Giuseppe

1807–1882

Italian soldier, revolutionary leader, and memoirist An irrepressible man of action, Giuseppe Garibaldi composed his memoirs at intervals between 1849 and 1871, in various locations, during the periods of inaction and, frequently, disappointment which followed each of his spectacular military adventures. They consist mainly of detailed, though occasionally inaccurate, accounts of each campaign, interspersed with polemical comment regarding those whom he saw as having thwarted his patriotic endeavours. Garibaldi began to set down a record of his exploits in 1849, in Tangier, at a moment of political dejection, personal grief, and enforced exile from Italy. This first portion of the memoirs (also referred to as his autobiography) is particularly valuable as the only source for most of what is known about his youth in the city of Nice and his early life as a sailor. He recalls his early education in Mazzinian republicanism and his first, hardly auspicious, attempts to foster a republican insurrection in Genoa in 1834, which ended with his being condemned to death in absentia by the Piedmontese authorities. There follows an account of his 14 years of exile in South America and a detailed treatment of each of the military campaigns, on land and at sea, that he came to lead in support of local insurrections against the repressive Brazilian and Argentinian authorities. Unfortunately, here as later in the memoir, he passes rapidly over the non-military phases of his life – his time as a cattle herdsman, trader, and schoolmaster in Montevideo –

with the protestation that they “present no periods of interest”. Garibaldi returned to Italy in early 1848 to participate in the events that can now be seen as the prelude to the unification of Italy to be achieved some 12 years later. He tells of leading a volunteer unit on behalf of Milan against Austria, near Lake Como, then, in 1849, of commanding the defence of Mazzini’s brief Roman Republic against French and Neapolitan attack. In this period, his respect for Mazzini’s political idealism underwent a sharp decline, and in the memoirs he employs harsh eloquence to attack Mazzini for failing to match his “fertility of imagination” with the necessary “practical capacity”, and for not listening to those, such as Garibaldi himself, who were better equipped in this respect. He provides a moving account of the death of Anita, his pregnant wife, mother of their three children, during their flight from Rome. The memoirs deal only briefly with Garibaldi’s second period of exile, first in New York, where he worked in a candle factory, then in Lima, Peru, where he resumed his early maritime career, captaining a trading ship around the Pacific, and returning to Europe only in 1854. Typically, he has nothing to say about the series of amorous entanglements with aristocratic women, English and Italian, that (now approaching 50) he became involved in during the late 1850s, nor about the daughter he had with a young woman who worked for him. The first instalment of the memoirs was published in New York in 1859, but the following year Garibaldi entrusted a rather fuller, and somewhat different, manuscript to Alexandre Dumas père, who published it in French. It was this edition, and translations of it into English, German, and Spanish, that circulated in great numbers over the next ten years and more. Having the author of The Three Musketeers endorsing the autobiography of this real-life swashbuckling hero doubtless enhanced its appeal. Only in the second half of the memoirs does Garibaldi deal with the events for which he is now remembered around the world: the astonishing campaign by which, with his band of 1000 volunteers, and in the context of ambivalence from the Piedmontese authorities, he defeated the Bourbon forces in Sicily and southern Italy, and drew those regions into the newly forming Italian nation. The remainder deals not only with the two subsequent campaigns in which, in 1862 and 1867, against government wishes, he led volunteer forces in abortive attempts to seize Rome for the unified nation, but also his participation in the successful campaign, in 1866, to gain Venice from the Austrians. The memoirs appeared in several partial editions, both in Italian and in translation, before the “authorized” version was published in 1872. In the later versions, his critique of Mazzini, the church, and the Italian monarchy become ever stronger. Characterized by real political passion, his writing is almost completely devoid of self-aggrandizement, and he is scrupulous in his praise for the bravery of his military comrades of all ranks, and for those individuals, including peasants, aristocrats, and diplomats, who sheltered him in moments of difficulty. His Italian language and style have often been criticized, but this is hardly surprising, since, ironically for the great Italian patriot, Italian was only his third language, with the Ligurian dialect being his mother tongue, and French his second language. Michael Hanne

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Biography Born in Nice, then part of the French empire (now in France), 4 July 1807. His father was a sailor. Left school at an early age to work as a seaman; worked on cargo ships trading with the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Joined Young Italy, an organization pledged to liberate Italy from foreign rule inspired by Giuseppe Mazzini. Participated in a plot to seize a ship in the port of Genoa, 1834. Escaped to Marseilles when the plot was discovered; learned that he had been condemned to death and sailed to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Fought for the republic of Rio Grande do Sul in its war against Brazil, primarily at sea as a pirate, then from 1843 in guerilla warfare, as commander of an Italian legion. Eloped with a married woman, Anna Maria Ribeiro da Silva, 1839; later married her. Won fame in Italy for his battles on behalf of Uruguay against the Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas, particularly his victory at Sant’Antonio, 1846. Met his future biographer, Alexandre Dumas, père, in Montevideo, 1847. Sailed for Italy with his family, intending to participate in the Italian war of independence against Austria, 1848. Retired to Switzerland after his troops were scattered, then made his way to his childhood home of Nice. Fought in Rome on behalf of the Roman Republic against the French, who planned to reinstate the pope as head of government, then retreated across Campagna to the Adriatic, 1848–49. Wife died on the retreat, 1849. Left his children with his parents in Nice and went to live and work on Staten Island, New York, then commanded a Peruvian sailing vessel. Returned to Nice after the death of his mother and the repeal of the order banishing him from Italy, 1854. Bought land on the island of Caprera, between Sardinia and Corsica, planning to retire there, 1856. Invited to form an army and fight on behalf of King Vittorio Emanuele of Piedmont-Sardinia and his minister Cavour, 1859. Formed the Cacciatori delle Alpi, a guerilla force, and made successful manoeuvres in the Tirol. Sailed for Sicily with 1000 volunteers, the “Redshirts”, to assist in the anti-Bourbon rebellion which had broken out there, May 1860; captured Palermo from the Neapolitan forces, then entered Naples, September 1860. As “Dictator of the Two Sicilies” presented these lands to Vittorio Emanuele, October 1860. Retired briefly to his home in Caprera. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies, where he opposed Cavour and the king, 1861. Landed in Italy with his forces to attack Rome, 1862; stopped by Piedmontese forces at Aspromonte, wounded, and imprisoned briefly, then returned to Caprera. Participated in further campaigns from 1867. Elected a deputy at the Bordeaux Assembly, 1870. Held a command in the French army during the Franco-Prussian war, 1870–71. Retired to Caprera to complete his memoirs and to farm. Died in Caprera, 2 June 1882.

Selected Writings Memorie, edited by Alexandre Dumas père, 1859, “authorized edition”, 1872; edited by Franco Russo, 2 vols, 1968, Ugoberto Alfassio Grimaldi, 1972, and Giuseppe Armani, 1982; as The Life of Gen. Garibaldi, translated by Theodore Dwight, 1859; as Garibaldi: An Autobiography, translated by William Robson, 1860, revised 1861; as Autobiography of Giuseppe Garibaldi, translated by Alice Werner, 3 vols, 1889 (reprinted 1971); as The Memoirs of Garibaldi, translated by R.S. Garnett, 1931 Epistolario, edited by Giuseppe Fonterossi, Salvatore Candido, and Emilia Morelli, 1973–

Further Reading Byrne, Donn, Garibaldi: The Man and the Myth, Oxford: Modern English, 1988 Delzell, Charles F. (editor), The Unification of Italy, 1859–1861: Cavour, Mazzini, or Garibaldi?, New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1965 De Polnay, Peter, Garibaldi: The Legend and the Man, London: Hollis and Carter, 1960; as Garibaldi: The Man and the Legend, New York: Nelson, 1961 Griffith, C.E., “The Novels of Garibaldi”, Italian Studies, 30 (1975): 86–98 Mack Smith, Denis, Cavour and Garibaldi, 1860: A Study in Political Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954; reprinted, New York: Kraus Reprint, 1968 Mack Smith, Denis, Garibaldi, London: Hutchinson, 1957

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Mack Smith, Denis (editor), Garibaldi, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1969 Parris, John, The Lion of Caprera: A Biography of Giuseppe Garibaldi, New York: McKay, and London: Barker, 1962 Trevelyan, George Macaulay, Garibaldi and the Making of Italy, London and New York: Longmans Green, 1911; reprinted, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1982

Garneau, Hector de Saint-Denys see Saint-Denys Garneau, Hector de

Gaskell, Elizabeth

1810–1865

English novelist and biographer Elizabeth Gaskell’s posthumous account of Charlotte Brontë’s life was written at the request of Charlotte’s father, when he became concerned at the speculation and factual inaccuracies generated about his daughter in the obituary notices that followed her death in 1855. Gaskell was suited in a number of ways to take on the role of official biographer. She had been a personal friend of Charlotte’s, and was an established author who, even before she had been approached by Charlotte’s father, had expressed a wish to publish an account of her friend’s “wild, sad life” out of the conviction – consonant with Patrick Brontë’s own desire to vindicate his daughter – that “the more she was known the more people would honour her as a woman, separate from her character of authoress” (Letters, 1966). The basis of the Life was Charlotte Brontë’s correspondence to her school-friend and confidante Ellen Nussey, who supplied Gaskell with around 350 letters. Extensive use of correspondence had become standard in biography of the Victorian period and the practice of interweaving correspondence with authorial comment and narration – the “life and letters” model – was also firmly established. Yet this well-tried formula took on new life in Gaskell’s hands. This originality was partly the outcome of the nature of her material and of Gaskell’s decision to concentrate on the woman – “the friend, the daughter, the sister, the wife” (Letters) – who lay behind the artist, and whom the artist herself, Gaskell felt, had served to obscure. In substituting the hidden, inner world of feeling disclosed by Charlotte’s letters for the record of external event and public success that characterized contemporary biographies of eminent men, the book, as Margaret Oliphant put it, was “revolution as well as revelation” (“The Sisters Brontë”, Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign, 1897). Yet the distinctive achievements of the biography were acknowledged from the first to be in large part owing to Gaskell’s gifts as a novelist. “It is thanks to its artistic power”, said George Henry Lewes, “that the work makes us familiar inmates of an interior so strange … [and] paints for us at once the psychological drama and the scenic accessories with so much vividness” (letter to Gaskell, 1857; see Easson, 1991). Gaskell’s novelistic powers and experience are perhaps most visible in her re-creation of the scenes of Charlotte’s early life at Haworth and

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its environs, to which Gaskell brings the same seemingly effortless descriptive precision and fidelity to detail that characterizes the urban and rural landscapes of her fiction. Yet as Charlotte Brontë’s wild, sad life becomes inseparable from the wild sadness of the moorland landscape in which she grew up, it is clear that it is not just formal technique that is being imported from novel to biography. Rather, Gaskell brings to her account of Charlotte’s life a realist novelist’s appreciation that the shape and direction of an individual life and character are a complex and fluid mix of internal and external pressures or forces (social, geographical, domestic, as well as hereditary and psychological); and she brings, in addition, a realist novelist’s capacity for imaginative immersion in the individual life she thus explicates. This gift for understanding her subject from the outside, while also inhabiting that mode of consciousness as if from within, is what makes this work one of the great biographical monuments of the 19th century. A major criticism of the work, however, from its first appearance to the present day, is that it owes all too much to a literary imagination, to the point of positively distorting the facts. Indeed, the original version was hastily withdrawn and replaced by a revised edition when Gaskell’s accounts of the ruin of Charlotte’s brother, Branwell, and of Charlotte’s experience at the Cowan Bridge School (fictionalized as Lowood in Jane Eyre), brought the threat of legal action from those implicated. Moreover, Gaskell’s deliberate suppression of the evidence relating to Charlotte’s relationship with her teacher in Brussels (M. Paul of Villette), together with the notable similarity between this “real” heroine and the typical character and situation of Gaskell’s fictional heroines – who, like Charlotte, subjugate personal need to the demands of domestic duty (often in the shape of a widowed father) – have lent weight to the charge that Gaskell was the principal architect of the entire Brontë myth. Yet no reader could easily deny the integrity of Gaskell’s attempt, as she herself put it, to “hit as near the truth as anyone could do”: “I weighed every line”, she wrote, “with my whole power and heart” (Letters). It is the largeness and loyalty of Gaskell’s imaginative effort – protectively surrounding the intimate disclosures of Charlotte’s letters even while opening them up to the possibility of being sympathetically shared by the reader – which no subsequent account has been, or likely will be, able to surpass. Josie Billington Biography Born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson in Chelsea, London, 29 September 1810. Her father was a Unitarian minister, and later a journalist and treasury official. Brought up by her aunt in Knutsford, Cheshire, which was the inspiration for her novel Cranford (1853). Educated at Byerley sisters’ school, Barford, and later in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, 1822–27. Married William Gaskell, minister of Cross Street Unitarian chapel in Manchester, 1832: four daughters and one son (died in infancy). Lived in Manchester, which provided the industrial setting for her first novel, Mary Barton (1848), and the later North and South (1855). Contributed to Dickens’s Household Words, 1850–58. Met and became a friend of Charlotte Brontë, 1850: visited her at Haworth, Yorkshire, 1853. Published The Life of Charlotte Brontë, 1857. Contributed to the Cornhill Magazine, 1860–65. Organized sewing-rooms during the cotton famine, 1862–63. Bought a house at Holybourne, near Alton, Hampshire, for her husband’s retirement. Died in Holybourne, 12 November 1865.

Selected Writings The Life of Charlotte Brontë, 2 vols, 1857: revised, 3rd edition, 1857; edited by Alan Shelston, 1975; edited by Angus Easson, 1996; edited by Elisabeth Jay, 1997 My Diary: The Early Years of My Daughter Marianne, 1923 The Letters of Mrs Gaskell, edited by J.A.V. Chapple and A. Pollard, 1966, reprinted 1997

Further Reading Allott, Miriam (editor), The Brontës: The Critical Heritage, London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974 Barker, Juliet, The Brontës, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995 Bonaparte, Felicia, The Gypsy-Bachelor of Manchester: The Life of Mrs Gaskell’s Demon, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992 Easson, Angus, Elizabeth Gaskell, London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979 Easson, Angus (editor), Elizabeth Gaskell: The Critical Heritage, London and New York: Routledge, 1991 Easson, Angus, “Getting It Right: Elizabeth Gaskell and The Life of Charlotte Brontë”, Gaskell Society Journal, 11 (1997): 1–14 Fraser, Rebecca, Charlotte Brontë, London: Methuen, 1988 Gerin, Winifred, Charlotte Brontë: The Evolution of Genius, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967 Gordon, Lyndall, Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life, London: Chatto and Windus, 1994; New York: Norton, 1995 Helms, Gabriele, “The Coincidence of Biography and Autobiography: Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë”, Biography, 18/4 (1995): 339–59 Hopkins, A.B., Elizabeth Gaskell: Her Life and Work, London: Lehmann, 1952; New York: Octagon, 1971 Kershaw, Alison, “The Business of a Woman’s Life: Elizabeth Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë”, Brontë Society Transactions, 20 (1990): [11–24] Pollard, A., Mrs Gaskell: Novelist and Biographer, Manchester: Manchester University Press, and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1965 Smith, Margaret (editor), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, with a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends, 3 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995– (2 vols published to date) Spencer, Jane, Elizabeth Gaskell, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993 Uglow, Jenny, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories, London: Faber, and New York: Farrar Straus, 1993

Gatheru, Mugo

1925–

Kenyan / American autobiographer and historian Mugo Gatheru’s Child of Two Worlds (1964) constitutes a nodal point in the evolution of the autobiographical genre in Kenyan literature. Only three works of life writing that are of historical importance come before it. Parmenas Mockerie’s An African Speaks for His People and Tom Mboya’s Freedom and After form a separate category within the generic type, owing to the political motivation that shaped them. Similarly, Muga Gikaru’s Land of Sunshine: Scenes of Life in Kenya before Mau Mau fits more aptly into the mould of a memoir. Gatheru’s book is the first to come significantly close to an exemplification of the essential qualities of the classical Western genre, which served as a model for this early African autobiographer. The narrative never loses sight of the author’s self (though the latter is not its exclusive focus), introspection is a major analytical strategy, and the lived life is reconstructed imaginatively so as to attribute to its flow a coherence of order

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and meaning. This order is unmistakably discerned by the reader in the path of enlightenment followed by the protagonist with diligence and consistency. He grows up absorbing the traditions of the Kikuyu people, and later spends years acquiring Western education. The author is determined to identify the aim of his existence: he vows to embrace what is positive in all worlds and use it to serve and uplift his people. Still, if Gatheru’s aim was to create an autobiography par excellence (in the Western sense), he did not fully achieve it. One basic factor comes into play to undermine the crystallization of the form. This is the author’s acute awareness of the pioneering nature of his effort, and the resultant compelling desire to compress in this one work the treatment of a multiplicity of subjects, whose relevance stretches far beyond his composite individual experience, and the fulfilment of a number of cultural objectives. Consequently, in spite of Gatheru’s explicit autobiographical “intention”, the genre is infiltrated by elements alien to its pristine self. The narrative incorporates, in miniature, the anthropological treatise, the ethnographic study, the historical account, the political outline, the biographical sketch, in modes that are variously interpretative, didactic, and propagandist. The latter tendencies are the product of the author’s concern with a nonAfrican audience. Phrases like “many people in Europe and America think that Africa is one vast and large dense jungle”, which serve as preludes to corrective commentaries, are quite common. So are various intercultural comparisons, which gradually build into the author’s thesis that the human race is homogeneous, and human experience universal. The more controversial aspects of the author’s native culture give rise to more elaborate arguments. For instance, the practice of polygamy is subjected to a dispassionate analysis in which numerous pros and cons are weighed. Such fair-mindedness is expected to win the appreciation of the reader, and to extend the limits of his / her cultural tolerance. Ironically, it is the features that contaminate the purity of the autobiographical genre that fascinated the early non-African critics of the book. In what amounts to a reordering of the author’s formal priorities, reviewers like Mary H. Lystad hailed the book as “required reading in introductory courses in African culture”. This irony is, however, partial. For there is ambivalence in the actualization of the autobiographical declaration, which is also reflected in the writer’s justification of his piece: “I find myself living in two worlds, and in the telling of my story I am telling the story of my people who are also caught between two worlds … The more we know about each other’s customs and history … the better we shall understand each other”. Herein lies the characteristic quality of the autobiographical genre in Kenyan literature at that nascent stage in its formation: it treats the individual first and foremost as the representative of his or her people, positioned within their culture, and as the mediator between his or her people and the rest of the world. In the context of African literature as a whole, Gatheru’s work, on the one hand, bears affinity to Camara Laye’s L’Enfant noir (1953; The African Child). On the other hand, it has also been compared to William Conton’s The African (1960) and Wole Soyinka’s Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981). The two West African authors give greater prominence to the personal as compared to the personal within the com-

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munal, but this is a variation in terms of degree rather than of principle. Emilia V. Ilieva Biography Reuel John Mugo-Gatheru. Born in North Lumbwa, Rift Valley Province, Kenya, 1925. Son of medicine man or priest, highly respected among the Kikuyu people. Attended local schools. Studied at Kahuti and Weithaga Schools of the Church Missionary Society, 1936–40, and Kambui Primary School, near Nairobi, 1941–1944. Joined the Medical Research Laboratory, Nairobi, to train as laboratory technician, 1945–47. Joined the Kenya African Union as assistant editor of the African Voice, and was associated with the political leadership of Jomo Kenyatta. Travelled to India and studied for the Overseas Cambridge School Certificate at St. Joseph’s Collegiate School, Allahabad, 1949–50. Went to England for a brief period and obtained visa for the United States, 1950, and moved there the same year. After a brief period studying at Roosevelt University, Chicago, enrolled at BethuneCookman College, Florida, where he studied sociology, political science, and other subjects, 1950–51. Won scholarship to Lincoln University, Lincoln, Pennsylvania, 1951: BA in political science, 1954. Worked as factory hand in New York, mid-1950s. Studied at New York University from 1955: MA, 1958. During this time the US Immigration Service attempted to expel him from the country because of Mau Mau activity in Kenya. Succeeded in winning legal right to stay in the USA, 1957. Married Dolores Pienkowski, 1958; two daughters. Moved to England, 1958, and studied law in London under the auspices of the Law Society: graduated 1963. Worked for the Lord Chancellor’s Department of the British government, 1964–65; articled clerk for firm of solicitors in London, 1966–69. Published his autobiography, Child of Two Worlds, 1964. Since returning to the United States, 1969, has been professor of history at California State University, Sacramento. Made several short visits to Kenya, 1977–1980.

Selected Writings Child of Two Worlds (autobiography), 1964

Further Reading Appiah, Kwame Anthony, “Soyinka’s Myth of an African World”, African Literature Association Annuls, 12 (1986) “Autobiography and African Literature”, special issue of Research in African Literatures, 28/2 (1997) Bruss, Elizabeth W., Autobiographical Acts: The Changing Situation of a Literary Genre, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976 Conton, William, The African, London: Heinemann, and Boston: Little Brown, 1960 Eakin, Paul John, Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of SelfInvention, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985 Gikaru, Muga, Land of Sunshine: Scenes of Life in Kenya before Mau Mau, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1958 Jackson, Michael and Ivan Karp (editors), Personhood and Agency: The Experience of Self in African Cultures, Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University, 1990 Kanneh, Kadiatu, African Identities: Race, Nation and Culture in Ethnography, Pan-Africanism and Black Literature, London: Routledge, 1998 La Fontaine, J.S., “Person and Individual: Some Anthropological Reflections” in The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, edited by Michael Carrithers et al., Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985 Laye, Camara, The African Child, translated from the French by James Kirkup, London: Collins, 1955 Leinhardt, Godfrey, “Self: Public, Private: Some African Representations”, in The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, edited by Michael Carrithers et al., Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985 Lystad, Mary H., quoted in A New Reader’s Guide to African Literature, edited by Hans M. Zell, Carol Bundy, and Virginia Coulon, London: Heinemann, and New York: Africana, 1983: p.182

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Mboya, Tom, Freedom and After, London: André Deutsch, and Boston: Little Brown, 1963 Mockerie, Parmenas Githendu, An African Speaks for His People, London: Hogarth Press, 1934; reprinted, New York: AMS Press, 1977 Mockerie, Parmenas Githendu, “The Story of Parmenas Mockerie of the Kikuyu Tribe” in Ten Africans, edited by Margery Perham, London: Faber, 1936; 2nd edition, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1963 Olney, James, Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972 Olney, James, Tell Me Africa: An Approach to African Literature, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1973 Olney, James (editor), Studies in Autobiography, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988 Schipper, Mineke, Beyond the Boundaries: Text and Context in African Literature, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1989 Soyinka, Wole, Aké: The Years of Childhood, London: Rex Collings, 1981

Gaulle, Charles de

1890–1970

French soldier, statesman, and memoirist Charles de Gaulle published numerous books and articles, particularly on French military history and military strategy, with letters and diaries appearing posthumously, but his memoirs are his major literary work. The memoirs cover the two periods of his life when he played a crucial role in shaping France’s destiny: the three volumes of Mémoires de guerre (1954–59; War Memoirs) cover the period from the start of the resistance against the Nazi occupation in 1940 up to 1946, the year of his first resignation as head of state; the two volumes of Mémoires d’espoir (1970–71; Memoirs of Hope) cover the period from his return as head of state in 1958 to the early 1960s. He planned to write a third volume of Memoirs of Hope about the time of his national leadership up to 1969, when he resigned as president of the Republic, but he died before completing the project, and even the second volume of Memoirs of Hope is clearly unfinished. De Gaulle’s memoirs are concerned with politics, military strategy, international relations, and diplomacy, and contain no details of his private life. But they are at the same time intensely personal – and this is the key to understanding them – because he sets out to convey his own very particular view of France and the role his country should play in the world. In a famous passage he explains that he has a “certain idea of France” and that France is “like the princess in fairy tales, the Madonna in frescos, destined for an eminent and exceptional place” (Mémoires de guerre, vol. 1, L’Appel 1940–1942). But this special destiny had been partially thwarted, in particular because of humiliating invasions and occupations by other European powers, which have led not only to less influence for France on the international stage than was its due, but also to internal divisions and conflict. De Gaulle had a conviction that he was destined to play a special role in the history of 20thcentury France, a role that was one of saviour of his beloved country in terms of both France’s position on the world stage and domestic politics. The memoirs, which draw extensively on, and greatly refine, the then unpublished letters, notes, and diaries, are thus a lucid exposition of de Gaulle’s philosophy, particularly when read in

conjunction with his speeches (Discours et Messages, 1946– ). The nation, whose shape is determined by both history and geography, is for de Gaulle the key to understanding the organization of human activity. The nation’s army is crucial in defending its interests, as is strong (at times heroic) individual leadership. Political institutions must offer government the ability to take decisions freely and, while the people’s views must be represented, ideologies are divisive and political parties little better. The Memoirs of War in particular are also a valuable record of the political and diplomatic details of the period, including relations between France and Britain, and France and the United States, with whom de Gaulle always dealt with the utmost suspicion, whereas he always maintained more friendly relations than might have been expected with the Soviet Union. The Memoirs of Hope offer insights into the way in which de Gaulle brought a blend of idealism and pragmatism to bear on the important issues of the late 1950s and early 1960s, including constitutional change, the role of the president of the Republic, and decolonization (it was under de Gaulle that France finally granted independence to Algeria in 1962). The style of de Gaulle’s Memoirs is clear and accessible and often reminiscent of the oratory that he used to his great advantage in his later years via the new mass medium, television. This was achieved by slow and painstaking work, and he commented about his Memoirs to the journalist Michel Droit: “I go over my manuscripts a great deal. I try to rid myself of my writing tics”. He blends grandiose philosophy and historical detail with ease. Add to this the occasional lapses into bombast and one understands why the Memoirs became bestsellers and are still widely quoted by other authors. But it is perhaps above all de Gaulle’s supreme sense of personal mission that not only became a selffulfilling prophecy and facilitated France’s passage from one era to another, but also made him the ideal memoirist. He was an odd mixture of traditional patriot and pragmatic modernizer, an approach that contributed to provoking the student and workers’ uprising of May 1968 and an approach that the uprising itself finally rendered obsolete. This is perhaps the significance of de Gaulle’s comment (again to Michel Droit) shortly before his death that “What I am doing here, writing my Memoirs, is much more important for France than anything I could be doing at the Elysée if I were still there” (quoted by Lacouture in De Gaulle, the Ruler). Nick Hewlett Biography Charles-André-Marie-Joseph de Gaulle. Born in Lille, France, 22 November 1890. His father was a teacher of philosophy and literature. Educated at the Rue Vaugirard College in Paris, where his father was director. Also attended the Collège Stanislaus, Paris. Attended SaintCyr military academy, 1909–12. Joined French army, 1912, serving in Colonel Philippe Pétain’s regiment. Fought in World War I at Verdun; wounded three times, and prisoner-of-war for nearly three years. Visited Poland as member of military commission, 1919. Lectured at Saint-Cyr military academy, 1921–22. Studied strategy and tactics at the Ecole Supérieure de Guerre, 1922–24. Promoted by Marshal Pétain to the staff of the Conseil Supérieur de la Guerre, 1925. Married Yvonne-Charlotte-Anne-Marie Vendroux, 1921: one son and two daughters. Served as major in the French army in the Rhineland and the Middle East, 1927–32. Published Le Fil de l’épée (1932; The Edge of the Sword). Promoted to rank of lieutenant-colonel; member of the secretariat of the Conseil Supérieur de la Défense Nationale, 1932–36. Commanded tank brigade attached to French 5th army; promoted to brigadier-general in the 4th armoured division, 1939. Entered

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government of Paul Reynard as under-secretary of state for defence and war, 6 June 1940. Left for London after the fall of France and establishment of Marshal Pétain’s government, 18 June 1940. Made broadcast appeals from London to the French people to continue the war against Germany under his leadership. Sentenced to death in absentia by French military court, August 1940. Moved to Algiers as president of the Comité Français de Libération Nationale, initially with Henri Giraud, 1943. Returned to Paris after its liberation, September 1944. Head of provisional French government, 1944–46. Founded with his wife the Anne de Gaulle Foundation for children with learning difficulties, in memory of one of his daughters who had died, 1945. Resigned as premier, 1946. Opposed Fourth French Republic and campaigned against new constitution from 1946. Formed Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF), which became a quasipolitical party, winning seats in the national Assembly, 1951. Left RPF, 1953 (disbanded 1957). Retired to Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises to write his memoirs, 1955. Became Prime Minister of France then President of the Fifth Republic during the Algerian war, 1958. As President, enabled the constitutional independence of colonies in Africa, 1959–60; negotiated end of the war in Algeria, 1962; was instrumental in the development of an independent French nuclear deterrent; denounced Soviet domination in Eastern Europe; and supported Vietnam’s independence movement from the United States. Gaullist party returned with increased majority in elections after student protests in Paris, 1968. Resigned after plan for reorganization of national and regional government of France was rejected in a referendum, 1969. Retired to home at Colombey-les-deux Eglises and continued with memoirs, 1969. Died at Colombey-les-deux-Eglises, 9 November 1970.

Selected Writings Mémoires de guerre, 3 vols, 1954–59; as War Memoirs, translated by Jonathan Griffin, Richard Howard, J. Murchie, and H. Erskine, 5 vols (includes “documents”), 1955–60; as The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, 3 vols, 1964 1. L’Appel, translated as The Call to Honour 2. L’Unité, translated as Unity 3. Le Salut, translated as Salvation Mémoires d’espoir, 2 vols, 1970–71; as Memoirs of Hope, translated by Terence Kilmartin, 1971 Lettres, notes et carnets, 13 vols, 1980–97 Mémoires (Pléiade edition; includes Mémoires d’espoir and Mémoires de guerre), edited by Marius-François Guyard, 2000

Further Reading Charlot, Jean, The Gaullist Phenomenon: The Gaullist Movement in the Fifth Republic, translated by Monica Charlot and Marianne Neighbour, London: Allen and Unwin, and New York: Praeger, 1971 Debré, Michel, Trois républiques pour une France: mémoires, vol. 1, Paris: Albin Michel, 1984 Faure, Edgar, Mémoires, 2 vols, Paris: Plon, 1982–84 Fouchet, Christian, Mémoires d’hier et de demain: au service du Général de Gaulle, Paris: Plon, 1973 (vol.1 of memoirs) Hoffmann, Stanley and Inge Hoffmann, De Gaulle: artiste de la politique, Paris: Seuil, 1973 Lacouture, Jean, De Gaulle, 3 vols, Paris: Seuil, 1984–86 (biography); vol. 1 as De Gaulle, the Rebel: 1890–1944, translated by Patrick O’Brien, London: Harvill Press, and New York: Norton, 1990; vols 2–3 combined as De Gaulle, the Ruler: 1945–1970, translated by Alan Sheridan, London: Harvill Press, 1991 Malraux, André, Les Chênes qu’on abat …, Paris: Gallimard, 1971; as Fallen Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle, translated by Irene Clephane, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971; New York: Holt Rinehart Winston, 1972 Monnet, Jean, Mémoires, Paris: Fayard, 1976

Gay Life Writing see Lesbian and Gay Writings

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Gender and Life Writing “Why hath this woman writ her own life?” So asks Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, who is widely credited with writing the first secular autobiography in English by a woman, published in 1656. Cavendish wrote this short autobiography before embarking upon a much longer work of biography about her husband, the Duke of Newcastle, published in 1667. Her question is one that resonates today in considerations of women’s life writing, a form of writing that has been obscured for many years in scholarly work on life writing. In traditional auto/biography criticism, women have not been the expected or assumed subject of auto/biographical life writing; critics such as James Olney (Metaphors of Self, 1972) and William Spengemann (The Forms of Autobiography, 1980), for example, do not consider women’s life writing at all in their seminal works. As Bella Brodzki and Celeste Schenck note in their introduction to Life /Lines: Theorizing Women’s Autobiography: The (masculine) tradition of autobiography beginning with Augustine had taken as its first premise the mirroring capacity of the autobiographer: his universality, his representativeness, his role as spokesman for the community … No mirror of her era, the female autobiographer takes as a given that selfhood is mediated. Traditional auto/biography has taken for its definition male writing about the self, usually including celebrations of public success, while also, following the pattern of the Bildungsroman, dealing with the development of the individual. Georges Gusdorf, for example, emphasizes an individualistic concept of the self in his analysis of autobiography. Women’s concept of selfhood, however, is often far from individualistic in this manner, as many feminist auto/biography critics have noted. Drawing upon psychoanalytic theories of women’s development, feminist critics have shown how women often have a far more relational sense of selfhood, in which their identity is felt to be intertwined with that of others: mothers, friends, lovers, or children. Similarly, women’s identity may be experienced collectively, in relation to a whole community. For example, in her autobiography Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982), African American writer Audre Lorde combines elements of autobiography, myth, and history in order to tell her own story, which is also the story of the women who are her “Zami”, a Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and as lovers. Another example is Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), a narrative about Angelou’s youth in the American south of the 1930s. Angelou conceives of her own sense of self in relation to the black community that raises her and nurtures her, with particular focus upon her family members. Critics focusing on women’s autobiographical practices have expanded the definitions of autobiography used by traditional critics to account for the wider variety of forms of life writing by women, to include letters, diaries, journals, and memoirs, as well as fictionalized forms of life writing that include novels, short stories, and poems. For example, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short novella, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) about a nameless woman driven mad by enforced confinement after the birth of her child, has been read as a parable about female

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selfhood that is based upon Gilman’s own experiences, although it is encoded in fictional form. Particular attention has been placed upon Gilman’s extended use of the theme of imprisonment, a theme to be found in many other semi-fictionalized forms of women’s life writing, such as Sylvia Plath’s autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar (1963), or the poetry of Emily Dickinson. This theme of imprisonment is reflected in the form chosen by these women writers: for various reasons, they each felt that their life stories needed to be encoded in some way. Recent critical work on women’s life writing has therefore both questioned inherited critical definitions of what constitutes life writing, and sought to enlarge the women’s life-writing canon. Women’s life writing is often fragmented, rather than chronologically developmental, in line with the fragmentary nature of both memory and selfhood. Celebrated male life writing, such as the confessions of Augustine (written 397–400) or Rousseau (1782–89), or The Education of Henry Adams (published privately, 1907), does not admit as much disjunction in the process of recollection, but instead presents a more seamless narrative, as well as conveying a sense of the writer as spokesman for his society. In contrast, texts such as the collection of Virginia Woolf’s autobiographical writings, Moments of Being (1976), Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1976), or Audre Lorde’s Zami, are episodic in nature, and tend not to make observations or claims in the name of their wider societies. Moments of Being, for example, is a fragmentary memoir corresponding to Woolf’s life between the death of her mother in 1895 to the death of her father in 1904. It does not cover her whole life, and it takes the form of snapshots of consciousness, or so-called moments of being, that Woolf deemed significant. For many years, women’s life writing was absent from the public arena of printed texts, and many women life writers have noted the lack of role models for them to emulate. In her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), African American writer Zora Neale Hurston noted the dearth of similar writing for her to use as a model. The genre of public, first-person autobiography is extensively imbricated in a Western, Judeo-Christian tradition of writing about the self, and it is unsurprising that so many non-Western women have chosen alternative ways of writing their lives. For example, the Chinese American writer Jade Snow Wong wrote her life story, Fifth Chinese Daughter (1950), in the third person, because, as she notes in the introduction: The third-person-singular style in which I told my story was rooted in Chinese literary form (reflecting cultural disregard for the individual) … The submergence of the individual is literally practiced. In written Chinese, prose or poetry, the word “I” almost never appears, but is understood … Even written in English, an “I” book by a Chinese would seem outrageously immodest to anyone raised in the spirit of Chinese propriety. Another example is Latin American women’s testimonios, which often have plural subjects, in contrast to the singular nature of much Western, male, autobiography. Despite its title, Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú (1983; I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala), is the most famous of these. In it, Menchú notes, “I’d like to stress that it’s not only my life, it’s

also the testimony of my people.” Yet another instance is Native American women’s autobiography. Written autobiography is not an indigenous form for Native Americans; traditionally, Native Americans rendered their lives in the form of shamanic songs recording epiphanic life moments. However, some Native American women have seen the publication of their own autobiographies, as mediated by anthropologists or ethnographers; an example is Maria Chona, the subject of Ruth Underhill’s Autobiography of a Papago Woman (1936). This text is extensively affected by the intervention of Underhill, who organized and edited the text herself. In such cases, the cultural differences between the writing and the “written” female subjects are so extensive that the autobiographical subjects’ voices may be partly submerged by the traditional requirements of the written autobiographical form. The history of women’s secondary social status has tended to mark their life writings with a conscious exploration of the issues of gender roles. More recently, however, male life writers have turned their attention to masculinity as a subject for investigation. The British writer Blake Morrison’s And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1993) and American Philip Roth’s Patrimony (1991) both deal with a new sense of manhood after the experience of caring for their dying fathers, while Irish writer Brian Keenan reflects on the meaning of male friendship and violence across British, Irish, and Lebanese cultures in his prison memoir, An Evil Cradling (1993). The recent flourishing of autobiographies of transsexuals offers perhaps an even more radical view of the relationship between gender and life writing. As Jay Prosser argues, autobiography is central to the transsexual experience, both in terms of the personal narrative of transgendered identification as required by clinicians and produced in medical case histories, and in terms of the strong (if paradoxical) impulse to testify to the conversion in the form of published autobiographies. If Jan Morris’s Conundrum: An Extraordinary Narrative of Transsexualism (1974) is the most celebrated and the most literary of these, others, such as Nancy Hunt’s Mirror Image: The Odyssey of a Male-to-Female Transsexual (1978), Renée Richards’s Second Serve: The Renée Richards’s Story (1983), Raymond Thompson’s What Took You So Long? A Girl’s Journey into Manhood (1995), Paul Hewitt’s A Self-Made Man: The Diary of Man Born in a Woman’s Body (1995), and Leslie Feinberg’s autofiction Stone Butch Blues: A Novel (1993) provide challenging examples of the function of life writing in constructing and embodying gender. Helena Grice See also Criticism and Theory since the 1950s: Feminism; Fatherhood and Life Writing; Motherhood and Life Writing; Women’s Autobiographies; Women’s Biographies; Women’s Diaries and Journals; Women’s Letters

Further Reading Anderson, Linda R., Women and Autobiography in the Twentieth Century: Remembered Futures, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, and New York: Prentice Hall, 1997 Benstock, Shari (editor), The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writings, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988 Brodzki, Bella and Celeste Schenck (editors), Life /Lines: Theorizing Women’s Autobiography, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988 Bruss, Elizabeth W., Autobiographical Acts: The Changing Situation

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of a Literary Genre, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976 Danahay, Martin, A Community of One: Masculine Autobiography and Autonomy in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993 Gilmore, Leigh, Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women’s SelfRepresentation, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1994 Haaken, Janice, Pillar of Salt: Gender, Memory, and the Perils of Looking Back, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998 Heilbrun, Carolyn G., Writing a Woman’s Life, New York: Norton, 1988; London: Women’s Press, 1989 Jelinek, Estelle C. (editor), Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980 Jelinek, Estelle C., The Tradition of Women’s Autobiography: From Antiquity to the Present, Boston: Twayne, 1986 Lionnet, Françoise, Postcolonial Representations: Women, Literature, Identity, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1995 Long, Judy, Telling Women’s Lives: Subject / Narrator / Reader / Text, New York: New York University Press, 1999 Morgan, Janice and Colette T. Hall (editors), Redefining Autobiography in Twentieth-Century Women’s Fiction: An Essay Collection, New York: Garland, 1991 Prosser, Jay, Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998 Smith, Sidonie, A Poetics of Women’s Autobiography: Marginality and the Fictions of Self-Representation, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987 Smith, Sidonie, Subjectivity, Identity, and the Body: Women’s Autobiographical Practices in the Twentieth Century, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993 Stanley, Liz, The Auto/biographical I: The Theory and Practice of Feminist Auto/biography, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1992 Stanton, Domna C. (editor), The Female Autograph: Theory and Practice of Autobiography from the Tenth to the Twentieth Century, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987

Genealogy Genealogy locates and authenticates identity by constructing a family tree of descent. Its central concept is the “pedigree” of ancestral evidence based on documents and generational history. Records of family information include pedigree charts, compiled data on generational history, correspondence, ancestor lists, record abstracts, and collections of documents. Family charts, videotapes, and photo scrapbooks are used to memorialize ancestry. This essay describes the methodology and institution of genealogy, using the mythical “melting pot” of the United States as an example. It considers the situation of peoples historically disadvantaged in constructing genealogies, and contrasts how genealogy and autobiography frame origin and descent. Genealogical method employs various apparatuses for documenting the pedigree: journals, archives, societies, certified researchers, how-to books, and indexes. In its International Genealogical Index, the largest microfiche genealogical record in the world, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints lists the births, baptisms, and marriages of more than 220 million deceased persons worldwide. Bibliographies organized by ethnicity, place, archive, or source provide information on reference books about immigration and refugee settlements. Internet resources such as “Cyndi’s list” provide a cross-referenced index to more than 50,000 sites containing genealogical information

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(www.cyndislist.com); the “ancestry world tree” database has more than 11 million names. Genealogical manuals suggest the “how” and “why” of tracing origins in social life. In the United States archival resources include the National Archives and Records Administration, the Family History Library of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, with more than 1500 centres worldwide, the holdings of the Library of Congress, the Newberry Library, and the New York Public Library, more than 9000 historical and genealogical societies, and numerous journals. Researchers use civil records including birth records, marriage certificates and registrations, divorce decrees, and death records, and religious records on baptism, marriage, and death, federal census and military records, passenger lists of ships, city telephone directories, and obituaries. Federal, state, and local censuses, though available, are not always accurate because before 1850 the names of slaves, women, and children were often omitted or reported incorrectly. Genealogists seek verifiable family history and resist the incursions of “subjective” autobiographical storytelling. In every sense conservative, genealogy mistrusts the notion of the self-made man or woman. “How-to’s” advise the genealogist to resist any personal connection to the “object” of study, whose autobiographical performance of talking back, holding back, or fantasizing must be discouraged. Researchers are urged to verify details and to avoid “hearsay” as compromising accuracy. Research methodology demands the careful evaluation of evidence and the use of reliable eyewitness or proximate accounts. Diaries, for example, are considered to be too idiosyncratic, although Suzanne Bunkers (1997) argues for their value as a genealogical resource. Genealogical research is often done to validate descendency for membership purposes (e.g. in the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Society of Mayflower Descendents or the Society of Colonial Wars). Thus it is used to recover a historically erased past and to inspire national or patriotic feeling as the individual or group makes a “blood” connection to collective history. Despite the objectivity it claims, genealogical method has functioned as an exclusionary practice for the historically dispossessed, including African Americans, Native Americans, and formerly colonized subjects, in not addressing histories of enslavement, colonization, and appropriation; and for the historically invisible – women, rootless adventurers, orphans, the adopted. During the colonial conquest of indigenous peoples, knowledge of descent lines was threatened when new names were assigned; this jeopardized the oral genealogies that had been preserved by the recitations of griots or taletellers over the centuries. Migration also poses difficulties for immigrants and displaced people, such as the survivor children of Holocaust families, those whose records were destroyed (e.g. in the burning of public records in Dublin in 1922), persecuted Jews whose names were modified during migration, and religious dissidents. For example, Maxine Hong Kingston’s family narrative of descent and preservation is reshaped by migration in The Woman Warrior (1976) and China Men (1980). For these “others” of genealogy, researching their origins can be difficult. One tension at the heart of genealogical activity is that European migration to new worlds preserved some of the genealogical networks at the cost of appropriating many indigenous heritages. A case in point is that of Native Americans, who were either

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fully or partially omitted in federal censuses before 1890 and could not file wills until 1910. The annual rolls done by the federal government after 1885, when most Native Americans had been forced onto reservations, often included several different names, making genealogical tracing difficult. Many Native American autobiographers “write back” by asserting blood as memory, “re-membering” themselves to tribes and practices maintained in oral storytelling, as Chadwick Allen suggests. N. Scott Momaday in the novel House Made of Dawn (1968), Janet Campbell Hale in Bloodlines: Odyssey of a Native Daughter (1993), and Leslie Marmon Silko in Storyteller (1981) use autobiography to embed individual identity in a collective network and reawaken transgenerational memory of lost pasts and lands. The Australian aboriginal autobiographer Sally Morgan’s My Place (1987) is a similar quest for expropriated origins. But although these narratives trace kin networks, they would not be considered official genealogies. In making genealogical enquiries African Americans and those of mixed racial ancestry confront a history of slave trading, bondage, and the destruction of the family. Because slaves were legally treated as property, investigators need access to wills, tax records, and manumission statements. Recent responses to this historical dispossession have traced imaginative genealogies, what Jerome Bruner calls narrative constructions of life history, in autobiographical novels such as Michelle Cliff’s Abeng (1984), Maryse Condé’s Moi, Tituba, sorcière … noire de Salem (1986; I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem), and Shirlee Taylor Haizlip’s The Sweeter the Juice (1994). One influential inspiration for imaginative genealogy without documented pedigree was Alex Haley’s Roots (1976), a cultural and publishing phenomenon that sold more than 12 million copies, was translated into 37 languages, and was made into a television series. Haley traced his ancestry to a West African named Kunta Kinte, who was born in 1750 and sent in a slave ship to the American colony. He stressed the need for genealogical legitimation in order to redress social relations, and called Roots “a symbolic saga of all African-descent people”. After Haley’s death his claims to authentic genealogy were challenged. But by making genealogical record into a “talking book”, Haley reformed its detached objectivity and revised family history as a transformative experience for historically invisible subjects. As William Boelhower (1991) has suggested, the “melting pot” culture of America needs both the methods and the fictions of genealogy to contain and counteract the pluralistic character of its members’ lives. While the autobiography critic Louis Renza argues that “Documented or not, biographical and historical materials are intersubjective through and through”, autobiography and genealogy clearly address lineage and origin from different locations and for different ends. For the genealogist, family history requires documentation and unambiguous attribution; for the autobiographer, it evokes and gives voice to a collective past that authorizes the subject’s history. For biography, in its interest in kinship and descent lines, the social contexts of individual lives, and influence on future generations, genealogical accuracy is of course crucial; but autobiography has a more vexed relationship to fact and is often ambivalent about referentiality. Wanting to retain a referential dimension for autobiography, yet concerned with “the agency of the imagination” and “the individual’s constructed relation to history”, Paul John Eakin

(1992) has argued that autobiography represents the subject’s inscription in history. If autobiography is reconceived as “the individual’s experience of ‘historicity’”, it furnishes a more extensive, “truer” account of lived history than documented records. Autobiographical writing makes a “sustaining structure of relation” to the past, while genealogy maps only lineage. Thus, autobiography is multi-directionally located at a nexus of past, the retrospective chronicle, and future, the wishes, dreams, and aspirations of the subject-in-process. It liberates possible identities from past inscription. While genealogy is indispensable to biography, its method and aims may be sharply distinguished from those of autobiography. Genealogy recovers the recorded past, while autobiography articulates an active subjectivity. Genealogical pedigree can be verified through records; autobiographical narration depends on personal and collective memory to articulate the writing subject. Genealogy legitimates social status by the production of a pedigree; autobiography may dispute and revise the “official” past by interweaving differing memories of family members. For example, Mary McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957) exploits the multiple, contradictory memories in photographed childhood events among members of her family. Norma Cantú in Canícula (1995) examines snapshots to probe Mexican American cultural boundaries. The pressure of genealogical imperatives compels autobiographical writing in The Education of Henry Adams (published privately, 1907), where Adams insists on his differences even as the last of his line. Benjamin Franklin recites his English genealogy at the start of his autobiography, but emphasizes throughout how, in his inventiveness, he is self-made. Finally, while genealogy’s protocol is fixed, autobiographical storytelling is emergent and incomplete, holding individual and official versions of descent and consent in productive tension. Julia Watson Further Reading Adams, Henry, The Education of Henry Adams, edited by Ira B. Nadel, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 (first published, 1907) Allen, Chadwick, “Blood (and) Memory”, American Literature, 71/1 (1999): 93–116 Boelhower, William, “The Making of Ethnic Autobiography” in American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect, edited by Paul John Eakin, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991 Bruner, Jerome, “Life as Narrative”, Social Research, 54 (1987): 11–32 Bunkers, Suzanne, “Illegitimacy and Intercultural Lifewriting”, a /b: Auto/biography Studies, 12/2 (1997): 188–202 Cantú, Norma E., Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995 Cliff, Michelle, Abeng, Trumansburg, New York: Crossing Press, 1984 Condé, Maryse, Moi, Tituba, sorcière … noire de Salem, Paris: Mercure de France, 1986; as I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, translated by Richard Philcox, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992 Doane, Gilbert H. and James B. Bell, Searching for Your Ancestors: The How and Why of Genealogy, 6th edition, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992 (1st edition edited by Bell, 1937) Eakin, Paul John, Touching the World: Reference in Autobiography, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992 Finnegan, Ruth and Michael Drake, From Family Tree to Family History, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press / Open University, 1994 Franklin, Benjamin, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography: An

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Authoritative Text, Backgrounds, Criticism, edited by Leo Lemay and P.M. Zall, New York and London: Norton, 1986 Haizlip, Shirlee Taylor, The Sweeter the Juice: A Family Memoir in Black and White, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994 Hale, Janet Campbell, Bloodlines: Odyssey of a Native Daughter, New York: Random House, 1993 Haley, Alex, Roots: The Saga of an American Family, New York: Doubleday, 1976 Kingston, Maxine Hong, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts, New York: Knopf, 1976; London: Allen Lane, 1977 Kingston, Maxine Hong, China Men, New York: Knopf, 1980; London: Pan, 1981 McCarthy, Mary, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1957 Momaday, N. Scott, House Made of Dawn, New York: Harper and Row, 1968; London: Gollancz, 1969 Morgan, Sally, My Place, South Fremantle, Western Australia: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1987; New York: Seaver, 1988 Renza, Louis, “The Veto of the Imagination: A Theory of Autobiography” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by James Olney, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Research Outline: United States, Salt Lake City: Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 1988 Silko, Leslie Marmon, Storyteller, New York: Seaver, 1981 Taylor, Helen, “Everybody’s Search for Roots: Alex Haley and the Black and White Atlantic” in her Circling Dixie: Contemporary Southern Culture through a Transatlantic Lens, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000 Watson, Julia, “Ordering the Family: Genealogy as Autobiographical Pedigree” in Getting a Life: Everyday Uses of Autobiography, edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996

Germany, Austria, Switzerland: Medieval and Renaissance Life Writing Any attempt to identify autobiographical texts from the Middle Ages is faced with the difficulty that most medieval writers lacked interest in providing much information about themselves. Even Augustine’s (354–430) Confessiones (Confessions), probably the most influential life writing of the entire Middle Ages and Renaissance, were not intended as an autobiography in the modern sense of the word, but rather as a literary model of the author’s path toward conversion to Christianity. Whereas clerical authors such as Othlo of Emmeran (c.1010–c.1072), Ratherius of Liège (c.887–974), Guibert of Nogent (1055– 1125), and Peter Abélard (1097–1142) composed famous Latin autobiographical texts, in vernacular literature comparable efforts to follow their example were not made until the 15th century. Nevertheless, some of the greatest writers and poets from the German Middle Ages have left many traces that allow us at least to glimpse a few of their personality traits and typical characteristics hidden behind the narrator figures. How far these literary allusions conform to historical fact, however, remains very uncertain. Heinrich von Veldeke (second half of the 12th century) is named after a small town in the Belgian province of Limburg. He obviously knew Latin and French, apart from his native Limburg dialect, and informs us at one point in the text of his epic Eneit that the uncompleted manuscript was lent to the Landgrave of Thuringia and then stolen by his brother in 1175. The manuscript was returned to him only nine years later so he

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could complete the work around 1185. Hartmann von Aue states in the prologue to his novella Der arme Heinrich (c.1170– 80; Lord Henry) that he knew how to read and write, but otherwise there are practically no further indications about his identity. Similarly, in the prologue to his Iwein (c.1200) the poet refers to himself and stresses his literacy skills, but he does not reveal any concrete facts about his background or personal life. Wolfram von Eschenbach (c.1170–c.1220) informs us in his Parzival (115, 11) about his rank as a knight; claims with tongue in cheek that he is illiterate (115, 27); mentions his patrons, the Count of Wertheim (184, 4) and the Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia (Willehalm 3, 8ff.); and refers to his audience, the Bavarians, as his own people (Parzival 121, 7). Repeatedly Wolfram draws parallels between the literary protagonists and his personal life, underscoring his material poverty, and compares the fictional heroes with his own family, such as his wife (216, 26ff.) and his daughter (Willehalm 33, 24ff.). We can be certain that Wolfram was a very self-conscious poet, proud of his own accomplishments, but he never fully let down the mask covering his autobiographical self. Gottfried von Strassburg, composer of the famous Tristan romance (c.1210), did not even include his own name in the text – it was mentioned only by later writers – and refers to his patron simply by means of an acrostic; otherwise no self-references can be detected in his famous love story. Nevertheless, in his prologue Gottfried is very specific about his values and ideals, the intentions he had for his romance, and how he researched it far and wide to find the true story about the two lovers. In contrast to all his forerunners, Ulrich von Liechtenstein represents a curious exception with his Frauendienst (written c.1240–50; Service of Ladies), which seems to be built on an autobiography and yet turns out to be more or less a literary account of Ulrich’s chivalric adventures in the service of his lady. However, the differences are not clear cut because the biography and the fictional narrative are synthesized to create a new forum for poetic reflections on the interaction between chivalry and courtly love. Contemporary to Ulrich, many 13thcentury German mystical writers such as Gertrud the Great, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Margarete Ebner, but also male mystics such as Heinrich Seuse and Heinrich Tauler, produced remarkable literary testimonies of their personal visions and revelations in which their own self is refracted in their encounter with the Godhead. The less these mystics placed value on their own identities and tried to merge with the divinity, the more they reintroduced their selves into their texts by means of transforming themselves into God’s mouthpiece. Their lives and metaphysical experiences emerge in their writings as models for the believers to follow and to strive toward the Godhead. The German Emperor Charles IV (1346–78) of the House of Luxemburg produced an extensive vita, but not only did he rely on Latin, he also mostly refrained from examining his own self in subjective terms, instead reporting the military and political events in his life. The first medieval German poet who seriously made an attempt to create an autobiographical discourse was the South Tyrolean Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376/77–1445). In many of his songs he focuses on himself and describes in surprisingly realistic details the most important events and developments in his life. In his song “Es fügt sich” (no. 18: “It happened”) Oswald narrates how he left home when he was only ten years

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old and travelled throughout the world without having any resources, which forced him, although he was of aristocratic origin, to work as messenger, cook, stable boy, oarsman, musician, clown, merchant, and eventually as translator and diplomat in the service of Emperor Sigismund. Nevertheless, being primarily interested in entertaining his audience, Oswald mostly ignores politics and religion and instead focuses on his personal mistakes, follies, and errors, then turns the attention to his erotic adventures, and concludes with a self-admonishment to settle down, to marry, and to strive for wisdom. In many of his songs the poet reflects on his international travel experiences and on his meetings with all kinds of royalties (e.g. nos. 41 and 44). In other songs Oswald informs us about his marriage with Margareta of Schwangau (nos. 48, 68, 73, 76, etc.) and explores to a considerable extent his emotional and sexual relationship with her. Similarly, the Styrian poet Hugo von Montfort (1357– 1423) composed a number of love songs addressing his three wives (no. 23, no. 25, no. 38); occasionally he also mentions his education and early experiences (no. 5), and once he takes stock of his entire poetic output (no. 31). Moreover, the song-poet Michel Beheim (1416–c.1475) made serious attempts to incorporate references to his own life in many of his songs, such as in “Von meiner Merfart” (no. 327; “Of my sea journey”), a poetic account of his journey to Norway. True life writing in the modern sense of the word, however, did not emerge before the late Middle Ages when merchants and tradesmen created their first chronicles, travelogues, and autobiographies. Initially conceived as business letters and historical accounts, the documents produced by members of such families as Tölner, Vicko of Geldersen, Wittenborg, and Ruland in the various north German cities during the 14th century soon contained important personal information. The Augsburg citizen Hans Rem (1340–96) laid the foundation for a family chronicle, which subsequently his son Lucas Rem (1481– 1542) expanded considerably and continued until the end of his life. In his “Puechel von meim Geslechet und von Abentewr” [1349–1407; Little Book of My Family and Adventures] Ulman Stromer not only presents a family tree, but also mentions the many relatives and acquaintances who were of importance to him. Other contemporaries producing this kind of life writing were Erasmus Schürstab (d. 1461) with his report about the war between Nuremberg and Margrave Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg, and Anton Tucher with his Haushaltsbuch written between 1507 and 1517 [Household book]. The Viennese medical doctor Johann Tichtel (d. 1500) wrote down many personal comments in a variety of printed books about his life during the years 1472, and 1477 to 1495, mentioning his income, family events, and occasionally also political issues. At one point he also integrated a detailed account of how his body reacted to an infection. Christoph von Thein (1455–1516) used the last pages of his ledger book to present the history of his family, to talk about many business dealings, gifts received and handed out, and to discuss his business transactions. Bernhard Rorbach, a Frankfurt citizen (1446–82), combines life writing with a listing of his debts, gains, and other monetary dealings; his son Job (1469–1502) continued with this work until his death. In Hildesheim Hennig Brandis (1471–1528) composed a family chronicle almost entirely focused on the financial developments of the family business. Religious motifs also played an important role in the composition of family chroni-

cles, such as in the case of Nicolaus Muffel’s Gedächtnissen und Schrift [Memoirs and Report] written in 1468 and 1469 in Nuremberg, just months before his execution as a thief of public property. The first real diary as such was produced by Emperor Frederic III, who from 1437 regularly jotted down bills, economic notes, verses, recipes, epigrams, and then also his personal reflections. Bishop Ulrich Putsch of Brixen, Tyrol (d. 1437) created a diary as well, but composed it almost entirely in Latin, and only occasionally fell back to his native German. The Augusburg writer Burkard Zink (c.1396–1474/75) inserted a lengthy personal account of his life in his city chronicle from 1466 in which he takes us from his childhood to his old age, concentrating on his marriage, children, and the relationship with his environment. This text might be considered the foundation of the German autobiography as he was the first to discuss his entire life in a vivid and detailed manner. In the 15th century a number of knights, such as Georg von Ehingen (1428–1508), Christof von Thein (1453–after 1520), and Andreas von Lapiz (c.1435–after 1500) produced remarkable reports about their chivalric experiences, their travels, and involvement in wars and tournaments. In Nuremberg Hans Tucher (1428–91) composed an extensive travelogue about his experiences in Palestine and on the Sinai peninsula, and many other Tucher family members also wrote personal chronicles. Travel accounts were also created by Bernhard of Breidenbach (d. 1497) in Mainz and Felix Fabri (1441/42–1502) in Zurich. In 1488 Ludwig von Diesbach began with his extensive autobiography after his wife had died, and continued his personal reflections until 1518. Already in 1450 the German-Hungarian chambermaid Helene Kottannerin had produced a highly significant account of her life at the court and how she stole, on behalf of her lady, the Queen Elisabeth, the Hungarian royal crown to secure the succession of the Habsburgian house in Hungary. Considering all these life writings, it is obvious that the distinction between historiography, religious teachings, chronicle literature, and life writing did not really exist at that time. From the 16th century an increasing flood of autobiographical writings was produced, many of which pursued specific moral and didactic purposes and served, so to speak, as memorial literature for the authors’ descendants. Johannes Soest (1448–1506) still relied on verse for his autobiography, but this was to change very quickly. The Stralsund merchant and mayor Bartholomäus Sastrow (1520–1603), for instance, discussed in his prose narrative, written in 1595 and apparently based on a diary, his childhood and youth, his education and a trip to Rome, and political events at the Imperial Diet in Augsburg in 1547/48; then he turned to his marriage and how he settled in Stralsund and was involved in various trials. Sastrow specifically addressed his children, but also a public readership that might have been interested in the history of the city. Whereas the medieval and early-modern autobiographies did not yet reflect personal emotions, this was to change in the 16th century. The Nuremberg patrician Christoph Fürer lamented the death of his two children in his Lebenserinnerungen [1520; Life Memories]. In the same year the painter and engraver Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) began with his remarkable Tagebuch [Diary] in which he reported about his travel to the Netherlands and modern-day Belgium, commenting on many contemporary artists, buildings, museums, church rituals, the

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crowning of Emperor Charles V, and so forth, in addition to a detailed list of all his expenditures. Many so-called Zuchtbüchel or “disciplinary books” were created as teaching tools for children and also as family chronicles, such as Sebastian Schärtlin von Burtenbach’s Rebus gestibus [Events], begun in 1518, and Joseph von Lamberg’s family book from c.1550. The Cologne city councilman and wine merchant Hermann Weinsberg (1518–98) filled more than 4000 folio pages with his memorial, reflecting upon life in the city and its surroundings. Under the influence of the Reformation many life writings were created demonstrating the new religious orientation, such as Georg Kirchmair’s (c.1480–1554) Denkwürdigkeiten [Noteworthy Events], Thomas Platter’s autobiography, written in 1572, and Daniel Greiser’s (1504–91) Historia und Beschreibunge des gantzen Lauffs vnd Lebens from 1587 [History and Description of the Entire Course of Life]. Albrecht Classen Further Reading Classen, Albrecht, “Autobiography as a Late Medieval Phenomenon”, Medieval Perspectives (Southeastern Medieval Association), 3/1 (1988): 89–104 Classen, Albrecht, Die autobiographische Lyrik des europäischen Spätmittelalters, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991 Classen, Albrecht, “Binary Oppositions of Self and God in Mechthild von Magdeburg”, Studies in Spirituality, 7 (1997): 79–98 Haas, Alois M., Kunst rechter Gelassenheit: Themen und Schwerpunkte von Heinrich Seuses Mystik, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1995 Misch, Georg, Geschichte der Autobiographie, vol. 4, parts 1–2, edited by Leo Delfoss, Frankfurt: Schulte-Bulmke, 1967–69 Pafenberg, Stephanie B., “Subjektivität und Skepsis in deutschen Schriften der frühen Neuzeit: Privatchronik und Autobiographie” in Text im Kontext: Anleitung zur Lektüre deutscher Texte der frühen Neuzeit, edited by Alexander Schwarz and Laure Abplanalp, Bern: Peter Lang, 1997 Rein, Adolf, “Über die Entwicklung der Selbstbiographie im ausgehenden deutschen Mittelalter”, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 14 (1919): 193–213 Rupprich, Hans, Die deutsche Literatur vom späten Mittelalter bis zum Baroque, Munich: Beck, 1970 Velten, Hans Rudolf, Das selbst geschriebene Leben: eine Studie zur deutschen Autobiographie im 16. Jahrhundert, Heidelberg: Winter, 1995 Wachinger, Burghart, “Autorschaft und Überlieferung” in Autorentypen, edited by Walter Haug and B. Wachinger, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1991 Wenzel, Horst, Die Autobiographie des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, 3 vols, Munich: Fink, 1980

Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 17thand 18th-Century Auto/biography Sixteenth-century German literary culture had witnessed a new discovery and articulation of the self through European humanism and the German Reformation of Luther. However, the Baroque culture of the 17th century represented a discontinuation of this development. Humanists such as Erasmus, More, and Montaigne had placed the individual within a cult of identity and personality, characterized by a new aristocracy of the spirit and a nobility of the pen. For Luther, a new religious

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self – capable of reading the Bible and rooted in the personal experience of faith – had become the sine qua non for his critique of Catholicism and for his defence of a new, reformed Christian community. In contrast, in the intellectual climate of the Baroque, identity dissolved into ruptures, fragments, and eccentricities, as, politically, the Thirty Years’ War gave way to a Germany of numerous sovereign territories, absolutist rule, and the Counter-reformation. The resulting culture of court and church was personified by a sense of self torn between chaos and order, worldly vanitas and spiritual redemption, ultimate truth and passing illusion. In such circumstances, the Baroque self, as expressed in the writings of the period, was defined by its role as allegory, as ideal type demonstrating order and stoic will in the face of ever-changing appearance, earthly temptation, and the meaningless rotations of fortune’s wheel. One notable exception is the best-known prose work of the 17th century, Jakob von Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus (1669), the first book in German with many autobiographical overtones. In the tradition of the picaro, this complex work follows the adventures of the rogue-hero as he survives the perverted illusions of fortuna – here, the murderous chaos of the Thirty Years’ War – through continuous self-metamorphosis until he reaches the full realization of the world’s vanitas and the personal solace and private utopia of the hermit’s life. Eighteenth-century German cultural movements gave notions of the self ever greater priority. The bourgeois self was constituted as the central principle of rationalism, sentimentalism, and the early-Romantic movement of the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress). The new notion of the self passed through distinct stages in its progress toward fully autonomous individuality. The first stage is perhaps best represented by Kant’s essay “Was ist Aufklärung?” (1784; “What is Enlightenment?”). Looking back to the dominant rationalism of the first half of the century, Kant answered the titular query of his essay with the suggestion that Enlightenment is the personal and intellectual journey from self-imposed ignorance and innocence to knowledge and its uses, hence his call for sapere aude (the courage to know). Through reason, rationalism, and critical judgement, the self (Selbst) would become independent (selbstständig). At the root of such independence – idealized in the utopian teleology of the new bourgeois hero of Daniel Defoe’s fictional Robinson Crusoe – lay the classical-humanistic programme of literarycultural education (Bildung). In the second stage, the cultural experience of the subjective is intensified by the sentimentalism of the second half of the century, particularly after the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s writings. A combination of psychology and empiricism, the sentimental cult of the self understood subjectivity as inclusive of the irrational and emotional, the eccentric and the neurotic (i.e. melancholy, depression, hypochondria, loneliness, alienation). Here, significant influences from England must be mentioned: Shaftesbury argued for a neo-platonic philosophy that combined the morally good and the aesthetically beautiful; Edward Young in his Night Thoughts (1745) pondered upon the personal mysteries of “life, death, and immortality”; and Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey (1768) offered a model for a personal experience of the world based upon the culture of feeling and sentiment. A third stage, delineated by the Sturm und Drang movement of the 1760s and 1770s, further radicalized this experience of

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private subjectivity and public bourgeois identity. Variously influenced by Shakespeare, Homer, and Rousseau, conceptions of the unlimited self were further defined and refined in terms of instinct, intuition, historicism, folklore, mythology, and the cult of the genius. The above three stages of the conception of identity in the 18th century found their literary expression overwhelmingly in the form of the autobiography. Initial impulses for autobiographical writing emerged from the religious movement of Pietism, whose mystical communitarianism posited a Christian subjectivity and self-consciousness apart from doctrine, dogma, and church. Following in the steps of Augustine’s Confessiones (Confessions), Pietists like the founder Philip Jakob Spener (1635–1705) (Pia desideria, 1680), Hermann Francke (1663– 1727), Nikolaus, Graf von Zinzendorf (1700–60), and Christian Scriver (1629–93) (Seelenschatz, 1691; Treasury of Souls) emphasized the formative and inspirational roles of autobiographies as instruments for conversion and spiritual growth. Pietism would prove to be such a central influence on 18thcentury German autobiography, because by emphasizing selfobservation and introspection as the means to “listening for God”, it developed key insights into psychology. The autobiographies of sentimentalism and Sturm und Drang continued a secular religion of the self, an acute observation and diagnosis of subjectivity akin to literary psychotherapy whose major international model was Rousseau’s Confessions (1782– 89). In an era long before the science of psychology and the practice of psychotherapy, autobiographical life writing functioned as a vehicle for various modes of human understanding, in that their writing and reading afforded possibilities of exorcism, catharsis, and identification for both writer and reader. Following Rousseau’s rationale for autobiography as “making the soul transparent”, through intense introspection, filtering the external world through the psyche, and projecting the self onto the world, Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740–1817) wrote of himself in the third person in his Heinrich Stillings Jugend [1777; Heinrich Stilling’s Youth], as he traced his rise from labourer to scholar, to author. The autobiography serves to justify its author’s hyper-subjectivity and sensibility as it analyses his social development. Similarly, the two autobiographical novels Anton Reiser (1785–90) by Karl Philip Moritz (1756–93) and Lebensgeschichte und natürliche Ebenheuer des Armen Mannes im Tockenburg [1789; The Life and Adventures of the Poor Man from Tockenburg] by Ulrich Bräker (1735–98), observe and analyse the psyche of their author-narrators. Carrying an implicit criticism of 18th-century society, neither work presents a development of the subject. On the contrary, both are pathologies of failure and alienation resulting from repeated ruptures between the individual and the world. Only autobiographical writing enabled the authors to survive psychically. Following the epistolary tradition of Samuel Richardson and Rousseau’s La nouvelle Héloise (1761), Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774; The Sorrows of Young Werther) is an epistolary and autobiographical novel. Goethe brought his experiences and crises – his love for Lotte Buff, a woman already betrothed, the suicide of a fellow writer (K.W. Jerusalem) for reasons of unrequited love – to his writing and so, in effect, wrote himself free of his own suicidal feelings. The ensuing tragic novel recounts the futile attempts by Werther to live

naturally and authentically: “I turn into myself and find a whole world”. That the external, social world is unable and unwilling to recognize his “genius” guarantees the subsequent tragedy of Werther’s suicide. The biographies of the 18th century are found mainly in the new literary form of the familiar essay. Notable among them are the biographical essays of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742– 99) on Captain Cook, Benjamin Franklin, and the Montgolfier brothers, which focused on the personalities and their accomplishments, so as to render them models of late-Enlightenment thought and action. In addition, Sturm und Drang writers produced biographies such as Johann Gottfried Herder’s and the young Goethe’s famous works on G.E. Lessing and Shakespeare, while Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) emphasized the Romantic nature of his subjects in biographical essays on the travel writer and political radical Georg Forster (1754–94) and Lessing (Über Lessing, 1797; On Lessing). Ralph W. Buechler Further Reading Blackall, Eric, The Emergence of German as a Literary Language: 1700–1775, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959; 2nd edition, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1978 Brown, Stephen W., entry on “Biography and the Essay” in Encyclopedia of the Essay, edited by Tracy Chevalier, London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997 Fakundiny, Lydia, entry on the “Autobiographical Essay” in Encyclopedia of the Essay, edited by Tracy Chevalier, London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997 Friedrichsmeyer, Sara and Barbara Becker-Cantarino (editors), The Enlightenment and Its Legacy: Studies in German Literature in Honor of Helga Slessarev, Bonn: Bouvier, 1991 Garland, Henry and Mary Garland (editors), Oxford Companion to German Literature, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976; 2nd edition, revised by Mary Garland, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1986 Gay, Peter, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, New York: Knopf, 1966; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967 Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, translated by Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1989 (German edition, 1962) Hoffmeister, Gerhart (editor), German Baroque Literature: The European Perspective, New York: Ungar, 1983 Martens, Wolfgang, Die Botschaft der Tugend: die Aufklärung im Spiegel der deutschen Moralischen Wochenschriften, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1968 Müller, Thomas, Rhetorik und bürgerliche Identität: Studien zur Rolle der Psychologie in der Frühaufklärung, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1990 Niggl, Günter, Geschichte der deutschen Autobiographie im 18. Jahrhundert: theoretische Grundlegung und literarische Entfaltung, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1977 Nolden, Thomas, An einen jungen Dichter: Studien zur epistolaren Poetik, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1995 Pascal, Roy, The German Sturm und Drang, Manchester: Manchester University Press, and New York: Philosophical Library, 1959 Romerin, Man M., entry on “Lebensbeschreibung” in Real-Lexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte, vol. 2, edited by Werner Kohlschmidt and Wolfgang Mohr, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965 Sagarra, Eda and Peter Skrine (editors), Companion to German Literature: From 1500 to the Present, Oxford: Blackwell, 1997 Shookman, Ellis (editor), Eighteenth-Century German Prose, New York: Continuum, 1992 Steussy, Fredric S., Eighteenth-Century German Autobiography: The Emergence of Individuality, New York: Peter Lang, 1996 Wuthenow, Ralph-Rainer, Das erinnerte ich: europäische Autobiographie und Selbstdarstellung im achtzehnten Jahrhundert, Munich: Beck, 1974

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Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 17thand 18th-Century Diaries and Letters In early modern times diary writing was a basic form of writing so general that the “journal” is even more difficult to characterize for this period than for later centuries. In the Germanspeaking countries, this source type was defined as an integral part of self-analysis only towards the end of the 18th century, by Johann Gottfried Herder, as published literature increased. In the tradition of Tomaso Garzoni’s encyclopedia, Piazza universale (1578), the German translation of which was published in 1619, the term “Diarium” (journal) referred mainly to a type of historiography. Long into the 18th century the difference between annals and diaries remained very unclear, especially in the monastic environment. The best-known and earliest examples of 17th-century women’s journals in German derive from this type of convent historiography (Klara Staiger, Maria Anna Junius). City chronicles in Germany during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) often provided an opportunity to describe the effects of the events on the writer (Gangolf Hartung, Hans Heberle). Historiographic tradition lastly justifies the diaristic self-observation of the late humanists (Martinus Crusius). Journal writing often took shape under the influence of protocol writing, which increased dramatically in the administrative and judicial systems. The custom of keeping a diary-type protocol was not limited to the social elite of diplomats (e.g. Ferdinand Bonaventura Harrach) in the 17th century, but extended to a wide variety of civil servants. The famous notes (written 1573–1615) of the Nuremberg executioner Franz Schmidt about his work are by no means exceptional. Sigmund von Birken was one of the first German poets to keep brief but very consistent records of his writing (Diarium, 1660–79). The most widespread medium for journal entries was the printed calendar (Schreibkalender), which was popular with craftsmen (such as Jakob Röder for 1589–1618) as well as with princes (such as Frederick I of Sachsen-Gotha for 1667–86). There are also calendar entries by women of the educated elite (e.g. Sophia Eleonora von Hessen-Darmstadt for 1637–70). Printed calendars with forecasts also strongly influenced the choice of entry topic (natural disasters, the weather, harvest failures). Peasant journals and chronicles, which appear in greater numbers only after the middle of the 18th century, for example in Brandenburg and Lower Austria, focus on these topics. Research dealing with the collection and study of these texts, which vary greatly according to region, has only just begun. Diary writing was lastly subject to a standardization based on the ars apodemica (theory of travel). Late humanist scholars recommended that travellers should record their impressions in journals. The earliest standard-setting itineraries were published by learned court scholars (e.g. Paul Hentzner, 1617); ultimately the chevaliers wrote the protocols of their travels themselves. The itinerary genre also influenced the remarkable journal of a mercenary (Peter Hagendorf?, written 1625–49) in the Thirty Years’ War. Travel journals changed only around the middle of the 18th century in imitations of the English novelist Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey (1768). Johann Gottfried Herder places the diary of his journey from Riga to Nantes (1769) in

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the immediate tradition of Sterne and uses it primarily as a memorandum. In Germany the analytical literary journal had one of its main sources in the devotional writings of the period around 1700. Pietists (e.g. the Herrenhuters) used the diary as a tool to examine their consciences and as a record of their faith. Catalogues of sins, crises of faith, and proofs of divine grace are also the central topics in the journals written by Protestant scholars and poets such as Albrecht von Haller (Tagebuch, 1734–77), Johann Georg Hamann (Tagebuch eines Christen, 1758), and Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (Tagebuch, 1761), published posthumously for the most part. As the soul increasingly became the object of empirical study in the course of the 18th century, religious-philosophical diary writing evolved into an expression of psychological self-analysis (Johann Kaspar Lavater’s Geheimes Tagebuch, 1771). Writers such as Karl Philipp Moritz and Johann Gottlieb Schaumann made a point of asking their readers to write and publish diaries to document everyday emotional experiences (in the periodical Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde 1783–92 and Psyche, 1791). Goethe criticized this initial era of empirical psychology, which to him could not be separated from the “self-torture” typical of journals and letters (in Dichtung und Wahrheit, 1811–33; Poetry and Truth). The letters of the baroque age are generally poorly researched although they exist in large numbers. So far mainly letters written by individuals considered to be important for a particular area of research have been published. There are not many women among them. Most are letters written by sovereigns, princes, scholars, writers, diplomats, and church dignitaries. The letters of the nobility representing baroque court culture predominate. Only small parts of the correspondence of other social groups have been researched for this period, a fact that is due to the much less accessible status of the source material. The 17th century is often referred to as the “à-la-mode” period, in which the influence of foreign languages prevailed. Much-admired French models were the letters of Marie de Sévigné (1626–96) and Ninon de Lenclos (1620–1705). The German-speaking countries used French, Italian, and Spanish (for court correspondence) and Latin (for the learned) besides German. It must be noted that scaremongering statements such as “around 1700 there were no purely German [language] letters at all” (see Steinhausen and Nickisch) resulted from the abovementioned publishing situation and the exaggerated descriptions of the language societies, which strove to encourage the use of German (e.g. Georg Philipp Harsdörffer’s Teutsche Secretariat-Kunst). They will eventually appear in their proper perspective when the letters of the women of that period, who wrote mainly in German even if they were of the highest social standing, are finally published. The letters of Liselotte von der Pfalz (1652–1722) will then no longer be seen as atypical for the period because of their liberal use of German; they will be ranked among the documents produced by her numerous female contemporaries who also had a strong mastery of their native language. The 18th century has often been called the “century of the German letter” although the aristocracy became increasingly inclined to use French. It was the commoners who had the greater social impact, and both women and men engaged in the “cult of correspondence”. A great many letters written by spouses-to-be,

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such as Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Margaretha (Meta) Moller as well as Johann Christoph Gottsched and Luise Adelgunde Kulmus, have been passed down from this time. The “friendship cult” of the period of Empfindsamkeit (sentimentalism) gave posterity correspondences such as those between Christian Fürchtegott Gellert and Christiane Karoline Schlegel née Lucius. The former also wrote the era’s rules of letter writing, demanding a natural and simple style. Subjectivity and freedom were the order of the day; emotions were expressed forcefully, as in the young Friedrich Schiller’s and Goethe’s letters. In the correspondence between these two writers, as well as that of other German classical writers, the German language underwent an enrichment in content and style that had been previously unimaginable. For the German Romanticists the letter was one of the most important means of self-expression, and women, such as Karoline Schlegel-Schelling (née Michaelis, 1763–1809) and Bettina von Arnim (née Brentano, 1785– 1859), played an important part in their letter-writing circles of friends. Since there was no metropolitan centre in the fragmented Germany of the time, the learned elite were spread throughout the German territories, giving the act of letter writing an impetus greater than in many of the more centralized European states. Doris Aichholzer and Harald Tersch Further Reading Ammermann, Monika, “Bibliographie gedruckter Briefe des 17. Jahrhunderts”, Wolfenbüttler Barock-Nachrichten, 6/1 (1979): 254–56 Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, “Leben als Text, Briefe als Ausdrucks- und Verständigungsmittel in der Briefkultur und Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts” in Frauen, Literatur, Geschichte: Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, revised edition, edited by Hiltrud Gnüg and Renate Möhrmann, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999 Behrens, Katja (editor), Frauenbriefe der Romantik, Frankfurt: Insel, 1981 Boerner, Peter, Tagebuch, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1969 Bohrer, Karl Heinz, Der romantische Brief: die Entstehung ästhetischer Subjektivität, Munich: Hanser, 1987 Buchholz, Magdalena, Die Anfänge der deutschen Tagebuchschreibung, Münster: Lit-Verlag, 1983 Estermann, Monika, “Drucke zwischen 1600 und 1750” in Verzeichnis der gedruckten Briefe deutscher Autoren des 17. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992 Friedrichs, Elisabeth, Die deutschsprachigen Schriftstellerinnen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts: ein Lexikon, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1981 Hocke, Gustav René, Europäische Tagebücher aus vier Jahrhunderten: Motive und Anthologie, Wiesbaden: Limes, 1978 Krummacher, Hans-Henrik, Briefe deutscher Barockautoren: Probleme ihrer Erfassung und Erschliessung, Hamburg: Hauswedell, 1978 Krusenstjern, Benigna von, Selbstzeugnisse der Zeit des Dreissigjährigen Krieges: beschreibendes Verzeichnis, Berlin: Akademie, 1997 Mattenklott, Gert et al. (editors), Deutsche Briefe 1750–1950, Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1989 Nickisch, Reinhard M.G., Brief, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991 Peters, Jan, Hartmut Harnisch and Lieselott Enders (editors), Märkische Bauerntagebücher des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts: Selbstzeugnisse von Milchviehbauern aus Neuholland, Weimar: Böhlau, 1989 Runge, Anita and Lieselotte Steinbrügge (editors), Die Frau im Dialog: Studien zur Theorie und Geschichte des Briefes, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991 Schulze, Winfried (editor), Ego-Dokumente: Annäherung an den Menschen in der Geschichte, Berlin: Akademie, 1996 Steinhausen, Georg, Geschichte des deutschen Briefes: zur Kulturgeschichte des deutschen Volkes, 2 vols, Berlin: R. Gaertners, 1889–91

Tersch, Harald, Österreichische Selbstzeugnisse des Spätmittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit (1400–1650): eine Darstellung in Einzelbeiträgen, Vienna: Böhlau, 1998 Woods, Jean M. and Maria Fürstenwald, Schriftstellerinnen, Künstlerinnen und gelehrte Frauen des deutschen Barock: ein Lexikon, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1984 Wuthenow, Ralph-Rainer, Europäische Tagebücher: Eigenart, Formen, Entwicklung, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990

Germany, Austria, Switzerland: Romanticism and Life Writing Romanticism in Germany, as elsewhere in Europe, was marked by a fascination with introspection and confession. Peter Gay notes that while the Romantics were not the first intellectuals to engage in “intense self-scrutiny”, they and other 19th-century authors “made it available, almost inescapable, to a wide public”. Autobiographical and biographical writings were largely produced and received by the middle class; several of the German Romantic authors themselves supported their writing habits with jobs as teachers, physicians, or administrators. German Romanticism is often considered to consist of three phases: Early (1790–1801; authors resided primarily in Berlin and Jena); High (1801–1815; centred in Heidelberg, Dresden, and Berlin); and Late (1820–1850; most writers were in Vienna and Munich). (Although Vienna was a hub of Late Romantic activity, and natives of Austria and Switzerland have produced major autobiographies in the 20th century, during the 19th century Germans dominated the field of life writing.) The Romantics of each period were influenced heavily by French thought, particularly that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; they emulated the emphasis on nature, love, feeling, and self-revelation found in his Confessions. But German Romanticism began as a philosophical movement focusing on theories of self-consciousness after the writings of Immanuel Kant; the philosophies of subjectivity developed in this period constitute a critique of Enlightenment attempts to achieve an objective and highly systematic knowledge of the world and of the ever-increasing specialization taking place in scientific and artistic disciplines. Socio-historically, Romanticism responded to what the Germans viewed as the French Revolution’s inital promise and eventual failure. The aftermath of the Revolution aroused conservative and anti-democratic sympathies among several leading Romantics (such as Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis), prompting idealizations of a mythical medieval political unity as well as an even stronger focus on the inner life of the self. While reactionary in some respects, the “inward turn” that took place among Romantics in the late 18th and early- to mid19th centuries had a significant influence on much later depth psychology. A capacity for scepticism and self-criticism was also an important aspect of Early Romanticism in particular; the ironic stance these authors advocated involved an awareness of the problematic, potentially solipsistic nature of the fascination with the self and with attributing collective meaning to one’s own individual past. This awareness is evident in life writings and other works by the German Romantics that display autobiographical characteristics.

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The Romantic fascination with excavating individual pasts finds expression in autobiographies as well. In a passage exemplifying this interest, Joseph von Eichendorff (1788–1857) claims to remember his perceptions a few moments after his own birth: For my part, I only know that I was quite comfortable and warm in the well-heated room … My mother, with a pretty, pale face and large eyes, bent over me; her curls surrounded me completely, and through them I saw the stars and the still snow glistening beyond the window. Since then, whenever I see a clear and starry winter night, it seems to me that I am born again. Goethe, in contrast, openly acknowledges the blurred boundaries between fact and fiction in the title of his autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811, 1812, 1814, and 1833; Poetry and Truth). Goethe famously states: “All my works are fragments of a great confession”, though Sigmund Freud later concluded that the narrative techniques Goethe deployed in his autobiography were actually “used by him as a means of selfconcealment” (see Gay). An autobiographical impulse is evident in several German Romantic literary works that are not strict examples of life writing per se. Novalis’s (Friedrich von Hardenberg’s) novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802; Henry von Ofterdingen), like Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde (1799) and Ludwig Tieck’s Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen [1798; Franz Sternbald’s Travels], integrates elements of the author’s own life into fictional narratives that introduce the specifically Romantic characteristics of arabesque, fragment, and the poetic expression of the protagonist’s inner fantasy life to the tradition of the German Bildungsroman. The Romantics were also keenly interested in narrating others’ lives; this was part of the popularity of biography in 19th-century Europe in general. Such biographies often explicitly mixed fact with fiction, as did Achim von Arnim’s (1781– 1831) immensely popular novel based on a true story, Armut, Reichstum, Schuld und Busse der Gräfin Dolores: eine wahre Geschichte zur lehrreichen Unterhaltung armer Fräulein [1810; The Poverty, Wealth, Guilt and Repentance of the Countess Dolores: A True Story for the Instructive Entertainment of Poor Maidens]. Some reflected the Romantic attraction to the medieval past, for instance Friedrich Schlegel’s (1772–1829) biographies of medieval figures based on memoirs written in Old French and German. Letters and diaries, including travel journals, constitute much of German Romantic life writing. Novalis’s Tagebücher [diaries] permit insights into his fantasies shortly after the death of his 13-year-old fiancée, Sophie von Kühn. In May 1798, he documents a visit to her grave: “I was indescribably happy there – flashing moments of enthusiasm … – centuries were like minutes – her proximity was palpable – I believed she would appear”. Other writings reveal scientific or medical insights of the day, as does Friedrich Schlegel’s diary documenting the prolonged psychiatric treatment of the Countess Lesniowska. While Romantic male authors introduced autobiographical elements into their famous literary works as well as in published biographies, women of the period, being more excluded from publishing, wrote primarily letters and diaries.

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Bettina von Arnim (1785–1859), Caroline [Karoline von] Günderrode (1780–1806), Caroline Schlegel-Schelling (1763– 1809), Dorothea Veit-Schlegel (1764–1839), and Rahel Varnhagen (1771–1833) wrote primarily in Jena and Berlin during these years, and several of them were active in Berlin’s vibrant salon culture. An integration of private and public interests is evident in their ostensibly private letters and diaries, as is a mix of fact and fiction that also characterizes texts by the male Romantics. As Rahel Varnhagen wrote in a letter to David Veit: Facts mean nothing at all to me, for whether true or not, facts can be denied; if I have done something, I did it because I wanted to; and if someone wants to blame me or lie to me, there’s nothing for me to do but say “No,” and I do. … Lying is lovely if we choose it, and is an important component of our freedom. (quoted by Arendt) Many of the theoretical and practical concerns and impulses of German Romanticism remained vital well after the movement itself ended. The Romantic vulnerability to reactionary tendencies was evident in the Nazi co-option and idealization of several of the period’s leading authors. And the tensions that mark the relationship between the demands of self-expression and a responsibility to public engagement with social and political issues still exist, as German authors and intellectuals continue to struggle to find ways to depict remembrances of individual and collective pasts. Unfortunately, recent translations of life writings of the period into English are limited, particularly of women writers. Several of the available translations are included below. Laurie R. Johnson Further Reading Selected Life Writings: Arnim, Achim von and Bettina von Arnim, Achim und Bettina in ihren Briefen: Briefwechsel Achim von Arnim und Bettina Brentano, 2 vols, edited by Werner Vordtriede, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1961 Arnim, Achim von and Clemens Brentano, Freundschaftsbriefe, 2 vols, edited by Hartwig Schultz, Frankfurt: Eichborn, 1998 Arnim, Bettina von, Correspondence of Fräulein Günderrode und Bettine von Arnim, translated by Minna Wesselhoeft, Boston: Burnham, 1861 Brentano, Clemens, Briefe, edited by Friedrich Seebass, 2 vols, Nuremberg: H. Carl, 1951 Eichendorff, Joseph von, Werke, vol. 5, edited by Hartwig Schultz, Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1993 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, From My Life (selections from Dichtung und Wahrheit ), vols 4–5 of Goethe’s Collected Works, edited by Jeffrey L. Sammons, translated by Thomas P. Saine, New York: Suhrkamp, 1987 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, The Autobiography of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (i.e. Dichtung und Wahrheit), translated by John Oxenford, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974 (translation first published 1969) Günderrode, Karoline von, Der Schatten eines Traumes: Gedichte, Prosa, Briefe, Zeugnisse von Zeitgenossen, introduced by Christa Wolf, Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1981 Heine, Heinrich, Memoirs: From His Works, Letters, and Conversations (i.e. Memoiren), edited by Gustav Karpeles, translated by Gilbert Cannan, New York: Arno Press, 1973 Hoffmann, E.T.A., Tagebücher, edited by Hans von Müller and Friedrich Schnapp, Munich: Winkler, 1971 Hoffmann, E.T.A., Selected Letters of E.T.A. Hoffmann, edited and translated by Johanna C. Sahlin, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977

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Hölderlin, Friedrich, Sämtliche Werke, edited by Friedrich Beissner (general editor), also individual volume editors, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1943– (see vol. 6, parts 1–2, and vol. 7, part 1) Kleist, Heinrich von, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, 4 vols, edited by Helmut Sembdner, Munich: Hanser, 1982 Mereau-Brentano, Sophie, Liebe und allenthalben Liebe: Werke und autobiographische Schriften, vol. 3, edited by Katharina von Hammerstein, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1997 Novalis [Friedrich von Hardenberg], Schriften: Die Werke Friedrich von Hardenbergs, edited by Paul Kluckhohn and Richard Samuel, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960–88 (see vol. 4) Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, Philosophische Entwürfe und Tagebücher, edited by Hans Jörg Sandkühler, Hamburg: Meiner, 1994– Schelling, Karoline, “Lieber Freund, ich komme weit her schon an diesem frühen Morgen”: Briefe, edited by Sigrid Damm, Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1988 Schlegel, August Wilhelm von, Kritische Schriften und Briefe, edited by Edgar Lohner, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1963–74 (Ausgewählte Briefe in vol. 7) Schlegel, Friedrich von, Kritische Ausgabe, edited by Ernst Behler, Munich: Schöningh, 1958– (see vols. 23–32 – correspondence with Dorothea Veit-Schlegel – and 33, 35) Varnhagen, Rahel, Briefwechsel, 4 vols, edited by Friedrich Kemp, Munich: Winkler, 1979 Varnhagen, Rahel, Jeder Wunsch wird Frivolität genannt: Briefe und Tagebücher, edited by Marlis Gerhardt, Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1983

Analysis: Arendt, Hannah, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman, revised edition, translated by Richard and Clara Winston, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974 (first English edition, 1957) Blackwell, Jeannine and Susanne Zantop (editors), Bitter Healing: German Women Writers from 1700 to 1830: An Anthology, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990 Gay, Peter, The Naked Heart, vol. 4 of The Bourgeois Experience, New York: Norton, 1995; London: HarperCollins, 1996 Hamlin, Cyrus, “Poetics of Self-Consciousness in European Romanticism”, Genre, 6 (1973): 142–77 Krell, David Farrell, Of Memory, Reminiscence and Writing: On the Verge, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990 Mein, Margaret, “Novalis as a Precursor of Proust”, Comparative Literature, 23 (1971): 217–32

Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 19th-Century Auto/biography The ideologies of the 19th century contextualized and bedevilled that period’s attitudes to the self and its complex relationship to the world, a relationship that was articulated through the many modes of auto/biographical writing as well as though its fiction. A major theme to emerge, in all forms of writing, was the cultural formation of the bourgeois identity outside of the socioeconomic and political spheres – an identity frequently formed in solitude, isolation, and alienation. Both German classicism (Schiller, Goethe) and Romanticism (Novalis, the Schlegel brothers, Ludwig Tieck, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Joseph von Eichendorff) idealized human perfectibility, the formation (Bildung) of the personality as the ultimate cultural mission. While the former sought to accomplish this through harmony between individual and society, between spirit and nature, and a return to classical forms, the latter stressed subjectivism, psychology, and transcendence in its apotheosis of redemption and inner consciousness: “to the inner world leads the secret path”

(Novalis). Hence, Romanticism understood the self as genius in the terms of wish, desire, yearning, as dream, imagination, and fantasy. This was a self seen to flourish in the mythical golden age, the Middle Ages, folklore and fairy tale, and in the otherworldly realms of nature, the macabre, and music. Thus, instead of placing the self amid the critical changes sweeping through Europe and Germany – the French Revolution and Napoleon; the industrial revolution; the revolutions of 1830 and 1848; the entrenchment of the upper class and the institutionalization of authoritarianism bureaucracy; and militarism – the Romantic and classicist cultural milieu continued its emphasis on the individual removed and elevated into the realm of the spirit, consciousness, culture, and inwardness. Writing outside of the classical-Romantic canon, extraordinary writers like Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811), Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), and Jean Paul (1763–1825) wrestled with the disintegration of the spirit and the ruptures between private consciousness and public (social, economic, political) conditions. Here too, however, the meanings of literature and culture and the functions of the artist and poet for the new German 19th-century middle-class pivot on notions of identity. The years of cultural and political restoration between 1815 and 1848 conceived and articulated the self in a contrasting manner. Whereas the Biedermeier period authors (Eduard Mörike, Adalbert Stifter, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Karl Immermann, Franz Grillparzer) looked away from contemporary issues and back toward classicism and Romanticism, the authors of the Junges Deutschland trend from the 1830s to mid-century (Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne, Georg Büchner) wrote about, and for, contemporary society, often in the form of history or journalism. After the failed bourgeois revolution of 1848, when the effects of political resignation, autocracy, the industrial revolution, and materialism encouraged a realistic, bourgeois definition of identity, the realist writers (Gottfried Keller, Conrad Meyer, Wilhelm Raabe, Theodor Storm, Theodor Fontane, et al.) continued to query the role of the private and personal for the parvenus of the post-1870 Gründerzeit years’ obsessions with money, Realpolitik, and nationalism. During the last two decades of the 19th century a multiplicity of literary-cultural moments signal a further fracturing of the self. Naturalism in the 1880s, inspired by positivism and Emile Zola, was countered a decade later by the various manifestations of aestheticism, symbolism, and l’art pour l’art (Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Stefan George, Rainer Maria Rilke, et al.), which called for a renewed emphasis upon the inner, aesthetic self (Weltinnenraum). Notably, since these notions of truth were grounded not in the external world, but intuited from the individual consciousness, the relation between identity and language would become a key issue, thematized in such work as Hofmannsthal’s Brief des Lord Chandos’ (1902; The Lord Chandos Letter). The classic German paradigm of 19th-century autobiographical writing remains Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811–33; Poetry and Truth) along with the supplemental autobiographical works like his Italienische Reise (1817; Italian Journey). As the title suggests, the autobiography is an exploration of the relationship between the writer and the origins of his work, in the context of his time. The self is conceived as the locus between life’s necessity and art’s freedom, “to present the individual in

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his time, and to show how the world helps and hinders, how he forms his opinions about the world and people, and, if he is an artist, poet, or writer, how he mirrors all this in his work”. But the majority of 19th-century autobiography consisted of lesser-known personalities, their adventures and experiences. This is particularly valid for autobiography of the Napoleonic era, in which the writer often recounts in a realistic fashion his or her travels and adventures. Examples are Johann Christoph Sachse’s Der deutsche Gilblas [1822; The German Gilblas], Regula Engel’s Die schweizerische Amazone [1825; The Black Amazone], Johann Friedrich Löffler’s Der alte Sergeant [1836; The Old Sergeant]. Sentimentalization of youth, romanticization of travel to exotic places, and a variety of narrative styles may also be seen in Heinrich Leo’s Meine Jugendzeit [1880; My Youth], Daniel Elster’s Fahrten eines Musikanten [1837; Travels of a Musician], Karl von Francois’s Ein deutsches Soldatenleben [1873; A German Soldier’s Life], Wilhelm von Klügelgen’s Jugenderinnerung eines alten Mannes [1870; Memories of Youth by an Old Man], and Ludwig Richter’s Lebenserinnerung eines deutschen Malers [1885; Memoirs of a German Painter]. Ever since Sterne’s Sentimental Journey (1768), autobiography has traced the development of the self in relation to the physical and social world, in which knowledge about new, other places has been correlative to new, other knowledge about oneself. The travel autobiography was an important German sub-genre of this period. Georg Forster’s autobiographicalpolitical Ansichten vom Niederrhein [1791–94; Scenes from the Lower Rhine] from just before the start of the century, the Reisebilder (1826–31; Travel Pictures) of Heine, Börne’s Briefe aus Paris [1831–34; Letters from Paris], and Theodor Fontane’s Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg [1862–82; Hiking through Brandenburg] demonstrate a freely associative, openended feuilletonistic style that lends movement and flexibility to both the accounts and the development of the accounts’ subjects. The biographies of the 19th century have also been called character studies, portraits, and profiles. By the latter half of the century three-fourths of all German essays were biographical in nature: the foremost biographers were also the foremost essayists, such as Karl Hillebrand, in his Zeiten, Völker, Menschen [1875–86; Ages, Peoples, Persons], with its seven volumes of essays, one-half of which consisted of biographies, and Hermann Grimm, in his Essays (1859–90), with ten volumes of essays including biographies of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Goethe, and Shakespeare. Ralph W. Buechler Further Reading Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, translated by Willard R. Trask, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University, 1953 Beyer-Fröhlich, Marianne, Die Entwicklung der deutschen Selbstzeugnisse, Darmstadt: Reclam, 1930; reprinted, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1970 Brown, Stephen W., entry on “Biography and the Essay” in Encyclopedia of the Essay, edited by Tracy Chevalier, London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997 Burke, Eoian, “Carl Schurz und seine Radkalisierung durch die Ereignisse von 1848–1851” in Vormärzliteratur in europäischer Perspektive II: Politische Revolution, Industrielle Revolution, Ästhetische Revolution, edited by Martina Lauster and Gunter Oesterle, Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 1998

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Fakundiny, Lydia, entry on the “Autobiographical Essay” in Encyclopedia of the Essay, edited by Tracy Chevalier, London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997 Furst, Lilian, Romanticism in Perspective: A Comparative Study of Aspects of the Romantic Movements in England, France, and Germany, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1969 Garland, Henry and Mary (editors), Oxford Companion to German Literature, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976; 2nd edition, revised by Mary Garland, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1986 Grimm, Reinhold and Jost Hermand, Die Klassik-Legende: Second Wisconsin Workshop, Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1971 Heller, Erich, The Artist’s Journey into the Interior, and Other Essays, New York: Random House, 1965; London: Secker and Warburg, 1966 Klessmann, Eckart (editor), Deutschland unter Napoleon in Augenzeugenberichten, Dusseldorf: Rauch, 1965 Martini, Fritz, Deutsche Literatur im bürgerlichen Realismus 1848–1898, 4th edition, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1981 Müller, Klaus-Detlef, Autobiographie und Roman: Studien zur literarischen Autobiographie der Goethezeit, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1976 Müller, Klaus-Detlef (editor), Bürgerlicher Realismus: Grundlagen und Interpretationen, Königstein: Athenäum, 1981 Neuman, Bernd, Identität und Rollenzwang: zur Theorie der Autobiographie, Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1970 Prawer, Siegbert (editor), The Romantic Period in Germany, London: Weidenfeld, and New York: Schocken Books, 1970 Rohner, Ludwig, Der deutsche Essay: Materialen zur Geschichte und Ästhetik einer literarischen Gattung, Berlin: Luchterhand, 1966 Romerin, Man M., entry on “Lebensbeschreibung” in Real-Lexikon der deutschen Literatur-Geschichte, vol. 2, edited by Werner Kohlschmidt and Wolfgang Mohr, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965 Stern, J.P., Re-Interpretations: Seven Studies in 19th-Century German Literature, London: Thames and Hudson, and New York: Basic Books, 1964 Tymms, Ralph, German Romantic Literature, London: Methuen, 1955 Vivian, Kim, A Concise History of German Literature to 1900, Columbia, South Carolina: Camden House, 1992 Weissenberger, Klaus (editor), Prosakunst ohne Erzählen: die Gattungen der nicht-fiktionalen Kunstprosa, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1985

Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters In Germanic cultural and literary history of the 19th century, diaries and letters play an important and often underestimated role. Many eminent authors have left behind a more or less extensive collection of letters which shed light on their works and the times in which they lived. Reinhard Nikisch has even ascertained that the 19th century was the period “which bestowed upon us the largest collection of correspondence”. He believes letters to be the most important sources of information for this period. Of similar significance are diaries, which are, however, found less frequently. This relative rarity may be rooted in their private character, some authors or their heirs probably having destroyed such personal notes and records which were written for private reference only and often lacked a polished literary style. In literature, the epistolary novel, a genre that utilizes the personal, confessional character of the letter, and which experienced a boom in the second half of the 18th century (the most important German-language example being Goethe’s Die

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Leiden des jungen Werther (The Sorrows of Young Werther) from 1774), appears to die a sudden death in the 19th century. But still frequently used, and of perhaps even greater importance than before, was the letter within the novel. Well-known authors used the freedom of this genre to underline the credibility of their narratives by incorporating letters into the text: a good example would be Theodor Fontane, and particularly his masterpiece Effi Briest. In his lifetime, Fontane also wrote a great many letters, and is deemed by many experts, not least because of the stylistic quality of the correspondence, to be the best letter writer in the history of German-language literature. On the other hand, important correspondence shedding light on the lives and activities of other writers, as well as the times in which they lived, can be found throughout the 19th century, starting with the numerous letters written by Goethe. The correspondence between Goethe and Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), perhaps Germany’s most significant dramatist, bears witness to the creation of the important literature of the classical period in Germany and illustrates the great influence these authors had on each other’s work. Letters by Romantic authors such as Joseph von Eichendorff (1788–1857), Clemens Brentano (1778–1842), and Bettina von Arnim (1785–1859) reveal much about the philosophical and literary convictions of this era. Of similar importance are the diaries, which tend to be more personal in character and were not usually published until after the author’s death. Besides Goethe’s diaries, in which he attempted to objectify his self-assurances, it is worth mentioning the subjective, brooding diaries (Tagebücher) of E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776–1822). They illuminate the many facets of an outstanding individual. Hoffmann, who worked as an author, musician, and lawyer, was highly gifted and is one of the bestknown German-language authors of the 19th century. The struggles he had with himself and the world around him foreshadowed many of the identity problems characteristic of “literary modernism” (Literarische Moderne) in Germany. Intellectual correspondence also traces the rise of the human sciences in the 19th-century German world. One notable example is the letters of the Grimm brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm, which illuminate their research in the sphere of cultural and literary history, linguistics, and law. Towards the end of the century the new paths of philosophical thought can be found in the letters of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), while Sigmund Freud’s (1856–1939) correspondence bears witness to the breathtaking development of the new science of human psychology. More broadly, the published letter reflected the new bourgeois class’s pursuit of power. Heinrich Heine, one of the most eminent German-language authors of the period, and also one of the most experimental, used the epistolary form in his Reisebilder (1826–31; Travel Pictures), which were peppered with comments on contemporary issues. Ludwig Börne’s Briefe aus Paris [1830–34; Letters from Paris] are also worthy of mention. This dedicated democrat wanted to persuade his fellow compatriots to instigate a French-style revolution. Since the political structures remained inflexible and the heads of state, organized within the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund), suppressed all opposition following the Carlsbad Resolutions (Karlsbader Beschlüsse) of 1819, many authors, if they did not wish to go into exile like Börne and Heine, had no alternative

than to retreat into the private sphere. Hermann, Fürst von Pückler-Muskau, placed himself somewhere between the two options in his Briefe eines Verstorbenen (1830–32; Tour in England, Ireland and France), a personal travel report on Britain and Ireland, in which the political situation in Germany was reflected in the description of the political reality in Britain, and thus Germany could be observed from a critical distance. In its day, the brilliantly written work was a bestseller. Finally, mention should be made of another book from the early part of the century that caused a sensation when it was first published. It is both more private and more fictional – Bettina von Arnim’s Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (1835), in which Arnim constructs an epistolary relationship with Goethe, one considerably more intense than the actual known letters portray. Stefan Neuhaus Further Reading Aichinger, Ingrid, entry on “Selbstbiographie”, Real-Lexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte, 2nd edition, vol. 3, edited by Werner Kohlschmidt and Wolfgang Mohr, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977 Baasner, Rainer (editor), Briefkultur im 19. Jahrhundert, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1999 Boerner, Peter, Tagebuch, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1969 Görner, Rüdiger, Das Tagebuch: eine Einführung, München: Artemis, 1986 Grenzmann, Wilhelm, entry on “Brief”, Real-Lexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte, 2nd edition, vol. 1, edited by Werner Kohlschmidt and Wolfgang Mohr, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1958 Honnefelder, Gottfried, Der Brief im Roman: Untersuchungen zur erzähltechnischen Verwendung des Briefes im deutschen Roman, Bonn: Bouvier, 1975 Neuhaus, Stefan, Fontane ABC, Leipzig: Reclam, 1998 Neuhaus, Volker, Typen multiperspektivischen Erzählens, Cologne: Böhlau, 1971 Nickisch, Reinhard M.G., Brief, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991 Pückler-Muskau, Hermann, Fürst von, A Regency Visitor: The English Tour of Prince Pückler-Muskau Described in his Letters 1826–1828, from the original translation by Sarah Austin, edited with an introduction by E.M. Butler, London: Collins, 1957; New York: Dutton, 1958 Segebrecht, Wulf, Autobiographie und Dichtung: eine Studie zum Werk E.T.A. Hoffmanns, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1967 Steinhausen, Georg, Geschichte des deutschen Briefes: zur Kulturgeschichte des deutschen Volkes, Zurich: Weidmann, 1968 (original edition, 1889)

Germany, Austria, and Switzerland: 20th-Century Life Writing “I am one of the last, maybe the last who knows at all what an opus is”, Thomas Mann wrote in his diary on 3 April 1951. Indeed, after his autobiographical novel Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie (1901; Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family), Mann’s autonomy in treating his plots and characters developed in a way quite unparalleled in a century when writers would focus more and more on the crisis of the individual. Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (1910; The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge) by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) is indicative of the radical subjectivity and the distrust of language and conventional patterns that determined German life writing of the 20th century:

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I am learning how to see. I don’t know what it is – everything enters me more deeply and doesn’t come to a halt where it used to stop before. I possess an interior I didn’t know about. Now everything goes there. I don’t know what is happening there. Economic catastrophes, the carnage of two world wars, and the horrors of fascism and emigration call for a language capable of rendering atrocious experiences and novel ways of synthesis. However, keeping alive the memory of the dead and of bygone eras is of equal importance. Keen observation and synthesis are characteristic of the diaries of Ernst Jünger (1895–1998), In Stahlgewittern (1920; The Storms of Steel) and Strahlungen [1949; Radiations], while the autobiographical works of the Austrian writers Friedrich Torberg (1908–79) and Elias Canetti (1905–94) give a vivid account of Austrian and German cultural life before it was extinguished by the National Socialist terror. Torberg’s anecdotes in the satirical Die Tante Jolesch [1975; Aunt Jolesch] preserve the humour and ways of life of Jewish society in Vienna and Prague; stunning portraits of Austrian and German writers and artists of the pre-fascist period, such as the dramatist Bertolt Brecht, can also be found in the three volumes of Canetti’s highly acclaimed literary autobiography, Die gerettete Zunge (1977; The Tongue Set Free), Die Fackel im Ohr (1980; The Torch in My Ear), and Das Augenspiel (1985; The Play of the Eyes). Much of the detail on the lives of German and Austrian authors in exile is related in Der Wendepunkt [1952; The Turning Point], the autobiography of Klaus Mann (1906–49). The Tagebücher (1950, 1972; Sketchbooks) by the Swiss author Max Frisch (1911–91) provide insights from a neutral observation point. The same author’s Montauk (1975) is autobiographical fiction at its best, an unintrusive stocktaking of the artist’s life and identity. With socialist societies opposing auto/biography as indicative of the bourgeois cult of the individual, it is no wonder that life writing was not the prime occupation of writers living in East Germany (the GDR). Nevertheless, the artistic complexity of Nachdenken über Christa T. (1968; The Quest for Christa T.) by Christa Wolf (b. 1929) makes the work a significant and challenging contribution, which, at the time, did not flinch from the realities of the socialist bloc: in one passage, a comment on the Hungarian revolt follows an account of the suffering of a tram conductor frequently raped by her husband. “He doesn’t like Salzburg. He doesn’t like Austria. He doesn’t like the world. He probably doesn’t like himself either. And we cop it”, a critic wrote about the works of Thomas Bernhard (1931–89), whose radical life writing reached its culmination point in the five volumes of his literary autobiography: Die Ursache (1975; An Indication of the Cause), Der Keller (1976; The Cellar), Der Atem (1978; The Breath), Die Kälte (1981; The Cold), and Ein Kind (1982; A Child). Bernhard’s minute observations and artistically repetitive pessimism leave the reader troubled and, at the same time, on the brink of a relieving laughter. Scepticism directed at language itself made the Austrian writer Peter Handke (b. 1942) develop new forms of life writing. The journal Das Gewicht der Welt (1977; The Weight of the World) is an attempt at describing an 18-month period of his life without recourse to readily available phrases, so that reality can “speak out” without being distorted by

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language or by the observer. Wunschloses Unglück (1972; A Sorrow beyond Dreams), Handke’s biography of his mother, is one of the finest pieces of postwar life writing in the German language. Here writing against the urge to permit the “story to tell itself”, Handke allows his mother to come into being as an individual, but also as a product of the repressive society into which she was born. The literary autobiography Ein springender Brunnen [1998; A Gushing Fountain] by the German writer Martin Walser (b. 1927) shows that even seemingly conventional narratives have the power to create a scandal. Walser narrates his memories of a comparatively untroubled childhood, youth, and adolescence during the Third Reich and against the collective – and authoritative – memory of contemporary German society. Pursuing his entitlement to his own memory and recollections, he creates a rich, fresh, and appealing text that focuses on an aspect frequently overlooked by writers dealing with this period: the persistence of ordinary life. Winfried Thielmann Further Reading Durrani, Osman, Colin Good and Kevin Hilliard (editors), The New Germany: Literature and Society after Unification, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995 Elbaz, Robert and Leah Hadomi, “Text and Metatext in Canetti’s Fictional World”, The German Quaterly, 67/4 (1994): 521–33 Figge, Susan G., “‘Father Books’: Memoirs of the Children of Fascist Fathers” in Revealing Lives: Autobiography, Biography, and Gender, edited by Susan Groag Bell and Marilyn Yalom, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990 Grant, Alyth, “When is a Biography an Autobiography? Questions of Genre and Narrative Style in Christoph Meckel’s Suchbild”, Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, 26/3 (1990): 189–204 Jackson, Neil and Barbara Saunders, “Christa Wolf’s Kindheitsmuster: An East German Experiment in Political Autobiography”, German Life and Letters, 33 (1980): 319–29 Lorenz, Dagmar C.G., “Memory and Criticism: Ruth Klüger’s ‘Weiter Leben’”, Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature and Culture, Fort Wayne, 9 (1993): 207–24 Martin, Charles W., The Nihilism of Thomas Bernhard: The Portrayal of Existential and Social Problems in His Prose Works, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995 Meyerhofer, Nicholas J. (editor), The Fiction of the I: Contemporary Austrian Writers and Autobiography, Riverside, California: Ariadne Press, 1999 Rugg, Linda Haverty, “A Self at Large in the Hall of Mirrors: Rilke’s Malte Laurids Brigge as Autobiographical Act”, Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, 29/1 (1993): 43–54 Saunders, Barbara, Contemporary German Autobiography: Literary Approaches to the Problems of Identity, London: Institute of Germanic Studies, 1985 Schrader, Hans-Jürgen, Elliott M. Simon and Charlotte Wardi (editors), The Jewish Self-Portrait in European and American Literature, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1996 Shipe, Timothy, “Montauk: The Invention of Max Frisch”, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 22/3 (1981): 55–70 Sommer, Fred, “Nostalgia, Francophilia, and the Agony of Hitlerism: The Autobiographies of Heinrich Mann and Stefan Zweig”, New German Studies, 16/2 (1990–91): 109–23 Vansant, Jacqueline, “Challenging Austria’s Victim Status: National Socialism and Austrian Personal Narratives”, The German Quarterly, 67/1 (1994): 38–57 Williams, Arthur, Stuart Parkes, and Julian Preece (editors), ‘Whose Story’?: Continuities in Contemporary German-Language Literature, New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 1998 Williams, J., “Hans Fallada’s Memoirs: Fact or Fiction?”, New German Studies, 12/1 (1984): 21–35

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al-ghaza¯ li¯

al-Ghaz\lı¯

1058–1111

Iranian scholar and autobiographer Al-Ghaz\lı¯ is perhaps the most famous scholar of medieval Islam. He was a prolific and versatile writer on theology, jurisprudence, and political thought, but is best known for his spiritual autobiography, al-Munqidh min al-dalƒl (literally “The Deliverer from Error”, translated in Freedom and Fulfillment). The Munqidh reveals four stages in al-Ghaz\l¡’s intellectual and spiritual development: his early mastery of the Islamic sciences, a first encounter with Sufism (mystical Islam), a return to scholastic pursuits and finally a definitive involvement with Sufism, dating from 1095. Al-Ghaz\l¡ sets out to find “sure and certain knowledge”. He therefore examines critically the views of four important Islamic groups: the theologians, the philosophers, the Ism\‘¡l¡s (a sophisticated Sh¡‘ite group whose messianic doctrines he greatly fears), and the Sufis (Islamic mystics). He concludes that the Sufis alone hold the key to certain knowledge, not by virtue of intellectual arguments but through “mystic vision and illumination”: thus they attain “the lamp of prophetic revelation”. Significantly, al-Ghaz\lı¯’s analysis of the Sufis is placed in the context of his own life crisis. The Munqidh presents al-Ghaz\l¡’s life only schematically (chronological details can be found in medieval biographical literature). It concentrates on the key event of his life, a total breakdown in 1095 which overwhelmed him at the peak of his brilliant career. While serving as professor at the Nizamiyya madrasa (legal college) in Baghdad and frequenting the courts of the caliph, sultan, and their ministers, he gradually became unable to fulfil his duties: he felt himself to be “on the brink of a crumbling bank”. After what he describes as considerable vacillation (“I would put one foot forward, and the other backward”) and reluctance to leave his prestigious position and comfortable life, the crisis culminated in a total inability to give his lectures (“God put a lock on my tongue”) or to digest food or drink. He left Baghdad and wandered as a Sufi through the Islamic world, visiting Damascus, Jerusalem, and Arabia before returning to his native Iran where, still pursuing the Sufi life, he eventually resumed teaching and continued to write: on his own admission his period of seclusion lasted around ten years. This much is mentioned explicitly in the Munqidh, which was written probably around 1106–07. After his return to public life, al-Ghaz\l¡ claims to be teaching in a different spirit: “I now earnestly desire to reform myself and others . . . It was not I who moved: but He moved me.” Indeed, the Munqidh has a clear didactic purpose. The Sufi path, with its emphasis on heart, not head, was a difficult one for al-Ghaz\l¡ as an intellectual to follow. The Munqidh is a poignant spiritual self-portrait. Its chronology and autobiographical details should perhaps not be taken too literally. It seems probable that alGhaz\l¡ had long been associated with Sufism before 1095. His own crisis acts as a paradigm for all Muslims in search of “experiential knowledge of God”: after it he states confidently: “I knew with certainty that the Sufis are those who uniquely follow the way to God”. Scholars have suggested that al-Ghaz\l¡, often involved in politics, had other reasons for leaving Baghdad in 1095, an extremely unsteady period when his political patrons had died, and when fear of Ism\‘¡l¡ (Assassin) attacks was rife. Indeed, his

sincerity has been called into question. Certainly it is true that he suppresses all reference to contemporary political events which may have influenced his actions, and he may well have left Baghdad in fear of his own life. However, it is also probable that such a traumatic change would have led to his recognizing the futility of worldly prestige and in his making a complete rupture with his past life. Al-Ghaz\l¡, as the intellectual colossus of his time, bares his soul for the scrutiny of others; whether his personalized and schematic story is true or false, pruned down or embellished (and it is probably all of these), his status is larger than life. Indeed, his emotional collapse resembles the fate of the hero of a classical tragedy. Thus the narrative (and especially his moving account of his crisis) has an exemplary function for the edification of his fellow men and women. Al-Ghaz\l¡’s moment of crisis serves as a literary device, showing how God uses him as “an instrument of reform”. The Munqidh is profoundly moving. It is addressed to “my brother in religion”. An individualistic approach is rare in medieval Islamic literature; but despite its use of the first person this work speaks to society as a whole. In the early part, when attacking the first three Islamic groups, al-Ghaz\l¡ uses logical argument, even casuistry. When he turns to the Sufis, however, his writing has a beguiling inherent eloquence. The Munqidh is couched in elegant, sophisticated Arabic, replete with Qur’\nic [Koranic] and Sufi allusions, but its style is more accessible than that found in al-Ghaz\l¡’s more grandiose works. The language is full of striking images, metaphors, and literary devices such as rhetorical questions and antitheses – health and sickness and light and darkness are recurring topoi for truth and error. The Munqidh summarizes recurring ideas in al-Ghaz\l¡’s immense oeuvre: indeed, it represents al-Ghaz\l¡’s ideas in miniature. The Munqidh has been likened to Augustine’s Confessions. This analogy is appropriate in that the Munqidh concerns alGhaz\l¡’s spiritual crisis and search for truth, but unlike the Confessions, the Munqidh is a very short work and it is, of course, deeply rooted in Islamic soil. It is not in the popular tarjama (biographical note) genre, but it is in some respects in the same tradition as the works of al-Muh\sib¡ (d. 857) and al-Tirmidh¡ (d. 898) which form a distinctive branch of the Islamic autobiographical tradition concerned with the introspective examination of one’s soul. However, al-Ghaz\l¡’s superior intellectual powers manifest themselves in his ability to write persuasively, to argue clearly, and to order his material systematically. Although his polemical skills are evident in the Munqidh, this short work also speaks with considerable emotional force. The Munqidh did not spawn imitations. It seems to have been known from the 13th century in Spain (Marti, Gundisalvi, and possibly even Maimonides appear to have been familiar with it). It has been translated many times into European languages (for the first time in 1842), for while it represents the distillation of al-Ghaz\l¡’s mature thought as a medieval Muslim, it also appeals to modern Western taste. Whether or not al-Ghaz\l¡ himself was a Sufi remains open to debate, but at all events, the Munqidh helped to integrate Sufism within orthodox Islam. Carole Hillenbrand Biography Ab® H\mid Muhammad (ibn Muhammad al-T®s¡) al-Ghaz\l¡. Born in T®s, near Meshed, Persia (now Iran), 1058, probably into a family of

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Islamic religious scholars. Orphaned at an early age. Educated in Islamic law in T®s and Jurj\n; later, studied under a leading religious scholar, the “Im\m of the Haramayn” al-Juwayn¡, in Naysh\b®r (Naisabur), 1077 until al-Juwayn¡’s death, 1085. Gained a reputation as an outstanding scholar of Islamic law at Naysh\b®r, 1085–91. Appointed professor of law at the Niz\miyya College in Baghdad by the vizier, Niz\m al-Mulk, of the Seljuk sultan, 1091. Wrote a number of philosophical works, including Maq\sid al-fal\sifah [The Aims of the Philosophers], c.1093, Tah\fut al-fal\sifa [The Incoherence of the Philosophers], c.1094, and Fad\’ ih al-B\tiniyya [The Infamies of the Ism\‘¡l¡s], c.1094. Experienced major crisis of faith and lost the power of speech, 1095. On the pretext of planning a pilgrimage to Mecca, resigned his professorial position in Baghdad, which was taken over by his brother, and left his family to become a wandering Sufi mystic. Travelled to Syria and retired to a life of seclusion in the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, until 1097. Made a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, late 1097. Travelled to Palestine, Jerusalem, and Hebron; wrote his major work, Ihy\’ ‘ul®m al-d¡n [The Revivification of the Religious Sciences], 1096–1105. He returned to teach at the Niz\miyya in Naysh\b®r, 1106. Moved back to T®s shortly afterwards: lived and taught there until his death. Wrote his autobiography, al-Munqidh min al-dal\l, c.1106–07. Died in T®s, 1111.

Selected Writings al-Munqidh min al-dal\l (spiritual autobiography, written c.1106–07); as The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali, translated by F. Watt, 1953; translated by Richard Joseph McCarthy, in Freedom and Fulfillment: An Annotated Translation, 1980, and as The Path of Sufism: An Annotated Translation of al-Ghazali’s al-Munqidh min al-dal\l, 2000; in French, as Al-Munqidh Min Adalal (Erreur et Delivrance), translated by F. Jabre, 1959

Further Reading Ormsby, E., “The Taste of Truth: The Structure of Experience in AlGhazali’s al-Munqidh min al-dalal” in Islamic Studies Presented to Charles J. Adams, edited by Wael B. Hallaq and Donald P. Little, Leiden: Brill, 1991 Renard, John, Seven Doors to Islam: Spirituality and the Religious Life of Muslims, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, pp.221–5 Watt, W. Montgomery, Muslim Intellectual: A Study of Al-Ghazali, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963

Ghostwriting see Collaborative Autobiography Gibbon, Edward

1737–1794

English historian and autobiographer Edward Gibbon’s Autobiography, originally known as his Memoirs, has many merits. It assists understanding of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Its vividness allows us to share Gibbon’s excitement as he stands “amidst the ruins of the Capitol” on 15 October 1764 and decides to begin his great project. We enter his “sober melancholy” as he walks in the garden of his Alpine villa after completing it “on the day, or rather the night of 27th June 1787”. Gibbon’s account of the Fellows of Magdalen College, “steeped in port and prejudice”, provides the basis of that enduring stereotype – the lazy, drunken, and reactionary Oxford don. The idea of Gibbon as “a one-book man” seems nonsensical; Roy Porter’s assertion that “he [Gibbon] was the begetter of a pair of masterpieces” (see Porter) appears unassailable. Yet earlier Gibbon scholars regarded the

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Autobiography as a lesser work. While Porter explains its present reputation in terms of intellectual trends, such as psychohistory, structuralism, and postmodernism, reassessment of the significance of the Autobiography may have been possible all along. The central puzzle of the Autobiography is Gibbon’s own attitude towards it. What would he have made of Porter’s accolade? While agreeing that The Decline and Fall is indeed a masterpiece, he might have hesitated about the Autobiography. Of course, a man so vain as Gibbon might have welcomed praise for any of his writings, but Gibbon was modest about one thing – his Autobiography. At the outset, he stressed he was not writing another Decline and Fall. After all his hard work, he looked for some light relief. While he promised “Truth, naked, unblushing truth”, he thought he could cover “the simple transactions of a private and literary life”, “in some moments of my leisure”. Few literary predictions have been more inaccurate. Composition of the Autobiography proved hard, harder even than The Decline and Fall. Despite his efforts, Gibbon remained dissatisfied with his work; it was still unfinished when he died in January 1794. There were then no less than six drafts, each with its own emphasis and interpretation. Gibbon’s literary executor, Lord Sheffield, had to knock them into shape for publication. The contrast between Gibbon’s glib prediction and the difficulty of composition makes us question his motives. The biographer James Boswell realized that, with Gibbon, things are never what they seem – “Gibbon should have warned us of our danger before we entered his garden of flowery eloquence, by advertizing: ‘Spring-guns and man-traps set here’”. Thus, we may suspect that Gibbon is trying to lull us into thinking that here is a life story written with due regard for accuracy, but entirely “off the cuff” and with no thought of manipulation – whereas in reality he is slaving to produce a superbly crafted but essentially artificial construct, designed to promote a particular image of himself. But “naked truth” is hard to handle and, in any case, what is it? How to explain the embarrassing episode of youthful “religious folly”; how to respond to the fear that Edmund Burke may have had Gibbon’s notoriously hostile account of the rise of Christianity in his sights when blaming his Philosophe friends for the disaster of the French Revolution? These difficulties might be surmounted, even if naked truth has sometimes to be given a fig leaf. But there is a bigger problem. In his last years, Gibbon was concerned about how posterity would regard him as a man and as an historian – how it would view The Decline and Fall. That is why he embarked on the Autobiography. But would the Autobiography serve its purpose? Gibbon was not sure – hence the difficulty in composition and completion. If there was any doubt, better minimize its importance – hence the absurd comments about “some moments of my leisure”. In The Decline and Fall, Gibbon radiated intellectual selfassurance, distributing judgements “without hesitation” on whole aeons of time and expecting his readers to subscribe to generalizations of cosmic breadth. That was one reason it was so popular. For all its little deceptions, the Autobiography is honest enough to reveal that it had never really been like that. Gibbon’s views had changed substantially over time. History itself emerges not as “fact” but as shifting and elusive constructs in the mind of the historian. Today, this is why the Autobiography attracts so much attention: an unfinished book in six

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different drafts is a postmodernist’s dream. But Gibbon would not have seen it like that. His half-formed fears would have been fulfilled. Despite the importance of external trends, closer reading of the Autobiography has been the chief reason for the erosion of the authority of The Decline and Fall. John C. Clarke Biography Born in Putney, Surrey, England, 8 May 1737. Suffered from poor health as a child. Educated at a day school in Putney, then in 1746 at Dr Wooddeson’s school, Kingston-on-Thames, Surrey. Mother died, 1747; father retired to estate at Buriton, Hampshire. Sent as a boarder to Westminster School, London, until 1750; then to a school in Bath, Somerset; pupil of Philip Frances the elder in Esher, Surrey, 1752. Studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, 1752–53. Removed from Oxford by his father because of his conversion to Roman Catholicism and sent to Lausanne to study with a Calvinist minister, M. Pavillard, 1753: renounced Roman Catholicism, 1754, and returned to the Church of England, but soon became an agnostic. Became engaged in Lausanne to Suzanne Curchod (the future Madame Necker, mother of Madame de Staël), 1757, but broke off the engagement under pressure from his father. Returned to England, 1758, living at Buriton. Served in the Hampshire Militia, 1759–70, becoming a captain (on active service 1760–62). Toured France, Switzerland, and Italy, 1763–65. Father died, 1770. Sold Buriton and moved to London, 1772. Began to write The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (6 vols, 1776–88) in 1773. Elected member of Samuel Johnson’s literary club, 1774. Elected professor of ancient history, Royal Academy, London, 1774. Member of Parliament for Liskeard, Cornwall, 1774–80, and for Lymington, Hampshire, 1781–83 (commissioner of trade and plantations, 1779–82). Retired to Lausanne, Switzerland, to live more cheaply, 1783–93. Became ill on a visit to England, 1793. Died in London, 16 January 1794.

Selected Writings Memoirs, in Miscellaneous Works, 1796; 2 vols, with notes by John, Lord Sheffield, 1827; as The Autobiography and Correspondence of Edward Gibbon, edited by A. Murray, 1869; as Memoirs of My Life, edited by Georges A. Bonnard, 1966; as Gibbon’s Autobiography, edited by M.M. Reese, 1970; as Memoirs of My Life, edited by Betty Radice, 1984; as Memoirs of My Life and Writings, edited by A.O.J. Cockshut and Stephen Constantine, 1994 Journal to January 28th 1763, 1929 Le Journal à Lausanne 17 août 1763–19 avril 1764, edited by Georges A. Bonnard, 1945 Letters, 3 vols, edited by J.E. Norton, 1956 Gibbon’s Journey from Geneva to Rome: His Journal from 20 April to 2 October 1764, edited by Georges A. Bonnard, 1961

Further Reading Bell, Robert H., “Gibbon: The Philosophic Historian as Autobiographer”, Michigan Academician, 13 (1981): 349–64 Boswell, James, Life of Johnson, edited by R.W. Chapman, corrected by J.D. Fleeman, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1970 Buck, Willis R., “Reading Autobiography”, Genre, 13 (1980): 477–98 Craddock, Patricia B., Young Edward Gibbon: Gentleman of Letters, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982 De Beer, Sir Gavin, Gibbon and His World, London: Thames and Hudson, and New York: Viking Press, 1968 Folkenflick, Robert, “Child and Adult: Historical Perspective in Gibbon’s Memoirs”, Studies in Burke and his Time, 15 (1973–74): 31–43 Gibbon, Edward, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 7 vols, edited by J.B. Bury, London: Methuen, and New York: Macmillan, 1896–1902 Joyce, Michael, Edward Gibbon, London and New York: Longmans Green, 1953 Low, David Morrice, Edward Gibbon, London: Chatto and Windus, and New York: Random House, 1937

Parkinson, Richard N., Edward Gibbon, New York: Twayne, 1973 Porter, Roy, Edward Gibbon: Making History, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988 Price, Martin, “The Inquisition of Truth: Memory and Freedom in Gibbon’s Memoirs”, Philological Quarterly, 54 (1975): 391–407 Spacks, Patricia Meyer, Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1976 Swain, Joseph Ward, Edward Gibbon the Historian, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1966 Young, G.M., Gibbon, London: Davies, 1932; New York: Appleton, 1933

Gide, André

1869–1951

French fiction writer, poet, playwright, diarist, and autobiographer André Gide, who declared “extremes affect me”, signalled, in his own – paradoxically – lucid way, the complexity that characterizes his autobiographical writing (notably Les Cahiers d’André Walter, 1891; Journal, 1889–1949, 1939–50; Paludes, 1895). He forced himself to record all the contradictory facets of his strong personality and in so doing placed himself in direct contradiction to his conformist bourgeois origins (Protestant on his father’s side and Catholic on his mother’s). A disquieting and prolific writer, Gide pursued his minute stylistic research in the hope of attaining a “second reality” more precious than daily experience, if less explicit. The childhood and youth that are evoked in Si le Grain ne meurt (1920–21; If It Die) present the consciousness of an existential singularity that was often a source of suffering. The work is in some ways the first intimate profession of faith of a writer who had until then assumed the appearances of fictional characters. The title comes from the Gospel of St John (xii, 24): “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” The somewhat enigmatic and paradoxical title of Gide’s book implies that all partial joy is sterile and that one must go beyond the mediocrity of banal happiness. Outdoing oneself is a constant theme of Gide’s introspective writing style. The fundamental discovery of his own being, which was “not like others”, marks his entire life and work: in 1895 Gide had married his cousin Madeleine Rondeaux, to whom he had vowed a completely platonic passion in order to live and assume the homosexuality to which he plainly admits in his personal writings (particularly Corydon, 1920). Concerning his mariage blanc, the tormented and anti-conformist writer declared that: “she was the heaven that my insatiable hell married”. In this way he, who was without pity when he traced his own existential antagonisms, theorizes and illustrates what he qualifies as a “gratuitous act” in various novels, such as La Porte étroite (1909; Strait is the Gate), Les Caves du Vatican (1914; The Vatican Cellars), and Les Faux-monnayeurs (1926; The Counterfeiters). The last work, which associates the themes of the gratuitous nature of evil and of perversity, is in a way commented upon in Gide’s own autobiographical analysis, Le Journal des faux-monnayeurs (1926; The Journal of the Counterfeiters). His refusal of bourgeois institutional conformity is occasionally mixed with a refusal to take sides, because “to choose something is to sacrifice something else”.

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But one must not confuse this reticence with detachment or cowardice in recounting his travels in Voyage au Congo (1927) and Le Retour du Tchad (1928, both translated in Travels in the Congo); these autobiographical writings courageously lend themselves to the denunciation of the socio-economic realities of colonialism. Furthermore, Gide bears witness to the devotion of some of the intellectuals of his day to other ideological models; he bitterly acknowledged his disillusionment in Retour de l’URSS (1936; Return from the USSR) and Retouches à mon Retour de l’URSS (1937; Afterthoughts). Gide, who hinted that “I am perhaps nothing more than an explorer”, was undoubtedly first of all an experimenter in the subtleties of personal writing, dominated by the consciousness of verbal exactitude and by the respect for the most subtle rhythmic variations. His punctuation and his rigorous use of verb agreement are particularly idiosyncratic. This elaborate writing style gives itself to self-reflection. In 1947 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in recognition of a rich oeuvre that resonates with themes ranging from Narcissus to Theseus, passing on their way by Prometheus or even Hamlet and Ulysses, to question the notion of presence and absence, of identity and its masks, of sameness and “other”-ness. His influence on those who consider themselves his heirs is as broad as it is diverse, and it is only too obvious in regard to such divergent autobiographers as Jean-Paul Sartre, Roland Barthes, Julien Green, Jacques Lacan, Maurice Blanchot, and Alain Robbe-Grillet, not to mention the aficionados of the “nouveau roman”. Pérette-Cécile Buffaria translated by Jane Blevins-Le Bigot Biography André Paul Guillaume Gide. Born in Paris, 22 November 1869, into a Protestant family. His father, a law professor, died when he was aged 11. Educated at the Ecole Alsacienne, Paris, 1878–80; at a lycée in Montpellier, 1881; as a boarder with M. Henri Bauer, 1883–85, and M. Jacob Keller, 1886–87; and at the Ecole Alsacienne, 1887 (baccalauréat 1889). His education was frequently interrupted by psychological disturbances. Began to keep a journal in 1889, which he continued until shortly before his death. Inherited a large fortune on the death of his mother, 1895. Travelled on various occasions to North Africa, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. Married his cousin, Madeleine Rondeaux, 1895 (died 1938): one daughter. Mayor of La Roque-Baignard, Normandy, 1896–1900. Published his first major work, L’Immoraliste (1902; The Immoralist). Co-founder and editor of the literary journal Nouvelle Revue Française, 1908–40. Juror in Rouen, 1912. Helped refugees in World War I. Began to receive wide recognition as a writer. Liaison with Marc Allégret from 1916. Had one daughter with Elisabeth Van Rysselberghe, 1923. Travelled to Congo and Chad as special envoy of the Colonial Ministry, 1925–26. Considered becoming a communist, but disillusioned by a visit to Russia, 1936. Visited Egypt and Greece, 1939. Lived in North Africa, 1942–45; otherwise lived in Paris. Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, 1947. His best-known works of fiction are La Porte étroite (1909; Strait is the Gate), Les Caves du Vatican (1914; The Vatican Swindle), La Symphonie pastorale (1919; The Pastoral Symphony), and Les Faux-monnayeurs (1926; The Counterfeiters). Died in Paris, 19 February 1951.

Selected Writings Les Cahiers d’André Walter (autobiographical fiction), 1891; translated in part as The White Notebook by Wade Baskin, 1965; complete translation as The Notebooks of André Walter, 1968 Paludes (autobiographical fiction), 1895; as Marshlands, translated by George D. Painter, with Prometheus Misbound, 1953

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Lettres à Angèle (1898–1899), 1900 Dostoïevsky d’après sa correspondence, 1908 La Porte étroite (autobiographical fiction), 1909; as Strait is the Gate, translated by Dorothy Bussy, 1924 Oscar Wilde, 1910; as Oscar Wilde, translated by Bernard Frechtman, 1951 Charles-Louis Philippe (biographical essay), 1911 C.R.D.N. (dialogues), 1911; enlarged edition as Corydon, 1920, 2nd edition, 1925; as Corydon, translated by Hugh Gibb, 1950; translated by Richard Howard, 1983 Les Caves du Vatican (autobiographical fiction), 1914; translated by Dorothy Bussy as The Vatican Cellars, 1914, The Vatican Swindle, 1925, and Lafcadio’s Adventures, 1927 Si le grain ne meurt (autobiography), 2 vols, 1920–21; public edition, 1926; as If It Die…, translated by Dorothy Bussy, 1935 Numquid et tu…, 1922; translated in Journal, 1952 Dostoïevsky (biographical study), 1923; as Dostoevsky, translated by Arnold Bennett, 1925 Incidences, 1924 Les Faux-monnayeurs, 1926; translated by Dorothy Bussy as The Counterfeiters, 1927, and The Coiners, 1950 Le Journal des faux-monnayeurs, 1926; translated by Justin O’Brien as Journal of The Counterfeiters, 1951, and Logbook of The Coiners, 1952 Voyage au Congo, 1927; translated by Dorothy Bussy in Travels in the Congo, 1929 Le Retour du Tchad, suivi du Voyage au Congo, Carnets de route, 1928; translated by Dorothy Bussy in Travels in the Congo, 1929 Travels in the Congo, translated by Dorothy Bussy, 1929 Lettres, 1930 Retour de l’URSS, 1936; translated by Dorothy Bussy as Return from the USSR, 1937, and Back from the USSR, 1937 Retouches à mon Retour de l’URSS, 1937; as Afterthoughts: A Sequel to Back from the USSR, translated by Dorothy Bussy, 1938 Journal 1889–1939, 1939; 1939–1942, 1946; 1942–1949, 1950; as Journals 1889–1949, edited and translated by Justin O’Brien, 4 vols, 1947–51 Interviews imaginaires, 1943; as Imaginary Interviews, translated by Malcolm Cowley, 1944 Lettres à Christian Beck, 1946 Et nunc manet in te (auto/biographical prose), 1947; as The Secret Drama of My Life, translated by Keen Wallis, 1951; translated by Justin O’Brien as Madeleine and Et nunc manet in te, 1952 Paul Valéry (biographical study), 1947 (with Francis Jammes) Correspondance 1893–1938, edited by Robert Mallet, 1948 (with Paul Claudel) Correspondance 1899–1926, edited by Robert Mallet, 1949; as The Correspondence 1899–1926, translated by John Russell, 1952 Feuillets d’automne (essays and reminiscences), 1949; as Autumn Leaves, translated by Elsie Pell, 1950 (with Charles du Bos) Lettres, 1950 Egypte 1939 (travel notes), 1951 (with Rainer Maria Rilke) Correspondance 1909–1926, edited by Renée Lang, 1952 (with Simone Marye) Lettres à un sculpteur, 1952 Journal 1939–1949: souvenirs, 1954 (with Paul Valéry) Correspondance 1890–1942, edited by Robert Mallet, 1955; abridged as Self-Portraits: The Gide Valéry Letters 1890–1942, edited by Robert Mallet, translated by June Guicharnaud, 1966 Lettres au Docteur Willy Schuermans (1920–1928), 1955 (with Rilke and Verhaeren) Correspondance inédite, edited by C. Bronne, 1955 (with Marcel Jouhandeau) Correspondance, 1958 (with Charles Péguy) Correspondance 1905–1912, edited by Alfred Saffrey, 1958 (with Edmund Gosse) Correspondance 1904–1928, edited by Linette F. Brugmans, 1960 (with André Suarès) Correspondance 1908–1920, edited by Sidney D. Braun, 1963 (with Arnold Bennett) Correspondance 1911–1931, edited by Linette F. Brugmans, 1964

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Thirteen Letters of André Gide to Joseph Conrad, 1967 (with André Rouveyre) Correspondance 1909–1951, edited by Claude Martin, 1967 (with Roger Martin du Gard) Correspondance, 1913–1951, edited by Jean Delay, 2 vols, 1968 (with Jean Cocteau) Lettres, edited by Jean-Jacques Kihm, 1970 (with François Mauriac) Correspondance 1912–1950, edited by Jacqueline Morton, 1971 (with Charles Brunard) Correspondance, 1974 (with Albert Mockel) Correspondance 1891–1938, edited by Gustave Vanwelkenhuyzen, 1975 (with Jules Romains) Correspondance, edited by Claude Martin, 1976; supplement, 1979 (with Henri Ghéon) Correspondance 1897–1944, edited by Jean Tipy, 2 vols, 1976 (with Jacques-Emile Blanche) Correspondance 1892–1939, edited by Georges-Paul Collet, 1979 (with Justin O’Brien) Correspondance, edited by Jacqueline Morton, 1979 (with Dorothy Bussy) Correspondance, edited by Jean Lambert, 3 vols, 1979–82; as Selected Letters, edited and translated by Richard Tedeschi, 1983 (with François-Paul Alibert) Correspondance 1907–1950, edited by Claude Martin, 1982 (with Jean Giono) Correspondance 1929–1940, edited by Roland Bourneuf and Jacques Cotnam, 1983 (with Jef Last) Correspondance 1934–1950, edited by C.J. Greshoff, 1985 La Correspondance générale de André Gide, edited by Claude Martin, 1985 (with Harry Kessler) Correspondance, edited by Claude Foucart, 1985 (with Thea Sternheim) Correspondance 1927–1950, edited by Claude Foucart, 1986 (with Francis Viélé-Griffin) Correspondance 1891–1931, edited by Henri de Paysac, 1986 (with Anna de Noailles) Correspondance 1902–1928, edited by Claude Mignot-Ogliastri, 1986 (with Jacques Copeau) Correspondance, edited by Jean Claude, 2 vols, 1987–88 Correspondance avec sa mère 1880–1895, edited by Claude Martin, 1988 (with Valery Larbaud) Correspondance 1903–1938, edited by Françoise Lioure, 1989 (with André Ruyters) Correspondance, edited by Claude Martin and Victor Martin-Schmets, 2 vols, 1990 (with Jean Schlumberger) Correspondance 1901–1950, edited by Pascal Mercier and Peter Fawcett, 1993 (with Christian Beck) Correspondance, edited by Pierre Masson, 1994 Correspondance avec Rolf Bongs, 1935–1950, edited by Claude Foucart, 1994 (with Félix Bertaux) Correspondance, 1911–1948, edited by Claude Foucart, 1995 (with Robert Levesque) Correspondance (1926–1950), edited by Pierre Masson, 1995 Correspondance avec Charles-Louis Philippe et sa famille, 1898–1936, edited by Martine Sagaert, 1995 (with Louis Gérin) Correspondance, 1933–1937, edited by Pierre Masson, 1996 Journal (Pléïade edition), edited by Eric Marty and Martine Sagaert, 2 vols, 1996–97 (with Henri de Régnier) Correspondance (1891–1911), edited by David J. Niederauer and Heather Franklyn, 1997 (with Jean-Richard Bloch) Correspondance (1910–1936), edited by Bernard Duchatelet, 1997 L’Enfance de l’art: correspondances avec Elie Allégret (1886–1896), edited by Daniel Durosay, 1998 (with Jacques Rivière) Correspondance 1909–1925, edited by Pierre de Gaulmyn and Alain Rivière, 1998 (with Jean Paulhan) Correspondance, 1918–1951, edited by Frédéric Grover and Pierrette Schartenberg-Winter, 1998 Georges Simenon–André Gide (correspondence), edited by Benoît Denis, 1999

(with Jean Malaquais) Correspondance, 1935–1950, edited by Pierre Masson and Geneviève Millot-Nakach, 2000

Further Reading Apter, Emily S., André Gide and the Codes of Homotextuality, Saratoga, California: Anma Libri, 1987 Barthes, Roland, “Notes sur André Gide et son journal” in his Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, edited by Eric Marty, Paris: Seuil, 1993 Blanchot, Maurice, “Gide et la littérature d’expériences” in his La Part du feu, Paris: Gallimard, 1949 Delay, Jean, The Youth of André Gide, abridged and translated by June Guicharnaud, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963 (French edition, 1956) Itti, Eliane, La Littérature du moi en 50 ouvrage, Paris: Ellipses, 1996 Lacan, Jacques, “Jeunesse de Gide, ou la lettre du désir” in his Ecrits, Paris: Seuil, 1966 Lejeune, Philippe, L’Autobiographie en France, 2nd edition, Paris: Armand Colin, 1998 (first edition, 1971) Lesot, Adeline, L’Autobiographie de Montaigne à Nathalie Sarraute, Paris: Hatier, 1988 Martin, Claude, André Gide par lui-même, Paris: Seuil, 1963; as Gide, revised edition, 1995 Marty, Eric, L’Écriture du jour, Paris: Seuil, 1983 Pollard, Patrick, André Gide: The Homosexual Moralist, New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 1991 Robinson Paul, Gay Lives: Homosexual Autobiography from John Addington Symonds to Paul Monette, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999 Sheridan, Alan, André Gide: A Life in the Present, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1998 Tolton, C.D.E., André Gide and the Art of Autobiography: A Study of Si le Grain ne meurt, Toronto: Macmillan Canada, 1975

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins

1860–1935

American fiction writer, prose writer, and social activist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, best known today for the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) and utopian novel Herland (1915), and famous in her own time for the social theories elaborated in Women and Economics (1898), was a prolific writer. In addition to over 200 short stories, novels, non-fiction books, approximately 1000 lectures, and a book of poems, she also wrote diaries, quantities of letters, and an autobiography. From these latter materials one learns of Gilman’s private struggles and how closely her feminist social philosophy and fiction grew out of personal experiences. Gilman’s intellectual and nonconformist nature were partly shaped by family traditions. Her father was one of the Beecher family, famous for abolitionist, suffragist, and feminist activities; her mother’s family were religious nonconformists. Early experiences – a mostly absent father, a controlling and repressive mother, money worries, and frequent moves – quickly showed Gilman dangerous weaknesses underlying the conventional family structure. From 1875 to 1903, excepting a twoand-a-half year gap during a major depression following the birth of her daughter, Gilman kept extensive diaries (published 1994). Although claiming in her autobiography that she excluded from the diary anything that others couldn’t read and that therefore it tells little of the “desperately serious ‘living’ which was going on”, in actuality, the young Gilman was often frank, dramatic, and revealing about the details of daily life. After 1903 Gilman kept only minimal records in slim date books.

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The diary depicts young Gilman as hard-working and obedient, although sometimes rebellious or disheartened. She takes pleasures in clothes, exercise, intellectual achievements, social acceptance, and deep friendships, but exhibits a growing conviction that her life will be dedicated not to domesticity but to humanity’s betterment. Disappointments and worries are often implied rather than elaborated, as when, in March 1883, she tells of her fiancé (Walter Stetson) visiting and then merely notes: “Tears”. Yet some entries are painfully open, as with her 20 August 1885 description of depression: Every day the same weary drag. To die mere cowardice. Retreat impossible, escape impossible … He offers to let me go free, he would do everything in the world for me; but he cannot see how irrevocably bound I am, for life, for life. No, unless he die and the baby die, or he change or I change there is no way out. Often revealing are various letters, poems, and notes that Gilman tucked into her diary (see Knight’s edition). Both of Gilman’s husbands preserved many of her letters, and these usually long and candid texts demonstrate her personal turmoil and honesty, along with elaborated social theories and continuing dedication to feminist and social-justice causes. Stetson copied letters from his prospective bride into his diary, and later, after the marriage failed, he and Charlotte again corresponded, with concerns about their daughter, Katherine, but also about mutual friends and their own work. Reading Gilman’s 1897–1900 letters to her second husband, Houghton Gilman (see Hill’s edition), one finds emotional maturation along with delight in a sustainable love that nurtured all her faculties. Unpublished letters, as with most of Gilman’s papers, reside at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, but many letters are also preserved in the papers of her correspondents, at various locations (see Hill, 1980, and Lane). Gilman’s autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (written 1925–26) found no seriously interested publisher, Gilman being out of the limelight by this time. Only in 1935, after she provided light revision plus a new final chapter, and with an introduction by Zona Gale, did the book come forth – sadly, just weeks after her suicide. The book’s final chapter openly confronts her struggle with breast cancer and preparation to end her life using chloroform: Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune or “broken heart” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one. The Living presents Gilman’s well-crafted portrayal of the self she wanted others to remember: a woman who overcame childhood deprivation, poverty, social ostracism because of her divorce, and lifelong bouts of depression, yet capitalized on intelligence, determination, and strong heritage to become an amazingly productive lecturer and writer and an individual happy in her family situation. At times this depiction contradicts experiences recorded in her letters and diaries. She rationalized this: “the difference is great between one’s outside ‘life,’ the

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things which happen to one, incidents, pains and pleasures, and one’s ‘living’”. Taken in conjunction with her other life writings, however, the autobiography has much to tell us about how Gilman processed her own past and what she wished others to take from her experiences. Anne L. Bower Biography Born Charlotte Anna Perkins in Hartford, Connecticut, 3 July 1860. Her great-aunt was Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Her father deserted the family soon after her birth. Studied art at Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, 1878–79. Married a painter (Charles) Walter Stetson, 1884: one daughter. Treated for hysteria by Dr S. Weir Mitchell, 1886. Separated from her husband, 1887, and moved to Pasadena, California. Became a playwright with Grace Channing, 1888–91, then ran a boarding house. Wrote her most famous work, The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), a collection of stories; also wrote poetry in In This Our World (1893). Divorced from her husband, 1894. Co-editor, The Impress journal, San Francisco, 1894. Became a full-time writer, an activist in the women’s suffrage movement, public speaker, and lecturer on feminism and socialism, mid-1890s. Wrote Women and Economics (1898), a feminist landmark. Married a cousin, George Houghton Gilman, 1900, and moved to New York the same year. Lectured in Europe, 1905. Editor and writer, The Forerunner magazine, 1909–16. Wrote Herland (1915), a utopian novel, and further feminist works, including The Man-Made World (1911) and His Religion and Hers (1923). Husband died, 1934. Moved back to Pasadena, 1934. Diagnosed with cancer. Committed suicide, 17 August 1935.

Selected Writings The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography, 1935 The Diaries of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, edited by Denise D. Knight, 2 vols, 1994; selection as The Abridged Diaries of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, edited by Knight, 1998 A Journey from Within: The Love Letters of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1897–1900, edited by Mary A. Hill, 1995

Further Reading Ceplair, Larry (editor), Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Nonfiction Reader, New York: Columbia University Press, 1991 Hill, Mary A., Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Making of a Radical Feminist, 1860–1896, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980 Lane, Ann J., To Herland and Beyond: The Life and Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, New York: Pantheon, 1990 Meyering, Sheryl L. (editor), Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Woman and Her Work, Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1989

Ginzburg, Evgeniia

1904–1977

Russian teacher, journalist, political prisoner, and memoirist Evgeniia Ginzburg belonged to the tragic generation of Soviet people who venerated the ideals of the Russian October Revolution, survived the GULAG system, and still tried to reconcile their ideals with post-Stalinist reality. She became widely known because of the publication of her memoir Krutoi Marshrut (1967–79), in English Journey into the Whirlwind and its sequel Within the Whirlwind. Evgeniia Ginzburg was arrested on 15 February 1937 on the false charge of being a supporter of the Trotskyist opposition and a terrorist. She was sentenced to ten years of imprisonment, including solitary confinement and labour in a GULAG camp.

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By the time of her arrest, Ginzburg was a highly educated lecturer of history at Kazan University and a very active and loyal member of the Bolshevik party. She was married to an influential party member, Pavel Aksenov. She wrote the first volume of her memoir soon after her release. In 1962 she gave it and a part of the second volume to the publishers of the literary monthly journals Novyi Mir and Iunost’. By 1966 all her hopes for the book to be published vanished despite excellent references from K. Chukovskii, Boris Pasternak, K. Paustovskii, and A. Voznesenskii. The volume was tape-recorded, smuggled abroad, and published in Milan by Mondadori, both in Russian and Italian, without her permission. Ginzburg was upset that the book was first published not at home, but abroad. The second volume was published in Italy (1979), in the United States (1981), and then elsewhere. In the original Russian language the two-volume autobiographical book was first published in Riga (1989), where Ginzburg used to go for many years. With the overwhelming acclaim of reviews all over the world, the book is generally regarded as a historical record, not a literary work. In 1989 Aleksandr Getman wrote a play on the basis of her books. A Moscow theatre “Sovremennik” performed the play successfully and showed it on Broadway. In her gripping autobiographical account Ginzburg writes about her experiences during Stalinist purges, the 18-year dehumanizing imprisonment and the brutality of the GULAG camps. The book, written by a witness-victim of the repressive system, represents the collective experiences of the politically excluded and silenced victims of the regime. It contains some features of testimonial literature, in particular in the form of the first-person narration by a witness of the remembered events as a protagonist’s significant life experience. The volume was one of the first Soviet women’s autobiographical texts to appear, and a dramatic document about women’s experiences in the Stalinist totalitarian system. A personal story of a woman who loses her family and freedom becomes a revealing historical record in which factual evidence is combined with the analysis of the Soviet repressive technologies of power. Ginzburg meticulously documents the rituals of effacement of selfhood in prisons and the masquerades of gender “recreation” in labour camps. Her memoir is a poignant self-reflexive chronicle of how women’s political deviance was cleansed, how mechanisms of terror were profoundly interiorized in their lives, and how women’s individual and collective identities underwent psychological, emotional, and social ruptures. The book also uncovers the dynamic of women’s hidden memories behind the hegemonic representations of a new Soviet woman. Ginzburg continually recounts a sense of sisterhood born in mutual resistance and survival. She describes how women’s shared experiences confronted repressive mechanisms of the GULAG system, how they structured Ginzburg’s own survival and post-GULAG life. Ginzburg’s tormented account unveils the regime’s political eugenics as subjecting women to a humiliating diversity of “contraceptive measures”, including interrogations, torture, and deadly labour in the regions of permafrost. The literary exploitation of motherhood as trope raises the representation of Ginzburg’s individual maternal experience from its particularity to the symbol of a female body eroded to anonymous “surro-

gate” motherhood in the reproductive politics of the GULAG / Soviet system. The narrative of the book is intentionally polyphonic as Ginzburg included many lives, experiences, and names to resist “facelessness” of the past in the hegemonic ideological practices of anonymity for victims and their executioners. Ginzburg reflects on the controversies of the existential condition for both executioners and victims in the state machine of violence, and pays attention to physical, emotional, and psychological torments of many other people in camp experiences, whose silenced memories were to structure the entire lives of individuals and generations after their release from GULAG. Indeed, the very process of writing the book under austere censorship was an outstanding performative act of resistance to eradications of collective memories about Stalinism. Irina Novikova Biography Born in Moscow, Russia, 20 December 1904. Educated in Kazan’. Worked as a teacher, journalist, college instructor, and party activist. Married Dmitrii Fedorov: one son. Married Pavel Aksenov: one son (the writer Vasilii Aksenov). Married Anton Walter: one adopted daughter. Arrested in 1937: spent her sentence in solitary confinement in Iaroslavl, then in a labour camp in Kolyma until her release in 1947. Lived in exile in Magadan, while Anton Walter was finishing his sentence, 1947–49; lived with Vasilii Aksenov during this period. Rearrested, 1949. Released, rehabilitated, and allowed to return to Moscow, 1955–56. Moved to L’vov with Walter. Lived in Moscow after his death in 1959. Began publishing short stories, reviews, and essays in Iunost’ and other journals. Gained international recognition with the publication of her autobiographical works. Died in Moscow, 25 May 1977.

Selected Writings Krutoi Marshrut (memoir), vol. 1, 1967; as Journey into the Whirlwind, translated by Paul Stevenson and Manya Harari, 1967; as Into the Whirlwind, translated by Stevenson and Max Hayward, 1967 Krutoi Marshrut (memoir), vol. 2, 1979; as Within the Whirlwind, translated by Ian Boland, 1981

Further Reading Beverley, John, “The Margin at the Center: On Testimonio” in DeColonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography, edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992 Conquest, Robert, Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps, London: Macmillan, and New York: Viking Press, 1978 Harlow, Barbara, Resistance Literature, New York: Methuen, 1987 Heldt, Barbara, Terrible Perfection: Women and Russian Literature, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987 Holmgren, Beth, “For the Good of the Cause: Russian Women’s Autobiography in the Twentieth Century” in Women Writers in Russian Literature, edited by Toby W. Clyman and Diana Greene, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994 Kasack, Wolfgang, entry on Ginzburg in his Dictionary of Russian Literature since 1917, translated from the German by Maria Carlson and Jane T. Hedges, New York: Columbia University Press, 1988 Lowe, David, “E. Ginzburg’s Krutoi marshrut and A. Aksenov’s Ozhog: The Magadan Connection”, Slavic and East European Journal, 27/2 (1983): 200–10 Specter, Michael, “Into the Whirlwind: Gulag Survivor Put Her Pain into Words”, New York Times, November 11, 1996 Terras, Viktor, entry on Ginzburg in his Handbook of Russian Literature, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1985 Vronskaya, Jeanne and V. Chuguev, entry on Ginzburg in A

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Biographical Dictionary of the Soviet Union 1917–1988, London and New York: Saur, 1989 Zholkovsky, Alexander, “Three on Courtship, Corpses, and Culture: Tolstoj, Posle bala, Zoscenko, Dama s cvetami, E. Ginzburg, Raj pod mikroskopom”, Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, 22 (1988): 7–24

Ginzburg, Lidiia

1902–1990

Russian memoirist, life-writing theorist, and diarist Lidiia Ginzburg is recognized as the most distinguished theorist of life writing in Russian literary studies. Not only did she develop principles of literary and cultural analysis to re-evaluate the aesthetic function and place of various forms of life writing in literary history, but she gained prominence at the very end of her life as a master of the art of the journal, the essay, the cultural memoir, and the recorded conversation which she practised as new forms of “contemporary prose”. Only between 1982 and 1993 did it become possible for Ginzburg, and later her literary executor Alexander Kushner, to make large parts of the journal available for publication. The volumes O starom i novom [1982; On the Old and the New], Literatura v poiskakh real’nosti [1987; Literature in Search of Reality], and Chelovek za pismennym stolom [1989; The Person behind the Desk], were followed by the posthumous anthology, Pretvorenie opyta [1991; The Transformation of Experience], her last authorized work, and finally by two extraordinary publications of previously unpublished journal entries, edited by Kushner and Alexander Chudakov (1992–93). In addition to the unique pieces in her early journal, the two parts of Zapiski blokadnogo cheloveka (1984; Blockade Diary) should be noted among her finest later works along with her remarkable cultural memoirs, a pair of essays on the Russian and Soviet intelligentsia: “Pokolenie na povorote” [The Turning Point of a Generation] and “Zaodno s pravoporiadkom” [At One with the Prevailing Order]. Her interest in the journal as a prose form may be traced back to her seminar essay on Prince Petr A. Viazemskii and his Staraia zapisnaia knizhka (The Old Notebook), published in the “young formalist anthology” Russkaia proza (1926; as “Vyazemsky: Man of Letters” in Russian Prose, 1985), edited by her mentors Iurii Tynianov and Boris Eikhenbaum. Ginzburg’s training at the Petrograd State Institute for the History of the Arts (GIII) prepared her to engage with life writing as analytically as verse and fiction. During this time she also initiated her private journal, the medium of most of her life writing, maintaining it from 1925 until her death in 1990. Ginzburg’s early journal (1925–30) interrogates issues pertaining to self-definition and the formation of both personal and professional character traits which result in the crafting of a self, a personality with which she could ultimately live and work. Moreover, the journal entries evolve into a literary creation of self, which, by 1928, she already regarded as the “most suitable form” for her writing, but as “unpublishable”, as she noted in her journal for that year. Attention to matters of style and structure suggests a writer seeking aesthetic solutions to personal problems she is not otherwise equipped to resolve (see Zholkovsky, and Harris 1996).

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The interpretation of personality, as developed in her early journal, was to play a significant role in Ginzburg’s formulation of a theory of psychological prose, in which her concepts of historical and empirical personality, and her ideas on life writing, were to be advanced. Thus, as early as 1925, Ginzburg had begun to theorize the nature of life-writing forms not previously considered “aesthetic”, while practising the art of a genre not previously considered “literary”. In her essay “Ob istorizme i strukture” [dated “1975 / 1980”; Historicism and Structure] she explained why unmediated prose forms were fundamental to her aesthetic theory: the aestheticization of extra-literary elements occurs on various planes. Especially significant is everyday life, that is, the biographical plane in the broadest meaning of the term … oral biographies … ranging from heroic legends to gossip, exist in stories, in conversations, or even in musings about human nature; each contains its own obligatory forms. In O literaturnom geroe [1979; On the Literary Hero] she pointed out how people “constantly rework their lives through their internal and external speech . . . [thus even] spontaneous oral speech contains the potential for scientific and poetic thought, and consequently, has powerful creative potential.” And finally, theorizing art as “interpretation” in a late journal entry, she reaffirmed how all efforts to formalize and organize human activities and behaviour were part of the ongoing aesthetic process: “Art is the interpretation of experience, not of reality, because only through experience do we know reality. Interpretation is aesthetic . . . latent in every activity, in every aspect of behavior.” Hence, her thesis is that there exists a “continuum of aesthetic function” ranging from “everyday human documents” and “spontaneous oral speech” to masterpieces of artistic literature. Art is merely the “final stage” of the aesthetic process which is ongoing in the human mind (see Pratt, 1990). Ginzburg’s evaluation of life writing is ultimately expressed in one of her last entries, dated 1989, wherein she reflects on life writing as the most “contemporary” mode of expression because of its direct quality. Citing such writers as Viktor Shklovskii and Osip Mandel’shtam she concluded that “the direct conversation about life – in its various forms, and oblique forms also exist – is now the only genre that is contemporary”. Jane Gary Harris Biography Lidiia Iakovlevna Ginzburg. Born in Odessa, Ukraine (then a Russian territory), 5 March 1902. Educated at a young women’s gymnasium in Odessa until 1920. Attended the Petrograd State Institute for the History of the Arts (GIII), 1922–26; studied under Iurii Tynianov and Boris Eikhenbaum, and associated with the “Young Formalists”. Taught history of Russian literature at GIII, 1926–30, and in the Rabfak (workers’ school) at the Civil Aeronautics Academy and the Post-Secondary School of the Labour Movement, 1931–34. Worked for the publishing house Detgiz and wrote a detective novel for adolescents in 1932. Lectured on Russian literature for the Leningrad Municipal and Regional Public Lecture Service and the Section for Artistic Propaganda of the Leningrad branch of the Soviet Writers’ Union, 1930–40. Was connected with the court case concerning the spy Zhirmunskii, 1933. Studied at Leningrad State University (candidate degree 1940). Taught history of Russian literature and Russian aesthetic doctrine at the All-Russian Academy of Arts, Leningrad, 1944–46, and at the Karelo-Finnish University, Petrozavodsk,

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1947–50; taught monograph courses as a part-time instructor at Leningrad State University, 1948–50. Was connected with the case against Eikhenbaum and the Faculty of Russian literature at Leningrad State University, 1952. Editor in the literature and drama section of Leningrad Radio during World War II and the Leningrad blockade, receiving two awards for valour. Studied at the Institute of Russian Literature (doctoral degree 1959). Freelance editor responsible for numerous scholarly and academic editions of Russian classical authors, 1929–90. Her most important publications appeared after the Thaw of 1964. Awarded State Prize for Literature, 1988. Died in Leningrad, 15 July 1990.

Selected Writings “Viazemskii – literatur” in Russkaia proza, edited by Iurii Tynianov and Boris Eikhenbaum, 1926; as “Vyazemsky: Man of Letters” in Russian Prose, edited and translated by Ray Parrott, 1985 O psikhologicheskoi proze, 1971, revised 1977; as On Psychological Prose, translated by Judson Rosengrant, 1991 O starom i novom [On the Old and the New] (memoirs), 1982 “Tynianov-uchenyi” [Tynianov the Scholar] (memoirs) in Vospominaniia o Tynianove: portrety i vstrechi, 1983 “Zabolotskii kontsa dvadtsatykh godov” [Zabolotskii at the End of the 1920s] (memoirs) in Vospominaniia o N. Zabolotskom, 2nd edition, 1983 “Zapiski blokadnogo cheloveka” (memoirs), Part 1 in Neva, 1 (1984); Part 2 in Pretvorenie opyta, edited by Nikolai Kononov, 1991; as Blockade Diary, translated by Alan Myers, 1995 “Eshche raz o starom i novom (Pokolenie na povorote)” [Once Again on the Old and the New (Turning Point of a Generation)] (memoirs) in Tynianovskii sbornik: Vtorye Tynianovskie chteniia, 1986; translated as “Tsvetayeva et Pougatchev” in Lettre Internationale, 22 (1989) Literatura v poiskakh real’nosti [Literature in Search of Reality] (memoirs), 1987 Chelovek za pismennym stolom [The Person behind the Desk] (memoirs), 1989; excerpt translated as “Tolstoj e Proust” in La Nuova Rivista Europea (October–December 1978) “Vospominaia Institut Istorii Iskusstv” [Remembering the Institute of the History of the Arts] (memoirs) in Tynianovskii sbornik: Chetvertye Tynianovskie chteniia, 1990 “Dve vstrechi” [Two Encounters] (memoirs) in Russkaia mysl’, 3852 (2 November 1990) Pretvorenie opyta [The Transformation of Experience], edited by Nikolai Kononov, 1991 “Pokolenie na povorote” [The Turning Point of a Generation] in Tynianovskii sbornik: vtorye Tynianovskie chteniia, edited by Marietta Chudakova et al., 1986 “Zaodno s pravoporiadkom” [At One with the Prevailing Order] in Tynianovskii sbornik: Tret’ii Tynianovskie chteniia, edited by Marietta Chudakova, 1988 “Zapisi 1920–30–x godov (Iz neopublikovannogo)” [Entries of the 1920s and 1930s (Previously Unpublished)], edited by Alexander Kushner and Alexander Chudakov, in Novyi Mir, 6 (1992) “Iz dnevnikov Lidii Ginzburg” [From the Diaries of Lidiia Ginzburg] in Literaturnaia Gazeta, 41 (13 October 1993) “Selected Works: From the Journal”, translated by Jane Gary Harris, in Russian Women Writers, edited by Christine Tomei, 1999

Further Reading Chudakov, Alexander, “Vvedenie. Zapisi 20-30-x godov”, Novyi Mir, 6 (1992) Gasparov, Boris, “On ‘Notes from the Leningrad Blockade’”, Canadian-American Slavic Studies (special Ginzburg issue), edited by Jane Gary Harris, 28/2–3 (l994): 216–20 Ginzburg, Lydia, “Ob istorizme i strukture” in O starom i novom: stat’i i ocherki, Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1982 Ginzburg, Lydia, “Priamaia rech’” in her O literaturnom geroe, Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1979 Harris, Jane Gary, “Lydia Ginzburg, the ‘Young Formalists’, and Russkaia Proza”, Canadian-American Slavic Studies (special Ginzburg issue), edited by Harris, 28/2–3 (1994): 161–82 Harris, Jane Gary, “The Crafting of a Self: Lydiia Ginzburg’s Early

Journal” in Gender and Russian Literature, edited by Rosalind Marsh, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996 (on aesthetic structure) Harris, Jane Gary, “‘The Direct Conversation about Life’: Lydia Ginzburg’s Journal as a Contemporary Literary Genre” in Neoformalist Papers: Contributions to the Silver Jubilee Conference to Mark 25 Years of the Neoformalist Circle, edited by Joe Andrew and Robert Reid, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998 Harris, Jane Gary, “Lydia Ginzburg: Images of the Intelligentsia” in Incarnating Art: The Russian Cultural Memoir, edited by Beth Holmgren, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2001 (on the cultural memoirs) Harris, Jane Gary, “Lidiia Ginzburg” in Russian Women Writers, vol. 2, edited by Christine Tomei, New York: Garland, 1999 Iakov, Gordin, “Mashtabnost’ issledovaniia” in Voprosy literatury, 1 (1981): 273–81 Nevzgliadova, Elena, “Na samom dele, mysl’ kak gost’…O proze Lidii Ginzburg” in Avrora, 4 (1989) Pratt, Sarah (editor), “Lydia Ginzburg’s Contribution to Literary Criticism”, special issue of Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 19/2 (1985) Pratt, Sarah, “Lidiia Ginzburg and the Fluidity of Genre”, in Autobiographical Statements in Twentieth-Century Russian Literature, edited by Jane Gary Harris, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990 Rosengrant, Judson, “L. Ia. Ginzburg: An International Chronological Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Works”, Russian Review, 54/4 (1995): 587–600 Zholkovsky, Alexander, “Between Genres”, Canadian-American Slavic Studies (special Ginzburg issue), edited by Jane Gary Harris, 28/2–3 (l994): 157–61 (on aesthetic structure)

Ginzburg, Natalia

1916–1991

Italian fiction writer, autobiographer, essayist, and playwright “While I was living or looking at them, those moments and places were extremely beautiful only because I knew that I would have later found myself bent to remember them”. These lines written by one of the characters of Natalia Ginzburg’s epistolary novel Caro Michele (1973; Dear Michael) may serve as a definition of Ginzburg’s oeuvre as a whole. They clearly point out the important role played by memory and remembrance in Ginzburg’s works. Her life writings, as well as her fiction, fall mainly within the genre of the family chronicle, which they then subvert by their self-conscious denial of more conventionally ordered chronological reports on family life. In Lessico famigliare (1963; Family Sayings), the autobiographical portrait of the author and her family is rooted in remembrance. This gives the book its episodic character, which reflects the translation of remembrances into free associations of images through which the narrative develops. It would be frustrating to read Ginzburg’s autobiography as a thorough chronicle: chronological time is often subverted and, as she herself admits, “memory is treacherous and books founded on reality are so often only faint reflections and sketches of all that we have seen and heard”. The reader still thinks of her as a child or an adolescent when she announces that she is now married with children. Ginzburg chooses not to focus her autobiographical sketches on herself (“I have had no great wish to speak of myself”): what interests her the most is an investigation less of her inner self than of the interaction between the different

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members of her family. Although she repeatedly claimed that she understood nothing about politics (and yet was elected twice as an independent member of parliament in the lists of the Communist party), Ginzburg closely parallels the family portrait with the outline of the Italian social and political life in the microcosm of Turin from the period between the two world wars up to the late 1940s. Social and political events are always filtered through the daily life of the family, and yet Ginzburg does not emphasize the dramatic aspects of them: humour prevails over pathos. In line with her understated tone, Ginzburg does not overtly emphasize her father’s Jewish descent, at least not superficially. Most of the time the reader has the impression of witnessing the daily life of any bourgeois Italian family, not that of an anti-fascist family whose members will be jailed, like Natalia’s father, or will have to escape to France, like one of her brothers. Ironically, as Cesare Garboli has remarked, the book opens not with the mentioning of the hatred against Jews but of the hatred felt by Natalia’s paternal grandmother for anyone who was not a Jew: “she shuddered at people who were not Jews, as she did at cats”. Functional to the remembrance of things past (the name of Marcel Proust, whom Ginzburg translated, recurs several times in the narrative) is the constant use of family sayings and expressions, which Ginzburg subtitles for the unfamiliar reader. These are the structuring elements of the autobiography, keeping all its episodes together, and function at the same time as a counterthread (announced from the very title) to that impression of universalism conveyed by the book at first. Natalia’s family is not any common bourgeois Italian family; it has a distinctive code through which it communicates and which unites its members even when they are apart. In Le piccole virtù (1962; The Little Virtues), Mai devi domandarmi (1970; Never Must You Ask Me), and Vita immaginaria [1974; Imaginary Life], which collect Ginzburg’s newspaper articles, the topics are often invitations for autobiographical digressions about her family. The pull towards autobiography is always present in Ginzburg, and often, when reviewing a book or commenting on an event, she is attracted by the call of her memory. Her critical analyses always rest upon the search for a correspondence between the author and her own personal idea of literature or world vision. Most of the times, literary criticism is just the starting point for an autobiographical narrative. The same interest in family relations that characterized Lessico famigliare is at the core of Ginzburg’s biographical study La famiglia Manzoni (1983; The Manzoni Family), in which her reconstruction of the life of the 19th-century Italian novelist Alessandro Manzoni is woven into a commentary on the letters that the different members of the Manzoni family exchange as if they were characters of an epistolary novel, a genre that Ginzburg was to explore in the later part of her production. Throughout her career, Ginzburg revived the family chronicle by reinventing its codes and by disseminating them in writings that leisurely cross the boundaries between genres in the name of autobiographical remembrance. Luca Prono

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Biography Born Natalia Levi in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, 14 July 1916. Her father, a professor of anatomy, was Jewish. Moved with her family to Turin, 1919. Educated at home and at schools in Turin. Studied at the University of Turin, 1935; left before graduating. Married Leone Ginzburg, a Russian-born Jewish intellectual and anti-fascist activist, 1938: three children. Exiled to Pizzoli, Abruzzo region, 1940–43. Wrote her first book, the novella La strada che va in città (1942; The Road to the City). Returned to Rome after the fall of Mussolini, 1943. Went into hiding in Rome, where her husband was killed by the Nazis, and in Florence, 1944. Returned to Rome after the Allied Liberation. Worked for Einaudi publishers, Rome, 1944, and Turin, 1945–49. Married Gabriele Baldini, a professor of English literature at the University of Rome, 1950. Moved to Rome, 1952. Lived in London, where Baldini headed the Italian Cultural Institute, 1959–69. Husband died, 1969. Returned to Rome, 1969. Elected to parliament as deputy for the Sinistra Indipendente political grouping, drawn from the communist party list, 1983. Died in Rome, 8 October 1991 (some sources give 7 October).

Selected Writings Le piccole virtù (essays), 1962; as The Little Virtues, translated by Dick Davis, 1985 Lessico famigliare (autobiographical fiction), 1963; as Family Sayings, translated by D.M. Low, 1967, revised 1984; as The Things We Used to Say, translated by Judith Woolf, 1997 Mai devi domandarmi (essays), 1970; as Never Must You Ask Me, translated by Isabel Quigly, 1973 Vita immaginaria (essays), 1974 La famiglia Manzoni (biographical study), 1983; as The Manzoni Family, translated by Marie Evans, 1987

Further Reading Bullock, Alan, Natalia Ginzburg: Human Relationships in a Changing World, Oxford and New York: Berg, 1990 Clementelli, E., Invito alla lettura di Natalia Ginzburg, Milano: Mursia, 1972 Garboli, Cesare, “Prefazione” in Ginzburg’s Lessico famigliare, Turin: Einaudi, 1999 Ginzburg, Natalia, E’ difficile parlare di sé: conversazione a più voci condotta da Marino Sinibaldi, edited by Cesare Garboli and Lisa Ginzburg, Turin: Einaudi, 1999 Jeannet, Angela M. and Giuliana Sanguinetti Katz, Natalia Ginzburg: A Voice of the Twentieth Century, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999 Marchionne Picchione, L., Natalia Ginzburg, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 1749–1832 German playwright, novelist, poet, critic, and autobiographer Throughout his long career, Goethe had a strong interest in life writing. For instance, he translated Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography (1796), and he wrote a biographical sketch of the art historian Winckelmann. Goethe’s preoccupation with auto/ biography reflects the growing emphasis, in the second half of the 18th century, on the individual. In a manuscript fragment Goethe asserts that “we love only the individual; thus the great joy in lectures, confessions, memoirs, letters and anecdotes of deceased and even insignificant individuals”. Confession is a central impulse in Goethe’s work, surfacing even in his scientific writings. It cuts across the broad spectrum

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of his enormous literary production, and some of his famous characters, such as young Werther and Faust, are fictionalized alter egos. Like Byron later, the author of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774; The Sorrows of Young Werther) knew how to exploit his personal experience for public consumption. As Goethe put it with a famous phrase in book seven of Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811–33; From My Life: Poetry and Truth), all of his writings are but fragments of a great confession. Indeed, he claimed that this autobiography was written to furnish a unifying thread to his diverse writings. The ambition of Goethe the autobiographer was to leave a complete record of his immensely productive life. In this he both succeeded and failed – succeeded in the sense of leaving a written record in some form of much of that life; failed in the sense that he does not present the unified and retrospective account that he set out to write in Dichtung und Wahrheit. With its epic length and breadth, that work covers only his first 26 years. His colourful and voluminous Italienische Reise (1816–17; Italian Journey), the letters and journals of his twoyear stay in Italy in his late thirties reworked into a travelogue, was originally intended as part of Aus meinem Leben, as was his memoir of the abortive allied invasion of France, Campagne in Frankreich 1792 (1822; Campaign in France in the Year 1792). Goethe’s Annalen (appearing as Tag- und Jahreshefte in Werke, 1830; Annals), which offer a record of his life up to 1822 by way of mostly short, factual entries, is an attempt in yet another key to document his life. As Saine points out (in his introduction to the Heitner translation), Dichtung und Wahrheit is the only part of Goethe’s larger autobiographical project “which can unequivocally be termed an autobiography and would be recognized as such by the average reader”. This work radiates the ironic and clarified wisdom of Goethe’s later years. Goethe set to work on this magisterial portrait of his youth at the age of 60; the first three parts were completed in rapid succession (by 1814); the fourth part appeared only after his death. He brought to the task of narrating his own life the resolution to avoid what he saw as the morbidly self-pitying introspective mode of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his Confessions and what he epitomized as other modern navel-gazers. Through his study of various sciences, as well as several ventures into biography, Goethe had come to appreciate that phenomena, including an individual life, can only be understood historically. The true task of the auto/biographer is to frame the life of the individual in the context of his culture and his age. Goethe’s historicizing conception of life writing is spelled out in his preface to Dichtung und Wahrheit, where he asserts that “the chief goal of biography” is “to present the subject in his temporal circumstances”, and that each one of us “would have been quite a different person if born ten years before or after”. The concluding phrase of that preface, which acknowledges Goethe’s “half-historical, half-poetic treatment of events”, is also a clue to the masterful synthesis of historical detail and personal narrative (ranging from lyrical first person to ironically distanced third person). If on the one hand Goethe approached his task like a research project – reading up, for instance, on the history of the Holy Roman Empire in order to recreate the coronation rituals that he had witnessed as an adolescent in Frankfurt, and also drawing on others’ recollections of him – on the other hand he elevates these historical events to the level of

poetry through the power of dramatic narrative and vivid description. The same is true of his youthful amours, where the biographical facts undergo a novelistic (and richly intertextual) transformation by which autobiography is turned into high literature, especially the adolescent’s first infatuation (Gretchen) and the young Strasbourg law student’s idyllic romance with the protestant pastor’s daughter (Friederike Brion) which have become so much a part of the romantic legend of Goethe’s life. If Goethe’s need to see his life through the lens of history is in part a function of the revolutionary upheavals in Europe between 1789 and 1815, his poeticizing of that life is a function of the penchant for fabulation that he identifies as his mother’s legacy. The artistic drive to turn ordinary life into Dichtung is signalled in his title and playfully exemplified in “The New Paris” fairy-tale of book two. Unlike Rousseau, who insists in his Confessions on his complete truthfulness, Goethe boldly emphasizes the element of fiction – and in so doing both problematizes and wins a new freedom for the genre of autobiography. In Goethe’s view, the element of “poetry” can bring out the deeper truth(s) of our experience that a mere recitation of biographical facts cannot. As he told Johann Eckermann, “a fact of our lives does not matter insofar as it is true but insofar as it is significant” (conversation of 30 March 1831, from the Gespräche, translated as Conversations with Goethe). For Goethe, the Dichtung of the genre also inheres in its retrospective (re)interpretation of our experience through which emerges the “fundamental truth” of our lives (letter of 11 January 1830). His conclusion (in the same letter) that in drawing on “the retrospective faculty and thus also the imagination … we will register and emphasize more the results of how we now think of past events than the particular events as they then transpired” indicates a flexible and sophisticated appreciation of the genre that anticipates contemporary critical debates about it. Eugene Stelzig Biography Born in the German city of Frankfurt-am-Main, 28 August 1749. His father was a lawyer. Educated privately. Studied law, reluctantly, at the University of Leipzig, 1765–68, and drawing with Adam Öser. Became ill in 1768 and convalesced with his family in Frankfurt. Resumed law studies at the University of Strasbourg, 1770–71 (degree); met Johann Gottfried Herder, who encouraged him to write. Practised law in Frankfurt, 1771–72, and Wetzlar, 1772. His play Götz von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand (Goetz of Berlichingen with the Iron Hand) produced 1774. Began writing his masterpiece, the dramatic poem Faust, 1775. Invited to court of Weimar by Karl August, Duke of Saxony-Weimar, 1775: entered civil service at ducal court, 1776, and carried out various administrative duties, directing economic, political, social, and cultural affairs of state, including the court theatres. Became interested in the life sciences. Ennobled, 1782. Travelled in Italy, 1786–88. Liaison with Christiane Vulpius from 1788; married her, 1806 (died 1816): one son. First met Friedrich von Schiller, 1788. Director of Weimar court theatres, 1791–1817. Accompanied Karl August on a military campaign in France, 1792. Editor of various yearbooks and magazines, including Xenien (with Schiller), 1796–97, Die Propyläen (with J.H. Meyer), 1798–1800, Kunst und Altertum, 1816–32, and Zur Naturwissenschaft, 1817–24. Created chancellor of the University of Jena. His best-known works include the novels Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–96; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship), Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774; The Sufferings of Young Werther), and Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809; Elective Affinities), and the plays Iphigenie (1787), Torquato Tasso (1790), and Faust (1808 and 1832). Died in Weimar, 22 March 1832.

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Selected Writings Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (autobiographical fiction), 1774, revised 1787; edited by A. Kestner, 1854; Ernst Feise, 1914; E.L. Stahl, 1942, revised 1972; Hans Christoph Buch, 1982; Katharina Mommsen and Richard A. Koc, 1987; Wattraud Wiethölter (in Sämtliche Werke), 1994; Annika Lorenz and Helmut Schmiedt, 1997; and Matthias Luserke, 1999; as The Sorrows of Werter, translated by Richard Graves, 1780; as The Sorrows of Young Werther, translated by Elizabeth Mayer and Louise Bogan, 1971; edited by David E. Wellbery, translated by Victor Lange and Judith Ryan in Goethe’s Collected Works, vol. 11, 1988; translated by Michael Hulse, 1989; as The Sufferings of Young Werther, translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan, 1957 Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert (biographical sketch), 1805 Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Warheit, 4 vols, 1811, 1812, 1814, 1833; edited by Siegfried Scheibe, 1970–; as Memoirs of Goethe: Written by Himself, 1824; as The Auto-biography of Goethe: Truth and Poetry, translated by John Oxenford, 1848, revised, 2 vols, 1881–82; as Poetry and Truth from My Own Life, translated by Minna Steele Smith, 1908; as Goethe’s Autobiography: Poetry and Truth from My Life, translated by R.O. Moon, 1932; as From My Life: Poetry and Truth, edited by Thomas P. Saine and Jeffrey L. Sammons, translated by Robert R. Heitner, in Collected Works, vol. 4, 1987 Italienische Reise, 1816–17; as Travels in Italy, translated by Alexander James Morrison, 1849; as Goethe’s Travels in Italy, translated by Morrison and Charles Nisbet, 1883; as Italian Journey 1786–1788, translated by W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer, 1962; as Italian Journey, edited by Thomas P. Saine and Jeffrey L. Sammons, translated by Robert R. Heitner, 1989; as The Flight to Italy: Diary and Selected Letters, edited and translated by T.J. Reed, 1999 Campagne in Frankreich 1792, 1822; as Campaign in France in the Year 1792, translated by Robert Farie, 1849 Tag- und Jahreshefte, in Werke 31–32, 1830; as Annals, translated by Charles Nisbet, 1901 Briefe und Aufsätze von Goethe, aus den Jahren 1766 bis 1786, edited by A. Schöll, 1846 Correspondence between Schiller and Goethe, from 1794 to 1805, translated by L. Dora Schmitz, 2 vols, 1877–79 Early and Miscellaneous Letters of J.W. Goethe, 1884; as Early Letters of Goethe, 1993 Correspondence between Goethe and Carlyle, edited by Charles Eliot Norton, 1887 Campagne in Frankreich (23 août–20 octobre 1792), edited by Arthur Chuquet, 1903 Briefe, edited by Ernst Hartung, 2 vols, 1907–08 Briefe der Jahre 1786–1814, edited by Ernst Beutler, 1949 Briefe der Jahre, 1764–1798, edited by Ernst Beutler, 1951 Briefe der Jahre 1814–1832, edited by Ernst Beutler, 1951 Briefe an Charlotte von Stein, edited by Jonas Fränkel, 3 vols, 1960–62 Briefe, edited by Karl Robert Mandelkow and Bodo Morawe, 6 vols, 1962–69 Briefe an Auguste Gräfin zu Stolberg, edited by Jürgen Behrens, 1982; edited by Eugen Thurnher, 1985 Goethes Werke: Weimarer Ausgabe (correspondence), edited by Paul Raabe, 3 vols, 1990 Selections from Goethe’s Letters to Frau von Stein, 1776–1789, edited and translated by Robert M. Browning, 1990 Correspondence between Goethe and Schiller (1794–1805), translated by Liselotte Dieckmann, 1994 Tagebücher, edited by Jochen Golz et al., 1998– Also collaborated with Johann Peter Eckermann, who produced Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, 1823–1832, 3 vols, 1836–48

Further Reading Aichinger, Ingrid, Künstlerische Selbstdarstellung: Goethes ‘Dichtung und Wahrheit’ und die Autobiographie der Folgezeit, New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 1977

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Bowman, Derek, Life into Autobiography: A Study of Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit, Bern: Herbert Lang, 1971 Gould, Robert, “Die gerettete Zunge and Dichtung und Wahrheit: Hypertextuality in Autobiography and Its Implications”, Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, 21/2 (1985): 79[- ]107 Gould, Robert, “Spinoza and Lavater in Dichtung und Wahrheit and the Paradoxical Nature of Autobiography”, Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, 24/4 (1988): 310–43 Hammer, Carl J., Goethe and Rousseau: Resonances of the Mind, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1973 Koranyi, Stephan, Autobiographik und Wissenschaft im Denken Goethes, Bonn: Bouvier, 1984 Müller, Klaus-Detlef, Autobiographie und Roman: Studien zur literarischen Autobiographie der Goethezeit, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1976 Niggl, Günter, Geschichte der deutschen Autobiographie im 18. Jahrhundert: theoretische Grundlegung und literarische Entfaltung, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1977 Saine, Thomas P., “Goethe’s Autobiographical Works”, introduction to From My Life by Goethe, edited by Saine and Jeffrey L. Sammons, translated by Robert R. Heitner, New York: Suhrkamp, 1987 Stelzig, Eugene, “Poetry and / or Truth: An Essay on the Confessional Imagination”, University of Toronto Quarterly, 54/1 (1984): 17–37 Stelzig, Eugene, The Romantic Subject in Autobiography: Rousseau and Goethe, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000 Weintraub, Karl J., The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978

Goldman, Emma

1869–1940

American political activist, prose writer, and autobiographer “Life in all its variety and fullness is art, the highest art”. This thesis, from a lecture that the anarchist Emma Goldman gave in 1909, is rendered near the middle of her two-volume autobiography of 1000 pages. In this sense, Living My Life (1931) is high art: passionate, rich, intimate, and educative. It is a unique mix of political thriller, love story, and self-made hagiography. It depicts the intellectual and émigré communities in the United States and in Europe from the 1880s to the 1920s, but also the conditions of seamstresses and artists, prostitutes and prisoners. The dialogues between “Red Emma” and her audience during mass meetings are often hilarious. Even when Goldman’s remembering regresses to mere name-dropping, it has a stunning scope. Living My Life contains some scenes that were to define feminist consciousness in the late 20th century. The most classic of them features young Emma who is reproached by a male comrade for dancing “with … reckless abandon”. Emma gets furious: “I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy”. That the private is political has been the cornerstone of contemporary feminism, and this is probably the earliest explicit recording of this thesis in life writing. The tone of Goldman’s autobiography is direct and intense. There are unique depictions of female anger: Goldman smashes a jewellery shop, fights with the police, and once even publicly whips a fellow anarchist. The work follows the genre of testimony, with its urgent necessity of bearing witness to the times. This is typical for autobiographies by other Russian women

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written in the interwar period (as shown by Fitzpatrick). It stems from a tradition of political activism in which women have perceived themselves not solely as dependents, but as political subjects. Goldman wanted to set an example of how political idealism can direct one’s life. Her protagonist always adheres to such principles, whether refusing to sue for slander because she does not believe in the legal system, or accepting the obsessional promiscuity of her long-time lover Ben Reitman. However, she also acknowledges her doubts. In public life, the question of political violence represents her biggest ambivalence. Goldman’s lifelong comrade, Alexander Berkman, attempted to murder a prominent businessman in 1892. While he spent 14 years in prison, she became famous, travelled, and had several relationships. Her sorrow for “Sasha” was not only because of his terrible conditions in prison; she also began to doubt the effectiveness (if not the legitimacy) of political murder, although it was hard to express this openly, since it would have annihilated the significance of Berkman’s sacrifice. In the years 1921–23, Goldman and Berkman visited Soviet Russia. On this occasion, neither of them accepted the motives for political violence given by the Bolsheviks, especially as it was directed also against anarchists. Goldman defends her position against Lenin, Maxim Gorki, Alexandra Kollontay, and others. In today’s post-Soviet world Goldman’s views appear self-evident, but when she recorded them they were ignored by most of the European Left. In Goldman’s private life, there was a tension between life as an activist and her need for loving care. She had many happy relationships, but was without a partner when she wrote her autobiography. She comments on one affair in 1923 by saying how she longed for “two months of personal life in a lifetime that had never been my own. In vain!”. Nor did Goldman have any children, having chosen not to have surgery for infertility. Her commentaries about motherhood are contradictory, describing strong longings – “I had loved children madly, ever since I could remember” – but also her “feelings for motherhood in general, that blind, dumb force /that wastes/ woman’s youth and strength”. The monumental subject of Living My Life and the impact it has had is comparable only to Simone de Beauvoir’s autobiographical series. Apart from describing the lives of pioneer women intellectuals, the two works have several themes in common, among them the commitment to a lifelong relationship as well as to free love, the choice not to have children, and the question of how to relate to state socialism. On the basis of what we know today, Goldman appears to have succeeded better than de Beauvoir in living what she preached. Goldman’s political vision is also surprisingly close to what has in the 1990s been called reflective life politics. It enabled her to discuss birth control, imperialism, homosexuality, jealousy, and the quest for world peace during the same lecture series. Its big difference from most contemporary politics, amply manifested in her autobiography, is that Goldman’s life’s work was based on the belief in the possibility of profound socio-economic change. Anna Rotkirch Biography Born in Kovno (now Kaunas), Lithuania (then part of the Russian empire), 27 June 1869, into a Jewish family. Left Russia with her family to avoid persecution. Lived for a time in Königsberg,

northeastern Germany, where she attended a local school. Moved with her family to St Petersburg, 1881. Worked in glove and corset factories. Emigrated to Rochester, New York, with her half-sister Helena, late 1885, followed by her parents. Worked in garment and corset factories in Rochester and New York. Married Jacob Kersner, 1887 (divorced, remarried, then divorced him again in 1889). Became active in anarchist movement, c.1887. Met Alexander Berkman, who became her lover and associate. Made her first speaking tour, 1890. Planned, with Berkman, to assassinate the tycoon Henry Clay Frick, 1892; escaped prosecution, but Berkman was sentenced to 22 years’ imprisonment. Sentenced to one year’s imprisonment for inciting a riot, 1893. Worked as a nurse and continued to lecture on social issues. Became internationally known for her forceful speeches. Studied midwifery in Vienna, 1895–96. Attended anarchist congresses in Paris (1899), staying there until 1900, and Amsterdam (1907). Founded and edited the anarchist journal Mother Earth, 1906. Published Anarchism and Other Essays (1910) and wrote The Social Significance of Modern Drama (1914). Sentenced to 15 days’ imprisonment for lecturing on birth control, 1915. Sentenced with Berkman to two years’ imprisonment then deportation for anti-conscription activity during World War I, 1917. Deported to Russia with Berkman and other radicals of foreign birth, 1919. Met Lenin, 1920. Left Russia with Berkman, 1921, and travelled to Berlin, Sweden, and, without Berkman, to London. Published My Disillusionment in Russia (1923). Married James Colton, a Welsh miner, 1925. Lived in exile in SaintTropez, France. Began to write her autobiography Living My Life, 1928 (published 1931). Returned to the United States to make a speaking tour, 1934. Berkman committed suicide, 1936. Supported the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War. Died in Toronto, Canada, 14 May 1940.

Selected Writings (with Alexander Berkman) A Fragment of the Prison Experiences of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, 1919 My Disillusionment in Russia, 1923 My Further Disillusionment in Russia, 1924 Living My Life, 1931 Nowhere at Home: Letters from Exile of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, edited by Richard and Anna Maria Drinnon, 1975

Further Reading Avrich, Paul, Anarchist Portraits, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1988 Deutelbaum, Wendy, “Epistolary Politics: The Correspondence of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman” in Prose Studies, 9/1 (1986) Falk, Candace, Love, Anarchy and Emma Goldman, New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1984; revised edition, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1990 Falk, Candace et al., Emma Goldman: A Guide to her Life and Documentary Sources, Cambridge and Alexandria, Virginia: Chadwyck-Healey, 1995 Fitzpatrick, Sheila, “Lives and Times” in In the Shadow of the Revoluton: Life Stories of Russian Women from 1917 to the Second World War, edited by Sheila Fitzpatrick and Yuri Slezkine, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000 Kates, Alix Shulman, Emma Goldman: An Intimate Life, New York: Pantheon, 1984 Kates, Alix Shulman, “Living Our Life” in Between Women: Biographers, Novelists, Critics, Teachers, and Artists Write about Their Work on Women, edited by Carol Ascher, Louise DeSalvo, and Sara Ruddick, Boston: Beacon Press, 1984 Morton, Marian J., Emma Goldman and the American Left: “Nowhere at Home”, New York: Twayne, 1992 Rowbotham, Sheila, “Introduction: Daughter of the Dream” in Living My Life, by Goldman, London: Pluto Press, 1986 Solomon, Martha, Emma Goldman, Boston: Twayne, 1987 Wexler, Alice, Emma Goldman: An Intimate Life, London: Virago Press, and New York: Pantheon, 1984

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Goldoni, Carlo

1707–1793

Italian playwright and memoirist Carlo Goldoni, the great Venetian dramatist, spent most of the last 30 years of his long life in Paris, and it was there, in his late seventies, that he wrote, in French, the three volumes of his Mémoires (1787; Memoirs). Goldoni’s major successes as playwright in Venice and reformer of the Italian theatre had occurred between 1748 and 1762, but the rivalry of a fellow innovator, Pietro Chiari, and attacks by the traditionalist Carlo Gozzi had eventually left him without work or patronage in Venice. He had departed for Paris, with a reputation in France as well as Italy for the precise depiction on stage of contemporary characters and mores, to write plays for the Comédie Italienne. To his disappointment, the actors of that company were still attached to the worn-out formulas of the traditional commedia dell’arte, a form he had abandoned, and it was hard for him to maintain the artistic momentum he had built up in Venice. The final 15 years of his life were particularly difficult. Living in reduced financial circumstances, he gave Italian lessons to the daughter of Louis XV, then to the sisters of Louis XVI. This was the context in which he wrote the Mémoires. The Mémoires consist of 139 brief chapters and are written throughout with lively simplicity. Nevertheless, each of the three volumes has its own structure and thematic focus. The first covers the period 1707 to 1748, and tells the story of Goldoni’s youth, including some minor erotic adventures, and of his formation as a dramatist. He recalls his training as a lawyer at the Papal College in Pavia, until he was expelled for writing a satire about the women of the city. He even practised the law in Chioggia for a while, until his long-standing fascination for the theatre took over completely. The narrative has pace and charm, revealing the influence of French novels of the mid-18th century (those of Marivaux and Prévost, in particular), both in the vivid scenes it presents from bourgeois family life and the sense it conveys of the personal development of a young individual. The second volume covers the period 1748 to 1762, and, in addition to recounting the main features of Goldoni’s career in the Venetian theatre, provides a fascinating summary of the playwright’s views on Italian theatre of the period, and of his intentions in undertaking its reform. Concerned more with achieving lively representation of human characters and their interactions than with abstract theory, he makes clear, for instance, that he was willing to be flexible in his application of the unities of time and place. He was firm, however, in his preference for morally positive protagonists, disapproving of Machiavelli for making comedy, in his Mandragola, out of a depiction of ecclesiastical corruption. Not surprisingly, given the time that had elapsed between the events of this period and his writing about them, his recollection of detail is sometimes defective. The third volume is rather a travel memoir, which recounts his impressions of Paris, Versailles, Fontainebleau, and other locations in France. His delight at the splendour of what he saw has a charming simplicity. He pays attention not only to French theatre and court life, which he came to know from personal experience, but equally to such things as the development of the port of Cherbourg, a construction he found worthy of the ancient Romans, and to the swarming crowds in the streets of

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Paris. In this period, he made the acquaintance of many leading French cultural figures, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom he describes as having “superior talents, but incredible prejudices and weaknesses”. As a picture of French life and culture in the period immediately preceding the Revolution, this volume is of great interest, though, not surprisingly, there is little attempt at political or social critique. This third volume has been reprinted many times separately by French publishers. Goldoni, of course, lived long enough after writing this last part of the Mémoires to witness the Revolution, and to have the pension he had been receiving from the court since 1769 taken away because of his association with the royal family – though it was restored at his death for the benefit of his widow, on the grounds of the deeply democratic nature of his theatrical output. The Mémoires were published in French as soon as they were complete, in 1787, and shortly afterwards in Italian. They continue to be read today, in both languages, since they have much the same uncomplicated lightness and charm as the best of Goldoni’s comedies. Michael Hanne Biography Born in Venice, then an independent Italian state, 25 February 1707. His father was a physician. Educated in Venice, at a Jesuit school in Perugia, and with the Dominicans in Rimini. Assisted his father in Chioggia, 1721–23, and in other towns. Studied law at the papal college in Pavia, 1723–25. Clerk in the criminal court, Chioggia, 1728– 29, and Feltre, 1729–30. Wrote plays for amateur companies. Passed law examinations in Padua in 1731, and called to the Venetian bar, 1732. Wrote plays for Giuseppe Imer’s company, 1734–44, beginning with bare scenarios and gradually working towards completely written scripts. Director of the opera house, Teatro San Giovanni Crisostomo, in Venice. Married Nicoletta Conio, 1736. Lawyer in Pisa, 1744–47. House dramatist for Girolamo Medebach’s acting company, 1748–53, and writer with the Teatro San Luca, 1753–62, both in Venice (in Rome 1757–58). Accepted an invitation to go to France, 1761. Writer with the Comédie Italienne in Paris, 1762–64. Italian tutor at Versailles to Princess Adélaïde, daughter of Louis XV, 1764–65, and to other royal children, 1768–80. In Paris from 1780. Wrote plays in both Italian and Venetian dialect, and some plays in French; also wrote libretti for cantatas and operas. Wrote his Mémoires, 1787. Was left penniless at the French Revolution, when he lost his royal pension. His best-known plays are La Locandiera (1753; The Mistress of the Inn), I rusteghi (1760; The Boors), and Le baruffe chiozzote (1762; The Squabbles of Chioggia). Died in Paris, 6 February 1793.

Selected Writings Mémoires de M. Goldoni, pour servir à l’histoire de sa vie, et à celle de son théâtre, 3 vols, 1787; as Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni, translated by John Black, 2 vols, 1814, revised by William A. Drake, 1926

Further Reading Chatfield-Taylor, H.C., Goldoni: A Biography, with Illustrations from the Paintings of Pietro and Alessandro Longhi, New York: Duffield, 1913; London: Chatto, 1914 Fido, Franco, “I Mémoires di Goldoni e la letteratura autobiografica del Settecento”, MLN (Modern Language Notes), 96/1 (1981): 41–69 Goldoni, Carlo, Four Comedies, translated and introduced by Frederick Davies, London: Penguin, 1968 Gronda, Giovanna, “Goldoni e i Mémoires teatrali”, The Italianist, 17 (1997): (supplement) 34–41 Herry, Ginette, “A propos des Mémoires, ou, pourquoi ce ‘dernier ouvrage’ de Carlo Goldoni?”, Revue des Etudes Italiennes, 40/1–4 (1994): 167–77 Holme, Timothy, A Servant of Many Masters: The Life and Times of Carlo Goldoni, London: Jupiter, 1976

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Kennard, John Spencer, Goldoni and the Venice of His Time, New York: Macmillan, 1920 Van Steenderen, F.C.L., Goldoni on Playwriting, with an introduction by H.C. Chatfield-Taylor, New York: Printed for the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University, 1919 Zaina, L.A., “Goldoni in France” in ‘En Marge du Classicisme’: Essays on the French Theatre from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, edited by Alan Howe and Richard Waller, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1987

Goldschmidt, Meïr

1819–1887

Danish novelist, playwright, journalist, and autobiographer The autobiography of Meïr Goldschmidt was issued in 1877. The author named his work Livs erindringer og resultater [Recollections and Results of a Life]. He did not imply that his life had been one of great results and achievements, but he intended to prove that it had conformed with his own concept of nemesis or equilibrium. “Recollections and Results” consists of two volumes: the first is an ordinary autobiography, the second is an erudite treatise of the workings of fate, which might give the autobiography an uneven look. However, one might argue that Goldschmidt reveals a double strategy, to reconcile Christianity and the Jewish tradition, first by his own life as an example, and then by scientific research. As a writer Goldschmidt faced the dilemma confronting of 19th-century Judaism throughout Western Europe that resulted from the lifting of most of the restrictions that prevented Jews from taking part in ordinary life. The Jewish community had to choose whether its members should adapt to their surroundings and lose their identity as Jews, or preserve their heritage but isolate themselves from the surrounding society. The plight of Jews was further complicated by the rise of ideologies of nationalism in the surrounding Christian societies: an isolated Jewish community might be branded as alien. The Jewish community in Denmark found discretion the better part of valour and avoided confrontations. Goldschmidt was a lone figure in a double sense: he belonged to a minority and he embraced realism, while the contemporary Danish writers heralded Romanticism. When Goldschmidt wrote his autobiography he deliberately avoided mentioning any experience that might offend his readers and their demand for harmony. His contemporaries, the writer Hans Christian Andersen and the actor Thomas Overskou, who came from the social underclass, chose the same strategy in their autobiographies, as they knew that an audience presented with “sordid realism” (i.e. the reality of how a member of the lower class rises through bourgeois society) would be most unforgiving. Goldschmidt therefore deliberately avoids describing any conflict between Judaism and Danish society. In his autobiography the question of Jewish identity is displaced from Goldschmidt’s own life to that of his father. His father is portrayed unsuccessfully trying to adapt himself to Christian society as a merchant and later as a farmer. He is torn between his wish to conform and his wish to preserve his Jewish identity even if he must isolate himself from the Jewish community, sometimes with amusing results, such as when he amazes a Christian friend

by his shroudlike shirt, donned for the Easter meal. The friend had been sent for under a pretext by Meïr senior’s secular and mischievous brother-in-law. The father tries to preserve the cultural heritage for his son, young Meïr, by sending him to the boy’s uncle, who has remained an Orthodox Jew. However, though young Meïr and his uncle remain friends, the family splits on religious opinions, and the uncle curses the father as a renegade. For his own part, Goldschmidt claims that his knowledge that he was a descendant of the Levites gave him an early feeling of importance and as a boy he was attracted to the Jewish milieu as a sort of fairy-tale world, but he never felt any religious conviction. However, Goldschmidt proved that he was fully aware of the precarious position of the Jew in contemporary society. In the novel En Jøde (1845; Jacob Bendixen, the Jew) the protagonist Jacob Bendixen tries to abandon his Jewish heritage and adapt to his surroundings. However, the prejudice of society brands him and forces him to assume the anti-Semitic archetype of a money-lender. Some drafts, which Goldschmidt prudently declined to include in his autobiography, also show that he himself had personally been subjected to the scorn and rejection of Christian society. Goldschmidt admitted that his Jewish background gave him a feeling of psychological superiority and the urge to demonstrate it. He joined the democratic forces of Liberalism and Scandinavism and as an orator took his stand with Denmark in the looming national conflict with the German states, revelling in the political life, and achieving no small fame. His descriptions of how his nemesis had to struggle to humble his too-lofty spirits is generally warm-hearted. For example, on his return from a political demonstration in Sweden he was confronted by the authorities with a strict order to present himself at prison to serve a long-overdue minor prison term, but his hardship was ameliorated by the fact that he was considered a celebrity and a political martyr. However, his new friends were not above harsher criticism in his book. Goldschmidt described how their ideals were often compromised by a smug self-indulgence as they tended to overrate themselves and overlook their predecessors, in particular the Norwegian poet Wergeland. Goldschmidt gained more prominence on becoming the editor of the magazine Corsaren [The Corsair], which exposed the inefficiency and pomposity of the ailing absolute monarchy and lampooned the self-satisfaction and hypocrisy of the petite bourgeoisie. Goldschmidt took the precaution of hiring some bankrupts as “editors” to meet the legal proceedings of his victims, the real editors remaining unknown until the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard revealed the tactic, thereby ushering in a tragic conflict involving himself, Goldschmidt, and his coeditor Poul L. Møller. At the time Goldschmidt wrote his autobiography he was the sole survivor of the trio, and many probably blamed him for the tragedy he might have wrought upon Kierkegaard and Møller. Friends of Kierkegaard issued letters where the philosopher expressed the pain and humiliation he suffered at the hands of Corsaren. Goldschmidt, in defence, claimed that the fates of Kierkegaard and Møller conformed with the rules of nemesis, being partially imposed by their own failings. He said that his relationship with his former co-editor Møller was a pure working relationship, that Møller preferred to be a lone wolf and was an eccentric, yet also that Møller was worthy of high regard.

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Kierkegaard, meanwhile, is depicted as a conceited and somewhat arrogant person whose teachings are admirable but lacking in compassion. According to Goldschmidt, the credibility of Kierkegaard’s demands would have improved if the philosopher had led an ordinary life, as his philosophy tastes too much of pure intellectual logic and too little of personal experience, lacking human warmth. The second part of Goldschmidt’s autobiography may be seen as an attempt by the author to reconcile Judaism, Christianity, and the ideals of ancient Greece by proving that they stemmed from the same root. Considering that Goldschmidt refused to be a devout believer, such an attempt at reconciliation seems strange. The attempt is reminiscent of previous attempts made in the Age of Enlightment or early Romanticism to re-create “the original religion” as a means of sidestepping differences. Yet Goldschmidt makes a profound study of comparative religion and seeks his evidence in art, philosophy, and archaeology, as well as in religion itself. He claims that humanity has always believed fate to be governed by principles that ensure a certain balance of justice, looking at notions of destiny from ancient Egyptian philosophy onwards. Goldschmidt calls his concept of fate “nemesis”, conceived of less as an implacable and avenging mistress than a somewhat more light-hearted and often mischievous equalizer of the ups and downs of life. Goldschmidt’s idea of nemesis inspired Danish thinkers and writers, not least Johannes Jørgensen, but many rejected his theory as too far-fetched. They were sceptical about his conclusions as he was a writer and not a man of science; neither did they think that he could use his own life as an example of the workings of his theory of fate. Goldschmidt’s legacy was to inspire the budding realism of the 1870s, which was heralded by the brothers Georg and Edward Brandes, who, like Goldschmidt, were “assimilated” Jews. Jens Kristian L. Boll Biography Born Meyer Aron Goldschmidt in Vordingborg, Southern Zealand, Denmark, 26 October 1819. His father was a merchant of Jewish descent. Attended the Gymnasium, Copenhagen. Initially planned to become a physician, but a poor grade in religious study led to a change of plan, to become a writer. Became editor of Noestved Avis, a provincial weekly newspaper, 1838. Subjected to censorship and fined for liberal views and criticism. Sold newspaper, 1839. Contributed to conservative daily newspaper, Dagen. Founded successful satirical weekly Corsaren, 1840. Wrote critically of the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in the journal, which started a literary feud. Imprisoned briefly for his radical contributions. Started relationship with Johanne Marie Sonne, daughter of a shipmaster, 1844: one son. Married her in 1848 to legitimize son (divorced 1852). Published first novel, En Jøde (Jacob Bendixen, the Jew) under the pseudonym Adolphe Meyer, 1845. Sold Corsaren, 1846. Started new weekly paper, Nord og Syd, 1847 (ceased publication in 1859), to which he contributed literary and critical reviews. Wrote three-volume novel, Hjemløs (Homeless), serialized in Nord og Syd, 1853–57. Visited England several times. Considered living in exile, but returned to Copenhagen. Wrote his bestknown novel, Ravnen [1867; Raven]. Died in Copenhagen, 15 August 1887.

Selected Writings Breve fra og til Meïr Goldschmidt (correspondence), edited by Morten Borup, 3 vols, 1963 Breve til hans familie (correspondence), edited by Morten Borup, 2 vols, 1964

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Livs erindringer og resultater [Recollections and Results of a Life], 1877; edited by Morten Borup, 2 vols, 1965

Further Reading Bredsdorff, Elias, Corsaren, Goldschmidt og Kierkegaard [The Corsair, Goldschmidt and Kirkegaard], 2nd edition, Copenahgen: Corsarens, 1977 Brøndsted, Mogens, Meïr Goldschmidt, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1965 Kyrre, Hans, M. Goldschmidt, 2 vols, Copenhagen: Hagerup, 1919 Rubov, Poul Victor, Goldschmidt og Nemesis [Goldschmidt and Nemesis], Copenhagen: Danske Videnskabernes, 1968

Gombrowicz, Witold

1904–1969

Polish playwright, novelist, and diarist Witold Gombrowicz is considered by many to be one of the best Polish writers of the 20th century. He left his homeland in 1939 and spent the rest of his life abroad, first as an exile because of World War II, later as a voluntary émigré in Argentina and France. His contribution to life writing is substantial, based on three works of different importance: the Dziennik (Diary), of which three volumes cover 13 years of his life (1953–66) and a posthumous volume covers his last two years; the fictitious conversations with Dominique de Roux published as Entretiens avec Witold Gombrowicz (1968; A Kind of Testament), written entirely by Gombrowicz himself; and, finally, the series of radio scripts found among the author’s papers after his death and published in Paris as Wspomnienia polskie / We≈ drówki po Argentynie [1977; Polish Reminiscences / Wandering through Argentina]. Since of these only the Diary occupies a central part in Gombrowicz’s oeuvre, the following commentary will address the three principal volumes (1953–56; 1957–61; 1961– 66) of this momentous work. The Diary starts with a passage that is usually referred to as a blatant display of the author’s egocentrism: the entries are weekdays and after each of them Gombrowicz puts only one word: “I”. Since this is followed (under “Friday”) by a fairly long critical entry about the state of the Polish émigré press, it is clear that Gombrowicz simply wants to stun the reader with the pretence of a narcissistic attitude, as if stating that: “in this book everything revolves round me; my thoughts, views, or feelings are more important than the whole world”. In other words, while diaries are normally “unconstructed”, serving as a record of the given moment or short period of time, Gombrowicz disregards strict chronology (no date is given within a year, only days of the week, and even that is done with increasing annoyance) and constructs his diary instead round a particular theme or motif. The theme can be literary, philosophical, or part of a travelogue; it might consist of real or imaginary events. In fact, different kinds of reality (external and internal, or even virtual) mingle in every chapter. All this calls for different styles: Gombrowicz is a master of pastiche and self-irony – and while he tries to entertain the reader, he obviously enjoys himself as well. Jerzy Jarze˛bski points out that Gombrowicz sometimes builds his chapters around a single observation, such as “the hands of the waiter in the Café Querandi” (Jarze˛bski 1993) from which he departs and to which he returns towards the end of the chapter. At other times the chapter is a veritable miniessay on a given subject, such as the state of Polish literature

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since 1945 and Gombrowicz’s own views on authenticity (vol. 1, chapter 21). Gombrowicz’s style in the Diary is one balanced between “an essayistic discourse and a belletristic narrative” (Jarze˛bski 1993). The latter is obvious in parts when the text is put into the mouth of two different speakers: a cool, ironic commentator and an emotional, insecure individual. The “cool” voice is usually indicated typographically by the use of italics; on occasion, Gombrowicz even includes whole articles written for the émigré review Kultura as an italicized section (e.g. his answer to Cioran’s article on literature in exile in volume 1). The use of italics, however, does not necessarily mean superiority on the part of the author; some of his self-ironic and selfdeprecatory passages also appear in italics, for example, his sudden trip to Santiago del Estero in 1958 where he seeks some new connection with youth, in order “to replenish himself from youthful contents”. This, in turn, evokes memories of Tandil and a homosexual flirtation with a young lad which did not lead anywhere, only to laughter over the failure of his own “Faustian experiment” (vol. 2, chapter 10). One of the great assets of the Diary is Gombrowicz’s exceptional sense of humour and irony, which permeates even those passages where he speaks of his own art. He sees artistic creation as a fight between the artist and his work, between “the inner logic of the work” and the artist’s personality, the result of which “is neither pure form nor my direct expression but a deformation born in the sphere of ‘in between’, between myself and the world. I put this strange creature, this bastard into an envelope and send it to my publisher” (vol. 2). While we cannot expect factual correctness from Gombrowicz, and while some of his views might strike the contemporary reader as anachronistic or prejudiced, the Diary provides satisfaction on two levels. First, in attacking the philosophy of Sartre or Heidegger and ridiculing some of the claims of Marxism, Gombrowicz exercises his superb intellect. At the same time, through a dazzling variety of stylistic devices he reveals the hidden sources of his artistry, his seemingly infinite capacity to embrace change. The Diary is a triumph of the modern artist “creating himself” as an arbiter of taste, a passionately apolitical aesthete, an illusionist, and an exhibitionist. George Gömöri

Selected Writings Dziennik (1953–1956), 1957; as Diary, vol. 1, edited by Jan Kott, translated by Lillian Vallee, 1988 Dziennik (1957–1961), 1962; as Diary, vol. 2, edited by Jan Kott, translated by Lillian Vallee, 1989 Dziennik (1961–1966), 1966; as Diary, vol. 3, edited by Jan Kott, translated by Lillian Vallee, 1993 (including sections from 1967–69 originally published in Kultura) Entretiens avec Witold Gombrowicz, edited by Dominique de Roux, 1968; as A Kind of Testament, translated by Alastair Hamilton, 1973 Dzie≠a zebrane (collected works), 11 vols, 1969–85 Wspomnienia polskie / We˛ drówki po Argentynie [Polish Reminiscences / Wandering through Argentina], 1977 Dziennik (1967–1969), 1992 (with Jerzy Giedroyc) Listy 1950–1969 (correspondence), edited by Andrzej Kowalczyk, 1993 (with Jean Dubuffet) Correspondence, 1995 Gombrowicz: Walka o slawe˛ : Korespondencja (correspondence), edited by Jerzy Jarze˛bski, 1996

Further Reading Baranczak, Stanis≠aw, Breathing under Water and Other East European Essays, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990 B≠on´ski, Jan, “O Gombrowiczu” in Gombrowicy i krytycy, edited by Zdzis≠aw ∞apin´ski, Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1984 Carcassonne, Manuel, Christophe Guias and Malgorzata Smorag, Gombrowicz, vingt ans après, Paris: Bourgeois, 1989 Jarze˛bski, Jerzy, Gra w Gombrowicza, Warsaw: PIW, 1982 Jarze˛bski, Jerzy, “Literatura jako forma istnienia” (O Dzienniku Gombrowicza), Rocznik Towarzystwa Literackiego im. A.Mickiewicza, 28 (1993): 63–75 Jelenski, Constantin, “Witold Gombrowicz”, Tri-Quarterly, (Spring 1967): 37–42 Karpin´ski, Wojciech, “Gombrowiczowska przestrzen´” in Gombrowicz i krytycy, edited by Zdzis≠aw ∞apin´ski, Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1984 Kurczaba, Alex, Gombrowicz and Frisch: Aspects of the Lterary Diary, Bonn: Bouvier, 1980 ∞apin´ski, Zdzis≠aw, Ja, Ferdydurke: Gombrowicza s´wiat interakcji, Lublin: KUL, 1985 Phillips, Ursula, “Gombrowicz’s Polish Complex” in New Perspectives in Twentieth-Century Polish Literature: Flight from Martyrology, edited by Stanislaw Eile and Ursula Phillips, London: Macmillan, 1992 Sandauer, Artur, “Witold Gombrowicz – cz≠owiek i pisarz” in his Liryka i logika: wybór pism krytycznych, Warsaw: PIW, 1969 Thompson, Ewa M., Witold Gombrowicz, Boston: Twayne, 1979

Biography Born in Ma≠oszyce, near Opatów, Russian empire (now in Poland), 4 August 1904, into a family of Polish gentry. Moved to Warsaw with his family, 1915. Educated at St Stanislas Kostka (Catholic high school), 1916–22. Studied law at Warsaw University, 1922–27 (degree). Travelled in France and attended classes in philosophy and economics at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales, Paris, 1927–29. Worked in the municipal court in Warsaw, 1928–34; wrote short stories, publishing the collection Pamie˛ tnik z okresu dojrzewania (A Memoir from Adolescence) in 1933. Wrote for Warsaw newspapers . from 1933. Wrote his first play, Iwona, ksiezniczka Burgunda (Ivona, Princess of Burgundy), 1935, and published his best-known novel, Ferdydurke, 1937. Visited Argentina, 1939; stayed there once war had broken out, living in difficult financial circumstances. Wrote reviews for Buenos Aires newspapers from 1940. Secretary, Polish Bank, Buenos Aires, 1947–55; resigned in order to devote himself to full-time writing. His novel Trans-Atlantyk and play S´lub (The Marriage) published in Polish, 1953. Left Argentina and returned to Europe, funded by a Ford fellowship, 1963. Lived in Berlin, 1963–64, and Vence, France, 1964–69. Published the novel Kosmos (Cosmos), 1965, receiving the International Literary prize in 1967. Married Marie-Rita Labrosse, 1969. Died in Vence, 25 July 1969.

Goncourt, Edmond 1822–1896 Goncourt, Jules 1830–1870 French diarists, novelists, and biographers Edmond (1822–96) and Jules (1830–70) de Goncourt were novelists, biographers, historians, art collectors, and prolific letter writers, but they have above all been remembered as the keepers of an often caustic, always lively, diary, begun in 1851, finished in 1896, extracts of which were published in nine volumes between 1887 and 1896 as Journal des Goncourt: mémoires de la vie littéraire (The Goncourt Journals). One of the most significant features of the Goncourt diary is its collaborative nature: brothers Edmond and Jules shared one voice and one pen. In the 1887 preface, Edmond described this literary partnership and challenged any notion of individual self:

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This journal is our nightly confession, the confession of two lives never parted in pleasure, in work or in toil, the confession of two twin spirits, two minds engaged in receiving, from contact with men and things, impressions so like, so identic, so homogeneous, that this confession may be deemed the elaboration of a single ego, of a single I. (Galantière edition) The Journal is the space where the brothers forge their joint identity. When Jules died of syphilis in 1870, Edmond considered renouncing his literary life, but instead used the diary to come to terms with loss and absence. Edmond documented his brother’s – and hence his own – demise: life and writing are inextricably linked. Regardless of this shared voice, the Journal is nonetheless polyphonic: conversations are recorded, letters – to and from the Goncourts – are recopied, aphorisms and gossip noted. Individuals are painted repeatedly, each description capturing a being under a different light. This form of verbal portraiture has led critics to assess the influence of La Bruyère, as well as Chateaubriand and Saint-Simon, on the Goncourts. Unlike La Bruyère, however, the Goncourts’ professed aim was to capture “la vérité momentanée” (momentary truth), and this relied on reproducing series of impressions. As an impression was experienced, a verbal impression of it was etched in the diary. This almost existential denial of fixed essence, of unity, is similar to that of the impressionist painters who painted the modifications of time and light on given scenes. Unhindered by concerns of structure, the Journal is a medium in which the brothers’ aesthetic and stylistic originality – particularly in the form of neologism and nominal syntax – thrived. The Journal is a veritable archive of information on Parisian life in the second half of the 19th century, replete with table-talk (much to the annoyance of those at the table), portraits, and anecdotes relating to high and low society, authors, aristocrats, prostitutes, and servants. As Edmond confessed in its pages in 1885, the Journal is a “human document”: a record that assures the brothers’ place in posterity and provides a wealth of information regarding their writing and the artistic environment. Public events are documented; indeed the pages relating to the 1870 Paris Commune were – the 1866 volume Idées et sensations [Ideas and Sensations] aside – the first to be published, and they attest to the brothers’ wish to create vivid effects. Pages relating to private themes such as boredom, sadness, and desire for movement and innovation feature prominently. Theories of Naturalism and art for art’s sake are expounded alongside the jealous rantings of self-proclaimed neurotic authors who believed they were not sufficiently revered. The Goncourts’ historical and biographical writings, including the monographs La Femme au dix-huitième siècle (1862; The Woman of the Eighteenth Century) and Les Maîtresses de Louis XV (1860; The Confidantes of a King: The Mistresses of Louis XV), focus less on events than on the private lives of public figures, and bear witness to a fascination with “femininity”. These histories are based not on abstract ideas but on documents: correspondence and private papers were collected and researched. Many of the brothers’ novels are romans à clef – Edmond’s Les Frères Zemganno (1879; The Zemganno Brothers) is viewed as a fictional autobiography – and others, for example Charles Demailly (1860), Madame Gervaisais

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(1869), and Edmond’s Chérie (1884) (for which the painter Marie Bashkirtseff offered her journal as a source), contain diaristic and epistolary writing. The Goncourts wrote of their travels in the Journal as well as in L’Italie d’hier: notes de voyages 1855–56 [1894; Italy of Yesterday: Travel Notes 1855–56], and their correspondence was varied. Volumes of correspondence with Gustave Flaubert, Alphonse Daudet, and Henri Céard, among others, have been published. The Goncourts’ compulsion to link writing and life was deemed scandalous by many who contested the veracity of the Journal – considering it as nothing more than an indiscreet publicity stunt – and called for its suppression. To prevent legal disputes, the planned 1918 release of a definitive edition was postponed, and the diary was not published in its entirety until the 1950s. This did not, however, prevent the Goncourts from influencing numerous young diarists and authors such as André Gide and Claude Mauriac. Katherine Ashley Biography Edmond born in Nancy, France, 26 May 1822. Moved to Paris with his family 18 months later. Educated in Paris at the Pension Goubaux, Lycée Henri IV, and Lycée Condorcet. Studied law, 1841. Worked for the city finance department. Jules born in Paris, 17 December 1830. Educated in Paris at Lycée Condorcet. The brothers travelled through France and Algeria, sketching and noting impressions in their diary, 1848–49. Travelled to Switzerland, Belgium, and Normandy, 1850. Jules contracted syphilis, 1850. Began the Journal, 1851. Contributed to the literary daily Paris and to Revue de Paris, 1852–53. Cofounders, with their cousin Pierre-Charles de Villedeuil, L’Eclair, 1850s. Travelled together to Italy, 1855–56 and 1867. Collaborated on naturalistic novels, such as Soeur Philomène (1861; Sister Philomene), Germinie Lacerteux (1864), and Madame Gervaisais (1869), their best-known works. Also collaborated on art criticism, L’Art du dixhuitième siècle (1859–70; French 18th-Century Painters), and historical works on women in the 18th century and the mistresses of Louis XV. Edmond became an important collector and connoisseur of Japanese art. Jules died in Auteuil, 20 June 1870. Edmond wrote the popular novel La Fille Elisa (1878; Elisa: The Story of a Prostitute). He bequeathed money to found the Académie Goncourt, which awards an annual literary prize commemorating the brothers. Edmond died in Champrosay, 16 July 1896.

Selected Writings Oeuvres complètes, 45 vols, 1854–1934 Sophie Arnould, d’après sa correspondance et ses mémoires inédits, 1857 Portraits intimes du dix-huitième siècle, 2 vols, 1857–58 Histoire de Marie-Antoinette, 1858, revised 1859; revised, with letters, 1863; revised editions, 2 vols, 1873–74, 2 vols, 1880–82, 3 vols, 1881–82 Les Maîtresses de Louis XV, 2 vols, 1860; as The Confidantes of a King: The Mistresses of Louis XV, translated by Ernest Dowson, 1907 Gavarni, l’homme et l’oeuvre, 1873 La Du Barry, 1878, revised 1880; as Madame du Barry, translated anonymously, 1914 Madame de Pompadour, 1878, revised 1881 and 1888 (Edmond de Goncourt) Madame Saint-Huberty, 1882; definitive edition, 1925 Journal des Goncourt: mémoires de la vie littéraire, 9 vols, 1887–96; 9 vols, 1935–36; 22 vols, 1956–59; edited by Robert Ricatte, 4 vols, 1956; edited by Robert Ricatte, preface and chronology by Robert Kopp, 1989; as The Goncourt Journals 1851–70, edited and translated by Lewis Galantière, 1937; as Pages from the Goncourt Journal (selection), edited and translated by Robert Baldick, 1962; as Paris under Siege, 1870–1871, from the Goncourt Journal (selection), edited and translated by George Becker, 1969; as Paris

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and the Arts, 1851–1896, from the Goncourt Journal (selection), edited by George Becker and Edith Philips, 1971 (Edmond de Goncourt) Mademoiselle Clairon, 1890 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt (correspondence and journals), edited and translated by M.A. Belloc and M. Shedlock, 2 vols, 1894 L’Italie d’hier: notes de voyages 1855–56, 1894; as Notes sur l’Italie (1855–1856), edited by Nadeije Laneyrie-Dagen and Elisabeth Launay, 1996 (Edmond de Goncourt) Edmond de Goncourt et Henri Céard: correspondance inédite 1876–1896, 1965 Lettres de jeunesse inédites, edited by Alain Nicolas, 1981 (Edmond de Goncourt, with Alphonse Daudet), Correspondance, edited by Pierre Dufief and Anne-Simone Dufief, 1996 Gustave Flaubert–Les Goncourt: correspondance, edited by Pierre-Jean Dufief, 1998

Further Reading Baguley, David, “A Fresh Look at the Goncourt Journal (intime)” in Kaléidoscope, Essays on Nineteenth-Century French Literature in Honor of Thomas H. Goetz, edited by Graham Falconer and Mary Donaldson-Evans, Toronto: St Michael’s College, 1996 Baldick, Robert, The Goncourts, New York: Hillary House, and London: Bowes, 1960 Billy, André, The Goncourt Brothers, translated by Margaret Shaw, London: Deutsch, and New York: Horizon Press, 1960 Cahiers Edmond et Jules de Goncourt, vols 1–7 (1992–2000) Francofonia, special issue, 19 (Autumn 1990) Fuchs, Maximilien, Lexique du Journal des Goncourt, Paris: Cornely, 1912; reprinted, Geneva: Slatkine, 1972 Grant, Richard B., The Goncourt Brothers, Boston: Twayne, 1972 Magazine Littéraire: Les Frères Goncourt, 269 (1989)

Gordimer, Nadine

1923–

South African fiction writer and essayist In Writing and Being (1995) Nadine Gordimer declared “I shall never write an autobiography”, and her auto/biographical work amounts to just a few sketches of notable South Africans, with some autobiographical essays and travel writing, collected in The Essential Gesture (1988), and some personal reminiscences, often in the form of interviews. Yet if any writer reveals many of the peculiar problems of life writing, it is Gordimer, both in her accounts of her own life, and more broadly in relation to public issues of national identity and of testimony. Throughout her work, the distinction between life writing and larceny is a fine one, and to reveal is often simultaneously to conceal. On the personal front, Gordimer’s early autobiographical pieces might well share the title of her first novel, The Lying Days (1953). In “Leaving School: ii” (1963) Gordimer portrays herself as an independent truant, voluntarily absenting herself from formal education. In fact, a fainting fit had led to the diagnosis of a serious heart condition. All physical activity was forbidden, and she was removed from school, to spend the years from ages 11 to 16 in intense loneliness, without any contact with other children. Later Gordimer discovered that there was no heart condition, merely a fiction fostered by her possessive mother, who for obscure emotional reasons had scripted her daughter into the role of delicate invalid. Gordimer’s youth had been stolen from her by an act of cruelty, which she felt able to reveal only many years later. Critics of Gordimer’s writing have seized upon this personal story to suggest that Gordimer went on to endow her private history with public associations, and that her

enforced dependency on the protective-oppressive mother gave her a sharp insight into the psychology of colonial dependencies, both of race and of gender (see Cooke and Newman). For others, the life-stealer was not so much the mother as the mother country. Stephen Clingman reads her work largely in terms of the conditioning force of social and ideological codes as if the writer is written by South Africa itself, deprived of any individual agency. Gordimer herself acknowledged that her particpation in the Delmas Treason Trial (1985–88) was a political watershed. Under cross-examination as a witness in the defence of “Terror” Lekota, one of a group of UDF activists, Gordimer agreed that she supported Umkhonto We Sizwe, the military wing of the African National Congress. Until this point, Gordimer had approached the question of testimony only in passing, in The Black Interpreters (1973), as a form of literary production inferior to creative writing. In Writing and Being, however, Gordimer produced a book-length meditation on the relationship of testimony to imagination. For Gordimer the connection between fiction and auto/biography was initially a vexed one, tending to confirm the popular image of the writer as merely the looter of other people’s lives. Instead Gordimer characterizes the writer’s relation to real personages as akin to Primo Levi’s “metamir”: a metaphysical mirror that does not obey the rules of optics “but reproduces your image as it is seen by the person who stands before you” (Writing and Being). Writing Burger’s Daughter (1979) as a homage (critical as well as hagiographical) to the revolutionary hero Bram Fischer, Gordimer carefully avoided his family to ensure the primacy of invention over facticity. Yet when his daughter read the completed manuscript, she simply declared that “this was our life”. The vision of the novelist rendered a keener truth than could have been provided by the analyst’s notebook, diaries, letters, or biographical research. Gordimer nonetheless pays tribute to the moral force of testimony in South Africa, discussing two autobiographies of convicted “terrorists”, Ronnie Kasrils’s Armed and Dangerous (1993; a melodramatic account of the adventures of the “red Pimpernel”, the head of Umkhonto) and Carl Niehaus’s devoutly Christian Fighting for Hope (1994). For all their strengths, however, they pale, in Gordimer’s view, beside the responses to imprisonment of two other revolutionaries, Wally Serote and Jeremy Cronin, both poets. “The imagination has a longer reach … When testimony has been filed, out of date, poetry continues to carry the experience from which the narrative has fallen away.” Succeeding chapters consider three writers, the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz, the Nigerian Chinua Achebe, and the Israeli Amos Oz, for whom the domination of their societies by an outside power had made “home” a vexed term, and produced resistance to the occupation of the national personality. For them, their identities at risk of appropriation or deformation, “the truth is the real definition of ‘home’; it is the final destination of the human spirit beyond national boundaries”. For Gordimer, too, “home” – the intersection of the politics of place with the creation of a personal identity – is a central focus. A full-scale consideration of her life writing is long overdue. Judie Newman Biography Born in Springs, Transvaal, South Africa, 20 November 1923. Her father, a watchmaker, came from Lithuania, her mother from England;

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they were non-practising Jews. Educated at the Convent of Our Lady of Mercy in Springs, then from the age of 11 to 16 at home because of a supposed serious heart condition. Studied at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 1945. Married Gerald Gavronsky, 1949 (divorced 1952): one daughter. Published The Soft Voice of the Serpent, a collection of stories, 1952. Married Reinhold Cassirer, an art dealer, 1954: one son and one stepdaughter. Published Friday’s Footprint, further stories concerning the political situation in South Africa, 1960. Visiting lecturer, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Washington, DC, 1961; Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969; Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 1969; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1970. Adjunct professor of writing, Columbia University, New York, 1971. Published the novels A Guest of Honour (1970), The Conservationist (1974), for which she was awarded the Booker prize, Burger’s Daughter (1979), July’s People (1981), and A Sport of Nature (1987). Presenter, Frontiers television series, 1990. Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, 1991.

Selected Writings “Leaving School: ii”, London Magazine 3/2 (1963): 58–65 Burger’s Daughter (biographical fiction), 1979 (with David Goldblatt) Lifetimes under Apartheid, 1986 The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics, and Places, edited by Stephen Clingman, 1988 Writing and Being, 1995

Further Reading Bazin, Nancy Topping and Marilyn Dallman Seymour (editors), Conversations with Nadine Gordimer, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990 Clingman, Stephen R., The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: History from the Inside, London and Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986; revised edition, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992 Cooke, John, The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: Private Lives, Public Landscapes, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985 Driver, Dorothy et al., Nadine Gordimer: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources, 1937–1992, London: Hans Zell, and Grahamstown, South Africa: National English Literary Museum, 1994 Ettin, Andrew V., Betrayals of the Body Politic: The Literary Commitments of Nadine Gordimer, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993 Gordimer, Nadine, “The Fischer Case”, London Magazine, 5/2 (1966): 21–30 Gordimer, Nadine, The Black Interpreters: Notes on African Writing, Johannesburg: Spro-Cas Ravan, 1973 Gordimer, Nadine and David Goldblatt, On the Mines, Cape Town: Struik, 1973 King, Bruce (editor), The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993 Newman, Judie, Nadine Gordimer, London and New York: Routledge, 1988 Pettersson, Rose, Nadine Gordimer’s One Story of A State Apart, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1995 Subbarao, C., “The Writer’s Conscience: A Reading of Nadine Gordimer’s The Essential Gesture” in Indian Response to African Writing, New Delhi: Prestige, 1993

Gor’kii, Maksim

1868–1936

Russian playwright, autobiographer, and fiction writer As an autobiographer, Gor’kii is best known as the author of Detstvo (1913; Childhood). Yet this is only the most visible point of a much larger body of life writing that makes up a substantial part of his voluminous oeuvre. Gor’kii’s first efforts at literary self-invention comprise a number of short stories which appeared in the provincial

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Russian press in the 1890s but came to national attention only in 1898, when they were re-issued, together with some fictional pieces, in a two-volume collection, Ocherki i rasskazy [Sketches and Stories]. The impact of this publication was unprecedented in the history of Russian literature, bestowing upon the author a celebrity that verged on notoriety. In his fictional and autobiographical tales alike, Gor’kii introduced his readers to the world of Russia’s dispossessed and secured for himself an identity as the “tramp who became a writer”, the “voice of the suffering masses”. The early essays in autobiography took several forms. Some, like “Makar Chudra” (1892) consist of a dialogue with an exotic non-Russian “other” who tells the I-hero a romantic folk legend. Others, such as “Moi sputnik” (1894; “My FellowTraveller”) and “Na soli” (1897; “At the Salt-Diggings”), are action tales, in which the first-person protagonist engages in a dramatic confrontation with amoral individuals who easily get the better of him. By contrast, in works like “Konovalov” (1896), the narrator is a passive observer, a documentarist of life at the bottom of the social heap. In all cases, these are fragmentary, ironic self-portraits, in which the autobiographical hero stands in an uneasy relationship to a character who embodies a physical and psychological power by which he is both attracted and repelled. After the publication of “Sketches and Stories”, Gor’kii turned his back on life writing. Between 1898 and 1911 he devoted his literary talent to the production of plays and novels. At the same time, he became actively involved with the revolutionary movement, to the extent that he was obliged to leave his native country after the abortive 1905 Revolution, returning only in 1913. Although he wrote no autobiography at this time, several of his novels, from Foma Gordeev (1898) to Zhizn’ Matveia Kozhemiakina (1911; The Life of Matvei Kozhemiakin) employ the Bildungsroman form and may be seen, in retrospect, as essays towards the larger-scale life writing that was to come. In 1911 Gor’kii returned to life writing with a vengeance. Over the next 13 years he wrote very little else, other than journalism. In scope and diversity, this represents one of the most remarkable autobiographical achievements in any literature. Most widely read today is the trilogy – Childhood, V liudiakh (1916; My Apprenticeship), and Moi universitety (1923; My Universities) – in which he tells the frequently harrowing story of his life from young childhood to early manhood. The first volume, in particular, is an uplifting tale which celebrates the boy-hero’s victory over brute circumstance. Even as he was shaping his life into a sequential narrative, Gor’kii completed a series of disconnected stories from his experience, collected under the title Po Rusi (1915, 1917; Through Russia). Like his earlier works, these dealt with his tramping days in the 1880s. The most famous of these stories – “Rozhdenie cheloveka” (“The Birth of a Man”) and “Ledokol” (“The Ice Breaks”) – convey the author’s hope for the victory of socialism. Alongside these personal ventures, Gor’kii collaborated with the opera-singer Chaliapin in the production of the latter’s autobiography. The coming of Russia’s two revolutions in 1917 and the ensuing civil war interrupted Gor’kii’s work as an autobiographer. Only after his departure to Europe in 1922 did he resume the task, producing My Universities and a number of unjustly neglected pieces, of which the collection Zametki iz dnevnika

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(1924; Fragments from My Diary) is the most fascinating. These later works are characterized by their celebration of the “fragmentary” nature of life, of the bizarre and unpredictable events that intrude on “normality”, and of the strange individuals who add colour to human existence by their eccentric, sometimes even insane, behaviour. No less important are the series of memoirs Gor’kii wrote about his great contemporaries. Of these, his sketch of Tolstoi (Vospominaniia o Tolstom, 1919; Reminiscences of Leo Tolstoy) is the most celebrated and that of Lenin (V.I. Lenin, 1924) the most notorious. In 1924, Gor’kii’s activities as a life writer once again came to a sudden halt. In the final period of his life he dedicated himself to the writing of novels and plays. It was during this period, too, that his uneasy accommodation with the Stalin regime slowly began to dominate his life. Yet, even at this stage in his career, the urge to depict himself could not be totally suppressed. In the massive unfinished novel-chronicle Zhizn’ Klima Samgina [written 1925–36; literally “The Life of Klim Samgin”, translated under various titles], Gor’kii appears as a historical figure in his own recreation of Russia’s age of revolution. Andrew Barratt Biography Born Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov in Nizhnii Novgorod, Russian empire, 28 March 1868. His father, an upholsterer, died when he was aged four. Brought up by his mother and grandparents, who treated him harshly. Attended a parish school in Nizhnii Novgorod, then Kumavino elementary school, 1877–78. Apprenticed to a shoemaker at the age of 11 and subsequently worked in a variety of odd jobs, including cook’s boy on a Volga steamer. Attempted suicide, 1887. Associated with revolutionary politics from 1888. First arrested, 1889. Wandered through much of southern Russia, 1888–89 and 1891–92. First story published in Kavkaz newspaper, Tbilisi, 1892. Wrote for various periodicals in the Volga region from 1892. Married Ekaterina Pavlovna Volzhina, 1896 (later separated): one son and one daughter. Published the successful Chelkash (1895) and Ocherki i rasskazy [1898; Sketches and Stories]. Briefly imprisoned on a number of occasions for revolutionary activities. Became literary editor of the Marxist newspaper Zhizn’ [Life], St Petersburg, 1899. Worked for Znanie publishing house, St Petersburg, from 1900; subsequently became its leading editor. Exiled to Arzamas, central Russia, for illicit involvement with a secret printing press, 1901. Became a national hero with Na dne (1902; The Lower Depths), a play about the proletariat, which was first performed at the Moscow Art Theatre. Elected to the Russian Academy, 1902, but election declared invalid by the tsarist government: several academicians resigned in protest. Joined the Bolshevik party, 1905. Travelled to the United States to raise money for the revolutionary cause, 1906; began to write his best-known novel, Mat’ (1907; The Mother). Lived on the island of Capri, 1906–13; set up revolutionary propaganda school, 1909. Returned to Russia after the tsar granted a general amnesty to writers, 1913. Began his autobiographical trilogy with Childhood (1913). Founding editor of the magazine Letopis’ [Chronicles], 1915–17, and the newspaper Novaia Zhizn’ [New Life], 1917–18. Established Vsemirnaia Literatura [World Literature] publishing house and helped to launch a series of world classics. Involved in Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet, and in improving conditions for writers and scholars. Left Russia for health reasons in 1921, and spent three years at various German and Czech spas. Editor, Dialog, Berlin, 1923–25. Lived in Sorrento 1924–32, visiting Soviet Russia in 1928. Returned to the Soviet Union permanently in 1932, when he was awarded the Order of Lenin. Set up the Biblioteka Poeta [Poet’s Library] publishing project. Promoted the implementation of socialist realism, and was the first member of the Soviet Writers’ Union (1934). Gor’kii Literary Institute established in his honour. Died (possibly murdered) near Moscow, 18 June 1936.

Selected Writings “Makar Chudra” (autobiographical fiction), Kavkaz, 12 September 1892 Ocherki i rasskazy [Sketches and Stories] (autobiographical fiction), 2 vols, 1898; selected stories translated in various compilations Detstvo, in Russkoe slovo, 1913–14; as My Childhood, translated by Ronald Wilks, 1966; as Childhood in Collected Works, vol. 6, 1980 V liudiakh, in Letopis’, 1–12, 1916; as My Apprenticeship, translated by Margaret Wettlin, 1952, and in Collected Works, vol. 7, 1981; translated by Ronald Wilks, 1974 Moi universitety, in Krasnaia nov’, 2–4, 1923; as My Universities, translated by Ronald Wilks, 1979; translated by Helen Altschuler in Collected Works, vol. 7, 1981 Po Rusi, 1915, 1917; as Through Russia, translated by C.J. Hogarth, 1921 Vospominaniia o Tolstom (biographical study), 1919; as Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoy translated by S.S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf, 1920 (with Alexander Kuprin and I.A. Bunin) A.P. Chekhov (biographical study), 1921; as Reminiscences of Anton Chekov, translated by S.S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf, 1921 Kniga o L. Andreevie: vospominaniia (biographical study), 1922; as Reminiscences of Leonid Andreyev, translated by Katherine Mansfield and S.S. Koteliansky, 1922 V.I. Lenin (biographical study), 1924 Vospominaniia: N.E. Karonin-Petropavlovskii, A.P. Chekhov, Lev Tolstoi, M.M. Kotsiubin’skii, Leonid Andreev, 1923; as Literary Portraits, vol. 9 of Collected Works, 1982 Zametki iz dnevnika, 1924; as Fragments from My Diary, 1924; translated by Moura Budberg, 1940, revised 1972 Zhizn’ Klima Samgina (unfinished, written 1925–36); 4 vols, 1927–37; as Forty Years: The Life of Clim Samghin, 4 vols, 1930–38 1: Bystander, translated by Bernard Guilbert Guerney, 1930 2: The Magnet, translated by Alexander Bakshy, 1931 3: Other Fires, translated by Bakshy, 1933 4: The Specter, translated by Bakshy, 1938 Pis’ma v Sibir’, 1903–1936 (correspondence), 1946 Sobranie sochinenii (collected works), 30 vols, 1949–55 Perepiska, stat’i, vyskazyvaniia (correspondence), 1951 “Letters of Maxim Gor’kij to V.F. Xodaseviπ, 1922–1925”, edited and translated by Hugh McLean in Harvard Slavonic Studies 1 (1953) Pis’ma k K.P. Piatnitskomu (correspondence), edited by I.N. Uspenskii, 1954 Pis’ma k E.P. Peshkovoi / A.M. Gor’kii (correspondence), 2 vols, 1955–66 A.M. Gor’kii i V.G. Korolenko: perepiska, stat’i, vyskazyvaniia: sbornik materialov (correspondence), edited by A.M. Gor’kii, 1957 Pis’ma, vospominaniia, dokumenty, 1958, revised 1961 and 1969; abridged translation as Lenin and Gorky: Letters, Reminiscences, Articles, 1973 Letters of Gorky and Andreev 1899–1912, edited by Peter Yershov, 1958 Pis’ma k pisateliam i L.P. Ladyzhnikovu (correspondence), 1959 Perepiska A.M. Gorkogo s zarubezhnymi literatorami (correspondence), edited by N.N. Zhegalov, S.S. Zimina, and R.M. Samarin, 1960 Gor’kii i Sibir: pis’ma, vospominaniia (correspondence and reminiscences), 1961 Gor’kii i sovetskie pisateli: neizdannaia perepiska (correspondence), 1963 M. Gor’kii i sovetskaia pechat (correspondence), edited by R.P. Panteleeva, 2 vols, 1964–65 Gor’kii i Leonid Andreev: neizdannaia perepiska (correspondence), 1965 Perepiska A.M. Gor’kogo s I.A. Gruzdevym (correspondence), edited by B.A. Bialik, 1966 Letters, edited by P. Cockerell, translated by V. Dutt, 1966 Literaturnye portrety, 2nd edition, 1967; as Literary Portraits, translated by Ivy Litvinov, 1982

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Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (complete collected works), 25 vols, 1968–76 M. Gor’kii i syn: pisma, vospominaniia (correspondence), edited by B.A. Bialik et al., 1971 Neizdannaia perepiska (correspondence), 1976 Collected Works, 20 vols, 1978–83 (with Vsevolod Viacheslavovich Ivanov) Perepiska s A.M. Gor’kim: iz dnevnikov i zapisnykh knizhek (correspondence), 1985 Iz literaturnogo naslediia: Gorkii i evreiskii vopros (correspondence), edited by Mikhail Agurskii and Margarita Shklovskaia, 1986 Perepiska M. Gor’kogo v dvukh tomakh (correspondence), 2 vols, 1986 Gor’kii i russkaia zhurnalistika XX veka: neizdannaia perepiska, edited by I.S. Zilbershtein and N.I. Dikushina, 1988 Correspondance: Romain Rolland, Maxime Gorki, edited by Jean Pérus, 1991 M. Gor’kii i R. Rollan: perepiska, 1916–1936, edited by A.D. Mikhailov, 1995 Selected Letters, edited and translated by Andrew Barratt and Barry P. Scherr, 1997 Pis’ma v dvadtstati chetyrekh tomakh (correspondence), edited by F.F. Kuznetsov et al., 1997– Neizdannaia perepiska s Bogdanovym, Leninym, Stalinym, Zinov’evym, Kamenevym, Korolenko (correspondence), edited by S.V. Zaika et al., 1998

Further Reading Barratt, Andrew, “Maksim Gorky’s Autobiographical Trilogy: The Lure of Myth and the Power of Fact”, AUMLA Journal, 80 (1993): 59–91 Barratt, Andrew, The Early Fiction of Maksim Gorky: Six Essays in Interpretation, Nottingham: Astra, 1993 Barratt, Andrew, “The Forgotten Gorky: Notes from My Diary, Reminiscences” in After the Watershed: Russian Prose 1917–1927: Selected Essays, edited by Nicholas Luker, Nottingham: Astra, 1996 Borras, F.M., Maxim Gorky the Writer: An Interpretation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967 Erikson, Erik H., Childhood and Society, 2nd edition, New York: Norton, 1963 Hare, Richard, Maxim Gorky: Romantic Realist and Conservative Revolutionary, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1962 Scherr, Barry P., “Gor’kij’s Childhood: The Autobiography as Fiction”, Slavic and East European Journal, 23/3 (1979): 333–45 Scherr, Barry P., Maxim Gorky, Boston: G.K. Hall, 1988 Weil, Irwin, Gorky: His Literary Development and Influence on Soviet Intellectual Life, New York: Random House, 1966

Gosse, Edmund

1849–1928

English biographer, critic, and autobiographer Edmund Gosse, prolific and influential man of letters, devoted a great deal of his life to biography of one sort and another. He himself shared “the peculiar curiosity which legitimate biography satisfies”. Reviewing Festing Jones’s biography of Samuel Butler, he said that there might be readers who did not care how many times Butler brushed his hair each day: “I am not one of them; these little things are my delight.” He loved to know that Butler, travelling abroad, carried diarrhoea pills in the handle of his Gladstone bag. He considered that the essential element in biography is its actuality, its individuality. Gosse hated the enormous Victorian biographies, which flung together without selection or arrangement most of the surviving letters and often included a history of the times as well. “There is hardly a Life printed nowadays that does not offend by the publication of too much of everything”, he once wrote.

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Gosse himself had a particular skill in writing brief lives of famous writers, often for series. He contributed Gray (1882), Jeremy Taylor (1904), and Sir Thomas Browne (1905) to the English Men of Letters series; Raleigh (1886) for the English Worthies; and Congreve (1888) for Great Writers. Two titles for the Literary Lives series, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll – Coventry Patmore (1905) and Ibsen (1907) – were more substantial. Gosse also wrote a considerable number of brief portraits of people he had himself known, and the best of these (including substantial accounts of Hardy, Robert Browning, and Robert Louis Stevenson, all close friends) appeared in a collection called Portraits from Life over 60 years after his death. Gosse’s most daunting task as a biographer, one which occupied him over many years, was his attempt at the first Life and Letters of John Donne. It is remarkable that in Margaret Drabble’s updating of The Oxford Companion to English Literature she can record: “There is no collected edition of Donne’s letters, the best available approach to it still being E. Gosse, Life and Letters (2 vols, 1899)”. The main material for a life of Donne then consisted of a collection of letters printed in 1851 and in such confusion, Gosse said, “that no biographer has hitherto ventured to unravel the knotted and twisted web”. It was Gosse’s enthusiastic use of Donne’s poems as biographical evidence in reconstructing his early life that caused more criticism than Gosse’s typical errors. Helen Gardner, the Donne scholar, paid tribute to the charm of Gosse’s work and noted that its “deceptive air of learning lightly carried gave it a wide influence”. Gosse met different problems with his biographical work on his close friend, the poet and dramatist A.C. Swinburne, whom he had first met in 1870. Gosse loved Swinburne and called him “our greatest living poet”, but going through his papers after his death in 1909, Gosse had to admit, “I confess that Swinburne occasionally makes me physically sick”. Much of the material was unpublishable, not only because of the feelings of Swinburne’s family, but because Gosse himself at that point wanted to “try to prevent the world from ever learning what a pig he sometimes was”. Gosse’s Life of Algernon Charles Swinburne (1917), his last major book, was carefully self-censored: “I think no biographer ever had more to contend against. If I could I would … re-write it from beginning to end. I ought to have been more daring, less reserved”. Instead he deposited in the British Museum library a Confidential Paper putting down his own knowledge of the more scandalous aspects of Swinburne’s life, for the benefit of future biographers, but even here he did not explore the question of Swinburne’s sexual orientation. In 1890 Gosse had published The Life of Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S., a book that was subsequently titled The Naturalist of the Sea-shore. Henry James admired it: “Gosse has just published a singularly clever, skilful, vivid, well-done biography of his father”. But George Moore glimpsed in the book the great unwritten story of the relationship of the father and the son: “I missed your father’s life and your life as you lived it together – a great psychological work waits to be written.” When, 17 years later, in 1907 Gosse published Father and Son, his masterpiece, it first appeared anonymously. He was afraid of what people would think of his unfilial act. Immediate reactions were indeed mixed. But Father and Son has established itself as a classic.

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Harold Nicolson in 1928 considered it “the most ‘literary’ biography in the English language … To this work he brought great courage, great originality and consummate literary art.” Gosse denied it was an autobiography, though it is often considered as such: “The value consists in what light it may contrive to throw upon the unique and noble figure of the Father.” But it is above all “the record of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciences and almost two epochs”, as Gosse himself said – the clash is between the age of belief and the age of reason. It is a remarkable book that confirms that truth is not always a matter of getting the facts right.

Portraits from Life (biographical sketches), edited by Ann Thwaite, 1991

Further Reading Braybrooke, Patrick D., Considerations on Edmund Gosse, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1925 Nicolson, Harold, The Development of English Biography, London: Hogarth Press, 1927; New York: Harcourt Brace, 1928 Thwaite, Ann, Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape, London: Secker and Warburg, and Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984 Woolf, James D., Sir Edmund Gosse, New York: Twayne, 1972 Woolf, Virginia, The Moment and Other Essays, London: Hogarth Press, 1947

Ann Thwaite Biography Born in London, 21 September 1849. After his mother’s death in 1857, moved with his father, the naturalist and fundamentalist Christian Philip Henry Gosse to St Marychurch, near Torquay, Devon. Educated at local private schools. Obtained a post as a transcriber in the cataloguing department of the British Museum, London, through the aid of Charles Kingsley, 1865, and worked there until 1875. Published his first poems, 1870. Visited Norway and bought a copy of Ibsen’s plays, 1871. Freelance critic and reviewer from 1872. Translator in commercial department, Board of Trade, London, 1875–1904. Married Ellen Epps, 1875: two daughters (one the artist Sylvia Gosse) and one son. Gave US lecture tour, 1884–85; declined offer of a chair at Harvard University. Clark lecturer in English literature, Cambridge University, 1885–90. Translated Ibsen’s plays and published many critical works on French literature as well as biographies, including of John Donne (1899) and Ibsen (1907). Librarian, House of Lords, London, 1904–14. Editor, Books, the Daily Mail literary supplement, 1906–07. Published Father and Son, 1907. Contributed to The Spectator, Fortnightly Review, the Daily Chronicle (from 1914), and the Sunday Times (from 1918), among other newspapers and periodicals. Awarded the Order of St Olaf (Norway), 1901; Order of the Polar Star (Sweden), 1908; Order of the Dannebrog (Denmark), 1912; CB (Companion, Order of the Bath), 1912; Légion d’honneur (France), 1925. Knighted 1925. Died in London, 16 May 1928.

Selected Writings Gray (biography of Thomas Gray), 1882; revised 1889 Cecil Lawson: A Memoir, 1883 Raleigh, 1886 The Life of William Congreve, 1888; revised 1924 Robert Browning: Personalia, 1890 The Life of Philip Henry Gosse (his father), 1890; as The Naturalist of the Sea-Shore, 1896 The Life and Letters of John Donne, 2 vols, 1899 Jeremy Taylor, 1904 Coventry Patmore, 1905 Sir Thomas Browne, 1905 French Profiles, 1905 Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments (auto/biographical prose), 1907; edited by James Hepburn, 1974; edited by A.O.J. Cockshut, 1994 Ibsen, 1907 Biographical Notes on the Writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, 1908 Swinburne: Personal Recollections, 1909 Portraits and Sketches, 1912 The Life of Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1917 Correspondence 1904–1928, with André Gide, edited by Linette F. Brugmans, 1959 Correspondence with Scandinavian Writers, edited by Elias Bredsdorff, 1960 Transatlantic Dialogue: Selected American Correspondence, edited by Paul F. Mattheisen and Michael Millgate, 1965 America: The Diary of a Visit, Winter 1884–1885, edited by Robert L. Peters and David G. Halliburton, 1966 Sir Henry Doulton: The Man of Business as a Man of Letters, edited by Desmond Eyles, 1970

Gossip The term “gossip” is derived from the Old English godsibb, meaning godparent, and often used to refer to the female friends attending a woman in labour. Both this archaic meaning of close woman friend and the notion of social exchange is evidenced in, for example, Samuel Rowland’s Well Met Gossip, or, Tis Merrie When Gossips Meete, newly enlarged with very merry songs, pleasant for maids, wives and widdows: and delightfull to all that shall read it (1619). At its most pernicious, gossip is generally regarded as malicious in intent and damaging to reputations, while at its most innocuous, it is regarded as idle chat of little import, as an act of intimacy. At each extreme, gossip implies behaviour that challenges or provokes the teller’s certainties of social distinctions. Gossip can be akin to scandal in that its characteristics can include misrepresentation of self or others, the exposure of secrets, the regulation of cultural representations, and the ordering of social exchange. Like scandal, gossip, both private and public, is transitory and its written forms are often originally orally based. However, the detrimental qualities of scandal are not always concomitant with gossip. Written instances of gossip proliferated in the European salon and coffee-house cultures of the 18th century as well as the journal publications of the 19th century. Reputations subject to onslaught by scandalous gossip were defended in such texts as Teresa Phillips’s An Apology for the Conduct of Mrs Teresa Phillips (1748). In the Appendix to The Dunciad (1743), Alexander Pope notes the malicious potential of gossip: “Why how now, Gossip Pope? Or, the Sweet Singing-Bird of Parnassus taken out of its pretty cage to be roasted.” James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) can be read as an example of biographical gossip. Items such as Green Room Gossip, or, Gravity Gallinipt, a Gallimaufry, Consisting of Theatrical Anecdotes (1809) by Gridiron Gabble (i.e. Joseph Hazlewood), the periodical The Gossip, a series of original essays and letters, literary, historical and critical; descriptive sketches, etc. (1821), and Tobacco Talk and Smoker’s Gossip, an amusing miscellany of fact and anecdote, etc. (1897) point up the anecdotal and descriptive nature of the gossip. Sections of Household Words and the Athenaeum were devoted to gossip. Gossip as biography is foregrounded in Thomas Archer’s Charles Dickens: A Gossip about His Life, Works and Characters (1894). In the 20th century, written gossip was primarily to be found in the gossip columns of newspapers and magazines. One of the

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foremost gossip columnists in the United States was Walter Winchell who ushered in a new kind of journalism with his radio and newspaper items on the lives of celebrities. During the 1940s and early 1950s, Winchell was a powerful figure, detailing scandal and gossip that impacted heavily on both political and Hollywood circles. Today, magazines such as People, In Style, Hello, and OK! are replete with gossip, “revealing” the lives of the celebrities as well as demonstrating readers’ appetites for this kind of information. In contemporary culture, celebrity gossip especially can be disseminated to a massive audience in seconds via the World Wide Web, with Web spaces such as chatrooms allowing for the verbal exchanges that simulate actual conversation. Gossip as a subject of critical study has only emerged since the 1980s. The standard text on the subject is Patricia Meyer Spacks’s Gossip (1985). While focused primarily on the constructions and incidences of gossip in the 18th century, Spacks problematizes the social exchange inherent in gossip, while identifying the ways in which the forms and functions of gossip are similar to those of the novel. (“The forms that novels often imitate – diaries, letters, biography, autobiography – deal with similar material: the stuff of private life made substance for public speculation”.) Recent works have taken a more subjectspecific approach, such as Robin Dunbar’s anthropological Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language (1994), Melanie Tebbutt’s historical Women’s Talk? A Social History of “Gossip” in Working-Class Neighbourhoods, 1880–1960 (1995), and Wendy Woodward’s article on gossip as social regulation and surveillance in settler communities. Among the writings in the posthumous collection Reflections (1978), Walter Benjamin suggests that gossip “comes about only because people do not wish to be misunderstood”. This interest in the self-consciousness of gossip is also taken up by Nicholas Emler (1990), who argues that gossip is concerned with reputation management: one passes on information about oneself in order to influence listeners’ perceptions of oneself. This turn to the discussion of the speaking or writing subject might seem surprising, given that gossip is popularly thought of as discussion of, or writing about, others. Spacks, however, begins to unite gossip’s several functions: “Its participants use talk about others to reflect about themselves, to express wonder and uncertainty and locate certainties, to enlarge their knowledge of one another.” It can be regarded as an act of both biography and autobiography, that is, as a discourse through which another’s identity and acts are represented and discussed in order to describe (consciously or not) the social and cultural regulations of the person speaking. As such, gossip is fundamental to social and cultural exchange: through it, one tells both another’s life and one’s own. Stacy Gillis See also Celebrity and Popular Biography; Conversations, Dialogues, and Table Talk; Interviews; Scandal

Further Reading Beresford, John, Gossip of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1923; New York: Knopf, 1924 Bergmann, Jörg, Discreet Indiscretions: The Social Organization of Gossip, translated by John Bednarz, Jr, and Eva Kafka Braun, New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1993 Byrne, Julia, Gossip of the Century: Personal and Traditional

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Memories, Social, Literary, Artistic, &c, edited by Rachel Busk, London: Ward and Downey, and New York: Macmillan, 1892 “Chatty Cheerful” [i.e. William Martin], Scandal, Gossip, Tittle-Tattle and Backbiting, London: Jarrold, 1862 Coates, Jennifer, “Gossip Revisited: Language in All-Female Groups” in Women in Their Speech Communities: New Perspectives on Language and Sex, edited by Coates and Deborah Cameron, London: Longman, 1989 Collins, Gail, Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity, and American Politics, New York: Morrow, 1998 Drew, Elizabeth, The Literature of Gossip: Nine English Letter Writers, New York: Norton, 1964 Dunbar, Robin, Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, and London: Faber, 1996 Ellis, David, “Biography and Gossip”, Cambridge Quarterly, 24/4 (1995): 304–14 Emler, Nicholas, “A Social Psychology of Reputations,” European Journal of Social Psychology, 1 (1990): 171–93 Emler, Nicholas, “The Truth about Gossip”, Social Psychology Newsletter, 27 (1992): 23–37 Gabler, Neal, Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity, New York: Knopf, 1994 Goodman, Robert F. and Aaron Ben-Ze’ev (editors), Good Gossip, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1994 Goodwin, Marjorie, “Retellings, Pretellings and Hypothetical Stories”, Research on Language and Social Interaction, 24 (1990–91): 263–76 Gordon, Jan, Gossip and Subversion in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction: Echo’s Economies, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996 Klein, Lawrence E., “Gender, Conversation and the Public Sphere in Early Eighteenth-Century England” in Textuality and Sexuality: Reading Theories and Practices, edited by Judith Still and Michael Worton, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1993 Levin, Jack and Arnold Arluke, Gossip: The Inside Scoop, New York and London: Plenum Press, 1987 Machlin, Milt, The Gossip Wars: An Exposé of the Scandal Era, London: Star Books, 1981 Morrissey, L.J, “‘Mending Wall’: The Structure of Gossip”, English Language Notes 25/3 (1988): 58–63 Riegel, Henriette, “Soap Operas and Gossip”, Journal of Popular Culture, 29/4 (1996): 201–09 Ronsow, Ralph L. and Gary Fine, Rumor and Gossip: The Social Psychology of Hearsay, New York: Elsevier, 1976 Spacks, Patricia Meyer, Gossip, New York: Knopf, 1985 Tebbutt, Melanie, Women’s Talk? A Social History of “Gossip” in Working-Class Neighbourhoods, 1880–1960, Aldershot, Hampshire and Brookfield, Vermont: Scolar Press, 1995 Weber, Myles, “Other Voices: A Life in Gossip”, Southern Review, 34/4 (1998): 816–21 Woodward, Wendy, “Riddles in the Marketplace: Gossip and the Surveillance of Settler Women’s Bodies” in The Body in the Library, edited by Leigh Dale and Simon Ryan, Amsterdam and Atlanta, Georgia: Rodopi, 1998

Gottsched, Luise

1713–1762

German letter writer, journalist, playwright, and translator First published in 1771–72, Luise Gottsched’s letters have long been cited as an outstanding example of the natural style of women epistolary writers. Her epistolary style, it was claimed, surpassed in naturalness and grace that of her more prominent husband Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700–66), leading proponent of linguistic reform in the early German enlightenment.

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The evolution of such a style eventually liberated German epistolary writing from the contortions of the prevailing chancery style and contributed to the development of German as a literary language. Luise Gottsched’s letters have been hailed, somewhat enthusiastically, as the German rivals of Madame de Sévigné’s celebrated ones. As remarkable as the three volumes of her letters are, the recent discovery of manuscript versions of some letters leads both to a more cautious evaluation of their style and to even greater admiration of their original naturalness. In the very few cases in which comparisons of manuscript and printed versions are possible, it is clear that sizable cuts were made and the style considerably revised for publication. When the liveliness of the originals is thus exposed we can only regret the loss of the vast majority of them. Since the posthumous edition of her letters was undertaken by Gottsched’s close friend, Dorothea Henriette von Runckel, she is one possible source of these revisions. However, another possibility is Luise Gottsched herself, for she assigned the task of their publication to her friend. Indeed the author clearly planned for their edition, as her husband (then fiancé) had requested permission to publish her letters in the early 1730s. At that time she steadfastly refused, stating they might be published only after her death. Whoever undertook the revisions was mindful of Johann Christoph’s recommendations for good German style. While the publication of Luise’s letters was intended to provide a model of good epistolary style for German women, hers were not the first to be published with the intent of encouraging and improving women’s writing. As early as 1731 Christiane Mariane von Ziegler (1695–1760) had boldly published Moralische und vermischte Send-Schreiben [Moral and Miscellaneous Letters]. Ziegler intended this collection of letters to encourage other German women to contribute their writing to the international literary arena. Since each prose letter is carefully composed around a particular moral or social problem, these letters of advice resemble more closely pieces of journalism than personal and intimate communication. Unlike unedited (and unpublished) letters of Ziegler’s, in these there is virtually no subjective voice. By contrast – even in their revised form – Luise Gottsched’s letters reveal a powerful personality with strong opinions and sentiments. While they have frequently been used to construct her intellectual role as the docile helpmate of her learned husband, a different interpretation reveals a woman who successfully manipulated social conventions in order to be able to engage in public debates. The early letters to her future husband are as reserved as one might expect from a pious 16-year-old responding to a worldly and gallant suitor. Older critics have sometimes viewed this as calculation; more recent ones sometimes as decided coolness toward her fiancé. After her marriage, letters to Runckel suggest a growing emotional distance from her husband and increasing intimacy with Runckel. Given that Luise Gottsched suspected his infidelity, this might not have been unwarranted, or, given conventions about female friendships, even unusual. The loss of the originals prevents definitive statements about her style. In their published form Gottsched’s letters do not approach the liveliness of those the young Christiane Karoline Lucius (1739–1833) wrote to Christian Fürchtegott Gellert in the 1760s, but published only in 1823. (Gellert, professor at the

University of Leipzig, used examples of Lucius’s letters in his university lectures on natural style.) However, in their original form, Luise Gottsched’s letters surpass these in expressive vigour. Katherine R. Goodman Biography Born Luise Adelgunde Victorie Kulmus in the German city of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland), 11 April 1713. Her father was a physician. Educated at home by her parents; studied French, literature, and music, as well as mathematics and philosophy. Began to write poetry at the age of 12. Translated Madame de Lafayette’s La Princess de Clèves (1678) at the age of 15. Met the critic and playwright Johann Christoph Gottsched, who held much influence in German literary circles, 1729. Began writing and publishing work anonymously, 1731. Married Gottsched, 1735: no children. Worked with her husband, who was professor of poetry at the University of Leipzig, as his literary assistant, translating his work and writing articles and critical reviews for his journals, anonymously and in her own name. Translated many prose and dramatic works into German from English and French. Also wrote many plays under her own name, notably the controversial Die Pietisterey im Fischbein-Rocke (1736; Pietism in Petticoats), as well as Das Testament [1745; The Will] and Herr Witzling [1745; Mr Witty]. Died in Leipzig, 26 June 1762.

Selected Writings Briefe der Frau Luise Adelgunde Victorie Gottsched gebohrne Kulmus, edited by Dorothea Henriette von Runckel, 3 vols, 1771–72 Louise Gottsched: “mit der Feder in der Hand”: Briefe aus den Jahren 1730–1762, edited by Inka Kording, 1999

Further Reading Gellert, Christian Fürchtegott, Briefwechsel Christian Fürchtegott Gellerts mit Demoiselle Lucius, edited by Friedrich Adolph Ebert, Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1823 Goodman, Katherine, Amazons and Apprentices: Women and the German Parnassus in the Early Enlightenment, Rochester, New York: Camden House, 1999 Heuser, Magdalene, “Neuedition der Briefe von Louise Adelgunde Victorie Gottsched” in Editionsdesiderate zur Frühen Neuzeit: Beitrage zur Tagung der Kommission für die Edition von Texte der Frühen Neuzeit, edited by Hans-Gert Roloff with Renate Meincke, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997 Kord, Susanne, “Eternal Love or Sentimental Discourse? Gender Dissonance and Women’s Passionate ‘Friendships’” in Outing Goethe and His Age, edited by Alice A. Kuzniar, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996 Ziegler, Christiane Mariane von, Moralische und vermischte SendSchreiben, Dresden: Harpeter, 1731

Goytisolo, Juan

1931–

Spanish fiction writer, essayist, and autobiographer Apart from the strong autobiographical content of much of his fiction and essay work, Goytisolo has published two highly acclaimed volumes of autobiography: the bestselling Coto vedado (1985; Forbidden Territory) and En los reinos de taifa (1986; Realms of Strife). If in the rest of his work Goytisolo sides with the marginal and dispossessed, in Coto vedado he identifies with the hidden figures who have been significant in his formation – often outcasts, such as the maternal grandfather who initiated him as a child into homosexuality. When writing poignantly about his own mother (who was killed in a nationalist air raid in 1938

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while shopping for presents for her children), he looks behind the conventional roles she performed as a middle-class mother and wife. Tracing his own cosmopolitanism and love of literature to her, he lists her favourite books (predominantly by French authors) and remembers that she had aspired to become a novelist herself. Moreover, by revealing his mother’s hidden life, Goytisolo links his own dissatisfaction with bourgeois convention to hers. In the same book, Goytisolo’s difficult relationship with authority and his middle-class background is portrayed in oedipal terms. As in all his mature writing, he reflects not only on the external but also the self-imposed constraints on religious, political, cultural, and sexual freedom. He confesses that filial loyalty to his late father, as well as affection, was largely responsible for the author’s reluctance to admit openly his leftist politics, religious agnosticism, and homosexuality. Thus, Goytisolo’s autobiographical writing illuminates the author’s awareness in his other work of the repressive forces bearing down on the individual with regard to social location, conflicting loyalties, and relation to authority, as well as the subversive possibilities offered by these. Goytisolo’s self-confessed diffidence also reveals the author’s integrity for he recognizes that the individual assimilates social convention and must share the sometimes guilty burden of responsibility. As a writer, Goytisolo is keenly aware that a major instrument of authority and convention is language itself, so that any bid for nonconformism and social, cultural, and perceptual renovation must involve a revolutionary incursion into linguistic territory. Indeed, after his immersion in structuralism and Barthesian semiology since the 1950s, Goytisolo’s fiction becomes increasingly experimental in terms of characterization, plot, syntax, and generic convention. Goytisolo’s transgressive intent is signalled in the very titles, as well as content, of both volumes of his autobiography and the collections of literary and other essays, such as his Disidencias [1977; Dissidences] and Contracorrientes [1985; Countercurrents]. En los reinos de taifa deals extensively with Goytisolo’s communist-affiliated opposition in the late 1950s and early 1960s to the Franco regime, his complicated married life with the writer Monique Lange, his tentative admission of his homosexuality, and his life in Paris among writers such as Albert Camus and Jean Genet and intellectuals such as Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes. Goytisolo admits that the latter’s friendship and example exerted a profoundly liberating influence on his own life and writing. Goytisolo also gives an account of his rejection of literary realism, a decision which he relates to his increasing disillusionment with what he considers the inherent doctrinism of institutional politics in general, Marxism and the gay movement in particular, as well as to his involvement with French intellectual debate on questions of language and representation since the 1950s. Goytisolo presents incidents that had a decisive influence on him as illustrative of the tyranny of ideologies with which he has struggled in his mature writing. One such incident was the notorious Padilla case of 1968–71, when the Cuban writer Heberto Padilla was forced by the Castro regime publicly to renounce both his writing and himself as “counter-revolutionary”. Goytisolo’s disillusionment with Marxism results from his association of literary censorship with the repression of all forms of deviance – whether religious, sexual, or economic – by ostensibly revolutionary governments,

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such as that of Castro. Apart from such libertarian reasons, Goytisolo suggests that his political apostasy was also motivated by his realization that politics and socially committed writing had served as expedient vehicles for more profoundly antibourgeois ethical, sexual, and spiritual drives, whose renegade potential tormented him with insecurity and guilt. But if Goytisolo delves into the personal motives for his public activities, integrity obliges intellectual detachment. Ever aware of the contrivance and mediation involved in the production of all texts, Goytisolo acknowledges that autobiography is a textual act of remembrance by often employing a second- or third-person pronoun and italicized asides to refer to the actions and thoughts of his younger self from the perspective of his older authorial self. Thus, in his autobiographies as in his novels, he foregrounds the discontinuous heterogeneity of identity and the difficulty of narrating a life without lending it a deceitful chronological unity and transparency. John D. Perivolaris Biography Born in Barcelona, Spain, 5 January 1931; brother of the writer Luis Goytisolo. Lived with his family in a mountain village in Catalonia during the Spanish civil war of 1936–39. Studied law at the universities of Madrid and Barcelona, 1948–52. Member of Turia literary group, with Ana María Matute and others, Barcelona, 1951. Emigrated to France, 1956. Employed at Gallimard publishers, Paris, 1958–68. Travelled to Cuba, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; visiting professor at universities in the United States. Married Monique Lange, 1978 (died 1996): one stepdaughter. Moved to Marrakech, Morocco, after his wife’s death. His best-known novels are Reivindicacíon del conde don Julián (1970; Count Julian) and Juan sin tierra (1976; Juan the Landless).

Selected Writings Coto vedado (autobiography), 1985; as Forbidden Territory: The Memoirs of Juan Goytisolo 1931–1956, translated by Peter Bush, 1989 En los reinos de taifa (autobiography), 1986; as Realms of Strife: The Memoirs of Juan Goytisolo 1957–1982, translated by Peter Bush, 1990

Further Reading Epps, Bradley S., “Thievish Subjectivity: Self-Writing in Jean Genet and Juan Goytisolo”, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 26/2 (1992): 163–81 Epps, Bradley S., Significant Violence: Oppression and Resistance in the Narratives of Juan Goytisolo, 1970–1990, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996 Labanyi, Jo, “The Construction / Deconstruction of the Self in the Autobiographies of Pablo Neruda and Juan Goytisolo”, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 26/3 (1990): 212–21 Pope, Randolph D., “Theory and Contemporary Autobiographical Writing: The Case of Juan Goytisolo”, Siglo XX / 20th Century, 8/1–2 (1990–91): 87–101 Pope, Randolph D., Understanding Juan Goytisolo, Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1995 Review of Contemporary Fiction, 4/2 (1984) (special issue on Goytisolo, with critical essays, interviews, and excerpts of his work) Riera, Miguel, “Regreso al origen: entrevista”, Químera, 73 (1988): 36–40 Six, Abigail Lee, Juan Goytisolo: The Case for Chaos, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1990 Ugarte, Michael, Trilogy of Treason: An Intertextual Study of Juan Goytisolo, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982 White, Edmund, “The Wanderer: Juan Goytisolo’s Border Crossings”, Village Voice Literary Supplement, (June 1991): 18–21

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Gozzi, Carlo

1720–1806

Italian playwright and memoirist Of noble ancestry, Carlo Gozzi as a moralist, playwright, and writer of memoirs seems to have wanted to live his life under the aegis of contradiction and polemics. This “reactionary” count violently opposed the reforms that his theatrical rival Carlo Goldini imposed on the stage and in texts, daring to present to the public a number of Fiabe (fables) that went against the grain of contemporary trends but which registered huge successes at performances (in particular L’amore delle tre melarance, or Love of Three Oranges, which was performed in 1761). In his autobiographical writings, which bore witness to and took position in the political and cultural debates of the day, Gozzi never ceased to affirm the ideals of the Venetian nobility; he wished for a return to the commedia dell’arte as well as to the imaginative and magical in art. In fact, one of the leitmotivs in his writing is the mixing of genres, or at least the mingling of styles. He readily took from the oriental tradition magical or fantastical themes in order to meld them into a style tinging on a realism reminiscent of Italian storytellers. In his view satire and tragedy were not incompatible; fiction and experience could also work well together, which explains why his autobiographical texts are peppered here and there with lies by omission or disguised truths. The mask and the search for truth are constant themes for him. Gozzi deplored the new creative trends, in which he perceived a danger to the established order and the Catholic religion. The fall of the Venetian republic in 1797 seems to have comforted him, because he believed that he was one of the few surviving sages in an age of madmen and fools and considered that one of the principal functions of writing (whether for the theatre or intimate writings) was the teaching of morality and virtue. Gozzi’s principal autobiographical text is emblematically and provocatively titled Memorie inutili della vita di Carlo Gozzi scritte da lui medesimo e pubblicate per umiltà (1797–98; Useless Memoirs of the Life of Carlo Gozzi Written by Himself and Published by Humility), and is written in the Italian tradition of memoir-writing dramatists (Carlo Goldoni and his Mémoires, in French; Vittorio Alfieri and his Vita, etc.). Its origin lies in the polemics that opposed Gozzi and his rival in love, Pier Antonio Gratarol (1730–85), secretary of the Venetian senate. For the eyes of the actress Teodora Ricci, following a staging of the play Droghe d’amore (1777), and especially in order to respond to the accusations of Gratarol (who had to flee Venice) in his autobiographical Narrazione apologetica (1780), Gozzi undertook in 1780 to write a reverse narrative of his own life, in three parts. In order to demonstrate his enemy’s errors, and inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, he retraced the development of his childhood memory up until the circumstances of his adult years, passing through adolescence and youth before making a convincing case for the integrity and goodness of his character. The main protagonists of cultural and intellectual life in Venice are described, and the Useless Memoirs paint a vivid and often satirical portrait of contemporary society at an important time in Venetian history. The memoirs also reveal to the reader the lucid and pessimistic perspective of an aristocratic and erudite artist who is well aware of his own originality and often conservative attitude. Gozzi attempts to analyse with

impartiality the causes of the plight of the nobility of the ancien régime. With his brother, he was among the founders, in 1747, of the Accademia dei Granelleschi, which constituted one of the most conservative institutions of 18th-century Italy and which had as its main goal the defence of the purity of the Tuscan language. But Carlo Gozzi always manifested a desire to address the ideas of others. This autobiography, like the rest of Carlo Gozzi’s work, enjoyed even more success abroad, notably with the German and French Romantics, than in Italy itself. Pérette-Cécile Buffaria translated by Jane Blevins-Le Bigot Biography Born in Venice, then an Italian republic, 13 December 1720. Educated privately. Military service in Dalmatia, 1741–44. Began literary career as a writer of satire and poetry. Co-founder, with his brother, of the Accademia dei Granelleschi, a conservative literary group, 1740s. Attacked the realistic drama of Carlo Goldoni in the satirical poem Tartana, 1757. The first of his fiabe (fantastic romances), Il corvo (The Raven), performed by Antonio Sacchi’s company, 1761. Wrote the popular comedy L’amore delle tre melarance (1761; The Love of Three Oranges). Worked mainly on his memoirs in his later years. Died in Venice, 4 April 1806.

Selected Writings Memorie inutili della vita di Carlo Gozzi, scritte da lui medesimo e pubblicate per umiltà, 3 vols, 1797–98; as Memorie inutili, edited by Giuseppe Prezzolini, 2 vols, 1910; edited by Domenico Bulferetti, 2 vols, 1928; translated by John Addington Symonds as The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi, 2 vols, 1890, and The Memories of Count Carlo Gozzi, 2 vols, 1890; part as Useless Memoirs of Carlo Gozzi, translated by Symonds, revised by Philip Horne, 1962 Opere edite e inedite, 14 vols, 1801–02

Further Reading Battistini, Andrea, Lo specchio di Dedalo: autobiografia e biografia, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990 Bonora, Ettore, Letterati, memorialisti e viaggiatori del Settecento, Milan: Ricciardi, 1951 Fido, Franco, Le muse perdute e ritrovate: il divenire dei generi letterari fra Sette e Ottocento, Florence: Vallecchi, 1989 Lindon, John (editor), “Italian Autobiography from Vico to Alfieri (and Beyond)”, supplement of The Italianist, 17 (1997) Mathieu-Castellani, Gisèle, La Scène judiciaire de l’autobiographie, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996 Miraux, Jean-Philippe, L’Autobiographie: écriture de soi et sincérité, Paris: Nathan, 1996

Gramsci, Antonio

1891–1937

Italian cultural critic and letter writer The autobiographical work of Antonio Gramsci is in a sense indirect. It is made up of a long series of letters, essentially divided into two periods: from 1908 to 1926, and the period of his detention, from 1926 until his death in 1937. What is generally known as the autobiographical work of Gramsci is his Lettere dal carcere (1947; Letters from Prison), the content of which varies widely, because he had different correspondents, all of whom played very different roles in his life. Condemned to 20 years of imprisonment by the fascist regime because he was a

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militant member of the Partito Comunista Italiano, Gramsci, who was seriously ill, poured all his energy into his intellectual activity during his detention. His letters are a complete testimony of his life in prison: his lectures, the development of his thought (it was in prison that he produced all of his theoretical work, which was published after his death), and of his ties of love and affection. But they also contain chronicles of prison life, news about his health, and memories of his childhood. These letters are addressed to his friends, his comrades, but also to his family, living in Sardinia; to his wife, living in Russia; and to his sister-in-law Tania, who lived in Italy and gave him assistance till his death. The Lettere dal carcere form an extraordinary document, the only one that gives real insight into Gramsci’s personality, and which provides an indispensable keystone for his intellectual work. Gramsci’s intention during the drafting of these letters was not explicitly autobiographical; his project was rather the creation of a “complete document” that would contain all the facets of his life in prison. Quite the contrary, the autobiographical value of this corpus was claimed by others: the recipients of his letters and his comrades, who quickly put them forward as the testimony of a strong experience of political faith. The person responsible was undoubtedly his sister-in-law Tania, who copied all of his letters for his wife Giulia (who, living in Russia, was not really interested in her husband’s fate) and for his friend Sraffa, an economist who worked in England, and also copied all these letters for Togliatti, a friend and comrade of Gramsci, and with him the co-founder of the Partito Comunista Italiano. In this way, almost all of the letters were saved, and it was easy to emphasize their importance by publishing them. The first edition, censured, was in 1947, ten years after Gramsci’s death, edited by Togliatti and F. Platone. The remaining letters were published progressively: an unabridged edition of 428 letters was published in 1965. Some years later Gramsci’s son, Giuliano, gave other letters to the Partito Comunista Italiano: the most complete edition available to date was published by the newspaper L’Unità in 1988, and contains 476 letters. As far as the letters of his youth are concerned, the best edition was put together by Antonio Santucci: Lettere 1908–1926 (1992). Even if he did not set out to write an autobiography as such, the autobiographical dimension of writing interested Gramsci considerably; increasingly so, as can be seen from his Quaderni del carcere, a work in which he presents, systematically, all of his thought on political, social, and cultural theories. In comparing the first and the second version, it can be seen that Gramsci made a number of additions in which he tried to add to his intellectual writing some personal, subjective elements such as memories and private thoughts. In the same year in which he began to integrate this autobiographical dimension to his professional writing he also wrote the Note autobiografiche [1933; Autobiographical Notes]. In fact, in the Quaderni Gramsci often deals with the topic of autobiography, but already in this fragment he explains how he sees it: he does not believe in autobiography as an “act of pride”, that is to say a text written because the author thinks his life to be interesting, original, special, and so on. For Gramsci, autobiography is a genre in which one can describe by facts everything that can be logically deduced in other ways; its value lies not in the description of a single man’s life, but rather in the fact that it shows life

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for what it is, in action, and not for what it should be according to written laws or dominant moral principles. So, autobiography is for him a sort of essay on moral and political philosophy applied to life. In this sense, and because of the events that lie at their source, the Lettere of Gramsci are unique in the Italian corpus of autobiographical writing. Anna Iuso Biography Born in Ales, Sardinia, Italy, 23 January 1891 (some sources give 22 January). His father, who came from mainland Italy, was a minor civil servant; his mother was Sardinian. Injured his spine at the age of four, which left him physically deformed, and he suffered from ill health throughout his life. Worked for two years after completing his elementary education because of his family’s straitened circumstances. Returned to school in 1905. Left home to study languages at a secondary school in Cagliari, 1908. Won a scholarship to study linguistics and philosophy at the University of Turin, 1911. Joined the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), c.1913. Abandoned his studies to become a journalist, 1915; contributed articles to the Socialist press throughout the war years. Founder, editor, or contributor to several journals and newspapers, including Il Grido del Popolo from 1915, Avanti!, 1916–20, La Città Futura, 1917, Il Club di Vita Morale, 1917, L’Ordine Nuovo, 1919–24, and L’Unità, 1922. Broke away from the Socialist party and became a founder-member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), 1921. Suffered from poor health, depression, and a nervous breakdown, 1921–22. Married Julka (Giulia) Schucht, 1922: two sons. Visited the Soviet Union as Italian delegate at the Third International in Moscow, 1922–23. Worked for Comintern in Moscow and Vienna, 1922–24. Served as head, 1924, then general secretary, 1924–26, of the PCI. Elected parliamentary deputy for the Veneto constituency, 1924. Arrested because of his outspoken opposition to the fascist regime and sentenced to more than 20 years’ imprisonment, 1926. Began prison sentence near Bari, southern Italy. Suffered from arteriosclerosis, Pott’s disease, and pulmonary tuberculosis. Transferred from prison to a private clinic in Formia, 1933, and to Quisisana Clinic, Rome, 1935. Wrote observations, essays, and studies while in prison, later collected as Quaderni del carcere (1948–51; Prison Notebooks). Died in Rome, 27 April 1937.

Selected Writings Note autobiografiche, 1933 Lettere dal carcere, edited by P. Togliatti and F. Platone, 1947, revised by Sergio Caprioglio and Elsa Fubini, 1965; as Letters from Prison, edited by Frank Rosengarten, translated by Ray Rosenthal, 2 vols, 1994; selections as Letters from Prison, edited and translated by Lynne Lawner, 1973, and Gramsci’s Prison Letters, translated by Hamish Henderson, 1988 Quaderni del carcere, 6 vols, 1948–51; edited by Valentino Gerratana, 4 vols, 1975; as Prison Notebooks, edited by Joseph A. Buttigieg, translated by Buttigieg and Antonio Callari, 1992–; selections as: The Open Marxism of Antonio Gramsci, translated by Carl Marzani, 1957; The Modern Prince and Other Writings, translated by Louis Marks, 1957; Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, 1971; and Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Derek Boothman, 1995 Nuove lettere di Antonio Gramsci con altre lettere di Piero Sraffa, edited by Antonio A. Santucci, 1986 Lettere, 1908–1926, edited by Antonio A. Santucci, 1992 Vita attraverso le lettere 1908–1937, edited by Giuseppe Fiori, 1994 Lettere, 1926–1935, edited by Aldo Natoli and Chiara Daniele, 1997 Further Reading Bedani, Gino, “The Long-Term Strategy in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks”, Quinquereme, 2 (1979): 204–22 Davidson, Alastair, Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography, London: Merlin, and Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1977 Dombroski, Robert S., Antonio Gramsci, Boston: Twayne, 1989

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Fiori, Giuseppe, Vita di Antonio Gramsci, Bari: Laterza, 1966; as Antonio Gramsci: Life of a Revolutionary, translated by Tom Nairn, London: NLB, 1970; New York: Dutton, 1971 Garin, Eugerio, Con Gramsci, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1997 Gerratana, Valentino, Gramsci: problemi di metodo, Rome: Riuniti, 1997 Holub, Renate, Antonio Gramsci: Beyond Marxism and Postmodernism, London and New York: Routledge, 1992 Moss, Howard K., “Gramsci and the Idea of Human Nature”, Italian Quarterly, 31/119–20 (1990): 7–19 Nicholson, Jenifer, “Biography and Language: A Neglected Aspect of the Life and Work of Antonio Gramsci”, Auto/Biography, 8/1–2 (2000): 63–70 Nordquist, Joan, Antonio Gramsci (bibliography), Santa Cruz, California: Reference and Research Services, 1987 Ransome, Paul, Antonio Gramsci: A New Introduction, Hemel Hempstead and New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992

Graves, Robert

1895–1985

English poet, novelist, prose writer, and autobiographer English autobiographer Robert Graves was already an established poet and novelist when his autobiography Goodbye to All That was published in November 1929. Although he was only 33 years old when he wrote his book, the autobiography was designed to be a farewell to the English life and traditions against which Graves had been in revolt since his school days at Charterhouse. The autobiography is widely regarded as one of the finest examples of its kind for substantial reasons. The most obvious explanation for its popularity is its powerful description of trench warfare during World War I. Graves was a captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers and saw action in several important battles from Mons to the Battle of the Somme. His morbid sense of the grotesque and his cynicism about the conduct of the war by those in power make Goodbye to All That gripping reading. The book, however, is far more than a graphic depiction of life at the front, for it also examines the social and cultural conditions in Victorian and Edwardian England that led Graves to reject almost all the values the nation stood for in the late 1920s. In this self-study, Graves attacked the formalized structure of Victorian upper-middle-class expectations, familial responsibility, scholastic regimentation, social conformity, and class distinction; all of which, according to Graves, conspired together to deny his natural inclinations and to ill prepare him for the slaughter on the Western front. Nearly half the autobiography concerns the war and the way in which the sickly uprightness of the progressive-minded Victorians was exploded by the stark realities and hopeless disillusionment that Graves encountered on the battlefields of France. Graves records his condition after the war as desperate: he has married a woman (Nancy Nicholson) to whom he is not temperamentally suited; he is suffering from neurasthenia; his physical health is precarious at best, and he has no faith in the assurances and values the Establishment has promised him. The last quarter of the autobiography is the story of Graves’s mental struggle to survive in a self-satisfied England where his literary accomplishments are largely ignored. Finally, however, the book is a song of deliverance to his liberator, the American poet Laura Riding. For at the last moment, when all looks lost, her appearance renews Graves’s faith in art and in life. She is the

woman who enables Graves to turn his back on his country and its foibles in order to perceive through the strength of Riding’s personality the opportunity to build a new artistic self in the warmth of Spain, on the island of Majorca. The genesis of Goodbye to All That was Laura Riding’s suicide attempt on 27 April 1929. On that evening, Laura Riding threw herself out of a fourth-storey window in London because the man she loved, an Irish poet and lover of Graves’s wife, had rejected her proposal of love. Graves, desperately in love with Laura, jumped from a lower flight of stairs and was unhurt. Laura, however, was badly injured, and while she was recovering from her injuries, Graves began work on the autobiography, which he hoped would earn him enough money to take Laura out of England in case she would be convicted of attempted suicide. In just over two months of concentrated effort, Graves completed the book. Despite objections from Edward Marsh and Siegfried Sassoon, the book was published, and to sensational reviews: it sold 20,000 copies in just over five days. The important factor to Graves was that the royalties proved very substantial, and he was able to set up life in Majorca with Laura Riding without financial concerns. In 1957, Doubleday Books offered Graves an opportunity to revise Goodbye to All That. Re-reading the book after 25 years, Graves was bothered by the grammatical errors his hastiness in preparation had caused, and he regretted his omission of any mention of his Celtic heritage. So, he added more of his family history and smoothed out some of the ragged edges of his prose style. Most importantly, however, he cut out any reference to Laura Riding, who had betrayed his trust in April 1939 by leaving him for the American magazine reviewer and farmer Schuyler Jackson. Graves suggested in a three-page epilogue to the 1957 edition that nothing of note had happened to him since he finished the first volume, and simply concludes by giving a broad outline of his family life in Majorca. There is no doubt that the 1929 volume, despite its niggling errors, is a richer and more spontaneous product than the sanitized 1957 version. Patrick J.M. Quinn Biography Born in Wimbledon, London, 24 July 1895. His father, a school inspector, poet, and folk-song collector, was of Irish descent; his mother was German. Educated at King’s College School and Rokeby School, Wimbledon; Copthorne School, Sussex; Charterhouse School, Godalming, Surrey, 1907–14. Served in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, 1914–19, seeing action on the Western front: captain. Married Anne Mary “Nancy” Nicholson, sister of the artist Ben Nicholson, 1918 (separated 1929, divorced 1949): two daughters and two sons. Lived in Oxford, 1919–26. Studied English at St John’s College, Oxford, from 1919 (left before graduating due to ill health, but awarded a B.Litt for a critical essay in 1925); editor of The Owl from 1919, Winter Owl, 1923. Professor of English, Royal Egyptian University, Cairo, 1926. With the American poet Laura Riding established the Seizin Press, 1928, and Epilogue magazine, 1935. Published his autobiography, Goodbye to All That, recounting his war experiences, 1929. Became well known after the publication of the historical novels I Claudius and Claudius the God (1934). Lived with Riding in Deyá, Majorca, 1929–36, London, 1936–38, and Rennes, France, 1938–39. Moved to the United States, 1939, but returned to England after Riding left him. Lived with Beryl Pritchard from 1939, and married her in 1950: three sons and one daughter. Lived in England, at Galmpton, Devon, 1939–46, then settled permanently in Deyá. Wrote a study of mythology, The White Goddess (1948), which prompted him to start work on Greek Myths (1955) and Hebrew Myths (1963). Clark

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lecturer, Trinity College, Cambridge, 1954–55. Professor of poetry, Oxford University, succeeding W.H. Auden, 1961–66. Arthur Dehon Little memorial lecturer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States, 1963. Died in Deyá, Majorca, 7 December 1985.

Selected Writings Lawrence and the Arabs (biographical study), 1927; as Lawrence and the Arabian Adventure, 1928 Goodbye to All That: An Autobiography, 1929, revised 1957 and 1960 Majorca Observed, 1965 In Broken Images: Selected Letters of Robert Graves, 1914–1946, edited by Paul O’Prey, 1982 Selected Letters, edited by Paul O’Prey, 2 vols, 1982–84 Between Moon and Moon: Selected Letters of Robert Graves, 1946–1972, edited by Paul O’Prey, 1984 Conversations with Graves, edited by Frank Kersnowski, 1989 Dear Robert, Dear Spike: The Graves–Milligan Correspondence, edited by Pauline Scudamore, 1991 (with Raphael Patai) Robert Graves and the Hebrew Myths: A Collaboration (correspondence), 1992 (with Kenyon Barrett) Letters to Ken (1917–1961), edited by Harvey Sarner, 1997 Also translated Winter in Majorca by George Sand (1956) and The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius (1957)

Further Reading Canary, Robert H., Robert Graves, Boston: Twayne, 1980 Cohen, J.M., Robert Graves, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1949 Day, Douglas, Swifter Than Reason: The Poetry and Criticism of Robert Graves, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963 Graves, Richard Perceval, Robert Graves: The Assault Heroic 1895–1926, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986 Graves, Richard Perceval, Robert Graves: The Years with Laura, 1926–40, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, and New York: Viking Press, 1990 Graves, Richard Perceval, Robert Graves and the White Goddess, 1945–85, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995 Kirkham, Michael, The Poetry of Robert Graves, London: Athlone, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1969 Mehoke, James S., Robert Graves: Peace Weaver, The Hague: Mouton, 1975 Quinn, Patrick J., The Great War and the Missing Muse: The Early Writings of Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, London: Associated University Presses, 1994 Seymour, Miranda, Robert Graves: Life on the Edge, London: Doubleday, and New York: Holt, 1995 Seymour-Smith, Martin, Robert Graves: His Life and Works, London: Hutchinson, and New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982

Greece, Classical see Classical Greece and Rome Greece, Modern The practice of life writing in modern Greece developed under the impact of forceful historical experiences. These included the war for national independence in the early 19th century, the political turmoil of the post-independence era, the territorial wars in the Balkans and Asia Minor during the first decades of the 20th century, multiple regional and transatlantic migrations, political repression and persecution, exile and civil war (1945–

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49). Most published autobiographies are in Greek, and very few have been translated into other languages. During the late 18th and the 19th centuries life writing in Greece was motivated by the need to define modern Greek identity and its essential characteristics. Reminiscent of the ancient tradition of Plutarch, modern biographers composed collections of biographies of important men. Biographers such as A. Goudas in his Bioi paralleloi ton epi tes anagenniseos tes Ellados diaprepsanton andron [1869–76; Parallel Lives of Prominent Men during the Renaissance of Greece] sought to propagate the ideals of modern Greek patriotism. The intellectual climate of 19th-century Greece – in the period both before and after the war of independence (1821–29) – was marked decisively by the insights of Greek intellectuals who were committed to the political and cultural principles of the European Enlightenment. Contemporary scholars have reconstructed intellectual biographies that offer insight into the Greek Enlightenment movement (see Pascalis Kitromilidis, The Enlightenment as Social Criticism, 1992). One of the most influential advocates of the Enlightenment was Adamandios Korais, a Greek scholar, who was born in Smyrna (in what is now Turkey) and lived most of his life in Paris. Korais played a pivotal role in the articulation of the ideological, cultural, and political premises of modern Hellenism. His autobiography was published posthumously in Paris (1833). Another great contribution to the tradition of life writing in modern Greece was Korais’s letters, which were also published after his death and offer a considerable vision of the intellectual climate of this era (see Adamantiou Korai ton meta thanaton eurethenton, vols 2–4 [1833; Works of Adamantios Korais, Discovered after His Death]). Andreas Laskaratos (1811–1901), a Greek from the Ionian Islands, wrote his autobiography in Italian (1863–98). Before their annexation to the Greek state (1864), the Ionian Islands had been at varying times under the control or protection of France, Russia, the Ottoman empire, and Great Britain. Laskaratos’s Autobiografia [1983; Autobiography] constitutes a keen commentary on issues concerning ethics, morality, religion, and politics, as they emerged in the context of competing colonial forces and national movements. Other examples of life writing from this period are H Stratiotike zoe en Elladi [1870– 01; Military Life in Greece], published anonymously, and the fictional biography Loukes Laras [1835 and 1908; Loukes Laras] by Dimitris Bikelas. The memoirs and testimonies written by fighters in the Greek war of independence from the Ottoman empire constitute probably the most important category of life writing from 19thcentury Greece. Often disappointed with post-independence politics and governments, former fighters published apologetic or polemical testimonies through which they sought legitimization of contemporary claims to power. These testimonies may be divided into two categories: memoirs written by educated authors – these include, for example, Ch. Perraivos’s Apomnhmoneymata stratiotika [1836; Military Memoirs] and N. Dragoumes’s Istorikai anamneseis [1874; Historical Memories]; and memoirs written by barely literate fighters, often with the help of special editors. The most representative examples from this category are by Panage Skouze, Enthymemata or Chroniko tes sklavomenis Athinas [1841; Memoirs or the Chronicle of Enslaved Athens], and by Makrygiannis, Apomnemoneuta [1907; Memoirs]. The memoirs of General

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Makrygiannis provide the most representative depiction of the world of independence fighters and their era. Makrygiannis started writing his memoirs in 1829, immediately after the end of the war. The author was practically illiterate but undertook writing lessons in order to pursue his desire to share his experiences through writing. His memoirs are considered the most original expression of popular national consciousness and revolutionary spirit from 19th-century Greece. Life writing in the 20th century was influenced by a different set of events. Biographical discourse was now motivated by the urge to express the multiple ways in which particular social groups experienced modernity. Exile, migration, and political struggle are the recurrent themes of life writing in 20th-century Greece. The violent expulsion of almost 1,300,000 Greeks from Asia Minor during the first decades of the 20th century was represented in semi-auto/biographical fictional accounts such as Dido Sotiriou’s Matomena chomata [1983; Farewell Anatolia]. Life writing in this period was also concerned with the experience of transatlantic migration, a process that marked Greek culture throughout the 20th century. The Greek American experience in particular was described in numerous auto/ biographies and testimonies written in English as well as in Greek. In his Buried Unsung: Louis Tikkas and the Ludlow Massacre (1991) Zeese Papanikolas described the participation of Greek migrants in the early 20th-century miners’ strikes in the United States. Other migrant auto/biographical accounts include Demetra Vaka’s A Child of the Orient (1914), Harry Mark Petrakis’s Tales of the Heart: Dreams and Memories of a Lifetime (1999), and Karolos Manos’s H zoe enos metanaste [1964; An Immigrant’s Life]. Greek literature after World War II often adopted semiautobiographical strategies of narration. Fictional autobiographies and biographies of this period include Nikos Kazantzakis’s Bios kai politeia tou Alexe Zorba (1946; Zorba the Greek) and Anafora sto Greco (1961; Report to Greco). Auto/biographical writing of this period mostly concerned the historic experiences of resistance (1940–44) and the subsequent Greek civil war (1944–49). This body of literature also includes memoirs and testimonies that voice the experiences of political persecution, imprisonment, dissidence, exile, and displacement that marked the lives of the defeated after the end of the civil war. Fani Manolikidou-Beta’s book, entitled Tha se leme Ismene [1997; We Will Call You Ismene], describes the protagonist’s life from the period of the resistance against the German occupation of Greece to the period of exile after the civil war. Those autobiographies and testimonies produced in the late 1980s and 1990s often referred also to the period of the military dictatorship (1967–74), for example, Chronis Misios, … kala, esi skotothekes noris [1985; … Good, You Died Early On]. Early testimonies seek to document violations of human rights, torture, and other forms of political oppression and persecution. More recent autobiographies describe in depth the world of political dissidence and often manage to represent subjective aspects of individual and collective life as a set of practices and rituals of resistance (see Pagona Stefanou, Ton afanon [1997; For the Infamous], and Takis Benas, Tou emfyliou [1996; For the Civil War]). Other writers chose to present collective experiences of imprisonment, for example Stamatis Skourtis in Autoi pou ntropiasan to thanato [1996; The Ones Who Intimidated Death], or published collections of

testimonies such as that edited by Bardis Bardinogiannis and Panaiotis Aronis, Oi misoi sta sidera [1996; Half of the People Are in Prison]. A collection of translated testimonies was published in English in 1986 (Eleni Fourtouni, Greek Women in Resistance: Journals – Oral Histories). More recently, the contemporary cultural and intellectual history of Greece has been documented in numerous auto/biographies of prominent Greek intellectuals and artists. Kaiti Gkrey’s Ayte einai he zoe mou [1983; This is My Life] provides an insight into the worlds of postwar Greek music, rembetiko, and popular theatre. In a similar way the publication of the private and public correspondence of poets such as George Seferis illuminates particular aspects of modern Greek intellectual life (see G. Theotokas–G.Seferis: Allelografia, 1930–1966 [1975; Theotokas-Seferis, Correspondence] edited by G.P. Savides, and Ioanna Tsatsos’s My Brother George Seferis (1982)). In addition, scholars such as Edmund Keely in his Inventing Paradise: The Greek Journey (1937–1947) (1999) have provided penetrating biographical accounts of the ways in which modern and contemporary Greek history was experienced by prominent writers, who included Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell. Through autobiography and literary criticism, Keely offers a cultural history of literary tourism in Greece. Finally, life writing in modern Greece also includes political auto/biographies, a notable example being Nikos Papandreou’s book Father Dancing: An Invented Memoir (1996). Published both in Greek and in English, this describes the author’s personal memories of the life and political career of the late Greek prime minister Andreas Papandreou. Ioanna Laliotou See also Classical Greece and Rome

Further Reading Beaton, Roderick, An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999 Hart, Janet, New Voices in the Nation: Women and the Greek Resistance 1941–64, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996 Moullas, Panagiotes, O logos tes apousias: dokimio gia ten epistolografhia me saranta anekdota grammata tou Fotou Polite (1908–1910) [The Discourse of Absence: An Essay on Letter Writing and 40 Unpublished Letters by Fotos Polites (1908–1910)], Athens: Morphotiko Hidryma Ethnikes Trapezes, 1992 Politis, Linos, A History of Modern Greek Literature, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973

Green, Julien

1900–1998

American / French diarist and autobiographer During the course of his long life, Green wrote autobiographies, biographies, memoirs, letters, essays, and a journal. Even his fiction and dramatic writings were autobiographical explorations of his self in all of its manifestations. In addition to the expected present and past selves evident throughout, and often symbolized by the mirror image, other alternate selves proliferate through time, encompassing both what John M. Dunaway has called “the mystic and the sensualist” and the bilingual, bicultural split in Green’s identity.

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Although he was brought up in France and later elected to the French Academy, his parents had come from the southern United States: hence his dual identity as an American citizen who wrote in French. He spent only two extended stays in the United States, the second during World War II, when he began an autobiography, which was to cover his first 26 years. After writing one chapter in French, later published as “Quand nous habitions tous ensemble” [When We All Lived Together], he switched to English, eventually producing Memories of Happy Days (1942). This English autobiography is in part an apology for France, which was occupied by the Nazis at the time of writing, but also an attempt to explain his bicultural identity to an anglophone audience. Much later he again embarked on an autobiography covering the same period, this time in French. The result was four volumes: Partir avant le jour (1963; To Leave Before Dawn), Mille Chemins ouverts (1964, later revised; The War at Sixteen), Terre lointaine (1966, later revised; Love in America), and Jeunesse (1974; Restless Youth). These are more detailed, more intimate, and more complex than the English autobiography, dealing frankly with Green’s inner conflict between his spirituality as a devout Catholic and his homosexual longing for love from other men. Green’s desire to trace God’s presence throughout his life becomes more evident here and provides the autobiography with a unifying thread. Green’s other memoirs and autobiographical essays often repeat the same episodes from a particular perspective. His essay on his sister Anne, for example, is not so much about her but about her presence in his life. Ce qu’il faut d’amour à l’homme [1978; The Love Man Needs] tells the story of his conversion to Catholicism and his subsequent relationship to the church. Other autobiographical essays, “Années de désir” [1968; Years of Desire] and “Fin de jeunesse” [1968; The End of Youth], began as prefaces to new editions of novels, thereby highlighting the close relationship between autobiography and fiction in Green’s work. He sees his novels as portrayals of the hidden, perhaps unconscious elements of his personality: “My novels express only what I otherwise keep secret (that is why my true diary is hidden in what I invent)” (quoted by Piriou). On the other hand, he also thinks about his life in fictional terms: “we are characters in a novel who don’t understand what the author wants” (Journal, 15 August 1949). The subjects of Green’s biographies, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1928) and St Francis (1983), are historical figures with whom Green himself closely identified, and his examination of their lives, although factual, reveals his own obsessions. Green’s journal, which he kept from the age of 19, charts his spiritual progress. Since he wrote with an audience in mind, however, it risks compromising his oft-stated goal of sincerity and search for the truth about himself – a paradox he himself wrestled with. He had been writing the journal only for himself for about ten years when his editor approached him about publication. In 1939, shortly after the first journal came out, he decided to stop keeping it, partly out of self-consciousness: “I was someone who spoke out loud when alone; it isn’t possible for me to continue when I know someone is listening” (Journal, 5 February 1939). He did, however, resume writing it in July 1940 and continued until his death. Green also availed himself of a third autobiographical possibility, which lies between writing solely for himself and writing for an anonymous audience: the dialogical forms of letters and

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interviews. Here the relationship between Green and his selves is moderated by an interlocutor whose perceptive questions and responses may uncover aspects of Green that he himself overlooked. These writings include letters between Green and his friend Jacques Maritain, first published in 1979 after Maritain’s death, and numerous interviews that Green candidly submitted to over the course of his life. Kristine J. Anderson Biography Julien Hartridge Green. Born in Paris, 6 September 1900. His American parents had moved to France from the southern United States in 1883, after the family business failed. Grew up in Paris. Mother died, 1914. Converted to Catholicism, 1916. Served as an ambulance driver with the American Field Service, then the American Red Cross, in Italy, 1917–18, then joined the French army, training at the Ecole d’Artillérie at Fontainebleau. Considered entering the Benedictine monastery of Quarr, Isle of Wight, England, but changed his mind, 1919. Studied at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1919–22. Returned to France, 1922. Studied art briefly at La Grande Chaumière, Paris. Started to write in earnest, 1923. Wrote the novels Adrienne Mesurat (1927; The Closed Garden) and Léviathan (1929; The Dark Journey). Kept a diary regularly from 1928. Visited The Netherlands and Germany, 1929. Broke with Catholicism because of his homosexuality and developed an interest in Buddhism. Lived in Paris during the 1930s, travelling frequently in Europe. Returned to Christianity, 1939. Moved to Pau, southern France, after the Germans occupied Paris, May 1940, then returned to the United States. Lectured at Goucher College, Baltimore, 1941. Called up for military service briefly, 1942; taught at Camp Richie. Wrote Memories of Happy Days, 1940–42. Worked in the office of war information, 1943. Returned to Paris and to the Catholic church, 1945. Published his masterpiece, Moïra, 1950, and Chaque Homme dans sa nuit (Each in His Darkness), 1960. Only American to be elected a member of the Académie Française, 1971. Published the bestselling novel Les Pays lontains (The Distant Lands), 1987. Died in Paris, 13 August 1998.

Selected Writings Un Puritain Homme de lettres: Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1928. Journal: 1. Les Années faciles: journal 1928–1934, 1938; revised as Journal, 1926–1934: les années faciles, 1970 2. Derniers Beaux Jours 1935–1939, 1939; vols 1 and 2 as Personal Record 1928–1939, translated by Jocelyn Godefroi, 1939 3. Devant la porte sombre 1940–1943, 1946 4. L’Oeil de l’ouragan 1943–1945, 1949 5. Le Revenant 1946–1950, 1951 6. Le Miroir intérieur 1950–1954, 1955 7. Le Bel Aujourd’hui 1955–1958, 1958; vols 1–7 as Journal 1928–1958, 1961; abridged translation as Diary 1928–1957, edited by Kurt Wolff, translated by Anne Green, 1964 8. Vers l’Invisible 1958–1967, 1967; vols 1–8 as Journal 1928–1966, 2 vols, 1969 9. Ce qui reste de jour 1966–1972, 1972 10. Le Bouteille à la mer 1972–1976, 1976 11. La Terre est si belle 1976–1978, 1982 12. La Lumière du monde 1978–1981, 1983 13. L’Arc-en-ciel 1981–1984, 1988 14. L’Expatrié 1984–1990, 1990 15. L’Avenir n’est à personne 1990–1992, 1993 16. Pourquoi Suis-Je Moi? 1993–1996, 1996 Memories of Happy Days, 1942 Jeunes années (autobiography), 2 vols, 1984; individual parts as: 1. Partir avant le jour, 1963; as To Leave Before Dawn, translated by Anne Green, 1967; as The Green Paradise 1900–1916, translated by Anne Green and Julian Green, 1993 2. Mille chemins ouverts, 1964; as The War at Sixteen 1916–1919, translated by Euan Cameron, 1993 3. Terre lointaine, 1966; as Love in America 1919[–1922, translated by Euan Cameron, 1994

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4. Jeunesse, 1974; as Restless Youth 1922–1929, translated by Euan Cameron, 1996 5. Fin de jeunesse, in Jeunes années,1984 Ce qu’il faut d’amour à l’homme (autobiographical essay), 1978 (with Jacques Maritain) Une grande amitié: correspondance 1926–1972, edited by Henry Bars and Eric Jourdan, 1980; as The Story of Two Souls: The Correspondence of Jacques Maritain and Julien Green, edited and translated by Bernard Doering, 1988 Julien Green en liberté (interviews), with Marcel Jullian, 1980 Frère François, 1983; as God’s Fool: The Life and Times of Francis of Assisi, translated by Peter Heinegg, 1985 Journal du voyageur (selections), 1990 On est si sérieux quand on a dix-neuf ans 1919–1924 (diaries), 1996

Further Reading Anderson, Kristine Jo, “Bilingualism in the Self-Imaging of Julien Green, Anaïs Nin and Karen Blixen” (dissertation), Binghamton, New York: State University of New York, 1983 Dunaway, John M., The Metamorphoses of the Self: The Mystic, the Sensualist and the Artist in the Works of Julien Green, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1978 O’Dwyer, Michael, Julien Green: A Critical Study, Dublin and Portland, Oregon: Four Courts Press, 1997 Piriou, Jean-Pierre J., “Introduction” in Memories of Evil Days by Green, edited by Piriou, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976 Rose, Marilyn Gaddis, Julian Green, Gallic-American Novelist, Bern: Herbert Lang, 1971

Grillparzer, Franz

1791–1872

Austrian playwright, fiction writer, autobiographer, and diarist Among Grillparzer’s life writings, we find three early attempts at autobiography, Bruchstücke einer Selbstbiographie [written 1814; Fragments of an Autobiography], Anfänge einer Selbstbiographie [written 1822; Beginnings of an Autobiography], and Anfang einer Selbstbiographie [written c. 1834; Beginning of an Autobiography], all of which first appeared in print posthumously in the 42-volume historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe [1909–48; Historical-Critical Complete Works]. In 1853, at the behest of the Viennese Academy of Sciences, Grillparzer wrote the Selbstbiographie [1872; Autobiography]. He kept diaries from 1808 until the end of his life, some of which contain remarkably detailed reports of his travels throughout Europe. He also wrote memoirs: Erinnerungen an Marie Piquot [1872; Memories of Marie Piquot], Meine Erinnerungen an Beethoven [1872; My Memories of Beethoven], Erinnerungen aus dem Revolutionsjahre 1848 [in Sämtliche Werke 1887; Memories of the Revolution Year 1848], and Meine Erinnerungen an Feuchtersleben [1853; My Memories of Feuchtersleben]. The most substantial work of these, the Selbstbiographie, which covers Grillparzer’s life from early childhood until 1853, reads much like a typical, indeed stereotypical, Künstlerroman (novel of an artist): the artistic mother, the cold bourgeois father, and the writer struggling to find success and acceptance in and from an indifferent world. Grillparzer writes little of his mother in the Selbstbiographie, giving a few details of her artistic temperament as housewife: “My mother was a kindhearted woman, took pains with her children, sought to bring about order, which she, to tell the truth, did not at all keep her-

self, and lived and breathed music, which she passionately loved and studied”. Grillparzer reports that he had learned to read at a very early age – so early he could not recall exactly when – and enjoyed poetry both as reader and writer; his attorney father, however, disapproved. Grillparzer writes: My own literary productions found in my father a great obstacle. As often as I showed him a poem of my composition … he initially could not hide a certain joy, which quickly changed to criticism that became more and more vehement and whose conclusion was always the fixed phrase “I would die like a dog on a dung heap.” Grillparzer went on to study law and earned excellent appraisals from his professors but got no praise from his father, who died before he finished his studies. Having taken a job as a law tutor to a young count, whose uncle and guardian also disapproved of literary activity, Grillparzer wrote: “And so I had to write on the top of all my poetic or dramatic rough drafts … translated from the English or French, so that they could pass as language exercises”. The Selbstbiographie continues with Grillparzer’s search for acceptance, now mainly from a public that often praises his plays, but like his father also sometimes turns on him, which Grillparzer is unable to forgive. He writes that when he chose the second night’s box office receipts instead of a set fee for Das goldene Vlies (produced 1821; The Golden Fleece), the take was so small that it amounted to less than half of the usual set fee. He explains: “I mention this only to call to the attention of the Viennese public … that they left me in the lurch every time I made a claim on their affection that went beyond empty applause”. The last line of the Selbstbiographie is thus an unkind comment on the public, or rather lack of one, in Germany. There is, however, one problem with which the reader of the Selbstbiographie must deal: its reliability. Grillparzer narrates his finding of his mother’s corpse thus: I hurried into my mother’s room and found her, half dressed, standing against the wall at the head of her bed. I implored her not to expose herself to the cold and to lie down, but received no answer. I took hold of her to assist her in her weakness if necessary; there, in light of the lamp held by the maid, I see her face fixed and lifeless. I was holding my mother dead in my arms. This is a fiction, for Grillparzer’s mother committed suicide by hanging; the dramatist has here created a moving scene that never happened, in order to protect the memory of his beloved, artistic mother. This requires the reader of the Selbstbiographie, and indeed of all of Grillparzer’s autobiographical writings, to read them all cum grano salis, seeking to discover what parts are in the style of the Künstlerroman and which are simply fantasy. Indeed, much of the Autobiography resembles Grillparzer’s novella Der arme Spielmann (1847; The Poor Musician) about the misunderstood artist – in this case a musician – who suffers for his art in an unappreciative and cruel world. The critical reader must be aware that truth and fiction intertwine in all of Grillparzer’s autobiographical writings. James T. Simmons

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Biography Born in Vienna, Austria, 15 January 1791. His father was a lawyer, his mother a musician. Educated at Anna-Gymnasium, Vienna, 1800–07. Studied law at University of Vienna, 1807–11. Began his diaries, 1808. Wrote his first tragedy, Blanca von Katilien [Blanche of Castile], 1812. Tutored the nephew of Graf von Seilern in law, 1812; volunteer assistant in court library, 1813. Began his career in government service, 1814. First attracted attention with Die Ahnfrau (The Ancestress), 1817, followed by Sappho, produced in 1818. Appointed director of the Hofburgtheater, Vienna, 1818. Travelled to Italy, 1819, and to Germany, 1826. Appointed director of the Burgtheater archives, 1832 (retired in 1856, as Hofrat). Founder-member, Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1847. Chiefly known as a playwright, especially for the plays Das goldene Vlies (produced 1821; The Golden Fleece) and König Ottokars: Glücke und Ende (1825; King Ottokar: His Rise and Fall), but also wrote poetry and one notable prose novel, Der arme Spielmann (1847; The Poor Musician). Created a member of the Herrenhaus (upper house of the Austrian parliament), 1861. Died in Vienna, 21 January 1872.

Selected Writings Meine Erinnerungen an Feuchtersleben, 1853 Erinnerungen an Marie Piquot, 1872 Meine Erinnerungen an Beethoven, 1872 Selbstbiographie, 1872 Erinnerungen aus dem Revolutionsjahre 1848, in Sämtliche Werke, 1887 Sämtliche Werke: Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe, edited by August Sauer and Reinhold Backmann, 42 vols, 1909–48 Sämtliche Werke: ausgewählte Briefe, Gespräche, Berichte, edited by Peter Frank and Karl Pörnbacher, 4 vols, 1960–65 Tagebücher und Reiseberichte, edited by Klaus Geissler, 1980

Further Reading Amann, Klaus and Karl Wagner (editors), Autobiographien in der österreichischen Literatur: von Franz Grillparzer bis Thomas Bernhard, Innsbruck: Studien, 1998 Dusini, Arno, Die Ordnung des Lebens: zu Franz Grillparzers Selbstbiographie, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1991 Frederiksen, Elke, Grillparzers Tagebücher als Suche nach Selbstverständnis, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1977 Thompson, Bruce, Franz Grillparzer, Boston: Twayne, 1981 Yates, Douglas, Franz Grillparzer: A Critical Biography, Oxford: Blackwell, 1946 Yates, W.E., Grillparzer: A Critical Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972

Grove, Frederick Philip

1879–1948

Canadian novelist and autobiographer Frederick Philip Grove misled biographers and literary critics for more than two decades with his autobiography, published in 1946, and its largely fictional account of his life. In Search of Myself was initially considered a primary source, both on the life of Grove and on his writings, many of which explicitly derive from his life experiences. In the prologue to his autobiography – originally published as an essay in 1940 – Grove suggests that the impulse to narrate his life developed after he saw a lengthy bibliography of works by André Gide, whom he had met in Paris in 1904. The full-length autobiography that Grove would publish six years later takes the form of an apologia for his literary underachievement relative to Gide. In Search of Myself describes a cosmopolitan early life in Europe that is disrupted by a decline in Grove’s financial prospects. Despite the considerable promise

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that he claims to have shown as a youthful dilettante, he emigrated to North America where he spent two decades as a travelling farmhand. The final sections of Grove’s autobiography – which he tellingly called Life of a Writer in Canada until shortly before its publication – follow in the tradition of Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush (1852) and John Richardson’s Eight Years in Canada (1847), describing a life of unappreciated and unprofitable literary endeavour in Canada’s pioneer environment. Douglas O. Spettigue’s second monograph on Grove, FPG: The European Years (1973), revealed major factual inaccuracies in Grove’s account of his life and had a dramatic effect on the critical reception of his work. Spettigue’s research, originally begun in an effort to date Grove’s early writings, revealed “Frederick Philip Grove” to be a thinly disguised pseudonym for Felix Paul Greve, and uncovered a European youth, not of opulence and promise, but of poverty, deception, and bad debts that eventually resulted in Grove’s imprisonment for fraud in 1903. Disputing Grove’s claim that he had emigrated in 1892 and had spent twenty years travelling through North America, Spettigue revealed that, following his release from a German prison in 1904, Grove moved to France where he worked furiously as a translator of English to German in a futile attempt to pay his debts, and, in 1909, faked his suicide and fled to America to escape his creditors. Despite Grove’s fictionalization of his early life, the second half of In Search of Myself, describing Canadian society’s indifference to his career as a writer, is considered to offer a relatively faithful account of his later years. Articulating an essential interpretation of Grove’s autobiography after Spettigue’s revelations, Paul Hjartarson (1981) suggested that the European half of the autobiography was fictionalized in order to intensify the contrast between Grove’s European experience and his life in Canada, thereby heightening the sense of inevitability surrounding his failure to succeed as a writer: “Grove uses his own life story and the genre of autobiography to demonstrate that life in Canada is inimical to the arts, and that he did not succeed as a writer in this country because no one could possibly do so”. While In Search of Myself is Grove’s only work that purports to be an autobiography per se, several of his other works have a significant autobiographical emphasis. A Search for America (1927) describes both the itinerant life that Grove lived in the years following his emigration from Europe and the mixture of idealism and hardship characteristic of the immigration experience and of Grove’s struggle to succeed as a writer. Over Prairie Trails (1922), which combines elements of autobiography and travel writing, derived largely from Grove’s experiences as a schoolteacher and his weekly commute by buggy and sled over 35 miles of Manitoba prairie. Two Generations (1939) grew out of Grove’s farming and dairying experiences. Two of his most aesthetically successful works of fiction, Settlers of the Marsh (1925) and Master of the Mill (1944), while less autobiographical in their approach, depict the sense of isolation and inevitability that Grove relates in In Search of Myself. The autobiographical elements of Grove’s fictions have made them difficult to classify generically, and the realization that Grove’s life writings are deliberately deceptive has compounded this problem. In the immediate aftermath of Spettigue’s revelations, Grove criticism was directed toward biographical approaches as critics sought to re-evaluate his works in the light

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of the new information about his past. More recently, much of the now-diminishing discussion of Grove’s work has centred on the difficulty of approaching a body of writings that displays many of the formal properties of autobiography combined with distinctly fictional elements, and there has been some attempt to reveal Grove’s motives for deception through a psychoanalytic approach to his works. Colin Hill Biography Born Felix Paul Berthold Friedrich Greve in Radomno, East Prussia (now Radomsko, Poland), 14 February 1879. Educated in Hamburg at St Pauli school, 1886–95, and Gymnasium des Johanneums, 1895–98. Studied at Friedrich-Wilhelms University, Bonn, 1898–1900; Maximilians University, Munich, 1901–02. Worked as a writer and translator in Germany, 1902–03. Imprisoned for fraud, 1903–04. Moved to France, 1904, and continued work as a writer and translator. Married Eisa Ploetz, 1904. Emigrated to the United States after staging a fake suicide aimed at deceiving his creditors, 1909. Farmer in Kentucky, 1910–12, then moved to Canada. Married Catherine Wiens, 1914: one daughter and one son. Taught in Manitoba, in Haskett, 1913, Winkler, 1913–15, Virdin, 1915–16, Gladstone, 1916–17, Ferguson, 1918, Eden, 1919–22, and Rapid City, 1922–24. Studied at University of Manitoba, Winnipeg (BA 1921). Became a Canadian citizen, 1921. First attracted critical attention with Over Prairie Trails (1922). Gave lecture tours of Canada, 1928–29. Editor, Graphic Press, and president, Ariston Press, Ottawa, 1929–31. Associate editor, Canadian Nation, 1929. Dairy farmer near Simcoe, Ontario, from 1931. Fellow, Royal Society of Canada, 1941. Died in Simcoe, 19 August 1948.

Selected Writings Over Prairie Trails, 1922 A Search for America (autobiographical fiction), 1927 In Search of Myself, 1946 The Letters of Frederick Philip Grove, edited by Desmond Pacey, 1976

Further Reading Dudek, Louis, “The Literary Significance of Grove’s Search” in The Grove Symposium, edited by John Nause, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1974 Gammel, Irene, “Victims of Their Writing: Grove’s In Search of Myself and Dreiser’s The Genius”, ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 23/3 (1992): 49–70 Giltrow, Janet, “Grove in Search of an Audience”, Canadian Literature, 90 (1981): 92–107 Heidenreich, Rosmarin, “The Search for FPG”, Canadian Literature, 80 (1979): 63–70 Hjartarson, Paul, “Design and Truth in Grove’s In Search of Myself”, Canadian Literature, 90 (1981): 73–90 Hjartarson, Paul (editor), A Stranger to My Time: Essays by and about Frederick Philip Grove, Edmonton: NeWest, 1986 Pacey, Desmond (editor), Frederick Philip Grove, Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1970 Spettigue, Douglas O., Frederick Philip Grove, Toronto: Copp Clark, 1969 Spettigue, Douglas O., FPG: The European Years, Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1973 Stich, K.P., “Grove’s New World Bluff”, Canadian Literature, 90 (1981): 111–23 Stobie, Margaret R., Frederick Philip Grove, Boston: Twayne, 1973 Sutherland, Ronald, Frederick Philip Grove, Toronto: McClelland, 1969

Guevara, Ernesto [“Che”]

1928–1967

Argentinian revolutionary, political writer, and diarist Known by the Argentinean nickname “Che”, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna wrote on subjects such as economics, politics, history, and guerrilla tactics. It is through his prolific life writing – his daily chronicles and letters – that we get the personal account of what life was like for the Marxist confidante of Cuba’s communist leader Fidel Castro, whose travels and adventures took him far beyond the small island of Cuba. Che’s life writing reveals the range of his interests and influences and the development of his political sensibility. Inspired by thinkers ranging from India’s Jawaharlal Nehru to the fascist leader Mussolini, he produced a vast amount of work from his early twenties until the last days before his capture and execution by the Bolivian army. Two of his most interesting works that portray his dynamic development, and which have been translated into English, are Notas de viaje (1992; The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey around South America) and El diario del Che en Bolivia (1968; The Bolivian Diary). The former is one of his earliest diaries and reveals the unguarded, personal writing of an adventurous young man. A combination of letters and diary entries, it is an account of his adventures on the journey he made from Buenos Aires to Venezuela in 1951 and 1952 when he was 23 years old. It portrays how the young Argentine, living in the time of Juan Perón’s regime, leaves the nest of his aristocratic family and then records impressions of a South America foreign and unfamiliar to him. In it, he describes his first encounters with the peasant classes, his time with miners, and a short stay in a leper colony when he and his travelling partner, Alberto Granado, posed as leprologists. His thoughts and actions are still immature and rough around the edges, but these often light-hearted accounts are mixed with a growing concern for humanity which foreshadows his future dedication to the under-represented. From beginning to end there is a shift in his viewpoint, as he moves from the sheltered life he knew in Argentina into the stark reality of an impoverished Latin America. By the end of the book, we find less of the unpolished Ernesto and more of the philosophic “Che” who will become one of the most notable and mythical figures of later 20th-century history. In contrast, his final work, El diario del Che en Bolivia, reveals the stark difference between the young man out for adventure and the older, more studied revolutionary. These diaries recount the last 11 months of his life in the Bolivian jungle and confirm Che’s mature talent as a record maker and chronicler of daily life. One entry might include a dry description of his men’s activities, details of ammunition and weapon supplies, and concern about the sturdiness of their shelter. In another he conveys his poetic side as he notes the flora and fauna of Bolivia, the course of a river, or writes a line mentioning his daughter’s birthday far away in Cuba. His final work illustrates that, in the course of trying to overthrow a government, he was attentive to the world around him beyond the immediate and the political, and that there was more to him than his involvement in military manoeuvres and power struggles. In the prologue to Notas de viaje, Che’s father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, writes: “It was always through his letters that we realized the true nature of our son’s vocation. They gave us

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an economic, political, and social analysis of all the countries he passed through and also included thoughts which suggested growing leanings toward Communism.” Che left a prolific body of diaries and letters about his thoughts on communism, education, literature, philosophy, and the plight of the lower classes, works that add to the resources about Latin American revolutionary struggles and illustrate how he held tightly to his political views until his death. Influenced by his many years of study of leaders, philosophers, and writers ranging from Marx to Stalin and even the American novelist Jack London, his work combines cultural studies with a sharp political sensibility reminding us of the writing of the prolific Russian leader Leon Trotski or the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci. Che was executed by the CIA-backed Bolivian army in October 1967 at the age of 39, and his chronicles are valued as a significant contribution to a tradition of Marxist and liberationist life writing. Stephenie A. Young

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Further Reading Anderson, Jon Lee, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, New York: Grove Press, 1997 Castañeda, Jorge G., Compañiero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara, translated by Marina Casteñada, New York: Knopf, 1997 Castro, Fidel, Che: A Memoir, edited by David Deutschmann, Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1994 Gadea, Hilda, Ernesto: A Memoir of Che Guevara, translated by Carmen Molina and Walter Bradbury, New York: Doubleday, 1972; London: W.H. Allen, 1973 (account by his first wife) Harris, Richard L., Death of a Revolutionary: Che Guevara’s Last Mission, New York: Norton, 1970 Harris, Richard L., “Reflections on Che Guevara’s Legacy”, Latin American Perspectives, 25/4 (1998): 19–32 Hodges, Donald C. (editor), The Legacy of Che Guevara: A Documentary Study, London: Thames and Hudson, 1977 Lynch, Ernesto Guevara, Mi hijo el Che, Barcelona: Planeta, 1981 Rojo, Ricardo, My Friend Che, translated by Julian Casart, New York: Dial Press, 1968 Sinclair, Andrew, Che Guevara, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1998 Taibo II, Paco Ignacio, Guevara, also Known as Che, translated by Martin Michael Roberts, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997

Biography Ernesto Guevara de la Serna. Born in Rosario, Argentina, 14 June 1928, into an upper-middle-class family. Studied medicine at the university of Buenos Aires (MD 1953). Hitchhiked from Chile to Caracas, Venezuela, 1951–52. Travelled north again after graduating in 1953, reaching Guatemala in 1954. Supported the radical reform programme of Jacobo Arbenz’s government and took refuge in the Argentine embassy when the government was overthrown by American CIA agents, 1954. Moved to Mexico City, 1955. Joined a group of Cuban revolutionaries under Fidel Castro who were attempting to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista; nicknamed “Che”. Landed in Cuba, 1956, and began a guerrilla campaign that lasted for two years. Made a Cuban citizen by Castro, 1959. Undertook diplomatic and commercial missions on behalf of Castro’s government. Headed the Department of Industry within the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, 1959; managed the National Bank, 1959–61; and served as minister of industry, 1961–65. Promoted the industrialization of Cuba, often opposing Soviet advisers. Wrote La guerra de guerrillas (1960; Che Guevara on Guerrilla Warfare), advocating guerrilla tactics rather than political measures to achieve revolutionary aims. Openly criticized the Soviet Union, 1964. Disappeared from public view, 1965. With Castro’s support, secretly took a contingent of Cubans to the Congo to assist in the revolutionary movement against the pro-Western regime, 1965–66. Returned to Havana, 1966. Assembled a force of Cuban and Peruvian revolutionaries to carry out guerrilla warfare in Bolivia, with the aim of spreading insurrection to other countries, late 1966. Defeated by the Bolivian army, wounded, and captured, 8 October 1967. Executed in the village of La Higuera, Bolivia, 9 October 1967.

Selected Writings Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria, 1963; as Episodes of the Revolutionary War, translated by Eduardo Bernat, 1967; as Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War, translated by Victoria Ortiz, 1968; as Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956–58, 1996 Notas de viaje, 1992; as The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey around South America, translated by Ann Wright, 1995 El diario del Che en Bolivia, 1968; as Diario de Bolivia, edited by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, 1997; as The Diary of Che Guevara, edited by Robert Scheer, 1968; as Bolivian Diary of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, translated by Carlos P. Hansen and Andrew Sinclair, 1968; as The Complete Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara and Other Captured Documents, edited by Daniel James, 1968, revised 1970; as The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara, edited by Mary-Alice Walters, 1994

Guo Moruo

1892–1978

Chinese poet, scholar, political activist, and autobiographer Guo Moruo is a phenomenon in modern China. Not only was he a man who wore many hats – poet, critic, essayist, translator, historian, archaeologist, and playwright – but he performed these functions almost equally well. Alongside Guo Moruo’s fame as a writer and scholar is his extraordinary life, which interweaves with China’s tortuous course to modernity. In many ways, Guo’s metamorphosis from child rebel to romantic poet, from atheist to Marxist, from man of letters to army propaganda officer and back, is the intellectual’s life story of his generation. In the preface to his first autobiography, Guo claimed not to produce confessions in the manner of Augustine and Rousseau, nor to describe geniuses following the methods of Goethe and Tolstoi, but to describe how a man had lived in his turbulent times. Yet Guo was fully aware of the unique significance of his autobiographical self because of his prominence in China’s cultural and intellectual life and the public’s interest in the life path of a rare talent. That is why Guo kept up his autobiographical writings in between his hectic creative, scholarly, and revolutionary activities. Chapter by chapter – each became a bestseller upon publication – Guo accumulated nearly a million words in chronicling his life, which is still an unsurpassed quantity in China. It is interesting to note that Guo published his last autobiography in 1947 and never wrote a new chapter afterwards. One can only guess how much Guo’s views on autobiography had been affected by the political climate of the new communist Chinese government in which Guo was given the role of a senior official in charge of cultural affairs. In Guo’s day, modern autobiography in China was not yet a mature genre. Never interested in the theoretical aspects of autobiography, Guo seems instinctively to have clung to the truth-seeking function of autobiography as opposed to fiction. With an unmistakable candidness and honesty, Guo set out to describe himself and the people around him who embodied an uneven mixture of idealism and selfish motives. When memory

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failed, Guo openly expressed this, carefully leaving blank names and details. Yet, by virtue of his extensive association with many influential and powerful people and his own leadership positions in the Northern Expedition’s military campaigns and the Anti-Japanese War, Guo presented an insider’s look at the intricacies and the confusion of China’s revolutions, meanwhile rationalizing his split with the nationalists and his eventual alliance with the communists. But at heart Guo was a poet, and it is his humanistic sensibility towards the sacrifice of human lives and the many brief yet vivid character sketches that will outlast the value of his autobiography as a historical document. In this light, the chapters about Guo’s early life make particularly interesting reading, for here in-depth character portraits and revealing personal moments abound. For the former, Guo’s mother Du Yaozhen (illiterate yet well versed in folk songs, who used a benign tyranny to lead her eighth child towards arts and poetry), Guo’s first teacher Shen Huanzhang (an old-style intellectual who dared to learn and teach “new knowledge”), and Guo’s big brother Guo Kaiwen (a returned student from Japan who financially and spiritually supported the young Guo Moruo’s dream to venture to the outside world) are all characters who will stand the test of time. For the latter, Guo’s daring depiction of his first sexual arousal through gazing at a sister-inlaw’s beautiful hands and the symbolism in the narrative of his arranged marriage with a woman (nicknamed “black cat”) he had never met (on the wedding night, Guo read the Taoist text Zhuangzi to ease anxiety) are indicative of Guo’s lyricism and psychological insight. Guo seems to have reserved his most confessional moment for telling his love story with a Japanese woman (Anna), which started innocently when Guo was a medical student in Japan but was soon complicated by Guo’s revolutionary activities and the enemy status of the two countries during much of the early 20th century. Guo’s final choice was to leave Anna and four children in Japan and return to China by himself to participate in the Anti-Japanese War, letting patriotism override the occasional self-doubt and guilt. A few years later, Guo started a new family with a young Chinese woman and Anna disappears from his autobiography. The unresolved love tragedy between Guo and Anna testifies to the intense conflict between the individual and the nation that bedevilled the intellectuals of Guo’s generation.

Sato (“Anna”), as common-law wife, from 1916. Helped to organize the Xia Society, which alerted China to hostile Japanese political intentions by reporting in Shanghai newspapers, 1919. Began to study foreign literature and to write poetry, contributing to the Chinese journal Xin Shishi [New Current Events]. Founded Creation Society, a Romantic literary movement in China, c.1920. Returned to Japan and encountered Marxism. Graduated in medicine, 1923, but unable to become a physician due to a hearing impediment sustained after contracting typhoid fever. Translated work of the Japanese economist Kawakami Hajime, 1924. Went back to live in China, late 1924. Joined the School of Literature at Guangdong University (later known as Yat-Sen University), 1926. Joined North Expedition, a revolutionary military campaign. Wrote article denouncing leader of campaign after massacre of revolutionaries in 1927. Forced to flee to Hong Kong, returning to Shanghai later in 1927. Became ill with typhus. Published collections of poems Huifu [Recovery] and Ping [The Vase], 1927. Went into exile in Japan, 1928. Studied Chinese history and published book on ancient Chinese society, 1930. Returned to Shanghai alone after invasion of China by Japan, 1937. Ceased being harassed by the Chinese authorities after 1938 due to a change in the political situation and the threat of Japanese aggression. Served as director of the Third Office in the Department of Politics of Chinese government. During World War II, wrote plays, prose works, and poetry, and translated works of Goethe, Schiller, and other writers. Wrote play Qu Yuan (staged 1942), based on the life of an ancient Chinese poet. Held several government positions after the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949. President of Academica Sinica (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Central People’s Government committee member. Proposed reforms of Chinese calligraphy, and changes in the printing format from vertical to horizontal; suggestion adopted in 1956. Continued to hold influential positions during the Cultural Revolution of 1966–76, although he was initially attacked. Published book of literary criticism, Li Bai Du Fu, a Marxist attack on the 8th-century poet Du Fu, 1971. Died in Peking (now Beijing), 12 June 1978.

Selected Writings Sanye ji: Tian Han, Zong Baihua, Guo Moruo (correspondence), edited by Tien Han, 1923 Guo Moruo shuxin ji (correspondence), 1933 Sulian zhixing (travelogue on the Soviet Union), 1946 Wo de tongnian [My Childhood], Wo de xuesheng shidai [My Days of Being a Student], and Geming chunqiu [My Revolutionary Years], in Guo Moruo wenji (complete works), vols 6, 7, and 8, 1957–59; part as Autobiographie: mes années d’enfance, translated into French by P. Ryckmans, 1970 Guo Moruo shujian (correspondence), edited by Rong Geng, 1981 Yinghua shujian, 1913–1923 (correspondence), 1981 Guo Moruo shu xin ji (correspondence), edited by Huang Chunhao, 2 vols, 1992 Guo Moruo riji (diaries), edited by Chen Shuyu, 1997

Dian Li Further Reading Biography Born Guo Kaizhen in Shawan, Leshan Country, Sichuan province, China, 16 November 1892. His father was a wealthy merchant. Received traditional education at Leshan County Advanced Primary School (1897–98), Jiading Prefecture Middle School (1898–1910), and Chengdu Advanced School (1910–13). Went to Japan, partly to escape an unsatisfactory arranged marriage, and entered the Kusu Imperial University Medical School, 1913. Lived with a Japanese nurse, Tomilo

Larson, Wendy, Literary Authority and the Modern Chinese Writer: Ambivalence and Autobiography, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1991 Lee, Leo Ou-fan, The Romantic Generation of Modern Chinese Writers, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1973 Prusek, Jaroslav, Three Sketches of Chinese Literature, Prague: Oriental Institute in Academia, 1969 Roy, David Tod, Kuo Mo-jo: The Early Years, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971

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h of the Catholic church’s official, and increasingly strenuous, process of canonization, which continues today. Miracles and Lives of the Virgin Mary are the acme of such life writing and appear as narrative and drama throughout Christendom, particularly in the Middle Ages, and continue in accounts of recent appearances of Mary. Very early hagiography is often told in letter form, like that from the Christian community at Smyrna about the Polycarpi huiusque Martyrium (156 ce; Martyrdom of Saint Polycarp), friend of Ignatius of Antioch. Later Eusebius of Caesaria included much of the text in his Historica ecclesiastica (324–25; Ecclesiastical History). The Vita S. Antonii (c.356–57; Life of Saint Anthony) is a letter by the bishop of Alexandria responding to the monks outside Egypt who enquired about his ascetic life. Veneration of the saints has always stemmed from a belief in their role as intercessor, or a bridge between heaven and earth, especially needed in harsh times. But life writings have an additional, more secular, appeal as exciting and inspiring stories, dramatic and full of rich dialogue, which blend history, legend, and miracles to create a form close to romance. Augustine’s Confessions, written at the end of the 4th century, is for many the first autobiography; it combines immediacy, personal voice, biographical details, and a testament of faith. The account of St Monica, Augustine’s mother, has characteristics of hagiography, but the author does not seek to idealize himself. Nevertheless, the record of his struggle and conversion to Christianity, and surrender to God, has inspired many. The enormous influence and popularity of The Confessions, one of the great pieces of world literature, contrasts with Augustine’s other theological writings and demonstrates the fascination of life writing. The Confessions is crucial to an understanding of late antiquity and the early development of Christianity, just as Sulpicius Severus’s Vita Martini (Life of Martin), a biography, tells much about his friend and the struggle against paganism at Tours at the end of the 4th century. Similarly Bede’s (673–735) Vita Saneti Cuthberti (Life of Cuthbert) and Navigatio Saneti Brendani (The Voyage of St Brendan) show the development of monasticism in the 6th and 7th centuries in Britain, while Geoffrey of Auxerre’s biography of Bernard of Clairvaux pictures the mystic and abbot of 12th-century France. Few have equalled Augustine in influence, but Francis of Assisi (c.1181–1226), “the most lovable of the saints”, is a rival. In the Fioretti (The Little Flowers) followers recount Francis’s life of challenge, adventure, piety, and an unsurpassed love of all God’s creatures and unwavering imitation of Christ. The saint’s world-

Hagiography Saints’ Lives are a central genre in a long tradition of life writing that has a didactic purpose; they both honour the saint and instruct the audience about the significance of the life, originally to foster Christian faith. “Hagiographa” (sacred writings) is the Greek name for the last division of the Hebrew scriptures. The Psalms contain many references to saints, and Job (5:1) includes the question, “to which of the saints wilt thou turn?” The term “saint” is derived from the Latin sanctus (holy). Jesus is the first Christian saint, and Matthew’s Gospel records that immediately after the Crucifixion, “the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose” (27:52). Paul frequently speaks of saints, which originally meant all believers, and the concept remains in the “Communion of Saints”. The Acts of the Apostles (c.63 ce) include biographical and hagiographic material, such as the account of Stephen’s martyrdom, as Luke narrates the main events in the spread of the Church. Paul’s Epistles recount his missionary journeys and provide information about events and persons; the letters are also a form of autobiography, especially when the author defends himself (Corinthians); careful explanations of doctrine indicate their didactic purpose. Many 19th-century English writers favoured the term “hagiography” for “saints’ lives”, and it could refer to the Mohammedan world, although Ibn Ishaq’s original biography of the Prophet includes scandalous details omitted in the abridgement, and limited miraculous events were added. In its broad sense of idealized lives of prophets or martyrs, hagiography can be found in the literature of most of the world’s religions, and are generally the foundation of biographical practices. From the 2nd and 3rd centuries the Roman persecution of Christians gave the term “saint” the more specialized meaning of martyr, and holy deaths were celebrated as local examples of sanctity and inspiration. By the 5th century some saints were celebrated throughout the Christian world; and with less persecution and fewer martyrs, other holy people – bishops, theologians, abbots, and lay persons (especially in the 14th century) – were also canonized. Their identification passed from oral record to life writings, or vitae – or narratives composed shortly after the death, to which were soon attached reports of miracles and descriptions of the individual’s virtues. The Passio Perpetuae (3rd century; The Passion of St Perpetua), for example, begins as a first-person diary and concludes as a third-person account of her martyrdom. Witnesses gave details and were part 411

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wide appeal is rooted not in an extraordinary intellect, but in his character, a simplicity and determination revealed and memorialized in these wonderful stories. Francis also inspired great paintings at Assisi and elsewhere – another example of life story as hagiography. Without saints’ lives much of Europe’s greatest art would never have been created, since before modern abstraction visual art was another form of storytelling, and saints’ lives were favoured subjects in churchs and in books of hours. Ongoing adaptations show how a saint’s life served different audiences over time. One favourite is St Alexis (5th century), whose Latin Vita was translated into at least 11 vernacular languages. French literature began in the 11th century with a Vie de saint Alexis; it was recast in Anglo-Norman; in the 13th century Alexis became romance, intended for an audience of men and women, not just monks. Alexis’s life appears as a separate item and in collections, and there are paintings of his life in San Clemente in Rome. The Alexis theme of pious renunciation is redeployed in a romance, Guy of Warwick (c.1300), retold since Anglo-Norman times. Life writings by and about saints circulated in collections, especially Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea (c.1275; The Golden Legend). This most popular compendium was translated into many languages; the included saints vary with local interest and the date. It was the most important translation (1483) of Britain’s first printer, William Caxton, who drew upon an earlier Middle English version of 1438, Jean de Vignay’s Légende dorée, the Latin original, and some separate English lives. The South English Legendary, a vernacular collection, survives in manuscripts from the 13th century and is fourth in the number of preserved texts. Capgrave’s Nova legenda Angliae was translated and printed by Wynkyn de Worde (1516). An enthusiasm for collections of women’s lives – Osbern Bokenham’s Legends of Holy Women (1443) and the Stowe Lives of Women’s Saints (c.1610) – recurs today in feminist readings. Another source of hagiography is the Gesta Romanorum (early 14th century; Deeds of the Romans), made by Franciscans in England and widely translated. These moral stories and applications were intended for preachers; subjects include saints, other historical persons, and the fabulous. Mirk’s Festival (early 15th century) shows the use of hagiography in homilies. Bibliographical lists are very long indeed. Perhaps nothing indicates more vividly the power of hagiography than the influence of the successor of the Protestant Reformation, John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, better known as Book of Martyrs, first printed in Latin (1554, complete 1559) and then in English (1563), much expanded. Many lives of saints are still written – some consciously hagiographic, such as Evelyn Waugh’s Edmund Campion (1935), and others more broadly biographical, such as Peter Ackroyd’s The Life of Thomas More (1998); both are splendid combinations of factual information and instruction. Such biographies give the lie to the supposed debasement of “hagiography” in the modern secular world, where the subjects of much life writing may be celebrities and political figures – Karl Marx, John Kennedy, Princess Diana – but who yet inspire adulatory praise, albeit not for the humility and self-sacrifice lauded in saints of earlier centuries. Velma Bourgeois Richmond See also Exemplary and Model Lives; Religious Biography

Further Reading Baring-Gould, Sabine, The Lives of the Saints, 16 vols, revised edition, London: Nimmo, 1897–98; New York: Longmans Green, 1898 Brown, Peter, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, and London: SCM Press, 1981 Brown, Peter, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, New York: Columbia University Press, 1988 Canton, William, A Child’s Book of Saints, London: Dent, 1898 Caxton, William, The Golden Legend, or, Lives of the Saints as Englished by William Caxton, 7 vols, edited by F.S. Ellis, London: Dent, 1900 Coulson, John (editor), The Saints: A Concise Biographical Dictionary, New York: Hawthorn, 1958 Delany, Sheila (editor and translator), A Legend of Holy Women: Osbern Bokenham, Legends of Holy Women, Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992 D’Evelyn, Charlotte and Anna J. Mill (editors), The South English Legendary, 3 vols, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1956–59 D’Evelyn, Charlotte and Frances A. Foster, “Saints’ Legends” in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1500, vol. 2, New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1967–93 Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400–c.1580, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1992 Erbe, Theodore (editor), Mirk’s Festival: A Collection of Homilies, London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trübner, 1905 Greenspan, Kate, “Autohagiography and Medieval Women’s Spiritual Autobiography” in Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages, edited by Jane Chance, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996 Kieckhefer, Richard, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984 Lang, Mrs, The Book of Saints and Heroes, edited by Andrew Lang, London and New York: Longmans Green, 1912 Mooney, Catherine M., Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters, Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1999 Rinehart, Robin, One Lifetime, Many Lives: The Experience of Modern Hindu Hagiography, Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1999 Swan, Charles (editor and translator), Gesta Romanorum, or, Entertaining Moral Stories, corrected by Wynnard Hooper, London: Bohn Library, 1876; reprinted, New York: Dover, 1959 Szarmach, Paul E. (editor), Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Contexts, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996 de Voragine, Jacobus, Legenda aurea, edited by T. Graesse, Dresden: no publisher, 1846; reprinted, Osnabruck: Zeller, 1965 de Voragine, Jacobus, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, translated by William Granger Ryan, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993 de Voragine, Jacobus, The Golden Legend: Selections, edited by Richard Hamer and translated by Christopher Stace, London and New York: Penguin, 1998 Webb, J.F. (translator), Lives of the Saints: The Voyage of St. Brendan, Bede: Life of Cuthbert, Eddius Stephanus: Life of Wilfrid, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965 Weinstein, Donald and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints & Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000–1700, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982

Hakluyt, Richard

1552–1616

English writer, editor, and translator Richard Hakluyt is without question one of the leading figures of early modern English colonialism and expansion. Unlike the travellers whose narratives and experiences he compiled, edited, and published in the two editions of his most significant work,

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The Principal Navigations (1589, revised 1598–1600), he never journeyed to the New World. In fact he never travelled beyond France, despite apparent intentions of sailing to New England in 1584 and Virginia around 1606. Hakluyt sought instead to encourage English exploration and settlement by translating accounts of the achievements of England’s rival European powers, and also by publicizing the English nation’s contributions to Renaissance travel and discovery, his main occupation in the two editions of the Principal Navigations. G.B. Parks has described Hakluyt as the “midwife” of English travel literature (“Tudor Travel Literature”, in Quinn, 1974), a comment which, although it invokes the Victorian period’s construction of Hakluyt as a benchmark figure in the rise of nation and empire, is true in the important sense that he produced a body of literature that helped to preserve the life experiences of many early modern English subjects. Indeed, in numerous cases no other record of travellers’ observations and experiences exists outside Hakluyt’s own corpus, so that his textual labours have often subsumed the activities of those whose works and experiences he appropriated. In his role as translator, Hakluyt worked in a tradition begun (in England at least) by Richard Eden, whose groundbreaking edition of the Italian chronicler Peter Martyr’s Treatyse of the Newe India, which includes accounts of the explorations of Columbus, Vespucci, and Magellan, appeared in 1553. In a more vigorous way than his forerunner, Hakluyt appropriated foreign materials in an effort to rouse the English nation out of its colonial apathy and belatedness in relation to other continental powers, especially to Spain. His translations – from the voyages of Jacques Cartier, Giovanni da Verrazzano, and others in the Divers Voyages (1582), to the exploits of Hernando de Soto in Virginia Richly Valued (1609) – sought to encourage English initiatives by providing analogies in the heroic deeds and achievements of French, Spanish, and Portuguese explorers. As a compiler and editor, Hakluyt’s acquaintance with some of the most influential key players, colonial organizers, and travellers of his day – such as Francis Walsingham, Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake, Martin Frobisher, and Humphrey Gilbert – put him in an excellent position to acquire and disseminate knowledge to do with travel and discovery. The Principal Navigations is the result of Hakluyt’s sustained effort to collect the accounts of sea captains and other voyagers who had witnessed faraway peoples and places, sometimes writing or rewriting their experiences himself, as a means of promoting overseas discovery, trade, and settlement (see Quinn). If, as Philip Edwards has pointed out, “there is a difference between writing for your life and writing for a living”, then Richard Hakluyt was not in the strictest sense writing for his life in the same way as those writers who journeyed to foreign countries and encountered conditions of extreme hardship and hostile strangers who mostly did not welcome the intrusions of others. Relative to these travellers, Hakluyt risked very little. Yet the efforts that he took to promote England’s nascent colonialism ensured the editor a solid position in the rise of a national identity and history during the mid to late 19th century. With the formation of an English national epic during this period (see Barker and Hawkes), an important part of which was the inception of the Hakluyt Society in 1846, Hakluyt’s texts were celebrated as national treasures and he himself was proclaimed the harbinger and vanguard of the emerging empire. Hakluyt’s

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most influential critics praised the editor’s modesty, his lack of calculation and rhetoric, along with his matter-of-fact, accurate, and unselfconscious handling of his source materials (Fuller). Recent critics, influenced by postcolonial theory and the antiColumbian literature of the early 1990s, are not so eager to accept this nationalist rhetoric. The construction of Hakluyt’s corpus as the product of a self-effacing editor has yielded to one that identifies in his texts either a self-motivated or more ambivalent relationship to his sources, as well as the mediations of a writer who worked not simply to promote English expansion, but also his own self-interest, privilege, and patronage largely through the discursive transformation of heterogeneous materials into a body of literature that lays claim to a more unified, less self-referential status (see Hulme, Helgerson, Fuller, and Hart). Paul W. DePasquale Biography Born in London before 30 March 1552. Educated at Westminster School, London (Queen’s scholar), 1564–66. Studied at Christ Church, Oxford, 1570–75 (BA 1574, MA 1577). Tutor, Christ Church, c.1577–83 (cancionator 1581, censor 1582); gave up studentship, 1587. Received pension from Clothworkers’ Company, 1577–87. Ordained priest before 1580. Became increasingly interested in geography and exploration, and was a friend of Francis Drake, Humphrey Gilbert, and Walter Raleigh. Compiled Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of America (1582), which promoted the colonization of North America as a base for exploring a route to Asia via the Northwest Passage. Chaplain and secretary to Sir Edward Stafford, English ambassador to France, 1583–88 (acted as a messenger for Elizabeth I on frequent missions). In France, wrote Discourse Concerning Western Discoveries (1584). On return to England, began to collect material for his most famous work, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589; enlarged 1598–1600). Married Duglesse Cavendish c.1587 (died 1597): one son. Held various clerical appointments. Served as prebendary canon, Bristol Cathedral, 1586–1616, and Westminster Abbey, 1602–16 (archdeacon 1603–05, steward 1608–09, treasurer 1614–15). Rector, Wetheringsett with Blockford, Suffolk, 1590–1616; and of Gedney, Lincolnshire, and Buckden, Huntingdonshire, 1612–16. Active promoter of further American colonization. Adviser to East India Company, 1601. Shareholder in South Virginian Company and Northwest Passage Company. Married Frances Smithe, 1604. Bought Bridge Place manor, Coddenham, Suffolk, 1612. Died 23 November 1616.

Selected Writings Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of America and the Islands Adjacent unto the Same, made first of all by our Englishmen and Afterward by the Frenchmen and Britons, 1582; edited by John Winter Jones, 1850; facsimile edition, 2 vols, 1968 The Principal Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by sea or over land, to the most remote and farthest quarters of the earth, 1589; revised as The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffics, and Discoveries, 3 vols, 1598–1600; edited by Walter Raleigh, 12 vols, 1903–05; edited by David B. Quinn and R.A. Skelton, 2 vols, 1965; selections as Voyages and Discoveries: The Principal Navigations, edited by Jack Beeching (1972), Hakluyt’s Voyages, edited by Richard David (1981), and The First Colonists: Hakluyt’s Voyages to North America, edited by A.L. Rowse (1986) Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Hakluyts, 2 vols, edited by E.G.R. Taylor, 1935 Voyages and Documents, edited by Janet Hampden, 1958 Virginia Voyages, edited by David B. Quinn and Alison M. Quinn, 1973

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Also translated works of travel and exploration by Peter Martyr of Anghiera (1587), René de Laudonnière (1587), Antonio Galvaõ (1601), and Hernando de Soto (1609)

Further Reading Barker, Simon, “Images of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries as a History of the Present” in Literature, Politics, and Theory: Papers from the Essex Conference 1976–84, edited by Francis Barker et al., London and New York: Methuen, 1986 Edwards, Philip (editor), Last Voyages: Cavendish, Hudson, Ralegh: The Original Narratives, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988 Fuller, Mary C., “The ‘great prose epic’: Hakluyt’s Voyages” in Voyages in Print: English Travel to America, 1576–1624, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995 Hart, Jonathan, “Strategies of Promotion: Some Prefatory Matter of Oviedo, Thevet, and Hakluyt” in Imagining Culture: Essays in Early Modern History and Literature, edited by Hart, New York: Garland, 1996 Hawkes, Terence, That Shakespeherian Rag: Essays on a Critical Process, London and New York: Methuen, 1986 Helgerson, Richard, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 Hulme, Peter, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492–1797, London and New York: Methuen, 1986 Quinn, David B. (editor), The Hakluyt Handbook, 2 vols, London: Hakluyt Society, 1974

Hampâté Bâ, Amadou see Bâ, Amadou Hampâté

Handbooks and Guides In one sense, the idea of handbooks and guides to life writing appears to be a contradiction in terms, for while the manual, in all its guises, involves a mechanical expression of prose, life writing is highly individual and personalized. Yet despite this apparent contradiction, a host of different guides continue to flood the market in an effort to instruct potential authors on how to proceed with their own attempts at life writing. Guides to letter writing date back to ancient Rome, where the size and mobility of the empire encouraged letter writing among its citizens. Cicero wrote about the aesthetics of letter writing and, as a branch of rhetoric, his own letters were highly influential alongside those of the Younger Pliny. As part of the Renaissance pursuit of a more personal style, the idea of the model letter resurfaced in the letter-writing manuals that were so prolific in France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Moreover, in letter-books of the period women writers gained a precarious status through their supposed special excellence in letter writing. Elizabeth Goldsmith has traced the legacy of this connection between gender and genre and shows that the letters of this period were subsequently used as models for later periods: [Victor] Cousin’s massive project, begun in the 1840s, to publish in modern editions the letters of those seventeenthcentury ladies that were so admired by their contemporaries, was inspired by his belief in the notion of a particular kind of “feminine genius” that could serve as a model for modern women writers.

The concept of the model letter highlights the latent tension within letter writing between convention and spontaneity. If the letter is merely one element within the wider sphere of social etiquette, then it can be seen as a convention to be followed. On the other hand, it would seem that the individual and personal nature of the letter favours spontaneity rather than convention. This tension is illustrated in the writings of Samuel Richardson. His early letter-writing manual, Familiar Letters (1741), acknowledges various conventions, whereas his epistolary novels tend towards spontaneity and personal expression. As Carol Flynn observes, the protagonist in Pamela (1740–41) “uses her letters to examine and develop her own evolving ideas about herself”. The increasing preference for spontaneity rather than convention now means that the letter-writing manual enjoys an uncertain position. In contrast to letter-writing manuals, handbooks to autobiography (and its related forms, particularly diaries) are a more recent phenomenon, which emerged in the 1970s. Their publication has been concentrated in North America and, to a lesser extent, Australia and the United Kingdom. In her influential guide to writing a journal, Tristine Rainer outlines the background to the modern interest in certain forms of life writing: No one individual or even group of individuals can be said to have created it. But four twentieth-century pioneers of psychology and literature played major roles in conceptualizing the principles of modern journal writing: Carl Jung, Marion Milner, Ira Progoff, and Anaïs Nin. Of the four people that Rainer mentions, Ira Progoff has done the most to popularize the genre. During the mid-1960s he developed a highly structured approach to journal writing which was subsequently taught in a journal workshop. The publication of At a Journal Workshop: The Basic Text and Guide for Using the Intensive Journal in 1975 helped to disseminate his method among a wider audience. In the 1990s the range of handbooks grew dramatically, adapting to both technological development (e.g. the video camera) and cultural pressures (e.g. the need for politically sensitive language). The modern intersection of psychology and literature suggested by Rainer underlies the striking emphasis of many handbooks on life writing as an exercise in personal development. Brian Hawker tells us that: “Writing a personal journal is an exercise in individual growth.” Later on he spells out the benefits of personal development: “Personal growth is about being in charge of one’s own life.” This echoes some of the themes and ideas that are typically found within self-improvement manuals, and threatens to reduce life writing to a means towards this end. While many handbooks avoid this extreme, they still focus on the development of the individual, as Deena Metzger illustrates: “To write is, above all else, to construct a self. Only secondly is it to record one’s history, to express feelings and ideas, to create characters, or to communicate with others.” According to some handbooks, a further benefit of life writing is its therapeutic value. This has become increasingly noticeable with the ever-increasing Western interest in therapy. One example of this is the introduction by Nancy Smith to her book, Writing Your Life Story (1993), in which she assures the reader that: “Putting down on paper a painful part of your life can be

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extremely therapeutic, often exorcising a ghost that has haunted you for too long.” Whether for their formulaic approach to personal writing or because of their grand claims about writing’s purchase on experience, manuals and handbooks have often been met with a degree of scepticism by critics. In a 1908 essay entitled “The Fallacy of Success”, G.K. Chesterton anticipated modern critics when he detected the empty rhetoric of such books, declaring: “I would rather have some decent little book which told me the rules of the game”. More recent critical analysis has been undertaken by, notably, Philippe Lejeune. This leads us back to the question of whether or not life writing has certain rules that need to be followed. It might be argued that manuals overcome the dichotomy between the “rules” of life writing and its inherent individuality through the use of instruction by example. However, in a genre that is predicated on the value of the self rather than any particular self, it is difficult to agree to the criteria by which certain pieces of life writing can be held up as exemplary. One of the criteria that is commonly used, often by default, is fame. In seeking to explain this, Evelyn Hinz argues that: … one might consider why life writing documents by or about the “famous” attract more attention than do the lives of the “unknown”: does it not have something to do with the extent to which the reader is in a position to compare the “original” and the copy …? If the famous serve a useful purpose here in providing a relatively transparent model of life writing, then one might also accept that the manual has helped to democratize the field of writing, despite its underlying and paradoxical insistence on uniformity and convention. Mark Knight See also Conduct Books; Genealogy

Further Reading Chesterton, G.K., “The Fallacy of Success” in his All Things Considered, London: Methuen, 1908; New York: Allen Lane, 1909 The Complete Letter Writer: How to Write Letters for Every Occasion, London: Foulsham, 1998 Flynn, Carol Houlihan, Samuel Richardson: A Man of Letters, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1982 Goldsmith, Elizabeth C., “Authority, Authenticity, and the Publication of Letters by Women” in Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolary Literature, edited by Goldsmith, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989 Hawker, Brian, Your Life in Your Hands: Writing A Personal Journal, London: Fount Paperbacks, 1991 Hinz, Evelyn J., “A Speculative Introduction: Life-Writing as Drama”, Mosaic, 20/4 (1987): v–xii Lejeune, Philippe, bibliography of life-writing manuals, http://worldserver.oleane.com/autopact/manuels.html Lejeune, Philippe, “Apprendre aux gens à écrire leur vie” in his Moi aussi, Paris: Seuil, 1986 Lejeune, Philippe, “Le Tournant d’une vie” in his Les Broullions de soi, Paris: Seuil, 1998 Lyons, Robert, Autobiography: A Reader for Writers, New York: Oxford University Press, 1977; 2nd edition, 1984 McLaughlin, Paul, A Family Remembers: How to Create a Family Memoir Using Video, Vancouver: Self-Counsel, 1994 Metzger, Deena, Writing For Your Life: A Guide and Companion to The Inner Worlds, San Francisco: Harper, 1992

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Porter, Roger J. and H.R. Wolf, The Voice Within: Reading and Writing Autobiography, New York: Knopf, 1973 Progoff, Ira, At a Journal Workshop: The Basic Text and Guide for Using the Intensive Journal, New York: Dialogue House Library, 1975 Rainer, Tristine, The New Diary: How to Use a Journal for Self Guidance and Expanded Creativity, New York: Putnam, 1978 Smith, Nancy, Writing Your Life Story: A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing Your Autobiography, London: Piatkus, 1993 Winslow, Donald J., Life-Writing: A Glossary of Terms in Biography, Autobiography, and Related Forms, 2nd edition, Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1995

Havel, Václav

1936–

Czech playwright, dissident, statesman, and letter writer Václav Havel – playwright, politician, essay writer – is one of the most important liberal thinkers in Eastern Europe. His autobiographical writing is also highly significant. Following the Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968, many important Czech cultural figures were forced into an underground subculture, promoting samizdat (underground) publishing and forming various dissident organizations. Havel strongly pronounced his opposition to dehumanized totalitarian ideology in his essay “The Power of the Powerless” (1978). He was a founder of the Charter 77 human rights group, who defined his experience as “living in truth”. Between 1970 and the early 1980s Havel was arrested on several occasions for his political views. In November 1989 he became president of Czechoslovakia, and continued writing political speeches and essays that expressed his humanitarian ideals. In 1986 he was awarded the prestigious Erasmus prize. Havel’s political writing has strong autobiographical overtones, because of a belief in the importance of personal privacy for every member of society regardless of political system, a right threatened by the growing pragmatism of the age of technological revolution. His own experience formed this view, especially the periods of his imprisonment, which turned him towards a philosophical quest for spirituality. However it is Havel’s letters to his wife Olga – Dopisy Olze (1983; Letters to Olga: June 1979–September 1982) – that form his principal contribution to life writing. The letters, which resemble table-talk discussions, include Havel’s responses to everyday experience, news from friends and family, and meditations as he explores his true self and spiritual matters. Thus Havel admits: Of course depressions in many forms are nothing new with me, it’s just that I don’t write about them because by nature I’m loath to make my personal feelings public; I tend, rather, to hide behind certain depersonalised (or apparently depersonalised) constructions, either in my plays or now, in these meditations. Havel’s meditative style was particularly shaped by the tradition of phenomenology, and especially by the philosopher Jan Patochka (1907–77), who gave unofficial seminars on phenomenology and existentialism to actors and writers at the Prague Theatre of the Balustrade in the 1960s. Havel recollects the unique experience of “meaning of life” conversations in his

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essay “The Last Conversation” (included in Czech in O lidskou identitu [On Human Identity]). He describes therein things and relations around him as they present themselves, avoiding the mechanistic determinism often present in political and scientific discourses. Havel’s play Vyrozumeˇni (1965; The Memorandum) mocks official dehumanized ideology in a very personal way, revealing his exceptional sensitivity to the use of language in society. In 1977 Havel and Patochka continued their conversations about life in prison, where Patochka later died of a stroke after intense interrogation by the secret police. But Havel continued his conversations with his best friend and co-founder of Charter 77 in his letters to Olga. In a letter of 1 January 1982 he refers to Patochka’s concept of personal responsibility, that is “ours, everywhere”. Havel compares this sense of omnipresent responsibility to the “absolute horizon”, stating that “we can never step beyond this horizon” and “we cannot escape our responsibility”. In Havel’s view, responsibility establishes identity, determines the locus between I and “non-I”. And in his essays, Havel calls on his readers to awake to “a world of personal responsibility”, as opposed to being alienated from the natural world, as “the world of their actual personal experience” (Vaclav Havel, or, Living in Truth). One of the remarkable achievements of Havel as a writer and autobiographer is that he has always written with an astonishing frankness, “in a way that he believed was true” (as his friend J. Nemec said), as if censorship did not exist for him. His political essays also bear the strong mark of his personality. In his essay “Politics and Conscience” Havel speaks of his own childhood in the country, when he hated industrial pollution, seeing it as “humans soiling the heavens” (Vaclav Havel, or, Living in Truth). He denounces the civilization of the new age that has destroyed myths and mystery, and “has put its full weight behind cold, descriptive Cartesian reason and recognises only thinking in concepts” (“Thriller”, ibid.). The essays and letters reveal the anxieties of a child of postwar Europe and a victim of the Cold War, who has witnessed the effects of technological advance on the human psyche. His dry sense of humour and irony make his narrative very effective, especially in his selfrepresentation as a humble truth-seeker. Havel’s influence on Czech political figures and writers has been immense. As Havel admits, he has always written about his experience of himself in the hope that his writing might “disclose something universally human”, an aspiration largely confirmed. Alexandra Smith Biography Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), 5 October 1936. His father was a wealthy restaurateur and property developer. Worked as a laboratory technician, 1951–55. Studied at a technical college, 1955–57. Carried out military service in the Czechoslovak army, 1957–59. Worked at the ABC Theatre, Prague, 1959–60, and the Divadlo na Zábradlí [Theatre on the Balustrade], Prague, 1960–68. Studied at the Academy of Arts, Prague, 1962–66. Became internationally known with the play Zahradni slavnost (1963; The Garden Party), which was translated into all major European languages. Married Olga S´plíchalová (died 1996), 1964. Wrote his best-known play, Vyrozumeˇni (1965; The Memorandum). Passport confiscated because his writings were considered subversive after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1969. Co-founder, Charter 77 human rights group, 1977, and the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS), 1978. Imprisoned for various charges of

subversion or behaviour opposed to the government, 1977, 1978–79, 1979–83 (released on account of illness), and 1989. Published Largo desolato (1984) and Pokou¢ení (1985; Temptation). Member of the editorial board, also regular contributor, to Lidové noviny [The People’s News] samizdat newspaper, 1987–89. Co-founder and leader of the political party Obπanské Fórum [Civic Forum], 1989. President of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, 1989–92, and of the Czech Republic from 1993 following the division of the country. Married Dagmar Veskrnova, 1997. Awarded the Erasmus prize, 1986, among numerous other awards and honours.

Selected Writings 0

◊estnáct dopisu (correspondence), 1982 Dopisy Olze, 1983; as Letters to Olga: June 1979–September 1982, edited and translated by Paul Wilson, 1988 O lidskou identitu: úvahy, fejetony, protesty, polemiky, prohlá¢ení a rozhovory z let 1969–1979 [On Human Identity: Essays, Columns, Protests, Polemical Articles, Declarations, and Conversations from the Years 1969–1979], edited by Vilém Precan and Alexander Tomsky, 1984 Politika a sv domí in Prirozen∫ sv tjako politick∫ problém, 1984; as Politics and Conscience, 1986

Further Reading Havel, Václav, Open Letters: Selected Prose 1965–1990, London: Faber, 1991; as Open Letters: Selected Writings 1965–1990, New York: Knopf, 1991 Havel, Václav, Summer Meditations: On Politics, Morality and Civility in a Time of Transition, translated by Paul Wilson, London and Boston: Faber, 1992 Havel, Václav, The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice: Speeches and Writings, 1990–1996, translated by Paul Wilson and others, New York: Knopf, 1997 Kriseova, Eda, Václav Havel: The Authorized Biography, Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991 Simmons, Michael, The Reluctant President: A Political Life of Václav Havel, London: Methuen, 1991 Vladislav, Jan (editor), Vaclav Havel, or Living in Truth: Twenty-two Essays Published on the Occasion of the Award of the Erasmus Prize to Vaclav Havel, London: Faber, 1986 (includes six essays by Havel, and 16 by others)

Hazlitt, William

1778–1830

English critic, essayist, and autobiographer Although William Hazlitt had ambitions to be an artist and philosopher and was the author of On the Principles of Human Action (1805), he is best remembered for his accomplishments in the personal essay. Encouraged by Leigh Hunt, he began a series of “round-table” discussions of topics that interested him, which were published in Hunt’s Examiner. These essays helped to establish him as a well-known author, reviewer of literary works, and political analyst. His most important series of essays in book form was entitled Table-Talk and published in two volumes in 1821 and 1822. In 1825 he published The Spirit of the Age, which assessed the prominent literary and political figures of his era from his position in a coterie of famous friends including Charles Lamb, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Hazlitt, who was divorced in 1822, fell in love with Sally Walker, the daughter of his London landlord, but the affair ended disastrously. He described his failure to win her love in Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion (1823). The autobiography was initially published anonymously, but its true author

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and subjects were so widely known in literary circles that Hazlitt soon admitted publicly that he had written it. Liber Amoris is a text that has much in common with Rousseau’s Confessions in its exploration of emotions and impulses then usually excluded from autobiography in Britain by concerns over propriety: it was thus seen as scandalous. Hazlitt subtitled his text The New Pygmalion to show that he was aware that his infatuation with the woman he was pursuing was more a creation of his own imagination than a real love affair. The book also records his admiration for Napoleon, and while living in France later in his life he was to undertake a biography of the emperor. Hazlitt remained a firm supporter of the French Revolution and criticized Wordsworth and Coleridge for abandoning the republican cause. While Liber Amoris is often regarded as an anomaly in British autobiography, it does set one important precedent. Hazlitt’s invocation of Pygmalion aligns him with other 19th-century male writers and artists who drew upon the same myth. While the myth of Narcissus might seem more appropriate for 19thcentury autobiographers, it is actually Pygmalion who appears most often. In the 19th-century use of the myth, the male artist constructs his identity by using the figure of a woman as a vehicle for his self-consciousness, a procedure adopted by Wordsworth in The Prelude (published 1850) and “Tintern Abbey” when he addresses his sister Dorothy as the guarantor of his own sense of identity, and later by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in relation to numerous female models. Hazlitt’s autobiography shows a radically unstable self. Where Wordsworth in The Prelude stresses continuity and connection, Hazlitt comes across as a male hysteric. He is prone to extravagant bouts of emotion and reacts to the most trivial of remarks or incidents with either ecstasy or despair. He thus reveals his male, Romantic credentials in that the overflow of feeling is for him a pre-eminent experience. Hazlitt criticized Byron for his egotism, but his description of Byron’s egotism could very well be applied to his own self-representation in Liber Amoris: “self-will, passion, the love of singularity, a disdain of himself and others … are the proper categories of his mind”. Hazlitt is also exemplary of male autobiography of his time in another way. His primary genre is the personal essay, which means that much of his prose is taken up with a discussion of his own experiences. Like many essayists, Hazlitt modelled himself on Montaigne. Like the Romantic poets, Hazlitt’s ideal in his prose was to be a “man speaking to men”, and so his style, in reaction against 18th-century ways of writing, was intended to convey the impression of a man expressing himself as if in conversation. Thus in Table-Talk he declares his ambition to follow the same pattern as when in conversation with his friends: making no distinction between the man and the writer, he strove for a language that would simulate his presence in writing. Martin A. Danahay

Biography Born in Maidstone, Kent, England, 10 April 1778. His father was a Unitarian minister of Irish descent. Moved with his family to Ireland, 1780, to the United States, 1783–87, then to Wem, Shropshire, 1787. Studied at Hackney Theological College, London, 1793–94; also studied philosophy privately. Abandoned his plan of becoming a

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minister by 1796, when he met the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who encouraged him to write Principles of Human Action (1805). Studied painting with his brother John in Paris with the aim of becoming a portrait painter, 1802–03. Associated with Coleridge, Charles Lamb, William Godwin, and William Wordsworth. Lived in Wem and London, 1805–08. Wrote Free Thoughts on Public Affairs (1806) and Reply to the Essay on Population by Malthus (1807). Married Sarah Stoddart, 1808 (divorced 1822): three sons (two died in infancy). Lived in Winterslow near Salisbury, Wiltshire, 1808–11. Returned to London and committed himself to a career in journalism, 1812. Parliamentary reporter, 1812–13, and drama critic, 1813–14, Morning Chronicle; critic for The Times, 1817, and The Examiner, 1828–30. Contributed to various other journals and newspapers, including the Edinburgh Review, 1814–30, The Champion, The Liberal, London Magazine, Atlas, and the New Monthly. Wrote Liber Amoris (1823) in response to his unrequited passion for Sarah Walker, daughter of his landlord. Arrested for debt, 1823. Married a well-to-do widow, Isabella Bridgewater, 1824 (she left him in 1825). Travelled in France and Italy, 1824–25. Published his essays and lectures in Lectures on the English Poets (1818) and The Spirit of the Age (1825), a series of sketches of contemporaries. Wrote a life of Napoleon Bonaparte, 1828–30. Last years were dogged by poor health and financial troubles. Died in London, 18 September 1830.

Selected Writings Memoirs of the Late Thomas Holcroft, completed by Hazlitt, 3 vols, 1816; as The Life of Holcroft, edited by Elbridge Colby, 2 vols, 1925 (with Leigh Hunt) The Round Table: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men, and Manners, 2 vols, 1817; facsimile, 1991 Political Essays, with Sketches of Public Characters, 1819 Table-Talk, or, Original Essays, 2 vols, 1821–22 Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion (autobiography), 1823; edited by Gerald Lahey, 1980 The Spirit of the Age, or, Contemporary Portraits, 1825; edited by E.D. Mackerness, 1969 Notes of a Journey through France and Italy, 1826 The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, 4 vols, 1828–30 Conversations of James Northcote, R.A., 1830; edited by Frank Swinnerton, 1949 The Letters of William Hazlitt, edited by Herschel Moreland Sikes, 1978 Leigh Hunt: A Life in Letters together with Some Correspondence of William Hazlitt, edited by Eleanor M. Gates, 1988

Further Reading Baker, Herschel Clay, William Hazlitt, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962 Broughton, Trev Lynn, Men of Letters, Writing Lives: Masculinity and Literary Auto/biography in the Late Victorian Period, London and New York: Routledge, 1999 Good, Graham, “Hazlitt: Ventures of the Self” in his The Observing Self: Rediscovering the Essay, London and New York: Routledge, 1988 Uphaus, Robert W., William Hazlitt, Boston: Twayne, 1985 Kinnaird, John, William Hazlitt, Critic of Power, New York and Guildford: Columbia University Press, 1978

Hebbel, Christian Friedrich

1813–1863

German playwright, poet, essayist, letter writer, and diarist Christian Friedrich Hebbel created some of the most important dramas in the history of 19th-century German literature, and he was often praised as a worthy successor to the literary giants Goethe and Schiller. But, both in his extensive critical studies on

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literature, and in his vast correspondence and elaborate diaries, Hebbel has also provided us with detailed autobiographical accounts of his own life, his intellectual development, and his creative-writing process. Hebbel’s childhood was to be the subject of his “Aus meiner Jugend” [Recollections from My Childhood], published in 1854 in Karl Gutzkow’s magazine Unterhaltungen am häuslichen Herde. In 1835 Hebbel began writing his enormously detailed and reflexive diaries which he continued until his death; at this time he also began an intensive correspondence with his mistress Elise Lensing. While Hebbel lived in Munich he sent Elise many highly vivid and detailed travel accounts, which represented the beginning of a life as reporter, critic, and travel writer who emphasized his personal perspectives and own points of view regarding contemporary literature and politics. From the 1840s Hebbel extensively commented on his own dramatic production in his diary, and also outlined his emerging concept of the drama in his Mein Wort über das Drama [1843; My View on the Drama]. His views on literature affirmed its benefit for the life of the writer. In his own words, “poetry is my religion which leads me to truth; what can improve my poems will also ennoble my character”. He also remarked that the highest task of poetry would be, as he described it, to inject the golden thread of life into the thought of death. Letters were often the media for expression of his views on literature generally and on himself as writer. When he wrote to Emil Palleske (27 January 1848), Hebbel reflected on the essence of all art works: “the more the ideas which form the center of an art work move away from the concrete object and remain in the abstract, the rarer will be the concretization and vivification of these ideas in their media, that is, in the drama”. He used the letter form for a discussion of fundamental issues in poetry, for example: I believe it is impossible to create good hexameters and pentameters in our language; I do not know any and estimate those loosely composed by Schiller and Goethe higher than those by Voss and Platen. The reason is that the latter make claims which they cannot, in the long run, fulfill, at least that is my feeling, whereas the meters composed by the former do not make such a claim. In the aftermath of the 1848 revolution, in which he was heavily involved, he argued, in a letter to Felix Bamberg, that “a person is without any doubt of most use to the world through its primitive forces, and these are in me of a poetic nature”. In a letter to Fedor Löwe in Stuttgart (10 August 1852) Hebbel commented: “the major problem of our own time is that the audience demands too much [of its dramatists]”. When he sent a copy of his poem to Eduard Mörike, he also characterized himself in a letter: “[the book] serves to demonstrate to you that I am a man of the old, not the new school, and that all the caricatures of me created by friends and foes in so-called literary histories and monographs do not apply to me”. Hebbel also used his diaries for political and artistic comment. On 17 December 1851 he jotted down: Still the dear Germans do not find an agreement. Prussia does not want what Austria wants. Nevertheless, I am convinced they would immediately march hand in hand if there

were a war. These are unfortunate people who can do the job together, but cannot eat and drink together peacefully; instead of enjoying the good days like brothers, they throw knives and forks at each others’ heads. Often the diary entries are no more than fragments of thought, but their aphoristic nature could turn them into important autobiographical observations: “Insults have an effect on me like wooden splinters which penetrate the flesh; at the beginning one hardly feels them, but then they begin to fester and to hurt”, or: “there are times when one looks for the saviour in every manger”. At other times, however, his reflections deal with problems in nature or philosophical conundrums: in this sense Hebbel’s diary entries incorporate much more than simple autobiographical data, providing also deep insights into his thoughts, observations, and ideas. Albrecht Classen Biography Born in Wesselburen, Holstein, Denmark (now in Germany), 18 March 1813. His family was poor and he was largely self-taught after attending a primary school in Wesselburen, 1819–25. Worked as a servant / clerk to a local official, 1827–35. Studied at the University of Heidelberg, financially supported by benefactors, 1836. Worked as a freelance writer while studying in Munich, 1836–39, and Hamburg, 1839–43. Published his tragedy Maria Magdalena, 1844. Received a travel grant from the king of Denmark; lived in Paris, 1843–44, and Rome, 1844–45. Received his doctorate from the University of Erlangen, 1844. Lived in Vienna from 1845. Other notable plays include Herodes und Mariamne (1850; Herod and Mariamne), the much-admired Agnes Bernauer (1852), and Gyges und sein Ring (1856; Gyges and His Ring). Honorary librarian at the Weimar court, 1863. Awarded the Schiller prize, 1863. Died in Vienna, 13 December 1863.

Selected Writings “Aus meiner Jugend” in Unterhaltungen am häuslichen Herde, 1854 Über den Stil des Dramas, 1857 Tagebücher, edited by F. Bamberg, 2 vols, 1885–87; subsequent editions and selections: Tagebücher, 4 vols of Sämtliche Werke, 1901–07; Durch Irren zum Glück, edited by Frèderich Helbel, 1907; Friedrich Hebbels Tagebücher in vier Bänden, edited by Herman Krumm, 2 vols, 1913; Hebbels Tagebücher in zwei Bänden, edited by Friedrich Brandes, 2 vols, 1913; Die Mensch und die Mächte, edited by Ernst Vincent, 1936; Hebbel als Denker, 1947; Tagebücher, edited by Anni Meetz, 1963; Der einsame Weg: Tagebücher, edited by Klaus Geissler, 1966; Tagebücher, edited by Karl Pörnbacher, 3 vols, 1966–67 Friedrich Hebbels Briefe, edited by Fritz Lemmermayer and Richard Maria Warner, 2 vols, 1900 Briefe, 8 vols, 1904–07 Hebbels Briefe, edited by Theodor Adolf Poppe, 1913 Ein heiliger Krieg: Friedrich Hebbels Briefe, Tagebücher, Gedichte, edited by Hans Brandenburg, 1916 Friedrich Hebbel an Julius Campe, edited by Reinhard Crasemann, 1949 Neue Hebbel-Briefe, edited by Anni Meetz, 1963 Briefe an Friedrich Hebbel, edited by Moris Enzinger and Elisabeth Bruck, 2 vols, 1973–75 Briefe, edited by U. Henry Gerlach, 2 vols, 1975–78 Hebbel-Briefe, edited by Arthur Tilo Alt, 1989

Further Reading Alt, A. Tilo, “Friedrich Hebbel” in Nineteenth-Century German Writers, 1841–1900, edited by James Hardin and Siegfried Mews, Detroit: Gale Research, 1993 Bornstein, Paul, Friedrich Hebbels Persönlichkeit: Gespräche, Urteile, Erinnerungen, 2 vols, Berlin: Propyläen, 1924

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Campbell, Thomas Moody, The Life and Works of Friedrich Hebbel, Boston: Badger, 1919 Flygt, Sten G., Friedrich Hebbel, Boston: Twayne, 1968 Grundmann, Hilmar (editor), Friedrich Hebbel: neue Studien zu Werk und Wirkung, Heide in Holstein: Westholsteinische Verlagsanstalt Boyens, 1982 Kaiser, Herbert, Friedrich Hebbel: geschichtliche Interpretation des dramatischen Werks, Munich: Fink, 1983 Koller-Andorf, Ida and Hilmar Grundmann (editors), Hebbel, Mensch und Dichter im Werk: Problemdrama und Postmoderne, Vienna: Verlag des Verbandes der Wissenschaft Geselschaften Osterreichs, 1988 Kreuzer, Helmut, Hebbel in neuer Sicht, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1963, revised 1969 Kuh, Emil, Biographie Friedrich Hebbels, Vienna: Braumüller, 1877; 2nd revised edition 1907 Meetz, Anni, Friedrich Hebbel, 2nd revised edition, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1965 Müller, Joachim, Das Weltbild Friedrich Hebbels, Halle: Niemeyer, 1955 Pilling, Claudia, Hebbels Dramen, Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang, 1998 Purdie, Edna, Friedrich Hebbel: A Study of His Life and Work, London: Oxford University Press, 1932 Wiese, Benno von, “Das Tragische in Hebbels Welt- und Kunstanschauung”, Euphorion, 41 (1941): 1–21

Heiberg, Johanne Luise

1812–1890

Danish actress and autobiographer Johanne Luise Heiberg was the most celebrated actress in 19thcentury Denmark. Although her career came to an end in 1864, she remained a legend well into the 20th century. Her lasting fame is, however, based on her memoirs Et liv gienoplevet i erindringen [1891–92; A Life Relived in Memory]. They tell the story of her childhood and her married life, as well as of her career in the theatre. They also show how she and her husband Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791–1860), poet, critic, Hegelian philosopher, dramatist, and theatre producer, were leading cultural figures, in contact with all the writers, artists, academics, and politicians of consequence in Denmark. The Heibergs’ home became a centre where standards of taste and manners were established, and which set the tone with the educated and wealthy in the capital, Copenhagen. Her memoirs follow an almost annalistic pattern, but there is no question of a monotonous enumeration of events. The work is carefully planned (she worked on it for 30 years until her 70th birthday, allowing it to be published only on the day of the centenary of her husband’s birth). The initial chapters about her early years – a sad piece of social realism about want and wretched housing in an unhappy parental home – is narrated in a fairly simple idiom, but as the story of her life and career develops, the self-taught actress masters a complex, yet eloquent style, reflecting her wide reading of classical literature. The memoirs present a series of principal themes. The chapters on her childhood describe her early career as a dancer, leading to her successful debut as an actress at the age of 14 and her definitive change from ballet to acting in 1827. At the same time they show her transformation from a melancholy and introverted child to a self-assured, happy, and sociable young woman. The account of her early years includes her experience

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of the unwelcome advances that her precocious erotic attractiveness provoked from men considerably older than herself. The story of her marriage to Johan Ludvig Heiberg, 21 years her senior, dwells on their happy domestic life, their summer vacations in the countryside, and their travels in Europe. About their intimate relationship the memoirs remain silent, but in her letters to her husband during his stay at a spa abroad in 1854–55 she reveals her unfulfilled erotic passion. However, her devotion to her husband was unconditional. As the memoirs bear out, she took on his views on drama, praising his plays and the parts he wrote for her. She was also his loyal comrade-inarms, as shown in her account of their bitter conflict with the administrators and actors of the Theatre Royal, which led to his resignation as a managing director in 1858, when she also temporarily stood down. Discussions of the many roles that she performed over the years take up a considerable part of the autobiography. Here she gives an insight into her methods of acting and the interpretation of roles. The most outstanding example is her analysis of the character of Lady Macbeth, whom, contrary to the conventional conception at the time, she aimed to portray as a young woman, and did so convincingly. In the context of her indignant attack on Heiberg’s main rival and critic F.L. Høedt she writes a kind of manifesto of her views on dramatic art. As she emphasizes the primacy of the dramatist’s text, she finds that the quality of acting will improve from performance of the outstanding European and Danish dramatists. She accepts realism as far as it means nature and truth, but she disapproves of all show of realistic trivia on the stage. Her demand that all art should be elevating and liberating, never stooping to represent merely the real, reveals her to be a representative of the idealist bourgeois culture that was dominant in Denmark in her day. Further testimony to her ideas of the techniques of dramatic art can be found in her observations about the importance of deportment and mime. Heiberg’s involvement with all aspects of her profession also makes her consider the ethical justification for acting. Here she shows her bourgeois moral norms and her firm Christian faith. Johanne Luise Heiberg was remarkable as an actress, and with her memoirs she has left a record of the progress of an extraordinary individual, while offering a rich picture of the life and society of Denmark over more than half a century. In 1848 the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote an essay about her performance as Juliet in Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet when she was of mature age; and the dramatist Henrik Ibsen paid tribute to her art with a poem in 1871. Niels Lyhne Jensen Biography Born Johanne Luise Patges in Copenhagen, Denmark, 22 November 1812. Began acting and singing for patrons of her father’s tavern and billiard parlour in Copenhagen at a young age. Became professional singer and dancer at the age of 14. Played Agnete in successful production of Elverhoj (Elfinhill), the source of the Danish national anthem, at the Kongelige [Royal] Theater, Copenhagen, 1828. Married the playwright Johan Ludvig Heiberg, 1831, and acted in many of his vaudevilles. Was the most important actress in Danish theatre until her retirement in 1864, performing at the Kongelige Theatre and excelling in plays by Eugène Scribe and Henrik Hertz. Associated with Danish intelligentsia. Husband died, 1860. Directed plays and encouraged writers such as Henrik Ibsen and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, 1864–79. Died in Copenhagen, 22 November 1890.

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Selected Writings Et liv gienoplevet i erindringen (autobiography), edited by A.D. Jørgensen, 4 vols, 1891–92, Aage Friis, 4 vols, 1944, and Niels Birger Wamberg, 3 vols, 1973–74 Johanne Luise Heiberg og Andreas Frederik Krieger: en samling breve 1860–1889 (correspondence), edited by Aage Friis and P. Munch, 2 vols, 1914–15 Fra det Heibergske hjem: Johan Ludvig og Johanne Luise Heibergs indbyrdes brevveksling (correspondence), edited by Aage Friis, 1940 Breve fra og til Johanne Luise Heiberg (correspondence), edited by Just Rahbek, 2 vols, 1955

Further Reading Henning, Fenger, The Heibergs, translated by Frederick J. Marker, New York: Twayne, 1971 Kierkegaard, Søren, Crisis in the Life of an Actress and Other Essays, translated by Stephen Crites, London: Collins, 1967 Marker, Lise-Lone, “Fru Heiberg: A Study of the Art of the Romantic Actor”, Theatre Research, 13/1 (1973) Marker, Frederick J., “Fru Heiberg as Lady Macbeth”, Scandinavica, 12/2 (1973): 130 ff.

Heine, Heinrich

1797?–1856

German poet, journalist, travel diarist, and memoirist Heinrich Heine is often portrayed as one of the quintessential outsiders in German literary history: an expatriate who attempted with varying success to make his living as a writer, he was also a Jew in an epoch of fierce anti-Semitic laws and practices. Indeed, his memoirs, together with the satire, essays, and poetry he produced in Germany and France, powerfully document exclusion and strife among and between national, social, and ethnic groups in the turbulent 19th century. Heine’s Jewish and emigrant identities gave him unique perspectives on the political and social upheaval caused by events such as the Paris July Revolution of 1830 and the revolutions of 1848, and these perspectives were avowedly partisan and passionate. The son of a businessman in a relatively assimilated Jewish community in Dusseldorf, the boy named Harry Heine studied under Jesuit teachers and socialized with Catholics. His family’s attempts to train him as a banker were in vain, as Harry conceived of himself as a poet and writer. However, he did make a career-oriented decision after studying law, literature, and history at the universities of Bonn, Göttingen, and Berlin. Heine knew that in order to obtain any worthwhile position in academia or in the public sector he would need to disavow his Jewish identity, and in 1825 he was baptized Lutheran and took the first name Heinrich (although he signed his work “H. Heine”). But this move, which Heine in no way considered a true conversion from the Jewish faith, proved to be of no help whatsoever in overcoming anti-Semitic stigmas. The only job offer he received was an editorship at the Munich journal Politische Annalen [Political Annals], where he worked only in 1827–28. In 1822 Heine began to produce life writings that would appear in various forms until not long before his death. In Briefe aus Berlin [1822; Letters from Berlin], he describes his impressions of that city’s cultural “glow” and political “misery”. While Heine’s stay in Berlin included visits to prominent literary salons and acquaintances with leading Romantic thinkers in addition to his university studies (during the course of which he heard

Hegel’s lectures), the fact that liberal political and social reforms were blocked consistently and that in 1822 Jews were forbidden to pursue academic careers led to serious disillusionment. Heine referred to democratic freedom in Germany as nothing more than a “mask of freedom” disguising a climate of censorship and police repression. Supported in part by an uncle in Hamburg, Heine travelled through the Harz mountains and Italy; these trips led to the publication of the travel diary Harzreise (Journey through the Harz) and more travel diaries from 1826 to 1831 that document journeys to Munich and Lucca, among other places. Heine wrote in a letter that travel was his “earthly specialty”. During these years he further developed a philosophy of freedom that strongly endorsed the French Revolution and foreshadowed his eventual embrace of France and of Paris as the “New Jerusalem”. Particularly after Louis-Philippe of Orléans (the “Citizen King”) replaced Charles X in a bloodless coup in 1830, Heine saw in France the setting for a classless utopia based on the Saint-Simonian ideals of sensuality, beauty, love, and justice (see Spencer). These views largely persisted after he emigrated to France in 1831 and made the acquaintance of the writers Balzac and Hugo, composers Chopin and Liszt, and others. In France, where he remained until his death, Heine produced political essays and worked as a reporter and journalist in addition to continuing to write the poetry for which he is perhaps most famous. Geständnisse (Confessions), published in 1854, constitutes Heine’s intellectual autobiography and his major completed work of life writing. Here he asserts somewhat ambiguously that he has “accomplished nothing on this beautiful Earth. Nothing has become of me, nothing but a poet. One is much, when one is a poet, and especially when one is a great lyric poet in Germany, among the people who have transcended all other nations in philosophy and in song”. Heine wrote the Geständnisse while he was ill, and they privilege religion over the philosophy that preoccupied him for some time and that he had attempted to unify with his emancipatory political agenda. But the extent to which Heine was really involved in contemporary philosophy, and particularly that of Hegel, is a matter of debate. Heine himself stated that “honestly, I rarely understood him [Hegel]”. However, after attending Hegel’s lectures he did integrate central concepts such as the idealized progress of history and of the history of ideas throughout the ages into his own thinking (see Spencer again). Heine’s most substantial life-writing project was never fully realized: the Memoiren (written 1823–54; Memoirs). Fragments of this project were published in other works such as the Confessions and in a posthumous edition (1884). While the majority of the Memoirs deal with Heine’s childhood, he also describes his later interest in philosophy and his frustration after the German Federal Assembly’s decision to ban his work as of December 1835. I had to find a new content for the new form; thereby I came upon the unhappy idea of busying myself with ideas, and I thought about the inner meaning of appearances, about the ultimate basis of things, about the destiny of man, about ways to make people better and happier, etc. … But oh! when finally I had written something, I was forbidden to write … I cried like a child! (Karpeles translation)

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Heine’s life writings, with their mix of such personal reminiscences and political, social, and aesthetic theory, transcend their 19th-century dilemmas and form an exemplary critique of repressions, prejudices, and misunderstandings among national and ethnic entities in general. Laurie R. Johnson Biography Born Chaim Harry Heine in the German city of Düsseldorf, 13 December 1797(?), into a Jewish family. His father was a textile merchant. Educated at a dame’s school for two years, at a Hebrew school, and at Catholic schools run by Jesuits, 1804–14. Studied at a business school, 1814–15. Apprenticed to a banking house and to a grocery dealer in Frankfurt, 1815. Worked in his uncle’s bank in Hamburg, 1817; his uncle, Salomon Heine, became his benefactor, sponsoring him for many years. Ran a textile business, 1818–19. Studied law at the universities of Bonn, 1819–20, Göttingen, 1820–21 (expelled for participating in a duel), and Berlin, 1821–23; visited Rahel Varnhagen’s salon and joined the Society for Culture and Science of the Jews. Published Gedichte [Poems], an immediate success, 1821. Met Goethe, 1824. Returned to study in Göttingen, 1824, receiving a doctorate in law in 1825. Converted to Christianity and was baptized as a Lutheran Protestant, taking the name of Christian Johann Heinrich Heine, 1825. Worked as a writer in Lüneberg and Hamburg, 1825–27. Launched his career as a writer with the publication of the popular Buch der Lieder (1827; Book of Songs) and the prose work Reisebilder (1826–31; Pictures of Travel). Subsequently wrote many works on French and German culture. Invited to Munich to become co-editor of a new journal, Politische Annalen, 1827–28; worked there for six months. Travelled to Italy, 1828. Settled in Hamburg after his father’s death, living with his mother and uncle Salomon, 1829. Moved to Paris, attracted by the July Revolution, 1831, and increasingly applied himself to democratic political causes, in exile in France. Began work as correspondent for the Augsburg newspaper Allgemeine Zeitung. Writings banned in Prussia, 1835. Received a pension from the French government, 1836–48. His book (1840) attacking the deceased German-Jewish intellectual Ludwig Börne drew much opprobium, eventually involving him in a duel. Married Crescence Eugénie Mirat after a seven-year relationship, 1841. Visited Hamburg, 1843. Became ill from a disease of the spine, 1845; confined to bed from 1848. Published Vermischte Schriften [Miscellaneous Writings], 1854–55. Died in Paris, 17 February 1856.

Selected Writings Briefe aus Berlin, 1822; edited by Walter Victor, 1954 Reisebilder (includes Die Harzreise; Die Heimkehr; Die Nordsee; Ideen: Das Buch Le Grand; Reise von München nach Genua: Die Bäden von Lucca; Die Stadt Lucca; Englische Fragmente), 4 vols, 1826–31; as Reisebriefe und Reisebilder, edited by Gotthard Erler, 1981; as Unterwegs in Europa: Reisebilder, edited by Gotthard Erler, 2 vols, 1995; as Heinrich Heine’s Pictures of Travel, translated by Charles Godfrey Leland, 1855; as Travel Pictures, translated by Francis Storr, 1887; as Pictures of Travel, translated by Russell Davis Gilmann, 1907; translated by Elizabeth A. Sharp as The Italian Travel Sketches, 1892, and Heinrich Heine’s Italian Travel Sketches, 1927; as Journey to Italy, edited by Christopher Johnson, translated by Leland, 1998 Geständnisse (intellectual autobiography) in Vermischte Schriften, 3 vols, 1854–55; as Confessions, with Tolstoi’s A Confession, translated by Peter Heinegg, 1981 Memoiren und neugesammelte Gedichte, Prosa, und Briefe, edited by Eduard Engel, 1884; as Memoirs, translated by Thomas W. Evans, 1884; as Memoirs: From His Works, Letters, and Conversations, edited by Gustav Karpeles, translated by Gilbert Cannan, 1910 (reprinted 1973) Heinrich Heines Autobiographie: nach seinen Werken, Briefen und Gesprächen, edited by Gustav Karpeles, 1888 Briefe, edited by Friedrich Hirth, 6 vols, 1950–51 Sämtliche Schriften, edited by Klaus Briegleb, 1968–76 Selected Works, edited and translated by Helen M. Mustard, 1973

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Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke, edited by Manfred Windfuhr, 16 vols, 1973–97

Further Reading Hermand, Jost, Mehr als ein Liberaler: über Heinrich Heine, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1991 Höhn, Gerhard, Heine-Handbuch: Zeit, Person, Werk, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987 Reich-Ranicki, Marcel, Der Fall Heine, Stuttgart: Deutsche VerlagsAnstalt, 1997 Sammons, Geoffrey L., Heinrich Heine: A Modern Biography, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979 Spencer, Hanna, Heinrich Heine, Boston: Twayne, 1982 Unfermeyer, Louis, Heinrich Heine, Paradox and Poet: The Life, 2 vols, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937 Wiese, Benno von, Signaturen: zu Heinrich Heine und seinem Werk, Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1976 Zlotkowski, Edward A., Heinrich Heine’s Reisebilder: The Tendency of the Text and the Identity of the Age, Bonn: Bouvier, 1980

Hellman, Lillian

1905–1984

American playwright, screenwriter, and autobiographer The American dramatist Lillian Hellman, best known for her melodramatic plays such as The Children’s Hour (1934) and The Little Foxes (1939), established a new, highly successful career for herself with the publication of her first memoir, An Unfinished Woman (1969). She benefitted from the rise of the women’s movement and from a book market that had begun to thrive on the stories of women’s lives, told in both autobiographies and biographies. Her clipped style, in the manner of Hemingway – at once direct and elliptical – made her an intriguing, provocative figure. On the one hand, she related adventures such as her tour of Spain during the civil war in the 1930s; on the other hand, she presented her private life as a conflicted, sometimes self-destructive, and always arduous work in progress. Hellman’s idea of herself as unfinished seemed to stimulate readers to think of her as an honest, unpretentious autobiographer. Her book became a bestseller. Hellman did not present herself as a feminist, yet her successful career as a screenwriter and playwright made her a role model – as did her willingness to explore what it meant to be a woman in a male-dominated world. She did not conceal her troubled on-again, off-again relationship with the mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, or her, by turns, passive / aggressive responses to his unfaithfulness and cruelty. That she had demonstrably overcome difficult love affairs and a drinking problem gave her the authority and respect accorded to a triumphant survivor. Initial responses to An Unfinished Woman concerned the content of Hellman’s life; that is, critics did not examine the art involved in Hellman’s memoirs carefully. Only with the appearance of her second memoir, Pentimento (1973), constructed more like a series of vignettes or short stories, did Hellman’s gift for shaping her life into narrative begin to capture the attention of critics. She provided riveting portraits of friends such as Hammett and Dorothy Parker, but it was the drama of her involvement with a childhood friend, Julia, that earned her even more admiration. It was a tale of how the diffident Hellman agreed to help Julia in her underground work against the Nazis

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by smuggling funds for the resistance struggle out of Germany. (The episode eventually became the basis for a film, starring Jane Fonda as Hellman, Jason Robards as Hammett, and Vanessa Redgrave as Julia.) In her first two memoirs, Hellman acknowledged her antifascist politics but not her deep involvement with the Left or with the Communist party in the 1930s and 1940s. Only with Scoundrel Time (1976) did she tackle head-on her own troubles with the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). She refused to testify about friends involved in radical politics, and wrote a letter to HUAC with the memorable phrase: “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions”. At the time, she was put on the blacklist in Hollywood, which meant that she was not employed by Hollywood producers afraid that they would be accused of aiding the communist “conspiracy”. Retelling her story in Scoundrel Time, Hellman attacked liberals who did not come to her defence or to the aid of other writers who were branded with the communist label. Scoundrel Time threw down the gauntlet, and Hellman’s critics replied with savage reviews. Writers such as Mary McCarthy and Martha Gellhorn attacked the veracity of Hellman’s earlier memoirs, particularly the story of Julia, which Hellman made no effort to corroborate. She brought a lawsuit against Mary McCarthy for slandering her on television. But Hellman’s integrity was further questioned when Muriel Gardiner, apparently the model for Julia, published her own memoir (Gardiner and Hellman had in fact never met, although they did have a mutual friend). Hellman’s reputation as an autobiographer never recovered from the assault on her credibility and on her politics. She was fiercely condemned for obscuring her Stalinist politics and for appropriating details from other peoples’ lives as her own. And yet her imaginative use of the autobiographical form, her vivid style, and her candour about aspects of her private life suggest that her memoirs deserve renewed attention. Her work provides rich examples of how the memoir form can be shaped as diary entries (An Unfinished Woman) and short stories (Pentimento). Hellman herself seemed to recognize that she had developed a form of autobiographical fiction. In her last completed work, Maybe (1980), she explicitly called attention to the ambiguity inherent in narratives, suggesting that the very act of recalling the past is inevitably a construction resembling fiction even when it is based on fact. Indeed, she intimated to a friend that had Maybe been published as her first memoir, it might have forestalled some of the attacks that her later work engendered. Carl Rollyson Biography Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, 20 June 1905. Her father was a shoe salesman, her mother a member of an Alabama banking family. Divided her time as a child between New Orleans and New York. Attended classes at New York University, 1924–25; Columbia University, New York, 1925. Worked as a reader for the New York publishers Horace Liveright, 1924–25. Married the writer Arthur Kober, 1925 (divorced 1932). Reviewer, New York HeraldTribune, 1925–28; theatrical play reader, 1927–30. Began lifelong relationship with the novelist Dashiell Hammett, 1930. Reader, MetroGoldwyn Mayer, 1930–32. Received critical acclaim for her first, controversial, play The Children’s Hour (1934). Toured Europe, including the Soviet Union, France, and Spain, 1936–37. Wrote her best-known play, The Little Foxes (1939). Wrote anti-fascist plays

during World War II, including Watch on the Rhine (1941) and The Searching Wind (1944). Made a second trip to the Soviet Union, 1945. Came before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), 1952, and was blacklisted for leftist activities, 1950s. Wrote the Chekhovian dramas The Autumn Garden (1951) and Toys in the Attic (1960). Taught at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1966, and at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; and University of California, Berkeley. Published the first volume of her memoirs, An Unfinished Woman, 1969. Died in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, 30 June 1984.

Selected Writings An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir, 1969 Pentimento, 1973 Scoundrel Time, 1976 Maybe: A Story, 1980 (with Peter S. Feibleman) Eating Together: Recipes’ Recollections, 1984 Conversations with Hellman, edited by Jackson R. Bryer, 1986

Further Reading Adams, Timothy Dow, Telling Lies in Modern American Autobiography, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990 Eakin, Paul John, “Reference and the Representative in American Autobiography: Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman” in Identita e scrittura: studi sull’autobiografia nord-americana, edited by A.L. Accardo et al., Rome: Bulzoni, 1988 Griffin, Alice and Geraldine Thorston, Understanding Lillian Hellman, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999 Mellen, Joan, Hellman and Hammett: The Legendary Passion of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, New York: HarperCollins, 1996 Rollyson, Carl, Lillian Hellman: Her Legend and Her Legacy, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988 Spacks, Patricia Meyer, The Female Imagination: A Literary and Psychological Investigation of Women’s Writing, London: Allen and Unwin, 1976 Wright, William, Lillian Hellman: The Image, the Woman, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986

Héloïse see Abélard, Peter and Héloïse

Herder, Johann Gottfried

1744–1803

German philosopher, critic, travel diarist, and letter writer Herder was a seminal thinker, writer, mentor, and initiator in many areas of inquiry: aesthetics and literary theory, linguistics, philosophy of history, Bible criticism, psychology, education, anthropology, and cultural studies such as the appreciation of folk art from the most diverse cultures. He was a preacher, educator, and church official; he was a poet and especially a great translator. But he did not live to write his autobiography, as his friend Goethe was able to do. Herder was, however, significant for the history of life writing in several respects. He left an unpublished Journal meiner Reise im Jahre 1769 (Journey of My Travels in the Year 1769), the “diary” of his voyage from Riga to Nantes in 1769, a unique document; he advocated fervently the use of biographies, and especially autobiographies, for the

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investigation of human nature and for educational purposes; he reflected repeatedly on the nature of autobiographical writing; he wrote a number of important biographical essays and emphasized the lives of great men for the historical consciousness and identity of a nation; and he humanized the Bible by stressing the lives of its protagonists, including Jesus Christ. At the age of 25, Herder fled from his successful occupations as a teacher and preacher in Riga that he considered too confining. He spent nine months abroad, mostly in France, under the pretence of wanting to learn French and studying the greater world. During this crisis period, he kept a “diary” to voice his inner conflicts, his hopes and plans for the future, and his experiences. Partly intended for publication, the Reisejournal became a self-reflective, intimate document similar to pietist life stories, and remained a fragment without conclusion, first published in an abridged version in 1846. Only one-sixth of the text deals with external events and impressions. The rest concerns Herder’s conflicts of “living” and “writing”, grand plans for future publications, a project for the curriculum of a model school in Riga or St Petersburg, reflections on the state of Europe, especially France, hopes for meaningful political employment to reform Russia, responses to current reading, and drafts for immediate publication projects – all in all an intimate portrait of a great mind at a decisive point in his life, and chaotic new visions of future plans and ideas. Beyond such a dialogue with one’s own self, the Reisejournal is a confession of past sins, of not having lived life as it should have been lived, and an attempt to find a new orientation, almost a Pietist conversion, but only a partially successful one. Still, this is true “storm and stress” writing, and the Reisejournal is a crucial document that contains the ideas for most of Herder’s future books and activities. Herder was convinced of the crucial heuristic power of selfreflection. He believed that narratives of one’s own life revealed the truth about the person, even aspects of the truth that the person did not want to reveal. Therefore, in the three versions of his treatise Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele [1774–78; On the Cognition and Sensation of the Human Soul], he emphasized the epistemological value of such selfrevelations. Increasingly concerned with educational problems in the Duchy of Sachsen-Weimar, Herder later emphasized a judicious selection of autobiographies for young minds. In the first “collection” of his Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität [1793–97; Letters on the Advancement of Humanity], Herder contrasted the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin with the Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, praising the practical common sense and sane perception of the world in the first, and warning against the subjective distortions and misperceptions in the second. In his last book, Adrastea (1801–04), Herder stressed the value of historically important memoirs for the formation of a national identity. At Herder’s urging, his former student Johann Georg Müller in Switzerland edited six volumes of Bekenntnisse merkwürdiger Männer von sich selbst [1791– 1810; Confessions of Remarkable Men by Themselves], an anthology of classical autobiographies, for which Herder wrote an introduction in the form of four letters to Müller (1790–91). Herder’s complaint was that the fragmented German nation did little to support the careers of its creative geniuses in all areas, and even less to preserve the memory of great Germans. Therefore, he wrote on Ulrich von Hutten, Leibniz, Thomas

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Abbt, G.E. Lessing, and a host of others, using the biographical essay both for an “advancement of humanity” and a reflection on the German nation and its disjointed and backward state. He was not concerned with biographical details, but with the contributions of these subjects to the common goal of a perfection of the human race. Therefore, in his many texts dealing with history, he did not write the lives of kings and generals, but of artists, writers, philosophers, inventors, scientists, and explorers. Herder was a preacher and administrator of the Lutheran church. He viewed the Bible as a “human document” and called Jesus Christ “der Menschensohn” [son of man]. In his many writings on the Old and New Testaments and the study of theology, he humanized the Bible by relating the text to real people. Moses, King David (as the author of psalms), the prophets, and especially Jesus Christ, his disciples, and the evangelists emerge as historical human beings in their own time, and their portraits can be called biographies. Herder considered the Bible texts divinely inspired, but written in human terms for a specific audience and purpose. He was, therefore, keenly interested in all textual and historical studies available to him. Herder’s view of autobiography and biography is connected, on the one hand, with his sensualistic epistemology, as a way to arrive at an authentic knowledge of human nature, and, on the other hand, with his “historicism”, seeing nature and the human race as part of a cycle of life-stages and an eternal decay and renewal. In his own political and historical situation, he saw the need to harness historical biography and autobiography for the service of creating a true German national consciousness as the precondition for a real “nation”. Wulf Koepke Biography Born in Mohrungen, East Prussia (now Morag, Poland), 25 August 1744. His father was a teacher, organist, and church warden. Attended the local Latin school, then at age 16 lodged with a clergyman with an extensive library, working as a copyist. Studied theology, literature, and philosophy under Immanuel Kant at the University of Königsberg, 1762–64. Taught at the cathedral school in Riga and preached in churches, 1764–69. Travelled to France, then became travelling tutor to the young prince Wilhelm of Holstein, 1770. Stayed in Strasbourg for an eye operation, where he met and became friends with Goethe, 1770–71. Served as consistorial councillor and court preacher at the court of Schaumburg-Lippe in Bückeburg, early 1771–76. Married Caroline Flachsland, 1773: eight children (six survived him). Court preacher and general superintendent in the duchy of Sachsen-Weimar, 1776–1803. Collected folk songs and wrote his greatest work, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Reflections on the Philosophy of the History of Humankind), 1784–91. Elected external member, Prussian Academy of Science, 1787. Travelled to Italy, 1788–89. Died in Weimar, 18 December 1803.

Selected Writings Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele, 1778; in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 8, 1892; edited by Jürgen Brummack and Martin Bollacher, in Werke, vol. 4, 1994 Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität, 10 vols, 1793–97; in Sämtliche Werke, vols 17–18, 1881–83; edited by Walter Beyschlag, 1946; edited by Heinz Stolpe, Hans-Joachim Kruse, and Dietrich Simon, 2 vols, 1971 Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769, abridged version, 1846; in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 4, 1878; edited by Alexander Gillies (with English introduction and notes), 1947, revised 1969; edited by Katharina Mommsen, Momme Mommsen, and Georg Wackerl, 1976; by Rainer Wisbert in Werke, vol. 9/2, 1997; as Journal of My

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Travels in the Year 1769, translated by John Francis Harrison, PhD thesis, University of South Carolina, 1953 Von und an Herder: ungedruckte Briefe aus Herders Nachlass, edited by Heinrich Düntzer and Ferdinand Gottfried von Herder, 2 vols, 1861 (reprinted 1981) Sämtliche Werke, edited by Bernard Suphan et al., 33 vols, 1877–1913; reprinted, 1994 Briefe an Johann Georg Hamann, edited by Otto Hoffmann, 1887 (reprinted 1975) Herders Briefe in einem Band, edited by Regine Otto, 1970 Aus Herders Nachlass: ungedruckte Briefe, edited by Heinrich Düntzer and Ferdinand Gottfried von Herder, 3 vols, 1976 Briefe: Gesamtausgabe 1763–1803, edited by Wilhelm Dobbek and Günter Arnold, 1977– Bloss für Dich geschrieben: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen über eine Reise nach Italien 1788/89, 1980 Werke, edited by Wolfgang Pross, 2 vols, 1984–87 Werke, 10 vols, 1991 – Italienische Reise: Briefe und Tagebüchaufzeichnungen 1788–1789, edited by Albert Meier and Heide Hollmer, 1988

Further Reading Clark, Robert T., Herder: His Life and Thought, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955 Critchfield, Richard, “Herder’s Journal meiner Reise” in Johann Gottfried Herder: Language, History, and the Enlightenment, edited by Wulf Koepke, Columbia, South Carolina: Camden House, 1990 Gillies, Alexander, Herder, Oxford: Blackwell, 1945 Haym, Rudolf, Herder: Nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken, 2 vols, Berlin: Gaertner, 1877–85; Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1954–58 Kantzenbach, Friedrich Wilhelm, Johann Gottfried Herder in Selbstzeugnissen und Dokumenten, Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1970 Koepke, Wulf, Johann Gottfried Herder, Boston: Twayne, 1987 Müller-Michaels, Harro, “‘For His Own Self-Formation’: On the Educative Effect of Autobiography around 1800” in Johann Gottfried Herder: Academic Disciplines and the Pursuit of Knowledge, edited by Wulf Koepke, Columbia, South Carolina: Camden House, 1996 Nübel, Birgit, Autobiographische Kommunikationsmedien um 1800: Studien zu Rousseau, Wieland, Herder und Moritz, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994 Waniek, Erdmann, “Circle, Analogy, and Contrast: On Herder’s Style of Thought in his Journal” in Johann Gottfried Herder: Innovator through the Ages, edited by Wulf Koepke with Sampson B. Knoll, Bonn: Bouvier, 1982 Wiese, Benno von, “Der Philosoph auf dem Schiffe, Johann Gottfried Herder” in his Zwischen Utopie und Wirklichkeit: Studien zu deutschen Literatur, Dusseldorf: Bagel, 1963 Wisbert, Rainer, Das Bildungsdenken des jungen Herder: Interpretation der Schrift Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769, Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang, 1987

Herling-Grudzin´ski, Gustaw

1919–2000

Polish autobiographer, fiction writer, and critic Born in the central Polish town of Kielce in 1919, Gustaw Herling-Grudzin´ski (better known to English readers simply as Gustaw Herling) exemplifies the writer whose formative circumstances prove far more interesting than anything his considerable imaginative talent might invent. A student of literature at the University of Warsaw, his studies were cut short by Hitler’s invasion in 1939, when Herling-Grudzin´ski became active in the earliest Polish efforts to resist the Nazi occupation. It was not long, however, before he was arrested in Russianoccupied eastern Poland and sent to a Soviet forced-labour camp

near Archangel. His experiences there from 1940 to 1942 are recounted in his groundbreaking first book Inny s´wiat (A World Apart), published in New York in 1951 with an introduction by the philosopher Bertrand Russell. The publication of A World Apart was a significant event. Because Herling-Grudzin´ski was a staunch critic of Soviet communism, the book appeared in translation two years before it could be published in the original Polish, and then only by an émigré press in London. A World Apart introduced a young, gifted writer to a world audience, and the strength of his testament justified this sudden attention: Herling-Grudzin´ski provides one of the first and most powerful accounts of the injustices of Stalin’s regime during World War II. As an analysis of life under the Soviet thumb, the book is rich in psychological detail and intuitive human insights. As a narrative, it demonstrates the author’s skill as a storyteller who not only manages the many voices and sub-plots of camp life but can effectively retell or fictionalize reality without trivializing it, later prompting frequent comparisons to the work of Primo Levi. A World Apart also bears traces of what would become a hallmark of Herling-Grudzin´ski’s approach to narrative: the equal weight he assigns to all kinds of retelling, whether based on historical reality or generated by the imagination. Much of his oeuvre confronts the reader with the difficulty of separating record, style, and illustrative fabrication. This is perhaps most evident in Herling-Grudzin´ski’s masterwork, Dziennik pisany noca ˛ (1970–98; The Journal Written at Night), selections of which have appeared in English under the main heading of Volcano and Miracle (1996). After his release from the labour camp, Herling-Grudzin´ski enlisted in the Allied army and took part in their invasion of Italy, where he eventually settled after the war. In 1970 he started to publish brief “entries” from the diary in the Polish émigré literary journal Kultura, which he co-founded. A project spanning nearly three decades, the diary is a miscellany without preconceived architecture, with the noteworthy exception that every entry – following the diarist’s convention – is untitled and identified only by the date of composition. It includes everything from daily recollections to musings on history, autobiography, and a life spent in literature, and Herling-Grudzin´ski shifts readily from the real author’s remarks on novelist Franz Kafka in one passage to an imagined author’s fictitious biography in the next. With each successive entry, elements of the author’s life evoke his stories, just as his fantasies played a very active role in his life both on and off the written page. Accordingly, it is impossible to discuss Herling-Grudzin´ski’s autobiographical prose without a word about his scant – yet highly original – short fiction, published in translation as The Island: Three Tales (1967). Set primarily in Italy, and frequently drawing on details from the author’s life, the stories necessarily address the author’s attitudes toward life writing per se. For example, the expansive “The Tower” provides far less in terms of “plot” than it does by way of a psychological portrait of the speaker’s overwhelming isolation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the speaker is a Polish soldier on leave in the Piedmont countryside, where he encounters François-Xavier de Maistre’s Le Lépreux de la cité d’Aoste, the fictitious account of a leper confined to a nearby tower. But the speaker reads the book as a true biography and increasingly adopts de Maistre’s voice in depicting his own narrative. Through a subtle sleight-of-hand,

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Herling-Grudzin´ski makes a fictitious account real within an equally fictitious narrative frame, which in turn has its moorings in the author’s biography. Although Herling-Grudzin´ski’s output has been small in comparison to such Polish contemporaries as Czes≠aw Mi≠osz and Witold Gombrowicz, his contribution to the art of life writing has been equally vital. Unlike Mi≠osz, principally a poet, or Gombrowicz, primarily a novelist and playwright, HerlingGrudzin´ski’s main literary project has been his life writing, the lifelong struggle to mediate his artistic and moral consciousness through deceptively straightforward, autobiographical prose. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, representation and invention, Herling-Grudzin´ski’s work offers an often surprising and ambiguous vision of life, of writing, and the distinctions between the two. Benjamin Paloff Biography Born in Kielce, central Poland, 20 May 1919. Studied Polish literature at the University of Warsaw, 1937–39; editor of the weekly journal Orka na Ugorze [Ploughing the Fallow Field]. Organized the anti-Nazi underground group PLAN and the newspaper Biuletyn Polski [Polish Bulletin] following Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939. Arrested in Russian-occupied eastern Poland and deported to a Soviet labour camp near Archangel, 1940. Released in 1942; joined the Polish forces fighting on the side of the Allies against the Germans in Italy (awarded the Virtuti Militari). Literary editor, Orze≠ Bia≠y [White Eagle], 1945–47. Frequent contributor to the Paris-based Polish émigré monthly Kultura from 1947, and associated with the group of Polish émigré writers based around it. Lived in London and worked for the émigré weekly Wiadoms´ci Literackie [Literary News], 1948–52. After the death of his first wife, married Lidia Croce, daughter of the historian and philosopher Benedetto Croce, and settled in Naples, 1955. Contributed to the Italian monthly Tempo Presente. Visited Poland, 1991. Died in Naples, 4 July 2000.

Selected Writings Inny s´ wiat (autobiographical fiction); as A World Apart, translated by Joseph Marek, 1951; in Polish, 1953, and as vol. 1 of Pisma zebrane (collected works), 1994 Dziennik pisany noca ˛ [The Diary Written at Night], 6 vols, 1970–98; part as Volcano and Miracle: A Selection of Fiction and Nonfiction from The Journal Written at Night, edited and translated by Ronald Strom, 1996 1. 1971–1972, 1973 2. 1973–1979, 1980 3. 1980–1983, 1984 4. 1984–1988, 1989 5. 1989–1992, 1993 6. 1993–1996, 1998 Pisma zebrane (collected works), 1994– Also wrote short autobiographical fiction, including Skrzydia oltarza (1960; “The Island” and “The Tower”, published in The Island: Three Tales, translated by Ronald Strom, 1967).

Further Reading Kandulski, Henryk, “O Herlingu-Grudzin´skim”, Arka, 18 (1987): 30–37 Mi≠osz, Czes≠aw, The History of Polish Literature, New York: Macmillan, and London: Collier-Macmillan, 1969 Nycz, Ryszard, “‘A Closed Sliver of the World’: On the Writing of Gustaw Herling-Grudzin´ski”, translated by Joanna Dutkiewicz, Renascence, 47/3–4 (1995): 219–27 Przybylski, Ryszard, By√ i pisa√: o prozie Gustawa HerlingaGrudzin´skiego, Poznan´: Wydawnictwo A-5, 1991

Herzen, Aleksandr

425

1812–1870

Russian fiction writer, critic, and autobiographer Aleksandr Herzen was the most profound Russian political writer of the 19th century. “No good biographies of him exist, perhaps because his own autobiography is a great literary masterpiece”, said Isaiah Berlin. He is familiar to Russians as a fiction writer, editor, autobiographer, and critic, sometimes using the pseudonyms Iskander or Nikonskii. Herzen trained as a physicist and mathematician, graduating from Moscow University with a dissertation on Copernicus, and his many essays discuss science and the history of ideas. He was frequently exiled for free-thinking and political activities, emigrating with his family to France in 1847, where he continued to produce revolutionary propaganda, and later living in Switzerland and London (1852–64). In exile he edited prominent political periodicals – his The Bell influenced Russian revolutionaries. (Lenin praised the embryonic expression of dialectical materialism in Herzen’s writings.) In articles and numerous letters to friends Herzen denounced the expanding capitalist culture. In his Letters from France and Italy, 1847–51 he stated that the “bourgeoisie has no great past, and its future is questionable”, and portrays the French working class sympathetically and optimistically. In another autobiographical book, Vom Anderen Ufer (1850; From the Other Shore), he succumbed however to pessimism and disillusionment on the outcome of the French revolution of 1848, believing that the socialist movement was defeated. Herzen’s personal tragedy contributed to the growing pessimism of his writings after 1848: in 1851 his mother and son perished in a shipwreck; his wife died in 1852. These events prompted his move to London. Herzen partly overcame his scepticism and pessimism, as reflected in Pis’ma k staromu tovarishchu [1867–69; Letters to an Old Friend], which contains correspondence on issues including the Marxist movement in Europe and the proletariat’s historical mission. Herzen’s autobiography Byloe i dumy (1855 and subsequent volumes; My Past and Thoughts), including his youth experiences in Russia, notes of European journeys (including Italy and France), and portrayals of important literary and political figures, is not easily defined generically. Some critics believe that this gigantic free narrative resembles Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth). Herzen’s book also contains confessions and an emotional account of his personal tragedy. His style reflects a fascination with the heroic writing of the Russian Decembrists and with European utopian thought. The memoirs bear a strong imprint of Romantic dualism, Romanticizing lofty ideology and revolutionary action. In the introduction to the fifth part of My Past and Thoughts Herzen declares that the work “is not a historical monograph; it is a reflection of history in a person, whom History happened to encounter on its way”. Herzen’s epic work blends his vision of Russia and Europe with description of various lifestyles, places, people, and personal commentaries. It is a portrayal of the spiritual evolution of a revolutionary. In memoirs by Herzen’s friend the critic P.V. Annenkov – Zamechatel’noe desyatiletie (1880; The Extraordinary Decade) – Herzen is presented as an extraordinary mind and an entrancing speaker, with a natural gift for criticism and an enormous capacity to expose life’s dark sides. Herzen as narrator of his

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memoirs displays similar qualities, applying them to the events of his life and to European history. He employs powerful metaphorical description that helps to generalize his views of historical periods. He appears to use techniques usually found in novels as a mask to disguise his political and historical analysis of the past. Yet the range of countries, historical figures, and periods in My Past and Thoughts surpasses that in any novel, and is truly monumental. The book’s last three parts remained unfinished, partially published in the journals The Bell and The Northern Star. The sixth part is devoted to England during the years 1855–64. In the last parts of the book Herzen’s project appears too ambitious for him. Towards the end he abandons chronological description of events in favour of highlighting the history of ideas, focusing for example on the best representatives in England of post-1848 revolutionary emigration, and on “low-lying swamps”, the darkest sides of London urban life (mobs, spies, informers, etc.). In the narrative Herzen incorporates fragmented portraits of thinkers and revolutionaries (e.g. Garibaldi). The eighth part presents travel diaries of 1865–68, a collection of incidents. Despite the evaporation of the project’s epic spirit towards the end, Dostoevskii, Tolstoi, and Turgenev greatly admired Herzen’s memoirs for their libertarian humanism. Alexandra Smith Biography Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen. Born in Moscow, 6 April 1812. He was the illegitimate son of a nobleman; his mother was of German origin. Educated at his father’s home in Moscow. Studied natural sciences at Moscow University, 1829–33; awarded silver medal for his dissertation, “Analytical Exposition of Copernicus’ Solar System”, 1833. Joined a group of students to debate progressive ideas: arrested with other members and charged with “dangerous free-thinking”, 1834. Exiled to clerical service in Perm, 1835, then Viatka, 1835–37; transferred to Vladimir to serve in the governor’s office, 1837–39. Married Natal’ia Zakhar’ina (died 1852), 1838: eight children (one son and two daughters survived infancy). Returned to Moscow to serve in clerical office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 1839. Moved to St Petersburg to serve in the same department, 1840. Exiled to Novgorod for “spreading baseless rumours”, 1841. Served in Novgorod as councillor to the governing body, 1841–42. Resigned and lived and wrote in Moscow, 1842–46. Wrote a series of essays on philosophy and the natural sciences using the name Iskander, 1842–47; first critical essay published in Teleskop, 1836, subsequent works in Otechestvennye zapiski. Inherited a substantial fortune from his father, 1846. Emigrated to Europe with his family. Lived in Paris, 1847–49; visited Italy, 1848. Escaped to Switzerland after participating in antigovernment demonstrations in Paris, 1849. Refused to obey Tsar Nicholas I’s order to return to Russia in 1850 and became an exile. Naturalized in Switzerland, 1851. Lived in Nice, 1849–52. Became reconciled with his wife after she had an affair with the German poet Georg Herwegh, 1851. Mother and son drowned in a shipwreck, 1851; wife died, 1852. Lived in London, 1852–64, where he was joined by Nikolai Ogar’ev. Co-editor, with Ogar’ev, of émigré publications throughout the 1850s and 1860s. Founder, Free Russian Press, 1853, Poliarnaia Zvezda [The Northern Star], 1855–69, and Kolokol [The Bell], 1857–67. Had an affair with Ogar’ev’s wife, Natalya: one daughter and two sons (twins). Published his best-known work, Byloe i dumy (1855–69; My Past and Thoughts). Returned to Switzerland and continued literary and political activities, 1865–69. Died in Paris, 21 January 1870.

Selected Writings Vom anderen Ufer, 1850; as S togo berega, 1855; as From the Other Shore, translated by Moura Budberg, 1956 “Byloe i dumy” (memoirs: periodical publications), in Poliarnaia

zvezda, 1 (1855), 2 (1856), 3 (1857), 4 (1858), 5 (1859), 6 (1861), 7 (1862), 8 (1869); selections also in Kolokol, 1857–67 Pis’ma iz Frantsii i Italii, 1855; as Letters from France and Italy, 1847–1851, edited and translated by Judith Zimmerman, 1995 Byloe i dumy Iskandera (memoirs: book editions), vols 1–2, 1861, vol. 4, 1867; also in Sbornik posmertnykh statei Aleksandra Ivanovicha Gertsena, 1870; as My Exile in Siberia, translated by M. Meizenbug, 2 vols, 1855; as My Past and Thoughts: The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen, translated by Constance Garnett, 6 vols, 1924–27, revised by Humphrey Higgins, 4 vols, 1968; abridged version, 1973; parts 1 and 2 translated by J.D. Duff as The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen, 1923, and Childhood, Youth and Exile, 1980; parts 3 and 4 as Ends and Beginnings, edited by Alice Kelly, translated by Garnett, 1968 Pis’ma k staromu tovarishchu: Sbornik posmertnykh statei Aleksandra Ivanovicha Gertsena [Letters to an Old Friend], 1867–69, revised 1874 Sobranie sochinenii (collected works), 30 vols, 1954–66 Lettres inédites à sa fille Olga, edited by Alexandre Zviguilsky, 1970 Sochineniia (works), 4 vols, 1988

Further Reading Carr, Edward Hallett (editor), The Romantic Exiles: A NineteenthCentury Portrait Gallery, London: Gollancz, and New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1933 Chukovskaia, L.K., Byloe i dumy Gertsena, Moscow: Khudozhestvenniia literatura, 1966 Druzhakova, Elena, “Herzen’s Past and Thoughts: Dichtung und Wahreit” in The Golden Age of Russian Literature and Thought, edited by Derek Offord, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992 Elizavetina, G., Byloe i dumy A.I. Gertsena, Moscow: Khudozhlit-ra, 1984 Ginzburg, Lydia, On Psychological Prose, edited and translated by Judson Rosengrant, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991 Malia, Martin, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism, 1812–1855, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, and London: Oxford University Press, 1961 Partridge, Monica (editor), Alexander Herzen and European Culture, Proceedings of an International Symposium, Nottingham and London, 6–12 September 1982, Nottingham: Astra Press, 1984 Partridge, Monica, Alexander Herzen, 1812–1870, Paris: UNESCO, 1984

Hillesum, Etty see Frank, Anne; Netherlands and Belgium (Flanders); Holocaust Life Writings

Hinduism and Life Writing Hinduism is not a single philosophy or a way of life; it is not a monolithic “ism” or a given set of scriptures defining the moral matrix of the society described as Hindu. It is rather a civilization loosely holding together a bewildering variety of social, cultural, and theological practices, diverse linguistic and racial groups, and religious sects. The nomenclature was first used by Persian travellers to designate the culture developed along the basin of the Sindhu. Subsequently, after the Islamic rules were established in the Indian subcontinent, “Hindu” was widely used to cover all the peoples inhabiting the subcontinent before the 11th century and their descendents. The various schools of philosophy developed by Hindu thinkers are so divergent in their attitude to the basic philosoph-

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ical issues related to existence, meaning, and essence as to allow completely opposite positions to be accommodated in them. Yet, popularly understood, Hinduism has been a polytheistic approach to nature and existence and an Idealist approach to essence and matter. Due to its emphasis on stratifying the human life in four distinct phases, the ashramas, and society into four different classes, the varnas, the individual has always remained less privileged in it than the community. Partly owing to this philosophical disposition and partly because literary skills were restricted to a single segment of the society, the Hindu writer, composer, and thinker has traditionally been selfeffacing. Therefore, though there is an abundance of literature from ancient India, life writing remained almost completely restricted to what may be called the biographical form. Whereas the tradition of biographical writings can be traced back to at least the 8th century bce, autobiographical writings, in the sense that we now understand the term, have a history of barely 100 years in Indian literature. The earliest poetry, following the Vedas (3000–2000 bce), was biographical in nature. Biographical narration was one of the prime motivations behind the Ramayana (2nd century bce), and composers of the Mahabharata (4th century bce) described the poem as an itihasa, a life history of kings. The form of narrative dealing with the life history of a line of princes and incarnations was widely practised by ancient and medieval Indian poets. The best- known example of this form of writing is Raghuvamsa (4th century ce). Like poetry, the earliest Indian prose too was biographical in nature. The earliest prose narratives, the Jataka stories (2nd–4th century ce), describe the life of the Buddha in his various births. Thus in ancient India, biography occupied an important place in prose and poetic writing. The aim of biographical writings up to the beginning of the 7th century was primarily religious and ethical enlightenment. The period of Islamic invasions and rules in India (roughly the 8th to the 17th century) gave rise to a new mode of biographical writing. During this period there was a fashion of employing court poets for the specific purpose of glorifying the king’s actions. These poets were called bhatas in some parts of India, and they were well trained in literary panegyrics. In their work, not much of which has survived, biography moved away from myth and closer to history. The Rajtarangini of Kalhana (12th century) written in Kashmir is a fine example of life writing as political history. The roots of modern Indian biography, which is marked by a tendency to be eulogistic, are to be found in the works of the medieval court poets. The role of biography as a socially edifying document seems to have become obsolete in modern India, though in the early years of the 20th century – the period of the struggle for national independence – biography was used as a powerful social weapon. The 1000 years of Islamic rule in India also caused the rise of obliquely autobiographical writings. In ancient times, Indian artists had practised, very scrupulously, a policy of self-effacement. In a society where the minimal unit of activity was the community and not an individual person, and which believed the ego to be only an infinitesimal part of the brahman, there was obviously little scope for autobiography. The rishis who wrote poetry; the sculptors and the architects who built temples, palaces, and forts; and the painters who adorned the places of religious and social activity rarely left their signatures on their works. However, owing to a profound religious change from the

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13th century onwards, a new class of saintly leaders came to the forefront in almost all parts of India. They wrote poetry in modern Indian languages (which emerged all over India from the 11th to the 17th century) and acquired an amazing mass appeal. It has to be borne in mind that the people who can be described as Hindu have used for communication and literary production a huge variety of languages. These languages are derived from five different language families – namely, the IndoAryan, the Dravidian, the Tibeto-Burman, the Austric, and the Indo-Iranian. During the medieval period, there were significant literary developments in almost all of the languages used by Indians. In the writings of the saint-poets such as Basava (11th century), Mira (16th century), Kabir (15th century), Surdas (16th century), Tukaram (17th century), and Narasi Mehta (15th century), one finds an autobiographical tendency in ample degree. However, their autobiographical writings were not devoted to ego celebration, but rather to ego sublimation. For instance, Tukaram, the most gifted poet in the 700 years of Marathi poetic tradition, wrote freely about his relatives, his wife, his quarrels, and his own poetry. But he selected himself as a metaphor to represent human life in general. Hence his autobiographical poetry became socially meaningful, and has continued to inspire millions of Marathi-speaking people. Tukaram and the other saint-poets did not write as autobiographical poets but rather as saints. On the other hand, the autobiographies produced by the first Mughal emperor, Babar (Baba Nama, 16th century), and other Islamic writers were in the nature of memoirs. The colonial period in India, from the mid-18th century to the mid-20th century, has had a definite impact on the forms and styles of literary production, though it cannot be said to have made any significant impact on the Hindu way of life. In literature, the colonial impact enhanced the value attached to individualism and the celebration of the ego. It also privileged nostalgia. Therefore, autobiographical elements started appearing in poetry written during this period, and subsequently autobiography as a form of personal prose narrative emerged as an accepted mode of writing. The early part of the 20th century in Indian literature was marked by a spirit of nationalism. The prose forms acquired a greater social relevance during this period. Perhaps the most outstanding example of life writing during the 20th century was Mahatma Gandhi’s The Story of My Experiments with Truth, originally written in Gujarati as “Satyana preyogo athava atmakatha” (1927). This work has rarely been surpassed in its lucidity, sincerity, and range of social issues covered. Since it was written in an Indian language, and not English (which for most Indians of Gandhi’s generation was a learned language), it is able to reflect accurately the psychological tensions of the narrator. It shares the saintly quality of medieval Indian poetry. In India life is lived in terms of the ordinary. There, there is still a sense of community. Many would consider that the real India is composed of villages and the masses, not of city-bred individuals suffering from social alienation. As a reaction to the literary styles developed by modernist writers, there has been a rise of several protest movements in recent years. During the last 30 years, Gramin and dalit literature in Marathi, bandaya in Kannada, and digambar poetry in Telugu have brought to the forefront the nativistic tendency. Most of these movements have given a very important place to autobiography. Thus, in Indian

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literature autobiography has become a significant means to articulate the concerns of the less privileged sections of Indian society. These movements have injected a linguistic vitality into literature in Indian languages. Thus, once again the tradition of the saint-poets and of Gandhi is revived. Dalit (socially oppressed) writing has developed some unique styles of life writing in Marathi. Many of the writers are from the lowest ranks among the working classes, the unemployed, the communities legally castigated as “criminal”, children of sex workers, and other such marginalized social groups. Their writing employs the autobiographical form as a means of social critique. Those who were kept away in the traditional Hindu social structure from access to writing have started using life writing as a powerful campaign for changing the traditional Hindu attitude to human life. There has been also a large crop of life writing by civil servants, judges, public figures, and professionally successful people. Most of these autobiographical accounts are written in English. However, there is little in them that distinguishes them from such accounts appearing elsewhere in the world. On the other hand, a few creative writers such as R.K. Narayan, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, and Kamala Das have practised the autobiographical genre very effectively. Of these Chaudhuri stands out as the most gifted. His Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (1951) has become a classic; but equally distinguished is his biography of Friedrich Max-Müller (Scholar Extraordinary, 1974). However, it could be said that life writing in English does not have the same kind of poignancy and ideological sharpness as that in Indian languages. G.N. Devy See also Indian Subcontinent: Early Life Writing; Indian Subcontinent: Autobiography to 1947

Further Reading Athavale, Parvati, Hindu Widow: An Autobiography, Written in the Marathi Language, New Delhi: Reliance, 1986 (first published 1930) Besant, Annie Wood, The Doctrine of the Heart: Extracts from Hindu Letters, 3rd edition, London: Theosophical Society, 1914 Dutta, Bhabesh, Bharater sadhika, Calcutta: Gyanatirtha, 1968 (biographies of Hindu women saints) Elenjimittam, Anthony, Cosmic Ecumenism via Hindu-Buddhist Catholicism: An Autobiography of an Indian Dominican Monk, Bombay: Aquinas, 1983 Gandhi, M.K. (“Mahatma”), The Story of My Experiments with Truth, translated by Mahadev Desai, 2 vols, Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1940; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982; Canton, Maine: Greenleaf, 1983 Leigh, David S.J., “Reading Modern Religious Autobiographies: Multidimensional and Multicultural Approaches” in Seeing into the Life of Things: Essays on Literature and Religious Experience, New York: Fordham University Press, 1998 Padmanji, Baba, Once Hindu, Now Christian: The Early Life of Baba Padmanji: An Autobiography, New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1900 Rinehart, Robin, One Lifetime, Many Lives: The Experience of Modern Hindu Hagiography, Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1999 Schab, Stanley and George Simson (editors), Life Writing from the Pacific Rim: Essays from Japan, China, Indonesia, India, and Siam, with a Psychological Overview, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997 Stutley, Margaret, Hinduism: The Eternal Law: An Introduction to the Literature, Cosmology and Cults of the Hindu Religion, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire: Aquarian Press, 1985 Tharu, Susie and K. Lalita (editors), Women Writing in India: 600 BC

to the Present, 2 vols, New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1991 Tirumalesh, K.V., “Autobiography’s Search for Truth: Newman and Gandhi”, Centennial Review, 40/1 (1996): 99–123 Zaidi, Mujahid Husain (editor), Biography and Autobiography in Modern South Asian Regional Literatures, Heidelberg: South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, 1979

Hispanic American Life Writing The literary area of Hispanic American life writing is as varied as the number of minorities of Latin origin living in the United States. The term is problematic when referring to the literature written by authors of Latin origin living in the United States since the general tendency nowadays is to label literary works by stating the writer’s original geographical identity (such as Mexican American or chicano/a, Puerto Rican). One problem with the terms “Hispano” or “Hispanic” and “Latino” is that they frequently fail to differentiate bctween each of the Spanishspeaking minorities. Here we are going to concentrate on the three main literary groups: the chicanos, the Puerto Ricans, and the Cubans. Most of the literary manifestations by Hispanic writers in the United States have for many years suffered from being ignored by mainstream publishers. With a few exceptions, texts on chicano/a, Cuban, and Puerto Rican lives were not published before the end of the 1960s. No public attention had been paid to the struggles and the differences growing up Latino in a predominately Anglo-Saxon country, and Hispanic life writing remained marginal to the literary canon. In the case of the chicano/a minority, the population of Mexican descent living in the United States, we are dealing with people who are culturally neither Mexican or American but are influenced by both societies. Several cultural and historical influences have shaped chicano/a culture: deities and symbols from the pre-Columbian Aztecs, the social customs and institutions of the Spaniards, and a number of North American values. Such a complex mixture has contributed to the shaping of a hybrid identity, which very often interweaves Spanish and English in its literary production, and which has a rich tradition of personal narratives. Most personal narratives after the Mexican revolution of 1848 present a marked tendency to express nostalgia for the precolonial era. An idealized depiction of what had been lost is mixed with anger in many cases, especially in the Southwest. Many narratives remain unread, and sometimes even unpublished. Some important autobiographical works include Eulalia Pérez’s “Una vieja y sus recuerdos” [1877; An Old Lady and Her Memories] and Apolinaria Lorenzana’s “Memorias de la beata” [1875; The Pious Lady’s Memories], Cleofas Jaramillo’s Romance of a Little Village Girl (1955) and Fabiola Cabeza de Baca’s We Fed Them Cactus (1949). The last third of the 19th century was a time of significant oral expression, with folk-tales, legends, and the well-known corridos (traditional Mexican folksongs). The poor level of literacy among the chicano people of these times reinforced the use and survival of oral traditions for recounting personal experiences. After decades of literary silence, when chicano/a literature was not even recognized as

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such, the 1960s emerged as a turning point in the construction of a written tradition. At this time chicano literary works emphasized chicano/a rural and working-class roots, since the individual was not considered as important as the social group to which he / she belonged. El Teatro Campesino [The Peasants’ Theatre], founded by Luis Valdéz at the University of San José in 1965, dealt with the peasants’ difficult lives in an attempt to bring the rural reality to a general audience. Two years later Quinto Sol Publications opened its doors in Berkeley with three excellent prose writers, also interested in depicting the farm workers’ lives : Tomás Rivera, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, and Rudolfo Anaya. In 1973 Oscar Zeta Acosta’s Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo offered a powerful testimonial account of the author’s experiences in Los Angeles during the heyday of chicano militancy. Richard Rodríguez’s Hunger of Memory (1981) is a radically different autobiography, which focuses on the chicano experience from an original perspective. But it was in the 1980s when chicana women writers finally came to the fore. Three relevant titles that deal with chicana women’s experiences in often experimental ways are: Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street (1984), Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlerlands / La Frontera (1987), and Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga’s This Bridge Called My Back (1983). More recently several women writers’ personal narratives have seen the light: Tiffany Ana López’s editorial compilation Growing up Chicana/o (1993), Bryce Milligan and Mary Guerrero Milligan’s edition Daughters of the Fifth Sun (1995), and Norma Cantú’s Canícula (1995). Puerto Rican life writing can be divided into three separate periods. The first starts in the 19th century and continues up to the 1940s, and is characterized by a strong testimonial literature, in which the first Puerto Ricans to live in the United States (who were mostly political exiles) narrate their experiences in New York. These writings are scattered in diaries, letters, and newspapers. Bernardo Vega’s Memorias de Bernardo Vega (written in the 1940s, but published in English in 1954) stands as one of the pioneer autobiographical books together wiih Jesús Colón’s A Puerto Rican in New York (1961). Popular songs were also a popular medium at this time for recording the reality of the Puerto Rican community . The second wave began around 1950. The two decades after World War II forced many hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans to emigrate to several American states. Here the testimonial veracity of the writing is less important than a new interest in literary experimentation. Oscar Lewis’s La vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty (1965), Manuel Zeno García’s El Negocio [1973; The Business], José de Diego Padró’s En Babia [1961; Having One’s Head in the Clouds], Fernando Sierra Berdecía’s Esta noche juega el joker (1960; Tonight the Joker Plays) were exceptions at a time when the immigrant experience was not the national motif. However, many writers from the island moved to the United States to witness the Puerto Rican experience there with their own eyes and pens. Some of these literary examples are René Marqués’s La carreta (1963; The Oxcart), José Luis González’s “La noche que volvimos a ser gente” (1972; “The Night We Became People Again”), Pedro Juan Soto’s Spiks (1956) and Emilio Díaz Valcárcel’s Harlem todos los días (1975; Everyday Harlem) and Trópico de Manhattan [1960; The Tropic in Manhattan], the autobiographical novel by Guillermo Cotto-Thorner.

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The third, and sometimes overlapping, phase combined the testimonial content of the first and the more imaginative techniques of the second, giving rise to prose fiction. Examples of works from these times are Piri Thomas’s Down These Mean Streets (1967) and Edward Rivera’s Family Installments (1983). From the 1970s the growing presence of women writers is noticeable, with works such as María Esteves’s Blues Town Mockingbird Mambo and Nicholasa Mohr’s Nilda (1973) and Rituals of Survival (1985). One identifying mark of contemporary writing is the use of English and Spanish in bilingual and interlingual texts. Finally, in the case of Cuban literature of the United States, the literary reality is totally different from that of the previous two cultural groups. There have been various waves of Cuban political refugees living in the United States. Those Cuban writers who arrived in the 1960s have normally focused their work on Cuba and on a nostalgic and idealistic vision of their past on the island. They have not usually assimilated to the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture, because their middle-class position or professional situations have allowed them to write in Spanish and still get published. Their works are most accurately labelled as exile literature. However, according to Silvia Burunat and Ofelia García (1988), this situation has been changing since 1980, with the Marielitos, the new wave of Cuban immigrants who were largely non-white and working class. This group is closer to the other US Latino minorities in its experience of racial and class prejudice. Lastly there is a recent group of Cuban American novelists whose work addresses different issues related to life writing: Reinaldo Arenas’s El portero (1989; The Doorman) relates the experience of life in the United States; and Oscar Hijuelos’s The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989) and Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban (1992) concentrate on issues of culture and identity. María Henríquez Betancor Further Reading Boza, María del Carmen, Beverly Silva and Carmen Valle, Nosotras: Latina Literature Today, New York: Bilingual Press, 1986 Burunat, Silvia and Ofelia García (editors), Veinte años de literatura cubano-americana: antología, Tempe, Arizona: Bilingual Press, 1988 Castillo-Speed, Lillian (editor), Latina: Women’s Voices from the Borderlands, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995 Fernández, Roberta (editor), In Other Words: Literature by Latinas of the United States, Houston, Texas: Arte Público Press, 1994 Gutiérrez, Ramón and Genaro Padilla (editors), Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage, Houston, Texas: Arte Público Press, 1993–96 Hernández-Gutiérrez, Manuel de Jesús and David William Foster (editors), Literatura Chicana, 1965–1995: An Anthology in Spanish, English and Caló, New York: Garland, 1997 Kanellos, Nicolas (editor), Biographical Dictionary of Hispanic Literature in the United States: The Literature of Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans and Other Hispanic Writers, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1989 Karrer, Wolfgang and Hartmut Lutz (editors), Minority Literatures in North America: Contemporary Perspectives, Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang, 1990 Morillas, Rosa and Manuel Villar Raso (editors), Literatura Chicana: reflexiones y ensayos críticos, Granada, Spain: Editorial Comares, 2000 Padilla, Genaro, My History Not Yours: The Formation of Mexican American Autobiography, Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993

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Rebolledo, Tey Diana and Eliana S. Rivero (editors), Infinite Divisions: An Anthology of Chicana Literature, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993 Rebolledo, Tey Diana, Women Singing in the Snow: A Cultural Analysis of Chicana Literature, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995

Historiography “History is but the biography of great men”, said the 19thcentury British statesman Benjamin Disraeli. This view, equating history with biography, claims a long tradition. From the earliest Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides up to the 19th century, biography constituted much of recorded history. In the 1st century bce, Dionysius of Halicarnassus formulated a logic for this approach in asserting that “history is philosophy teaching by examples”. He reasoned that the moral order of the universe emerged in the lives of individual men and women, as the good reaped reward and the evil punishment. Consequently, the historian guides us by teaching through exemplary figures. History as biography has also influenced non-Western historiography, especially in China. In the 5th century bce, Confucius (Kong zi) argued that the state was like a family and that the moral balance of the universe depended on moral rulers. Throughout the imperial history of China, writers emphasized moral leadership in dynastic histories. The emergence of modernist history based on scientific principles, as well as the professionalization of the discipline, challenged these views in both the West and the East. The modernist challenge, however, did not end biographical (or autobiographical) writings. Rather, biography no longer defined history. More recently, postmodernism has questioned the modernist faith in impartial knowledge, especially when linked to the use of narrative forms that historians employ. Nevertheless, life writings persist today in the field of history – both as source material and as a form of writing. Therefore, historiography demonstrates a deep connection with life writing. Postmodernists question the distinctions made between history and fiction, pointing to the common use of narrative. However, early theorists of the classical period made precise distinctions. In the 4th century bce Aristotle distinguished between history and poetry, arguing that history was particular and dealt with “what has been”, whereas poetry was concerned with the general and “what might be”. Because poetry addressed the imagination and the general, Aristotle saw it as superior to history. Unlike the author of the Homeric tales whose work is treated as art, the two earliest Greek historians were seen to write history. Herodotus, called the “Father of History” by Cicero, published his Histories (c.445 bce) about the Greek defeat of the Persian king, Xerxes; Thucydides wrote one work, The Peloponnesian War, which was untitled and unfinished at his death in 399 bce. While their approaches are often contrasted, these two historians wrote narratives that were presumed to be true and that included detailed portraits of individual lives. The biographical tradition flourished with the writer Plutarch in the 2nd century ce in his Vitae parallelae (Parallel Lives), a multi-volume collection of biographies about heroic Greeks and Romans. Plutarch distinguished his “lives” from “history”, which he considered to be more comprehensive, but

he drew upon Thucydides’ materials (see Stadter). Furthermore, his work became enormously influential in Western historiography. The Parallel Lives were popular in antiquity and also in the Byzantine empire. They were translated into French in the 15th century and into English in the 16th. They inspired Shakespeare, Rabelais, Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The idea of history as biography that teaches by example became especially significant in the 17th century, as indicated by Richard Braithwait’s Survey of History (1638). Braithwait writes: The true use and scope of all Histories ought to tend to no other purpose than a true Narration of what is done, or hath been achieved … with a modest Application (for present use) to caution us in things Offensive, and excite us to the management of imployments in themselves generous and worthy imitation. Beverley Southgate argues that history as biography for moral teaching “reached its apogee in the nineteenth century”, as illustrated by Thomas Carlyle’s theory of universal history as “the History of the Great Men who have worked here”. In the Western world the prevailing universal history was Christian. The view was that history revealed God’s plan and that the manifestation of that plan came through God’s representatives on earth, the kings. Thus, historical time represented both the secular and the sacred. Biographies of great monarchs constitute much of the historical writing in the Middle Ages, also known as the Age of Faith. For example, the Venerable Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (compiled 731 ce; Ecclesiastical History of the English People) was intended to provide moral guidance for readers through biographies. It was hoped that the lives of good men would be imitated and that the lives of wicked men would deter readers from evil. In addition to the biographies of kings, much medieval history can be found in the lives of mystics and saints, including women. For example, feminist historians turn to the life writings of mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) to examine the positions of women during the period. The Protestant Reformation, beginning in the 16th century, also generated biographical narratives. The Book of Martyrs (originally entitled Actes and Monuments) by John Foxe (1516–87) justified Protestant revolt through the lives of the martyrs, seen to reveal God’s plan. In colonial New England the life stories of Puritan leaders provided much of the early history, as Sacvan Bercovitch demonstrates in The Puritan Origins of the American Self (1975). History as biography flourished even in the Age of Enlightenment, although the distinctions between history and art may have become blurred. Hayden White notes that before the French Revolution “historiography was conventionally regarded as a literary art” and that it was associated with a branch of rhetoric. Lionel Gossman articulates the logic in his statement that: Traditional national histories in pre-Revolutionary times are essentially dynastic. Like genealogies, their function is to situate and secure the present generation chronologically and to provide a legitimation of authority by reviewing the chain of succession from the original foundation to the present.

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The legitimation of authority by tracing imperial succession might apply both within and outside the Christian and European traditions. Outside continental Europe, histories can also be described as dynastic. The medieval Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sturluson (1178/79–1241) is said to have perfected the historical / literary saga form, especially in his Heimskringla (translated under the same title), a history of the Norwegian kings. These narratives supposedly linked Iceland’s earliest settlers to the ancestral kings of Norway and so legitimated authority, ironically, in the island’s medieval democracy. In addition to the king’s sagas, the family sagas (for example Egil) documented Icelandic family history from the 9th century and were commonly accepted as the history of Iceland until the mid20th century. In the East, dynastic histories also shaped Chinese historiography. In accordance with Confucian principles, good rulers maintained a proper relationship with the people, meaning that they demonstrated a “shared humanity” or benevolence (ren) towards the people, thereby maintaining harmony in the universe. This legitimated the authority and succession of the ruler. Up to the modern period in China (1911), dynastic historians writing its imperial history celebrated rulers who sustained harmony in their realm. Histories of conquest and exploration, especially into the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries, depend heavily on life writings – diaries, journals, and letters – about the first contacts with the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Bartolemeo de Las Casas (1474–1566) documented Spanish cruelty towards the native peoples and the Christianizing of them. Though non-dynastic, these narratives may be considered a legitimation of conquest and authority. Today, ethnohistory (defined by James Axtell as “a union of history and ethnology”) uses the life writings of explorers, traders, missionaries, and settlers, as well as archaeological findings and traditional oral histories, to write histories of the groups that kept no written records. By the 19th century the application of scientific principles to the study of history launched the period of modernist historical scholarship. This meant that historians were required to demonstrate objectivity. The detached, impartial, and objective portrayal of the past now became the goal. Emphasis was placed on discovery, collection, classification, and interpretation of the “facts” by historians supposedly void of partiality. Modern history began to be defined as the study of historical events through a comprehensive study of archival resources and grew alongside the emerging field of archaeology. Personal accounts were seen as the least reliable of historical sources. Central figures in this development were German scholars and thinkers, including Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), and Karl Marx (1813–83). Leopold von Ranke is often considered the “father” of modern history. Ranke began the systematic formulation of “historical methodology” grounded in exhaustive archival research. History, he insisted, should be written “wie es eigentlich gewesen” (as it actually was), a dictum that was often cited by modern historians. Perhaps the most influential thinker shaping 20th-century historiography was Karl Marx. Rather than the pre-modernist view that great men shape history, or the Hegelian view that ideas effect historical change, Marx argued that material conditions shape social, political, and intellectual

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life. This materialist approach to history emphasizes the means of production and its social relations as the determining forces in history, rather than individuals or ideas. For Marx, the primary historical force is the inevitable class struggle that emerges out of conflicting class interests. Historians influenced by Marxist analysis emphasize the struggles of oppressed classes, rather than great figures in history. By the end of the 19th century, professional historical organizations had begun to emerge. The development and professionalization of the discipline established standards for history writing. Historical methods, rigorously defended within professional journals, demanded empirical accuracy, thorough research and documentation, knowledge of secondary literature, and getting the “story straight”. All this meant that history as biography lost credibility. These developments shaped the course of modern historical scholarship and defined the movement that views history as a (social) science. The underlying assumption, in the words of Georg G. Iggers, was that “methodologically controlled research makes objective knowledge possible”. Despite the social scientific approach to history in the 19th century, the writing of biography continued. Although the social scientific approach to history insisted that objectivity was possible, the use of narrative form linked history writing to its 19th-century antithesis, fiction writing. Furthermore, modern historians wrote of their own lives in the form of autobiography. The 18th-century French Enlightenment thinker Rousseau provided a model of the modern autobiography in his Confessions (1782–89), a narrative about the mind – an intellectual autobiography – that provided a model for later historians. Illustrative of this same pattern are the autobiographies of the American historian Henry Adams (The Education of Henry Adams, published privately, 1907), the Italian historian Benedetto Croce (Contributo alla critica dime stesso, 1926; translated as An Autobiography), and the British historian R.G. Collingwood (An Autobiography, 1939). Marxist historians also write biographies. E.P. Thompson, best known for The Making of the English Working Class (1963), also wrote individual biographies of the socialist William Morris and the poet and artist William Blake. His interest in the development of class consciousness and human consciousness and agency can explain the writing of biography. The use of narrative in the writing of history has led to critiques of modernist claims of objectivity. Although modernist history demands and believes in impartial knowledge, Hayden White argues that despite efforts at empirical rigour the use of narrative requires one to select and arrange material; to impose an order on the presentation of knowledge; to create beginnings, middles, and ends; and to employ metaphors in order to convey meaning. He argues that these devices call into question the “scientific” foundations of history writing. In Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in 19th-Century Europe (1973) and subsequent works, White challenges modernist assumptions about objectivity. Because much critique of modernism, like that of White, focuses on language, the postmodernist development is sometimes called the “linguistic turn”. In brief, postmodernists (linguists, psychologists, philosophers, poststructuralists, and postcolonialists) call into question the possibility of “impartial knowledge”. This questioning challenges assumptions about rationality and its universality. Postmodernists question the

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possibility of writing history as modernists envisioned it and as Leopold von Ranke argued that it should be, “wie es eigentlich gewesen”. The effects of postmodern challenges on historiography and life writing seem contradictory. On the one hand, those historians who focus on oppressed groups embrace theories that help to explain these groups’ exclusions from the historical records. On the other hand, most historians resist the epistemology of postmodernism and its implications because many see these intellectual developments as causing a blurring of distinction between history and fiction. Also, seemingly contradictorily, historians who adhere to concepts of objectivity may continue to use life writing both as source material (letters, diaries, oral histories, autobiographies) and as the writing of history through biography. In short, historians have not abandoned life writings. This is especially true for historians who study oppressed groups. Feminist historians, for example, have performed a balancing act between reconstruction of an unwritten past (in which life writings are often crucial tools) and deconstruction of the notions of both gender and history themselves (in which life writings themselves become fragile or suspect texts). In particular, Joan Wallach Scott, Denise Riley, Gerda Lerner, and Darlene Clark Hine have systematically collected materials to document women’s lives and the effects of patriarchal domination, while they also challenge us to resist easy and transparent readings of their meanings. Perhaps ironically, postmodernist theories provide more potential for the use of life writings because the focus on language has meant that individual articulations can be interpreted with greater contextual meanings and for their contradictions rather than coherence. Despite postmodern critiques, interest in life writing within contemporary historiography is evident in three ways. First, as suggested, historians have increasingly turned to life writings as historical sources in order to illuminate the histories of oppressed groups. For example, the oral interviews of former slaves conducted in the 1930s by the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration and subsequently transcribed by George Rawick (The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography) helped to provide a basis for the rewriting of African American history beginning in the 1960s. Oral histories, diaries, letters, and eyewitness accounts have been primary sources in reconstructing social history – including women’s history, ethnic histories, and labour and immigration history. More recently, postcolonial and subaltern studies examine lives of oppressed groups globally through the use of oral histories and testimonies. Military history is also affected by life writings. For example, at the end of the 20th century testimonies of the Korean “comfort women” (those women coerced by the Japanese Imperial Army to provide sexual service to its soldiers during World War II) emerged from the oral histories of the aging women. The history of the Holocaust draws heavily upon personal testimony. Native American history draws on oral tradition. Second, biographical studies continue to constitute a significant portion of historical writings. Traditional biographies of political and military leaders, heads of state, martyrs, generals, presidents, and parliamentarians persist. However, in the new social histories of the late 20th century, focused on ordinary lives and collective struggles, we also find biographies – of labour leaders, protesters, reformers, and radicals; for example,

in The American Radical or Anarchist Portraits. In addition numerous biographies also focus on figures in other collective struggles; for example, in women’s and African American history. Third, historians write their own autobiographies. Although historians of the 19th century also did so, there has been a modern resistance to this more literary form. For modern professional historians, other people’s autobiographies have been described as the “least convincing of all personal records” and prompt a suspicion towards any personal experimentation. David Levering Lewis, a historian of African American history, notes this reluctance to write autobiography and describes it as “a curious deficit in introspection [that] is commonplace among professional historians, I think – a function of the inductive way we do history and of the temperamental aversion most of us develop over time to theorizing about the value of what we do”. On the other hand, the historian Jeremy Popkin asserts: “It is precisely because history and autobiography are so closely related that historians who decide to cross the line from one to the other find themselves uneasy about what they are doing.” The British historian Sheila Rowbotham explores that connection in her work Threads through Time (1999). She collected in one volume her earlier publications (1973–98), offering both an intellectual autobiography and reflections on links between autobiography and history. The American historian Howard Zinn conveys no uneasiness about writing autobiography. Perhaps best known for A People’s History of the United States, Zinn argues that “All knowledge is partial”. So, in his autobiographical work You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train (1994), he details his political positions in contemporary history, especially during the civil rights movement and anti-war demonstrations in the 1960s that included several arrests. Not all historians at the turn of the 21st century, however, embrace autobiography. Noting the greater frequency of autobiography in France and the United States, Popkin identifies four groups of historians most likely to write autobiography: elites, immigrant scholars, radical historians, and those who identify themselves in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender. Popkin notes the high degree of intimate detail and personal ideological positions revealed in many of these works. However, despite the historians’ consciousness of history, he asserts that these works do not necessarily demonstrate greater insight. Popkin also laments the so-called linguistic turn in contemporary thought when he concludes that “history can and should contest the literary theorists’ bid to annex autobiography to the realm of fiction”. Meanwhile in France, Pierre Nora, editor of the seven-volume collection Les Lieux de mémoire (from 1984; Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past), published a volume of memoirs by historians under the label ego-histoire (1987), illustrating French historians’ interest in and willingness to write autobiographies. The connections between life writing and historiography persist. Betty Ann Bergland Further Reading Adams, Henry, The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918; London: Constable, 1919; edited by Ira B. Nadel, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 Avrich, Paul, Anarchist Portraits, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1988

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Beasley, W.G. and E.G. Pulleyblank (editors), Historians of China and Japan, London: Oxford University Press, 1961 Bercovitch, Sacvan, The Puritan Origins of the American Self, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1975 Boyd, Kelly (editor), Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, 2 vols, London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999 Braithwait, Richard, A Survey of History, or, A Nursery for Gentry, London: Okes and Emery, 1638 Buhle, Mari Jo, Paul Buhle, and Harvey J. Kaye (editors), The American Radical, New York and London: Routledge, 1994 Cimbala, Paul A. and Robert F. Himmelberg (editors), Historians and Race: Autobiography and the Writing of History, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996 Collingwood, R.G., An Autobiography, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1939 Collingwood, R.G., The Idea of History, edited by T.M. Knox, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946; New York: Oxford University Press, 1956; revised edition, edited by Jan van der Dusser, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993; New York: Oxford University Press, 1994 Confucius [Kong zhi], Analects of Confucius, with English translation, Beijing: Sinolingua, 1994 Croce, Benedetto, An Autobiography, translated from the Italian by R.G. Collingwood, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927; reprinted Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1970 (original Italian edition, 1926) Donaldson-Evans, Mary et al. (editors), Autobiography, Historiography, Rhetoric: A Festschrift in Honor of Frank Paul Bowman, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994 Dunaway, David K. and Willa K. Baum (editors), Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, Nashville, Tennessee: American Association for State and Local History, 1984 Gilbert, Felix, History: Politics or Culture? Reflections on Ranke and Burckhardt, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990 Green, Anna and Kathleen Troup (editors), The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-Century History and Theory, Manchester: Manchester University Press, and New York: New York University Press, 1999 Hazlett, John Downton, My Generation: Collective Autobiography and Identity Politics, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998 Hine, Darlene Clark, Elsa Barkley Brown and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn (editors), Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, 2 vols, Brooklyn, New York: Carlson, 1993 Las Casas, Bartolemeo de, Historia de las Indias, 3 vols, edited by Augustin Millares Carlo, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1951 Lerner, Gerda, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993 Lewis, David Levering, “From Eurocentrism to Polycentrism” in Historians and Race: Autobiography and the Writing of History, edited by Paul A. Cimbala, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996 Popkin, Jeremy, “Historians on the Autobiographical Frontier”, American Historical Review, 104/3 (1999): 725–48 Rawick, George P., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, vols 1–19, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1972 Rowbotham, Sheila, Threads through Time: Writings on History and Autobiography, London: Penguin, 1999 Southgate, Beverley, History: What and Why? Ancient, Modern and Postmodern Perspectives, London and New York: Routledge, 1996 Stadter, Philip A. (editor), Plutarch and the Historical Tradition, London and New York: Routledge, 1992 Sturluson, Snorri, Heimskringla: History of the Norse Kings, translated by Samuel Laing, London and New York: Norroena Society, 1906; revised edition, New York: Dutton, 1964 Thompson, James Westfall, A History of Historical Writing, 2 vols, New York: Macmillan, 1942 Todorov, Tzvetan, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other, translated by Richard Howard, New York: Harper and Row, 1984 (French edition, 1982) White, Hayden, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in 19thCentury Europe, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973

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White, Hayden, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978 Zinn, Howard, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times, Boston: Beacon Press, 1994

Hitler, Adolf

1889–1945

German / Austrian National Socialist leader and autobiographer Arguably the most studied political figure in all of history, Adolf Hitler was the Führer, the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. His life, thoughts, and deeds galvanized his nationalistic, imperialistic, and racist policies by way of a messianic cult of personality, and through pursuance of bureaucratic technocracy, militarism, state terrorism, and absolute propaganda. Whether as pathology, cautionary tale, or example of “fascinating fascism”, the life of Hitler has been studied endlessly and structured as biography from every imaginable perspective. Through his cult of the charismatic personality, Hitler’s life is emblematic, as the epitome of the personal as the political, and for manufactured, ideological self-representation. Such selfrepresentation not only served to construct a delusional self but also expanded the delusion into a mythology of redemption and teleological inevitability (the 1000-year Reich). Stating himself that his life consisted of “nothing but persuasion”, Hitler constructed for himself and his political aspirations a rhetorical self that little resembled the facts of his actual life. Aside from his oratory at party functions, Reichstag speeches, and mass rallies – all of which Hitler felt to be ideal occasions for his seduction of the masses – his single most significant text remains his personal, ideological, and political autobiography Mein Kampf (1924; My Struggle). Written while Hitler was serving the nine months of an intended five-year prison sentence for treason (resulting from his participation in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch of 1923), the book was an attempt to legitimize Hitler as a credible political leader. The originally cumbersome but revealing title, in English, Four and One Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice, was later shortened to My Struggle. What is more, the initial two volumes entitled Eine Abrechnung (A Reckoning) and Die nationalsozialistische Bewegung (The National Socialist Movement) were combined into one volume in 1930 and sold for eight marks. By 1933 one-third of a million copies had been sold; by 1945 this figure had climbed to ten million, and the German text had been translated into 16 languages. Amid much else, Mein Kampf contains an account of Hitler’s obscure lower-middle-class origins in Austria, and the early deaths of his strict, authoritarian father and his mother in 1903 and 1907 respectively. It includes his failed attempts to be admitted to the Vienna Art Academy and the ensuing Wanderjahre in Vienna, spent in often desperate conditions and squalid surroundings. In truth, during these years Hitler became a paradigm of the penniless drifter and disenfranchised outsider, an impatient, self-absorbed, and paranoid social failure. Yet in Mein Kampf he presents himself as victim, as the little man who sacrificed his art career and ultimately himself for his country. For Hitler, the opportunity for ultimate sacrifice presented

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itself a year after he moved to Munich in 1913. World War I was to be the singular event that inspired and redeemed him by ending his homelessness and alienation and giving him a cause and place of belonging. It marked the beginning of his political identity. Volunteering for infantry duty, twice wounded and decorated, Hitler shared with many the dreams of heroes and the fantasies of a noble war. The war represented a propitious moment for his career, a moment made all the more galling and bitter by the defeat of Germany, which he swore to avenge in the name of German honour, and which had been “stabbed in the back”, not by the soldiers, but – in Hitler’s view – by the myriad pacifists, communists, and Jews of the newly born Weimar Republic. But more than a subjective histrionic account of Hitler’s life, Mein Kampf details the gradual politicization of a pathological personality. It masks Hitler’s essential characteristics – ego projection, a narrow, delusional understanding of the larger public life, and a social-Darwinist view of power – through rhetorically pretentious and aggressive propaganda. Chthonian and verbose in style, Mein Kampf reveals itself as propaganda by its unfounded generalizations, non sequiturs, mixed metaphors, its falsifications, uninformed opinions, and half truths – all packaged and presented as fact, truth, and certainty. Not despite, but because of its prejudicial, irrational, and anti-intellectual strategies, it proved prophetic in giving contour to the ideas and programmes so closely associated with German fascism, social Darwinism, militarism, imperialism, Aryan mythology, and anti-Semitism. And it gave ample evidence of Hitler’s genius for organizing and transcending mass fear, discontent, and resentment into a political agenda and an ideological utopia. Far more than a personal life’s account, Mein Kampf describes in nuce the Nazi platform and the future of the Nazi state. It represents a conflation of the private self and the public Führer via a relentless propagandist rhetoric pressed to the point where both were transfigured into pure fanaticism, megalomania, and political destiny. Given its complicity in National Socialist ideology and all that was to proceed from it, Mein Kampf could plausibly claim to be the single most significant piece of life writing ever published, if judged on the terrible palpability of its influence. This significance is, not surprisingly, reflected in its publication history. With the rise of the Nazi party, and its propaganda priorities, royalties from the book had already made Hitler a wealthy man by the time he became Chancellor in 1933 (making his apparently self-sacrificing refusal of the Chancellor’s salary an empty gesture, as Ian Kershaw notes, 1998). By 1936 sales of the book were effectively state-supported, with copies given to all newly married couples. At the end of the war, with Hitler’s eve-ofsuicide will declared invalid, the copyright passed to the state of Bavaria, which has since maintained a small department to administer it: this effectively means using its power to prohibit republication worldwide. As Ryback notes, and as a perusal of library catalogues reveals, there exists no authorized German edition since the war. At the beginning of the 21st century, there are only two legal editions in other languages: one in Hebrew, with permission granted after the war for obvious reasons; and one in English, valid because of a 1933 translation deal. Apparently, according to Ryback’s investigations, the royalties from the English edition are collected by an agency, which channels them into Jewish charities. Mein Kampf remains one example of

life writing whose very appearance in print cannot be uncontroversial, and whose historical legacy is inescapable. Ralph W. Buechler Biography Born in Braunau-am-Inn, Austria (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), 20 April 1889. His father was minor customs official. Brought up and educated in Linz, Upper Austria, from 1898. Educated at the Realschule, Linz, but did not excel academically. Father died 1903. Finished formal education in 1905, after transferring to another school. Spent two years in the vicinity of Linz, with aspirations to be an artist, 1905–07. Failed entrance examination to the Vienna Kunstakademie (Academy of Art), September 1907. Mother died in December 1907, and he moved to Vienna, where he was able to live without working for a year, on an orphan’s pension and a loan from his Aunt Johanna. Failed again to enrol at the Kunstakademie, October 1908, and subsequently slid into destitution during 1909. Regained a modest income from 1910, when he began selling postcard-size sketches of Vienna, and lived in the Vienna Men’s House (hostel), until May 1913. Acquired strongly anti-Semitic, German-nationalistic, and anti-Marxist views during the Vienna period. Moved to Munich, attempting to avoid conscription into the Austrian army, 1913: arrested, but failed examination for military service. Returned to Munich and volunteered for German army: joined 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, 1914, and served as a runner during World War I: wounded, 1916, and gassed, 1918. Awarded Iron Cross, First Class, 1918. Hospitalized at end of the war, 1919. Remained with German army, joining the small nationalistic German Workers’ Party (one of a number of extreme right-wing parties in the Weimar republic) in Munich as army political agent, 1919. Left army, April 1920. Rose to the leadership (as Führer) of the Party, which was renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP, or Nazi Party), 1921. The NSDAP’s paramilitary wing, the Stürmabteilung (SA), formed, 1921. Attempted unsuccessfully, with General Erich Ludendorff and others, to force national revolution in so-called Bavarian beer-hall putsch, 8–9 November 1923: tried for treason and sentenced (lightly) to five years’ imprisonment in relative comfort in Landsberg prison, of which he served nine months: dictated the material for Mein Kampf during this period. The NSDAP banned, but reconstituted 1924. Lived at Obersalzberg, near Berchtesgaden, with half-sister and her two daughters, one of whom, Geli Räuber, with whom he had formed a close attachment, was later found dead (presumed suicide) in Hitler’s Munich apartment, 1931. Earned living from writing for nationalistic newspapers and by financial support from Nazi party. Established the Schutzstaffel (SS) as a paramilitary unit responsible to him personally, 1926. Took shop assistant, Eva Braun, as mistress, 1932. Lost to Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg in presidential election, 1932. After NSDAP’s success in national elections, and after considerable political manoeuvring, was called on by Hindenburg to lead a coalition government: became Chancellor of Germany, 1933. After the “Enabling Act” of March 1933, in which the German Parliament (Reichstag) voted to dissolve itself, gained political control of the government with Nazi allies in prominent government positions: there proceded a rapid Gleichschaltung (coordination) or Nazification of the state, in which democratic freedoms were suspended, political parties outlawed or dissolved, free trades unions disbanded, and the regional powers of the Länder curtailed. Many political opponents and rogue elements within the Nazi party eliminated in the murders of the “Night of the Long Knives”, 30 June 1934. On the death of Hindenburg, August 1934, abolished presidential title and became Führer of Germany. In this position of supreme power, his personal views and actions subsequently identified with the policies and actions of the German state up until 1939 and then during World War II, major aspects of which included the systematic persecution of Jews and minorities within Germany (from 1933), which was to mushroom into the systematic genocide in Axisoccupied territories of the “Final Solution” (the Shoah or Holocaust, from 1942); the alliance with Italy’s fascist leader Mussolini, 1935; the rearmament of Germany, and the entry into the demilitarized Rhineland (forbidden by the Versailles treaty), 1936; the annexations of Austria and Czechoslovakia, 1938; the invasion of Poland,

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provoking declarations of war from Britain and France, and thus the beginning of World War II, 1939; the defeat of France, 1940, and the occupation of Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway; the invasion of the Soviet Union (in contravention of the Nazi-Soviet Pact) and the declaration of war on the United States, 1941. Directed German military strategy during the war; while ultimately responsible for sanctioning all other actions of the Nazi state and war effort, he seems to have left much of the policy initiative to other leading Nazis and officials, and devolved power to the leaders in occupied territories. Increasingly reclusive and at odds with his generals from 1943, when German military successes began to be reversed. Narrowly survived attempted assassination (bomb explosion) by dissident officers and politicians, July 1944. From January 1945, operated from the bunker beneath the Chancellory building, Berlin. With defeat imminent, castigated Germany as unworthy of him, and dismissed Göring and Himmler from the Nazi party for attempting peace initiatives. Finally married Eva Braun, 28/29 April, 1945, with the Goebbels family as witnesses. Appointed admiral Karl Dönitz as head of state, and Goebbels as Chancellor. Died (suicide pact with Eva Braun) 30 April 1945.

Life Writings Mein Kampf, 2 vols, 1924; abridged translations by E.T.S. Dugdale as: My Battle, 1933, and My Struggle, 1933; as Mein Kampf, translated by James Murphy, 1939, and by Ralph Manheim, 1971 (reprinted 1982); as The Song of the Reich: Mein Kampf in Translation, translated by Richard S. Hoehler, 1990

Further Reading Barnes, James J. and Patience P. Barnes, Hitler’s Mein Kampf in Britain and America: A Publishing History 1930–39, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980 Bullock, Alan, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, revised edition, New York: Harper and Row, and London: Penguin, 1962 (original edition 1954) Davidson, Eugene, The Unmaking of Adolf Hitler, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996 Dulffer, Jost, Nazi Germany 1933–1945: Faith and Annihilation, translated by Dean Scott McMurry, New York and London: Arnold, 1996 Fischer, Klaus P., Nazi Germany: A New History, New York: Continuum, and London: Constable, 1995 Hauner, Milan, Hitler: A Chronology of His Life and Times, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1983 Kershaw, Ian, Hitler, London and New York: Longman, 1991 Kershaw, Ian, Hitler, 2 vols, London: Allen Lane, 1998–2000; New York: Norton, 1999–2000 (biography) Langer, Walter C., The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report, New York: Basic Books, 1972; London: Secker and Warburg, 1973 Maser, Werner, Hitler’s Mein Kampf: An Analysis, translated by R.H. Barry, London: Faber, 1970 Rosenfeld, Alvin, Judging Hitler, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985 Ryback, Timothy W., “Hitler’s Lost Family”, New Yorker (17 July 2000): 46–57 Shirer, William, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, New York: Simon and Schuster, and London: Secker and Warburg, 1960 Speer, Albert, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs, translated by Richard and Clara Winston, New York: Macmillan, and London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970 Staudinger, Hans, The Inner Nazi: A Critical Analysis of Mein Kampf, edited by Peter M. Rutkoff and William B. Scott, Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1981 Trevor-Roper, H.R., The Last Days of Hitler, New York and London: Macmillan, 1947 Waite, Robert, The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler, New York: Basic Books, 1977

Hoffman, Eva

435

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Polish / American autobiographer In the sub-genre of immigrant autobiography, Eva Hoffman’s memoir Lost in Translation: Life in a New Language (1989) takes up a special place. Hoffman writes her account of a young girl’s migration from Poland to Canada and then to the United States chiefly as a journey in language, as the construction of a new self in English. This new self emerges but slowly, and only after a long battle with the ambivalence of living in two languages has been fought. Hoffman dramatizes this battle as an inner dialogue between Polish and English selves, when she recounts how some of her major life decisions were made: Should you marry him? the question comes in English. Yes. Should you marry him? the question echoes in Polish. No. […] Why should I listen to you? You don’t necessarily know the truth about me just because you speak in that language. Just because you seem to come from deeper within. This is not the moment to lie to yourself. I’m not lying. I’m just not a child any longer. My emotions have become more complicated. I have ambivalences. In an interview Hoffman explained that in Polish, because it is her first language, “words seem to stand for the things they describe”. In English that connection is lost; it has to be discovered and then remembered, consciously, and from the ground up (Zournazi). In Polish, marrying someone means loving someone completely and unproblematically, “as you loved Marek”, the boy Eva knew in Poland. In English, marrying someone means being in love, forgetting Marek, and having ambivalent feelings: Polish loving now becomes “a romantic illusion”. Of course, what Hoffman describes here is also the loss of directness and spontaneity that comes with growing up, but in Lost in Translation it is the learning of a new language, and the self-consciousness it brings with it, that marks the transition from childhood to adult life. The passage quoted above is followed by another inner dialogue, in which the Polish / English voices debate whether Eva should become a pianist, as she seemed destined to be in Poland, or a writer, and again the decision comes painfully: “I want … I want not to have to change so much. But I have to. I have to catch up to myself”. Writing is the medium that enables Eva, eventually, to do this. The process begins when she decides to write her diary in English and continues when she works as an editor on the New York Times and deals with writers every day in the course of her duties. She wants to write herself as her self, that is in an autobiographical vein that puts the problem of selftranslation and bilingualism centre-stage. Hoffman’s book admirably succeeds in this endeavour: American literature has a long tradition of immigrant writing, but there are few texts that so clearly and so imaginatively articulate, through a child’s eyes and with the benefit of an adult writer’s hindsight, what it is like to live in two languages. Around the midpoint of her memoir Hoffman recalls reading

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The Promised Land (1912), another immigrant autobiography written by Mary Antin, a Jewish woman from Russia: Among the many immigrant tales I’ve come across, there is one for which I feel a particular affection. This story was written at the beginning of the century, by a young woman named Mary Antin, and in certain details it so closely resembles my own, that its author seems some amusing poltergeist, come to show me that whatever belief in my own singularity I may possess is nothing more than a comical vanity. But this ancestress also makes me see how much, even in my apparent maladaptations, I am a creature of my time – as she, in her adaptations, was a creature of hers. Antin was 30, Hoffman 43 years old when their respective memoirs were written, and Hoffman’s recognition of her kinship with Antin in the extract above neatly summarizes her view that Lost in Translation and The Promised Land are less stories about unique individuals than contrasting portraits of selves that are typical of the early and the late 20th century, modernity and postmodernity. Both women write stories of coming to America as children, but Antin’s reads as a classic narrative of immigration in which to pass for an American is the measure of success, whereas Hoffman emphasizes the ambivalence of exile that is explored and eventually resolved through writing. Acceptance of her difference, both by herself and others, provides perhaps not a happy, but certainly a good enough ending to Lost in Translation: “The language of this is sufficient. I am here now.” Maria Lauret Biography Born Ewa Wydra in Kraków, Poland, July 1945. Her Jewish parents had managed to survive World War II by hiding in the Ukraine with the help of local friends. Received early education in Kraków and showed promise as a pianist. Emigrated with her family to Vancouver, Canada, 1959. Attended high school in Vancouver and changed her name to Eva. Studied at Rice University, Houston, Texas, 1963–67. Taught literature and creative writing at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1973–76 (PhD in English and American literature). Taught at University of New Hampshire, 1976–77; Tufts University, Massachusetts, 1977–78. Settled in New York and started working as a journalist for the New York Times, 1979. Published first autobiographical work, Lost in Translation: Life in a New Language, 1989. Left New York Times, 1990. Travelled and wrote a second book, about Eastern Europe, Exit into History: A Journey through the New Eastern Europe (1993). Moved to London, 1992. Studied psychoanalysis and worked at the Tavistock Institute, London, 1994. Lectured in creative writing programmes at Columbia University, New York (1995), University of East Anglia, England (1997), and subsequently at University of California, Berkeley.

Selected Writings “Paradise” (personal history), New Yorker, 64/42 (5 December 1988) Lost in Translation: Life in a New Language, 1989 “Warsaw Days”, Yale Review, 80/3 (1992) “Memories of a Polish Censor”, Harper’s Magazine (December 1992) Exit into History: A Journey through the New Eastern Europe, 1993 Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews, 1997

Further Reading Crawshaw, Steve, “An Ancient Mariner in New York”, Independent on Sunday, (3 January 1999): 8 Durczak, Jerzy, “Eva Hoffman’s Immigrant Autobiography: A Quiet Affirmation” in The American Columbiad: Discovering America,

Inventing the United States, edited by Mario Materassi and Maria Irene Ramalho de Sousa Santos, Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1996 Hoffman, Eva, “Life Stories, East and West”, Yale Review, 88/1 (2000): 1 ff. Ingram, Susan, “When Memory is Cross-Cultural Translation: Eva Hoffman’s Schizophrenic Autobiography”, TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Redaction, 9/1 (1996): 259–76 Ling, Amy and Wesley Brown (editors), Visions of America: Personal Narratives from the Promised Land, New York: Persea Books, 1993 Wolff, Janet, Resident Alien: Feminist Cultural Criticism, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, and Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995 Zournazi, Mary, “Life in a New Language – Eva Hoffman” in Foreign Dialogues: Memories, Translations, Conversations, edited by Zournazi, Annandale: Pluto Press Australia, 1998

Holberg, Ludvig

1684–1754

Norwegian / Danish playwright, essayist, and memoirist Ludvig Holberg was born and brought up in Bergen in Norway. He did, however, receive a degree from the university of Copenhagen in 1702, and after some years in Norway he took up permanent residence in the Danish capital in 1708 to start his career as a writer and academic. He also spent periods of time on the European continent. Holberg was a historian, a political and moral philosopher, as well as a satirical poet and dramatist. He was also a prolific writer of essays (called epistles). Like his mentor Montaigne he was fond of writing about himself, his temperament, health, habits, beliefs, and aversions, particularly in epistles 25, 29, 51, 176, 188, 229, 284, 319, 322, 427, and 447. Paramount among his personal writings are three epistles in Latin, appearing in 1728, 1737, and l743, and addressed to a presumably fictitious recipient, “an illustrious gentleman” (vir perillustris). In 1745 they were translated into Danish, with some omissions. Holberg rounded off his autobiographical writing in 1753 with an epistle in Danish (epistle 447). In his epistles Holberg introduced a new, secular approach to autobiography. Without any self-glorification, but with humour and irony, he tells of his early years and youth in Norway as well as of his stay in The Netherlands in l704 and the two years he spent at Oxford in 1706–08. Settling in Copenhagen after his return from Oxford and shortly afterwards undertaking a short mission to Germany in 1709, he accounts for his academic career from that year onwards. A scholarship enabled him during the years 1714–16 to go as an itinerant scholar to Europe, with periods spent in The Netherlands, Paris, and Rome. Here Holberg shows himself to be neither courageous nor virtuous, but always extraordinarily able to survive the adventures and vicissitudes in which he gets involved. After his return to Denmark and his appointment to an unattractive professorial chair, he describes his creative breakthrough as a satirical poet and writer of comedies in the period 1718–25. The strain of this poetic spell gives him an excuse for seeking relief by taking a journey, in which, during a prolonged visit, he returns to Paris in l725–26 with the main aim of attending theatre performances. The self-portrait, concluding the first long epistle, is enlarged and elaborated in the third epistle, where the aging writer takes stock of his recent literary output, his management of his estates, and his opinions, including that of himself. Here

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he registers his preference for abstinence and a frugal diet in keeping with his weak stomach and generally enfeebled disposition. He admits to a tempestuous and idiosyncratic temperament. With remarks about the onset of old age he explains his reasons for his parsimony and lifelong unmarried state. In a passage about his reading, with reference to his study of the English deists, Holberg makes a detailed statement of his religious beliefs. He stresses his firm faith in God, while asserting his refusal to believe anything that is in conflict with his senses. Furthermore he strongly insists on tolerance, from which, however, he wants to exclude Roman Catholics and religious fanatics. His autobiographical essays conclude with a discussion of his personal experience of the dominant characteristics of the Dutch, the English, and the French peoples and an assessment of the value of various fields of knowledge. Holberg’s autobiographical writings draw a picture of an eccentric and enigmatic individual, but nevertheless a true representative of the Age of Reason, who is also aware of the irrational side to humanity and the paradoxical nature of human existence. Niels Lyhne Jensen Biography Born in Bergen, Norway (then part of the Kingdom of Norway and Denmark), 3 December 1684. Educated at school and at the Latin School in Bergen. Studied theology at the University of Copenhagen, 1702–04. Travelled to The Netherlands and Germany, 1704–06; England (mostly Oxford), 1706–08. Tutor in Germany, 1708–09. Fellow of Borch’s College, Copenhagen, 1709–14. Appointed unpaid associate professor at the University of Copenhagen, 1714, but spent the duration of the appointment travelling in The Netherlands, Paris, and Rome, 1714–16. Professor of metaphysics, 1717–20, professor of Latin and rhetoric (and secretary of the university), 1720–30, professor of history and geography, from 1730, rector, 1735–36, and university bursar, 1737–51, University of Copenhagen. Published the satirical epic Peder Paars, one of the earliest modern Danish classics, 1719–20. Wrote comedies for Montaigu’s troupe at the first Danish-language theatre, Lille Grønnegade, Copenhagen, including Den politiske kandestøber (The Political Tinker), Jeppe på Bjerget (Jeppe of the Hill), Erasmus Montanus, and Henrik og Pernille (Henry and Pernilla), 1722–28. Visited The Netherlands, 1725–26. Stopped writing plays during the reign of Christian VI, 1730–46, who banned all theatrical activities in Denmark and Norway. Created a baron, 1747. Unoffical adviser and writer, Kongelige [Royal] Theater, Copenhagen, which was established in 1748, a little while after the accession of Frederik V. Died in Copenhagen, 28 January 1754.

Selected Writings Ad virum perillustrem epistolae, 1728–43; as Ludvig Holberg’s Memoirs: An Eighteenth Century Danish Contribution to International Understanding (translation based on various sections of works), 1827; edited by Stewart E. Fraser, 1970 Moralske tanker, 1744; edited by F.J. Billeskov Jansen, 1943; part as Moral Reflections and Epistles, edited and translated by P.M. Mitchell, 1991 Epistler, 5 vols, 1748–54; edited by F.J. Billeskov Jansen, 8 vols, 1944–54; in part as Selected Essays, edited and translated by P.M. Mitchell, 1955, and with Moral Reflections, 1991 Ludvig Holbergs memoirer, edited by F.J. Billeskov Jansen, 1943 Epistler og moralske tanker, edited by Sigurd Højby, 1945 Essays, edited by Kjell Heggelund, 1977 Brev til Hr. Krigs Raad og Commissionaire Aage Rasmussen Hagen i Trondheim (correspondence), edited by Thoralf Berg, 1984 Moral Reflections and Epistles, edited and translated by P.M. Mitchell, 1991

437

Further Reading Billeskov Jansen, F.J., Ludvig Holberg (in English), New York: Twayne, 1974 Müller, Th. A., Den unge Ludvig Holberg 1684–1722, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1943; revised edition, 1963

Holland see Netherlands and Belgium (Flanders) Holocaust Writings Holocaust life writing takes several forms, and six distinct genres will be mentioned here. Diaries are the earliest form of written record from the years 1939–45. They were written with the precise intention of recording what the writers often already saw as unprecedented events – this is the case even when the writer did not live to see the end of the war. Chaim Kaplan, for instance, starts his diary of life in the Warsaw ghetto with the words: “We are witnessing the dawn of a new era in the history of the world” (Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan, 1965). Kaplan’s diary was an individual although not a personal effort. He states that he means to write impersonally, and in most respects he succeeds: he omits, for instance, the fact that he suffered from diabetes during a time of terrible deprivation, but records all kinds of public events. However, even this “impersonal” work is inflected by his own interests, for instance in biblical narrative; and he invents an alter ego, Hirsch, who becomes the mouthpiece for the negative and cynical feelings Kaplan cannot admit to. More genuinely impersonal diaries or catalogues were also compiled on behalf of whole communities, whose members were desperate to preserve something of their history and struggles. Emmanuel Ringelblum’s Oneg Shabbas (literally “Sabbath Delight”, translated as Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emmanuel Ringelblum, 1958) is one such archive. Ringelblum took down notes about life in the Warsaw ghetto and interviewed its inhabitants, intending to write them up as a historical account after the war – but he was killed by the Gestapo in 1944. In the Lodz ghetto, Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski, leader of the Judenrat (Jewish Council), set up a team of official chroniclers to record the fate of the ghetto; at the same time, a great range of individuals were also writing down their experiences, a range best seen in Alan Adelson and Robert Lapides’s remarkable collection, Lodz Ghetto: Inside a Community under Siege (1989). At the opposite extreme from these ghetto and communal records are the diaries with which present-day readers are most familiar: Anne Frank’s Het achterhuis (1947 and subsequent editions; Diary) and Etty Hillesum’s Het verstoorde leven (1982; An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941–1943). The authors of these diaries were young and assimilated western European women, who both lived in hiding in Amsterdam and eventually died in Auschwitz. The personal writings of Frank and Hillesum, which within an extraordinary context concentrate on everyday issues ranging from romance to food, are easier for post-Holocaust, primarily non-Jewish audiences to relate to than, for instance, the diary of Moshe [Moses] Flinker (Young Moshe’s Diary: The Spiritual Torment of a Jewish Boy

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in Nazi Europe, 1965), which is partly a record of the Orthodox Jewish writer’s relationship with the God who appears to have abandoned him. The second central genre of Holocaust life writing is testimony. The term “testimony” combines the idea of recording a historical truth with testifying to its veracity as if a witness in court. Again, these texts were usually written or collected with the express intention of informing and reminding the postHolocaust world about the atrocities committed; they usually concern the experiences of camp survivors. As part of this impulse to record, compilations were made immediately after the war of children’s accounts of their experiences during the preceding six years. Some of these have recently been translated into English, for instance The Children Accuse (edited by Maria Hochberg-Marianska and Noe Gruss, translated in 1996; original Polish edition, 1946). Several projects currently exist for recording as many oral testimonies as possible, including Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Visual History Foundation – which aims to amass 50,000 testimonies – and the collection of filmed testimonies in the Fortunoff Video Archive at Yale University. Lawrence Langer’s Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (1991), a groundbreaking analysis of this genre, argues that such testimonies reveal the “ruin” of memory and of lives in the aftermath of genocide. Testimonies with a more literary bias include Elie Wiesel’s Un di Velt Hot Geshvign [And the World Was Silent] (1956), revised as La Nuit (1958; Night), which is an early and harrowing account of a 15-year-old’s year in Auschwitz written in a blank and unadorned style. Wiesel claims that “testimony” is a literary genre bequeathed to 20th-century readers by the Holocaust, although other critics have pointed out that the testimony is a well-known form for recording personal experience of historical events, dating back at least to World War I. Primo Levi, in his influential testimony Se questo è un uomo (1947; If This is a Man), records the great fear of those imprisoned in Auschwitz that they will not be listened to or believed. Levi’s work is a meditation on the meaning of the Holocaust years as well as a record of his own experiences of dehumanizing slave labour; this project, of wrestling with the moral and human implications of Auschwitz, extends into all Levi’s writing, including his essays I sommersi e i salvati (1986; The Drowned and the Saved). Despite the half-century that has passed since the Holocaust, and the indifference with which historians in particular often greet such works, testimonies continue to be published, translated, and re-issued. Examples include Wladyslaw Szpilman’s The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw 1939–45 (translated 1999; Polish edition, 1946), about Szpilman’s experiences in the Warsaw ghetto; the newly translated text also includes extracts from the diary of the German officer who sheltered him. Roman Frister’s Deyokan ’atsmi ’im tsaleket (1993; The Cap, or, The Price of a Life) is one of the few testimonies to describe the “choiceless choices” of Jews under Nazi rule. Frister describes the betrayals he was forced to commit, including having to lead the Gestapo to his parents and causing the death of a fellow prisoner in Auschwitz by stealing his cap. The great interest that greets this genre today contrasts sharply with the hostility inspired by testimonies published in the first decades after the war, at a time when readers did not want to be reminded of a painful era that had just ended – particularly if their own roles in it had been in the least ambiguous.

A third category of Holocaust life writing is that of autobiographical fiction. Such works are often published as fiction, but are known to be based on events experienced by the author. In some cases choosing the genre of fiction can offer leeway for a writer to consider, for instance, stories other than his or her own, and to deal with the unreliability of memory. Ida Fink, for instance, makes both central to her autobiographical fictions Skrawek czasu (1987; A Scrap of Time and Other Stories) and ´ Podróz˙ (1990; The Journey), and Slady (1996; Traces: Stories). In the former, which is a collection of short stories, first-person narration alternates with the third-person narration of “scraps” about other people that the narrator appears to have overheard or been told; while in the first-person novel The Journey, about two Jewish sisters on the run in Nazi-occupied Poland, no claim is made for a definite link between first-person narrator and author. However, it is hard for the reader not to infer such a link, and in interviews Fink has confirmed that she writes autobiographically. Her decision to write fiction rather than fact complicates and enriches the notion of testimony. Louis Begley’s novel Wartime Lies (1991) equally appears to separate the firstperson narrator from the author; the former describes the fictionality of his own persona after a Holocaust childhood spent living out a false identity in Aryan Warsaw. Such a conceit allows Begley to explore how the “lies” of fiction can represent both the history of the Holocaust and an uncertain individual life. The fourth category is that of biography. There are of course many regular biographical studies of individuals or categories of people that fall under the heading of Holocaust life writing. These range from Myriam Anissimov’s biography of Primo Levi (Primo Levi: Tragedy of an Optimist, 1998) and Hillel Levine’s life study of the rescuer Chiune Sugihara, who was Japanese consul in Kovno during the war (In Search of Sugihara, 1996), to Gitta Sereny’s study of Franz Stangl, commandant of the death camp Treblinka (Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder, 1974). There are also more ambiguous and ambitious works of this kind. Art Spiegelman’s two-volume account of his father’s experiences during the Holocaust years is both biographical and autobiographical. It tells, in cartoon form, the odyssey of Vladek Spiegelman from Sosnowiec in Poland to Auschwitz and after the war to New York, where his son Art – the narrator, author, and a character in the text – now lives. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (1986 and 1991) tells its tale in a striking and innovative way, by presenting the story in terms of an animal allegory in which the Jews are mice, the Germans cats, and the Americans dogs. This defamiliarizes the Nazis’ racial policies, while with a knowing irony allowing the reader to understand the narrative through categories that appear similarly fixed. Spiegelman’s Maus is both biographical and autobiographical, making it an example of second-generation writing, a fifth category of Holocaust life writing. This new genre of Holocaust writing, which is concerned with trauma passed on from survivors to their children, emerged in the 1970s. In her account of growing up under the shadow of the Holocaust, The War After: Living with the Holocaust (1996), Anne Karpf describes the pressures and fears she inherited from parents who could not shed their wartime anxieties even in postwar Britain. All these genres of Holocaust life writing naturally have fictional counterparts. Anne Michaels’s prize-winning novel

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Fugitive Pieces (1997) is a poetic rendering of the life of a Holocaust survivor and that of his son: it is a novel about the second generation and the legacy of the war. Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow, or, The Nature of the Offence (1991) is an experimental, blackly comic novel which takes the form of a defamiliarized biography. It tells the story of a Nazi doctor, starting with his death and ending with his birth, in an attempt to represent anew both the events of the Holocaust and the relation of cause and effect in a life story. David Hartnett’s novel Black Milk (1994), which takes its title from Paul Celan’s poem “Death Fugue”, is unusual in fictionalizing individuals’ experiences of ghetto life. Black Milk is based on ghetto diaries from the Kovno ghetto; like Michaels’s novel, it offers a disjunction between poetic style and horrifying subject matter. Finally, Binjamin Wilkomirski’s Bruchstücke: aus einer Kindheit 1939–1948 (1995; Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood, with different subtitle in the UK) is a novel about the experiences of a child survivor of the Riga ghetto, Majdanek, and Auschwitz. This book is one of very few fictional works that represent the death camps; in William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice (1979), for instance, where the eponymous heroine is imprisoned in Auschwitz, the action is deliberately placed outside the camp itself. Fragments, however, was originally published as a memoir, and its author insisted that he was describing his own experiences. Subsequent research has revealed that Wilkomirski, whose real name is Bruno Doessekker, is neither a Holocaust survivor, nor Jewish, and spent the war years in his native Switzerland. Perhaps the most crucial fact to emerge from this scandal is that, despite the frequent critical assertion that there are narrative and structural ways of distinguishing Holocaust testimony from Holocaust fiction, this turns out not always to be the case. From internal evidence alone, Fragments is indistinguishable from an authentic memoir. This discussion has been primarily concerned with Jewish victims of the Holocaust. This is partly because the Nazis’ war against the Jews took precedence over, and provided the template for, their assault on others; and partly because the literature concerning genocide against the Jews has, for various reasons, been much more plentiful than that produced by other groups. However, there are some examples of life writing by Gypsy, homosexual, and political victims of Nazi rule. Alexander Ramati’s And the Violins Stopped Playing: A Story of the Gypsy Holocaust (1985) is an account of Gypsy life in occupied Poland and deportation to Auschwitz. Heinz Heger’s Die Männer mit dem rosa Winkel (1972; The Men with the Pink Triangle) is the testimony of a gay man in Dachau; Heger transcribed the story of an anonymous Austrian, whose own name could not be used because, in a horrible irony, homosexuality was still outlawed after the war. Jorge Semprún’s Le Grand Voyage (1963; The Long Voyage) is an early fictionalized account of a French resistance fighter’s journey to Buchenwald; while Charlotte Delbo’s Auschwitz et après (1970; Auschwitz and After) is a meditation on her imprisonment as a resistance fighter and on the way in which the memory of such an experience functions. Sue Vice See also Israeli and Modern Hebrew Life Writing; Jewish American Life Writing; Judaism and Life Writing; Survival and Life Writing; Testimony; Trauma and Life Writing

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Further Reading Barkow, Ben (editor), Testaments to the Holocaust (microform), Woodbridge, Connecticut: Primary Source Media, 1998 (archives of the Weiner Library) Borowski, Tadeusz, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, and Other Stories, selected and translated by Barbara Vedder, New York: Viking Press, and London: Jonathan Cape, 1967 Clendinnen, Inga, Reading the Holocaust, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999 Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, London and New York: Routledge, 1991 Fortunoff Video Archive, Guide to Yale University Library Holocaust Video Testimonies: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, New York: Garland, 1990 Friedlander, Saul, When Memory Comes, translated by Helen R. Lane, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1979 Friedlander, Saul (editor), Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution”, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992 Hartman, Geoffrey (editor), Holocaust Remembrance: The Shapes of Memory, Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1994 Horowitz, Sara R., Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997 Keneally, Thomas, Schindler’s List, and New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983 as Schindler’s Ark, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1982 Klemperer, Victor, I Shall Bear Witness: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer, 1933–41, abridged and translated by Martin Chalmers, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998 Kosinski, Jerzy, The Painted Bird, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965; London: W.H. Allen, 1966 Lang, Berel (editor), Writing and the Holocaust, New York: Holmes and Meier, 1988 Lengyel, Olga, Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz, Chicago: ZiffDavis, 1947 Lévy, Clara, Ecritures de l’identité: les écrivains juifs après la Shoah, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999 Millu, Liana, Smoke over Birkenau, translated by Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991 Nomberg-Przytyk, Sara, Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land, edited by Eli Pfefferkorn and David H. Hirsch, translated by Roslyn Hirsch, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985 Patterson, David, Sun Turned to Darkness: Memory and Recovery in the Holocaust Memoir, Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1998 Perechodnik, Calel, Am I a Murderer? Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman, edited and translated by Frank Fox, Boulder, Colarado: Westview Press, 1996 Rashke, Richard L., Escape from Sobibor, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, and London: Michael Joseph, 1982 Rothchild, Sylvia (editor), Voices from the Holocaust, New York: New American Library, 1981 Vrba, Rudolf and Alan Bestic, I Cannot Forgive, London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1963; New York: Grove Press, 1964 Wells, Leon Weliczker, The Janowska Road, New York: Macmillan, 1963 Willenberg, Samuel, Surviving Treblinka, edited by Wladyslaw T. Bartoszewski, translated by Naftali Greenwood, Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1989

Hong Kingston, Maxine see Kingston, Maxine Hong

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Horne, Donald

1921–

Australian journalist, novelist, and autobiographer In 1964 Donald Horne was widely acclaimed for The Lucky Country, which attacked Australian society as a second-rate and derivative one; the title retained popular currency for decades thereafter. His autobiographical trilogy, however, seems destined for more lasting literary reputation. In the Foreword to The Education of Young Donald (1967) Horne announced that “this is technically an autobiography but, since the central character is presented as a social animal … I would use the word ‘sociography’ rather than ‘autobiography’”. This statement of intention is brilliantly realized in the main text, which, following the hint of the title, is divided into three sections – “Primary”, “Secondary”, and “Tertiary”. The first section is especially successful in evoking life in Muswellbrook (a New South Wales country town) in the 1930s. With the transfer of his schoolteacher father, Donald moved to outer Sydney for his secondary education, and subsequently (because of his father’s breakdown and brief institutionalization) to a high school much closer to the city itself. As an adolescent, Horne knew himself to be quicker than most of his classmates and much more interested in books and ideas. Searching for a “style” that would define and express his “self”, he early developed verbal habits of mockery, satire, and irony, which, present in The Education of Young Donald, are more intensely displayed in Confessions of a New Boy (1985) and Portrait of an Optimist (1988). A scholarship to Sydney University in 1939 brought Horne into contact not only with the offspring of a wealthier class than he had previously encountered but also with a small number of individuals whom he found intellectually stimulating, some of them later forging careers of note in the Australian cultural or political scene – A.D. Hope, James McAuley, and Alf Conlon, for example. A major influence was John Anderson, the Scottish professor of philosophy at Sydney University, whose fierce scepticism left an indelible mark on Horne and many of his contemporaries. The drive to live up to the iconoclastic image he had created for himself produced tensions within this product of small-town New South Wales, which dominate the later pages of The Education of Young Donald. He sought to conceal (if not to solve) these tensions by episodes of outrageous behaviour and chronic self-questioning. Horne’s talent for mocking absurdity becomes more acute in Confessions of a New Boy, which takes up his story with his enlisting in the Sydney University Regiment for service with the Australian army. His wartime encounters with military and governmental bureaucracy provided rich material for his deflationary wit, increasing his tendency to judge his life experiences against his acquaintance with literature, especially fiction. Much of the flavour of Confessions of a New Boy derives from the constant parodic use of cliché, highlighted by the use of capitals or parentheses to produce ironic effects that diminish everything they touch except (usually) himself. In the years 1941–45 Horne was a ‘“new boy” in many different spheres of action – the army, Canberra and Australia’s infant diplomatic service, and journalism. In his personal life, he was introduced to what passed in Sydney for bohemia, to heavy drinking, and to relationships with women. In all, he found

material for the exemplary anecdotes by which he charted his life for many years. A major opportunity came with his employment in the newspaper empire of Frank Packer. He devoted much of the 1950s and 1960s to popular journalism, which brought him no real satisfaction. His first trip to the United Kingdom, which is the starting point of Portrait of an Optimist, was made in 1949 in company with his English wife. The subsequent collapse of the marriage is kept very much in the margins of this final volume of the trilogy. Attention is rather centred on what Horne offers as the high farce of his attempts to become a novelist, to be assimilated into English village life, to become a power broker in local Conservative party politics. His lifelong scepticism led him to adopt a wide variety of (sometimes contradictory) positions on political and social matters. In Portrait of an Optimist, however, the mechanics and excitement of metropolitan journalism command his most intense interest. For all his tribulations, his attempts at finding a “style” and defining a “self”, his unquenchable zest for life, allow him at its close, which coincides with the unhappy launch of a serious intellectual fortnightly, to maintain the optimism young Donald had known in Muswellbrook – despite all that education and experience had taught D.R. Horne about the necessity of pessimism. H.P. Heseltine Biography Donald Richmond Horne. Born in Muswellbrook, New South Wales, Australia, 26 December 1921. His father was a teacher. Studied at the University of Sydney, 1939–41. Served in the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF), 1941–44. Studied at Canberra University College (now Australian National University), 1944–45. Reporter and feature writer for the Sydney Daily Telegraph, 1945–49. Lived in Britain, 1949–54. Freelance writer, 1950–52; foreign correspondent for Associated Newspapers, London, and Australian Consolidated Newspapers, Sydney, 1952–54. Editor of Weekend, 1954–61; Observer, 1958–61; Everybody’s, 1961–62; and The Bulletin, 1961–62 and 1967–72. Coeditor of Quadrant, 1963–66, and Newsweek International, 1973–76. Married Myfanwy Gollan, a writer, 1960: two children. Research fellow, 1973, senior lecturer, 1975, associate professor, 1980, and emeritus professor, 1987, School of Political Science, University of New South Wales. Chancellor, University of Canberra, 1991–94. Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), 1982. Chair of the Australia Council, 1985–90. Chair of the Ideas for Australia Programme, 1991–94. Published many books about Australian society and politics, beginning with The Lucky Country (1964), three novels, as well as the autobiographical trilogy.

Selected Writings The Education of Young Donald, 1967 In Search of Billy Hughes (biographical study), 1979 Confessions of a New Boy, 1985 Portrait of an Optimist, 1988

Further Reading Buckridge, Patrick, “Antagonism as an Art Form: Brian Penton and the Politics of Provocation”, Journal of Australian Studies, 54–55 (1997): 81–90 Colmer, John, Australian Autobiography: The Personal Quest, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989 Cusack, Dymphna and Florence James, Come in Spinner, London: Heinemann, and New York: Morrow, 1951 Elliott, Sumner Locke, Rusty Bugles (performed 1948), Sydney: Currency Press, 1980 Friend, Donald, Gunner’s Diary, Sydney: Ure Smith, 1943 McGregor, Craig, Profile of Australia, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1966; Chicago: Regnery, 1967

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McKay, Claude, This is the Life: The Autobiography of a Newspaperman, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1961 Mayer, Henry, The Press in Australia, Melbourne: Lansdowne, 1964 O’Grady, Desmond, “A Dab Hand”, Voice, 7/1 (1997): 96–100

Hsieh Ping-ying see Xie Bingying Hu Shi

1891–1962

Chinese philosopher, literary scholar, and auto/biographer Hu Shi was one of the inventors of modern biography in China, and his many biographies remain models in conception, learning, and style for Chinese life writing. After 1910, Hu Shi was a strong advocate of writing in the style of modern Western biographies. He dismissed the Chinese biographical tradition as tedious and unimportant. Very early in the 20th century, Hu Shi began to publish unusual kinds of biographies, in vernacular Chinese, about great Chinese and Western heroes and heroines, from the ancient princess Wang Zhaojun to the French saint Joan of Arc. His early biographies stand out against the background of traditional Chinese biography and show the effectiveness of his contemporary Liang Qichao’s modernizing biographical criticism. Hu Shi’s fervent belief in the truthful telling of history prevailed in his early biographical writings, which shattered a long-held tendency in traditional Chinese biographies – namely, flattering the dead. This had been the prevalent impulse of life writing for centuries. Hu Shi’s arrival in the United States in 1910 marked the beginning of a new period in his development as a biographer. From this point onwards, many fresh influences came to the fore; Hu Shi read widely in Western literature and acquired an intimate knowledge of Western biography. Inspired by these works, he wrote an essay in 1914 in which he stated that China’s biographical literature was less developed than that of Europe. He claimed that, unlike Western biography, Chinese biography included little discussion of the character of its subjects, and even less included accounts of their inner world, or of psychological analysis. After the May Fourth Movement of 1919, Hu Shi emerged as the unquestionable leader of Chinese life writing. In his biographies, Hu’s own treatment of different types of subjects put into practice his theoretical vision of the biographical craft. These distinctions among various biographical types influenced most subsequent Chinese 20th-century biography. Nevertheless, Hu’s biographies provided a flexible stimulus rather than a rigid model. The new directions in biographical writing stimulated by Hu’s seminal models were certainly important in shaping modern Chinese biography, effectively acting as bold manifestoes to proclaim the possibility for a new age in life writing throughout the rest of the century. Hu Shi’s major contribution to modern Chinese biographical writing lies not merely in his own biographical writings, but in his criticism concerning the biographical form as a distinct literary genre. In his 1930 preface to a biography by Zhang Xiaoruo

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of Zhang Jian, a pioneer in modern Chinese industry, Hu raised theoretical questions about biographical writing and elaborated his theory of how to transform Chinese biography on the basis of Western biographical theory. He was distressed by three shortcomings of Chinese traditional biography: (1) customary taboos regarding certain topics and people, (2) a general lack of hero-worship, and (3) the fact that biographical style was static and without internal movement, which he blamed on the use of the (extremely formal) classical Chinese language. In his view, these failings imposed strict limitations on Chinese life writing. Two years later, Hu reiterated his earlier judgement on Chinese life writing, saying that many Chinese biographies were only based on official documents, so that their credibility was doubtful. His argument here included the claim that they only emphasized what the character of a person was, rather than how the character of that person developed, thus setting Chinese biography apart from various styles of Western biography. If Hu’s biographies in the early 20th century were a mosaic of Chinese tradition and Western influences, his writings after the 1920s attempted to put forward a general programme for the implementation of certain concrete practices. The extent of Hu’s accomplishment can be seen in his own autobiography Sishi zishu [1933; Self-Account at the Age of Forty] which blazed new trails in stylistic innovation, most obviously by adopting firstperson, rather than third-person, narration. Before Hu Shi, autobiographical writing in China usually followed the form of didactic biographical writing. It belonged to history and was therefore limited by generic considerations of “objectivity”, “truth”, and “accuracy” in the representation of events. Impersonality, from a Confucian moral perspective, was considered a necessary part of the transmission of information to future generations. Prior to Sishi zishu, very few Chinese autobiographers could bring themselves to abandon the posture of the historian and so to depart from third-person narration. The development of the first-person trope in Hu Shi’s autobiographical writing, therefore, represents a shift of emphasis within the meaning of “auto”, of “zi”: instead of privileging the author merely because he or she “was there”, and thus has the most accurate knowledge of external events, Hu Shi’s narrative “I” gives priority to that of which the individual has the most intimate knowledge – the self. After Mao Zedong and his revolutionary comrades came to power in 1949, Hu Shi spent nine years in the United States before returning to Taiwan. He continued to promote modern biographical writing from both theoretical and practical perspectives. He believed that biography should become a kind of catchword for any truthful account of personages. In his later years, he devoted much of his time to sorting through a wide range of biographical writings for materials of interest to modern readers. In a public lecture in Taiwan, he claimed that the development of Chinese biographical writing could not be fully understood simply by the examination of the theories of modern Western biography (Zhuanji wenxue, 1953 [On Literary Biography]. By this time Hu felt that both Chinese and Western trends in biographical writing had their good points and were likely to come together, creating a new synthesis in China. Rather than seeing them remain aloof from each other, he conceived them as moving on a converging course. If this is so, his work declared the advent of a new Chinese literary form, providing an interface wherein the separate interests of literature

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and history could overlap for the sake of mutual enrichment, and the reading public could benefit from the creative expansion of biographical knowledge heralded by Hu Shi’s innovations. Shao Dongfang Biography Born in Shanghai, China, 17 December 1891. His father, a minor government official and classical scholar, died in 1895. Brought up in family home in Anhui province. Attended village school, 1895–1904. Educated at several different schools in Shanghai, including the China National Institute, 1906–08, where he edited a student newspaper. Went to Beijing and succeeded in gaining Boxer Indemnity scholarship to study in the United States. Enrolled at Cornell University College of Agriculture, Ithaca, New York, 1910; transferred to College of Arts and Sciences to study philosophy, graduating in 1914. Studied for a doctorate at Columbia University, New York, under the philosopher John Dewey: received doctorate, 1917. One of the founders of the Collegiate League for Abolition of Militarism. Returned to China, as professor of philosophy on faculty of National Beijing University, 1917. Married Jiang Dongxiu, a marriage arranged by his mother when he was aged 11, 1917: two sons. Co-founder and editor of the weekly magazine Nuli [Endeavour], 1922. Published manifesto, Our Political Proposals, 1922. Advocated the use of the vernacular language (baihua) in Chinese literature instead of the traditional literary style of wen-yen. Travelled abroad representing the Boxer Indemnity Fund Committee, visiting London and the Soviet Union, 1926. Left Beijing to become professor of philosophy at Guanghua University, 1928; also served as president of the China National Institute, Shanghai, 1928–30. Returned to Beijing, 1930. Became dean of College of Arts at National Beijing University, 1931. Edited Duli Zazhi [The Independent Critic], 1932–37. Head of Chinese delegation to the Institute of Pacific Relations, 1936. Went to US on lecture tour, 1937. Served as ambassador to US, 1938–42; remained in the US, lecturing and writing, until 1946. Served as acting head of Chinese delegation to first United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization conference, 1945. Returned to China, to become president of National Beijing University, 1946. Delegate to National Assembly drafting China’s constitution, 1946. Went to live in New York after Communist government established in China, 1949. Served as Nationalist China’s representative to the United Nations. Moved to Taiwan to take up post as president of Academia Sinica, China’s principal scholarly organization, 1958. Died in Taiwan, 24 February 1962 .

Selected Writings Yao lieshi zhuanlue [Biography of Martyr Yao], in Hu Shi’s school bulletin, 1908; in Hu Shi wen cun (collected works), 1930 Zhongguo aiguo nüjie Wang Zhaojun zhuan [Biography of Wang Zhaojun: A Patriotic Heroine of China], 1908 Zhang Xuecheng nianpu [Chronological Biography of Zhang Xuecheng], 1931 Sishi zishu [Self-Account at Age 40], 1933 Hu Shi riji [Diaries], 1933 “Lingxiu rencai de laiyuan” [The Sources of Leadership Talents], in his Hu Shi lunxue jinzhu [Recent Works on Learning], 1935 Hu Shi liu xue riji [Diary of Hu Shi When Studying Abroad], 1947 Ding Wenjiang de zhuanji [Biography of Ding Wenjiang], 1956 Hu Shi koushu zizhuan [Oral Account of Hu Shi’s Autobiography], edited by Tang Degang, 1961 Hu Shi zuopin ji [Collected Works of Hu Shi], 37 vols, 1986 (includes all the biographies and his 1953 lecture) A Collection of Hu Shih’s English Writings, 1995 Hu Shi shuxinji [Collected Letters of Hu Shi], edited by Geng Yunzhi and Ouyang Zhesheng, 3 vols, 1996 Hu Shi zhuanji zuopin quanbian [Complete Collection of Biographies by Hu Shi], 4 vols, edited by Geng Yunzhi and Li Guotong, 1999

Further Reading Chou, Min-chih, Hu Shih and Intellectual Choice in Modern China, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984

Eber, Irene, “Hu Shih (1891–1962): A Sketch of His Life and His Role in the Intellectual and Political Dialogue of Modern China”, (dissertation), Claremont, California: Claremont Graduate School, 1965 Grieder, Jerome B., Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917–1937, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1970 Howard, Richard, “ Modern Chinese Biographical Writing”, Journal of Asian Studies, 21/4 (1962): 465–75 Hu Ming, Hu Shi pingzhuan [Critical Biography of Hu Shi], 2 vols, Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe [People’s Literature Publishing House], 1996 Hu Shi, The Chinese Renaissance: The Haskell Lectures, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934 Hu Shi, Hu Shi yanlunji [Collected Speeches of Hu Shi], Taipei: Ziyou Zhonguoshe, 1953 (includes the speech “On Literary Biography”) Hu Songping, Hu Shizhi xiansheng nianpu changbian chugao [A Draft Chronological Biography of Hu Shi], 10 vols, Taipei: Linking Publishing, 1984; revised edition, 1990 Hu Songping, Hu Shizhi xiansheng wannian tanhualu [Conversations with Hu Shi in his Late Years], Taipei: Linking Publishing, 1984 Hu Shi, The Hu Shi Reader, edited by Sharon Shih-jiuan Hou and Chih-p’ing Chou, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1990 Li Ao, Hu Shi pingzhuan [Critical Biography of Hu Shi], Taipei: Wenxin shudian [Wenxin Bookstore], 1964 Liu Qingfeng (editor), Hu Shi yu xiandai Zhongguo wenhua zhuanxing [Hu Shi and the Transformation of Modern Chinese Culture], Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1994 Shao Dongfang, “Transformation, Diversification, Ideology: Twentieth-Century Chinese Biography”, in Life Writing from the Pacific Rim: Essays from Japan, China, Indonesia, India, and Siam, with a Psychological Overview, edited by Stanley Schab and George Simson, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997 Yü Ying-shih, “Modern Chronological Biography and the Conception of Historical Scholarship”, translated by Shao Dongfang, Chinese Historians, 6/1 (1993): 31–43

Hughes, Langston

1902–1967

American poet, playwright, and autobiographer Langston Hughes’s work as an autobiographer is very much at one with his work as a poet. Hughes was a professional writer, at home in every genre in which he worked – novel, short story, opera libretto, drama, musical comedy lyric, children’s book, historical narrative, newspaper sketch – but he was most himself as the writer of brief lyric or ironic poems. Both of his autobiographical books are composed in brief, often anecdotal narrative sections, reminiscent of the style of his poems. The Big Sea (1940) consists of about 70 titled narrative sections of between three and ten pages; I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey (1956) is similarly composed of about 80 such brief narrative sections. Also as in Hughes’s poetry, these autobiographical texts connect subtly to the same literary influences from American literary traditions, especially Walt Whitman. Like Whitman, Hughes’s persona in these books is at once his self, the poet and celebrity, and the common man. He begins The Big Sea with the image of tossing the books of his college education overboard, thus putting behind him the trappings of convention as he heads out on the Whitmanian “open road” as a common seaman. And although Hughes is unambiguously himself in the narrative, he is also a mythic figure, a black Everyman, who connects not only the incidents of his personal life but also significant incidents –

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such as the great migration to the North – in the life of African Americans as a group. Symbolic associations are more important in these narratives than historical fact; Hughes often obscures chronology by connecting disparate persons and events in his reporting of his own experiences. While narrating the incidents of his life, Hughes demonstrates to the reader how he, like his fellow black Americans, is discriminated against by all the institutions the white reader can take for granted, from hotels and cinemas to buses and trains. So his comments on the events of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, in which he was an important participant, are followed up by an ironic comment on the Cotton Club, where so many famous black artists had performed during that period: “But I was never there, because the Cotton Club was a Jim Crow club for gangsters and affluent whites. They were not cordial to Negro patronage, unless you were a celebrity like Bojangles” (The Big Sea). In these autobiographical texts, Hughes the narrator is everywhere during the events, but he observes more than he is willing to discuss. Hughes’s portraits of the important persons in his artistic life, for example, are often shadowy and incomplete. While he gives vivid descriptions of Zora Neale Hurston and Wallace Thurman as vibrant personalities, his analysis of Countee Cullen, Wallace Thurman, and Carl Van Vechten, who were all homosexual or bisexual, does not even hint at this personal aspect of their lives. Recent criticism has noted the poet’s reluctance to declare his own sexuality, citing inconclusive evidence of his own bisexual or homosexual tendencies. Hughes is far more forthcoming in his portraits of his fellow seamen in The Big Sea and the various people he meets in his travels in I Wonder as I Wander. This reflects his consistent interest in the little people, the proletariat, the common man, and his growing disinterest in the kind of intellectuals and socialites who had touted him and other black writers during the Harlem Renaissance. Touring Venice with Alain Locke, he escaped from “the Grand Tour” to see the real city: I got a little tired of palaces and churches and famous paintings and English tourists. And I began to wonder if there were no back alleys in Venice and no poor people and no slums and nothing that looked like the districts down by the markets on Woodland Avenue in Cleveland where the American Italians lived. So I went off by myself a couple of times and wandered around in sections not stressed in the guide books. And I found that there were plenty of poor people in Venice and plenty of back alleys off canals too dirty to be picturesque. (The Big Sea) Like Mark Twain before him, Hughes expresses American indifference to the monuments and artefacts of the European past, seeking rather a personal experience of their human sources. He constructs an image of himself that suppresses the radical socialist he was during most of the 1930s, but as products of a consciousness that matured in the revolutionary 1930s, Hughes’s autobiographies emphasize his connection, personal and imaginative, to the common people everywhere. Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr Biography Born in Joplin, Missouri, United States, 1 February 1902. Educated at Central High School, Cleveland, 1916–20. Taught English in Mexico, 1920–21. Studied at Columbia University, New York, 1921–22.

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Worked as a seaman, 1923–24; as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, DC, 1925. Studied at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, 1926–29 (BA). Madrid correspondent, Baltimore AfroAmerican, 1937. Founder of: the Harlem Suitcase Theatre, New York, 1938; New Negro Theatre, Los Angeles, 1939; and Skyloft Players, Chicago, 1941. Member of the Music and Writers war boards during World War II. Columnist (“Simple”), Chicago Defender, 1943–67. Lived in Harlem, New York, from 1947. Visiting professor of creative writing, Atlanta University, Georgia, 1947; poet-in-residence, University of Chicago Laboratory School, 1949. Primarily known for his poetry, beginning with The Weary Blues (1926) and including Selected Poems (1959), he also wrote plays, lyrics for musicals, radio drama, and fiction. Columnist, New York Post, 1962–67. Died in New York, 22 May 1967.

Selected Writings The Big Sea: An Autobiography, 1940 I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey, 1956 Arna Bontemps–Langston Hughes Letters, 1925–1967, edited by Charles H. Nichols, 1980

Further Reading Berry, Faith, Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem, Westport, Connecticut: Lawrence Hill, 1983 Lewis, David Levering, When Harlem Was in Vogue, New York: Knopf, 1981; Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989 Miller, R. Baxter, The Art and Imagination of Langston Hughes, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989 Rampersad, Arnold, The Life of Langston Hughes, 2 vols, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986–88

Hume, David

1711–1776

Scottish philosopher, prose writer, and autobiographer Many of David Hume’s contemporaries found his deathbed autobiography, The Life of David Hume, remarkable less because of what it said than what it failed to say. First published as a slim pamphlet, his the Life was stunningly, disappointingly, brief. This pamphlet also included a letter by Hume’s friend and fellow Scotsman, Adam Smith, in which Smith gives “some account of the behaviour of our late excellent friend, Mr Hume, during his last illness”. Immediately after the publication of this pamphlet, entitled The Life of David Hume, Esq. Written by Himself (1777), biographical “letters”, “supplements”, “strictures”, and “anecdotes” about Hume proliferated. But although these early biographies, penned by a wide range of writers, advertised that they would fill in the details of Hume’s life, they in fact add little biographical information not already covered in the Life. These authors nonetheless make a significant contribution to the study of the Life and to Hume studies more generally in that they reveal much about how Hume’s many published works on moral theory were – and still can be – used to interpret and reframe portrayals of Hume’s life, especially the Life. In responding to the Life, Hume’s detractors objected to more than the autobiography’s sins of omission. They also took violent exception to what they considered a significant omission in Hume’s life itself, an omission that Hume’s autobiography only confirmed: Hume lacked religious faith. In contrast, Hume’s supporters, including Adam Smith, considered Hume’s refusal to convert not as a failure but as a formidable strength; a deathbed spiritual conversion would have been irreconcilable with his many philosophical, essayistic, and historical writings

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and with his life itself. In Smith’s assessment, Hume’s final accounting for his life – in person and in print – was unspoiled by fearful or otherwise inconsistent behaviour that would have marred the dignity of a man who devoted much of his literary life to enquiring into a morality irrespective of its religious foundation. Because Hume had moral priorities quite distinct from those of the bulk of early modern authors who wrote accounts of their lives, the Life breaks from early modern conventions for spiritual autobiographies. Its brevity may in part be attributed to Hume’s insistence that he led a life characterized by personal equanimity; he suggests that after some brief difficulties as a young man, he had not experienced the sudden conversions and the vacillations between belief and doubt so central to the narrative structure of spiritual autobiography. The Life is thus exceptional both as a deathbed document and as an early modern autobiographical narrative because of its decided aspirituality. It is instead written more on the model of a classical res gestae, an account of lifelong achievement, reformed for the 18th-century man of letters. In res gestae fashion, the Life focuses primarily on the fiscal, literary, and corporeal aspects of Hume’s life. Like other deathbed documents, Hume’s Life was written in anticipation of his rapidly approaching death. He drafted it at the same time that he composed his last will and testament. The simultaneity of these two documents is perhaps not incidental; in both, Hume tries to control the posthumous dispersal of his legacy, financial and literary. He wrote in a letter to Adam Smith that he set his life down on paper so that it might be “prefixed to any future Edition” of his works (Letters). Though Hume’s reputation as a philosopher and essayist was well established in his lifetime, in the Life he wrote that he anticipated his reputation would continue to increase only after his death and he therefore wrote the Life as a kind of letter of recommendation for the man who lay behind his works. While writing his histories of England, Hume came to believe that in seeking examples of great men, historians might profitably turn away from the public figures they usually treated and instead turn towards the private individual of strong, moral character. While demurring from any direct claims for himself as a historical exemplar, Hume’s autobiography nonetheless puts him squarely into such a role. He emerges from the Life as a mostly private, literary man whose life and letters are of a consistent and consistently moral character. The kind of morality that Hume describes here is, as we have seen, not a religious one but rather one derived from his many writings on the principles of morals. The moral standard of Hume’s Life is one that is, and can only be, embodied by a man who avoids faction and factiousness so that his friends can never have “occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of [his] character and conduct” (Life).

and most important work, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), and moved to London to oversee its publication, 1737. Lived on the Ninewells family estate in Scotland, 1739–40; in London, 1740–44. Published the more popular Essays, Moral and Political (1741–42). Stood for the chair of ethics and pneumatical philosophy at Edinburgh University, but unsuccessful because of his atheism, 1744. Lived at Ninewells, 1744–45. Tutor to George, Marquess of Annandale, in London, 1745–46. Secretary to General James St Clair, 1746–47, and accompanied him to Port l’Orient, Canada, 1747, and to Vienna and Turin, 1748. Returned to Ninewells and prepared a simplified version of the Treatise, the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). Rejected as candidate for chair of logic at the University of Glasgow, again because of his atheism, 1751. Moved to Edinburgh, 1751. Librarian to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, 1752–57. Became internationally famous with Political Discourses (1752) and the bestselling The History of England (1754–62). Divided his time between Edinburgh and London. Personal secretary to Lord Hertford, British ambassador in Paris, 1763–66. Met the Comtesse de Bouffers in Paris, and later had an affair with her. Returned to London, 1766, bringing Jean-Jacques Rousseau with him (they later quarrelled). Served as under-secretary of state for the Northern Department, 1767–68, then returned to Edinburgh. Worked on Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). Died in Edinburgh, 25 August 1776.

Selected Writings The Life of David Hume, Esq. Written by Himself (with a letter from Adam Smith to William Strahan), 1777; with Supplement, by David Hume Pratt, 1777; with The Travels of a Philosopher, 1778; in Life and Correspondence of David Hume, edited by John Hill Burton, 2 vols, 1846; in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, edited by Eugene F. Miller, 1985, revised 1987; as My Own Life, 1927 and 1997 Letters of David Hume and Extracts from Letters Referring to Him, edited by Thomas Murray, 1841 Life and Correspondence of David Hume, edited by John Hill Burton, 2 vols, 1846 The Letters of David Hume, edited by J.Y.T. Greig, 1932 New Letters of David Hume, edited by Raymond Klibansky and Ernest C. Mossner 1954

Further Reading Braudy, Leo, Narrative Form in History and Fiction: Hume, Fielding and Gibbon, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970 Damrosch, Leopold, Fictions of Reality in the Age of Hume and Johnson, Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989 Fieser, James (editor), The Hume Archives website, www.utm.edu /research /hume/, 1995 Livingston, Donald W., Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984 Mossner, Ernest Campbell, The Forgotten Hume: Le bon David, New York: Columbia University Press, 1943; Bristol: Thoemmes, 1990 Norton, David Fate, David Hume: Common-sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1982 Norton, David Fate (editor), The Cambridge Companion to Hume, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993 Spacks, Patricia Meyer, Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1976

Robin Valenza Biography Born in Edinburgh, 7 May 1711. His father, the laird of Ninewells in eastern Scotland, died when he was a child. Studied at the University of Edinburgh, 1723–26. Experimented briefly with a business enterprise, then began to train for the law, but abandoned it for philosophy, which he studied privately. Suffered a nervous breakdown, 1729. Worked briefly for a merchant in Bristol, 1734, then studied privately in France, in Reims then La Flèche, Anjou, 1734–37. Wrote his first

Hungary Autobiographical genres The first Hungarian attempt at autobiography proper was born out of the boredom of captivity – its author János Kemény, Transylvanian military commander and towards the end of his

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life briefly Prince of Transylvania – was captured by the Crimean Tartars and penned most of his reminiscences in his captivity. His Önéletírás [Memoirs] was written in 1657/58 and became the first in the series of Baroque autobiographies and memoirs. Kemény focuses his narrative on historical events, such as the wars in which he took part and political developments in Hungary and Transylvania (the latter a semi-dependent state from the mid-16th century), and his memoirs are written to some extent to justify his conduct throughout his career. It has been praised for the succint characterization of the main political players of Kemény’s age. From a literary point of view the memoirs of Miklós Bethlen (1642–1716) are more interesting. Bethlen was born into one of the leading families of contemporary Transylvania; his father János Bethlen was a rich nobleman and a historian. He was well educated, and studied and travelled widely in Europe. Having returned to Transylvania he continued to play a part in state affairs and after Prince Mihály Apafi’s death was instrumental in working out accomodation with the Hapsburg Empire (which made possible the Diploma Leopoldina of 1690). For a short time he was Chancellor of Transylvania, but in 1704 (because of a political treatise critical of imperial policies) he was arrested and jailed. Four years later he was taken to Vienna, and it was during his detention there that he wrote his memoirs (Önéletírás), originally not meant for publication. They are significant, for they introduce a very personal tone into Hungarian memoirs. Although Bethlen’s style is not exempt from Latin insertions (Latin was still the “official” tongue of law and diplomatic correspondence), it is also lively, expressive, and often humorous. Whether it is about his seasickness while crossing the English Channel, adventures in a London brothel, or an account of the moral double standards of contemporary Venice, Bethlen managed to write in a way that still captures the imagination of the modern reader. Also, because of the confessional tone of the memoirs (he was influenced by Augustine in this respect), he is a precursor of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and of other European memoir writers of the 18th century. Although Prince of Transylvania, and for a while elected ruler of the Kingdom of Hungary, Ferenc Rákóczi II (1676–1735) left behind memoirs in Latin and French. Having fought between 1703 and 1711 a long war of independence against the Hapsburgs, Rákóczi emigrated to France, and it was there that he decided to write his Mémoires dealing with the reasons for, and events of, the war (published in The Hague, 1739), which were followed by the more comprehensive manuscript in Latin, Confessiones [Confessions, translated into Hungarian only in 1903], written partly in France and partly in Turkish exile. While in the first book Rákóczi’s main aim is to justify his policies, in the second he is more concerned with “the sins of his youth” and the hoped-for salvation of his soul. From a literary point of view, Confessiones has a heterogeneous structure, for the autobiographical narrative runs parallel to, and alternates with, somewhat diffuse religious meditations. Two more Transylvanian memoir writers from the 18th century deserve mention: Péter Apor (1676–1752), whose Metamorphosis Transylvaniae (1736) is a realistic and colourful survey of the social, political, and cultural changes that took place in his native land between his childhood, when the principality still enjoyed a certain independence, and the mid-1740s when it became a mere province of the Hapsburg Empire (Apor

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is a laudator tempori passi – a chronicler of the glory of the past); and Kata Bethlen, an unfortunate but also narrowminded woman whose religious fanaticism coupled with social conformism turned her life into a series of painful tribulations and misfortunes, producing an exact opposite of Apor’s strongly social-centred writings. Some modern writers regard her Önéletírás (1754; Memoirs) as being effectively the first psychological novel in Hungarian literature. The Enlightenment produced two memoirs of particular interest written by Hungarians. The first of these was by Count Maurice (Móric) Benyovszky (1741?–1786), an international adventurer. Born in northern Hungary, Benyovszky, who had some land holdings in Poland-Lithuania, joined the struggle for independence of the Polish gentry against Russia. He was captured and exiled to Kamchatka, from where he escaped by boat and sailed to Madagascar. He tried to get the support of a European power to establish a colony there, but came into conflict with the French and was killed in a skirmish. Much of this was narrated in the colourful Memoirs and Travels of … Count de Benyovszky (originally written in French, but first published in English in London in 1790). These were translated into Hungarian a century later by Mór Jókai, but the extraordinary traveller himself became the hero of plays and epic poems by German and Polish writers (Kotzebue, S≠owacki). The other notable Enlightenment memoirist was also a political prisoner. A man of letters born in 1759, his literary career was ended by his arrest in December 1794: Ferenc Kazinczy (1759–1831) was a participant in the so-called “Jacobine plot”, suppressed by the Hapsburg authorities with the utmost severity (seven plotters were executed). Kazinczy was imprisoned for seven years, and some of his sentence was served in Kufstein; after his release he became a staunch supporter of the Language Reform movement and an influential figure in Hungarian literary life. Of his two autobiographical works, the first, Pályám emlékezete [Reminiscences of My Career], though published in 1828, stressed Kazinczy’s literary endeavours and contained very little social or political narrative or commentary. It is a fragmented piece of writing which becomes complete only when read together with Fogságom naplója [The Diary of My Imprisonment], Kazinczy’s pseudo-diary (i.e. re-creation of events as if he had kept a contemporaneous diary) of the years under arrest and in jail, published in full only in 1931. In it he showed himself a master of both dramatic episodes (the execution of the leading Jacobins) and comic scenes (brief but often rude exchanges with Hungarian guards or soldiers), and often uses a self-mocking tone as well. His models were Rousseau and then Goethe, but even many years after his release from jail he had to worry about censorship, so his reminiscences were not as frank as those of Rousseau. To “The Diary of My Imprisonment” Kazinczy added some drawings which enhanced the realism of his story. The Age of Reform, an important period in Hungarian history, started in 1825 when Count István Széchenyi (1791–1860) magnanimously offered one year’s income of his vast estates to found the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His gesture was followed by a sustained effort by a few progressive-minded aristocrats and numerous noblemen “to catch up with Europe” in construction works, trade, and in the establishment of modern political institutions. Széchenyi himself invited a Scottish engineer, Adam Clark, to build Hungary’s first stone-bridge

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over the Danube. He carried out many other reforms, though for years he was tormented by his love for another man’s wife (whom he eventually married at the age of 47) and by images of his own feverish imagination. All this informs his Napló [Diary], which he kept in a mixture of German and Hungarian (with inserts in English and French) until his suicide in 1860. Because it is not really structured, this “diary” (heavily censored after the Count’s death by Antal Tasner, his secretary) has a more documentary than purely literary value; and its sheer size is forbidding. The most complete edition so far (1978), a selection running in print to 1355 pages, consists of no more than one third of the full manuscript. Had Tasner not destroyed some of the most personal entries, we would have the most fascinating Romantic novel of the century; even in its present form one is able to see in the “Diary” the intensely private and passionate person behind the mask of the effective politician. The Hungarian struggle for independence of 1848–49 and the political settlement with Austria in 1867 produced a vast number of memoirs. Many participants in the events of 1848 could tell their story or justify their conduct during the conflict only after 1867; hence the veritable subsequent eruption of the genre. It has been estimated that no less than 246 memoirs were published in Hungarian between 1848 and 1914, including the work of such politicians as György Klapka, Sándor Teleki, and Ferenc Pulszky. The latter, who lived in England as an émigré for many years, published his recollections in four volumes in 1879–82. Among the writers of fiction the most interesting autobiographical piece was committed to paper by Miklós Jósika, the “father of the Hungarian novel”, who decided to write up his reminiscences in 1864 when living in Belgian exile. His Emlékirat [1977; Memoirs] gives a colourful, often humorous picture of his childhood and youth, including his army service in the Napoleonic Wars and a description of Vienna at the time of the famous Peace Congress of 1815. (He is the only Hungarian memoir writer whose work bears comparison to the Polish Aleksander Fredro’s memoirs covering the same period.) From the second half of the 19th century, there are more Hungarian memoirs extant than diaries, although, undoubtedly, some of the memoirs were produced by people who had kept a diary when abroad or travelling in the world. A minor writer of fiction, but a sensitive chronicler of artistic life in Paris, was Zsigmond Justh (1863–94) whose diaries from 1888 to 1889 and correspondence were only published in the second half of the 20th century. Justh’s sophistication verges on decadence, and the world that he recorded was to appear soon in a more complete form in Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu. The exact opposite (from the point of view of social class) of Justh was the lifelong socialist writer and educator Mihály Táncsics (the only political prisoner kept at Pest, freed by the revolution of 1848) who finished his autobiography Eletpályám [1949; The Course of My Life] shortly before his death in 1884. Although representing the underprivileged of a Hungarian society already in the throes of industrialization and radical transformation, Táncsics’s text, even if it had been published in his lifetime, would not have been a revelation. One has to wait until 1928 for the first authentic workingclass memoirs, when the first volume of Lajos Kassák’s work appeared. Kassák (1887–1967) was more than a poet or memoir writer: he was, as Czigány puts it, “a universal artist, equally at home in

painting or poetic and narrative writing”. He first made his mark as the editor of the avant-garde magazines Tett [The Action] and Ma [Today] published during and after World War I. A genuine working-class talent, Kassák was a socialist, but he never accepted the Leninist principle of subordination to party line. After the suppression of the Hungarian Republic of Councils in 1919, he emigrated to Vienna and stayed there until 1926, publishing (among other things) a long autobiographical poem “The Horse Dies the Birds Fly Out” (translated by Edwin Morgan in the Lines Review, 59, 1975) about his wanderings abroad. His major prose work Egy ember élete [8 vols, 1928–39; One Man’s Life] is a document of great honesty, which describes the young Kassák’s development and the beginnings of his literary career in a fairly simple, yet very readable, style. The last volume of the book deals with Kassák’s role in the revolutionary regime of 1919, and because of its sharp criticism of communist politicians the autobiography was not reissued in full until the 1980s. Diametrically opposite to Kassák’s endeavour was Sándor Márai’s Egy polgár vallomásai [2 vols, 1934–35; The Confessions of a Middle-Class Citizen]. The title has been rendered differently by critics, for the word polgár could be interpreted as “a bourgeois” or, as Lóránt Czigány wants it, “a middle-class citizen”. Also the word “confession” is slightly misleading, for although the first volume of the book is full of frank descriptions of Márai’s shortcomings and youthful wrong-doings, the narrator admits no guilt at all. Speaking of sexual norms, for example, he declares, “I know all modes of expression of eroticism and I accept it in all its forms”. While in the first volume Márai concentrates on a broad, and in some respects penetrating, analysis of his own class (through a middle-class patrician family in the north of historical Hungary), in the second he describes his travels, thus providing a different perspective from which he can view his own “rebellion”. For the young Márai rebels against the lifestyle of the middle classes in favour of a bohemian and intellectual existence, although at the end of the book he returns (in 1928) to Budapest for good. Márai’s technique alternates between narrative and essayistic parts, with an elegant style and a predilection for axioms and axiomatic statements. Márai was also a successful novelist, probably the most celebrated writer of pre-war middle-class Hungary. In 1948, sensing an imminent communist takeover, Márai did not return from a trip to Switzerland; later he lived alternatively in Italy and the United States. From his second creative period (in emigration) his diaries stand out as his best continuous achievement. Published in six volumes between 1958 and 1999, they show Márai’s sensitivity to social and cultural change and his enormous erudition. The most intriguing volume of the diaries (Naplók) is the volume Föld … föld … [1972; Earth … earth …], translated as Memoir of Hungary, 1944–1948, which deals with the last year of the war with a remarkably vivid level of detail and with the detached objectivity of a “bourgeois” property owner who was “freed” from the slavery of objects by the cataclysm of the war. After the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the landless peasantry also found its documentarist-autobiographer in the person of Gyula Illyés (1902–83). Illyés, whose father was a mechanic on a large agricultural estate in the Transdanubia region, had to leave Hungary (just like Kassák) after the collapse of the Republic of Councils. He went to Paris and returned to Hungary in

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1926 full of avant-garde ideas and a strong social commitment. The latter were expressed in his lyrical and epic verse, and they formed the basis for the influentual Puszták népe (1936; People of the Puszta). This is partly an autobiographical account and partly a survey of a substratum of Hungarian society showing the dire circumstances in which agricultural workers lived on large estates; Illyés’s method in this work was on occasion compared to that of a social anthropologist. The intended objectivity of his work excludes real “confessions” about himself; indeed the episodes from his childhood and early youth are selected with great care to fit in with his “social” analysis. People of the Puszta made a great impact on contemporary Hungary, but not as an autobiography par excellence. Illyés took up the autobiographical thread twice again: Hunok Párizsban [1946; Huns in Paris] is a lyrical prose account of the Paris years of his youth, and Beatrice apródjai [1979; Beatrice’s Pages] describes the most important period in his life (1919–20) with the help of contemporary documents and with a thorough discussion of the political mistakes committed by the revolutionaries of that time. Both latter works are more “novelistic” in their execution than the People of the Puszta, with the narrator much more at the centre of events. All in all, the period between the two World Wars was a particularly propitious time for memoirs in Hungary. This may have been the result of the political changes which upset the lives of several generations: World War I, the collapse of the AustroHungarian monarchy, two revolutions, and a counter-revolution. The most popular writer of the first years of the authoritarian Horthy regime was Dezso˝ Szabó (1879–1945), whose ambitious but turgid novel Az elsodort falu [1919; The Village that Was Swept Away] became a huge bestseller in the early 1920s. Szabó soon turned against the regime, which did not fulfil his hopes for radical change, and became an “unemployed prophet” and vicious political pamphleteer in later years. His unfinished memoirs, Eleteim, I-II [1965; My Lives in 2 Volumes] are considered by some critics his best work, but even these (describing Szabó’s youth in Transylvania, his university years at Budapest, and visit to Paris) are marred by an almost infantile egocentrism and the unbridled expressionism of some episodes. While much of his critique of profit-oriented society is valid, all he can offer in its stead is a mixture of Rousseau-esque illusions and a dream about the health and the purity of the Hungarian “race”. It is not always the best or the most succcesful writer of a period who writes the best memoirs. Zsigmond Móricz (1879–1942) was considered one of the best realist writers of fiction of his times, yet his Eletem regénye [1938–39; The Novel of My Life] has a misleading title and a not entirely coherent composition. The author follows events only to the 12th year of his life and the story reveals more about the Móricz family than about the writer himself. Another problem mars the two volumes of Lajos Nagy (1883–1954), an excellent chronicler of both rural and urban life in Hungary. While full of moral indignation against the political regime and social injustice, both A menekülo˝ ember [1949; Man in Revolt] and A lázadó ember [1959; Man in Flight] lack a coherent point of view and often make contradictory statements. Nagy was a lifelong socialist, and in his social ideals he would have much in common with those writers of diaries and memoirs who had started out as communists in 1919 only to suffer

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exile and imprisonment as ethical opponents of communist totalitarianism. The first of these, Ervin Sinkó (1898–1967), represents a special case. An active participant of the Republic of Councils, he wrote a novel about those days heady with the expectation of imminent world revolution entitled Optimisták [2 vols 1953–55; The Optimists]. The manuscript of the novel was ready 20 years before its actual publication (in Yugoslavia!), and Sinkó was lured to Moscow in the mid-1930s with the promise that it would be soon published. Nothing came out of it; but while in Moscow, Sinkó kept a diary which became the basis of the fascinating Egy regény regénye [1961; The Novel of a Novel], a critical description of the intellectual terror in Stalin’s Russia. Sinkó was lucky, for he managed to return to Paris; his old friend and later adversary József Lengyel (1896–1975) had less luck. An émigré in Moscow, he first published a piece of documentary fiction about the formation of the Hungarian Communist party in 1919 (Visegrádi utca, 1932; Visegrád Street), but soon he was arrested as a supporter of Béla Kun and sent to the GULAG. A thinly veiled narrative, Elejéto˝l végig [1963; From Beginning to End] earned Lengyel the soubriquet of “the Hungarian Solzhenitsyn”: it relates his horrific experiences in the Soviet labour camps from the time of his arrest to his release in the 1950s. Lengyel also kept a diary, parts of which were published long after his death in Lengyel József noteszeibo˝l, 1955–1975 [1989; From the Notebooks of József Lengyel, 1955–1975] showing that even after returning to Hungary Lengyel did not cease to be critical of the regime, which (after 1962) earned itself the name of “goulash Communism” with its modest concessions and fake consumerism. Another ex-communist was Béla Szász (1910–99), whose youthful involvement in the then illegal communist movement and years in exile seemed perfect qualifications for the position of a dignitary in the new postwar regime. In fact he was arrested in 1949 on trumped-up charges and tortured to play the part of a witness for the prosecution in the so-called Rajk case. He refused to co-operate and spent the next five years in jail. After the suppression of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 he fled to the West, and it was there that he published his excellent memoirs Minden kényszer nélkül (1963; Volunteers for the Gallows), in which he gives a realistic description of his tribulations, often referring to official documents of the Rajk trial in his text. In a sense, Szász’s memoirs are the exact opposite of Arthur Koestler’s famous Darkness at Noon in which a communist believer “sacrifices himself” for the alleged interests of the Party. For Szász truth was more important than political allegiance, and personal integrity overrode political expediency. While Szász will be remembered for a single book, Tibor Déry (1894–1977) has been recognized as one of the outstanding prose writers of the second half of the 20th century. A pre-war communist and a writer whose first major novel could be published only in postwar Hungary, Déry nevertheless had a leading role in the demolition of the Stalinist Rákosi regime, and though not particularly involved in the 1956 revolution, he was jailed soon afterwards. After his release he retired from public life, but not before writing Itélet nincs [1969; No Verdict], a rather unusual and highly literary autobiography. In it, the very process of reminiscing is analysed, temporal games played, and the medieval dance-of-death motif evokes the shadows of friends and lovers long dead as partners in elaborate conversations. Déry’s aim is not so much to justify the chequered story of

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his private life as to assert his version of truth which, in 1957, landed him in communist jail; whatever verdict the court may have reached, on a higher level there is clearly “no verdict”: the final verdict belongs to the reader. Among the post-1956 émigrés there were two writers who produced memoirs, first published in English and German respectively. György Faludy’s “My Happy Days in Hell” (1962; in Hungarian, Pokolbéli víg napjaim, 1989) is a most entertaining account of this well-known poet’s colourful life (including his sufferings in the notorious labour camp of Recsk) where fact often takes second place to fiction. The playwright Gyula Háy’s Geboren in 1900 (1971; Born 1900) is an interesting account of the life of a middle-class communist whose career took him from Vienna to Berlin and Moscow, and who became a “Revisionist” after Stalin’s death and was imprisoned by the Kádár regime in 1957. Eventually Háy emigrated to Switzerland, and it was there that he wrote his memoirs. The most impressive recent memoirs were written by the outstanding poet and translator, István Vas (1910–91). His autobiographical tetralogy – Nehéz szerelem [1964; A Difficult Love], A félbeszakadt nyomozás [1967; The Interrupted Investigation], Mért víjjog a saskeselyu˝? [1981; Why is the Eagle Screaming?], and Azután [1991; Afterwards] – relates his rebellion against his Jewish middle-class milieu, but also shows the gradual disenchantment of an intellectual who, at the age of 20, still believed in the salvation of Marxism. Vas uses the technique of a novel in some parts of his memoirs (such as quoting dialogues “verbatim”), but in other parts he produces mini-essays on the main aesthetic or political issues of the day. His is probably the most balanced and intelligent account of a “double-life”, quite common before 1945, where the writer or poet had to eke out a living in an office while writing in his free time. As for his private life, Vas is remarkably frank about his relationships with women, and it is clear that at least two women, his first wife, Eti, and his third, Piroska Szántó, played an important role in his development and artistic career. As for the genre of the diary, the 1980s brought a surprise: the poet András Fodor (1929–97) published the vast diary-novel Ezer este Fülep Lajossal [1986; A Thousand Nights with Lajos Fülep]. Fülep was an eminent art historian, and Fodor was one of his circle of devotees and disciples. This was followed by A Kollégium [1991; The College], also based on Fodor’s diaries from 1947 to 1950, when he was a member of the Eötvös College (an elite educational institution), and by A hetvenes évek [1996; The Seventies], a cross-section of Hungarian cultural life across a whole decade. Fodor’s diaries fill an important gap in the intellectual history of the period, written from the point of view of a sensitive poet and critic of classicist leanings. Since the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz’s Entretiens avec Dominique Roux the genre of “autobiography in conversation” has become accepted among other Central European writers. A good Hungarian example is Gyo˝zo˝ Határ’s Eletút [3 vols, 1993–95; Life Story]. Határ’s interviewer and the editor, Lóránt Kabdebó, a well-known literary historian, does not curtail any of Határ’s answers, so the result is overwhelmingly vintage Határ prose. This writer of great stature has produced a “Life Story” full of zest, irony, and negative views of most of Határ’s contemporaries; it is more entertaining than reliable, for the narrator’s egocentrism reigns supreme and he also suffers from a certain persecution complex. Nevertheless, it is useful in

understanding Határ’s work, and will be a treasure-trove for future literary historians. Thus far, few women exponents of Hungarian life writing have been mentioned. Comparatively few Hungarian women wrote memoirs before the 20th century. After Kata Bethlen there is a long gap, and while women poets and writers do appear in the Age of Reform, autobiography is a genre generally avoided. Anna Lesznai (1885–1966) is the first woman who produces something between fiction and memoir which is of high standard: Kezdetben volt a kert [1966; In the Beginning There Was a Garden] is the description of her idyllic childhood and early youth on a country estate in Hungary. Similar, but more analytical, is Ókút (1970; Old Well), a beguiling narrative about the Debrecen childhood and family of Magda Szabó (1917–), a prolific and popular writer of the realist tradition. Another woman whose contribution to life writing is substantial is Aleine Polcz (1922–), wife of novelist Miklós Mészöly. She is a trained psychologist and a pioneer of the hospice movement in Hungary, but what caused a literary sensation was the publication of Asszony a fronton [1991; Woman at the Front Line], the story of her first marriage and wartime experiences. The latter include rape, starvation, and horrific suffering as the front line shifted forward and back several times in the last year of World War II. All this is told in a calm, objective manner, though with an underlying passion of truthfulness – reality in this case defies fiction. Biography If we regard legends as a medieval form of biography, life writing in Hungary began with legends in Latin about the first kings and saints of the House of Arpád. The very first of these was written by Mór, Bishop of Pécs around 1060 (Legend of St Zoerard and Benedek), but the best of the genre, The Legend of St Ladislas, which depicts the king as an ideal knight, is the product of the early 13th century. The first legend that survived in Hungarian is the story of Margit (Margaret), the daughter of King Béla IV, whose beatification process began soon after her death in 1276, but whose legend was copied in a codex by the nun Lea Ráskai only around 1510. As for the biographies of the famous, models were provided for Hungarians by Antonio Bonfini whose history Rerum Ungaricarum Decades Quattuor et Dimidia (1487–96, published only in 1543) also contained a biography of King Matthias Corvinus and by another Italian humanist, Galeotto Marzio, whose collection of anecdotes and personal reminiscences of the court of Matthias was also published only much later (1563; Of the Remarkable,Wise and Amusing Sayings and Deeds of King Matthias). Not a biography proper, but an exposition of political ideas, is Count Nicholas Zrínyi’s (1620–1664) Mátyás király életéro˝l való elmélkedések [Reflections on the Life of King Matthias, publ. only 1817]. The first literary biographer in Hungarian was Péter Bod, who in his Magyar Athenas [1766; Hungarian Athens] gave short biographies of about 500 men of letters. Biographies as a separate genre did not thrive, however, until the 19th century, when a number of critics produced biographies of eminent poets (e.g. Pál Gyulai, Vörösmarty élete [1866; Vörösmarty’s Life], Frigyes Riedl, Arany János [1887; János Arany]), or politicians (e.g. Miksa Falk, Széchenyi István gróf és kora [1866; Count István Széchenyi and His Age]. The first biography of the great

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exiled statesman Lajos Kossuth was published just one year before his death by historian György Gracza (Kossuth Lajos élete és mu˝ködése, 1893). As for other poets of importance, the best monograph on Sándor Peto˝fi (1823–49) was written almost a century later by Gyula Illyés (Peto˝fi, 1936) who recalled the short-lived poet’s revolutionary fervour with approval. Minute details of Peto˝fi’s life were documented in Lajos Hatvany’s work Igy élt Peto˝fi [1947; Thus Lived Peto˝fi], published in two volumes. Another modern biography which threw light as much on the author’s temperament as on the subject of the book was László Németh’s Berzsenyi (1938), a psychological analysis of the life of this excellent 19th-century classicizing poet. While biographies are much less popular in Hungary than in Britain or America, the 20th century saw some ambitious attempts to gain more recognition for this genre. The symbolist poet Endre Ady was the subject of several biographies, of which those by Béla Révész (1922), Erzsébet Vezér (1969), and István Király (1970) are the most informative. Gyula Gombos published a biography of the writer Dezso˝ Szabó in Munich (1966), while the best available biography of poet and translator Mihály Babits was written by György Rába (1983). The outstanding socialist poet Attila József’s best Hungarian biographer was Andor Németh (Attila József, 1944), although Miklós Szabolcsi has devoted three voluminous monographs to the poet’s life and work between 1963 and 1999. In 1997 Thomas Kabdebo (who lives in Ireland) published the first monograph on Attila József in English. Definitive monographs were written on outstanding writers and statesmen of the past by Gyula Szekfu˝ (A mai Széchenyi, 1935), Tibor Klaniczay on Count Nicholas Zrinyi (Zrínyi Miklós, 1954, second ed. 1964), and by István So˝tér on 19th-century writer and reformer József Eötvös (1953), on whom there also exists a biography in English, by Béla Várdy [1987; Baron Joseph Eötvös]. Amongst the large number of biographies of contemporary politicians one should specially mention Tibor Méray’s book on the Prime Minister of the 1956 revolution, Nagy Imre élete és halála [1978; Imre Nagy’s Life and Death] and Sándor Révész’s introspective biography on the skilful cultural politician of the Kádár regime, György Aczél (1995). George Gömöri Further Reading Albert, Pál, Alkalmak, Budapest: Kortárs kiadó, 1997 Czigány, Lóránt, The Oxford History of Hungarian Literature from the Earliest Times to the Present, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1984 Gombos, Gyula, Szabó Dezso˝, Munich: Auróra, 1966 Gömöri, George, “Gyo˝zo˝ Határ: Életút 3: A partra vetett bálna”, World Literature Today, 70/3 (1996): 733–34 Gyo˝rffy, Miklós, “Sweet and Not So Sweet Burdens”, New Hungarian Quarterly, 33/88 (1982): 187–92 Halász, Gábor, Válogatott írásai, Budapest: Magveto˝, 1959 Herczeg, Gyula, A modern magyar próza stílusformái, Budapest: Tankönyvkiado˝, 1975 Kacziány, Géza, A magyar memoire-irodalom 1848-tól 1914-ig, Budapest: no publisher, 1917 Klaniczay, Tibor (editor), Old Hungarian Literary Reader, 11th-18th Centuries, Budapest: Corvina, 1985 László, Péter (editor), Uj Magyar irodalmi lexikon, I-III, Budapest: Akadémiai, 1994 László, Rónay, Márai Sándor, Budapest: Magveto˝, 1990 Lukács, György, “Van itélet”, Uj irás, 10 (1969): 80–82 Pomogáts, Béla, Déry Tibor, Budapest: Akadémiai kiadó, 1974

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Reményi, Joseph, Hungarian Writers and Literature: Modern Novelists, Critics, and Poets, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1964 Szávai, János, Magyar emlékírók, Budapest: Szépirodalmi, 1988 Vas, István, Az ismeretlen isten: Tanulmányok, 1934–1973, Budapest: Szépirodalmi, 1974 Vas, István, “Hovering over the Abyss”, The New Hungarian Quarterly, 21/79 (1980): 55–71

Hurston, Zora Neale

1891–1960

American novelist, folklorist, and autobiographer Zora Neale Hurston had published three novels – Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939) – and two ethnographies – Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938) – when her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road was published in 1942. Her first-person account traces her journeys and accomplishments beginning in her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, at the turn of the century. Episodes of her childhood are followed by an account of her mother’s death and her subsequent adventures, including a stint as a personal attendant for an actress with a Gilbert and Sullivan travelling theatre troupe; enrolment at Howard University, where she studied with eminent scholars such as the African American philosopher Alain Locke; her emergence in New York City as a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance; studies at Barnard College, Columbia University, under the tutelage of anthropologist Franz Boas; and field research trips back to Eatonville as well as to Louisiana, the Bahama Islands, and Haiti, among other places. In the final chapter of Dust Tracks, Hurston’s reasons for writing her life story become clear. Composed in metaphorical language, using hypothetical dialogue, parable, and rhetorical argumentation, in a style that is sustained throughout, the narrative turns to her political views. Optimistically, she argues that the past history of slavery is no basis for continued misunderstandings related to race. In the final paragraph, Hurston writes that she has “no race prejudice of any kind”, appealing for racial harmony rather than protest or other politically motivated approaches to life’s challenges. Using a tone that appears to take readers into her confidence, Hurston represents herself as an exemplary member of her race who desires not so much to be a spokesperson but to show why doing so should be unnecessary in 1942. Hurston’s writing skills are evident in her autobiography; however, her strengths in fictional techniques and oral storytelling overshadow her ability to convey intimate details with the clarity, depth, or the confessional demeanour ordinarily expected of life writing. Beginning before she was born, Dust Tracks in the first chapter depicts Eatonville as a pastoral environment that enjoyed the distinction of being founded by African Americans and incorporated in 1886. Hurston proudly claims the heritage of Eatonville as her birth place, although information posthumously released places her birth in Notasulga, Alabama, from whence her parents migrated to Florida. The second chapter, entitled “My Folks”, features Hurston’s parents, Lucy Potts and John Hurston, and the circumstances surrounding their meeting. Histories of Lucy and John Hurston are connected to

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the setting through John, who was an early mayor of Eatonville. Whereas his lack of property and status before being married caused a conflict with the Potts family, after he attained status and a measure of power, John Hurston dominated the household into which Zora was born the fifth child. While John Hurston is presented as having a sense of independence strong enough to make an imprint on a community and to stifle the flamboyant spirit of young Zora, Hurston’s mother is portrayed as a saintly woman who was defiant enough to marry against her parents’ wishes. In subsequent chapters, Hurston explains how her mother encouraged her children to “jump at the sun”, which has become a signature phrase in explaining the impulse that led Hurston to become a high achiever in the arts as well as a woman willing to resist the limitations with which her father, her first husband Herbert Sheen, or her wealthy patron Charlotte Osgood Mason, or others, would attempt to restrict her. Other chapters in the childhood section of Dust Tracks further illustrate episodes that were pivotal in developing Hurston’s imagination and talents, both as a fiction writer and a folklorist. The manner in which her fascination with the folk culture of her native environment later translated into a professional endeavour becomes apparent in these chapters. As the autobiography proceeds, however, the personal flavour and animated voice reflecting a youthful perspective are diffused in passages that discuss her work, people she has met, friendship, love, and other topics given only cursory treatment in a style that resists revelation. Indeed, important information that would expose conflicts in relationships or any other unhappy circumstances she encountered are absent from the narrative. Just as Dust Tracks contains some of the same techniques that Hurston employs in her fictional and anthropological writing, so her novels, essays, and ethnographies in part consist of autobiographical content. Her first novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, is based on the details of her parents’ marriage, while Their Eyes Were Watching God also has been characterized as a fictionalized examination of developments in Hurston’s life. As she explains in Dust Tracks, Their Eyes depicts a woman’s relationship with a younger man based on her own experience and was written for purposes of catharsis. In both of her anthropological books, Hurston writes in the first person, including herself as a narrator as well as a “character” in episodes that she describes. This practice of inserting her first-person point of view in these texts has given rise to her being acknowledged as an early practitioner of a type of experimental anthropology that has become more widely used in recent years. Lynda Hill Biography Born in Notasulga, Alabama, United States, 7 January 1891 (some sources give 1901). Her father was a minister. Moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida, as a child. Educated at Robert Hungerford School, Eatonville, and at a school in Jacksonville, Florida. Lived with various relatives after her mother’s death (when she was nine) and her father’s remarriage, working as a nanny and housekeeper. Worked as a wardrobe girl with a travelling repertory company, 1915–16. Attended night school at Morgan Academy, Baltimore, 1917–18. Worked as a waitress and manicurist and studied part-time at Howard Preparatory School, 1918–19, and Howard University, Washington, DC, 1920–24. Became one of the most prominent writers of the Harlem Renaissance with the publication of her stories and a play, Color Struck (1926). Studied cultural anthropology at Barnard College, New York, funded by a scholarship, 1925–28 (BA). Married Herbert Sheen, 1927

(divorced 1931). Won a fellowship to carry out two years’ graduate work in anthropology at Columbia University, New York. Researched folklore in Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana, 1928–32, the basis for Mules and Men (1935). Drama instructor, Bethune Cookman College, Daytona, Florida, 1933–34. Published her first novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, in 1934, to critical acclaim, and her best-known work, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in 1937. Folklore researcher in Haiti and the British West Indies, 1936–38; published results in Tell My Horse (1938; as Voodoo Gods, 1939). Editor, Federal Writers Project, Florida, 1938–39. Married Albert Price III, 1939 (later divorced). Head of the Drama Department, North Carolina College for Negroes, Durham, 1939–40. Story consultant, Paramount, Hollywood, 1941–42. Returned to Florida, 1942; worked as a part-time teacher at Florida Normal College, St Augustine, and published her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942. Wrote last book, Seraph on the Suwanee (1948). Subsequently became active as a political conservative, but was distanced by many contemporaries for her views on desegregation. Withdrew from public life in the 1950s. Worked as a maid in Florida, 1949–50. Reporter, Pittsburgh Courier, 1952. Librarian, Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, 1956–57. Reporter, Fort Pierce Chronicle, Florida, 1957–59. Substitute teacher, Lincoln Park Academy, Fort Pierce, 1958–59. Suffered a stroke, 1959. Died in Fort Pierce, 28 January 1960.

Selected Writings Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography, 1942

Further Reading Braxton, Joanne M., Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition within a Tradition, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989 Dorst, John, “Rereading Mules and Men: Toward the Death of the Ethnographer”, Cultural Anthropology, 2/3 (August 1987): 305–18 Hemenway, Robert (editor), introduction to Dust Tracks on a Road, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984 Hemenway, Robert, Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography with Foreword by Alice Walker, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977; London: Camden Press, 1986 Lewis, David Levering, When Harlem Was in Vogue, New York: Knopf, 1981 Lionnet, Françoise, “Autoethnography: The An-Archic Style of Dust Tracks on a Road” in Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, SelfPortraiture, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1989 McKay, Nellie Y., “Race, Gender, and Cultural Context in Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road” in Life /Lines: Theorizing Women’s Autobiography, edited by Bella Brodski and Celeste M. Schenck, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988 Pierpont, Claudia Roth, “A Society of One: Zora Neale Hurston, American Contrarian”, New Yorker, (17 February 1997): 80–90 Raynaud, Claudine, “Autobiography as a ‘Lying’ Session: Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road” in Black Feminist Criticism and Critical Theory, edited by Joe Weixlman and Houston Baker, Greenwood, Florida: Penkevill, 1988 Rosenblatt, Roger, “Black Autobiography: Life as the Death Weapon” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by James Olney, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Walker, Alice, “Saving the Life That is Your Own: The Importance of Models in the Artist’s Life” in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983 (essay originally published in 1976) Watson, Steven, The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920–1930, New York: Pantheon, 1995

Hussein, Taha see Tƒhƒ Husayn

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Huxley, T.H.

1825–1895

English naturalist, prose writer, and autobiographer The most obvious features of Thomas Huxley’s Autobiography (1889) are its brevity (less than 4000 words), the omission of important personal matters and events, and the lack of detail surrounding the author’s early intellectual life (as noted by de Beer). The temptation to marginalize this work, however, ought to be resisted. On the contrary, the Autobiography should be appreciated as an index to Huxley’s philosophical opinions on the role of science in culture and civilization, as well as to his conviction that the scientific method revealing natural reality provides the surest means of ameliorating the human condition. Of particular interest is the most prominent literary feature of the Autobiography: its use of metaphor to position a life’s work in the greater context of scientific knowledge. The figure of the mountain voyager, appearing in Huxley’s famous essay, “On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals” (1863), contrasts with its employment in the Autobiography. In the essay, this metaphor attempts to answer a controversial question: do man’s natural origins subvert his dignity? In Huxley’s comparisons of civilized man with the animal kingdom, human beings are much like alpine travellers: although the stupendous fact of human evolution rises up before them as a mountain range, “soaring into the sky”, contemporary human beings are unable to discern “where the deep shadowed crags and roseate peaks end, and where the clouds of heaven begin”. For this reason, contemporary man should not be criticized for being “awe struck” at these grand vistas and new possibilities. He may question the geologist who tells him that mountains are but “hardened mud of primeval seas, or the cooled slag of subterranean furnaces”; and it is understandably difficult for him to accept that the mountain he climbs is “of one substance with the dullest clay”, and was “raised by inward forces to the place of proud and seemingly inaccessible glory”. But he must overcome these doubts, to accept the idea that uniform natural forces are responsible for both biological and geological grandeur. Because the geologist is right, his teachings should enhance our aesthetic appreciation of nature. Huxley metaphorically identifies man himself as “the great Alps and Andes of the living world”. Our knowledge that man is substantively and structurally “one with the brutes” should not diminish our reverence “for the nobility of manhood”. What distinguishes man from other animals is “the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech”, permitting him to organize knowledge and to communicate it to posterity. Because of this endowment, man stands “as on a mountain top”, both the pinnacle and the interpreter of creation. From his “grosser nature”, he is at times distinguished, when he “reflects” the light of natural truth. In the Autobiography, Huxley re-employs the mountain traveller metaphor but in a different key. Surveying his own history, he observes that “life seems terribly foreshortened”. Each great obstacle, which the young man may have thought mountainous and insurmountable, in retrospect, turns out to have been “a mere spur of immeasurably higher ranges”, which the young climber conquered with “failing breath”. Each accomplishment, accordingly, is nothing more than a ridge or line of elevation projecting from, or subordinate to, the main body of the moun-

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tain range. In terms of his own intellectual career, these ridges correspond to his interest in engineering, medicine, physiology, and eventually comparative anatomy and paleontology (also noted by de Beer). Although, for the individual, life is a finite series of such ridges, Huxley acknowledges having had a consistent object “more or less definitely in view”, as he began to ascend his series of hillocks. Within his limited capacity, he has striven “to forward the application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems of life”. Through this means, human suffering can be alleviated – but only if we exercise “veracity of thought and of action” and face the world “as it is”. The spurs Huxley surmounted in his life are significant in the Autobiography only in so far as they contribute to the corporate scientific effort. Over and above any personal fame, therefore, one should place the motive for writing his life as the popularization of science and the development of scientific education in Britain. The battle, to which he dedicated his life’s work, is articulated as the propagation of evolutionary biology, unflaggingly opposing ecclesiastical strictures on science (see de Beer). Without denying his obvious personal success, he makes the point that its true effect can only be measured in terms of what he has contributed to this “New Reformation” in intellectual history. In both the essay and the Autobiography, Huxley used a common metaphor to propound a new scientific revolution, one to which he, as an individual scientist, hoped to contribute something of worth. Charles de Paolo Biography Thomas Henry Huxley. Born in Ealing, Middlesex, England, 4 May 1825. Educated at a school in Ealing, where his father taught, 1833–35. Moved with his family to Coventry, Warwickshire. Studied medicine at Charing Cross Hospital, London, 1842–45 (MB, University of London). Assistant surgeon on HMS Rattlesnake, which charted the passage between the Great Barrier Reef and the Australian coast, 1846–50. His work on the specimens he collected brought him immediate recognition, and he was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1851. Left the Royal Navy, 1854. Lecturer in natural history, Royal School of Mines (later the Royal College of Science), 1854–85. Naturalist to the geological survey of the English coast from 1855. Married Henrietta Heathorn, 1855: nine children (two died in infancy), including Leonard Huxley, father of the biologist Julian and the writer Aldous Huxley. Supported Charles Darwin after the publication of his Origin of Species (1859). Published a book of essays, Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature, 1863. Science columnist, Westminster Review and Saturday Review. President, Ethnological Society, 1868–70, and Geological Society, 1869–70. Published lectures in Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews, 1870. Secretary, 1871–81, and President, Royal Society, 1881–85. Served on several royal commissions. Other positions included: Croonian lecturer, Royal Society; Fullerian Professor at the Royal Institution, 1863–67; Hunterian Professor, Royal College of Surgeons, 1863–69; Governor of Eton College, of University College, London, and of Owen College, Manchester; and Rector, University of Aberdeen, 1872–75. Retired from all official appointments, 1885. Worked on Science and Morals (1886), which sets out his philosophical viewpoints, Science and Culture (1881), Evolution and Ethics (1893), and Science and Education (1899). Lived in Eastbourne, Sussex, from 1890. Privy councillor, 1892. Died in Eastbourne, 29 June 1895.

Selected Writings Autobiography, 1889; as Autobiography and Selected Essays, edited by Ada L.F. Snell, 1903, Sarah E. Simons, 1910, E.H. Kemper McComb, 1910, and Brander Matthews, 1919; in Autobiographies (with Charles Darwin’s autobiography), edited by Gavin de Beer, 1974

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Further Reading Ashforth, Albert, Thomas Henry Huxley, New York: Twayne, 1969 Ayres, Clarence Edwin, Huxley, New York: Norton, 1932 Bibby, Cyril, T.H. Huxley: Scientist, Humanist, and Educator, London: Watts, 1959; New York: Horizon Press, 1960 Bibby, Cyril, Scientist Extraordinary: The Life and Scientific Work of Thomas Henry Huxley, 1825–1895, Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press, 1972 Clodd, Edward, Thomas Henry Huxley, Edinburgh: Blackwood, and New York: Dodd Mead, 1902 Crowther, J.G., “Thomas Henry Huxley” in his Scientific Types, London: Cresset Press, 1968; Chester Springs, Pennsylvania: Dufour Editions, 1970 Desmond, Adrian, Huxley: From Devil’s Disciple to Evolution’s High Priest, Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1997 Di Gregorio, Mario A., T.H. Huxley’s Place in Natural Science, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1984

Huxley, Leonard, Thomas Henry Huxley: A Character Sketch, London: Watts, 1920 Huxley, Thomas Henry, “On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals” (1863) in Darwin, 2nd edition, edited by Philip Appleman, Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1969; New York: Norton, 1979 Irvine, William, Apes, Angels, & Victorians: The Story of Darwin, Huxley and Evolution, New York: McGraw Hill, 1955 Irvine, William, Thomas Henry Huxley, London: Longmans Green, 1960 Mitchell, Peter Chalmers, Thomas Henry Huxley: A Sketch of His Life and Work, London and New York: Putnam, 1900 Paradis, James G., T.H. Huxley: Man’s Place in Nature, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978 Peterson, Houston, Huxley: Prophet of Science, London and New York: Longmans Green, 1932

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i has nevertheless been consistently rhetoricized as junbungaku (pure / high literature) and heralded as the cornerstone of a modern national literature, often to the detriment and neglect of so-called taish› bungaku (popular / mass literature) and many other forms of writing. Works designated in the critical discourse as I-novels are diverse in both style and content, but share several common characteristics. The defining factor in the I-novel is the perceived unity of the protagonist, narrator, and author. The reader’s view of the world in the narrative is limited to a single point of view provided by this composite entity. Critics have credited this lack of distinction between narrating subject and narrated object with giving the I-novel its feeling of unmediated truth and realism; some have even said that this immediacy and factuality is precisely what makes the I-novel Japanese. The often essayistic narrative, which is compared with traditional forms such as the zuihitsu (essay) and nikki (diary), is usually not so much plotdriven as focused on the minutiae of everyday life and the self’s private perceptions of and reactions to it. However, the form is not limited to the direct tone of firstperson narration, but seems to include intimately personal narratives in the third person as well. The Quilt, for example, is believed to be the (married) author’s confession of love for a young female student who had been boarding in his home. Despite the fact that the story is narrated in the third person, the main character Takenaka Tokio is commonly identified as a thinly disguised version of Tayama Katai (1871–1930) himself. It is interesting that even Katai freely admitted to his close association with the protagonist, a pathetic and passive victim of obsession who buries his face in the student’s discarded quilt at the conclusion of the story. As in this example, common themes treated by this mostly male group of writers include the hero’s various problems with romantic and other human relationships, poverty, and the struggle to define and deploy himself as an artist. Being strongly associated with the persona of the artist himself, the I-novel is not only an outgrowth of the intellectual and male-centred bourgeois community that flourished in the cafés and literary discussion groups of the quickly modernizing metropolis of Tokyo, but often unfolds against the very same backdrop. If the hero of the European naturalist novel is fiercely independent and defiant of society, the (anti-)hero of the I-novel lacks any political activism, preferring to distance himself from society and even family, attempting to preserve a sense of self by passively accepting the isolation that seems to be the price of this individuality.

The I-Novel “I-novel” is an inexact translation from the Japanese of shishπsetsu (alternately read watakushi shπsetsu). Shishπsetsu, which can be translated more accurately as self-writing, denotes prose fiction of variable length believed to reflect authentically the private life of the author. This form, with its fictionalized confessional or diaristic style, is considered central to the modern Japanese literary canon. The I-novel phenomenon (and the term itself) emerged during the 1920s and had its heyday during the Taishπ period (1912– 26), but continues to be one of the most popular (and controversial) prose forms in Japan even today. Most studies cite Tayama Katai’s Futon (The Quilt) as the first I-novel, although this label has been applied in retrospect, since the story originally appeared in 1907. Though not associated with any one literary school, the genesis of the form is most closely connected with Japanese Naturalism (Shizenshugi) and the Shirakaba (White Birch) school, many of whose members later became so-called I-novelists. The influx of Western culture into Japan that occurred during the Meiji period (1868–1911) brought many changes to Japanese culture in general; works of Western literature, imported for the first time, permanently altered the concept of Japanese literature itself. With the Western-influenced Naturalists at the helm, the perceived inadequacies of traditional writing styles led to the wholesale reform not only of the written language, but also of form and content. The idea of the individual or self as a political and social unit, as well as the scientifically objective description of that allimportant individual in the naturalist European novel, were both new concepts for the Japanese bundan (literary community). Generally speaking, Japanese Naturalism, which peaked during the late Meiji period, reinterpreted the aim of modern realism as the faithful portrayal and aesthetic exploration of this newly discovered, psychologically constituted self. Ensuing discussions of the resulting I-novel seem to be divided into two schools of thought: some explain the genesis of the form as a flawed adaptation of modern European literature, as nothing but a type of roman à clef that has not yet reached maturity. Others choose to emphasize the form’s continuity with indigenous literary genres and modes of thought, arguing instead that any Western influence is outweighed by the I-novel’s transformation into a uniquely Japanese form of expression. Despite these diverging and often biased opinions, the I-novel 453

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Kenzπ, a novelist and the protagonist of Michikusa (1915; Grass on the Wayside) by Natsume Sπseki’s (1867–1916), speculates on the nature of his own detachment in the objective, yet slightly insecure manner typical of many I-novel heroes: He was forced by circumstances to cut himself off from the company of other men. His loneliness as a human being increased as his mind became more and more occupied with the written word … And he knew that his way of life must seem arid to others. But he was confident that it was the proper one for him, that no matter how outwardly desolate his daily existence might become, the passion deep inside him would not wither away. Despite these similarities, and however much we may wish to impose the convenient order of Western-based generic taxonomy on the I-novel, recent discussions of the issue show that there is in fact little agreement on the defining characteristics of this amorphous group of literary works. Indeed, it is doubtful that the I-novel can be defined as a genre, with intrinsic features, limited to the pre-World War II era of Japanese literature; the stylistic diversity of the authors and works that critics have associated with the form over the years attest to this conundrum. The contradictions of I-novel rhetoric are well demonstrated in the example of Japan’s most recent Nobel Prizewinner, ∏e Kenzaburπ (b. 1935). Even though he has been quite outspoken against the I-novel, his sometimes intensely personal books have themselves been described as I-novels. ∏e Kenzaburπ’s own feelings when his developmentally challenged son was born are seen to be reflected in the fear, disgust, and guilt of the protagonist, Bird, in Kojinteki na taiken (1964; A Personal Matter), who has just become a father to a mentally disabled son. As Bird rationalizes that the death of a mentally retarded baby might not be such a bad thing, he is struck with horror at his own thoughts: Under what category of the Dead could you subpoena, prosecute, and sentence a baby with only vegetable functions who died no sooner than he was born? Bird gasped in fear that had deepened until now it was profound. I might be called as a witness and I wouldn’t even be able to identify my own son unless I got a clue from the lump on his head. Though ∏e Kenzaburπ is admired mainly for his innovative and complex writing style, the appeal of reading this novel from a purely autobiographical view is quite clear. Finally, it may not be distinctions between style and content that will allow us to understand what the Japanese I-novel is all about. Perhaps one of the most recent explanations of the I-novel, proferred in Tomi Suzuki’s study, is the easiest to understand: that the genre exists only within its critical discourse, as a reception-based interpretive strategy that is retroactively projected onto a body of texts. Western scholarship on the I-novel has been relatively scanty in comparison with Japanese criticism. The most recent and comprehensive works, each presenting a different view of the matter, are listed below. Unfortunately, most of the discussion in Japanese has not been translated. Nevertheless, those who wish to come to more than a one-sided understanding of the I-novel and its context within modern Japanese literature should be aware of the numerous essays published throughout the 20th

century by Japanese critics, most notably pre-World War II texts by Kume Masao, Kobayashi Hideo, Nakamura Mitsuo, and Uno Kπji. More recent criticism can be found in works by Itπ Sei and Hirano Ken. Typical Taishπ period I-novels by writers such as Kasai Zenzπ (1887–1928), Chikamatsu Sh®kπ (1876–1944), and Kamura Isota (1897–1933) are not often read today, but the writings of Shiga Naoya (1883–1971), considered by many to be the most masterful I-novelist, are still widely admired. A small selection of I-novels available in English translation is included below. Melek Ortabasi See also Autofiction; Japan: Kindai Period (1868–1945); Japan: Modern Period (1945 to the Present)

Further Reading Selected I-novels in English: Akutagawa Ry®nosuke, Cogwheels [Haguruma] in Hell Screen, Cogwheels, A Fool’s Life, translated by Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu, Hygiene, Colorado: Eridanos Press, 1987 Dazai Osamu, No Longer Human [Ningen shikkaku], translated by Donald Keene, Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1958 Hayashi Fumiko, “Diary of a Vagabond” [Hπrπki] in Be a Woman: Hayashi Fumiko and Modern Japanese Women’s Literature, by Joan E. Ericson, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997 Natsume Sπseki, Grass on the Wayside = Michikusa: A Novel, translated by Edwin McClellan, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969 ∏e Kenzaburπ, A Personal Matter [Kojinteki na taiken], translated by John Nathan, New York: Grove Press, 1968; Tokyo: Tuttle, and London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969 Satπ Haruo, The Sick Rose: A Pastoral Elegy [Denen no y›’utsu], translated by Francis B. Tenny, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993 Shiga Naoya, A Dark Night’s Passing [An’ya kπro], translated by Edwin McClellan, Tokyo and New York: Kπdansha International, 1976; London: Fontana, 1990 Shimazaki Tπson, The Family [Ie], translated by Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1976 Tanaka Yukiko (editor), To Live and to Write: Selections by Japanese Women Writers 1913–1938, Seattle: Seal Press, 1987 Tanizaki Jun’ichirπ, Naomi [Chijin no ai], translated by Anthony H. Chambers, New York: Knopf, 1985; London: Secker and Warburg, 1986 Tayama Katai, The Quilt [Futon] in The Quilt and Other Stories, translated by Kenneth G. Henshall, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1981 Yasuoka Shπtarπ, A View by the Sea [Umibe no Kπkei], translated by Kären Wigen Lewis, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984

Analysis: Fowler, Edward, The Rhetoric of Confession: Shishπsetsu in Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Fiction, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988 Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Irmela, Rituals of Self-Revelation: Shishπsetsu as Literary Genre and Socio-Cultural Phenomenon, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996 (German edition, 1981) Karatani Kπjin, Origins of Modern Japanese Literature, translated by Brett de Bary, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1993 Keene, Donald, Dawn to the West: Japanese Fiction in the Modern Era, New York: Holt, 1984 Suzuki, Tomi, Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996 Wolfe, Alan, Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan: The Case of Dazai Osamu, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990

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identity

Ibn Batt®ta see Arabic Travel Writing

Ibn Munqidh, Usƒma see Usƒma Ibn Munqidh

Identity The issue of identity is a pivotal one in life as well as life writing. It is a subject or a theme that runs through a life and its various accounts; and it is one of the functions and motives of writing a life: of writing as a quest for an answer to the questions “Who am I?” and “Who is someone else?”. The concepts of “I” and identity, the self and the ego, tend to be used without clear-cut definitions and distinctions, not only in everyday discourse, but in attempts to encompass lives in documentary, fictional, or theoretical form. We are continually confronted with a bewildering variety of terms and issues concerning the notion of identity, but this reflects less a lack of conceptual accuracy than an essential quality of human identity itself: namely, its open, fleeting, and elusive nature. We can, at least, distinguish three principal aspects of our understanding of identity: first, identity as something that remains unchanging; second, identity as something that is multiple; and third, identity as a sense of self. In the first aspect, identity is a figure against a background of instability. In the flux of time, identity is something firm that develops, or manifests itself against the backdrop of change and temporality. Identity, in this sense, is an idea or a narrative Gestalt, based on two or more moments in time that – in the process of life writing – are to be connected. Hence, identity is often understood as that part (or ensemble of characteristics, beliefs, or stories) of ourselves that remains unchanged and which represents continuity. Viewing the “essence” of the self in such temporal terms is specific to Western culture – or more precisely, Western culture of the modern age. Since the publication of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), personal identity has been seen as an identity of consciousness through duration, often with memory as the guarantee of such duration. The practice of writing down one’s life experiences continuously over an extended period of time also emerged in the 17th century. The diary of Samuel Pepys (written 1660–69) is considered one of the first examples of the genre in English. But even before, and independent of, the specific Western focus on self-knowledge and autobiographical consciousness, we can find particular genres of life writing that suggest the idea of a unitary and essentialized self – identity as soul, body, or substance. Genres presenting one’s life as a journey (odyssey, pilgrimage, endless voyage), as a process of self-finding, or as Bildungsroman outline identity as something that either guides, or must be discovered or constituted during one’s life. Often this constitution occurs after a crucial turning point or conversion, as in Augustine’s Confessions (written c.397–400 ce); or when the lived life, in an explicit act of retrospective reflection, becomes the subject of an auto/biographical dialogue, as in Johann Eckermann’s

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Gespräche mit Goethe (1836–48; Conversations with Goethe); or only on the deathbed, as in the feigned autobiography Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas (1997; Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas) by the Brazilian poet Machado de Assis. There is also a variant of the understanding of identity as diachronic Gestalt that contrasts the idea of substance with that of construction. In this view, life accounts either suggest the protagonist as a constructive agent of his or her identity (as developed, for example, out of an “inner destiny”), as in many life stories of scientists, artists, and politicians; or they highlight the power of circumstances (family, culture, history, etc.), as in Anne Frank’s diary (1947). Along these lines, leading a life is conceived of as the making of an identity in the same way that, as some critics believe, in Shakespeare’s histories and tragedies references to historical memory serve to shape an English national identity. Life writing, in this context, attempts to follow a life as the course of its construction, as in Kafka’s Tagebücher 1910–1923 (1964; Diaries 1910–1923), where the focus oscillates between the discovery of the constructedness of identity and the very act of construction through writing a diary. For Kafka, the act of writing about himself is the configuring of his identity. The second aspect of identity we are dealing with considers the self to be multiple, or a whole composed of various distinct selves. Such selves can be the transitory, here-and-now constellations that, when connected and aligned, constitute “a Gestalt of coherence” that we call our life. These local or temporary selves may change in the same way that children grow up and become adults, or that adults change under different conditions and at different times of their lives. But these different selves can also exist simultaneously and independently from each other. As Ian Hacking has pointed out in Rewriting the Soul, since the late 19th century the issue of multiple identities has become a widespread cultural discourse in the West, leaving its mark not only on debates in psychiatry and philosophy (see, for example, Parfit, Glover), but also – and, it seems, first of all – on all forms of life writing. The phenomenon of multiple identities coexisting in one person has been a concern of case histories, as in D. Keyes’s The Minds of Billy Milligan (1981) and F.R. Schreiber’s Sybil (1984); in biographical accounts of the “doubling” of identities, for example, in Auschwitz doctors (see Lifton); and in the autobiographical reflections of such works as the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa’s Livro do Desassossego (1982; The Book of Disquietude). The texts of Pessoa’s book pretend to have been written by several autobiographical “I”s who, as Pessoa notes, “at a certain point, hour, or period of time were fused with the identity of the author, went through his own personality, if this own personality does exist at all” (his Páginas íntimas e de auto-interpretação, 1966). The third aspect of identity is the specific sense one has of one’s self. It asks the question “What is it to be an individual or, perhaps, several individuals?” When one grapples with such questions as “What type of person do I believe myself to be?” or “What story of my life do I find appropriate and fitting?” one relies on this sense of oneself – even though it may consist of several selves or “voices” (as, for example, Virginia Woolf observes about herself in her diary). Obviously, this sense of identity is a most fluid and fluctuating point of reference, often not even addressed explicitly in life writing; nevertheless, it is implicitly present in all self-referential life writing, like the

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perspective of a painter in each painting. In recounting his life as a child, Jean-Paul Sartre in Les Mots (1964; The Words) describes how the young Jean-Paul is not yet sure about his “true” identity but certainly has a sense of self. My true self, my character and my name were in the hands of adults; I had learnt to see myself through their eyes; I was a child, this monster they were forming out of their regret . . . I was a bogus child . . . I could feel my actions changing into gestures. Over the last two decades, a new vision has emerged in the human sciences challenging the traditional relationship between identity and autobiographical writing as expression of an inner, essential self. In this new vision, the construction of identity has been viewed as intimately interwoven with the autobiographical process itself, a process that appears to be essentially narrative in nature (see de Man, Bruner, Freeman, Brockmeier). Understanding identity and autobiographical remembering as narrative processes has far-reaching consequences. One is that the construction of autobiographical identity appears to have become common practice in Western culture, bound neither to a particular age or level of education, nor to the act of writing in the traditional sense. Rather, it is through the many forms of discourse that we order our experiences, memories, desires, and concerns in an autobiographical perspective. Narrating them, we reconstruct and interpret these events along the lines of genre or other narrative conventions provided by culture; in doing so, we give them the shape and meaning of personal life events. In this view, autobiographical narrative is the very place where we construct our identities, interweaving past and present experiences with the threads of a life history. By the late 1970s, the notion of the self as storyteller had therefore entered both the human sciences and cultural theory. In the wake of the narrative and discursive turn in several disciplines, the traditional concept of identity as an unchangeable and substantial self lost ground in favour of a concept of a lifelong process of construction and reconstruction, a continuous writing and rewriting of the text of one’s self. This development also took shape in the practice and theory of life writing, often associated with other forms of postmodernism (see Ashley, Gilmore, and Peters; Hall and Du Gay). The agent of autobiographical remembering who, in this view, has come to the fore is entangled in a variety of social interactions, “dialoguing” with a polyphony of voices distinct in space and time, to use Mikhail Bakhtin’s influential terms. Identity construction, thus viewed, is a function of the present life of a person, and the outcome of this construction is a local, ephemeral, always emergent Gestalt. Understood in this way, the autobiographical process turns out to be not so much about an individual and sovereign subject taking stock of past events – an idea that can be traced back to the Augustinian tradition of life writing and the Cartesian metaphysics of a substantial self. Rather, what happens in the narrative construction of identity is an interplay of possible pasts and possible beginnings in the light of the present of the story and in the discursive context of its telling. In this sense, life writing not only thematizes or re-presents identity and its construction and deconstruction, but is one of the very sites of its making. Jens Brockmeier

See also Individualism and Life Writing; The Self

Further Reading Albright, Daniel, “Literary and Psychological Models of the Self” in The Remembering Self: Construction and Accuracy in the SelfNarrative, edited by Ulric Neisser and Robyn Fivush, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994 Ashley, Kathleen, Leigh Gilmore and Gerald Peters (editors), Autobiography and Postmodernism, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994 Bakhtin, Mikhail, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981 Brockmeier, Jens, “Autobiography, Narrative and the Freudian Conception of Life History”, Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 4 (1997): 175–200 Bruner, Jerome, “The Autobiographical Process” in The Culture of Autobiography: Constructions of Self-Representation, edited by Robert Folkenflik, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1993 de Man, Paul, “Autobiography as De-facement”, Modern Language Notes, 95 (1979): 919–30 Freeman, Mark, Rewriting the Self: History, Memory, Narrative, London and New York: Routledge, 1993 Glover, Jonathan, I: The Philosophy and Psychology of Personal Identity, London: Allen Lane, and New York: Viking Penguin, 1988 Hacking, Ian, Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995 Hall, Stuart and Paul Du Gay, Questions of Cultural Identity, London and Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, 1996 Lifton, Robert Jay, “Medicalized Killing in Auschwitz”, Psychiatry, 4 (1982): 283–97 Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984; corrected edition, 1987

Illness and Life Writing Although illness figures historically in life writing, only by the late 20th century did we witness a proliferation of publications in which illness, disease, and disability are the central features. Anne Hunsaker Hawkins’s research in Reconstructing Illness: Studies in Pathography (1993) reveals that “book-length personal accounts of illness are uncommon before 1950 and rarely found before 1900”. Given the variety of illnesses currently recounted, it is clear that the dysfunctional body is now inextricably tied to constructions of identity. This phenomenon is true especially in the United States, where publications include books, articles, and even newspaper columns in which the ill person chronicles his or her struggles with the disease, either until cured or until the progress of the illness has rendered writing impossible. Current trends in illness narratives involve, predictably, those diseases that have most challenged the identity of the narrator and whose presence, particularly among certain groups or genders, has instilled a generalized fear and sense of loss of control. Thus, autobiographies of cancer and AIDS patients figure predominantly. The scope is much more broad, however, and encompasses narratives of mental illness, especially schizophrenia and bipolar disorders; heart disease; neurological and neuromuscular disorders, such as stroke and multiple sclerosis; and addiction to alcohol and other drugs, to name a few. Clearly, as in no other time in history, the body is the self, and the ill individual’s narrative seeks to gain control – or wrest it

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from the medical establishment – of the illness through creating discourses that counter, among other challenges to identity, the jargon of the medical world. Historically, however, illness narratives were closely linked with spiritual and mystical autobiographies and constituted the central event – the vision or the conversion – in the narrator’s life. The prototype for narratives of physical affliction is quite possibly the experience of St Paul, whose conversion to Christianity occurred after being blinded on the road to Damascus. In medieval Europe, the notion of “self” was inextricably linked to one’s relationship with a Christian god. Illness, constituting a disjunction of the physical and spiritual worlds, a relinquishing of normal, daily interaction with the physical world, and a heightened state of mental or psychic awareness, became the stimulus and the evidence for spiritual insight. The autobiographical texts from this period emphasize the link between physical illness and visionary experience: Dame Julian of Norwich (Showings), and Margery Kempe (The Book of Margery Kempe), from 14th- and 15th-century England; and Teresa of Avila (Las moradas; translated as The Interior Castle) and St John of the Cross (Noche Oscura del alma; translated as The Dark Night of the Soul), both from 16th-century Spain. In the 19th century, Cardinal John Henry Newman was to follow this pattern of spiritual autobiography, in Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864) and in the pieces subsequently collected in Autobiographical Writings (1956), by emphasizing that his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism was precipitated by an intense fever, which he interpreted as a sign from God. Illness and oppression also function historically as linked themes in accounts of survivors of grossly inhumane acts against large groups of people. The tragic circumstances of the slave trade and the African diaspora have provided a unique genre of autobiography in which illness plays an important part. Accounts of the middle passage of slaves to the Western hemisphere detail the terrible conditions of the slave boats, wherein illness (and death) resulted from unsanitary conditions and cruel treatment. The same may be said for autobiographical works that emerged from the Holocaust. Crimes against the human spirit involve causing and refusing to treat illness, and even demanding labour from the weakened body and soul. Accounts of illness would seem an obvious autobiographical focus, especially when the work speaks for a community, but such narratives also serve to reveal the treatment of human beings as a species lower than animals, thus stunning the reader out of a complacent, albeit concerned, distance into the actuality of great crimes against humanity. Classic examples of illness and oppression in autobiography can be found in Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo (1947; If This is a Man), Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (1977), and the selections in The Civitas Anthology of African American Slave Writings (1999). Apart from notable exceptions cited above, however, illness occupies little space in both private and public life writings before the 19th and 20th centuries. Perhaps the most obvious reason for the paucity of illness narratives until then is historical attitudes about public life, decorousness, and their role in autobiography. Illness would not be considered relevant or proper to the writer interested in recounting the main stages in his or her life. In fact, even in the 1940s, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt worked diligently to deny his physical disability (as a result of polio) by making certain that he was never

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photographed in a wheelchair, thereby demonstrating his understanding that physical disability would be equated with lack of masculinity and could inspire both fear and revulsion in the public. Prominent literary figures in early 19th-century England, however, did make note of affliction in their life writings. Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Journals (1800–03) could be read as an account of her brother William’s digestive problems (“William is bad in his bowels”), which appear to be closely linked to his visceral poetic responses to his environment. Thomas De Quincey details his addiction to opium, while John Keats’s letters describe his resistance and eventual succumbing to tuberculosis, to name only the most obvious examples from the Romantic period. British Victorian writers were equally candid about illness. Alice James (The Diary of Alice James, 1934), sister of William and Henry, found a purpose in keeping a journal only after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her journal, then, adumbrates 20th-century illness narratives, whose purpose is to find a discourse for the diseased body. Most remarkable of the Victorians in this regard, however, were John Stuart Mill (Autobiography, 1873) and Charles Darwin (The Autobiography, originally as Life and Letters, 1887), both of whom quite openly discussed their mental illness, a condition that flies in the face of Victorian (and even 20th-century) constructions of masculinity. It is important to note, however, that the above references to 19th-century illnesses are to works by major literary figures, Alice James being the exception. Illness narratives in the 20th century would encompass a much broader spectrum of both writers and audiences. In the 20th century, illness per se became an acceptable reason for writing an autobiography, with the author often narrating other life events only in so far as they had some relevance to the illness in question. Whereas our knowledge of 19th-century illness narratives derives from autobiographical writing of individuals who identified themselves as writers, contemporary life writing about illness involves both professional writers and those who have been moved to narrate an account of their illness but would not otherwise consider themselves writers. The phenomenon has inspired the scholar G. Thomas Couser to coin the descriptive term of “autopathography”: The texts I have in mind range from journals to essays to full-life narratives, but most lie in a middle range of “singleexperience” autobiographies. Disease may remain in the background … but usually it is squarely in the foreground, as when the narrative is coextensive with the illness. In the former category, prominent writers who have turned to illness narratives include May Sarton (After the Stroke, 1988), Audre Lorde (The Cancer Journals, 1980, and Burst of Life, 1988), William Styron (Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, 1990), and Nancy Mairs (Plaintext, 1986). Celebrities often fit into the latter category: the tennis star Arthur Ashe writing about his eventually fatal struggle with AIDS (Days of Grace: A Memoir, 1993) or the actress Jill Ireland writing about her battle with breast cancer (Life Wish, 1987). Equally prolific, however, are those “single experience” autobiographies by writers whose names would not otherwise be known. The journalist Juliet Wittman’s Breast Cancer Journal: A Century of Petals (1993) was nominated for the National Book Award in

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the United States (regretfully, the nomination had to be withdrawn because her legal residency was Britain). Paul Monette’s Borrowed Time (1988), an AIDS narrative, led to another autobiographical work about growing up homosexual in America. From the examples of the primary works listed above, it is clear that illness is not a theme that dramatically crosses racial, cultural, ethnic, or class boundaries. In his important work on illness and disability, Couser notes: “As it happens, those who produce narratives of illness and disability are not diverse in terms of race and class. They tend to be white and upper middle class.” The striking exception to this statement in the references above (apart from Arthur Ashe) is the late Audre Lorde, who was an African American lesbian feminist. The reasons for the imbalance are varied. In the English-speaking world, the white, upper-middle class probably has the time and money (or insurance, in the case of privatized health care) to contemplate the meaning of illness in one’s life. Moreover, the obsession with the body as a commodity is primarily a Western phenomenon – witness the startling proliferation of fitness centres, personal trainers, and “health food” shops and restaurants, as well as numerous gadgets for monitoring one’s health, among which is the coin-operated blood pressure machine readily found in American pharmacies. That members of such cultures would be writing about their bodies in the late 20th and early 21st centuries seems inevitable. That so many autobiographies concern illness suggests not only the grasping towards a discourse of the body, but also an increasing fear of aging and death and, equally, a fear of the environmental toxicity to which the modern body has become vulnerable. Although in some ways illness narratives are themselves arguably symptoms of a general “culture of narcissism” associated with privilege, it is quite clear that they have the profound effect of creating a face and giving humanity to life’s inevitable onslaught on the body. Kay Cook See also The Body and Life Writing; Case Histories; Disability and Life Writing; Insanity and Life Writing; Trauma and Life Writing

Further Reading Couser, G. Thomas, Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and LifeWriting, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997 Frank, Arthur W., The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995 Hawkins, Anne Hunsaker, Reconstructing Illness: Studies in Pathography, West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1993 “Illness, Disability, and Lifewriting”, special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 6/1 (1991) Kleinman, Arthur, The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition, New York: Basic Books, 1988

Immigration Writings, American When the historian Oscar Handlin began research for The Uprooted (1951), he wanted to write about immigration in United States history; rather, he discovered, immigration was American history. From the early years of nationhood, the United States was a destination for immigrants. In a travel narrative, published in 1809 and cited in the Oxford English

Dictionary, Edward A. Kendall remarks that “Immigrant is perhaps the only new word, of which the circumstances of the United States, has in any degree demanded the addition to the English language”. From 1820 to 1920, in what Roger Daniels describes as the century of immigration, nearly 35 million people emigrated to what many called “the promised land”. From the beginning, immigrants wrote of their new lives – in letters, diaries, memoirs, autobiographies, testimonies, and oral histories. Historians and scholars continue to document and analyse their experiences. Thus, at the end of the 20th century, a significant body of primary and secondary sources is available for study by the scholar and general reader interested in immigration and the life writing this generated. The language of immigration may be specialized. Immigration is generally defined as “entrance into a country for the purpose of settling there” (Oxford English Dictionary). This definition implies voluntary and intentional migration, as opposed to coercive migration. Historically, this has meant that Africans forced into slavery and brought to the United States were not generally considered to be immigrants. Others forced to emigrate because of wars, persecution, or political repressions have been considered to be exiles, refugees, or displaced persons, not immigrants. Today, with changes in immigration policy, the emergence of the global economy, and new trends in historiography most of these groups are simply considered immigrants. The generation that migrates (invariably young adults) is considered the first generation; their children are referred to as the “second-generation immigrant” or “first-generation American”. Though their experiences are different (see Wong), the writings of both generations may be categorized as immigration literature. In the last quarter of the 20th century the term ethnic may also signify immigrant: The Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (1980) includes 104 different ethnic groups in the United States, most of which are immigrants. Immigrants to the United States have always written about their lives. Life-writing forms vary, however, as cultural expressions change over time. Throughout the 19th century letters and diaries dominated. From the turn of the century autobiographies flourished. By the end of the 20th century these genres existed among immigrant groups alongside oral histories, testimonies, memoirs, and multi-media life stories. A rich collection of these writings is available through the Longfellow Institute at Harvard University which translates, publishes, and reissues immigrant writings obscured and lost through linguistic barriers. Migration to the United States follows what historians call pushand-pull factors – economic, social, and cultural forces in both the ancestral homelands and the United States. To appreciate better life writing among immigrants, it is helpful to recognize the historical patterns of immigration. Patterns of migration to the United States are often described as “waves”. While English-speaking immigrants of the colonial period might reasonably be seen as “immigrants”, historically they have been considered colonialists. After nationhood, the Anglo-Saxon majority were viewed as settlers, while other English-speaking migrants – Irish, Scottish, and Welsh – were considered to be immigrants. The first wave of migration is generally associated with the period from 1820 to 1880 and is characterized by migration from northern and western Europe, specifically the British Isles, and especially Ireland (which sent the highest percentage of its population), Scandinavia, and

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Germany. During this period, Chinese migration began but was terminated with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (repealed only on 17 December 1943). During the period between 1820 and 1880, an estimated 10,189,429 immigrants entered the United States (see Daniels). A second wave of immigration occurred in the context of industrialization. From 1880 to 1920 the number of immigrants to the United States doubled to 23,465,374 (ibid.). Despite this rise, the percentage of foreignborn individuals in the population as a whole in both periods remained relatively constant (between 13.2 and 14.7 per cent). However, these so-called new immigrants, primarily industrial workers from eastern and southern Europe settling in urban areas, were perceived as incapable of assimilation by the influential Anglo-Saxons. This fear produced the Americanization movement, which aimed to Americanize new immigrants. The fear also generated efforts to restrict immigration and led to a series of laws, mandating literacy (1917), setting quotas per country (1921, 1927), and establishing total limits for immigration (National Origins Law, 1924). These laws virtually eliminated the entry of a European labour force. Thus the period from 1917 to 1964 is seen as the period of restriction. In addition to the effects of restrictive laws, immigration was diminished by the world wars and the global depression. In the post-World War II years, most migration to the United States can be explained by the Cold War, since immigration policy favoured those leaving communist countries. After 1965, however, immigration policy shifted. In that year the Hart-Celler Act liberalized US immigration policy, a benefit especially to those countries whose quotas had disadvantaged them in the past. Additional acts (1980, 1986, and 1990) also increased migration. Thus after 1965 the regions producing the most immigrants have been Asia and Latin America, and, by the 1980s, only 11 per cent of immigrants came from Europe, as opposed to 90 per cent in 1900. Overall, two-thirds of immigrants to the United States arrived in the 20th century, making it, according to one scholar, “the greatest era of immigration in national and world history” (Ueda). The life writing of the first wave of 19th-century immigrants to the United States is especially characterized by diaries and letter writing. The letters, often referred to as “America Letters”, helped to stimulate migration since the family members receiving them would often read them aloud, especially in the rural communities of Northern Europe. Often the letters gave precise instructions on emigration and included tickets for the passage or money for that purpose. The letters invariably spoke in a lofty language about the nobility of the land, which also justified migration. One Norwegian immigrant wrote in 1849: “Here it is not asked, what or who was your father, but the question is, what are you? … Freedom is here an element which is drawn in, as it were, with mother’s milk, and seems as essential to every citizen of the United States as the air he breathes” (quoted in Blegen). Many of these letters and diaries provided the basis for fictional works on migration. For example, Vilhelm Moberg’s four novels on emigration (also made into films) drew heavily on the diary of Andrew Peterson, an immigrant from Sweden, who left his homeland in 1854 and kept a diary of his journey and farm life in Iowa and Minnesota until his death in 1898. Ongoing interest in immigration means that these letters and diaries continue to be unearthed, translated, and published, some for the first time, such as Dutch

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Farmer in the Missouri Valley: The Life and Letters of Ulbe Eringa, 1866–1950 (1996). Letter writing is found in each wave of immigration. Immigrants arriving in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, also wrote autobiographies. The prevalence of the genre is marked by the 6377 titles listed in Louis Kaplan’s Bibliography of American Autobiographies, all published before 1945. Immigrants may have imitated the tradition of Henry Adams and other Anglo-Saxons in telling their life stories, or they may have sought to demonstrate their Americanness. A few successful immigrants wrote of their good fortune in the new world – Jacob Riis (Danish), Edward Bok (Dutch), and Andrew Carnegie (Scottish), for example – in linear narratives of achievement. In the paradigmatic immigrant autobiography the writer portrayed his or her transformation in the crucible of the “melting pot” (Israel Zangwill’s metaphor for American society) to become a new person, an American citizen. These narratives served the Americanization movement since they provided “evidence” of assimilation. The Promised Land (1912), written by the Russian Jewish immigrant Mary Antin, is the classic illustration of this genre. Dividing the work between the old and new world, the narrator Antin begins: “I was born, I have lived, and I have been made over”. Reproduced for schools and in anthologies, and often republished, the autobiography has served a representative function throughout the century. Not all immigrant autobiographies celebrated American society and individual transformation, however. Emma Goldman’s Living My Life (1931) documents a radical critique of industrial capitalism, involvement in anarchism, and alternative immigrant communities. During the period of immigration restriction (1917–64), memoirs, reminiscences, and oral histories prevail, often documenting tragedies in the ancestral homeland of refugees and survivors through the Holocaust and wars. Other memoirs of this period evoke immigrant life in the United States, such as Jerre Mangione’s fictionalized narrative, Mount Allegro: A Memoir of Italian American Life (1942). The most recent immigration life writing emerges from the post-1965 immigrants, predominantly from Asia and Latin America. What characterizes this work is aesthetic experimentation. Perhaps the best-known example is Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1976), an “autobiography” that mixes fiction and memoir in a story of growing up female as a Chinese American in California. Also significant in recent life writing is the testimony, a form associated with “resistance literature”. Ramon “Tianguis” Perez’s Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant (1991) uses the diary form to call attention to contemporary injustices of immigrant labour and laws. Some experimentation involves mediation that draws upon older models. I Begin My Life All Over: The Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience (1998), is a collective “autobiography”, written and compiled by Lillian Faderman with Ghia Xiong. Faderman uses Antin’s model, structurally and literally employing “the promised land” in order to tell the story of Hmong immigrants. Experimentation also involves multi-media and performance art, especially in collaborative efforts – for example the Asian American group in Minneapolis, Theater Mu, which depicts immigration stories on stage. Critical scholarship on immigration life writing centres mostly on literary and cultural studies and burgeoned in the

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wake of ethnic studies and feminism. Critical issues change, however, with cultural and intellectual shifts, especially associated with poststructuralist theories, new technologies, and the global economy. One prevailing critical issue centres on the nature and meaning of ethnic identities expressed in life writing. Until recently questions centred on representativeness – whether and how immigrants spoke as Americans or foreigners, for a whole group or only the presumed “self”. In the wake of poststructuralist theories, and more theoretical approaches to ethnicity, these questions have shifted to the meaning of the subject, the “I” who speaks, and issues of authenticity. A second arena of scholarly inquiry focuses on the relationship between immigrants and ethnic peoples. Prior to 1965, immigrants tended to come from Europe; after 1965 from Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. This shift occurred alongside the focus on multiculturalism that gave attention to the nation’s minority populations. In 1977 the Office of Management and Budget identified five racial and ethnic categories for the administrative reporting of affirmative action cases – American Indian or Alaskan Native; Asian or Pacific Islander; Black; Hispanic; and white. Multiculturalism has focused, especially, on the four “ethnic minorities” (non-white) groups. This categorization also has led to studies of the relationships between and among (white) immigrant populations and (non-white) ethnic (including some immigrant) populations. These parallel developments have led to an emphasis among scholars on meanings of ethnicity and the construction of racial and ethnic identities. The emphasis on identity politics, however, often blurs the social and historical conditions that shaped the groups, both past and present. At the same time, focus on ethnicity has contributed to critical white studies that examine the cultural construction of whiteness and white privilege. Other scholarly work directly related to immigration life writing includes work on cultural politics. One example is Lisa Lowe’s influential study Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (1996). Current theories on postcolonialism and transnationalism also affect scholarship on immigration life writing. The proliferation of both immigration life writing and related scholarly work suggest that the vibrancy of this genre is continuing in the 21st century. Betty Ann Bergland Further Reading Antin, Mary, The Promised Land, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, and London: Heinemann, 1912 Blegen, Theodore (editor), Land of Their Choice: The Immigrants Write Home, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955 Boelhower, William, Immigrant Autobiography in the United States, Verona, Italy: Essedue, 1982 Boelhower, William, Autobiographical Transactions in Modernist America: The Immigrant, the Architect, the Artist, the Citizen, Udine: Del Bianco, 1992 Daniels, Roger, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, New York: Harper Perennial, 1990 Dublin, Thomas (editor), Immigrant Voices: New Lives in America, 1773–1986, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993 Holte, James Craig, The Ethnic I: A Sourcebook for Ethnic-American Autobiography, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1988 Kennedy, John F., A Nation of Immigrants, New York: AntiDefamation League of B’nai B’rith, 1959 Padilla, Genaro, My History, Not Yours: The Formation of Mexican American Autobiography, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993 Perez, Ramon (Tianguis), Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant,

translated by Dick J. Reavis, Houston, Texas: Arte Publico Press, 1991 Shavelson, Susanne Amy, “From Amerike to America: Language and Identity in the Yiddish and English Autobiographies of Jewish Immigrant Women” (dissertation), Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1996 Thomas, W.I. and F. Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America: Monograph of an Immigrant Group, 5 vols, Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1918–20; 2nd edition abridged by Eli Zanetsky, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984 Ueda, Reed, Postwar Immigrant America: A Social History, Boston: Bedford Books of St Martin’s Press, 1994 Vecoli, Rudolph J., “Ethnicity and Immigration” in Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century, vol. 1, edited by Stanley I. Kutler, New York: Scribner, 1996 Wong, Sau-Ling Cynthia, “Immigrant Autobiography: Some Questions of Definition and Approach” in American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect, edited by Paul John Eakin, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991; reprinted in Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998

Indian Subcontinent: Early Life Writing The earliest corpus of life stories in India comes from a group of women who lived in the 5th century bce. Known as theris – nuns of the Buddhist faith – they left a remarkable mine of literature recounting their life experiences. While they did not write autobiographies in the modern sense, they did describe their lives in poems known as therigathas (songs of the theris) that were transmitted orally for centuries and written down around the 1st century bce, as was a commentary on them. Thereafter the poems appeared in several collections of the Buddha’s teachings. They were probably first composed in Magadhi Prakrit, a popular language of the Buddha’s time, but later written down in Pali, the language of early Buddhist literature. They remained unknown outside the world of Theravada Buddhism until late in the 19th century, and the first English translation, by Caroline Rhys-Davids, appeared in 1909. Not all the poems have survived; 73 are extant and available in several editions (see especially Rhys-Davids and Norman, and Murcott). Not all the therigathas are autobiographical, but many definitely fall into the category of life-story writing. They reveal the reality of women’s lives in early Indian society, especially the negative self-perception forced upon women. They learned to regard themselves as possessing merely a “two-finger consciousness” (Rhys-Davids and Norman), i.e. just a pinch of rationality, and as creatures fickle and lustful (see Murcott). They were taught to believe that they had been born as women because of bad deeds in previous lives, a continuing misfortune, for as women they would be hard put to achieve salvation. Their poems reveal both the ideology that confined women’s lives and its impress upon day-to-day social and personal life. When they lived with their families, these women were dutiful and uncomplaining. Tellingly, though, those who were married record no closeness to their husbands and seldom mention love. On the contrary, they all rejoice at their freedom from the bondage of familial duties and crooked husbands. The poems show that the theris had a wide range of life experiences, although most came from wealthy families. Many turned to religion as a refuge from life’s misfortunes. Some had been courtesans and had become

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disillusioned about pleasures and riches. By contrast, a third group comprised renunciates by spiritual choice rather than emotional damage. It is remarkable that with hardly any access to education, these women should have succeeded in entering their religious order, rising from their subordinate position as women to become teachers, some with large followings. Equally remarkable is the high level of self-awareness that led them to set down their life stories. But perhaps the most striking fact is that it is women’s life stories, not those of the rich and powerful, that should mark the beginning of life writing as a cultural genre in India. The singularity of these women’s self-expression becomes apparent when we place against their writings those of the theras or monks of the Buddhist order who also left a large number of poems. The men seldom talk about their lives, choosing rather to reflect on their experience of liberation and to record their disapproval of women, whom they depict as seductive and lustful (see Schelling and Waldman’s edition). The theris were thus the earliest known individuals in India to write about their actual lives rather than philosophize about existence. The paucity of life writing in ancient India may be explained by the separation that was maintained between the private and the public spheres, which made an individual’s personal life a closed territory and any act of speaking about oneself deplorable as self-advertisement. More than a thousand years elapsed between the exceptional poems by the Buddhist nuns and the appearance of the only other piece of life writing in early India: Banabhatta’s life of his patron king Sri Harsavardhana, a 7thcentury ruler of Thanesvar, who himself was the author of three well-known plays. In its introductory part Banabhatta’s celebrated Harsacarita [the Life of Harsa] includes an account of his own life. He speaks briefly of his childhood, mentioning that he lost both his parents by the age of 14, and that he had enough money to complete his education and maintain his household. However, he befriended undesirable young men and women but soon tired of them and left home to travel abroad. After a while he returned home to settle down to a proper brahmin’s life of performing Vedic sacrifices, complemented by his life as Sri Harsavardhana’s court poet. In Harsacarita, which is only one among Banabhatta’s many well-known works, he describes the splendour and magnificence of the capital of the kingdom, noting the grandeur of scenes at the royal court. He mentions how the king supported and encouraged scholars, poets, and artists. The poet identifies Harsavardhana as a Buddhist who was just, generous, and liberal in his views. During his reign the king actively opposed the practice of Sati (the self-immolation of widows at the cremation of their husbands) and tried to prevent his mother and sister from following the custom (failing with his mother but saving his sister). This and similar items of information are invaluable in reconstructing the social history of the period, particularly because so little is known about how people lived in ancient India. Even where conquering rulers such as Chandragupta, or great religious leaders like the Buddha, were concerned, contemporaries produced adulatory legends rather than focused biographies, leaving us only with hagiographies from which to piece together past lives. The practice of writing lives began to prosper in medieval times, particularly after the Mughal conquest of India. The first Mughal conqueror was Babur Shah

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(1483–1530), whose Baburnama stands as one of the finest autobiographies ever written. Written from notes of campaigns and journeys that Babur made throughout his life, this work is marked by utter candour, and reveals a man of culture, a lover of books and gardens who was poetic and pragmatic at the same time. A critical observer of life, his accounts of events and his comments on them served his descendants as practical guidelines. Among the later Mughals, Humayun (1507–56) and Akbar (1542–1605) had their life stories recorded, respectively the Humayunnama and the Akbarnama, which chronicle the chief events, report the personal characteristics of the subjects, occasionally in a critical spirit, and trace their political careers. Thus, the tradition that began in India with the very private testimony of the Buddhist nuns evolved into a rhetorical gesture aimed at participating in the public sphere. Mandakranta Bose See also Buddhism and Life Writing; Hinduism and Life Writing

Further Reading Agrawala, Vasudeva S., The Deeds of Harsha: Being a Critical Study of Bana’s Harshacharita, Varanasi: Prithivi Prakashan, 1969 Akbar Nama, 3 vols, Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, 1873–87; translated by H. Beveridge, Calcutta: 1921–48; reprinted, 3 vols, Delhi: Low Price, 1989 Babur, Shah, The Babur Nama in English, edited and translated by A.S. Beveridge, 2 vols, London: Luzac, 1922; reprinted, New York: AMS Press, 1971 Banabhatta, The Harshacarita of Banabhatta, edited by P.V. Kane, Bombay: P.V. Kane, 1917–18; reprinted, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1973 Begam, Gulbadan, The History of Humayun – Humayun-Nama, edited and translated by A.S. Beveridge, London: no publisher given, 1902; reprinted, Lahore: Sange-Meel, 1974 Blackstone, Kathryn, Women in the Footsteps of the Buddha: Struggle for Liberation in the Therigatha, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1998 Dasgupta, S.N. and S.K. De, A History of Sanskrit Literature: Classical Period, Calcutta: Calcutta University, 1947 Karmarkar, R.D., Bana, Dharwar: Karnatak University, 1964 Murcott, Susan, The First Buddhist Women: Translations and Commentaries on the Therigatha, Berkeley, California: Parallax Press, 1991 Norman, K.R., Poems of Early Buddhist Monks (Theragatha), revised edition, Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1997 Rhys-Davids, C.A.F. and K.R. Norman, Poems of Early Buddhist Nuns (Therigatha), Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1989 Songs of the Sons and Daughters of the Buddha, translated by Andrew Schelling and and Anne Waldman, Boston: Shambhala, 1996

Indian Subcontinent: Auto/biography to 1947 In Indian literary history, autobiography as a reflection on the self and its relationship to private and public realms essentially developed in the 19th century – it is therefore a relatively recent development, although one that grew out of a long Indian biography tradition. Biography, as a way of telling the stories of kings, as history, and as a moral tale of the good and righteous life of an exemplary figure, has a tradition of more than 2000 years in Indian writing. This style of biographical writing, the charitra katha, appears to be a primary motive in the composition of the various Ramayanas. The sanskrit play

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Raghuvansham derives from a similar impulse. The composers of Mahabharata saw their function as writing an Itihasa (history). One of the earliest examples of prose narrative in Indian languages is the Jataka stories, which tell of the many lives of the Buddha through his various reincarnations, in order to teach the righteous path through an exemplary life. The life stories of ordinary people were recorded as “genealogies” by communities known as bhats. These genealogies were essentially records of family trees and certain special activities, such as going on a pilgrimage. However, despite these biographical traditions, as G.N. Devy has observed, there was little scope for autobiographical writing in a society where the “artist had practised, very scrupulously, a policy of self-effacement” and in which the ego was believed to be “only an infinitesimal part of the brahman”. The period of Islamic invasions and rule (roughly from the 8th to the 18th century) saw the emergence of a new mode of writing history. Here, history was written as the biography of the ruler by a court-appointed biographer-historian. Apart from the ruler, noblemen from court also commissioned works narrating their achievements. Occasionally, the biography was replaced by the autobiography, as in the case of the first Mughal emperor Babar’s (1483–1530) Babar Nama. But such acts were rare and, eschewing self-reflection, dealt with the writer’s public life. A significant break with the earlier Brahminic literature occurred in various Indian languages around the 11th century. The literatures of roughly six centuries (11th to 17th) of poetic and devotional effervescence are categorized by the term Bhakti (devotional) literature. The literatures of saint-poets, such as Basava, Akkama, Narsinh Mehta, Mira, Chaitanya, Amir Khusaro, Tukaram, Tulsidas, Jynanadev, Kabir, and Guru Gobind Singh, composed in newly emerging Indian languages (Bhashas), challenged the Brahminical world-view. They also challenged, and indeed altered, conventional ideas of literature and literary language. An increasing assertion of the self is evident at the level of cosmology as well as poetry, as the writers spoke and wrote of the self in relation to the spiritual. Their goal was, however, sublimation of the self in its quest to be one with the divine, and hence this autobiographical poetry speaks of the longings of the inner self, without actually emphasizing the relation of the self to the world. It is in this literary and cultural milieu, in conjunction with Western influence, that modern Indian autobiographies emerged in the 19th century. The early autobiographical writing was aware that it was laying a new path and breaking with tradition. This awareness informed the first Gujarati autobiography. Poet, reformer, and lexicographer Narmadashankar Lalshanker (1833–86) wrote and printed Mari Hakikat [My Factual Story] in 1866 at the age of 33. He noted: For someone like me to write his own story and moreover to print and publish it during my life time itself, may appear disrespectful to our people. I am not a learned man, nor a warrior nor a religious leader, nor am I a wealthy philanthropist. Despite this conscious break with the past Narmad wrote his story because this act, he felt, would allow him to gaze at his own life and, in doing so, he would also be able “to institute the

practice of writing the autobiography which does not exist amongst us”. It is notable, however, that the book was not distributed until after his death in 1886, and the full text, including other self-writings, not published until 1994. This self-conscious sense of being a pioneer is present in other autobiographical writings of the 19th century. Around 1892 Fakir Mohan Senapati (1843–1918) wrote the first autobiography Atmajeevancharitra [Story of My Life] in the Oriya language, first published in book form in 1927 but with excerpts in journals before that. After stating that his own life was too “insignificant” to make an “autobiography worthwhile”, he chose to write it nevertheless because the “Oriya language is particularly deficient in autobiographies”. He hoped that “this sacred motherland of ours will see many autobiographers in the near future. I am merely laying the foundation for them to build on.” Thus, it appears that the early autobiographies were not only expressions of individual lives but also representative of a linguistic community and a literary tradition finding outlets for expression. There seemed to be an increasing need not only to tell the story of the self but also to modernize various Indian literary traditions by introducing a genre that appeared to those pioneers essentially Western in origin. That a primary motive was to enrich one’s own literary tradition is evident from the fact that these early autobiographies were written in Indian languages, rather than English; but it is also possible that the early autobiographers felt that speaking of one’s self with authenticity and truthfulness required writing in the “mothertongue” rather than in an acquired alien tongue. This tension between writing in an “alien” form and in one’s own language surfaced in the almost mandatory attempts at self-effacement in Narmad’s and Fakir Mohan Senapati’s autobiographies. The tension is resolved by the assertion of that self which is the inheritor of a literary tradition. Another important feature of these early autobiographies is their presentation of the story of the self as less an attempt at reflection than as a matter-of-fact narrative of events as they happened, in chronicle form. The family, for example, appears as genealogy. The idea of conjugal life with all its intimacies has no place in it. Narmad represents this impersonal trend by recording the death of his wife simply by recounting that “in 1852 my wife became pregnant but she gave birth to a still-born child on the eighth month, [and] as a result she died soon after at the age of 16–17”. There is no record of his feelings about this event. Even the name of his wife is recorded only in a footnote. Similarly, Fakir Mohan Senapati speaks of his family in terms of events and dates. Some of the early autobiographies contain a mixture of modes of life writing, not just straight narrative. They also contain large sections of diaries or journals, along with letters and testimonials received and sent. Narmad’s autobiography is divided into two sections, the first part comprising the story of his life to the age of 33, while the second part contains periodic additions to the narrative in the form of diary entries. The other major Gujarati autobiography of the 19th century, Atmavrutant [Story of Life], written by philosopher Manibhai Nabhubhai, also employs the same technique. The use of more than one mode for self-writing in the early autobiographies suggests a certain hesitation in adopting fully the form of linear narrative, as if the discomfort with self-writing could be ameliorated by

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employing the “historical records” of letter and diary. As a result these autobiographies tend to resist becoming reflections on the self. Two very different 19th-century works did, however, manage to capture a progressive and personal view of their writers. They are Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi’s Scrapbooks (published 1957–59) and Rassundari Debi’s Amar Jiban [1876; My Life]. It is in the writing of these two individuals, from entirely dissimilar backgrounds, that autobiographical writing in India acquires maturity. Govardhanram maintained diaries, or “scrapbooks” as he called them. Unlike all other autobiographical works of that period, they are written in English. Govardhanram wrote other literary works – a novel, poetry, and critical writing in Gujarati, his mother tongue. Hence, this decision to maintain the so-called Scrapbooks in English was very significant. For Govardhanram his literary work was his “service towards the country”. It was as part of the project of cultivating the minds and souls of his countrymen that his literature was written in Gujarati. By contrast, his Scrapbooks were not intended to be part of the project of imagining a nation. The Scrapbooks are, instead, a record of the journey of the soul in the quest of that service to the nation. They are Govardhanram’s notes to himself. Why would someone so conscious of the importance of language choice choose to write about himself in English? To say that his inner world was captured by the colonial encounter would be to simplify the issue. Govardhanram introduces for the first time a sharp divide between the public and the private, between the realm that deals with societal obligations and that which governs obligations to one’s own self. This division is, however, made with an acute awareness about the intertwined nature of these two quests. It is perhaps to achieve this division that Govardhanram, one of the early graduates of the modern English education system, employed English to speak to himself, although speaking of the self and to oneself in an alien language poses a fascinating and paradoxical puzzle for the contemporary reader. His Scrapbooks remain an extraordinary document in Indian self writing, as they recapture the themes and the quest of the medieval Bhakti tradition. They also introduce for perhaps the first time in modern idiom the idea that the self is the site for experimentation and that its recording can create a separation between the outer and inner worlds at the same time as they are together in the self. (This paradox was to find its most mature expression in the 20th century in M.K. Gandhi’s An Autobiography, or, The Story of My Experiments with Truth.) While Govardhanram was writing his Scrapbooks, another extraordinary act of autobiographical imagination appeared in Bengal in 1876 with the publication of Rassundari Debi’s autobiography Amar Jiban. It is not only the first autobiography in the Bengali [Bangla] language; it is also the first autobiography by an Indian woman in modern times. Unlike others who wrote their stories in the 19th century, Rassundari Debi was not a public figure, nor was she writing an autobiography in the self-conscious manner of a Narmad or a Senapati. She had lived her life in the villages of Bengal and was, in fact, unlettered. She taught herself to read and write in secret in order to read and tell others the story of God, the Bhagvad Purana. Amar Jiban was written in two parts. The 1876 autobiography contained 16 compositions, but 15 new compositions were published in 1906. Rassundari Debi shows an acute aware-

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ness of her surroundings and the affairs of the large household over which she presided. But the central concern is not to speak of what is outside but to capture her spiritual quest. In this effort she mirrors the saint-poets of the Bhakti period. It was by appealing to this tradition that Rassundari Debi found a voice for herself. Krupabai Satthianadhan’s Saguna: The Story of Native Christian Life, serialized in Madras Christian College Magazine in 1887–88, represents the coming together of several strands of 19th-century autobiography. Saguna is the first autobiographical novel in English by an Indian woman. It received wide critical attention and was read by Queen Victoria, who asked for other works by the author. Saguna captures the major concerns of 19th-century India – concerns about the question of faith, conversion, and being a “Native Christian” in a colonized country, and about being able to speak of one’s self both in “real” and “fictional” terms. Amar Jiban and Saguna are important autobiographical acts not only because they represent the inner worlds of women, but because they reveal an unselfconscious confidence. This is evident from the fact that both works were published during their writers’ lifetimes. By contrast, the autobiographical writings of Narmad, Senapati, Manibhai Nabhubhai, and Govardhanram were all published posthumously. The greater assurance of the women writers, especially Rassunderi Debi, is perhaps the result of the fact that they did not feel burdened by a need to modernize their literary tradition in the light of Western influence; their point of reference was instead the continuing memory of ancient Bhakti tradition. The journey of these authors, from Mari Hakikat to Saguna, captures the major concerns of 19th-century self writing in India. It is a movement from “fact” to “fiction”. It is also a journey from anxieties about the native tongue and native literature to speaking of the self in an alien tongue with confidence and authenticity. The 19th-century Indian autobiography breaks fresh ground by speaking of the self as an autonomous individual yet also maintains its link with medieval Bhakti literature in locating the self in relation to a larger quest. The first half of the 20th century in India witnessed the increasing legitimacy of autobiographical writing. This is evident from the fact that two of the most important national figures chose to narrate their life histories through autobiographies, Mohandas (“Mahatma”) Gandhi in The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927–29) and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who would become prime minister, in what he simply called An Autobiography (1936). These two autobiographical texts are important not only because of the stature of their authors, but because they represent the two different modes in which autobiographical writing in India came to be cast in the century. Profound doubts about the validity of autobiographical expression persisted well into the 20th century, often because life itself was perceived as repetitive and uneventful. Kannippayyur Sankaran Namboodrippad began his four-volume autobiography My Memories (written in Malayalam) by – ironically – stating the impossibility of the autobiographical project. It is easy to write my life-history: Bathed in the morning, had coffee, had lunch, had evening coffee, had dinner, slept – now the history of one day is complete. After this, if

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you change the date and write the words “the same as above” that would be the next day’s history. Now I am 68 years old. If I write all the dates during this period and “the same as above” beneath them, my life-history would be complete. His contemporary V.T. Bhattathirippad invoked similar sentiments, noting that “a Namboodiri’s life is so uneventful that no author can really stretch it beyond half a page”. Despite such attitudes, autobiographies emerged. Often they became, for individuals and social groups, a way of making sense of the times of transition, reform, and modernization. The focus of such works is therefore often on understanding the rupture introduced by early modernity in a repetitive life. The other anxiety of 19th-century autobiographers that continued into the 20th century concerned the perceived “Western” origins of autobiography. M.K. Gandhi has to confront this question even before he can begin his autobiography. In the preface he recollects a conversation highlighting the dilemma: But a God-fearing friend had his doubts, which he shared with me on my day of silence. “What has set you on this adventure?” he asked. “Writing an autobiography is a practice peculiar to the West. I know of nobody in the East having written one, except amongst those who have come under Western influence … Don’t you think it would be better not to write anything like an autobiography, at any rate just yet?” The argument that autobiography was a mode of writing peculiar to the colonizers and the colonized, and was not an “Indian” genre, did weigh on Gandhi, and he was influenced by it. But he justified himself by the reasoning that “it is not my purpose to attempt a ‘real’ autobiography. I simply want to tell the story of my numerous experiments with truth, and as my life consists of nothing but these experiments, it is true that the story will take the shape of an autobiography.” Gandhi thus introduced a distinction between a “real” autobiography and one that he could write as an Indian. He wished to achieve this by turning his gaze inwards on the self and not on his public life. He chose therefore, not to speak of his political experiments. He called his autobiography Atmakatha, which in general usage would have meant just an autobiography or one’s story, but he restores to the term its deeper meaning: a story of the soul. At one level, by seeking to speak only of the journey of the soul in quest of moksha in its sense of self-realization he “Indianized” the autobiography. He argued that only when one speaks of the moral can one speak with truthfulness about one’s failings and fallibility. And that should be the real purpose of autobiography. To write the atmakatha, Gandhi takes scientific method from the West, and transforms it to become an inward analytical gaze and a form of self-experimentation. It is by bringing together “scientific” analysis and religion as morality that Gandhi creates the possibility of speaking about the self as a soul. His autobiography thus represented a movement from the Jeevanvrutant (story of life) tradition to the new concept of atmakatha (story of the soul). Gandhi also reaffirmed the idea that to speak truthfully about one’s self one had to speak in one’s own tongue – his own book being written in Gujarati. Gandhi’s book created an environment in which others could

also scrutinize themselves. Some of his followers, such as Kaka Kalelkar with Smaranyatra (1934) and Pandit Sukhlalji with Maru Jivanvrutant (1980), attempted to write autobiographical works that mirrored Gandhi’s method, but these have had relatively little impact. However, Gandhi’s “political heir” Nehru remained untouched either by Gandhi’s anxieties or method. Nehru’s anxieties were rather of a kind that were shared by large sections of colonized elites. He wrote in the postscript to his autobiography: I have become a queer mixture of the East and the West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere. Perhaps my thoughts and approach to life are more akin to what is called Western than Eastern, but India clings to me, as she does to all her children, in innumerable ways, and behind me lie, somewhere in the subconscious, racial memories of a hundred or whatever the number may be, generations of Brahmans … I am a stranger, an alien in the West. I cannot be of it. But in my own country also, sometimes, I have an exile’s feeling. Nehru’s quest in autobiography is also one of selfunderstanding. As he had to “discover” India, so he had to discover and locate himself in his world, and autobiography for Nehru becomes a medium for finding himself within the coordinates of history, geography, and memory. He seeks to do this by turning outwards, by speaking of himself in relation to the events that were shaping his times. His sense of himself is that of an actor, one who is shaping the events as he is in turn being shaped by them. It is Nehru’s autobiographical mode that found a wider acceptance among 20th-century South Asian writers although usually without the benefit of his scope and imagination. Autobiography has increasingly become the preferred mode for retired bureaucrats, judges, politicians, and even aging film personalities. Gandhi’s mode of self writing – as a “subject” and not an actor – has proved much less accessible than Nehru’s. Nevertheless, it is literally through his soul-searching that he crafts a genre that is truly Indian, but which also harks back to the theological origins of the autobiography as a medieval Christian practice. Tridip Suhrud Further Reading Chatterjee, Kalyan Kumar, “The Art of Creative Self-Expression”, Indian Literature, 33/1 (1990): 47–55 Chellapan, K., “The Discovery of India and the Self in Three Autobiographies” in The Colonial and the Neo-Colonial Encounters in Commonwealth Literature, edited by Anniah Gowda, Mysore: Prasaranga University Press, 1983 Dave, Narmadashankar Lalshankar, Mari Hakikat, Surat: Kavi Narmad Yugavart Trust, 1994 Debi, Rassundari, My Life, translated from the Bengali by Enakshi Chatterjee, Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1999 Devy, G.N., In Another Tongue: Essays on Indian English Literature, Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang, 1993; Madras: Macmillan, 1995 Gandhi, M.K., An Autobiography, or, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, translated from the Gujarati by Mahadev Desai, Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1940; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982; Canton, Maine: Greenleaf, 1983

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Jahangir, Emperor, The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India, edited and translated by Wheeler M. Thackston, Oxford: Freer Gallery, 1999 Jain, Sushil Kumar, A Bibliography of Indian Autobiographies, including Journals, Diaries, Reminiscences, and Letters, etc., Regina, Saskatchewan: University of Saskatchewan Library, 1965 Jain, Sushil Kumar, Indian Literature in English: A Bibliography, Being a Check-List of Works on Poetry, Drama, Fiction, Autobiography, and Letters Written by Indians in English, or Translated from Modern Indian Languages into English, Regina, Saskatchewan: University of Saskatchewan Library, 1965 Naik, M.K., “The Discovery of Nehru: A Study of Jawaharlal Nehru’s Autobiography” in Perspectives on Indian Prose in English, edited by M.K. Naik, New Delhi: Abhinav, and Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1982 Namboodrippad, K.S., My Memories, Kunnamkulam: Panchangam Press, 1963 Nehru, Jawaharlal, Jawaharlal Nehru: An Autobiography, London: Lane, 1936, expanded edition, 1942; New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund and Oxford University Press, 1980 Parekh, Bhikhu, Colonialism, Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi’s Political Discourse, New Delhi and Newbury Park, California: Sage, 1989 Riddick, John F., Glimpses of India: An Annotated Bibliography of Published Personal Writings by Englishmen, 1583–1947, New York: Greenwood Press, 1989 Sarkar, Tanika, Words to Win: The Making of Rassundari Debi’s Amar Jiban, New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1999 Satthianadhan, Krupabai, Saguna: The First Autobiographical Novel in English by an Indian Woman, edited by Chandani Lokuge, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998 Sen, S.P. (editor), Historical Biography in Indian Literature, Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 1979 Senapati, Fakir Mohan, My Times and I, translated from the Oriya by John Boulton, Bhubaneswar, Orissa: Orissa Sahitya Akademi, 1985; as Story of My Life, translated by Jatindra K. Nayak and Prodeepta Das, Bhubaneswar: Sateertha, 1997 Stilz, Gerhard, “Experiments in Squaring the Ellipsis: A Critical Reading of the Autobiographies of Gandhi, Nehru, Chaudhuri and Anand” in New Perspectives in Indian Literature in English: Essays in Honour of Professor M.K. Naik, edited by Balarama Gupta et al., New Delhi: Sterling, 1995 Sunity, Devi, Maharani of Cooch Behar, The Autobiography of an Indian Princess, London: Murray, 1921; edited by Biswaneth Das, New Delhi: Tarang, 1995 Tewari, V.N. (editor), Nehru and Indian Literature, Chandigarh: Publication Bureau of Punjab University, 1982 Tharu, Susie and K. Lalita (editors), Women Writing in India: 600 BC to the Present, 2 vols, New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1991 Tripathi, Govardhanram Madhavram, Scrapbooks, 4 vols, edited by K.C. Pandya, R.P. Bakshi, and S.J. Pandya, Bombay: N.M. Tripathi, 1959 Walsh, Judith E., Growing up in British India: Indian Autobiographies on Childhood and Education under the Raj, New York: Holmes and Meier, 1983 Zaidi, Mujahid Husain (editor), Biography and Autobiography in Modern South Asian Regional Literatures, Heidelberg: South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, 1979

Indian Subcontinent: Auto/biography 1947 to the Present Although different forms of life writing have long been a part of Indian literary tradition, the auto/biographical genre, as we know it today, developed primarily out of contact with the West. Thus the Indian auto/biography came to exist as a clearly defined form only as late as the 19th and 20th centuries. Given

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the Western influence on the autobiographical genre, it is not surprising that the better known of these have been in English. However, life writing continues to flourish in the vernacular languages despite a rather limited readership. India’s most famous and controversial autobiographer, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, wrote his Autobiography of an Unknown Indian in 1951. While the autobiography’s dedication, “to the memory of the British Empire”, sparked off a controversy that was amply fuelled by the contents of the book, Chaudhuri was also able to convey effectively the angst of a man trapped between two conflicting cultures. Following Chaudhuri, a number of autobiographies were published during the 1950s, including Nripendra Chandra Banerji’s At the Crossroads: An Autobiography (1950), N.B. Khare’s My Political Memoir, or, Autobiography (1959), and Jayaprakash Narayan’s Inside Lahore Fort (1959). Since all these writers were leading politicians, their works evince the indisputable link between the public and the personal in Indian life writing, a link wrought by the turmoil of a newly born nation that had long struggled for freedom. Women too were actively engaged in writing about their lives: Krishna Hathee Singh and Vijay Lakshmi Pandit, the sisters of India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote autobiographies both before and after Independence. Nayantara Sahgal, Mrs Pandit’s daughter, maintained the tradition of life writing in the Nehru family with the publication of Prison and Chocolate Cake (1954), her lively memoirs of coming to age in an India on the threshold of independence. Exemplary among other nonpolitical writers is Ved Mehta, whose courageous Face to Face (1957) details his growing up blind and who continued to write autobiographies well into the 1990s. Political life writing continued its prominence in both the 1960s and the 1970s. Moraji Desai, later to become prime minister, published The Story of My Life (vols 1–3, 1974–79). This was also the time when creative writers such as Dom Moraes in My Son’s Father (1968), R.K. Narayan in My Days (1975), and Kamala Das in My Story (1976, originally in Malayalam, 1973) recorded their lives in vivid prose. The work of Das, one of India’s most popular poets, is interesting stylistically as it adopts the same confessional mode celebrated in her poetry. Important examples of life writing that appeared in succeeding decades often narrated the individual’s role in framing a particular moment of history, such as the aptly titled My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir (1992), the memoirs of Jagmohan, controversial governor of the conflict-riven state, and the memoirs of the former president K.R. Venkatraman, titled My Presidential Years (1994). Women writers also continued to flesh out their life stories. Prominent among these are Anees Jung’s Unveiling India (1988), which takes on a personal, semisociological stance towards its subjects, the women of India, and Meena Alexander’s Fault Lines (1993), which deals with the particular angst and exuberance of the female immigrant experience. Life writing in the regional languages has been prolific in its own right but has garnered less fame and readership than its English counterpart. This is partly because of a paucity of quality translations, but also because of a culturally conditioned reticence on the part of the writers themselves about exhibiting their lives to an audience; not surprisingly, most of the life writing to be published in a vernacular language such as Assamese has been posthumous. In regions more prone to Western

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influence, such as Bengal, life writing began to flourish in the 20th century. Some of the more important autobiographical works are Apan Katha by Rabanindranath Tagore and Smritichitran by Primal Goswami. In Hindi-language autobiography, the political and the macrocosmic tend to subsume the personal, as in Shantipriya Dwivedi’s Parivrajak ki praja (1952), which is more the life story of a literature than that of a man and writer, and Mahadevi Verma’s Ateet ke chalchitra (1982), translated as Sketches from My Past: Encounters with India’s Oppressed in 1994. Notable exceptions are the premier poet Harivanshray Bachchan’s Nid ka nirman, which is an intensely personal work. Marathi has attracted a large number of autobiographers including Jadan ghadan (1981) by Wamanrao Chorghade, a straightforward account of the growth of a shortstory writer, and Damu Dhotre’s more complex Wagh sinha maze sakhe sobati (1982) which is about the author’s life in the circus. A number of autobiographies have been written in the Oriya language by well-known politicians, teachers, administrators, and social reformers, many of which were published after 1960. The autobiography of the prominent Punjabi writer Amrita Pritam, Rasidi Tikata (1976), sets a new trend in the boldness of its tone. Its translation into English as The Revenue Stamp: An Autobiography (1977) reveals its continuing popularity. In 1989 Pritam also published Life and Times (1989), an autobiographical memoir. In Urdu, writers have adopted a variety of different techniques to tell their life stories. Autobiographies are thus found in the form of direct narration, diaries, letters, travelogue, and reportage. Important examples are Josh Malihabadi’s Yadon ki barat (1974) and the eminent autobiographical novel Kar-e-jahan daraz hai by the short-story writer and novelist Quaratularin Haider. Biography writing has also been fairly active in independent India, and Ved Mehta and the writer-journalist Khushwant Singh are important biographers in English. More than 500 biographies are now available in Malayalam, most of which were published during the 20th century, largely because of an organized effort to facilitate the development of this genre. Pannational figures such as M.K. (“Mahatma”) Gandhi and the freedom-fighter Lokmanya Tilak have their life stories represented in languages such as Marathi, Gujarati, and Rajastani. In Urdu, literary magazines such as Pagdandi and Shair often carry biographical sketches and vignettes of important writers and poets. Viewed as a whole, life writing in India is a complex, hybrid phenomenon, difficult to define by particularities of theme or style. Rather it reflects the bewildering variety of the country, a variety that provides many of these writers with so much of their creative material. Pallavi Rastogi Further Reading Other Selected Life Writings: Bissondoyal, Basdeo, Life in Greater India: An Autobiography, Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1984 Hazari, An Indian Outcaste: The Autobiography of an Untouchable, London: Bannisdale Press, 1951; as Untouchable: The Autobiography of an Indian Outcaste, New York: Praeger, 1969 Kharata, S.K., Tarala antarala: Autobiography of a Dalit Writer, Social Activist and Educator from Maharashtra, Pune: Kontinentala, 1981 Mahajan, Mehr Chand, Looking Back: The Autobiography of Mehr Chand Mahajan, Former Chief Justice of India, New York: Asia

Publishing House, 1963 Mukerjee, Radhakamal, India, the Dawn of a New Era: An Autobiography, New Delhi: Radha Publications, 1997 Nanda, Savitri Devi, The City of Two Gateways: The Autobiography of an Indian Girl, London: Allen and Unwin, 1950 Phoolan, Devi with Marie Thérèse Cuny and Paul Rambali, I, Phoolan Devi; The Autobiography of India’s Bandit Queen, London: Little Brown, 1996 Sukhwant, S., Three Decades of Indian Army Life: Autobiography of Brigadier Sukhwant Singh, Delhi: Sterling, 1967

Analysis: Datta, Amaresh (editor), Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature, 6 vols, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1987–94 Harish, Ranjana, Indian Women’s Autobiographies, New Delhi: Arnold, 1993 Harish, Ranjana, The Female Footprints, New Delhi: Sterling, 1996 Hornung, Alfred and Ernstpeter Ruhe (editors), Postcolonialisme & Autobiographie: Albert Memmi, Assia Djebar, Daniel Maximim (in French), Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998 Mishra, Vijay, “Defining the Self in Indian Literary and Filmic Texts” in Narratives of Agency: Self-Making in China, India, and Japan, edited by Wimal Dissanayake, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996 Sen, S.P. (editor), Historical Biography in Indian Literature, Calcutta: Institute fo Historical Studies, 1979 Sinha, R.C.P., The Indian Autobiographies in English, New Delhi: S. Chand, 1978 Radhakrishnan, N., “Contemporary Indian Biography” in Life Writing from the Pacific Rim: Essays from Japan, China, Indonesia, India, and Siam, with a Psychological Overview, edited by Stanley Schab and George Simson, Honolulu: University of Hawaii and the EastWest Center, 1997 Tewari, V.N. (editor), Nehru and Indian Literature, Chandigarh: Publication Bureau of Punjab University, 1982 Tharu, Susie and K. Lalita (editors), Women Writing in India: 600 BC to the Present, 2 vols, New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1991 Walsh, Judith E., Growing up in British India: Indian Autobiographies on Childhood and Education under the Raj, New York: Holmes and Meier, 1983 Zaidi, Mujahid Husain (editor), Biography and Autobiography in Modern South Asian Regional Literatures, Heidelberg: South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, 1979

Individualism and Life Writing The histories of life writing and individualism in Western culture have moved in parallel. The term “individualism”, like the term “autobiography”, was first used in France. It emerged from the reaction against the French Revolution, which some commentators saw as the result of individualist ideals. The French political commentator Alexis de Tocqueville, who coined the word, described individualism as a kind of enlightened and restricted selfishness that encouraged human beings to be concerned only with their own personal interests, and largely with their own consciousness. Tocqueville was critical of individualism, especially in America, asserting that it “disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into a circle of family and friends”. Conservative thinkers, like Edmund Burke in England, regarded the French Revolution and individualism as threats to social order and cohesion. Conservatives stressed the obligations of subjects to “society” and the importance of subordinating the will of the individual to a controlling religious or institutional power.

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Eighteenth-century France produced not only the terms individualism and autobiography but also Les Confessions (1782–89) of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This is arguably the first autobiography in the modern sense of the word, in that Rousseau claims in his preface that his autobiography is worth reading because he is a unique individual and therefore interesting in and of himself. Rousseau’s text, which was published posthumously, was considered scandalous in the extent to which it revealed personal details of his life, including episodes of stealing and aspects of his sexuality. The disciples of the philosopher Claude Henri de Saint-Simon were the first group to declare individualism the enemy in a movement from the mid 1820s onwards. They regarded individualism as one of the most pernicious forces of the 19th century. In 19th-century America, by contrast, “individualism” did not carry the pejorative overtones that it had in France, but rather was used as a positive term in association with the concepts of democracy and capitalism. It became part of the ideology of the culture, and was the basis for the philosophy of the Transcendentalists, especially in the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. This idealization of individualism was later often conceived of in opposition to European theories of socialism and, later, communism. Emerson’s friend and disciple Henry David Thoreau produced some of the most influential autobiographical American writing on individualism in the journals he wrote during his two years living near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau’s first autobiographical publication was A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), describing a journey taken by Thoreau and his brother, who later died of lockjaw. But it is Walden, published in 1854, for which Thoreau is best remembered. Much of Walden is based on journals he kept during his stay there. His individualism found its most overt expression in his defence of the private, individual conscience against the claims of the government in the concept of “civil disobedience”, which was first expressed in May 1849 in the essay “Resistance to Civil Government”. Not all American autobiographies were individualist. Henry Adams produced one of the outstanding autobiographies in American literature, The Education of Henry Adams, which was printed privately in 1907 and then more widely in 1918. In this, Adams refers to himself as “he” rather than “I” and tries to see his life in terms of wider historical forces rather than individual effort. In this way the work resists the essential characteristics of American individualism. The book traced Adams’s evolution as he moved from the 19th-century world of his birth into a 20th-century America in which he felt all the old certainties had vanished. In 19th-century Britain, although “individualism” was used less often as a rallying cry than in America, it was an equally important ideological term. It was often cited as a facet of the national character, especially in connection with laissez-faire politics and calls for restrictions on government. It was the basis for Utilitarianism and other strands of 19th-century liberal thought. John Stuart Mill, in Chapters on Socialism (1879), wrote that “the very foundation of human life, as at present constituted … is the principle of individualism”. Thomas Carlyle, in parallel with Mill, proclaimed the 19th century to be “the Age of Autobiography”, showing how close the connection was between autobiography and individualism in some strands of

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19th-century thought. Individualism found its most popular literary expression in Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help (1860, and subsequent editions), which was a compilation of biographies of successful individuals whom Smiles presented as models of success in life. In his Preface Smiles linked individual and national success by proclaiming that “the energetic action of individuals has in all times been a marked feature of the English character”. One of the most important conceptual intersections of autobiography and individualism occurs under the rubric of autonomy. Autonomy means, literally, “self-governing”, just as autobiography is “self-life-writing”. Individualist ideology claims that everyone has freedom of choice, and that such choices are not determined by external forces. Immanuel Kant expounded the ideal of autonomy most systematically, arguing that to “the idea of freedom there is inseparably attached the concept of autonomy”. The high value placed on autonomy is also expressed by thinkers like Mill in their fear that the growth of the bureaucratic state in industrialized European countries threatened freedom of thought. Along with this fear was an insistence that individuals had a zone around their minds and bodies, defined as an area of “privacy”, beyond which no social forces, especially agencies of the state, should be allowed to penetrate. Mill argued that, as Steven Lukes has put it, “over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign”, effectively defining a private realm that neither the state nor any social institutions have the right to abrogate. With the advent of modernism came a critique of individualism and its assumptions. Poets like T.S. Eliot and writers such as Gertrude Stein questioned the assumption of a stable, unified subject that could be labelled the “individual”. Experimental autobiographies by Virginia Woolf and Stein attempted to move beyond the conventions of autobiography as the utterance of a unified subject. In the latter part of the 20th century, writers as varied as Roland Barthes, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Gloria Anzaldua questioned the conventions of both subjectivity and autobiography in their autobiographical texts. While in academic circles both individualism and autobiography have come under scrutiny as categories since the 1980s, there has remained a lucrative market for popular texts that continue to embody the ideals of individualism. In the tradition of Smiles, the lives of “successful” people are published as models for others to emulate; large sections of “self-help” texts offer advice to individuals on how to cope with various psychological and physical problems; and biographies of famous people are produced for mass-market consumption. The concept of individualism continues to be strongly associated with an American culture still dominated by an individualist ideology, shaping the majority of first-person narratives in the areas of both literature and popular entertainment. Since the late 20th century in particular, American culture has become saturated with confessional accounts on television and radio, accounts viewed entirely in individualist terms, disconnected from the wider social sphere. Both autobiography and biography have become staples of the publishing and entertainment industries. It could be said De Tocqueville’s misgivings about individualism, in America at least, have been borne out. Martin A. Danahay

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See also Criticism and Theory: Romanticism and the 19th Century; Identity; The Self

Further Reading Danahay, Martin A., A Community of One: Masculine Autobiography and Autonomy in Nineteenth-century Britain, Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1993 De Tocqueville, Alex, Democracy in America, vol. 2, translated by George Lawrence, edited by J.P. Mayer, New York: Doubleday, 1969 Lukes, Steven, Individualism, Oxford: Blackwell, and New York: Harper and Row, 1973 Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty, edited by David Spitz, New York: Norton, 1975 Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson (editors), Getting a Life: Everyday Uses of Autobiography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996 Weintraub, Karl Joachim, The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978

Indonesia and the Malay World In the Malay-Indonesian archipelago there is some evidence of diary writing and the insertion of occasional autobiographical references into the chronicles of the court literatures of the many states that flourished in the region in the 17th and 18th centuries. Another quite different source of autobiographical writing is Islamic hagiographic literature, which circulated in centres of religious instruction. The consolidation of European colonialism and the introduction of printing presses – the latter often imported by Christian missionaries – at the beginning of the 19th century led to the gradual emergence of life writing, some of it developed from the earlier chronicle–romance genre, some of it arising from a new demand from European observers and government officials pressing for information from significant individuals who had participated in recent political events. The most well-known of these autobiographies written at the behest of a patron is the prose work Hikayat Abdullah (1843; The Hikayat Abdullah) written by Abdullah Munshi (1796–1854), a man who had once taught Malay to, and was a friend of, Stamford Raffles, the founder of modern Singapore and lieutenant governor in Java (1811–16), one of the foremost 19th-century British scholarofficials in the region. This autobiography is still a much-used text in schools and universities and is often referred to as an early example of modern Malay literature. It has been the subject of considerable critical attention, not all of it favourable, since Abdullah’s hostility to aspects of Malay life of the time is seen as a product of his outsider status (see Sweeney). An autobiography of a different character from the same period is the Babad Dipanegara, a Javanese chronicle relating the life of a charismatic opponent of the Dutch, Pangeran Dipanegara (1785?–1855). From a slightly later date there is an example of a diary of a Javanese aristocrat which, although apparently highly influenced by the earlier self-aggrandizing hagiographic tradition, displays a strong modern consciousness (see Kumar). By the end of the 19th century the willingness on the part of writers to insert themselves into their narratives coincides with, and to a large extent is shaped by, the demand for new types of

documentary writing, found above all in newspapers and magazines and in European works in translation and in the original which provide new models of self-expression. Accounts of journeys to foreign lands and observations along the way were printed in small books or serialized in newspapers for a newly literate population in the urban centres. Consequently, writing incorporating autobiographical experience appeared in several of the languages of the archipelago. The most outstanding examples of the new reflexivity are the letters written in Dutch by a young woman from the minor Javanese nobility, R.A. Kartini (1879–1904). These letters were published in an abridged form in 1911 by one of her Dutch correspondents. They are remarkable not only for the degree of strong emotion they reveal but for their critical insights into the socio-cultural milieu of the time in which Dutch officials and Javanese aristocrats were learning each other’s modes of thought. In the following decades up to the 1950s a few, but not many, autobiographies were written. Some were penned by public figures writing to put the record straight concerning the various events in which they had participated; others, however, were composed less for public consumption than as family history for a small inner circle of relatives and friends. In the late 1940s, however, there was a significant increase in autobiographical literature, in the form of both lyrical poetry and thinly disguised fictional stories and novels, of which the best are the works of Pramoedya Ananta Toer (b. 1925) describing his family and childhood in east Java. This was also a time when the senior figures of the early years of the nationalist movement were coming to the end of their lives and biographies were written to commemorate their achievements. There was also a continuation of the tradition of political figures writing their own accounts of their contribution to the emergence of the newly independent nation of Indonesia. The best of these, Dari pendjara ke pendjara (c. 1947–48; From Jail to Jail) is written by a Sumatran political exile, Tan Malaka (1897–1949), who returned to Indonesia during the Japanese period but then met a tragic end at the hands of fellow Indonesians in the fighting which broke out in 1949 (see Watson). To many Indonesians the readiest way to chronicle their lives in terms both of discrete varieties of experience and as a series of stages in their shifting understanding of the world was to think of separate historical periods: the Dutch period to 1942, the period of the Japanese occupation (1942–45), the time of the revolution (1945–50), and its aftermath. This remained for some time the conceptual template for political memoirs of religious and literary figures as well as civil servants, politicians, and military leaders, reaching a high point in the 15 years between 1975 and 1990 when several leading politicians published their autobiographies, some of them, as in the case of former president Soeharto, ghostwritten. In addition, however, to these political memoirs a small genre of childhood autobiography set in Sumatra was established in the 1950s with the adult narrator using the opportunity of childhood reminiscences to comment on the social history of the last decades of Dutch colonialism and early experience of formal education (see Rodgers). Outside the confines of the short story, which continues to be popular, this sub-genre has not been systematically developed, though a fascinating anthology of short childhood autobiographies, Perjalanan anak bangsa [1982; The

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Journey of the Nation’s Children], the product of a nationwide competition, did find a publisher, and the well-known woman writer Nh. Dini produced five small volumes of memories of childhood and adolescence which are very different from the earlier reminiscences written by her male counterparts. Autobiographical writing is now a flourishing literary genre in both Malaysia and Indonesia. Not only are well-known public figures continuing to produce their own versions of recent political history – in many instances encouraged to do so by students and scholars anxious to learn about the recent past – but even lesser-known figures who have been successful in life or who are in some sense representative of sub-cultures within the nation, as for example members of small ethnic groups such as the Chinese, wish to put on record experiences that might otherwise disappear from the collective memory. At the same time a new tradition of intellectual or confessional autobiography has begun to emerge from a younger generation, who, in addition to delving into the nation’s recent political past, seek to contextualize national traditions within broader international currents, in the fields of religion and social justice in particular. This generation is also open to the influences of comparative literature, now widely available in the region. C.W. Watson Further Reading Abdullah Munshi, The Hikayat Abdullah, translated by A.H. Hill, Kuala Lumpur and New York: Oxford University Press, 1970 Kartini, Raden Adjeng, Letters from Kartini: An Indonesian Feminist, 1900–1904, translated by Joost Coté, Clayton, Victoria: Monash Asia Institute, Monash University, 1992 Kumar, Ann, The Diary of a Javanese Muslim: Religion, Politics and the Pesantren, 1883–1886, Canberra: Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University, 1985 Malaka, Tan, From Jail to Jail, 3 vols, edited and translated by Helen Jarvis, Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1991 Rodgers, Susan (editor and translator), Telling Lives, Telling History: Autobiography and Historical Imagination in Modern Indonesia, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995 (on Aku dan Toba by P. Pospos and Semasa Kecil di Kampung by Muhamad Radjab) Sweeney, Amin, Reputations Live On: An Early Malay Autobiography, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980 Sweeney, Amin, “Some Observations on the Nature of Malay Autobiography”, Indonesia Circle, 51 (March 1990): 21–36 Watson, C.W., Of Self and Nation: Autobiography and the Representation of Modern Indonesia, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000

Inés de la Cruz, Sor Juana see Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor

Insanity and Life Writing In highlighting opaque yet powerful connections among issues of authenticity, control, empowerment, and the self, narratives with insanity as a central theme – written by the inmates of institutions or by those who translated their experiences of mad-

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ness into semi-autobiographical fiction – are profoundly linked to the study of the “self”. Such narratives present the reader with often harrowing representations of the stable “self” succumbing to, or rebelling against, unreason. As in the New Zealander Janet Frame’s Faces in the Water (1961), the American Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963), and the South African Bessie Head’s A Question of Power (1974), the presence of insanity problematizes the reader’s implicit acceptance of the narrative’s “truth” and legitimacy in ways that other more traditional forms of life writing do not. The fact that many writers on insanity have been labelled insane yet have written coherent published narratives points to the finely drawn line between sanity and madness underlying many such texts. The reader, too, becomes involved in the conscious effort by the author to make sense of, “expose humbug” in, or combat the ideologically grounded castigation of unreason. As an insane “Gentleman” wrote in 1838, “In the name of humanity … I in treat [sic] you to place yourselves in the position of those whose sufferings I describe, before you … discuss what course is to be pursued towards them.” William Bowack, too, wrote A Lunatic’s Writings (1899) while certified as insane and confined in an asylum in Scotland. Bowack believed that his essays were no different from those printed in newspapers, and he “humbly and regretfully” argued that he himself could not “perceive an abnormal strain” in his writings and published them to invite the public’s unbiased assessment of the state of his mind. As with Bowack’s Writings, the purpose of writing one’s “self” through recounting an experience with madness was often to counter the “taint” that insanity engendered and to relocate blame and fear from the actual or alleged insane “self” to the physicians and institutional practices that sought, often illegally, to contain insanity. The desire to expose social injustices and condemn abuses committed under the auspices of psychiatric authority was a central feature of 19th-century tracts written by men and women illegally incarcerated in asylums as insane. They often sought to inform an ignorant public of the realities of asylum life. The “little work”, Life in a Lunatic Asylum: An Autobiographical Sketch (1867), was written, for example, to highlight the abuses, oversights, and mistakes “which are productive of so much misery to many unfortunate individuals consigned to those Asylums”. As in similar autobiographical narratives, its anonymous “Author” wrote with the specific intention of inducing the Commissioners in Lunacy to “imitate all that was good and avoid all that was bad” in the care and treatment of lunatics. As Clarissa Caldwell Lathrop put it in A Secret Institution (1890), a moving chronicle of “the perfect agony” she suffered upon being wrongly incarcerated, I reveal my heart and my history, as I send forth this plea for your sympathy and interest in the welfare of the insane … the time will not be far distant when our institutions for the insane can not be vast prisons and dens of iniquity to enrich venal asylum super intendents. In such tracts the metaphorical notion of being “buried alive” in the “sepulchre[s]” or “living tombs” of madhouses, such as the Bastille and the lettre de cachet (the French ancién regime order of incarceration), was a strategy (adopted from the genre of

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Gothic romance and the captivity narratives of Latude and Linguet) employed with striking regularity to convey the iniquity of wrongful confinement. With “infinite disgust and scorn”, the author of My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum. By a Sane Patient (1879) dedicated “this true story of the Bastilles of merrie England to all whom it may concern”. In narratives such as Elizabeth Packard’s The Prisoners’ Hidden Life (1868), the reader’s acknowledgment of the “truth” of the narrative (its evidence of the narrator’s reliability and so the author’s “reason”) was central in ultimately alleviating the writer from the stigma of madness. In the 20th century, the desire to entreat the reader’s sympathy for the plight of insanity and the treatment of the insane was marked to a greater extent by reformist impulses. The repeal of biased laws and practices was central in such texts. As Jeffrey Geller and Maxine Harris have pointed out, the increase in psychosocial and psycho-dynamic treatments and practices inspired women in particular to write more directly about their experiences at the hands of the medical establishment. The reliance on and appropriation of classic literary genres such as the Gothic romance gave way to a greater desire to centre one’s own experience within individualized and highly specific frames of reference. The “talking cure”, introduced in the early 20th century (most prominently by Freud), assisted in no little way such a development. Yet in other narratives focused on insanity such a concern was immaterial. As Valerie Sanders has pointed out, autobiographical narratives, again particularly for women, often themselves became a means to reconstruct the self from social, emotional, or physical “disease”. Though Bowack’s Writings contributed to the rehabilitative reconstruction of the “self” from the castigating label of insanity, a starker version of recovery effected through the process of writing can be found, for example, in the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s semi-autobiographical short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892). Confined to a regime of bed-rest and isolation, the narrator pleads with her physician husband to be allowed to write, believing that “it would relieve the press of ideas” and rest her. Though she attempted in secret to fulfil her desire, the project resulted in exhaustion for “having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition”. The story was based closely on Gilman’s experience with Dr S. Weir Mitchell’s Rest Cure, a form of treating hysterical disorders that saw in the desire to write an acute susceptibility to the dangerous malady. Had Gilman adopted the advice of Weir Mitchell, to “never touch pen, brush, or pencil again”, she herself would never have been “cured” and her intensely introspective semiautobiographical story would never have been written. The belief that writing itself was a curative strategy rather than indicative of a debilitating disease has been echoed more recently by both Mary Barnes in Mary Barnes: Two Accounts of a Journey through Madness (1971), and by Sylvia Plath in Letters Home (1975). Plath wrote in one letter that she believed that she would “smother” if she was unable to write. All three narratives might be interpreted in this sense as a means both to salvage control over their own illnesses and to warn others against the spectre of being “driven crazy”. The body of literature that constitutes life writing presents multiple versions, myths, and metaphors of selfhood and myriad forms of subjectivity. Autobiographical narratives exploring

insanity are no exception. Perhaps it is for this reason that little attempt has been made collectively to interrogate such narratives in order to locate and define within them the common modes of experimentation by which one’s “insane” self is written and so overcome. The autobiographical narrative, as dynamically appropriated by writers concerned with or affected by insanity, becomes in this sense an exciting if unstable medium by which to explore the integral relations between power and authority, and between reality, the reader, and the “self”. Margaret Homberger See also Case Histories; Prison Writings; Psychology and Life Writing; Trauma and Life Writing

Further Reading Anonymous, Life in a Lunatic Asylum: An Autobiographical Sketch, London: no publisher, 1867 Anonymous, My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum. By a Sane Patient, London: Chatto and Windus, 1879 Anonymous, Narrative of the Treatment Experienced by a Gentleman during a State of Mental Derangement, London: Effingham Wilson, 1838 Anonymous, The Philosophy of Insanity: By a Late Inmate of the Glasgow Royal Asylum for Lunatics at Gartnavel, Edinburgh: no publisher, 1860; reprinted London and New York: Fireside Press, 1947 Barnes, Mary and Joseph Berke, Mary Barnes: Two Accounts of a Journey through Madness, London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1971; New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972 Bowack, William Mitchell, A Lunatic’s Writings: Being the Literary Effusions of a Person While under Certification of Insanity, Edinburgh: James Thin, 1899 Etchell, Mabel, Ten Years in a Lunatic Asylum, London: no publisher, 1868 Frame, Janet, Faces in the Water, Christchurch, New Zealand: Pegasus Press, and New York: Braziller, 1961; London: W.H. Allen, 1962 Geller, Jeffrey L. and Maxine Harris (editors), Women of the Asylum: Voices from Behind the Walls, 1840–1945, New York: Anchor, 1994 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography, New York and London: Appleton-Century, 1935 Head, Bessie, A Question of Power, New York: Pantheon, and London: Heinemann, 1974 Hennell, Thomas Barclay, The Witnesses, London: Peter Davies, 1938; reprinted, New York: University Books, 1967 Herndl, Diane Price, “The Writing Cure: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anna O., and ‘Hysterical Writing’”, National Women’s Studies Journal, 1/1 (1988): 52–74 Hillyer, Jane, Reluctantly Told, New York: Macmillan, 1926; London: Wishart, 1927 King, Marian, The Recovery of Myself: A Patient’s Experience in a Hospital for Mental Illness, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931 Lathrop, Clarissa Caldwell, A Secret Institution, New York: Bryant, 1890 Magnan, André (editor), Experiences de l’épistolaire: lettres d’exil, d’enferment, de folie: actes du Colloque de Caen, Paris: Champion, 1993 Marks, Shula (editor), Not Either an Experimental Doll: The Separate Worlds of Three South African Women, London: Women’s Press, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, and Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1987 Packard, Elizabeth, The Prisoners’ Hidden Life, or, Insane Asylums Unveiled, Chicago: published by the author, 1868 Peterson, Dale (editor), A Mad People’s History of Madness, London: Feffer and Simmons, 1982 Porter, Roy, A Social History of Madness: Stories of the Insane, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987; as A Social History of

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Madness: The World through the Eyes of the Insane, New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988 Sanders, Valerie, The Private Lives of Victorian Women: Autobiography in Nineteenth-Century England, Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1989 Wood, Mary Elene, The Writing on the Wall: Women’s Autobiography and the Asylum, Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1994

Interviews Interviews have been widely used since the 19th century to elicit aspects of life stories. The interview is an oral exchange between two or more people that is distinguished from conversation by the division of roles adopted – one side questioning, prompting, or probing, the other providing answers. Before the advent of sound recording and sound reproduction, oral narratives could only be recorded and disseminated through writing, and it was the interviewer who took notes, employed a stenographer, or wrote up an account from memory. In a journalistic context the term “interview” was used to refer not only to this type of oral exchange but also to the written text, including direct or indirect quotation from the interviewee’s speech, that was produced through such interaction. Despite the increased dissemination of interviews through sound and television broadcasting in the 20th century, the production of a written text by a professional writer – as journalist, biographer, or academic – has remained a common outcome of interviews. This outcome, whether written or broadcast, meant that even though an interview might involve an intimate exchange in a private setting, awareness of a wider audience usually informed the interview situation. Thus interviews frequently occupy a borderline not only between speaking and writing, but also between private and public. In its early meaning of a face-to-face meeting for conversation and discussion, the interview was one among many sources on which life writing drew, including biographies like James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), and obituaries informed by personal knowledge. It was in the 19th century, however, that the modern meaning of “interview” emerged in the context of developments in journalism, through its increasing use in the printed media from the 1860s, pioneered in the United States (see Michael Schudson). At the same time the interview was also developed in the context of social investigation, and was widely used in the production of government blue books (official reports) in Britain from the 1830s. The questionand-answer format used in trials may have influenced both developments since it is possible that the use of interviews in journalism owed something to the familiarity of journalists and newspaper readers with court reports, as Nils Nilsson has pointed out. Some groups were interviewed both by journalists and by social investigators. Black American slaves and ex-slaves, for example, gave testimony both to journalists and to the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission of 1863, while the urban poor in London were the subject of social investigations by writers who frequently published in the press, notably in the work of Henry Mayhew published as “Labour and the Poor” in the Morning Chronicle in 1849–50. Despite this convergence, literatures of social investigation tended to construct a collective subject – the urban poor, the working classes, slaves – in contrast to the focus of interviews in

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the printed media on individuals in public life. Horace Greeley’s interview with Brigham Young, the Mormon leader, for the New York Tribune in 1859 has been claimed as the first fully fledged newspaper interview (see Silvester). Thompson Cooper’s interview with Pope Pius IX for the New York World has been claimed as the first interview with a Pope. By the 1880s the interview had been adopted by sections of the British press, notably the Pall Mall Gazette under the editorship of W.T. Stead, which interviewed, among many others, explorer Henry Morton Stanley (1887) and actress Lillie Langtry (1889). The subjects of major interviews were generally of the same category as those who received obituaries in newspapers and were predominantly male and white. The divergence between the focus on important individuals in media interviews and the collective subject of social investigation – sometimes characterized as “ordinary people” – can be traced in 20th-century developments. Journalism, extending into radio and television broadcasting, used “vox pop” interviews, developed genres like the talkshow, and became heavily dependent on interviews in the production of news stories and documentaries. But lengthy interviews continued to focus mainly on individual public figures, as exemplified in the titles of collections of interviews published by journalists, like George Viereck’s Glimpses of the Great (1930). Some journalists who published or broadcast initial interviews in the media later developed biographies based on more extensive interviews, like Charlotte Chandler’s Hello, I Must Be Going: Groucho and His Friends (1978). Social investigation using interviews – developed in academic disciplines as well as market research – was also used occasionally as the basis for biographies. Generally, however, it constructed a collective subject. This collective subject is apparent in the title under which the testimonies of ex-slaves collected in the 1930s as part of the New Deal Federal Writers’ Project were finally edited and published in 1977 by George Rawick – The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography. It is also apparent in sociological and anthropological texts of the 1920s and 1930s, when the interview method was first widely used in a range of work, including Robert and Helen Lynd’s Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (1929), Robert Redfield’s The Life Story of the Mexican Immigrant (1931), and Mass Observation’s Britain (1939). In the post-1945 period, and especially from the 1960s onwards with the advent of the portable cassette recorder, an astonishing range of work was produced in these areas. In sociology this included Ann Oakley’s Housewife (1974); in anthropology, Oscar Lewis’s The Children of Sanchez: The Autobiography of a Mexican Family (1961); in oral history, Studs Terkel’s Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1970), Alex Haley’s Roots (1976), Luisa Passerini’s Torino operaia e fascismo (1984; Fascism in Popular Memory), Hall Carpenter Archives / Lesbian Oral History Group’s Inventing Ourselves: Lesbian Life Stories (1989), Belinda Bozzoli and Mmantho Nkotsoe’s Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy and Migrancy in South Africa (1991), and the work of Memorial, an organization set up to commemorate the victims of Soviet repression. The work extended into audio-visual media and included the foundation of the Fortunoff video archive for Holocaust testimonies at Yale in 1981. The use of the term “testimony”, with its legal associations of bearing witness under oath, has been applied particularly to

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narratives of oppression and survival, including those collected in a legal context. Thus it is used for the Holocaust testimony collected in a range of settings, including war-crimes tribunals; for testimony collected by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, including stories by perpetrators as well as victims; and for narratives by survivors of Soviet repression, as in Vieda Skultans’s The Testimony of Lives: Narrative and Memory in Post-Soviet Latvia (1998). In a Latin American context the term testimonio signifies a genre recognized by a prize category in the annual literary contest of the Casa de las Americas, and exemplifed by works such as Domitila Barrios de Chungara’s “Si me permiten hablar …” (1977; Let Me Speak!) and Rigoberta Menchú’s Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú (1983; I, Rigoberta Menchú). In testimonies of this sort narrators at times emphasize their need to bear witness and even, in some cases, attribute their survival to the desire to bear witness. The idea of testimonio as one among a variety of projects that, especially since the 1960s, have seen the collection of narratives by interlocutors and interviewers as a means of giving a voice to those who were previously denied one, might seem to fit a notion of an interview as a collaborative task and an empowering process – one in which testimony and access to publication and an audience are facilitated. However, this notion has increasingly been questioned. From their beginnings, interviews by journalists were criticized for their invasion of privacy, and this theme was extensively developed in 20th-century debates. In recent discussion of interviews in an academic context a main focus is on imbalances of power, characterized by the interviewers’ control over the form in which the interview is conducted and disseminated, their role in mediating, contextualizing, editing, and interpreting narratives, and the outcome of the interview, which may increase their prestige or income without benefiting their subject. Such problems are also seen as embedded in the social context in which narratives are collected – in testimonio, for example, they are sometimes mediated and edited in particular ways by Western anthropologists for a Western audience. (The debate over Menchú’s testimonio has further provoked analysis of the power dynamics involved in the use of such texts by Western academics more generally.) Although interviews are generally regarded as encounters between professional writers or broadcasters and interviewees, they might usefully be explored as a widespread practice in many societies that requires people to produce narrative coherence in relation to many aspects of their lives, and generates a range of autobiographical practices through the different subject positions constructed for speakers in a range of contexts. Applicants in job interviews are expected to offer narratives that correspond closely to a curriculum vitae. Users of health, counselling, and social services must produce particular aspects of their histories – medical, family, sexual. Through everyday practices the interview may be associated with scrutiny by authority or hostile interrogation. Robert Perks, who collected oral history narratives in post-Soviet Ukraine, comments that: The entire interview setting has connotations in the former Soviet Union which we can only guess at. One woman we talked to in Stryi in western Ukraine seemed very on edge during the first part of the interview and only revealed later that she had at first thought that we were from the KGB.

If the notion of an interview includes interrogation, then the autobiographical practices it generates might be regarded as encompassing a range extending from the performer’s production of life story as entertainment on a television chat show to the accused person’s self-denunciation in a false confession extracted under torture. Wendy Webster See also Journalism and Magazines; Sound Recording and Life Writing; Television and Life Story

Further Reading Blassingame, John W. (editor), Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977 Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History, London and New York: Routledge, 1992 Mayhew, Henry and Eileen Yeo, The Unknown Mayhew: Selections from the Morning Chronicle 1849–1850, edited by Edward Thompson, London: Merlin Press, and New York: Pantheon, 1971 Nilsson, Nils, “The Origins of the Interview”, Journalism Quarterly (Winter 1971): 707–13 Perks, Robert, “Ukraine’s Forbidden History: Memory and Nationalism”, Oral History, 21/1 (1993): 43–53 Perks, Robert and Alistair Thomson (editors), The Oral History Reader, London and New York: Routledge, 1998 Salazar, Claudia, “A Third World Woman’s Text: Between the Politics of Criticism and Cultural Politics” in Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History, edited by Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai, London and New York: Routledge, 1991 Schudson, Michael, “Question Authority: A History of the News Interview in American Journalism, 1860s–1930s”, Media, Culture and Society, 16/4 (1994): 565–87 Silvester, Christopher (editor), The Penguin Book of Interviews: An Anthology from 1859 to the Present Day, London: Viking Press, and New York: Penguin, 1993

Ireland Irish autobiographical writing can be traced back to St Patrick’s Confessio of the 5th century; but, in line with the dominant critical idea that autobiography developed alongside Renaissance reconceptualizations of the individual, it is with The Memoirs of James Lord Audley (1680) and An Account of … Barbara Blaugdone (1691) that recognizably modern autobiographical writing emerges. By the late 20th century Irish circumstances, combined with a secularized Western confessionalism, produced a deluge of autobiographical writing, since most Irish public figures, especially writers, and many private ones, turned to autobiography, often to recount stories that had been omitted from official narratives. This is epitomized by the extraordinary international success of Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes (1996), a success matched in Ireland by Nuala O’Faolain’s Are You Somebody? (1996). Despite several hundred autobiographies over three centuries, little attention has been paid to Irish autobiographical writing as a genre, partly because of the way that autobiographical criticism developed. Earlier, formalistically oriented delineations of the genre were concerned to establish a Western canon in which the work of W.B. Yeats and George Moore, for example, was placed next in line after, typically, Augustine, Benvenuto Cellini,

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John Bunyan, and Goethe. National traditions of autobiographical writing are a more recent concern. In Ireland, autobiography has continued to be seen as secondary material conveniently written by the subject: so biographers, for instance, often accept autobiographies at face value, as do historians, especially with the work of working-class or peasant writers such as William Carleton and Patrick MacGill. Autobiographies are seen either as part of individual writers’ oeuvres, with claims to individual uniqueness being taken for granted, while the construction and contestation of individuality are overlooked, or as straightforwardly reliable historical and cultural evidence. It remains true that autobiography provides insiders’ accounts of Irish literary and other history. From the 19th century there are the unfinished autobiographies of James Clarence Mangan (1968) and William Carleton (1896). The Revival period produced George Moore’s trilogy Hail and Farewell (1911–14), Katherine Tynan’s Twenty-Five Years (1913), Lady Gregory’s Our Irish Theatre: A Chapter of Autobiography (1913), Patrick MacGill’s Children of the Dead End (1914), W.B. Yeats’s Autobiographies (1938), and Sean O’Casey’s sixvolume Autobiographies (1939–54), among many others. From the post-Revival period we have Francis Stuart (Things to Live For, 1934), Patrick Kavanagh (The Green Fool, 1938), Elizabeth Bowen (Seven Winters, 1942), Brendan Behan (Borstal Boy, 1958), Frank O’Connor (An Only Child, 1961), Austin Clarke (Twice round the Black Church, 1962), Kate O’Brien (Presentation Parlour, 1963), and Sean O’Faolain (Vive Moi!, 1964) in the South, while from the North we have Forrest Reid (Apostate, 1926), Robert Harbinson (No Surrender, 1960), and Louis MacNeice (The Strings Are False: An Unfinished Autobiography, 1965). Notable recent authors include Hugh Leonard (Home before Night, 1979), John Boyd (Out of My Class, 1985), and Brian Keenan (An Evil Cradling, 1992). Nor is the autobiographical impulse confined to literary works. The strong links between culture and politics in Ireland are evident in the contesting and often interventionist views of cultural politics offered by those listed above and from the way in which politicians from Wolfe Tone to Garret FitzGerald have used autobiography as both justification and assessment. Each major political upheaval in Ireland has been accompanied by its own crop of autobiographies: Wolfe Tone in 1798 (The Life, 1826), John Mitchel (Jail Journal, 1854), John O’Leary’s Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism (1896), the autobiographical accounts of the nationalist movements of the early 20th century and the civil war by Dan Breen (My Fight for Irish Freedom, 1924), Peadar O’Donnell (The Gates Flew Open, 1932), Ernie O’Malley (On Another Man’s Wound, 1936), Maud Gonne (A Servant of the Queen, 1938), and Tom Barry (Guerrilla Days in Ireland, 1949); and most recently works that deal with the events in the North by Bernadette Devlin (The Price of My Soul, 1969), Terence O’Neill (The Autobiography, 1972), and Gerry Adams (Falls Memories, 1982). An important aspect of this area is prison writing, which is given an interesting contemporary twist in Brian Keenan’s An Evil Cradling (1992). Irish autobiographical writing does not result only from cultural or political turmoil. There are a number of recognizable sub-genres of which the best known is probably the mostly Irishlanguage island autobiography, such as Tomás O Crohan’s The Islandman (1934), Maurice O’Sullivan’s Twenty Years a-Growing (1933), and the redoubtable Peig Sayers’s Peig (1936), which

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are parodied by Flann O’Brien’s An Béal Bocht (1941; The Poor Mouth). At the other end of the social scale is the aristocratic memoir stretching from Jonah Barrington (Personal Sketches, 1827–32) to Elizabeth Bowen and Elizabeth Plunkett, countess of Fingall (Seventy Years Young, 1937). Among the other types of autobiographical writing are the religious, for example Peter O’Leary (My Own Story, 1915), Walter MacDonald (Reminiscences of a Maynooth Professor, 1925), C.S. Lewis (Surprised by Joy, 1955), or James McDyer (Fr McDyer of Glencolumbkille, 1982); the medical, of which the best known are probably Oliver St John Gogarty’s various autobiographies (for example, As I Was Going Down Sackville St, 1937) – best known because they go beyond the limits of the type – and more recently Noel Browne’s Against the Tide (1986), which is also a political autobiography; and the legal and sporting (the prevalence of which is perhaps best seen in the existence of Somerville and Ross’s Irish R.M. stories which stand in relation to this category much as The Poor Mouth does to the island autobiographies). There are also literary memoirs such as John Ryan’s Remembering How We Stood (1975) and Anthony Cronin’s Dead as Doornails (1980). Some contemporary critics have extended this genre by writing their autobiographies rather than critical memoirs: George O’Brien’s The Village of Longing (1987) and Denis Donoghue’s Warrenpoint (1991). As is usual with autobiography women are also strongly represented, from Dorothea Herbert, Retrospections 1770–1789, and Margaret Leeson, Memoirs (1795), through Lady Morgan, Passages in My Autobiography (1859) and Sister Mary Francis Cusack, The Nun of Kenmare (1889), to Mary Colum, Life and the Dream (1947), and Mary Costello, Titanic Town (1992). Contemporary autobiographical writers in Ireland have followed a long-standing, if fragmentary, tradition in which autobiography is so central that, rather than being a justificatory retrospective, it often comes at the start of a career. Patrick Kavanagh published only one volume of poetry before The Green Fool, and his subsequent career followed a pattern of poetry followed by autobiography; similarly Francis Stuart, whose Black List Section H (1971) is in many ways the culmination of his career, produced Things to Live For in 1934, and much of his intervening and subsequent fiction is autobiographical. That tendency towards the autobiographical novel is, indeed, a cliché of Irish writing: from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) through Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September (1929) and Kate O’Brien’s Mary Lavelle (1936) up to Brian Moore’s The Emperor of Ice-Cream (1965) and Aidan Higgins’s Scenes from a Receding Past (1977) it seems to be accepted that Irish novelists are autobiographically obsessed. (This tendency, though perhaps less evident, is also present in drama and poetry.) Much Irish fiction which is classified as meta-fictional – works as various as Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Joyce’s Ulysses, and even Beckett’s Trilogy (as far removed from the autobiographical novel as it appears possible to get) – can with equal or greater validity be seen as meta-autobiographical or meta-biographical, suggesting that autobiography (and life writing more generally) is intrinsic to Irish culture. Setting aside memoirs, a striking feature of this writing is the number of writers who cannot stop at one volume (from Frank O’Connor’s two, through Sean O’Casey’s six, to George Moore’s eleven), which strongly suggests that a lack of self-

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knowing is a feature of these works as the individual self struggles to emerge, uncomprehendingly, in an environment in which collectivity and conformism, whether social, religious, or political, leave little space for self-expression and provide few paradigms for the individual. This means that autobiographers are often in debate both with themselves and, often obliquely, with each other about the nature and value of the self and its representation. In Irish autobiography the religious and political are equally strong strands, but rather than being intertwined they provide two separate narrative modes. In spiritual autobiographies the self is subordinated to the paradigm of the exemplary life in a narrative mode based on testifying. In many cases of Irish autobiography we can see the strength of this tendency towards the conversion narrative in which the self emerges only, paradoxically, to subordinate its individuality to a collectivist ideology such as nationalism. Such a pattern can be found in many political autobiographies and in work by Yeats and O’Casey. Always shadowing this narrative mode is another, even more problematic, mode in which the self emerges but only at the expense of a different kind of witness, that of informing, of revealing the secrets of the tribe to outsiders; in this case William Carleton, George Moore, and Patrick Kavanagh can stand as instances. Caught between these modes, it is no wonder that Irish autobiography is a rich seam, a large body of material that considers the ways in which personal, institutional, regional, class, and national identities interact in Ireland to produce or, more usually, disable individual selves. Eamonn Hughes See also Britain entries

Further Reading Brown, Terence, “Literary Autobiography in Twentieth-Century Ireland” in The Genius of Irish Prose, edited by Augustine Martin, Dublin: Mercier, 1985 Deane, Seamus (general editor), “Autobiography and Memoirs, 1890–1988” in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, vol. 3, Derry: Field Day Publications, 1991 Fallis, Richard, The Irish Renaissance, Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1977; Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1978 Foster, John Wilson, Fictions of the Irish Literary Revival: A Changeling Art, Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, and Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1987 Grubgeld, Elizabeth, “Class, Gender, and the Forms of Narrative: The Autobiographies of Anglo-Irish Women” in Representing Ireland: Gender, Class, Nationality, edited by Susan Shaw Sailer, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997 Hughes, Eamonn, “Sent to Coventry: Emigrations and Autobiography” in Returning to Ourselves: Second Volume of Papers from the John Hewitt International Summer School, Belfast: Lagan Press, 1995 Hughes, Eamonn, “‘You Need Not Fear That I Am Not Amiable’: Reading Yeats (Reading) Autobiographies”, Yeats Annual, 12 (1996): 84–116 Kenneally, Michael, “The Autobiographical Imagination and Irish Literary Autobiographies” in Critical Approaches to Anglo-Irish Literature, edited by Michael Allen and Angela Wilcox, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire: Smythe, and Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble, 1989 Reilly, Kevin Patrick, “Irish Literary Autobiography: The Goddesses That Poets Dream Of”, Eire-Ireland, 16/3 (1981): 57–80 Schrank, Bernice, “Studies of the Self: Irish Autobiographical Writing and the Discourse of Colonialism and Independence’, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 9/2 (1994): 260–75

Isherwood, Christopher

1904–1986

English / American novelist and autobiographer Isherwood’s writings display a curious schizophrenia concerning autobiography. His early works clearly employ personal experience, to the extent that his first novel, All the Conspirators (1928), can be read as a roman à clef showing the young Isherwood rebelling against his family in the disguise of Philip Lindsay. Yet despite the hatred of the “old gang” of parents, teachers, and authority figures that the novel shares with many writings of Isherwood’s contemporaries, and its stylistic echoes of E.M. Forster, it was intended as a modernist experiment. Isherwood’s second novel, The Memorial (1932), expands its perspective to become an indictment of British society at large. It abandons the imitation of modernism, but also an extended plot. Instead, the fragmentation of inter-war society is represented by “an album of snapshots”. The expression exposes the personal investment in a novel that contains fictional portraits of, among others, Isherwood’s grandfather, parents, and friends. Ultimately, The Memorial is an attempt to come to terms with the death of Isherwood’s father in World War I and its effect on Isherwood, who continued to show a strong distrust of family and society. The ambivalence produced by the desire to express the anxieties of a generation while refusing clear identifications continued to shape Isherwood’s most famous writings. His “Berlin novels” Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939) employ what he described as “camera” perspective. This strategy combines traditional social realism with impersonal detachment similar to Brecht’s epic theatre. A camera depicts all aspects of reality save one – the photographer. While Isherwood’s Berlin novels describe Berlin society and its expatriate community in objective detail, they hide their narrator behind vague facts. In Mr Norris, he is William Bradshaw (Isherwood’s middle names), yet Isherwood conceals, among other things, Bradshaw’s homosexuality. In Goodbye to Berlin, the narrator becomes “Christopher Isherwood”, yet remains the “ventriloquist’s dummy”, as the novel’s introduction describes him. Homosexuality, but also class, are the stumbling-blocks, although the documentary styles of the 1930s also clash structurally with a subjective first-person narrative. Novelistic caginess about his sexuality contrasted with Isherwood’s otherwise unflinching insistence on a homosexual identity. At around the same time, Lions and Shadows (1938) signals a first attempt to write a proper autobiography. Yet in keeping with a later statement that all of his novels “are a kind of fictional autobiography”, while, on the other hand, “autobiography is always fiction” (Vogue, December 1974), Isherwood again employed distancing methods as well as rewriting family history as the past he wished to remember. Prater Violet (1945) only seemingly continues the themes of the Berlin novels. Set in Austria between October 1933 and March 1934, the time of the socialist uprising and its suppression, the novel employs further autobiographical material (Isherwood’s collaboration with the Austrian film director Berthold Viertel). It, too, uses “Christopher Isherwood” as its narrator, but this time glimpses of his background and even sex life are provided. While the novel contrasts the trivial film comedy of its title with the tragic historic events, it also shows

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the narrator as a novice who learns about the limitations of art. The “camera” perspective is clearly reiterated and criticized. Between the writing of Lions and Shadows and Prater Violet, Isherwood’s life had changed radically: he had left Europe for California and, more importantly, discovered Hindu philosophy. He would write several books about the latter, but it also shaped The World in the Evening (1954), where it helped him achieve artistic ease with his homosexuality: this time Isherwood insisted (against his publisher’s advice) on retaining homosexual episodes. Down There on a Visit (1962) is a return to the loose episodic structure of the Berlin novels and simultaneously another attempt at “fictional autobiography”, now spanning the period between the late 1920s and the early 1950s. It retains the themes of loneliness and alienation familiar from Isherwood’s early writings. A Single Man (1964) again uses thinly veiled autobiography when it presents its narrator “Christopher Isherwood” as an English professor in California (Isherwood taught at California State College at the time). In Isherwood’s last novel, A Meeting by the River (1967), the central love–hate relationship of two brothers with opposed outlooks on life can be read as Isherwood’s fictional reconciliation with his own background. His subsequent biographical and autobiographical books Kathleen and Frank (1971), which in a detached yet loving fashion assesses his parents’ lives, and Christopher and His Kind (1976), which provides a frank account of Isherwood’s homosexuality, are the artistic outcomes of this reconciliatory process. Rainer Emig Biography Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood. Born at Wyberslegh Hall, near the villages of Disley and High Lane, Cheshire, England, 26 August 1904. Brought up in England and Ireland; his father, an officer in the York and Lancaster Regiment, was killed during war service in 1915. Educated at St Edmund’s School, Hindhead, Surrey, where he met the future poet W.H. Auden; then at Repton School, Derby, 1919–22. Won a history scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: studied there, 1924–25, but left after deliberately failing his tripos. Earned his living in London as a private tutor and as secretary to the French violinist André Mangeot and his Music Society String Quartet, 1926–27. Studied medicine at King’s College, London, 1928–29. Gave up medical studies to follow Auden to Berlin; stayed there until 1933, teaching English. His experiences formed the basis for his best-known novels, Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939). Travelled in Europe, 1933–37. Reviewer, the Listener, London, 1935–37. Also wrote plays, often collaborating with Auden. Visited China with Auden, 1938; wrote Journey to a War (1939). Film script work for Gaumont Films, UK. Emigrated to the United States with Auden, 1939. Settled in Los Angeles. Worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Worked as a conscientious objector with the American Friends Service Committee in a hostel for Central European refugees in Haverford, Pennsylvania, 1941–42. Resident student, Vedanta Society of Southern California, 1943–45; editor, with his guru Swami Prabhavananda, of the magazine Vedanta and the West, 1943–44, and translator, also with Prabhavananda, of the Bhagavad-Gita (1944). Became US citizen, 1946. Met Don Bachardy, a young student, 1953; lived with him for the rest of his life. Guest professor of modern English literature, Los Angeles State College, and University of California at Santa Barbara, 1959–62. Wrote the novel Down There on a Visit (1962). Regents Professor, University of California at Los Angeles, 1965–66, and University of California at Riverside, 1966–67. Promoted homosexual rights. Died in Santa Monica, California, 4 January 1986.

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Selected Writings Lions and Shadows (autobiography), 1938 The Condor and the Cows: A South American Travel Diary, 1949 Ramakrishna and His Disciples (biography), 1965 Kathleen and Frank (autobiography), 1971 Christopher and His Kind (autobiography), 1976 October (autobiography), 1983 Diaries: 1939–1960, edited by Katharine Bucknell, 1996 The Repton Letters, edited by George Ramsden, 1997 Lost Years: A Memoir 1945–1951, edited by Katharine Bucknell, 2000 Works that closely blend autobiography and fiction include The Memorial: Portrait of a Family (1932), The Berlin Stories (i.e. Mr. Norris Changes Trains, 1935, Sally Bowles, 1937, and Goodbye to Berlin, 1939), Prater Violet (1945), and Down There on a Visit (1962). Also translated Charles Baudelaire’s Intimate Journals, 1947.

Further Reading Cunningham, Valentine, British Writers of the Thirties, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988 Finney, Brian, Christopher Isherwood: A Critical Biography, London: Faber, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1979 Fryer, Jonathan, Isherwood: A Biography of Christopher Isherwood, London: New English Library, 1977; Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1978; revised edition, as Eye of the Camera: A Life of Christopher Isherwood, London: Allison and Busby, 1993 Heilbrun, Carolyn G., Christopher Isherwood, New York: Columbia University Press, 1970 Heilbrun, Carolyn G. (editor), special issue on Isherwood, Twentieth Century Literature, 22/3 (October 1976) Hynes, Samuel, The Auden Generation: Literature and Politics in England in the 1930s, London: Bodley Head, and New York: Viking Press, 1976 King, Francis, Christopher Isherwood, edited by Ian Scott-Kilvert, London: Longman, 1976 Lehmann, John, Christopher Isherwood: A Personal Memoir, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987; New York: Holt, 1988 MacNeice, Louis, The Strings Are False: An Unfinished Autobiography, London: Faber, 1965; New York: Oxford University Press, 1966 Piazza, Paul, Christopher Isherwood: Myth and Anti-Myth, New York: Columbia University Press, 1978 Phillips, Adam, “Knitting”, London Review of Books (16 November 2000): 6–7 (review of Lost Years) Spender, Stephen, The Thirties and After: Poetry, Politics, People (1933–75), London: Macmillan, and New York: Random House, 1978 Wade, Stephen, Christopher Isherwood, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1991 Wilde, Alan, Christopher Isherwood, Boston: Twayne, 1971

Islam and Life Writing Biographical writing in Islamic culture begins with accounts of the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Born in Mecca around 570 ce, Muhammad received his first revelations when he was 40 years old, around 610, and in the remaining 22 years of his life he preached the message of Islam (“submission to God”) and laid the foundations for the new religious community. After his death in 632, two sources came to be recognized as spiritually authoritative: first, the Qu’rƒn [Koran], as the unadulterated word of God, and second, the life of Muhammad, the exemplary worshipper of God, as preserved in accounts of his sunna (actions) and his had¡th (utterances). Minutely detailed accounts of Muhammad’s manner of praying, washing, speaking, and so forth, as well as the statements he made in various situations,

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were transmitted orally for several generations and then committed to writing in various literary forms. One of the earliest of these forms was s¡ra, a term that is usually translated as biography, but which also connotes behaviour, example, and even path. Several versions of the s¡ra of the Prophet Muhammad were composed in the first two centuries of Islam, but one specific text, written by Ibn Ishƒq (d. 767) and redacted by Ibn Hishƒm (d. 828 or 833), eventually achieved canonical status. This text, available in translation in many languages (in English, The Life of Muhammad), gives a chronological account of Muhammad’s life accompanied at many points by first-person quotations from his companions and other witnesses to the events recounted. This work, while holding a unique place in the Islamic tradition as the life of the Prophet, also established a precedent for biographical works on the lives of political and religious figures; dozens of such works were written during the Middle Ages. Typically the person about whom a s¡ra was written was portrayed as an esteemed exemplar and a model worthy of respect and imitation. Another format for the preservation of information about the life of Muhammad was in collections of had¡th and sunna. These works included much of the same material described above, but were organized into thematic chapters, such as marriage, prayer, and so forth, and functioned as guidebooks for Muslims in their daily lives and as foundational texts for the development of Islamic law. The format included first a meticulous chain of transmission (isnƒd) from the original speaker to the compiler (X heard from Y, who heard from Z that one day the Prophet said …) followed by the quotation itself. This mode of historical writing led to another domain of biographical knowledge – compilations of information about all the individuals, men and women, who acted as transmitters of Prophetic lore. As a result, by the early Middle Ages, the Islamic community was maintaining biographical records on literally thousands of people. From this original enterprise of maintaining records about transmitters of knowledge derived directly from the Prophet Muhammad, the “science of men” (‘ilm al-rijƒl) spread rapidly to other social groups: philosophers, jurists, physicians, poets, female scholars, singers, and many others all had biographical compendia (tabaqƒt) devoted to them. Since the overall focus was upon the occupational group as a whole, rather than upon specific individuals, this massive literature can rightfully be called prosopographical. Each individual entry, referred to as a tarjama (meaning variously a biographical notice, an interpretation, or a translation), typically included information about the subject’s genealogy, date and place of birth, education, teachers, travels, occupational positions held, publications, children and / or students, as well as samples of his or her poetry. The earliest autobiographical writings in Islamic culture were composed in Arabic (the lingua franca of the Islamic world for many centuries) in the 9th and 10th centuries. Some of these early texts were independent works devoted entirely to the life of the author, such as those written by the early mystic al-Hak¡m al-Tirmidh¡ (d. 898) and the philosopher Ibn S¡nƒ, known to the Latin world as Avicenna (d. 1036), but many others were penned as introductions or appendices to larger works. Still others were written by compilers of biographical compendia who simply added entries about themselves to their works where they deemed it appropriate. Autobiography was never as common as biography in the Arabic literary tradition, but we do

know of well over a hundred Arabic autobiographical texts written between the 9th and 19th centuries. These texts were written by a wide range of authors: princes, philosophers, politicians, government functionaries, missionaries, physicians, professors, religious scholars, judges, poets, Sufi mystics, historians, merchants, grammarians, African slaves in America, a princess from Zanzibar, an early Egyptian feminist, and a 19th-century civil engineer. Some accounts are primarily historical; some are so sparse that they resemble modern academic curricula vitae; others are political memoirs, and some Sufi autobiographies are devoted almost entirely to spiritual matters. From the 9th to 13th centuries authors seem to have had few qualms about writing their own life stories. From the late 13th century onwards, however, Arabic autobiographers begin to display a marked “autobiographical anxiety” – an ethical and spiritual ambiguity that began to surround the autobiographical act. Writers of this later period preface their texts with disclaimers stating that they do not write their texts out of vanity, conceit, or self-importance; they also develop complex arguments supporting the recording of experience at first hand and defend the writing of autobiographies in their introductions. One of the primary touchstones used by authors to justify writing an autobiography is a verse from the Qu’rƒn: “And of the blessings of thy Lord, speak!” (93:11). This verse is cited as a means of dedicating one’s life story to God by framing the work as an act of thanks, an enumeration of the blessings that one has enjoyed in this life from Almighty God. One 16thcentury Sufi shaykh took this technique so far as to structure his 700-page autobiography as a list of several thousand blessings, each one preceded with the phrase: “And among the blessings from my Lord which I have enjoyed is …”. Many autobiographers also included references to earlier autobiographies, thereby justifying their own texts by the example set by respected figures of the past. A rather distinct branch of autobiographical writing is that associated with Sufi mysticism. This sub-genre emerged quite early with the writings of al-Muhƒsib¡ (d. 857), which advocate an introspective evaluation of one’s self, and the autobiography of the aforementioned al-Tirmidh¡, which, dominated by accounts of dreams and visions, sets the stage for centuries of biographical and autobiographical Sufi texts. Sufi biographical texts are often hagiographic, and include accounts of the subject’s wondrous acts and powers, while the autobiographical texts tend to contain detailed accounts of ascending through various mystical states (ahwƒl) and spiritual stations (maqƒmƒt). Another distinctly religious category of autobiographical writing is that of conversion narratives. Two medieval autobiographies of conversion to Islam have survived: that of the Jewish convert Samaw’al al-Maghrib¡ (d. 1176) and that of the Mallorcan Christian convert ‘Abd Allah al-Turjumƒn (= Fray Anselmo Turmeda, d. 1432?). But a much larger number of medieval autobiographies exist that focus on the experiences of Muslims who for one reason or another “converted” to a more pious life, the life of an ascetic, or that of a Sufi dervish. The most famous of these is the al-Munqidh min al-dalƒl (“The Deliverer from Error”, translated in Freedom and Fulfillment) of al-Ghazƒl¡ (d. 1111), which recounts his emotional crisis while teaching at university and his subsequent search for spiritual fulfilment. Some pre-modern Arabic autobiographies provide much the

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same information as biographies, but many also include additional materials such as accounts of the author’s childhood, a theme treated almost exclusively in autobiographical texts. It is also noteworthy that Arabic autobiographical texts before the 20th century are highly idiosyncratic – texts written in the same time period, even by writers who knew each other, are often quite different in structure and style. The autobiography, with its emphasis on the individual life, seems also to have fostered individuality in literary form. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Arabic literature came into direct contact with European literary genres, particularly the novel, and the autobiography underwent a radical transformation; 20th-century Arabic autobiographies, unlike their predecessors, are quite similar to novels. Traditions of life writing also emerged in many of the other languages within the larger Islamic world, particularly in Persian and Turkish. There are biographical and autobiographical traditions in both languages from the pre-modern era. The most famous autobiographical texts include the magnificent Bƒburnƒmah or Book of Bƒbur written by the founder of the Mughal empire in India (d. 1530), the autobiography of the Persian Shah Tahmƒsp I (d. 1576), and an autobiography, which may well be spurious, said to have been written by Timür-lenk or “Tamerlane” (d. 1404). These other literary traditions are less closely related to the early Arabo-Islamic examples of life writing, with the exception of the writings of Sufi mystics, which exhibit a remarkable similarity across linguistic, historical, and geographic boundaries. Dwight Fletcher Reynolds See also Arabic Autobiography; Arabic Biography; Arabic Travel Writing; Turkey

Further Reading Austin, Allan D., African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook, New York: Garland, 1984; revised edition as African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles, New York: Routledge, 1997 Babur, Bƒburnƒma, edited and translated by Wheeler M. Thackston, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996; as The Bƒburnƒma: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emporer, Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, 1996 Ibn ‘Aj¡ba, Ahmad, L’Autobiographie (Fahrasa) du Soufi Marocain Ahmad ibn ‘Agîba (1747–1809), translated by J.-L. Michon, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969 (reprinted from Arabica, 15–16, 1968–69) Ibn Ishƒq, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ishƒq’s S¡rat ras›l Allƒh, translated by ‘Abd al-Malik Ibn Hishƒm, with introduction and notes by A. Guillaume, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955 Ibn S¡nƒ, The Life of Ibn Sina: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation, edited and translated by William E. Gohlman, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974 Ibn Z¡r¡ [‘Abd Allƒh ibn Bulugg¡n], The Tibyƒn: Memoirs of ‘Abd Allƒh ibn Bulugg¡n, last Zirid am¡r of Granada, edited and translated by Amin T. Tibi, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986 Jahangir, Emperor, The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India, edited and translated by Wheeler M. Thackston, Oxford: Freer Gallery, 1999 Kafadar, Cemal, “Self and Others: The Diary of a Dervish in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul and First-Person Narratives in Ottoman Literature”, Studia Islamica (1989): 121–50 Kramer, Martin (editor), Middle Eastern Lives: The Practice of Biography and Self-Narrative, Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1991 Ostle, Robin, Ed de Moor, and Stefan Wild (editors), Writing the Self:

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Autobiographical Writing in Modern Arabic Literature, London: Saqi, 1998 Radtke, Bernd and John O’Kane, The Concept of Sainthood in Early Islamic Mysticism: Two Works by al-Hak¡m al-Tirmidh¡, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1996 Reynolds, Dwight F. (editor), “Arabic Autobiography”, special edition of Edebiyât, n.s. 7/2 (1997) Reynolds, Dwight F. (editor), Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000 Reynolds, Dwight F., “Shaykh ‘Abd al-Wahhƒb al-Sha‘rƒn¡’s SixteenthCentury Defense of Autobiography”, Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review, 4/1–2 (1997–98): 122–37 Rooke, Tetz, “In My Childhood”: A Study of Arabic Autobiography, Stockholm: Stockholm University, 1997 Sha‘rƒw¡, Hudƒ, Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist (1879–1924), translated, edited, and introduced by Margot Badran, London: Virago Press, 1986; New York: Feminist Press, 1987 Taqi Mir, Mir Muhammad, Zikr-i Mir: The Autobiography of the Eighteenth-Century Mughal Poet, Mir Muhammad Taqi “Mir” (1723–1810), translated, annotated, and introduced by C.M. Naim, New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 Turmeda, Anselm, La Tuhfa, autobiografía y polémica islámica contra el cristianismo de ‘Abdallƒh al-Taryumƒn (fray Anselmo Turmeda), edited and translated into Spanish by Míkel de Epalza, 2nd edition, Madrid: Hyperíon, 1994

Israeli and Modern Hebrew Life Writing Israeli literature is part of a continuous literary corpus, called “Modern Hebrew literature”, that extends beyond fixed geographical boundaries. Modern Hebrew literature emerged not in Israel but in Europe more than 200 years ago, at the time when Jewish life began to come out of its seclusion and reach out for Western culture. It was then that Hebrew literature, along with European humanism, shifted its vision from God to humanity and became secular, giving rise to the movement of the Jewish Enlightenment, the Haskalah (1781–1881). The attempt to represent the collapse of the religious world and to express the loss of faith in Hebrew literature prompted the creation of a new mode of prose narrative, namely the autobiography. This survey does not include works that were written exclusively in the confessional genre, although autobiographies, as well as epistolary novels, memoirs, and diaries, all contain confessional elements. There are almost no autobiographies from classical and medieval Jewish writing. It has been suggested that the main reason for this lack is that autobiographies, as well as biographies, were alien to Jewish culture because of the secondary status given to the individual in Judaism (Mintz 1989). Be this as it may, autobiographical writing during the Haskalah period can be seen as an aberration in the development of Hebrew literature. Rousseau’s Confessions undoubtedly influenced early Haskalah writers such as Isaac Samuel [Yitshak Shemuel] Reggio (1784–1855), Samuel David Luzzato (1850–65), Meir ha-Levi Letteris (1800?–71), Abraham [Avraham] Gottlober (1811–99), Samuel Joseph [Shemuel Yosef] Fünn (1818–90), and Yehudah Leib Gordon (1860–1927). But their autobiographies reflected on their public careers rather than on their innermost retrospective thoughts. Mordecai Aaron Geunzburg’s Avi’ezer (1864), and most importantly Moses Leb Lilienblum’s Hat’ot ne’urim [1876; Sins of Youth], were the exception since they focused on their authors’ personal as well as public lives,

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and thereby extended the scope of autobiographical writing (see Werses). At the end of the 19th century autobiography crossed over into fiction, in the works of such writers as Mordecai Ze’ev Feierberg [Feuerberg] in Le’an? (1899; Whither?), and Joseph Hayyim Brenner in Bahoref [1903; In Winter], who developed the genre of fictional autobiography in Hebrew writing. They described the crisis in the personal life of the “uprooted” young Jews (the Telushim) who broke away from religion, family, and community, and their unsuccessful attempts to live in a world empty of those beliefs and institutions. Although strictly speaking these works are not autobiographies, they reflect the individual’s ordeal, which was considered to be representative of a collective crisis and therefore significant. Childhood memoirs are another type of autobiography used by Hebrew writers. Works such as Bayamim Ha-hem [1895; In Those Days] by S.Y. Abramovitz (known by his pen name Mendele Mocher Sfarim), Safi’ah (written between 1908 and 1919; Aftergrowth) by Hayyim Nahman Bialik, and Harishonim Kivne Adam [1930–43; The First People] and Pirke yaldut [1965; Chapters of Childhood] by Yitzhak Dov Berkowitz describe nostalgically the writers’ lost childhoods in Europe. With the events of World War I and the Russian Revolution and their traumatic effect on Jewish life, the focus in Hebrew autobiography shifted from the author to the events themselves, as in Avigdor Hameiri’s Ha-Shiga’on ha-gadol (1929; The Great Madness). This trend continued when the cultural centre of the Jews moved finally in the 1920s from Europe to Palestine. The new settlers were engaged in rebuilding their national homeland. This is probably the main reason why Zionist leaders in particular wrote their autobiographies. This activity was deemed acceptable since it was considered to be part of the Zionist national enterprise, in which public events superseded the private life of the individual. Examples are Zalman Shazar’s Kokhve Voker (1950; Morning Stars) and David Ben-Gurion’s Zikhronot [1971—; Memoirs]. Nathan (Agmon) Bistritzky’s Yamim ve-lelot [1927; Days and Nights] is an interesting attempt to synthesize authentic documentary material focusing on collective ideology with expressionistic technique, its focus being on the individual. The innermost thoughts of the early Jewish settlers, who were not only the leaders but also active participants in the Zionist enterprise, were written as memoirs and are reminiscent of the inner struggles of Brenner’s “uprooted Jews” (see Shaked). Shlomo Tsemah’s Shana rishona [1965; The First Year] and Rahel Yana’it Ben-Zvi’s Anu olim (1962; Coming Home) are memoirs written about the early settlement in the newly adopted homeland. Significantly, BenZvi’s memoirs are so far the only work mentioned here written by a woman. Even though before the 1950s women wrote more memoirs than fiction, their presence in Hebrew writing was still marginal. Works by David Maletz, Shelomo Reichenstein, and Moshe Smilansky can be regarded as autobiographies concerning the Jewish settlement in Palestine rather than the lives of their authors as individuals. It seems that after Brenner autobiographical writings centred on the private retrospection of an individual were absent in Hebrew literature until the 1970s. Shemuel Yosef Agnon’s Oreah natah la-lun [1938–39; A Guest for the Night], Ephraim E. Lisitzky’s Eleh toldot Adam (1949; In the Grip of Cross-Currents), and Pinhas Sadeh’s autobiography Ha-hayim ke-mashal (1958; Life as a Parable) were among the exceptions.

Fictional autobiography, however, reappeared in Hebrew writings after 1948. Although the names of the narrators in these works may not necessarily be those of the authors, persons and events are authentic and the documentary and historical data are accurate. Like the early Haskalah writers, the writers of the “Generation of the State” portrayed through the individual the autobiography of a whole generation at a time of crisis. Thus, in line with the early traditions of Hebrew autobiography, the portrayal of the collective rather than the individual is central. Themes concerning the war of independence and commitment to the newly established Israel and its ideology were paramount, as in Nathan Shaham’s Tamid anahnu [1952; Always Us] and Moshe Shamir’s Hayai ’im Yishma’el (1974; My Life with Ishmael). Yoram Kaniuk’s works digress from national concerns and are closer to the confessional style, as in Bito (1987; His Daughter) and Post mortem (1992). In recent years there have been new developments in Hebrew autobiographical writing. Many writers of the “Generation of the State” have turned to writing documentary-style autobiographies, in which they are the protagonists, albeit under assumed names. These narratives contain extracts from journals, letters, and memoirs, all of which reinforce the concrete and historical elements of the works and weaken the fictional aspects. Some of these works are autobiographies of the writer’s youth in Europe or in Israel seen in retrospect. Some examples are Shaham’s Sefer Hatum [1988; Sealed Scrolls]; S. Yizhar’s Mikdamot (1992), Tsalhavim (1993), Tsedadiyim [1996; Asides], and Etsel ha-yam [1996; By the Sea]; and Aharon Amir’s Ov (1994), as are Aron Appelfeld’s Sipur hayim [1999; Life Story] and Nurit Zarhi’s Mishake bedidut [1998; Childhood Games]. Matti Megged’s Mem [1985] is written in the confessional style, and Amos Oz’s Oto ha-yam [1999; The Same Sea], written in an innovative prose-poetry style, is partially autobiographic. Haim Be’er’s Havalim [1998; The Pure Element of Time] marks a new and significant departure: his autobiography drops all masks, revealing his intimate life, and he uses his real name. A brief glance at the development of Hebrew biography reveals that there were very few biographies before the 1970s. Moshe Shamir’s Be-mo yadav (Pirke Elik) (1951; With His Own Hands (Chapters On Elik)), which tells the story of the writer’s brother who was killed during the war of independence, paved the way for a whole new tradition of necrologies and memoirs of fallen Israelis in all their wars. In addition to some biographical portraits, the biographies written were about political leaders such as Theodor Herzl (by Reuven Brainin, Alex Bein, Amos Elon, and L. Lewison), Vladimor Jabotinsky (by Joseph B. Schechtman), and Yosef Trumpeldor (by Shulamit Laskov). It has been suggested that the main reason for this phenomenon is that after the middle of the 19th century, under the influence of German historians, the Jews concentrated on writing their history in an attempt to define their national identity. According to this deterministic viewpoint, the importance of the individual in the historical process was secondary. Where this deterministic concept flourishes, there is little room for biography (see Shapira). It is only since the 1970s that the number of biographies has increased. They are being written mainly about political leaders, e.g. Ben-Gurion, Haim Weitzman, and Berl Katznelson (by Michael Bar-Zohar, Shabtai Tevet, Yehuda Reinhartz, Norman Rose, and Anita Shapira) or

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about writers, such as Bialik, Ahad Ha’am, Agnon, Yonatan Ratosh, and Ester Rab (by Shlomo Sheva, Yosef Goldstein, Shulamit Laskov, Dan Laor, Yoram Porat, and Ehud Ben-Ezer). Haim Be’er’s Gam ahavatam, gam sin’atam: Bialik, Brener, ’Agnon [1992; Their Love and Their Hate: Bialik, Brenner, Agnon] belongs to the documentary-style form, as do many memoirs of Holocaust survivors. It seems that we are witnessing an exciting turning point in Hebrew writing, both for autobiography and biography. Risa Domb See also Holocaust Writings; Judaism and Life Writing

Further Reading Feingold, Ben-Ami, “ha-Autobiographia Kesifrut – Iyun be-Ha’tot Ne’urim”, Mehkere Yerushalayim Besifrut ’Ivrit, 4 (1984): 86–111 Halkin, Simon, Modern Hebrew Literature: Trends and Values, New York: Schocken Books, 1950 Keren, Michael, “Biography and History: The Case of David BenGurion”, Biography, 23/2 (2000): 332–51 Mintz, Alan, “Banished from Their Father’s Table”: Loss of Faith and Hebrew Autobiography, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989 Naveh, Hannah, Siporet ha-vidui: ha-z’aner u-vehinato, Tel Aviv: Papirus, 1988 Oren, Y., Hasifrut ha-Ysre’elit: Le’an?, n.p.: Yahad, 1998 Pelli, Moshe, Sugot ve-Sugyot basifrut ha-Haskala ha-’Ivrit, Israel: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1999 Schwartz, Jan, “‘When the Lamp is Made to Shine through Life’s Foolcap’: A Study of the Yiddish Literary Autobiography” (dissertation), New York: Columbia University, 1997 Shaked, Gershon, Siporet ha-’Ivrit 1880–1970, 5 vols, Jerusalem: Keter, 1977–98; as Modern Hebrew Fiction (abridged), edited by Emily Miller Budick, translated by Jessica Cohen, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000 Shapira, Anita, “Mistore ha-biographia” in her Yehudim Hadashim, Yehudim Yeshanim, Tel Aviv: ’Am ’Oved, 1997 Werses, Samuel, Megamot ve-tsurot Besifrut ha-Haskalah, Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990

Italy: Medieval and Renaissance Life Writing Life writing was abundant in medieval and Renaissance Italy. In the Middle Ages, hagiographical collections serving as pious models of saintly life were the only examples of life writing before Dante (1265–1321) and Petrarch (1304–74) began to take an interest in the human condition. In the Renaissance, humanity was the centre of all things, as evidenced by the greater interest in Italy for a definition of the individual’s role in society. The Christian and classical traditions provided the formal models for this non-canonical genre, in Roman biographies of great men as well as the New Testament Gospels and Acts. Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions (written c.397–400) are an example of autobiographical conversion narrative. The hero as protagonist of classical life writing gave way to the saint, or heavenly hero, and later to the man (or, though rarely, woman) of genius or talented hero. The Fioretti (written c.1370; Little Flowers), legends of St Francis of Assisi, constitute one of the most widely read medi-

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eval hagiographical collections. Le vite dei santi padri (written c.1330; The Lives of the Church Fathers) are a devotional adaptation of existing Latin texts in vernacular Italian by Domenico Cavalca (1270–1342). Later collections were produced with the double purpose of edifying the faithful and protecting them from the rising tide of Protestantism, often at the cost of historical veracity. These include the Sanctorum priscorum patrum vitae [1551–1601; Patristic Biographies] by Luigi Lippomano (1500–59), bishop of Verona. The first medieval vernacular writers in Italy experimented with life writing from a spiritual perspective. Francesco Petrarch wrote several autobiographical fragments, the most developed being Il secretum (1489; Petrarch’s Secret) which was composed in a time of deep spiritual crisis. Written in Latin, it describes the poet’s conversations with Augustine. Dante Alighieri’s La vita nuova (written c.1292–94; The New Life) also demonstrates a theocentric concept of life. The narrative is arranged to complement a series of poems and sonnets that tell the story of Dante’s spiritual renewal through his love for Beatrice. Giovanni Boccaccio is the author of the Trattatello in laude di Dante (written c.1370; Life of Dante), an admiring biography. Boccaccio’s biographical production was wide-ranging and included the first biographies of women beyond the confines of the hagiographical tradition. His De claris mulieribus (written c.1360; Concerning Famous Women) is a collection of lives of notable women, including the Neapolitan queen, Giovanna. Its companion volume is De casibus virorum illustrium (written c.1360; The Fates of Illustrious Men). The Italian Renaissance marks an important moment of development for life writing. There was a shift in interest from heavenly to earthly matters as men and women sought to define their roles in a worldly existence. The traditional biographical types of Christian saint and Roman hero did not disappear, but rather reappeared transformed in other episodes. The Commentarii rerum memorabilium [1584; Commentary on Memorable Events] were written by Enea Silvio Piccolomini during his years in office as Pope Pius II (1458–64). The narrative is based on classical models of statesmen and rulers and written in Latin, thereby marking a turning point between Christian and humanist culture. The physician, mathematician, and scientist Girolamo Cardano (1501–76) also wrote his autobiography, De vita propria liber (1643; The Book of My Life); in balanced Latin prose. The choice of expressive language underscores the classical models that influenced his text. He explicitly transposes the model of the Meditations (compiled c.175 ce) of Marcus Aurelius from that of an emperor to that of an intellectual. Unusually, Cardano’s life is not set out chronologically, but arranged according to topic along the model of Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars (c.120 ce). De vita propria liber appeared in translations throughout Europe shortly after its publication. In the Renaissance, one mutation of the hagiographical tradition appeared in the proliferation of accounts of the lives of artists, as the individual’s role in society underwent extensive transformation. A wealth of biographical information with reference to contemporary and medieval artists was produced in the 16th century because of the improvement in artists’ social status. The Vita (Life; dictated by the author between 1558 and 1562, but unpublished until 1728) of the sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini is one of the most famous in world literature. He is a Renaissance man at the centre of his own universe.

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Giorgio Vasari’s Vite de’ più eccellenti architettori, pittori e scultori italiani (1550; Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects) is of great importance for the European biographical tradition. In his evaluation of the lives of these artists, Vasari shifts the focus from the miracles of saints to the creative production of the artists, reflecting the transformation in the Cinquecento in the perception of the artist as a genius rather than an artisan. An anonymous biography of the Roman patriot and adventurer Cola di Rienzo, written in the 15th century, was published by Ludovico Antonio Muratori in the Antiquitates italicae medii aevi (1738–42; Antiquities of the Italian Middle Ages). His life was to inspire many 19th-century literary and musical adaptations, by Edward Lytton, Richard Wagner, Gabriele D’Annunzio, and others. The autobiographies and biographies of medieval and Renaissance Italy are important sources for our understanding of the period. The many works written were widely read, providing some of the first texts in the Italian vernacular and some very important models for later life writing in the European tradition. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his Confessions (1778), names Cardano as one of his models of life writing, and Cellini’s Vita was widely read long after its publication in 1728. In the century of adventurous autobiographies, Cellini was an encouragement to the late 18th-century flourishing of the genre with swashbucklers such as Casanova and Alfieri. Goethe translated the Vita into German, and it undoubtedly influenced his own concept of life writing in Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth). Jordan Lancaster Further Reading Battistini, Andrea, Lo specchio di Dedalo: autobiografia e biografia, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990 Caputo, Rino and Matteo Monaco (editors), Scrivere la propria vita: l’autobiografia come problema critico e teorico, Rome: Bulzoni, 1997 Freccero, John, Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, edited by Rachel Jacoff, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986 Forti-Lewis, Angelica, Italia autobiografica, Rome: Bulzoni, 1986 Goldfarb, Hilliard T., Imaging the Self in Renaissance Italy, Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1992 Guglielminetti, Marziano, Memoria e scrittura: l’autobiografia da Dante a Cellini, Turin: Einaudi, 1977 Ijsewijn, Jozef, “Humanistic Autobiography” in Renaissance: Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, edited by Anthony Molho and John A. Tedeschi, Florence: Sansoni, 1970; Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971 Scrivano, Riccardo, “Dalla memoria alla letteratura: processi formativi e modelli di autobiografia del Cinquecento italiano”, Versants (1985): 7–26 Weintraub, Karl, The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978 Wittkower, Rudolf and Margot Wittkower, Born Under Saturn: The Character and Conduct of Artists: A Documented History from Antiquity to the French Revolution, New York: Random House, and London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1963 Zimmerman, T.C. Price, “Confession and Autobiography in the Early Renaissance” in Renaissance Studies in Honour of Hans Baron, edited by Anthony Molho and John A. Tedeschi, Florence: Sansoni, 1970; Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971

Italy: 17th- and 18th-Century Auto/biography During the 17th century very few autobiographies were written in Italy. On the other hand, the influence of the biographical writing of Giorgio Vasari (1511–74) was still very strong. After the publication of his Vite de’ più eccellenti architettori, pittori e scultori italiani in 1550 (Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects), biography became the single most important tool for knowing and recognizing the worth of public figures and, in particular, artists. Already during the 16th century, this work spurred the writing of biographies – for instance the Vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti [Life of Michelangelo] written by Ascanio Condivi in 1553 – and autobiographies – such as the Memoriale of the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli – written to make up for his absence from Vasari’s collection. During the 17th century, collections of biographies continued to be written: there are the Vite de’ pittori, scultori e architetti moderni [1672; Lives of Modern Painters, Sculptors, and Architects] by Giovan Pietro Bellori (1615?–96) and the collection Notizie de’ professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua by Filippo Baldinucci (1625–96). There are also some long biographies, such as the Vita del Padre Paolo, a biography of Paolo Sarpi written by Fugenzio Micanzio in 1646, and the Racconto istorico del sig. Galileo Galilei written by Vincenzo Viviani in 1645, but published only later, in 1718. Biography was the most widespread form of life writing during the 17th century, to such an extent that the few existing autobiographies adopt the same conventions as biography, taking a public and praiseworthy character, and making use of documents that bear witness to the truthfulness of what they are asserting. This influence of the biographic model on autobiography is keenly felt in one of the few autobiographies of the century, the Vita di Gabriello Chiabrera scritta da lui medesimo. It is a presentation of the work of the poet Chiabrera (1552–1638), backed up by a large number of documents that attest to his success and the homages he received from many authorities, and written in the third person. In contrast, an autobiography that would have been very different, and which apparently had a stronger selfreflective tone, is that of the philosopher Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639), which has unfortunately been lost. The development of the autobiographical form during the Italian Settecento, on the other hand, is far richer. Here it is possible to distinguish three primary autobiographical trends: an increase in autobiographies of prominent intellectuals; the emergence of “Venetian” autobiographies written in French; and the appearance of the first modern autobiographies. The first trend is characterized by its undoubted originality, even in the context of European development of autobiography. After the publication of René Descartes’s Discours de la méthode (1637), and probably having been prompted by Leibniz, the Count Giovannartico da Porcia (1682–1743), a minor comic writer, came up with the idea of making an appeal to the Italian letterati (intellectuals) to ask them to write their memoirs. They were each asked to write a résumé of their intellectual career, honestly, without concealing oversights or the mistakes caused by their anti-positivist education. This is the Progetto ai letterati d’Italia per iscrivere le loro vite (written in 1721). The purpose of the Progetto was to produce a joint work,

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the Notizie d’alcuni letterati viventi d’Italia, e de’ loro studi, in which, through individual memoirs, they would present the intellectual, positivist output of 18th-century Italy. Da Porcia received much theoretical, intellectual, and moral support, but he published only one autobiography, the Vita of philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), which became a model of 18th-century Italian autobiography. It was published in 1728 (Vico wrote a second part in 1731; the whole was published in the 19th century), the same year in which Antonio Cocchi published in Naples the 17th century Vita of Benvenuto Cellini. The originality of this philosopher / autobiographer stemmed in large part from the fact that he contested Cartesian philosophy because it presupposed that humans could master what is real. On the other hand he believed that history, which is a product solely of human action, should be regarded as a science. In Donald Verene’s view, Vico’s autobiography is one of the great autobiographies of the world: “There is no question but that Vico is the founder of a new art of autobiography. He is the first original thinker to apply the genetic method to comprehend the development of his own thought and writings” (preface, The Life and Writings of Giambattista Vico, 1953). Less exhaustive is the autobiographical attempt of the historian Antonio Muratori (1672–1750), who was an important inspirer and supporter of Da Porcia’s enterprise; this was written in 1721 after the entreaties of Da Porcia. Together with the Vita of Vico, his Lettera all’Illustrissimo Signore Giovanni Artico conte di Porcia intorno al metodo seguito ne’ suoi studi (1780) is one of the most important examples of 18th-century Italian intellectual autobiography. The autobiographical form appeared increasingly in Italy during the 18th century. In such memoirs as those of Count Pietro Verri (1728–97), Giambattista Biffi (1736–1807), Count Giuseppe Gorani (1740–1819), and Pietro Giannone (1676– 1748), the intellectual evolution of the writer has an important place, and the narration is based on the style of the adventure / picaresque novel. The autobiographical texts of Giannone (Vita scritta da lui medesimo, 1740), de Antonio Genovesi (1713– 1769, in his Lettere ad un amico provinciale, 1759, and Lettere familiari, 1775) or Muratori were all pre-Rousseau texts in that the cursus honorum of the intellectual career they evoke is indistinguishable in the end from the major part of the life of the autobiographer. These texts are narrations of the self’s capacity to evolve intellectually, and give little account of emotional, psychological, or sentimental vicissitudes. Geographical and sociological context mark the later literary production in Italy and for almost a century seem to have established a kind of dichotomy between a relatively isolated and autonomous south and a central north sensitive to influences from the rest of Europe. The latter is represented by four FrenchVenetian autobiographies (so-called because they are written in French, products of the later 18th century). They are conceived as the narration of careers, but all are linked to the Venetian theatre, which, during the last decades of the 18th century, was one of the central components of middle-class culture. Carlo Goldoni’s (1707–93) Mémoires de M. Goldoni pour servir à l’histoire de sa vie et à celle de son théâtre, dédiées au roi (written in 1783–84, published in Paris, 1787). The Memoirs are divided into three volumes: the first covers the period from the birth of the writer until his return to Venice, the second presents the theory of his theatre, and the third describes his life at the

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French court. Venetian autobiographies were often written for very specific reasons: Goldoni wrote primarily to present and explain his theatrical reforms; the comedy writer Carlo Gozzi (1720–1806) wrote his Memorie inutili (Useless Memoirs) above all to oppose his aristocratic ideology to the middle-class ideology of Goldoni, and also to defend himself against the charges made against him in the Narrazione apologetica of Gratarol, published in Stockholm in 1779. He began to write his memoirs in 1780, and published them in 1797–98. Lorenzo da Ponte (1749–1838), known today chiefly as Mozart’s librettist, wrote his Storia compendiosa della vita di Lorenzo da Ponte essentially to defend himself. (It was published in abridged form in New York in 1807, and republished in an extended form as Memorie di Lorenzo da Ponte in 1823–27; translated as Memoirs.) In the Puritan milieu of his new American fellowcitizens he was charged with a dilettantish past as a society man who had worked in the theatre. The romantic adventurer Giacomo Casanova concludes the group of French-Venetian autobiographies with his Histoire de ma vie (History of My Life), written, as the author declares, with the chief aim of reliving, in the tiredness of illness and of old age, the joys, the vitality, and the search for the pleasures of his youth. The narrative goes from the birth of the author (1725) to 1774. Casanova is the only one in this category who writes about his life without specific, explicit aims. Yet he is also a transitional figure. With his philosophical exploration of memory, he opens the third trend – the period of the great, modern Italian autobiography. The other great autobiography of the last years of the century comes from the dramatist Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803), whose Vita appeared posthumously in 1806; but with him we are already in the changing autobiographic styles of the 19th century. When he began to write his Vita in 1790, he considered himself above all an author of great tragedies and the premier poet of modern Italy, one who was compared with Corneille and even Racine. He grudgingly committed himself to the personal form of writing in order to satisfy readers curious to know the genesis of his great theatrical works and especially to deter publication of superficial biographies, which, for reasons of publicity, often preceded pirate editions of comedies and tragedies. This was an aristocratic autobiographer who renewed the genre – in its form, in its goals. The Vita of Alfieri is a veritable epic whose auto-didactic hero insists on his right to subjectivity and to silence, and who recounts exploits that range from linguistic conquests (the author, from Piedmont and thus Francophone, learned Italian and ancient Greek in order to “forget the French”) to horse training, to the seduction of women, and finally, to the mastery of his art. Anna Iuso Pérette-Cécile Buffaria

Further Reading Adams, Henry Packwood, The Life and Writings of Giambattista Vico, London: Allen and Unwin, 1935 Anglani, Bartolo, Le passioni allo specchio: autobiografie goldoniane, Rome: Kepos, 1996 Bonore, Ettore, Letterati, memorialisti e viaggiatori del Settecento, Milan: Ricciardi, 1951 Buffaria, Pérette-Cécile, “La conjugaison de la fiction et du réel dans l’écriture autobiographique de Vittorio Alfieri: l’écho des

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Confessions de Jean-Jacques Rousseau” in “Testo e contesto”, Heteroglossia, 4 (1992): 485–502 Caputo, Rino and Matteo Monaco (editors), Scrivere la propria vita: l’autobiografia come problema critico e teorico, Rome: Bulzoni, 1997 Di Francia, Letterio, Letture autobiografiche di scrittori dell’età moderna, revised by Luigi Baldacci, Florence: Sansoni, 1978 D’Intino, Franco, L’autobiografia moderna: storia, forme, problemi, revised edition, Rome: Bulzoni, 1998. Ferrone, Vincenzo, The Intellectual Roots of the Italian Enlightenment: Newtonian Science, Religion, and Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1995 Forti-Lewis, Angelica, Italia autobiografica, Rome: Bulzoni, 1986 Guglieminetti, Marziano, “L’Ottantanove e la costituzione dell’io autobiografico” in “Les Ecrivains italiens et la Révolution française”, Revue des Etudes Italiennes, 38/1–4 (1992): 155–64 Lindon, John (editor), “Italian Autobiography from Vico to Alfieri (and beyond)”, supplement of Italianist, 17 (1997) Melon, Edda (editor), “L’effetto autobiografico”, in Variétés, 3, Turin: Tirrenia Stampatori, 1990 Pappalardo, Ferdinando (editor), Scritture di sé: autobiografismi e autobiografie, Naples: Liguori, 1994 Parati, Graziella, Public History, Private Stories: Italian Women’s Autobiography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996

Italy: 17th- and 18th-Century Diaries and Letters The 17th and 18th centuries gave rise in Italy to an explosion of personal writings. This abundance of texts bore the mark of a particular kind of subjectivity that was accompanied by more general reflections on the relationship between private and public life, between the intimate and the official, the true and the false. If the 17th century is undoubtedly characterized by the rise of ‘diary’ forms (periodical, public, intimate, and daily), the 18th century is more taken with the epistolary genre. All aspects of cultural life became the subject-matter of missives. To write a letter to a privileged correspondent, all the while thinking of posterity or at least of a larger public, resulted in an epistolary genre that was no longer limited to the simple expression of the self, or even of issues coming out of private life, but which rather became a kind of public debate. In the end the particular recipient was often there simply to affirm the expression of a singular identity in the midst of the collective. Individual opinions on society or mores gained their credibility from their appearance in epistolary form, addressed to a public that was both singular and plural. The letter writers made use of several registers. Francesco Algarotti (1712–64), son of rich Venetian merchants, received an education characteristic of the enlightened classes of the 18th century in Italy. His principal correspondents were women (Il neutonianesimo per le donne, 1737), intellectuals, and members of the upper classes. His résumé of a trip to Russia in 1738–39, written as a series of letters, was addressed to Lord Hervey, and he went on to add four more epistles to Scipione Maffei (Sulla Sassonia). His description of landscape, urbanism, institutions, social classes, government, etc.) is interspersed with details of private, moral, or ethical life. Saverio Bettinelli (1718–1808) is known especially for his Lettere virgiliane (1757). This most lively and original of the works of the Jesuit is composed of private texts and essays on critical ideology, aesthetics, and morality.

Giuseppe Baretti (1719–89) was also a literary traveller. He spent a large part of his life in England, where he settled in 1761 and eventually made his definitive home in 1766. In London he became friends with Samuel Johnson. In his Lettere familiari a’ suoi tre fratelli (1762), the epistolary form is an expedient for giving the reader sumptuous descriptions of trips to Spain and Portugal. In Scelta di lettere familiari (1779), the author uses the pretext of teaching Italian to the English in order to come back to subjects that are dear to him in the cultural and moral fields. The vicissitudes in the life of the Abbé Ferdinando Galiani (1728–87) are also indicative of the Age of Enlightenment in Europe. But his life is, on the surface of things, less agitated than that of Filippo Mazzei (1730–1816). Mazzei was an audacious adventurer who tells in his writings of his voyage throughout North America where he met Benjamin Franklin, of whom he became a friend, supporting the cause of independence in the colonies. After returning to Europe, he participated in the French revolution with Mirabeau and Lafayette. His Mémoires (Memoirs of the Life and Peregrinations) integrate letters and descriptions, and on occasion become a kind of courtroom where the subjectivity of the author determines its decisions. Giuseppe Gorani (1740–1819) and his Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de ma vie (1806–07) offer a vivid example of the permeability of geographic, institutional, social, and stylistic frontiers. This impressive polyglot traveller (French, Italian, German, English, etc.) participated in the Seven Years’ War, and lived in France, Austria, and Portugal. He frequented the company of Enlightenment philosophers, the Verri brothers and Cesare Beccaria. His autobiographical and epistolary writings have much in common with his essays on political history, showing as they do his fervour for revolutionary ideas, and his subsequent disenchantment. That his Lettres sur la Révolution Française par J. Gorani, citoyen français, à son ami Ch. Pougens (1793) were intended for both an intimate / ephemeral and a public audience, the latter with an eye for posterity, is made clear in their title. The intimate diaries (Giornale, 1774–77) of dramatist Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803) were written in French, which was his first language. A native of Piedmont (born in Asti), he only learned to write in Italian as a teenager. The bilingual nature of this text is characteristic of Italian intellectuals and literati who were in the 18th century in search of a political, cultural, and linguistic identity. Linguistic variations of personal writings and testimonies were often part and parcel of their existential circumstances and changes in fortune, and of the ideological and geographical oscillations in their lives. At first the French revolution acted like a catalyst for their hopes, and attracted a good number of intellectuals, liberal nobles, scholars, and even fiercely independent aristocrats such as Alfieri. But soon the excesses of the reign of Terror put off these new adherents. In general these diarists and correspondents conceived of a relative lack of aesthetic distinction between the letter and the diary. A kind of coherence presides; when it happens that these diaristcorrespondents reproduce or cite a letter (received or sent) in their diaries or vice versa, it is in the manner of supplying more information or a more convincing argument to their readers, without self-consciousness about mixing genres. Pérette-Cécile Buffaria translated by Jane Blevins-Le Bigot

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Further Reading Alfieri, Vittorio, Giornale e lettere scelte, edited by Walter Binni, Turin: Einaudi, 1949 Anglani, Bartolo, “Giuseppe Gorani e le tentazioni dell’autobiografia: dai Mémoires al romanzo” in Scritture di sé: autobiografismi e autobiografie, edited by Ferdinando Pappalardo, Naples: Liguori, 1994 Barenghi, Mario, “L’io e la memoria” in Dalla metà del Settecento all’Unità d’Italia, vol. 3 of Manuale di letteratura italiana: storia per generi e problemi, edited by Franco Brioschi and Costanzo Di Girolamo, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1995 Buffaria, Pérette-Cécile, “Thèmes et variations épistolaires de l’écriture autobiographique: Alfieri et Louis XVI”, Lectures (Bari), 24 (1989): 145–54 Buffaria, Pérette-Cécile, “Apories autobiographiques chez Ugo Foscolo”, Chroniques Italiennes, 61 (2000): 79–84 Corsetti, Luigi and Renzo Grado (editors), Bibliografia su Filippo Mazzei, avventuriero della libertà, Poggio a Caiano: Centro Iniziativa Culturale “Filippo Mazzei”, 1993 Di Francia, Letterio, Letture autobiografiche di scrittori dell’età moderna, revised by Luigi Baldacci, Florence: Sansoni, 1978 Folena, Gianfranco (editor), “Le forme del diario”, special issue of Quaderni di Retorica e di Stilistica, 2 (1985) Fortini, Franco, Ventiquattro voci per un dizionario di lettere, Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1968 MacDonald, D.L., Poor Polidori: A Critical Biography of the Author of The Vampire, Toronto and Buffalo, New York: University of Toronto Press, 1991 Mazzei, Filippo, Memorie della vita e delle peregrinazioni del fiorentino Filippo Mazzei, 2 vols, edited by Alberto Aquarone, Milan: Marzorati, 1970 Polidori, Gaetano, La Magion del Terrore, edited by Roberto Fedi, Palermo: Sellerio, 1997 Postigliola, Alberto, Gennaro Barbarisi, and Nadia Boccara (editors), Epistolari e carteggi del Settecento: edizioni e ricerche in corso, Rome: Postigliola, 1985 Ricoeur, Paul, Soi-même comme un autre, Paris: Seuil, 1990; as Oneself as Another, translated by Kathleen Blamey, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 Zambrano, Marìa, La confessione come genere letterario, introduced by Carlo Ferrucci, Milan: Mondadori, 1997

Italy: 19th-Century Auto/biography The 19th century was an era of great efflorescence in auto/biographical writing. But this proliferation is distinguishable from most other European currents for the same reasons that characterize the evolution of the rest of Italy’s unique and autonomous literature: as Italy was divided into many small states governed by other countries, there was an intellectual and physical struggle to win the unity and independence of Italy. Consequently, literature (and its autobiographical form) was concentrated on civic engagement, patriotism, and a social, didactic role. In this sense many 19th-century autobiographies waver between literary work, historical testimony, and memoir. A traditional classification in Italian criticism singles out two kinds of autobiographies as prominent: a political and didactic form in northern Italy, and a philosophical one in the south. But this division is only theoretical, and the general outline is much more complex. For example, after the Vita of Vittorio Alfieri (1803), Italian northern autobiography seemed to be open to a style based on that of Rousseau, in which emotion and selfknowledge were the most important elements. But in reality these characteristics soon deteriorated into sentimentalism and a

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certain religiosity. At the same time, among the most significant southern autobiographies we can find some texts which take an explicit political and didactic approach. All these distinctions are based on the analysis of memoirs of important men with public lives, but this outline changes if we also take into account the autobiographies of ordinary people, a form that was becoming more and more common during the 19th century. There are, among these, various kinds of memoirs, with differing approaches: patriotic, artistic, social, catholic, professional. There is also a third category of works: many auto/biographical texts whose most important aim was the formation of a new, modern, social individual and the creation of the middle class. Among the most well-known autobiographies of the Ottocento is Le mie prigioni (1832; My Prisons), by Silvio Pellico, which is the summit of Italian patriotic and religious autobiographical writing. Written in 1832 during his political captivity, Le mie prigioni is the best example of autobiographical work on the exaltation of patriotic faith of the Italian Risorgimento. This text was widely circulated in Italy and translated into various European languages. Among other political writers of memoirs (usually defined in Italy as “patriotic memorialists”) should be mentioned Giuseppe Mazzini (Note autobiografiche), Giuseppe Giusti, Cesare Balbo, Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi, Giuseppe Garibaldi (Memorie, 1859; authorized edition, 1872; Autobiography) and a number of his followers, such as Giuseppe Cesare Abba (Noterelle d’uno dei Mille, translated as Diary of One of Garibaldi’s Thousand), Giuseppe Bandi (I Mille da Genova a Capua), and Giuseppe Guerzoni (Garibaldi). Although they are important figures in Italian political life, the influence exerted by their memoirs is incomparable to that of Pellico. Other great successes of the 19th century include I miei ricordi by Massimo D’Azeglio (1867), an autobiography in which the author observes at close range various Italian milieux, and Le Ricordanze della mia vita (1879), by Luigi Settembrini, a moralistic and didactic text. But among the most important political autobiographies of this century must be mentioned I miei tempi, by Angelo Brofferio, a political, non-religious man who published his memoirs in serial form in a newspaper halfway through the century, and enjoyed an immediate success. Very modern in his narrative structure and by virtue of the particular stress he laid on the intimacy of character, Brofferio sketches at the same time a faithful portrait of Italy from the time of his childhood until the decade in which he writes, the 1860s. Among the artistic memoirs there are some of particular relevance: the Memorie artistiche (1875) of Giovanni Pacini, the Ricordi autobiografici (1857) of Giovanni Dupré, the Ricordi autobiografici di Adamo Tadolini scultore, vissuto tra il 1788 e il 1868 (published only in 1900), and Francesco Hayez’s Le mie memorie (dictated in 1869). But in addition to the autobiographies of politicians, artists, and writers, the 19th century is also the century of professional memoirs in a variety of other fields. One might mention, for example, the Ricordi di Maurizio Bufalini sulla vita e sulle opere proprie (Bufalini was a doctor who published his memoirs in 1875); the autobiography (1878) of Tommaso Vallauri, a Latin scholar; the memoirs of Angelo De Gubernatis (1900), ethnographer and philologist; or the important autobiography of Gaspero Barbera (1883), a publisher. Throughout the century can be seen a progressive diffusion of the practice of

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autobiography, spreading from the aristocratic classes to the middle class, and then reaching even the working class. In fact, in the second half of the century, there are many autobiographies of members of the poorest social classes: artisans, then workers, who often write once they reach a higher social level. Unfortunately critical discussion in Italy thus far has concerned only the most famous autobiographers, but current research trends promise a wider outline of the 19th century auto/biography, and a detailed inventory. Besides being the century that democratized the autobiographical act, the Ottocento also saw a change in autobiographical form, emphasizing the psychological and social construction of the individual, and placing emphasis on childhood. In this sense, during the first third of the century we can already find an important autobiography which, even though partial, introduces new narrative structures which escape the chronological flow of narration to try to reproduce the fragmented nature of childhood experience. It is the Autobiografia of Monaldo Leopardi, published in 1883 but written in 1823, when the author was only 47 years old. Most of the autobiographies mentioned above, along with many of the other existing ones, devote a good deal of space to childhood; one of the most interesting, which closes the century, is Ricordi di infanzia e di scuola, by Edmondo De Amicis (in his Memorie, 1900). An intellectual experiment of the 19th century bears witness to the importance attached to childhood experience. During the second half of the century the writer and journalist Onorato Roux decided to compile an anthology of autobiographical passages of famous Italian men, asking them to write something concerning only their childhoods. This time of life was considered the most significant in representing the personality of the men who, in different fields, were “creating the new Italy”. Roux compiled four volumes of the resulting anthology: Infanzia e giovinezza di illustri italiani contemporanei: memorie autobiografiche di letterati, artisti, uomini politici, patrioti e pubblicisti. A first version of this work was published in 1899, but from 1909 there were a number of publications of the definitive version. Roux’s anthology was not the only example of such investigation in the 19th century. There are other works in which the authors theorize on the function of autobiography as testimony to the importance of the individual in the new, enlightened concept of history, and as the essential component of modern democratic society. Examples include Diamillo Müller’s Biografie autografe ed inedite di illustri italiani di questo secolo (1853), Alessandro D’Ancona’s Autobiografie (1857), Ferdinando Martini’s Il primo passo, note autobiografiche di molti scrittori della seconda metà dell’Ottocento (1882), and Giuseppe Costetti’s Il libro delle confessioni di ventitrè uomini drammatici (1888) and Letture autobiografiche di scrittori dell’età moderna scelte e commentate da Letterio di Francia (1912). Anna Iuso Further Reading Caputo, Rino and Matteo Monaco (editors), Scrivere la propria vita: l’autobiografia come problema critico e teorico, Rome: Bulzoni, 1997 D’Intino, Franco, L’autobiografia moderna: storia, forme, problemi, revised edition, Rome: Bulzoni, 1998 Giorgio, Domenico, Autobiografie meridionali, Naples: Loffredo, 1997

Iuso, Anna, “Il popolo dell’inchiostro. Autobiografi italiani del XIX e XX secolo”, (dissertation), Rome: La Sapienza, 1997 Trombatore, Gaetano and Carmelo Cappuccio (editors), Memorialisti dell’Ottocento, 3 vols., Milan: Ricciardi, 1953–58

Italy: 19th-Century Diaries and Letters The Risorgimento inspired abundant and diverse autobiographical writings, letters, and testimonies. Some of these texts enjoyed a wide readership and were even translated, either because of the notoriety of their author (for political reasons) or because of their own stylistic and thematic qualities. It is worth noting that the events and changes of the Risorgimento (battles, negotiations, expeditions, popular movements, emigration, and the new governmental and national structures) encouraged narratives conscious of the problem of the truth value of experience and of the need to leave written traces of lives perceived as extraordinary, or fundamental. If personal Italian literature of the 18th century was essentially animated by the narration of the development of vocation, the 19th century modified this topos in order to render explicit, with accents that ranged from heroism to intimacy, the new topos of engaged action. The individual felt that he or she participated in the founding of national unity and thus wrote about it. Even the national battle hero Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–82) wrote his life story, in Memorie, as did Giuseppe Mazzini (1808–72), the champion of Italian unity, who left both an extensive autobiography and a rich correspondence. The marks left by texts covered loosely or intimately with the question of national unity in the 19th century are considerable. Among the most evocative or striking life writers were Giuseppe Cesare Abba (1838–1910), who participated in the expedition of the “Thousand” under the leadership of Garibaldi and wrote Da quarto a Volturno: noterelle di uno dei Mille (The Diary of One of Garibaldi’s Thousand), in the form of an intimate diary. Abba would take part in the third war of Italian independence and was also a friend of the writer Giosue Carducci (1835– 1907). Giuseppe Bandi (1834–94) wrote I mille: da Genova a Capua (1902). Eugenio Cecchi (1838–1932) had a more modest output, with his Memorie alla casalinga di un garibaldino (1866). These memoirists were not all professional writers, however. Authors who enjoyed greater success, either because of the heroic or exemplary character of their experiences or because of the stylistic or literary quality of their intimate writings, were Silvio Pellico (1789–1854) in his Le mie prigioni (1832; My Prisons), an edifying narrative for several generations; Luigi Settembrini (1813–76) in his Le ricordanze della mia vita (published posthumously and in an abridged version in 1879), a narrative heavy with lessons of virtue and morality; and Massimo D’Azeglio (1798–1866), who posed with verve and conviction the question of cultural and national identity in his Miei ricordi (published posthumously in 1867; Things I Remember). Last but not least is perhaps the case of Carlo Bini (1806–42) in his Il manoscritto di un prigioniero. Camillo Benso, Conte di Cavour (1810–61), a native of Piedmont, kept, on the other hand, a personal diary throughout his adulthood, principally in French but occasionally in Italian and English. These intimate writings, which he called simply Diari

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(1833–56), are rich in information, not only because of their diverse content, but also because of their form, which evolved in parallel with the various political offices assumed by their author – minister, deputy, agronomist, the forger of national unity, and an enthusiastic proponent of railway development. One of the most original aspects of Cavour’s diary is the reproduction of texts such as letters (sent or received) of all types (affectionate, sentimental, agronomic, scientific, sociological, legislative, etc.), accounts of readings and of seminars and conferences, and notes. But the diaries are also strikingly intimate, creating the sense of peering at once behind the scenes of power into the office of a devoted official, into the intimate life of a passionate man, and into the mind of an insatiable seducer. Furthermore, it is also apparent that the intimate writing derives from a real need for private self-expression, without which public life would be inconceivable for the writer. The polymorphous, privileged space of the Diari cannot be separated from the public institutions that Cavour employed in order to make his work function smoothly. At the end of the 18th century and throughout the 19th, the rise of “writings of the self” infused literature to the point where one finds not only the structures but also the characteristic topoi of diaries and correspondence. This phenomenon cannot be ascribed to cultural chance or to a literary or sociological fashion; it is part and parcel of the artistic, historical, and political issue of national unity and of the question of subject and identity (individual, collective, social, linguistic, sexual). The little-known Carlo Dossi (1849–1910) and his Note azzurre (1912) is exemplary of the osmosis established among various intimate genres – epistolary, autobiographical, and even fictive – in Italy in the 19th century. Several intimate diaries and collections of correspondence from the Risorgimento are now kept in the archives of the Archivio Diaristico Nazional (ADN), created and directed by Severio Tutino and located in Pieve Santo Stefano (San Sepolcro) in north Umbria. The library gives a vivid image of the dimension and diversity of the production of intimate writings (autobiographical, diaries, letters, etc.) that touched all the social classes. This phenomenon is also attested to by the success of the mass of literary works that have an autobiographical infrastructure, or which are written as testimonies, such as Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis by Ugo Foscolo (1798, definitive edition 1802); the Senso, nuove storielle vane (1883, later the basis for the film by Visconti of the same name) by Camillo Boito (1836–1914); Cuore (1886) and La lettera anonima (1895–96) by Edmondo De Amicis (1846–1908); and L’onorevole qualunque e i suoi ultimi diciotto mesi di vita parlamentare (1898) and Il giornalino di Gian Burrasca (1912) by Vamba (pseudonym of Luigi Bertelli, 1858–1920). Pérette-Cécile Buffaria translated by Jane Blevins-Le Bigot Further Reading Bertaux, Daniel, Les Récits de vie perspective ethnosociologique, Paris: Nathan, 1996 Buffaria, Pérette-Cécile, “La Révolution des faits aux mots chez Carlo Dossi” in Soulèvements et ruptures: L’Italie en quête de sa révolution, échos littéraires et artistiques, edited by B. Toppan, Nancy: PRISMI-CSLI, 1998

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Dolfi, Anna (editor), Journal intime e letteratura moderna, Rome: Bulzoni, 1989 Galli Della Loggia, Ernesto, L’identità italiana, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998 Haroche-Bouzinac, Geneviève, L’Epistolaire, Paris: Hachette, 1995 Kaufmann, Vincent, Post Scripts: The Writer’s Workshop, translated by Deborah Treisman, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994 (French edition, 1990) Oliviero, Alberto, Ricordi individuali, memorie collettive, Turin: Einaudi, 1994 Rosset, Clément, Loin de moi: étude sur l’identité, Paris: Minuit, 1999 Trombatore, Gaetano and Carmelo Capuccio (editors), Memorialisti dell’Ottocento, vols 1–2, Milan: Ricciardi, 1953–58

Italy: 20th-Century Autobiography The intimate nature of 20th-century Italian literature is one of its salient characteristics. It is very difficult to trace a history of the autobiographical mode as the genre influences much of the poetry and fiction of the period. Novels were often written in the first person with autobiographical protagonists, with many authors describing personal life experiences. In the early 20th century, a literary review based in Florence, La Voce [The Voice], actively encouraged contributors to cultivate the autobiographical aspects of their writings. Yet, despite the strength of the literary and intellectual autobiographical tradition in modern Italy, autobiographies have also frequently been written by war veterans, politicians, and celebrities. The starting point for any discussion of intellectual autobiography in modern Italy must be historian and philosopher Benedetto Croce, whose thought dominated the first half of the 20th century. Croce was a renowned scholar of the philosophy of fellow Neapolitan Giambattista Vico and modelled his autobiography to a certain extent on Vico’s celebrated Vita scritta da se medesimo (1728; Autobiography). Croce’s Contributo alla critica di me stesso (1918; An Autobiography), translated by Collingwood, is perhaps the only intellectual autobiography mentioned here that is available in English translation. In 1992, the Memorie della mia vita [1966; Memoirs of My Life] were reissued by the Italian Institute for Historical Research along with the diaries and letters of Croce, published to aid research on the life of this important figure. Croce’s daughter, Elena, too wrote an autobiography, L’Infanzia dorata [1964; An Ideal Childhood] in which she portrays life in the philosopher’s household, as well as memoirs of life with her father, Ricordi familiari [1962; Family Memoirs]. And to complete the portrait of Croce’s Naples, one of his students, the distinguished historian Carlo de Frede, has also written a memoir of growing up in the city in an attempt to define the essence of this fascinating metropolis: Lessico napoletano e memoria storica [1996; Neapolitan Lexicon and Historical Memoirs]. Other important autobiographies of the intellectual and literary type include: Emilio Segré, Autobiografia di un fisico [1995; Autobiography of a Physicist]; Aligi Sassu, Un grido di colore: autobiografia [1998; A Splash of Colour: Autobiography]; Indro Montanelli, La stecca nel coro, 1974–1994: una battaglia contro il mio tempo [1995; Singing Off Key in the Choir, 1974–1994: A Fight against My Own Time]; Giovanni Papini, Un uomo finito [1913; A Finished Man]; Piero Jahier, Ragazzo [1919; A Boy];

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Lucianno Bianccirdi, La Vita agra [1962; Rural Life]; Natalia Ginzburg, Lessico familiare [1963; Family Sayings]; Renato Serra, Esame di coscienza di un letterato [1915; Self-Analysis of an Intellectual]; Scipio Slataper, Il mio Carso [1912; My Carso]; Giani Stuparich, Trieste nei miei ricordi [1984; Trieste in My Memories]; Giuseppe Prezzolini, L’italiano inutile [1953; The Useless Italian]; and finally Ardegno Soffici, Ignoto toscano [1909; The Unknown Tuscan]. Two of the most illustrious modern poets have also composed autobiographies in verse: Umberto Saba in Autobiografia [1923; Autobiography] and Giuseppe Ungaretti in Vita di un uomo: tutte le poesie [1969; A Man’s Life: Collected Poems]. Other writers and intellectuals have written autobiographical essays. Important examples of the latter include: Gabriele D’Annunzio Cento e cento e cento pagine del libro segreto di Gabriele D’Annunzio tentato di morire [1935; Hundreds and Hundreds and Hundreds of Pages of the Secret Book of Gabriele D’Annunzio Tempted by Death]; Italo Svevo, Profilo autobiografico [1929; Autobiographical Profile]; Luigi Pirandello, Lettera autobiographica [1913; Autobiographical Letter]; Elio Vittorini, Della mia vita fino a oggi raccontata ai miei lettori stranieri [1949; The Story of My Life to the Present Written for My Foreign Readers]. The devastating effects of two world wars have left an indelible mark resulting in large numbers of personal testimonies, not only by intellectuals but also by individuals who might never have written of their own lives had they not found themselves involved in events of such magnitude. One of the greatest Italian books of this period is an account of Auschwitz. Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo (1947; If This is a Man) has been translated into many languages and is widely recognized as a masterpiece of both Italian literature and of Holocaust narrative. Levi also wrote La tregua (1963; The Truce) in which he describes his voyage from Auschwitz back to Italy after the liberation. Another outstanding personal narrative on the consequences of fascism was written by Carlo Levi (no relation) regarding his years in internal exile in the south of Italy for his public opposition to Mussolini’s government. Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (1945; Christ Stopped at Eboli) describes his experiences of the stark differences between his new surroundings and industrial Turin where he was born. It is a fascinating comment on Italy’s north-south divide. Many Italians who participated in the events of World War II have recently produced autobiographies deemed so important to their authors that they have financed limited publication themselves. In the last year of the 20th century, a spate of these appeared, discovered by the journalist and critic Sergio Romano: Alessandro Cortese de Bosis, In terra di nessuno [1999; In No Man’s Land]; Luchino Revelli-Beaumont, Forse da raccontare [1999; Maybe a Tale to Be Told]; Pietro Santini, Soldati nella guerra senza speranza [1999; Soldiers in the War without Hope]; Giorgio Zanardi, Un soldato, un italiano [1999; A Soldier, an Italian]. Francesco Gnecchi-Rusconi’s When Being Italian was Difficult (also 1999) was published in Milan, but written in English because the author’s grandchildren do not speak Italian. These writers share middle-class origins and strong patriotism, in addition to their wartime experiences, and all but Gnecchi-Rusconi were officers. On account of Italy’s compromised wartime history, these and other memoirs written tend to focus on a personal and sensitive response to the horrors of war, rather than on heroic deeds of

military prowess. Finally, in an interesting postscript on war memoirs, Italian wartime dictator Benito Mussolini wrote (or at least collaborated on . . .) his own life story, My Autobiography. This was produced in an English version only in 1937, most likely as an exercise in political propaganda intended for the British public. A phenomenon of the last century is the transformation of books into objects of mass consumption. It is in this context that one seeks to understand the development of the celebrity autobiography. Sadly, few of these titles live up to the promise of the first Italian celebrity autobiography written by goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini during the Renaissance. By writing or collaborating on autobiographies in English, several famous 20thcentury Italians, such as film director Franco Zefferelli (The Autobiography of Franco Zefferelli, 1986), tenor Beniamino Gigli (The Memoirs of Beniamino Gigli, 1957), and actress Sophia Loren (Living and Loving, 1979) have revealed an awareness of the global marketplace. Jordan Lancaster Further Reading Bo, Carlo, “Polemica della memoria”, Campo di Marte, 1 (1938) Briganti, Paolo, “La cerchia infuocata: per una tipologia dell’autobiografia letteraria italiana del Novecento”, Annali d’Italianistica, 4 (1986): 189–222 d’Antuono, Nicola, Contributi alla storia dell’autobiografia in Italia, Salerno: Laveglia, 1980 Parati, Graziella, Public History, Private Stories: Italian Women’s Autobiography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996 Patti, Samuel J., “Autobiography: The Root of the Italian American Narrative”, Annali d’Italianistica, 4 (1986): 242–48 Portelli, Alessandro, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991 Portelli, Alessandro, L’ordine e gia stato e seguito: Roma, le Fosse Ardeantine, la Memoria, Rome: Danzelli, 1999 Romano, Sergio, “Italia: la febbre dell’autobiografia”, Corriere della Sera (2 January 2000): 29 Viano, Maurizio, “Ecce foemina”, Annali d’Italianistica, 4 (1986): 223–41

Italy: 20th-Century Diaries and Letters The 20th century in Italy was a time of introspection, as witnessed in the flourishing of autobiography and the inwardlooking nature of many literary works. The diaries and letters produced in this period are related to these trends. The author of the bestselling novel Il gattopardo (1958; The Leopard), Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, in his own memoirs of childhood, wrote that: “the state should impose the duty of keeping a diary or of writing one’s memoirs in old age; the material accumulated after three or four generations would have an immense value”. Diaries and letters are primary sources for the historian, especially in the case of the 20th-century emergence of social and private history. Italian life writing of the 20th century thus serves as important source material for understanding the secret history of the resistance during World War II, as well as offering a voice to various socially disadvantaged groups such as children, women, and the poor. The well-defined Italian tradition of intellectual autobiog-

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raphy was further developed in the important personal writings of some of the 20th century’s greatest thinkers. Undoubtedly the most widely read published letters from this period are those of Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), general secretary of the Italian Communist party, written during his imprisonment by the fascist government from 1926 until his death in 1937. Lettere dal carcere (1947; Letters from Prison) are of great historical interest for their astute commentary on Italian politics in the years leading up to World War II, and are also admired for their literary quality. The letters written by Gramsci to his wife, whom he was never to see again, are especially poignant. They belong to the long trend of Italian intellectuals writing from prison (including, most famously, Silvio Pellico (1789–1854) and Pietro Giannone (1676–1748)). The historian and positivist philosopher Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) left not only his autobiography, the Contributo alla critica di me stesso (1915; An Autobiography), but also his diaries, the Taccuini (1992; Notebooks), which were recently published in a limited edition by the Istituto Italiano di Studi Storici in Naples. The Taccuini are a full record of Croce’s diary, previously published only for the years 1943–44 as Quando l’Italia è stata tagliata in due [1947; When Italy Was Cut in Half]. Under the auspices of the Istituto, founded by Croce himself, a vast editorial project is underway to publish the senator’s voluminous correspondence in order to provide scholars with valuable primary sources. In the same strong intellectual tradition we can place Giuseppe Prezzolini’s (1882–1982) three volumes of Diario [Diary], beginning in 1900; Elio Vittorini’s (1908–66) Diario in pubblico [1957; Public Diary]; Carlo Emilio Gadda’s (1893–1973) Giornale di guerra e di prigionia [1955; War and Prison Journal]; and Vittorio Sereni’s (1913–83) lyrics Diario d’Algeria [1947; Algerian Diary]. The literary-historical sensation of 1986 was the publication of an autobiographical letter from the hermetic poet Giuseppe Ungaretti to his friend Giovanni Ansaldo, written and posted on 28 August 1933 in response to a request for a few autobiographical notes to be included in a publication. Also notable is the novelist Cesare Pavese’s diary Il mestiere di vivere: diario 1935–1950 (1952; This Business of Living), which tracks the author’s disillusionment up to his suicide in 1950. Ada Gobetti’s (1902–68) Diario partigiano [1956; Diary of a Partisan] is a significant historical source for the understanding of the Italian resistance. The book is based on a diary kept in secretly coded English in order to save the author if she were to

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fall captive to the Germans or the fascists. The diary covers the period from 10 September 1943 to 26 April 1945, and explains in detail the movements and operations of the resistance in Piedmont, northwest Italy. There are also several collections of letters written with the intention of providing a sociological portrait of the concerns of disadvantaged groups in Italy. These include Il mondo dei vinti [1977; The World of the Oppressed], a collection of farmworkers’ memories collected by Nuto Revelli; Io speriamo che me la cavo [1988; Let’s Just Hope I Make It], a collection of the essays of disadvantaged Neapolitan schoolchildren, gathered by Marcello d’Orta; and Lettera a una professoressa (1967; Letter to a Teacher), another collective work by a group of schoolchildren in rural Tuscany, collected by their teacher, Father Lorenzo Milani. The individuals responsible for collecting and editing these writings are giving a voice to those who would otherwise not be heard. In 1991 Saverio Tutino established the Fondazione Archivio Diaristico Nazionale [National Diary Archive Foundation] in Pieve Santo Stefano, near Florence, with the object of providing a public, national archive for private life writing. The foundation conserves and collects diaries, letters, and memoirs and encourages the production of the same. They are especially important in the compilation of a history of the resistance, feminist movements, wars, and the phenomena of mass emigration. This is a particularly heartfelt task in Italy, where there exists a great interest in popular culture. Historians have turned increasingly to private or social history, and thus written personal testimonials of the kind conserved in the archives are of prime importance to research in Italy. Jordan Lancaster Further Reading d’Antuono, Nicola, Contributi alla storia dell’autobiografia in Italia, Salerno: Laveglia, 1980 Isnenghi, Mario, “Introduzione” in La guerra povera, edited by Giuseppe Ferri and Margherita Ianelli, Florence: Giunti, 1994 Iuso, Anna, “Archivi Autobiografici in Europa” in Archivio Trentino di Storia Contemporanea, 2 (1996): 63–68 Merry, Bruce, “The Literary Diary and Its Place in Italian Literature, with Special Reference to Pavese”, International PEN Bulletin of Selected Books, 23/3 (1972): 50–57 Ricci, Luca, “Introduzione” in Catalogo generale dell’Archivio diaristico nazionale di Pieve Santo Stefano, Archivio Centrale di Beni Archivistici, Ministero di Beni Culturali: Rome (February 2000)

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j Jacobs, Harriet

However, Jacobs’s work does share some common concerns of the slave narrative. The title itself, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, suggests the potential representativeness of the text, that it may stand for the lives of slave girls generally. In the manner of several other narratives, Jacobs not only tells her own story, but also chronicles the ill-treatment of other slaves in her neighbourhood and beyond. Jacobs is also as concerned as any other narrator to document and authenticate her story with the evidence that she and other relatives were bought, sold, and advertised as runaways. Also like other narrators, Jacobs is concerned not to offend her readers, or to have them think her immoral, and she is careful to stress her shame about her extramarital pregnancies, even while she denounces the slavery that necessitated both her fall from grace and her deception of her former master. Incidents is unlike the narratives of many male writers, though, in its emphasis on the agonizing choices family ties create for the slave. Jacobs’s grandmother begs her children and grandchildren not to run away where she will never see them again, and is heartbroken at the escapes of first her son, then Jacobs’s brother, and finally Jacobs herself. There is a sharp contrast here with the individualism of narratives like Frederick Douglass’s, where escape represents a triumphant achievement, and where there is little sense of what may be lost or left behind. Where some narrators link freeing themselves with reclaiming their masculinity, Jacobs’s maternal ties make a pyrrhic victory of freedom without family. This gendered pattern is most marked in “A True Tale of Slavery”, the autobiography that Harriet’s brother, John S. Jacobs, published in 1861 in a London magazine. The brother’s account recasts men as the protagonists of the family story, so that it is their father, not the grandmother, who is the strongest character in the family, and it is John who cares for the welfare of Harriet in the North. John Jacobs is also silent about the sexual persecution which so concerns his sister. The two autobiographies suggest, in their discrepancies, the parts played by genre and by gender in slave narratives, and how unusual Incidents is in both those respects.

1813–1897

American autobiographer Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published under a pseudonym in 1861, was for a long time discredited or ignored in the assumption that it was largely fictional, and probably composed by its editor, the novelist Lydia Maria Child. However, since Jean Fagan Yellin’s painstaking demonstration of the narrative’s veracity and authenticity in 1981, Jacobs’s autobiography has come to be regarded as the most interesting and important American slave narrative produced by a woman. Jacobs describes conditions in slavery in Edenton, North Carolina, in the 1820s and 1830s, and relates how the white doctor who owned her mounted an extraordinarily long, obsessive, and jealous campaign to make her his mistress. To foil this end, and to prevent her children suffering worse ones on a plantation, Jacobs spent seven years hiding in a tiny chamber in her free grandmother’s roof, before she finally escaped to the North. There, constantly dreading recapture, she worked as a nursemaid in the family of the writer Nathaniel Parker Willis, while trying to secure the freedom of her children. Jacobs’s tone is striking in its humility – “I wish I were more competent to the task I have undertaken” – but her text’s frequent use of apostrophe in addresses to the “Reader” and to “ye free men and women of the North” also make it an urgent appeal. Jacobs does not merely portray abuses, she condemns the system that produces them, and at least one contemporary reviewer attacked these frank comments on her own story. Frederick Douglass had described such white distrust of exslaves’ opinions in his My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and Jacobs’s narrative also shares with that text an outspoken critique of racism in the supposedly free North. Incidents also veers between the sentimental and the melodramatic, particularly in its depiction of the sexual obsession of the master Jacobs calls Dr Flint. The introduction, and the editorial assistance of Lydia Maria Child, signal that the book’s likely addressees were women, especially the middle-class Northern women who had made the sentimental novel a bestselling genre in the 1850s. Sentiment and melodrama were staples in such fiction, and Jacobs’s famous closing remark, “Reader, my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage”, suggests that her narrative model was primarily such novels, and not other slave narratives.

Sarah Meer Biography Born in Edenton, North Carolina, United States, 1813, into a slave family. Ran away from her master, Dr James Norcom, 1835. Hid in her grandmother’s garret for seven years and escaped to New York, 1842. Avoided Norcom and slavecatchers by moving to Boston, 1843.

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jacobs

Travelled to England, 1845. Moved to New York, 1846, and to Rochester, 1849. Worked in anti-slavery reading room, Rochester, 1849–50; as nursemaid, 1850. With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law she fled again to Massachusetts to elude her master, 1852; legally defined as a slave until her purchase from Southern owners by Northern friends for the sum of $300 in 1852. Had one daughter and one son with the United States Congressman Samuel Tredwell Sawyer. Published her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, under the pseudonym Linda Brent, 1861. Travelled to London, England, to raise funds for an orphanage in Savannah, 1868. Worked in Alexandria, Edenton, and Savannah during and after the civil war as a nurse and a reformer to improve the economic, health, and social conditions among recently freed slaves. Took part in the foundational meetings of the National Association of Colored Women, Washington, DC, 1896. Died in Washington, DC, 7 March 1897.

Selected Writings “Letter from a Fugitive Slave”, New York Tribune, 1855 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, edited by Lydia Maria Child, 1861; edited by Jean Fagan Yellin, 1987, revised 2000; edited by Valerie Smith, 1988; as The Deeper Wrong (original British edition), 1862

Further Reading Andrews, William L., To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of AfroAmerican Autobiography, 1760–1865, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986 Carby, Hazel V., Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987 Garfield, Deborah M. and Rafia Zafar, Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: New Critical Essays, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986 Jacobs, John S., “A True Tale of Slavery”, The Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation, (7, 14, 21, 28 February 1861) Mills, Bruce, “Lydia Maria Child and the Endings to Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, American Literature, 64/2 (1992): 255–72 Mullen, Harryette, “Runaway Tongue: Resistant Orality in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Our Nig, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Beloved” in The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Century America, edited by Shirley Samuels, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992 Yellin, Jean Fagan, “Written by Herself: Harriet Jacobs’ Slave Narrative”, American Literature, 53/3 (1981): 478–86 Yellin, Jean Fagan, Women & Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1989

James, Alice

1848–1892

American diarist Alice James began writing her journal in 1889, at the age of 40, and concluded it on her death bed three years later. According to her friend Katharine Loring, one of the last things she said was to correct the wording of the final entry. Begun out of a need to relieve the sense of “loneliness and desolation” that she experienced, trapped by illness in the England to which she had sailed to visit her brother Henry in 1884, the journal had developed into the means of clarifying and giving shape and significance to her life story. The satisfaction she felt when, after years of ill health, she was diagnosed as having breast cancer, is explained by the sense of direction and closure it gave her narrative. “One becomes suddenly picturesque to oneself, and one’s wavering

little individuality stands out with a cameo effect”. Alice was the youngest child, and only girl, in a family of five. Her father believed that women, unlike men, lacked “moral consciousness”, existing simply to “love and bless men”, while her mother was celebrated in the family as the epitome of maternal self-effacement, and Alice herself, intelligent but only haphazardly educated, appeared to subscribe unquestioningly to the family ideology. Some passages in the diary suggest a suppressed rivalry with her publicly successful brothers, but, having “fortunately” realized early, as she wrote, that the figure of “abortive rebel” is more “comic than heroic”, any claims she makes for herself are couched in defensively ironic language. Her choice of the diary as her medium of communication is, in itself, typical of her, in its apparent artlessness and secrecy combined with the actual self-assertion implicit in keeping such a record. Like many diarists, James occasionally addresses an implied reader. In her case this is “Dear Inconnu”, consciously defined as male. Much of the journal is a humorous and apparently spontaneous, though actually carefully crafted, account of people, events, and the social and political issues of the day. James includes cuttings from newspapers, with her own acerbic comments, and attacks English society, politicians, and the church with satiric wit, while turning an ironic eye also on herself. Her thoughts and speculations are merely “mental flatulence”, and she contrasts them comically with the reality of her enfeebled, middle-class, female body. She also comments with scorn, and perhaps fear, on the self-pity of other women diarists, even her admired George Eliot. “What a lifeless, diseased, self-conscious being she must have been!” In James herself, intense selfconsciousness is combined with equally intense self-deprecation, and with ruthless criticism for all who indulge in “futile whining” or take themselves too seriously. Alongside such comments, and increasingly in the latter part of the journal, James begins to develop her own life story through a series of reminiscences, expressed in vivid images and compelling metaphors. These reminiscences are highly selective, including almost none from the active life she had led between bouts of illness, but depicting an inner life shaped by the deliberate frustration and repression of hopes and aspirations. Life becomes for her “one long flight” from “multi-fold traps”, or a desperate defence “lest the dykes break and the flood sweep in”. Paralysis of body and will, figured as a self-imposed – and yet “imposed upon me” – straitjacket, is her defence against violent impulse or total disintegration. It is only as she becomes aware of its impending close, however, that James is able to visualize her story in this way. Death reveals what people “stand for”. The way she handles her death will be her life’s achievement, to rank beside her brothers’. Reading the journal after her death, Henry James commented that it showed how Alice’s “tragic health was in a manner the only solution for her of the practical problem of life”. He stopped short of further analysis, and Alice herself, typically, avoided any explicit conclusions. The diary format permitted her to tell her story in an elliptical, nonsequential way, while disclaiming “all personal concern” in it. What did it matter what forces had shaped the living subject, as one became “absorbed in the supreme interest of watching the outline and the tracery as the lines broaden for eternity”? Katharine Loring, following what she believed to be Alice’s wishes, had four copies of the diary privately printed in 1894. Its

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reception in the James family was cautious, but a highly edited version was published in 1934 as Alice James, Her Brothers – Her Journal, and raised considerable interest. The complete version did not appear until 1964. Janet Bottoms Biography Born in New York, 7 August 1848; sister of the novelist Henry James (q.v.) and the philosopher William James. Her father was the theologian, philosopher, and writer Henry James Snr. Educated at home by tutors. Suffered from variously diagnosed illnesses from the age of 15, which were unsuccessfully treated; her education was interrupted, and her mental health also deteriorated. Became suicidal and had breakdown, 1878, after which she suffered from recurrent depressive illness. Father died, 1882. Went to Europe with her close friend Katharine Loring and her sister, 1884. Began writing diary, 1889. Lived in London and Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, as an invalid, never returning to the US. Diagnosed with breast cancer, 1891. Died in London, 6 March 1892.

Selected Writings Alice James, Her Brothers – Her Journal, edited by Anna Robeson Burr, 1934; as The Diary of Alice James, edited by Leon Edel, 1964 The Death and Letters of Alice James: Selected Correspondence, edited by Ruth Bernard Yeazell, 1981

Further Reading Bottoms, Janet, “Writing Herself: The Diary of Alice James” in The Uses of Autobiography, edited by Julia Swindells, London and Bristol, Pennsylvania: Taylor and Francis, 1995 Strouse, Jean, Alice James: A Biography, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980; London: Jonathan Cape, 1981

James, Henry

1843–1916

American / British novelist and autobiographer Henry James’s autobiography consists of three volumes written late in his life: A Small Boy and Others (1913), Notes of a Son and Brother (1914), and The Middle Years (1917). The books pursue significant moments from the past, even when those moments are as outwardly trivial as a chance remark, or the sound of a newspaper being folded. In A Small Boy and Others, James speaks of the richness of the writing process: “to recover anything like the full treasure of scattered, wasted circumstance was at the same time to live over the spent experience itself, so deep and rich and rare”. In Notes of a Son and Brother, James suggests that the “recoveries and reflections” of the autobiography are joined upon the “fine silver thread” of the theme of his own developing imagination, “fed by every contact and every apprehension, and feeling in turn every motion and every act”. James’s developing imagination encountered many dialectically opposed forces. It was his “complex fate” to have been caught, imaginatively and physically, between America, “the small warm dusky homogeneous New York world of the mid-century”, and Europe, where his family’s rented house in Geneva was old, and somehow deep: “depth, depth upon depth, was what came out for me at certain times”. William James, the elder brother who seemed to succeed in everything to which he turned his attention, provides another source of tension within the autobiography, while Henry’s younger brother, Wilky, fought with distinction in the American civil war. Henry James

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presents himself as the young man who was convinced he could not “do things”, suspended between the brilliance of the elder brother and the sociability and verve of the younger. The autobiography maintains objectivity and perspective through James’s presentation of himself as narrator. The reader witnesses him in the act of recalling the past: “the more I squeeze the sponge of memory, the more its stored secretions flow” or “it’s like putting one’s ear, doctor-fashion, to the breast of time”. In few other autobiographies of its era is the sense of the narrator’s presence so strong. James’s is an autobiography of perceptions – of tableaux suddenly floodlit – and these usually contain a dual emphasis: the original scene and feeling, and the reviving, exploring, testing force of the narrator’s enquiry. James’s extraordinary late style, where each sentence advances to its conclusion through a series of weighty qualifying clauses and phrases, allows brilliant metaphors to gleam suddenly through the slowly refining and qualifying syntax, almost as the individual remembered scenes gleam through the mass of past experience. The paintings in the Louvre “gather there into a vast deafening chorus”, and a return to Cambridge, Massachusetts, feels like an astringent “mouth-rinse” after the delights of Europe. The distance between the narrator and the protagonist gradually narrows until, early in The Middle Years, the two seem to merge. James arrives at Liverpool in March 1869 as a young author on the brink of success. At breakfast in his hotel he has a heady sense of “recognition”; everything he had witnessed forms part of a massive pattern: “it represented at once a chain stretching off to heaven knew where … my life [has] veritably consisted but in the prolongation of that act [of recognition]”. Notes of a Son and Brother includes a surprising number of William James’s letters, supplemented by letters from Henry James senior. It concludes with 40 pages of letters from Henry James’s much-loved cousin Minny Temple, who had died at a young age, and whom he had used as a model for Millie Theale in The Wings of the Dove (1902). James scholars have found the material in Notes of a Son and Brother fascinating; in particular, Tamara Follini has found its family correspondence a “Pandora’s box” of revelations, while Alfred Habegger has explored “Henry James’s Rewriting of Minny Temple’s Letters”. As James M. Cox points out, many readers have also been intrigued by two mysterious episodes in this generally poised and assured autobiography. The first is the vividly remembered nightmare described in A Small Boy and Others, in which James pursues a spectre through the Galerie d’Apollon of the Louvre. The second is recounted in Notes of a Son and Brother, and involves the “horrid if even an obscure hurt” James suffered in an accident at the time of the civil war and the way its seriousness was dismissed by a famous Boston surgeon. The dream confrontation with the threatening spectre (on whom James turns the tables by means of an unexpected attack) is set in the very place where he had determined to become an artist. It has been read, variously, as a battle between the two halves of the writer himself, as a symbol of the struggle between Henry and his brother William, and as an image of the act of autobiography – confronting and “besting” the past. Even before Leon Edel’s biography cast doubt on the chronology given in James’s own account of his “obscure hurt” (it seems to have occurred after, not before, his visit to the war-wounded), critics had seen the injury as psychological rather than physical, as an adaptation by

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James of the 19th-century myth of the sick artist, and as a metaphorical substitute for his failure to serve in the war. Christopher Ringrose Biography Born in New York, 15 April 1843; younger brother of the philosopher William James, and older brother of the diarist Alice James (q.v.). His father was the theologian, philosopher, and writer Henry James Snr. Educated by various tutors and at the Richard Pulling Jenks School, New York. Met Ralph Waldo Emerson, Washington Irving, and William Makepeace Thackeray. Travelled to Europe with his family, studying with tutors in Geneva, London, Paris, Boulogne, and Bonn, 1855–58 and 1859–60. Lived in Newport, Rhode Island, 1860–62; prevented from serving in the Union army during the civil war because of a back injury. Studied at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1862–63, but left to pursue a writing career. Moved with his family to Boston, 1864. Contributed to Nation and Atlantic Monthly, 1866–69. Toured Europe, 1869–70, then returned to Cambridge; art critic for Atlantic Monthly, 1871–72. Lived in Europe, in Britain, Paris, and Rome, 1872–74. Returned to Cambridge, 1875, then moved to Paris, where he contributed to the New York Tribune, 1875–76. Settled in England, 1876. Wrote his most successful early novels in quick succession: The American (1877), The Europeans (1878), Daisy Miller (1879), which established his reputation, and The Portrait of a Lady (1881). Made two journeys to the United States, early 1880s, when his parents died. Wrote books with English themes, such as What Maisie Knew (1897). Lived in London until 1898, then at Lamb House in Rye, Sussex. Published the popular ghost story The Turn of the Screw, 1898. Wrote his three late masterpieces, The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904). Visited the United States, 1904–05. Became seriously ill, 1909. With his brother, William, visited Germany, 1909, then the United States, where William died, 1910. Fell ill again, 1913. Became a British citizen, 1915. Awarded the Order of Merit, 1916. Died in London, 28 February 1916.

Selected Writings Transatlantic Sketches, 1875; revised as Foreign Parts, 1883 Hawthorne (biographical study), 1879; edited by William M. Sale Jr, 1956 The Diary of a Man of Fifty, and A Bundle of Letters, 1880 Portraits of Places, 1883 A Little Tour in France, 1884 Partial Portraits (biographical studies), 1888 William Wetmore Story and His Friends (biographical study), 2 vols, 1903 A Small Boy and Others (autobiography), 1913; edited by Frederick W. Dupee in Henry James: Autobiography, 1956 Notes of a Son and Brother (autobiography), 1914; edited by Frederick W. Dupee in Henry James: Autobiography, 1956 The Middle Years (autobiography), edited by Percy Lubbock, 1917; edited by Frederick W. Dupee in Henry James: Autobiography, 1956 The Letters of Henry James, edited by Percy Lubbock, 2 vols, 1920 (editor) The Letters of William James, 2 vols, 1920 Three Letters to Joseph Conrad, edited by Gerard Jean-Aubry, 1926 Letters of Henry James to Walter Berry, 1928 Letters of Henry James to A.C. Benson and Auguste Monod, edited by E.F. Benson, 1930 Theatre and Friendship: Some James Letters, edited by Elizabeth Robins, 1932 The Notebooks of Henry James, edited by F.O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, 1947 James and Robert Louis Stevenson: A Record of Friendship and Criticism, edited by Janet Adam Smith, 1948 James and H.G. Wells: A Record of Their Friendship, Their Debate on the Art of Fiction, and Their Quarrel, edited by Leon Edel and Gordon N. Ray, 1958 The Art of Travel: Scenes and Journeys in America, England, France, and Italy from the Travel Writings, edited by Morton Dauwen Zabel, 1958 The Complete Notebooks of Henry James, edited by Leon Edel and

Lyall H. Powers, 1987 (includes fragment “The Turning Point of My Life”) Letters, edited by Leon Edel, 4 vols, 1974–84; abridged as Henry James: Selected Letters, 1987 Selected Letters of Henry James to Edmund Gosse, 1882–1915: A Literary Friendship, edited by Rayburn S. Moore, 1988 Henry James and Edith Wharton: Letters 1900–1915, edited by Lyall H. Powers, 1990 The Correspondence of Henry James and Henry Adams, 1877–1914, edited by George Monteiro, 1992 The Correspondence of William James, edited by Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley, 1992– (includes correspondence from Henry James) Collected Travel Writings (Library of America edition), 2 vols, 1993 Traveling in Italy with Henry James, edited by Fred Kaplan, 1994 Letters, Fictions, Lives: Henry James and William Dean Howells, edited by Michael Anesko, 1997 William and Henry James: Selected Letters, edited by Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley, 1997 Letters from the Palazzo Barbaro, edited by Rosella Mamoli, 1998 Bravest of Women and Finest of Friends: Henry James’s Letters to Lucy Clifford, edited by Marysa Demoor and Monty Chisholm, 1999 Dear Munificent Friends: Henry James’s Letters to Four Women, edited by Susan E. Gunter, 1999 Henry James: A Life in Letters, edited by Philip Horne, 1999

Further Reading Alvarez, Maria-Antonia, “Henry James’s New Approach to the Autobiographical Genre: The Growing Consciousness of a Small Boy”, Texas Review, 18/1–2 (1997): 59–68 Bell, Millicent, “Henry James and the Fiction of Autobiography”, Southern Review, 18/3 (1982): 463–79 Cox, James M., “Henry James: Self-Interest as Autobiography” in Studies in Autobiography, edited by James Olney, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988 Derrick, Scott S., “A Small Boy and the Ease of Others: The Structure of Masculinity and the Autobiography of Henry James”, Arizona Quarterly, 45/4 (1989): 25–56 Dupee, Frederick W., introduction in Autobiography by James, edited by Dupee, London: W.H. Allen, and New York: Criterion, 1956 Eakin, Paul John, “Henry James’s ‘Obscure Hurt’: Can Autobiography Serve Biography?”, New Literary History, 19/3 (1988): 675–92 Edel, Leon, Henry James (biography), Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, and London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1953–72 (especially volume 5) Follini, Tamara, “Pandora’s Box: The Family Correspondence in Notes of a Son and Brother”, Cambridge Quarterly, 25/1 (1996): 26–40 Habegger, Alfred, “Henry James’s Rewriting of Minny Temple’s Letters”, American Literature, 58/2 (1986): 159–80 Halperin, John, “Henry James’s Civil War”, The Henry James Review, 17/1 (1996): 22–29 Kirby, David, “Henry James: Art and Autobiography”, Dalhousie Review, 52/4 (1972–3): 637–44 Sayre, Robert, The Examined Self: Benjamin Franklin, Henry Adams, Henry James, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1964

Jameson, Anna Brownell

1794–1860

Irish / English prose writer Anna Brownell Jameson wrote three books containing autobiographical elements: a fictionalized travel journal, the Diary of an Ennuyée (1826); a travel book containing journal entries that examine both her own experiences and those of the Canadian Indians, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838); and a personal reminiscence of her childhood, “A Revelation of Childhood” (1854). Throughout her life she worked and sought

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ways to make money to support herself and her family, often using her own experiences as the basis for her published works. Nowhere in her self-writing does Jameson speak of her own extraordinary achievements. While The Diary remains a fictionalized account of her experiences, her other works attempt to use her experiences to examine the lives of other people. Jameson created The Diary of an Ennuyée under the influence of Madame de Staël’s Corinne, or, Italy (1807) and Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812). She assembled a unique amalgam of her travel journals and art criticism combined with hints of a tragic love story. The “editor” writes in a final note that the author died at 26 and was buried in a European monastery. To the modern reader, a melancholy persona (what the editor refers to as “a real picture of natural and feminine feeling”) seems tacked on to the experiences of a vital and intellectually alert young lady, whose development provides the main interest of the work. Jameson used her own travel experiences, but with a twist on her own age and situation, in order to shape a work that combines nonfiction and fiction. Anna Brownell Murphy had met Robert Jameson early in her life and they became engaged. She feared that they would not live happily together, so she broke off the engagement and took a post as a governess with a family travelling to Europe. When she returned to England she first took another governess post and then married the persistent Jameson in 1825. For most of their marriage, they lived apart. In 1833 Jameson was appointed attorney-general of Upper Canada and hoped to become vice-chancellor. Consequently Anna joined him in Canada in 1836 and returned to England in 1837. In Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada she presents her experiences in Canada in the form of “‘fragments’ of a journal addressed to a friend”. Circumstances surrounding her trip may be pieced together from her letters. Her reunion with her husband was not successful, and when she left him to travel through the wilds of Canada, they had come to an agreement to live separately. When she arrived in Toronto, Anna Jameson found her surroundings bleak, and even a visit to Niagara Falls proved disappointing. Her spirits were wearied and her fingers and ink frozen. She survived with the stimulation of translating German works into English, her “Winter Studies”, but, as she wrote to a friend, “it is after all a means of calm and not of consolation or happiness”. With “Summer Rambles”, Jameson comes into her own, delighted by her freedom of movement and enraptured by the natural beauty of the country. A second trip to Niagara Falls left two impressions in her fancy: “that of the sublime and terrible, and that of the elegant and graceful”. She describes her experiences on her travels from Toronto to Sault Ste Marie, with particular reference to the generally degraded state of the Indians and the place of the Indian woman in society. In addition, she relates the folk-tales and life stories that she has been told. The highlights of her travels are her friendships with a halfIndian woman and her Chippewa mother, and her canoeing at the Sault Ste Marie falls, after which she is baptized with a Chippewa name signifying her rebirth. According to Marian Fowler, Jameson’s travels in Canada furthered her development into a feminist who was publicly committed to bettering the station of women. On her return to England Jameson wrote articles on the status of English women and encouraged younger feminists in their battle for women’s suffrage.

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“A Revelation of Childhood” is an essay taken from a letter of Jameson’s in which she generalizes from her own childhood. She feels that she can use her own life between the ages of five and ten as an example to benefit all children because her experiences were typical and not exceptional. She remembers vividly the fears of her own childhood and the unnecessary suffering. Jameson believes children have acute perceptions and permanent memories. Adult awareness of these facts could ease that time for “of all the wrongs and anomalies that afflict our earth, a sinful childhood, a suffering childhood, are among the worst”. It is in this short work that Jameson comes closest to examining her own experiences and their influence on herself. Dorothy Mermin refers to The Diary as an example of the way in which Victorian women show self-doubt in their writings at the inception of their literary careers. She considers how Jameson denigrates herself and her work in order to underplay her own ambition and ability. By presenting Winter Studies and Summer Rambles as a travel journal, Jameson accomplishes the same purpose. She retains the journal format since, “I have been obliged to leave the flimsy thread of sentiment to sustain the facts and observations loosely strung together”, and yet includes no mention of anything as personal as her relationship with her husband. Judith Johnston comments that through her studies and rambles Jameson was able to explore and interpret two lands – Germany and Canada – and women’s role in socialization and civilization. Bina Friewald comments on the feminine nature of Jameson’s writing: her career was “strongly marked by a commitment to write ‘as a woman’ for and about women, a commitment to writing, as she put it, ‘with a reference to my sex’”. In Fowler’s view Jameson’s voyage through Ontario “is a metaphor for a much more daring psychological one into unknown areas beyond sex stereotyping and society’s artificial fences”. As in her “A Revelation of Childhood”, Jameson describes her own experiences, and uses them in an attempt to better the place of the disadvantaged, whether the Indians of Canada or the children and women of England. Abigail Burnham Bloom Biography Born Anna Brownell Murphy in Dublin, Ireland, 17 May 1794. Her father, D. Brownell Murphy, was a talented miniaturist. Moved to England with her family, 1798. Largely self-educated. Went to work as a governess to the family of the Marquis of Winchester to help with the family finances at the age of 16. Became engaged briefly to Robert Jameson, a lawyer, 1821. Travelled to France and Italy as a governesscompanion to a wealthy family and kept a diary (published anonymously as A Lady’s Diary; as Diary of an Ennuyée, 1826). Resumed relationship with Jameson and married him, 1825. Settled in London. Separated from Jameson, 1829 (he moved to Dominica and later Canada, where he was appointed attorney-general in 1833). Stayed in London, maintaining a diary, learning to play the guitar, and cultivating a wide circle of literary friends. Published biographical books about women, including Memoirs of the Loves of the Poets (1829), Memoirs of Celebrated Female Sovereigns (1831), and Characteristics of Women (1832). Travelled to Germany, making further literary and artistic friendships, 1833. Published Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad, 1834. Joined her husband in Canada, 1836–38; wrote Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838). Returned to London and established a career as a writer, publishing translations, poetry, articles in journals, including art criticism for the Athenaeum, and museum guidebooks. Travelled to Italy to collect material for her book Sacred and Legendary Art, 1847. Ended friendship with Lady Byron, widow of the poet, after a quarrel, 1853. Husband died, making no provision for her in his will, 1854:

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supported financially by a royal pension and an annuity raised by friends. Became interested in the Sisters of Charity, a welfare organization, and travelled abroad to research the institution. Involved in the feminist movement of the 1850s, associating with activists such as Adelaide Proctor, Bessie Rayner Parkes, and Barbara Bodichon. Founder-member of the Society for the Promotion of Employment for Women, and instrumental in establishment of the Englishwoman’s Journal, 1850s. Died in London, 17 March 1860.

Selected Writings Diary of an Ennuyée (autobiographical fiction), 1826; reprinted in Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad, 1834 (originally titled A Lady’s Diary) Memoirs of Celebrated Female Sovereigns (biographical studies), 2 vols, 1831 The Romance of Biography, or, Memoirs of Women Loved and Celebrated by Poets, from the Days of the Troubadors to the Present Age (biographical studies), 2 vols, 1837 Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (travel journal), 3 vols, 1838; selections edited by Clara Thomas, 1965 “A Revelation of Childhood” (reminiscences) in A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies, Original and Selected, 1854 (reprinted 1955) Anna Jameson: Letters and Friendships (1812–1860), edited by Mrs Steuart Erskine, 1915 Letters of Anna Jameson to Ottilie von Goethe, edited by G.H. Needler, 1939

Further Reading Fowler, Marian, The Embroidered Tent: Five Gentlewomen in Early Canada: Elizabeth Simcoe, Catharine Parr Traill, Susanna Moodi, Anna Jameson, Lady Dufferin, Toronto: Anansi, 1982 Friewald, Bina, “‘Femininely speaking’: Anna Jameson’s Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada” in A Mazing Space: Writing Canadian, Women Writing, edited by Shirley Neuman and Smaro Kamboureli, Edmonton, Alberta: Longspoon Press, 1986 Johnston, Judith, Anna Jameson: Victorian, Feminist, Woman of Letters, Aldershot, Hampshire and Brookfield, Vermont: Scolar Press, 1997 Macpherson, Gerardine, Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson by Her Niece, London: Longmans Green, and Boston: Roberts, 1878 Mermin, Dorothy, Godiva’s Ride: Women of Letters in England, 1830–1880, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993 Moers, Ellen, Literary Women, New York: Doubleday, 1976; London: W.H. Allen, 1977 Sanders, Valerie, The Private Lives of Victorian Women: Autobiography in Nineteenth-Century England, Brighton, Sussex: Harvester, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1989 Thomas, Clara, Love and Work Enough: The Life of Anna Jameson, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, and London: Macdonald, 1967

Japan: Heian Period 800–1200 The outpouring of life writing in Japan’s Heian period (strictly 794–1185) produced works in new prose forms that soon took on the status of classics. These early classics, most written in Japanese using the newly developed native kana script rather than Chinese characters, were to serve as models and inspiration for Japanese writers for centuries to come. Japan shared with China the Confucian view that denigrated fiction and privileged writings that were truthful, based on real persons or events. Consequently, writers strove for verisimilitude even in obviously fabricated works such as prose tales and poetry. This insistence on authenticity, and the conflation of

author and narrating voice, remained salient characteristics in Japanese letters through the years. Nikki bungaku – literally “diary literature” but more accurately literary memoir – dominates the Heian literary prose scene and differs significantly not only from familiar Western notions of the genre but also from Chinese models. Diaries written in Chinese by Japanese authors date from the 9th century, such as the monk Ennin’s voluminous record in Chinese of his travels to China, Nittπ guhπ junrei gyπki (838–47; The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law). While important historically, these often dry recountings of names, dates, and events are not particularly literary, or particularly personal. By contrast, literary memoirs, usually composed in kana, explore the inner, emotional life of their authors. The native orthography, referred to as the onna-de or “woman’s hand”, was considered not only feminine but private, suitable to the musings of the spirit, while Chinese was gendered masculine and considered appropriate for more public, official writings. Significantly, most literary diarists of the time were women recounting their lives at court. Nikki little resemble Western notions of the diary. They often move freely from first- to third-person narration and are occasionally written entirely in the third person. Most are carefully crafted, probably composed after the described events occurred from notes or poems recorded at the time. Consequently, they frequently abandon the daily entry structure and make broad use of traditional waka poetry to drive the narration. The earliest extant literary memoir is the poet Ki no Tsurayuki’s Tosa nikki (c.935; The Tosa Diary), a record in kana of a return by ship to the capital from the provinces. Tsurayuki writes the diary as if he were a woman, beginning “I intend to see if a woman can write one of those diaries men are said to write” (McCullough’s translation). Although he relies on almost daily diary entries, as writers of Chinese-style travel diaries or official journals do, Tsurayuki’s adoption of the female voice and the “woman’s hand” allows him to tell his own tale – and evidence suggests that the work is autobiographical – in his native language, exploring his inner life through the female persona he creates. Other important nikki include the Kagerπ nikki of 954– 74 (The Kagero Diary), a three-volume work of scathing honesty and self-revelation composed by Michitsuna no Haha (Michitsuna’s mother, c.936–95) chronicling her unhappy marriage to the statesman Fujiwara no Kaneie and her sense of betrayal at his waning interest in her. Murasaki Shikibu nikki (composed c.1000–10; The Murasaki Shikubu Diary), though fragmentary, holds particular interest as an example of life writing from the author of the monumental prose work The Tale of Genji. References to the tale are scant, but Shikibu paints a vivid scene of life at court including gossip about her sister writers, Sei Shπnagon (966?–1017?) and Izumi Shikibu (fl. 976). Composed entirely in the third person, Izumi Shikibu nikki (date unknown; The Izumi Shikibu Diary) tells of an ill-fated affair with Prince Atsumichi. And Sarashina nikki (date unknown; The Sarashina Diary) records the lifelong obsession of Sugawara Takasue no Musume (Daughter of Sugawara Takasue, born c.1008) with fiction and her experiences as a wife, mother, and finally widow. The importance of nikki bungaku, not just in Heian writing

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but throughout the history of Japanese letters, can hardly be overemphasized. Not only did Heian nikki serve as models for later literary memoirs, they established a tradition of personal, reflective, confessional writing that has become a hallmark of Japanese literature. Sei Shπnagon’s Heian masterpiece Makura no sπshi (of c.994–996; The Pillow Book of Sei Shπnagon), an early example of zuihitsu or personal essay, provides a counterpoint to the chronologically constructed nikki. This collection of prose sketches, diary-like entries, and miscellaneous jottings provides keen and often acerbic observation, again in kana, of life at the Heian court, as well as psychological insight into the writer’s experience as a cloistered lady of the court. Throughout, Sei Shπnagon strives to preserve the illusion that the pieces are unedited thoughts recorded just as they occur, providing a genuine, immediate record of the inner life of the author. Heian writers also produced classic examples of biographical writing through rekishi monogatari or historical tales. Eiga monogatari of c.1092 (A Tale of Flowering Fortunes: Annals of Japanese Aristocratic Life in the Heian Period), a 40-volume work in kana, is an encomium to the Fujiwara family focusing on the life of Fujiwara no Michinaga (966–1027), the powerful autocrat, at the height of his fortunes at the Heian court. Its author, probably a lady of the court, eschews Chinese models of historical writing that merely chronicle events to paint a detailed portrait of the personal life of Michinaga and his family. The six-volume ∏kagami (compiled c.1119; The Great Mirror) also focuses on the life of Michinaga but employs the conceit of two ancient narrators, Yotsugi and Shigeki, telling a tale that spans 200 years. While both of these works revolve around the life of one man, they place that life within a context of family and nation, giving those institutions a larger role than individual biographies generally do. In addition, they chronicle the births, illnesses, and deaths, and the political and family maneouvrings that make a life, filling in the personal details left untold in works such as the pre- and early-Heian Rikkokushi (Six National Histories of Japan). Biography plays a vital role in waka poetry of the time as well, since many works derive their interest from the identification of the author with historical figures such as the renowned poet and lover Ariwara no Narihira (825–80) and his female counterpart Ono no Komachi (fl. c.850). Their known (or imagined) biographies were “read” along with their poetry, while at the same time their poetry was read as (auto)biographical, creating their personal and literary fame. These early classics of life writing in Japan’s Heian period established a tradition of personal, introspective writing in the native Japanese language that was to inform Japanese letters up to the present day. Sarah A. Cox Further Reading Bowring, Richard, “The Female Hand in Heian Japan: A First Reading”, New York Literary Forum, 12–13 (1984): 55–62 Carter, Steven D. (editor and translator), Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991 Ennin’s Diary: The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law, translated by Edwin O. Reischauer, New York: Ronald Press, 1955 Izumi Shikibu, The Izumi Shikibu Diary: A Romance of the Heian Court, edited and translated by Edwin A. Cranston, Cambridge,

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Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1969 Keene, Donald, Travelers of a Hundred Ages, New York: Holt, 1989 Keene, Donald, Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century, New York: Holt, 1993 Michitsuna no Haha, The Gossamer Years: The Diary of a Noblewoman of Heian Japan [Kagerπ Nikki], translated by Edward Seidensticker, Tokyo and Rutland, Vermont: C.E. Tuttle, 1964 Michitsuna no Haha, The Kagero Diary: A Woman’s Autobiographical Text from Tenth-Century Japan, edited and translated by Sonja Arntzen, Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1997 Miller, Marilyn Jeanne, The Poetics of Nikki Bungaku: A Comparison of the Traditions, Conventions, and Structure of Heian Japan’s Literary Diaries with Western Autobiographical Writings, New York: Garland, 1985 Murasaki Shikibu, Murasaki Shikibu: Her Diary and Poetic Memoirs, a Translation and Study, translated by Richard Bowring, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1982 ∏kagami, the Great Mirror: Fujiwara Michinaga (966–1027) and His Times, translated by Helen Craig McCullough, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Sarra, Edith, Fictions of Femininity: Literary Inventions of Gender in Japanese Court Women’s Memoirs, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1999 Schalow, Paul Gordon and Janet A. Walker (editors), The Woman’s Hand: Gender and Theory in Japanese Women’s Writing, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996 Sei Shπnagon, The Pillow Book of Sei Shπnagon, translated by Ivan Morris, New York: Columbia University Press, and London: Oxford University Press, 1967 Sugawara Takasue no Musume, As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams: Recollections of a Woman in 11th Century Japan (Sarashina Nikki), translated by Ivan Morris, New York: Dial Press, and London: Oxford University Press, 1971 A Tale of Flowering Fortunes: Annals of Japanese Aristocratic Life in the Heian Period, edited and translated by William H. McCullough and Helen Craig McCullough, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1980 Ki no Tsurayuki, “A Tosa Journal” in Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology, edited and translated by Helen Craig McCullough, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990 Walker, Janet A., “Poetic Ideal and Fictional Reality in the Izumi Shikibu Nikki”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 37 (1977): 135–82 Watson, Burton (translator), Japanese Literature in Chinese, New York: Columbia University Press, 1975

Japan: Medieval Period 1200–1600 One legacy that medieval Japanese left behind is a large amount and multiple kinds of life writings. Many of these writings are important historical documents, while others enjoy high literary esteem. Among the kaleidoscopic world of medieval life writings, one category that is especially valued by modern historians is the “official” diary kept by people holding official posts. The main content of these diaries centres on the management and the related interests of the institutions that the diarists belonged to, and it is also inevitably closely related to the political power centres of the time. Some of these official diaries have multiple authors, since the duty of recording was handed over to the different individuals who succeeded to the positions. For instance, Inryπken Nichiroku [The Daily Record of Inryπken] extended through 21 generations of Zen monks who presided over the leadership of Inryπken, a pseudo-Zen institution created by one of the military shoguns. Even though only the records of two of

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the diarists are extant, one can see two very different people’s perception of their environment. One diarist was business-like and disclosed little about himself other than official duties, while the other recorded the minor details of his daily life, ranging from his occasional illnesses to the poetry parties or performances he attended. This is an important document pertaining to the Zen institutions and their political, cultural, and social activities. Another interesting official diary is Oyudono no ue no nikki [The Diary of the Court Serving Ladies] which spans the midmedieval period to the end of the Edo period. Recorded by the emperors’ serving women, the linguistic style and focus of this diary differ significantly from other records. While men were supposed to write in the formal kanbun style (a curious mix of classical Chinese and Japanese), it was permissible for women to write in hiragana, a Japanese syllabary. The anonymous diarists recorded the daily activities of the imperial family and other court members in hiragana, providing later generations with invaluable information on both life at court and medieval female speech patterns. Court nobles and military personnel kept detailed records of their daily official routines, court etiquette, and important political events. Correspondence and even legal documents were sometimes included. The main purpose of such assiduous efforts was to ensure that their descendents would be familiar with their duties when they assumed official positions. As a source of social prestige and important information, these diaries were a valuable family legacy. Most of the diaries written by court nobles span long periods of time. Sanjπ Nishi Sanetaka (1455–1537) kept a diary that covers more than 60 years, recording events ranging from his personal plight to the chaotic political situation and civil wars. Even though it is written in the kabun style, the strong personal presence and concise literary style has earned Sanetaka Kπki [The Records of Lord Sanetaka] high acclaim in both history and literature alike. Sanetaka’s diary effectively presents the tribulations of a member of the waning court nobility who was tormented by constant warfare and natural disasters, but simultaneously enjoyed the dynamism of the period. Diary writing was not restricted to court officials. Many of the emperors were well versed in poetry and other literary genres. The cloistered emperor Fushimi (1265–1317), for instance, started his diary, Fushimi Tennπshinki [The Diary of Emperor Fushimi], when he was forced to abdicate in favour of his brother. It is believed that he continued writing for more than 20 years, although only a small portion of the diary is extant. The power struggle in the imperial family is a main concern, but other aspects of the diarist’s life are presented as well. In an entry on a rainy night, the emperor reminisced about a court noble who used to read poetry with him, and lamented the noble’s sudden death. Relatively speaking, there were fewer diary accounts written by emperors. Sometimes when they went on a pilgrimage trip or left the palace for a special visit, one of the ministers would compile travel memoirs. Travel memoirs were usually much shorter than diaries, and often included poetry, which was used to express an author’s emotions and sentiments towards the scenery. This genre had a considerable influence on later poets such as Bashπ (1644–94), who wrote several travelogues combining prose and verse. Travelogues of the medieval period often include accounts of the

author’s life, and explain the reasons for the trip: Towazugatari (The Confessions of Lady Nijπ), a retrospective autobiography of a court woman, is a good example. The book is a fascinating account of a strong-willed woman trying to survive the power struggles and romantic entanglements of the court. Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness) and Hπjπki (literally “An Account of My Hut”, translated as Hojoki) are essay (zuihitsu) collections which present the authors’ perceptions of the medieval society. Hojoki starts with “the flowing river goes on endlessly, but it is no longer the same water”, revealing the writer’s strong consciousness of a transient world. Its writer Kamo no Chπmei (1155?–1216) describes the series of major disasters that happened at the beginning of the 13th century and how they affected the lives of the common people. The second half of the work is an autobiographical account, and a general description of his life in the little grass hut that he built for himself. Both Essays in Idleness and Hojoki are records of the lives of the common people and their ways of coping with a chaotic world. One other significant form of life writing in the period comprises the portrait articles written by Zen priests. Usually written to accompany the portrait of a person, these short articles present, in a concise manner, the life achievements of the person portrayed. Although portrait articles were originally used to praise the Buddha or religious practitioners, the requesting of an accompanying article for one’s portrait came into vogue at the beginning of the medieval period in Japan. Portrait articles of people from a variety of social backgrounds form an important genre in the literary tradition of medieval Zen institutions. Not all diaries were kept by the social elite. At the end of the medieval period, in 1548, Tsuda Sπtatsu (d. 1567), a tea merchant, started writing a diary. Sπtatsu was an accomplished tea master who owned a large collection of tea utensils. His diary centres around the art of tea – the utensils used, the technique of tea making, and tea parties. His son and grandson continued with the practice and produced Ten’nπjiyaki [The Record of the Ten’nojiya]. By this time writing diaries was no longer restricted to the hands of the cultural elite, heralding an even more active time of literary creativity in the Edo period. Medieval Japan was an extremely dynamic period. The constant political and military power struggles, among other things, inspired the establishment of new political and religious institutions, and stimulated the development of new artistic genres. The excitement of the time is vividly transmitted to later generations through its various forms of life writing. Lim Beng Choo Further Reading Gomi Fumihiko, Nikki ni ch›sei o yomu, Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kπbunkan, 1998 Inryπken Nichiroku [The Daily Record of Inryπken], 5 vols, Kyoto: Shiseiki Kankπkai, 1954 Kamo no Chπmei, Hojoki: Visions of a Torn World, translated by Yasuhiko Moriguchi and David Jenkins, Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press, 1996 Keene, Donald, World within Walls: Japanese Literature of the PreModern Era, 1600–1867, New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1976 Keene, Donald, Travelers of a Hundred Ages, New York: Holt, 1989 Nakanion Masatada no Musume, The Confessions of Lady Nijπ, translated by Karen Brazell, New York: Doubleday, 1973 Nihon Rekishi: Kokirokusπran (kodai, ch›sei hen) [History of Japan:

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A General Survey of Ancient Records], Tokyo: Shinjinbutsuπraisha, 1990 Sanetaka Kπki [The Records of Lord Sanetaka], 13 vols, Tokyo: Zokugunshoruiju Kanseikai, 1969 Shπichi Saeki, “The Autobiography in Japan”, translated by Craig Teruko, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 11/2 (1985) Stevens, Carter (editor), Medieval Japanese Writers, vol. 203 of Dictionary of Literary Biography, Detroit: Gale Research, 1999 Yoshida no Kenkπ, Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkπ, translated by Donald Keene, New York: Columbia University Press, 1967

Japan: Tokugawa / Edo Period 1600–1868 The Japanese penchant for interiority in writing naturally gave rise to a vigorous tradition of personal records from early times, but the phenomenal rise of literacy during the Tokugawa (Edo) period (1600–1868) resulted in a burgeoning of life writing. The simultaneous growth of a thriving publishing industry that rivalled its contemporary European counterparts in scope also allowed for broader distribution. With few exceptions, renowned authors left significant personal writings, but many noted pieces were written by relatively unknown figures. The quantity of life writing from the period defies exhaustive analysis, but it may be investigated according to conventional categories: autobiographies, biographies, diaries, travel accounts, and letters. Since at least the 10th century ce, much writing has focused on the emotional lives and immediate circumstances of the authors. It was only in the Tokugawa period, however, that autobiographies in the current sense of the word appeared: philosophically self-reflective, retrospective, and combining subjective discourse with objective narrative. In Japan, the earliest work generally regarded as fitting this definition is Oritaku shiba no ki (1716; Told Round a Brushwood Fire) by the Confucian scholar Arai Hakuseki (1657–1725), whose writing combines the public and the personal. A close adviser to the sixth Shπgun Ienobu (1662–1712), Hakuseki clashed with Ienobu’s successor Yoshimune (1684–1751), who unceremoniously dismissed him. Hakuseki writes in the preface: “I am the only man alive who knows the full story, so it would be inexcusable if, unworthy though I am, I did not set it down.” Other autobiographies deserving mention include Itsumadegusa (1766; Wild Ivy) by the Zen priest Hakuin (1685–1768) and Uge no hitokoto [1793; Words of a Mortal Under Heaven] by the samurai statesman Matsudaira Sadanobu (1758–1829). One of the most remarkable samurai autobiographies of the period was penned by Katsu Kokichi (1802–50), the ne’er-do-well father of the great 19th-century statesman Katsu Kaish® (1823– 99). Kokichi’s autobiography, Musui dokugen (1843; Musui’s Story), is unusual for its candour in describing the author’s foibles, and the subject’s strong sense of self contrasts sharply with the “inter-subjectivity” of earlier eras. In the prologue, Kokichi confesses to the dissipation of his youth and laments that “because of [me], the house of Katsu, which had served the shogun honorably for generations, was disgraced”. One autobiography that combines an early modern subjective consciousness with the traditional lyrical approach to life writing is that of

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the haiku poet Kobayashi Issa (1763–1827), in Oraga haru (1819; The Year of My Life). Just as the new historical consciousness of the Renaissance in the West produced biographies that went beyond the portrayal of ideal types, the early Tokugawa period is also marked by an emerging interest in contemporary figures of Japanese history. Especially noteworthy are two romanticized biographies by Oze Hoan (1564–1640): Shinchπki (1622), an account of the 16thcentury generalissimo Oda Nobunaga (1534–82), and Taikπki (1625), which recounts the life and exploits of Nobunaga’s successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–98). Apart from such partly fictionalized treatments, biographical writing falls into the following categories: epitaphs; formal eulogies; book prefaces, written by acquaintances or disciples of a deceased author; analects and memorials; and collections and encyclopedias, which draw on all of the above. Some collections were limited to specific categories of individuals, but others covered many walks of life. By far the best known of these encyclopedic collections, one that is still consulted, is Kinsei kijinden [1790; Tales of Unusual People of Our Time] by Ban Kπkei (1733–1806). Also, the greater part of the monumental Dai Nihon-shi [Great History of Japan], compiled in 397 volumes between 1657 and 1906, is composed of biographies. Though diaries are hardly unique to Japan, the high literary status accorded to them there is unusual. In the Tokugawa period, the number and diversity of extant diaries far eclipse those of past ages, and some, such as Kagetsu nikki [1828; Diary of Elegant Pastimes] by Matsudaira Sadanobu (1758–1829), are admired for their literary qualities. The period is also marked by the reappearance of women on the intellectual scene, whose diaries are an important part of its legacy. One particularly memorable example is Matsukage nikki [1714; In the Shadow of the Pines] by ∏gimachi Machiko (1688–1724), concubine to the shogunal chancellor Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu (1654–1714). In the Tokugawa period, journeys became comparatively easier, and both pilgrimages and pleasure trips resulted in travel accounts. Indeed, it was not considered fitting for someone with adequate literacy to journey to a famous site without creating a written account. These vary considerably in their degree of belletristic merit, but “literary pilgrimages” to landmarks made famous in ancient verse are not uncommon, many such accounts occupying solid positions in the canon. One important example is that of Hayashi Razan (1583–1657), adviser to the first Tokugawa shogun. Razan’s Heishin kikπ [1616; A Journey of 1616] was the first travel diary to describe scenes along Tπkaidπ (Eastern Sea Road), establishing the conventions that would be followed in later accounts. This same route was also described in Tπkai kikπ [1681; Journey along the East Coast] by Inoue Ts®jo (1660–1738) which appears to be the first surviving diary or travel account by a woman in more than three centuries. The most widely read travel accounts from the period are those by poets, a notable example being Matsuo Bashπ’s Oku no hosomichi (1694; Narrow Road to the Deep North). Though some literary travel accounts, including those of Bashπ, were demonstrably “rearranged” for better effect, they remain some of the most beloved pieces of life writing. Letters were, of course, an important type of life writing in all ages, but the practice of compiling correspondence into collections dates from the Tokugawa period. An especially touching example is Yukikai [1752; Comings and Goings], the exchange

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of letters between Yuya Shizuko (1733–52) and Udono Yonoko (d. 1788), high-ranking female disciples of the great scholar Kamo no Mabuchi (1697–1769). The practice also appeared of including correspondence in an author’s collected works, such as Kotojirish› [1810; Zithern] by Murata Harumi (1746–1811). Roger K. Thomas Further Reading Arai Hakuseki, Told Round a Brushwood Fire: The Autobiography of Arai Hakuseki, translated by Joyce Ackroyd, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Bashπ, Matsuo, Bashπ’s Narrow Road: Spring & Autumn Passages, translated by Hiroaki Sato, Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 1996 Bodart-Bailey, Beatrice, “Councillor Defended: Matsukage Nikki and Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu”, Monumenta Nipponica, 34/4 (1979): 468–78 Bolitho, Harold, “Travelers’ Tales: Three Eighteenth-Century Travel Journals”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 50/2 (Dec 1990): 485–504 Hakuin, Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin, translated by Norman Waddell, Boston: Shambhala, 1999 Katsu Kokichi, Musui’s Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai, translated by Teruko Craig, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988 Keene, Donald, Travelers of a Hundred Ages, New York: Holt, 1989 Kobayashi Issa, The Year of My Life, 2nd edition, translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972 Lidin, Olof G., Ogy› Sorai’s Journey to Kai in 1706, London: Curzon Press, 1983 Shπichi Saeki, “The Curious Relationship between Biography and Autobiography in Japan” in New Directions in Biography: Essays, edited by Anthony M. Friedson, Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1981 Shπichi Saeki, “Some Remarks on the Biographical Tradition in Japan” in Literary Relations East and West: Selected Essays, edited by Jean Toyama and Nobuko Ochner, Honolulu: University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1990 Zoll, Daniel R., “The Study of Life-Writing in Japan: A Partially Annotated Bibliography of Japanese Books and Articles on Biography and Autobiography”, Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, 2 (1979): 348–58

Japan: Kindai Period 1868–1945 Japanese life writing in the kindai (modern) period, which spans the Meiji restoration (1868) and the end of the Pacific War in 1945, reflects the country’s remarkable transition from feudal backwater to East Asian empire. Early classics of Japanese diary and essay literature were produced during the Heian (c.800– 1200) and medieval (c.1200–1600) periods, and the isolationist Tokugawa period (1600–1868) witnessed an outpouring of life writing across the spectrum, including important works of biography and autobiography. But with the emergence of modern Japan, this classical tradition, marked by an outmoded literary language, would be displaced by new Western models and paradigms. The modernization project instituted early in the Meiji period (1868–1912) was predicated on gaining knowledge of the West. Strongly motivated to learn of the “great men” of Western civilization, Meiji modernizers looked to biography, which had enjoyed canonical status within the Confucian scholastic tradition, as a guide to exemplary character and its underlying cultural values. There ensued a wide-ranging production of

“eminent lives”, which did much to promote a new achievement ethic among young Japanese. The didactic role of biography in the kindai period cannot be overemphasized. The great writer and intellectual Mori ∏gai (1862–1922) enlisted the singular authority of Confucianist biography in a trilogy of exemplary lives of obscure Tokugawa physician-scholars, written between 1916 and 1921, that called into question the crass, materialist values that had weakened the country’s moral fibre (see Marcus 1993). Autobiography, too, would figure in the moral education of Meiji youth, with the well-known work of 18th-century America’s Benjamin Franklin reaching a wide readership in various translations. In fact, Franklin’s work served as inspiration for Japan’s first modern autobiography, written by Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901), a chief architect of the Meiji Enlightenment. Rejecting the insidious feudal burden of his samurai past, Fukuzawa cast himself as exemplar of the new spirit of individualism. The bulk of kindai life writing emerged from the Tokyo-based literary establishment, the so-called bundan. Increasingly tied to large publishers and journalistic conventions, bundan writers catered to an emerging national readership. Late Meiji literary periodicals actively solicited personal narratives and essays, reminiscences, and literary ephemera as a means of presenting name writers and marketing their product. This development coincided with the heyday of an influential coterie, the “naturalists” (shizenshugisha), who advocated authenticity and sincerity as pre-eminent literary values. This modernist credo inspired an outpouring of fictional autobiography that aimed at selfexpression unencumbered by artifice or guile. What resulted, for the most part, were formulaic accounts of domestic tedium, ineffectuality, and chronic angst. Yet here was the crucible for the emergence of Japanese literary selfhood. The best-known work of naturalist literature, and a landmark of kindai life writing, is “Futon” (1907; The Quilt), by Tayama Katai (1872–1930). This fictionalized account of the author’s infatuation with a young literary protegée was a veritable succès de scandale, which introduced confessionalism into the literary mainstream. The naturalist credo was most ardently fostered by Shimazaki Tπson (1872–1943), who produced an amazing quantity and variety of life writing over a period of four decades. The strong autobiographical current in modern Japanese literature, which owes much to the work of Katai and Tπson, is most evident in the shishπsetsu, known in English as the “I-novel”, a genre of personal fiction understood to be a pure manifestation of the authorial self. The writing of Shiga Naoya (1883–1971), regarded as an avatar of spiritualized self-expression, needs noting in this regard. The kindai period witnessed the modernization of classical forms such as the nikki (diary) and zuihitsu (essay). Although these had in a sense been eclipsed by shπsetsu (fiction) as the dominant literary medium, important writers such as Mori ∏gai, Natsume Sπseki (1867–1916), Masaoka Shiki (1867– 1902), and Nagai Kaf® (1879–1959) remained dedicated diarists and essayists. Indeed, despite the evanescence of the classical tradition, these genres have retained their appeal – and their literary pedigree – to the present day. Notwithstanding their keen interest in literary self-representation, kindai writers largely eschewed autobiography per se in favour of more episodic, fragmented forms such as the shπhin

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(literary miniature). Natsume Sπseki, arguably Japan’s greatest modern novelist, published volumes of shπhin, which originally appeared in daily newspaper serialization. His Garasudo no uchi [1915; Inside My Glass Doors], the assorted musings of a writer alone in his study, is a masterpiece of this genre of personal essay. Literary reminiscence occupies a prominent niche in kindai life writing. Nostalgic evocations of childhood in the rural countryside began to appear early in the 20th century, in part a reaction to the accelerating pace of modernization. Works such as Omoide no ki (1900–01; Footprints in the Snow) by Tokutomi Roka (1868–1927) and Gin no saji (1911–12; The Silver Spoon) by Naka Kansuke (1885–1965), which point to nativist roots and enduring cultural values, gained a large readership. Perhaps the largest quantity of kindai literary reminiscence concerned the bundan itself. The literary chat – writers writing about writers and writing – remained a staple of the literary marketplace well into the postwar period. A representative work in this vein is Tokyo no sanj›nen (1917; Literary Life in Tokyo, 1885–1915) by Tayama Katai, a personal “tour” of the bundan by one of its consummate insiders. Prewar Japanese literature, including life writing, was largely a male preserve. But women writers such as Yosano Akiko (1878–1942) and Tamura Toshiko (1884–1945), who overcame numerous obstacles in establishing their literary careers, wrote moving memoirs of their early years. Other noteworthy kindai memoirs were written by women such as Fukuda Hideko (1865–1927) and Kanno Sugako (1881–1911), who dedicated themselves not to literature but to political reformism (see Hane 1988). The example of their ardent activism belies the stereotype of passive, docile Japanese femininity. Important political memoirs were written by men as well – for instance, left-wing intellectuals such as ∏sugi Sakae (1885–1923) and Kawakami Hajime (1879–1946) – and these have become landmarks of Japanese political history. If Western-style autobiography was not especially favoured by the kindai literary crowd, it certainly appealed to others wishing to tell their life stories. Artists and kabuki actors wrote autobiographies, as did educators, industrialists, religious converts, and society women. A surprisingly large proportion of this work was written in English. How I Became a Christian (1893), by the influential theologian Uchimura Kanzπ (1861–1930), contributed to the emerging discourse on selfhood. Noted kindai educators such as Niijima Jπ (1843–90) and Nitobe Inazπ (1862–1933) wrote English-language memoirs that shed light on the cultural history of modern Japan. Perhaps the best-known work of kindai autobiography outside Japan is A Daughter of the Samurai (1925) by Sugimoto Etsu (1873–1950). This fascinating tale, with its interweaving of a nation’s modernization and a young girl’s coming of age, has been translated into seven languages – including Japanese! In conclusion, it would be true to say that life writing in its broad sense can be said to have constituted the very essence of Japanese literature in the kindai period. Marvin Howard Marcus See also The I-Novel

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Further Reading Fowler, Edward, The Rhetoric of Confession: Shishπsetsu in Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Fiction, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988 Fukuzawa Yukichi, The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa, translated by Eiichi Kiyooka, New York: Columbia University Press, 1966 Hane, Mikiso, Reflections on the Way to the Gallows: Rebel Women in Prewar Japan, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988 Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Irmela, Rituals of Self-Revelation: Shishπsetsu as Literary Genre and Socio-Cultural Phenomenon, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996 Keene, Donald, Modern Japanese Diaries: The Japanese at Home and Abroad as Revealed through Their Diaries, New York: Holt, 1995 Loftus, Ronald, “In Search of Japan’s First Modern Autobiography”, Biography, 6/3 (1983): 256–72 Marcus, Marvin, Paragons of the Ordinary: The Biographical Literature of Mori ∏gai, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993 Marcus, Marvin, “The Writer Speaks: Late-Meiji Reflections on Literature and Life” in The Distant Isle: Studies and Translations of Japanese Literature in Honor of Robert H. Brower, edited by Thomas Hare et al., Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies, 1996 Nakano Makiko, Makiko’s Diary: A Merchant Wife in 1910 Kyoto, translated and edited by Kazuko Smith, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995 ∏sugi Sakae, The Autobiography of ∏sugi Sakae, translated by Byron K. Marshall, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992 Saeki Shπichi, “The Autobiography in Japan”, Journal of Japanese Studies, 11/2 (1985): 357–68 Shibusawa Eiichi, The Autobiography of Shibusawa Eiichi: From Peasant to Entrepreneur, edited and translated by Craig Teruko, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1994 Sugimoto Etsu Inagaki, A Daughter of the Samurai, New York: Doubleday Page, 1925; London: Hurst and Blackett, 1933 Tayama Katai, Literary Life in Tokyo, 1885–1915: Tayama Katai’s Memoirs ‘Thirty Years in Tokyo’, edited and translated by Kenneth G. Henshall, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1987

Japan: Modern Period 1945 to the present Through their experiences in World War II, writers developed a sense of complex instability in terms of their self-visions. A variety of writings of war experience with a conventional I-novelistic realism can be found: a soldier’s meeting with an earless prostitute in Umezaki Haruo’s “Sakurajima” (1946); an A-bomb experience in Hara Tamiki’s “Natsu no hana” (1947; Summer Flowers); a soldier’s notes on his battlefield experiences and hostage life in ∏oka Shπhei’s “Furyoki” (1952; Taken Captive); a farcical recounting of a hostage life in Furuyama Komao’s “Pureπ 8 no yoake” [1970; Dawn of the préau huit]; and a soldier’s speechless reaction to the diagnosis of cholera and other episodes in Tanaka Komimasa’s Poroporo (1977). These I-novels highlight the narrators’ crises in which stable and communicable meanings about reality and the self are at stake. They necessarily shake, from within the I-novelistic convention, the foundation of the pre-World War II I-novel, whose canonical status is based on the writer’s belief in the representability of his or her personal experiences. A growing awareness of the complexity of the self often leads contemporary literary self writings to contain the issue of madness and to focus on the limits of communication with others.

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Thus we see expressions of the protagonist’s self in relationship with his suicidal drive in Dazai Osamu’s Ningen shikkaku (1948; No Longer Human); with his mad and dying mother in Yasuoka Shπtarπ’s Umibe no kπkei (1959; A View by the Sea); with his mentally unstable wife in Shimao Toshio’s Shi no toge (1960; The Sting of Death); with his mentally unstable girlfriend in Furui Yoshikichi’s “Yπko” (1971; Yoko); and with his own madness in Irokwa Takehiro’s Kyπjin nikki [1987; A Diary of a Mad Man]. In the contemporary search for the self, the barriers between reality and fantasy and between realism and fiction are inevitably obscured. Mishima Yukio’s Kamen no kokuhaku (1949; Confessions of a Mask) is an early example, which stresses, as the title suggests, the continuing interdependency between the author’s desire for confession and his desire for fiction. Mishima gives here a nuanced expression to his virgin protagonist’s strong homosexual drive, which indeterminately coexists with his interest in heterosexual potential. In Nakagami Kenji’s Kumanosh› [1984; Kumano Collection], the author consciously mixes folkloric / mythological tales and I-novelistic episodes from the writer’s daily life so as to highlight his narrator’s hybrid desire for fiction and confession: the self is expressed simultaneously through two struggling and competing desires – a metaphysical desire for life’s symbolism and a mimetic desire for life’s literalness. A number of contemporary women writers express their selfimages as something that defamiliarizes the femininity stereotyped by the gendered master narrative. Their selves are often expressed through a mixture of mythology and realistic selfexpression: for example an autobiographical story mixed with the motif of the mountain witch (yamauba) in ∏ba Minako’s Kiri no tabi [1980; A Journey in the Fog]; an I-novel-style episode mingled with folklore in Tsushima Y®ko’s “Danmariichi” (1984; “The Silent Traders”); and an allegorical contemporary story inspired by folklore in Tawada Yπko’s Inumukoiri (1993; The Bridegroom Was a Dog). Many women writers also emphasize the unconscious by describing out-of-the-ordinary sexual and criminal desires: masochism and attachment to boy infants in Kπno Taeko’s “Yπjigari” (1962; “Toddler-Hunting”); incestuous fantasies in Kanai Mieko’s “Usagi” (1975; “Rabbits”); arson in Takahashi Takako’s “Ronrii ®man” [1980; A Lonely Woman]; and picking up younger men in Tomioka Taeko’s “S®ku” (1980; “Straw Dogs”). Recently, female individuality has been expressed as a sort of diaspora in an increasing number of stories where female narrators / protagonists live in a foreign country and find themselves belonging neither to Japan nor to the land in which they live: we find a lonely married woman living in Alaska in ∏ba Minako’s “Sanbiki no kani” (1968; “The Three Crabs”); an intellectual woman’s hesitant search for tenure in an American university in Meiπ Masako’s Aru onna no gurinpusu [1978; A Glimpse of a Certain Woman]; a woman with a Jewish husband in Kometani Fumiko’s Sugikoshi no matsuri (1985; “Passover”); and bilingual sisters’ search for their identities oscillating between the United States and Japan in Mizumura Minae’s Shishπsetsu from Left to Right [1995; I-novel: From Left to Right]. Note in this regard that a parallel diasporic search for the self can be found in a variety of resident Korean writers: a dilemma of brothers with mixed Japanese and Korean blood in Tachihara Masaaki’s Tsurugigasaki (1965; Cliff’s Edge); a

stutterer’s identity-less position in Kin Kakuei’s Kogoeru kuchi [1970; A Mouth That Freezes]; a search for a Korean identity in Yi Yang-ji’s Yuhi (1988); and a newer, more political critique of national identities in Yang Sog-il’s Takushii kyπsπkyoku [1981; A Taxi Rhapsody] and Y® Miri’s Furu hausu [1997; Full House]. Postmodern self-expressions have developed since the late 1970s and have gained popularity. Murakami Ry®’s Kagirinaku tπmei ni chikai bur› (1976; Almost Transparent Blue), Murakami Haruki’s Kaze no uta o kike (1979; Hear the Wind Sing), and Yoshimoto Banana’s Kicchin (1988; Kitchen) represent this trend. The protagonists / narrators in these stories are young urban adults in a largely Americanized and highly consumerist society, in which their self-consciousness is often overpowered by a materialistic affluence that forces them to adopt the same desires as everyone else. The narrators express their own personalities, not through the search for their interiority, but through the uniquely cool yet intimately casual tones of voice with which they narrate. Apart from novelistic self-expressions, diaries and essays are also rich resources for life writings. Nagai Kaf®’s Danchπtei nichijπ [1963–64; Danchotei’s Diary] is an important classical achievement, vividly recording the author’s unique personality and his lifestyle in response to the radically changing society between 1920 and 1959. Mori Arimasa’s Harukana Nπtoru Damu [1976; Notre-Dame in the Distance] is an impressive philosophical essay, in which he describes an epiphany-like experience as the core of his intellectual thought. The commercialism of the contemporary media invites many writers (and many celebrities for that matter) to write essays containing autobiographical episodes and personal opinions on current cultural subjects (literature, cinema, fashion, and food, as well as politics and social news). Recently, ordinary people’s publications of their self-histories at their own expense have become popular, notably in the form of homepages on the internet. Reflecting the double-bind condition of mass commercialism’s essential impersonalization and its advocacy of the value of individual uniqueness, people’s interest in their own individualities and life histories is now intensifying. Eiji Sekine See also The I-Novel

Further Reading Selected Texts in Translation: Dazai Osamu, No Longer Human, translated by Donald Keene, New York: New Directions, 1958; Tokyo: C.E. Tuttle, 1981 Furui Yoshikichi, Child of Darkness: Yoko and Other Stories, translated by Donna Storey, Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1997 Hara Tamiki, Summer Flowers in Hiroshima: Three Witnesses, edited and translated by Richard Minear, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990 Kanai Mieko, “Rabbits” in Rabbits, Crabs, etc.: Stories by Japanese Women, translated by Phyllis Birnbaum, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1982 Kometani Fumiko, Passover, New York: Carroll and Graf, 1989 Kono Taeko, Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories, translated by Lucy North, New York: New Directions, 1996 Mishima Yukio, Confessions of a Mask, translated by Meredith Weatherby, New York: New Directions, 1958; London: Peter Owen, 1960

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Murakami Haruki, Hear the Wind Sing, translated by Alfred Birnbaum, Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1987 Murakami Ryu, Almost Transparent Blue, translated by Nancy Andrew, Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 1977 Nakagami Kenji, “The Immortal (from Kumano Collection)” in The Showa Anthology: Modern Japanese Short Stories, edited by Van C. Gessel and Tomone Matsumoto, Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 1985 ∏ba Minako, “The Three Crabs” in This Kind of Women: Ten Stories by Japanese Woman Writers, 1960–1976, edited by Yukiko Tanaka and Elizabeth Hanson, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1982 ∏oka Shohei, Taken Captive: A Japanese POW’s Story, edited and translated by Wayne Lammers, New York: Wiley, 1996 Shimao Toshio, The Sting of Death and Other Stories, edited and translated by Kathryn Sparling, Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1985 Tachihara Masaaki, Cliff’s Edge and Other Stories, translated by Stephen Kohl, Ann Arbor: Midwest Publishers, 1980 Tawada Yoko, The Bridegroom Was a Dog, translated by Margaret Mitsutani, Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 1998 Tomioka Taeko, “Straw Dogs” in Unmapped Territories: New Women’s Fiction from Japan, edited by Yukiko Tanaka, Seattle: Women in Translation, 1991 Tsushima Yuko, “The Silent Traders” in The Showa Anthology: Modern Japanese Short Stories, edited by Van C. Gessel and Tomone Matsumoto, Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 1985 Yasuoka Shotaro, A View by the Sea, translated by Karen Wigen Lewis, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984 Yoshimoto Banana, Kitchen, translated by Megan Backus, London: Faber, and New York: Grove Press, 1993

Analysis: Field, Norma, In the Realm of a Dying Emperor, New York: Pantheon, 1991 Granoff, Phyllis and Koichi Shinohara (editors), Other Selves: Autobiography and Biography in Cross-Cultural Perspective, Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press, 1994 Miyoshi, Masao and H.D. Harootunian (editors), Postmodernism and Japan, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1989 Ryang, Sonia (editor), Koreans in Japan: Critical Voices from the Margin, London and New York: Routledge, 2000 Schalow, Paul Gordon and Janet A. Walker (editors), The Woman’s Hand: Gender and Theory in Japanese Women’s Writing, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996 Sekine, Eiji (editor), Love and Sexuality in Japanese Literature: The Proceedings of the Midwest Association for Japanese Literary Studies, 5 (Summer 1999) Treat, John Whittier (editor), Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, and Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1996 Wolfe, Alan, Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan: The Case of Dazai Osamu, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990

Jesus, Carolina Maria de

1914–1977

Brazilian diarist Although she thought of herself as “the poet of the garbage dump”, Carolina Maria de Jesus’s life writings have always been valued more as social documents than as literary works in the conventional and / or canonical sense. To her first English translator, David St Clair, de Jesus’s work was notable for its exposure of the appalling social conditions of the favelas of São Paulo, shanty towns that provided shelter to the migrant poor of postwar Brazil. “She has not tried to be artistic, just sincere”, St

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Clair remarks in his preface to Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus (1962), the English translation of de Jesus’s first published diary, Quarto de despejo: diário de uma favelada (1960). While the value of her commitment to unmasking the life of a favelada is unquestionable, such assessments often discredit de Jesus’s dedication to her vocation as a writer and a life writer. In the diaries she wrote on the scraps of paper she collected to earn enough money to feed her three children, de Jesus tried to transform the harsh realities of her daily life into poetry. “How horrible it is to hear the poor lament”, she remarks. “The voice of the poor has no poetry”. She attempted to give the voice of the poor its poetry, appointing herself the poet laureate of the favela. “The tears of the poor stir the poets”, she comments. “They don’t move the poets of the living room, but they do move the poet of the garbage dump, this idealist of the favela, a spectator who sees and notes the tragedies that the politicians inflict on the people”. Evidence of her desire to be “artistic”, such metaphors are commonly employed by de Jesus to describe the social organization of São Paulo, a city where the upper and middle classes inhabit the “living room”, leaving the “garbage room” to the others, especially the poor. While the dominant theme of Quarto de despejo is hunger, as a black woman living in a favela, de Jesus was acutely aware of the ways in which race and gender contributed to Brazil’s many social problems. She observes that “Brazil is predominated [sic] by the whites. But for many things they need the blacks and the blacks need them”. She notes that “the world is the way the whites want it. I’m not white, so I don’t have anything to do with this disorganized world”. De Jesus was a very independent woman. She refused to marry because she preferred “to read and write”, and she believed that a man would not like a woman who “sleeps with paper and pencil under her pillow”. At times, her understanding of the complex power relations of Brazil could be quite acute. When a priest tells the favelados that they must have children, for example, de Jesus wonders: “Why is it that the poor have to have children – is it that the children of the poor have to be workers?” In many ways, her political ideas are similar to those often recorded in the Latin American testimonio, such as Me Ilamo Rigoberta Menchú, (1983; I, Rigoberta Menchú). De Jesus was often faulted for being extremely conservative at times, a quality that was perceived to have contributed both to her meteoric success and her subsequent loss of celebrity. As Robert M. Levine observes, Quarto de despejo often complies with the dominant view that the poor favelados are to blame for their own misfortunes, a view that found favour among Brazil’s upper and middle classes. This compliance meant that intellectuals on the political left ignored de Jesus, especially when her status as a celebrity began to diminish. The discovery in 1996 by Levine and José Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy of de Jesus’s unedited diaries suggests that this seeming contradiction may have been the result of Audálio Dantas’s editorial decisions. In their introduction to Meu estranho diário (1996; The Unedited Diaries of Carolina Maria de Jesus), Levine and Meihy suggest that a different de Jesus is revealed in her unedited diaries, one who was “feisty, opinionated, and quick to blame politicians and officials for the wretched conditions in which the poor were forced to live”. Following Quarto de despejo, de Jesus published her second diary, Casa de Alvenaria: diário de uma ex-favelada (1961; I’m

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Going To Have a Little House: The Second Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus). In this text, she records her feelings about her sudden rise to fame and her relief that hunger and poverty may no longer plague her family. Her observations about the upper and middle classes are as astute as her reflections about the poor in Quarto de despejo. “I feel like I am living in a world of fake jewelry”, she writes. In spite of the misgivings she often expresses that rich people have now become her subjects – “they are powerful and can destroy me”, she perceives – de Jesus’s observations continue to be typically candid. The second diary is also a witness to the difficulty she experienced as she tried to adapt to her sudden change in fortune. At times, she even wonders if it would have been better to stay in the favela. Shortly before her death, de Jesus wrote a series of autobiographical essays about her childhood that were published posthumously as Diário de Bitita (1986; Bitita’s Diary). Like her previous life writings, Bitita’s Diary is an invaluable testimony, one that records the poverty, racism, and sexism that existed in rural Brazil during the 1920s and 1930s. Together, all of de Jesus’s works are priceless documents that attest to the indomitable spirit of a black woman who refused to let either the “living room” or the “garbage dump” destroy her. Cheryl Cowdy Crawford Biography Born in Sacramento, Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1914, a descendant of African slaves. Her mother was a farm labourer. Left school at an early age because of her family’s move to a rural area of Brazil. Taught herself to read and write. Moved to São Paulo and took a variety of jobs, including domestic work, 1937. Dismissed from her position after she became pregnant. Moved to a favela (shanty town) on the outskirts of São Paulo and built her own shack from scrap materials. Had two more children. Lived in poverty, earning small amounts of money by collecting scrap metal and paper; often foraged for food and clothing among the rubbish heaps of the city. Wrote diary and stories and poems on scraps of paper. Selections from her diary were published in the São Paulo newspaper Diario da Noite by Audálio Dantas from 1958. Had enormous success when her diaries were published in book form as Quarto de despejo (1960; Child of the Dark). Moved to a brick house outside the favela, early 1960s. Found difficulty in adjusting to a new lifestyle. Continued to publish, but her brief financial success and celebrity status waned and she became destitute again. Died in Paralheiros, Brazil, 13 February 1977.

Selected Writings Quarto de despejo: diário de uma favelada, 1960; translated by David St Clair as Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus, 1962, and as Beyond All Pity, 1962 Casa de Alvenaria: diário de uma ex-favelada, 1961; as I’m Going To Have a Little House: The Second Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus, translated by Melvin S. Arrington Jr and Robert M. Levine, 1997 Diário de Bitita, 1986; as Bitita’s Diary: The Childhood Memoirs of Carolina Maria de Jesus, edited by Robert M. Levine, translated by Emanuelle Oliveira and Beth Joan Vinkler, 1998 Meu estranho diário, edited by José Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy and Robert M. Levine, 1996; as The Unedited Diaries of Carolina Maria de Jesus, translated by Nancy P.S. Naro and Cristina Mehrten, 1999

Further Reading Levine, Robert M., “The Cautionary Tale of Carolina Maria de Jesus”, Latin American Research Review, 29/1 (1994): 55–83 Meihy, José Carlos Sebe Bom and Robert M. Levine, Cinderela negra: a saga de Carolina Maria de Jesus, Rio de Janeiro: Editora UFRJ, 1994; translated as The Life and Death of Carolina Maria de Jesus, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995 Menchú, Rigoberta, I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in

Guatemala, edited and introduced by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, translated by Ann Wright, London: Verso, 1984 Ramsdell, Lea, “National Housing Policy and the Favela in Brazil” in The Political Economy of Brazil: Public Policies in an Era of Transition, edited by Lawrence S. Graham and Robert H. Wilson, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990 Santos, Andrea Paula dos, Ponto de Vida, Sao Paulo: Loyola, 1996 (oral history of women associated with the Carolina Maria de Jesus women’s centre)

Jewish American Life Writing “To be a Jew is to remember, an American must forget”, Loren Baritz once noted. This statement contains a dilemma that helps explain Jewish American autobiography, whose writers tell their American story while grappling with the Russian / East European Jewish culture they attempt to leave behind. In so doing, they are involved in an uncomfortable dialogue with the past, aware that their success may be mocking their heritage. Mary Antin’s From Plotzk to Boston (1899) is an impressionistic work she wrote in Yiddish at the age of 11. With childhood innocence, she relates her feelings on leaving the Jewish Pale and crossing the Atlantic. The difficulties are obviated by the anticipation of starting her American life. In The Promised Land (1912), Antin expanded the earlier book to present the hardships of Jews in Russia contrasted with American opportunities. As her family had begun to break with orthodox Jewish observance while still in Europe, she was able to take advantage of American freedom without guilt. Her father viewed education as “the essence of American opportunity, the treasure that no thief would touch, not even misfortune or poverty”. The respect for religious study that had characterized Russian Jews was transformed into a devotion to secular learning, and Antin was capable of taking full advantage of this opportunity, seeing herself as having been “made over” by the transforming process of America. The Jews depicted in Michael Gold’s (Irwin Granich) Jews without Money (1930) do not share Antin’s success, this book comprising an important statement of what came to be called proletarian literature. Unlike Antin, Gold focused on the sordid aspects of life, on New York’s Lower East Side. But, like Antin, Gold wanted nothing to do with orthodox Judaism, finding another god – communism – which to him became a secular version of Jewish messianism. Although Gold would succeed as an editor and writer, the essence of the book is better represented by his father’s experience: “A curse on Columbus! A curse on America, the thief! It is a land where the lice make fortunes, and the good men starve!” The desire to right injustice was central to the life of Emma Goldman, who was a well-known Jewish radical, having given up Judaism for anarchism. Her autobiography, Living My Life (1931), is almost 1000 pages long and chronicles her political activities and beliefs. She shared Michael Gold’s reaction to American injustices, and was jailed twice during World War I for pacificism. In 1919 she was deported to Russia, with which she became equally disillusioned. Her autobiography shows the idealism that many Jewish radicals brought to secular political movements upon abandoning Jewish religious idealism. Less extreme than Goldman but equally idealistic was

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Abraham Cahan, often called the father of American Jewish literature. He wrote a five-volume autobiography entitled, in Yiddish, Bleter fun Mein Leben [1926–31; Leaves from My Life]. The first two volumes were translated into English as The Education of Abraham Cahan (1969). He describes how in his early years he abandoned traditional Jewish belief for a new religion – socialism. Forced to flee Russia, he arrived in the United States in 1882, eventually becoming editor of The Jewish Daily Forward, the most important Yiddish newspaper in the country. Volume 4 of his autobiography contains the most significant material, describing his wide influence on new immigrants and the parties of the Left. The fifth volume is disappointing; he was planning a sixth. Eventually, second-generation Jews began to enter the mainstream of American life. The literary critic and “New York Intellectual” Alfred Kazin wrote three volumes of autobiography, each chronicling his movement away from the world of his immigrant parents. A Walker in the City (1951) is a lyrical rendition of his boyhood in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, where nostalgia was possible once the poverty and squalor were left behind. In Starting Out in the Thirties (1962), Kazin describes his young manhood during the Depression, with its doubts, striving, tempered socialism, and freelance writing jobs. The literary world of New York, its leftish editors, writers, and intellectuals, is vividly evoked. Despite his intense desire to flee his immigrant and “poor Jew” past, early in New York Jew (1978), the third volume, Kazin states: “The Jews are my unconscious”. Whatever he achieves, he remains, as do so many striving Jews, in tenuous attachment to his people. This book describes his life from 1942 to the 1970s, during which period, as he states, “I lived my life among brilliant intellectuals”. The three volumes chart the experiences of an American Jewish success story. The Objectivist poet Charles Reznikoff published the remarkable Family Chronicle (1963), which comprises three sections: in the first his mother, Sarah (“Early History of a Seamstress”), and in the second his father, Nathan (“Early History of a Sewing-Machine Operator”), describe difficult early lives in Russia followed by immigrant years in the United States. In the third section, “Needle Trade”, Charles reflects on the way his parents struggled to make a life in America for the family. It encapsulates much of the early immigrant experience. The Nobel laureate in literature for 1978, Isaac Bashevis Singer, wrote six volumes of memoirs, one of the liveliest being In My Father’s Court (1966). The “Court” is his father’s Beth Din, where the boy Isaac observed the rich panoply of Polish Jewish life in Warsaw’s Krochmalna Street through the questions and problems brought to his rabbi father. He implies his future break with orthodox Judaism and the lure of the secular world, which would reach fruition when he arrived in the United States in 1935. Making It (1967) by Commentary’s editor, Norman Podhoretz, concerns his rise to success in the New York intellectual world. Like Alfred Kazin, he moved from immigrant Brooklyn to sophisticated Manhattan, very much aware of the Jewishness he was leaving behind through a “conversion” to culture at Columbia and Cambridge Universities. These auto/biographies depict the tension between two cultures and ways of life – the religious and secular. Most of the writers chose secular lives but remained bound by ties of

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memory and nostalgia, often despite their expressed desires, to some aspect of the Jewish world – whether peoplehood, culture, or religious vision. While their accounts involve selfrepresentation, all continuously point away from the self to that Jewish world against which they ultimately define themselves. No aspect of what appears to be a personal past can be understood without reference to that Jewish religious culture, which so many of the writers seek to flee. Locating the self becomes an exercise in delineating its difference from that which is frequently perceived as a burdensome attachment, and those writers who have taken refuge in secular utopias promised by left-wing movements have done so through an idealistic rejection of centuries of prayer for the coming of the Messiah. Their deeds imply that direct human action must replace Jehovah’s promise if humankind is to achieve justice and salvation. Whether the conversion is to socialism, materialism, or culture, leaving the tribe behind for success in the secular world provides the major conflict within Jewish American life writing. The very process of introspection required to narrate one’s life provides, for these writers, an opportunity to focus on the self as opposed to the group, something discouraged in Jewish culture with its stress upon the peoplehood of Israel. In this sense, the very choice of autobiography as a genre rebels against Jewish cultural tradition. Paradoxically though, the stress on individual choice is also an attempt at various forms of universalism: worldly success, the more abstract worlds of the intellectual, high culture, socialism. Perhaps what this tendency actually reveals is a notquite unconscious desire to become an accepted part of the larger human family, leaving behind one’s membership of a persecuted minority people. Yet the attempt at detachment from Judaism for an immersion in the universal is never wholly successful on either the social or psychic level. Edward A. Abramson See also Holocaust Writings; Israeli and Modern Hebrew Life Writing; Judaism and Life Writing

Further Reading Life Writings: Berkman, Alexander, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, New York: Mother Earth, 1912 Gold, Herbert, My Last Two Thousand Years, New York: Random House, 1972; London: Hutchinson, 1973 Howe, Irving, A Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Autobiography, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982 Levin, Meyer, In Search: An Autobiography, New York: Horizon Press, and Paris: Authors’ Press, 1950 Lewisohn, Ludwig, Up Stream: An American Chronicle, New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922 Lisitzky, Ephraim E., In the Grip of Cross-Currents, translated from the Hebrew by Moshe Kohn and Jacob Sloan, New York: Bloch, 1959 Marx, Groucho, Groucho and Me, New York: B. Geis, and London: Gollancz, 1959 Metzker, Isaac (editor), A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters from the Lower East Side to The Jewish Daily Forward, New York: Doubleday, 1971 Metzker, Isaac (editor), A Bintel Brief: Letters to The Jewish Daily Forward, 1950–1970, New York: Viking Press, 1981 Podhoretz, Norman, Breaking Ranks: A Political Memoir, New York: Harper and Row, 1979; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing up

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in Warsaw, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1969; London: Julia MacRae Books, 1980 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, A Little Boy in Search of God: Mysticism in a Personal Light, New York: Doubleday, 1976 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, A Young Man in Search of Love, New York: Doubleday, 1978 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, Lost in America, New York: Doubleday, 1981 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, Love and Exile, New York: Doubleday, and London: Jonathan Cape, 1984 Yezierska, Anzia, Red Ribbon on a White Horse, New York: Scribner, 1950

Analysis: Fried, Lewis (editor-in-chief), Handbook of American Jewish Literature: An Analytical Guide to Topics, Themes, and Sources, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1988 Holte, James Craig, “The Representative Voice: Autobiography and the Ethnic Experience”, MELUS: Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, 9 (1982): 25–46 Guttmann, Allen, The Jewish Writer in America: Assimilation and the Crisis of Identity, New York: Oxford University Press, 1971 Kazin, Alfred, “The Self as History: Reflections on Autobiography” in The American Autobiography: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Albert E. Stone, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1981 Olney, James (editor), Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Rosenfeld, Alvin, “Inventing the Jew: Notes on Jewish Autobiography” in The American Autobiography: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Albert E. Stone, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1981 Shavelson, Susanne Amy, “From Amerike to America: Language and Identity in the Yiddish and English Autobiographies of Jewish Immigrant Women” (dissertation), Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1996 Sherman, Bernard, The Invention of the Jew: Jewish-American Education Novels, 1916–1964, New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1969

Johnson, Samuel

1709–1784

English biographer, lexicographer, and essayist Samuel Johnson has long been celebrated as a life writer, particularly of the lives of the English poets, but what may have been his most significant piece of life writing went up in flames just before he died. Boswell reports that Johnson destroyed a large quantity of his personal papers a week before his death. Nobody really knows the full extent of what was lost, but there are good grounds for believing that Johnson destroyed the raw materials for what would have almost certainly been among the most impressive autobiographies in the English language. We may not know exactly what Johnson would have done or said in a formal autobiography, but we can make some good guesses from what he has left behind. To judge from his biographies of others, we could have expected brilliant insight into character. Much of Johnson’s earliest work was actually life writing. At one time or another he published, usually in The Gentleman’s Magazine, the lives of Boerhaave, Barretier [Baratier], Burman, Morin, Father Paul Sarpi, Edward Cave, Francis Cheynel [Cheynell], Sir Thomas Browne, Sir Francis Drake, Admiral William Blake, and Frederick the Great. Despite some significant original touches these pieces were more often than not transcriptions, transla-

tions, or compilations of the work of others. Johnson’s breakthrough piece in the art of life writing came with The Life of Richard Savage, first published in 1744. Here on display were the qualities that would be most admired about Johnson as a writer of lives: great narrative powers, uncanny insight, a stern determination to gaze unblinkingly at the follies of humankind, but a determination that was always enlarged by compassion for his fellow human beings. Johnson would return to the format he had established in the Life of Savage in his Lives of the English Poets, published between 1779 and 1781. He is often quoted as having said that he loved the biographical part of literature best, and nowhere is that preference better displayed than in the 52 lives that constitute The Lives. That may also be part of the reason why so many believe that this collection contains some of the best work Johnson ever did. Certainly the Lives of Cowley, Waller, Milton, Dryden, and Pope remain among the most quoted, cited, and admired pieces of life writing in English. Johnson’s greatest contribution to a theory of life writing is in his periodical essay “The Dignity and Usefulness of Biography” in the Rambler (no. 60, first published 13 October 1750). It is particularly noteworthy because here he celebrated biography as the most satisfying if not the highest form of literature: Those parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds, are, above all other writings, to be found in narratives of particular persons; and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography, since none can be more delightful or more useful. Johnson goes on to suggest that the best biographies will be those written by people with a personal knowledge of their subject because they record what otherwise would be lost, for “the incidents which give excellence to a biography are of a volatile and evanescent kind”. Small wonder then that he also feels that “more knowledge may be gained of a man’s real character, by a short conversation with one of his servants, than from a formal and studied narrative”. Johnson’s other major contribution to life-writing theory, “Autobiography”, comes in Idler (no. 84, first published 24 November 1759). But here his praise leans in the direction of autobiography. This time the relations that are “commonly of most value” are those in which “the writer tells his [or her] own story”. His reasoning seems to be that biographers are more likely to be influenced by externals, while somebody writing about his or her own life is more likely to write about something far more important, about what is internal. To the objection that the temptation to shade the truth by casting oneself in the best possible light would necessarily be overpowering, Johnson replies that we should be able to expect at least as much impartiality from someone writing about him- or herself as we can from a biographer. Besides, the autobiographer always has this advantage over the biographer: he or she always knows the truth, something that could all too easily be hidden from a biographer. If nothing else, these comments preserve teasing hints for future generations about what was lost when Johnson destroyed his personal papers shortly before he died. John J. Burke, Jr

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Biography Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, England, 18 September 1709. His father was a bookseller, his mother a member of the local gentry. Contracted tuberculosis from a wet nurse, and subsequently suffered from poor health. Educated at grammar schools in Lichfield and Stourbridge until the age of 16. Studied at Pembroke College, Oxford, 1728–29: left without taking a degree through lack of funds. Returned to Lichfield, where his father died in 1731. Taught briefly at the grammar school in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire, 1731, then moved to Birmingham where he turned to writing. Worked for the publisher of the Birmingham Journal, 1732. Contributed to the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1734–44. Married a widow, Elizabeth “Tettie” Porter, 1735. Ran a boarding school in Edial, Staffordshire, 1735–37. Settled in London after the failure of the school, deciding to pursue a career as a writer, 1737. Earned a living writing reports on debates in Parliament for the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1740–44. Achieved recognition with the Life of Richard Savage (1744), then began his best-known work, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755). Formed the Ivy Lane Club, 1749. Writer and editor, The Rambler, 1750–52. Became depressed after the death of his wife in 1752. Major contributor, Adventurer, 1753–54. Arrested for debt, 1756, but released after the novelist Samuel Richardson loaned him money. Contributed to the Literary Magazine, 1756–58; wrote the “Idler” papers for the Universal Chronicle, 1758–60. Wrote the moral fable The Prince of Abyssinia (1759). Granted crown pension by George III, 1762. Met his future biographer, James Boswell, 1763. Co-founder of the literary Club, 1764. Began work on Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779–81). Travelled with Boswell to Scotland, 1773, and with Hester and Henry Thrale to Wales, 1774, and Paris, 1775. Formed the Essex Head Club, 1783. Died in London, 13 December 1784.

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Butt, John Everett, Biography in the Hands of Walton, Johnson, and Boswell, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966 Cafarelli, Annette Wheeler, Prose in the Age of Poets: Romanticism and Biographical Narrative from Johnson to De Quincey, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990 Clingham, Greg, “Johnson’s Prayers and Meditations and the ‘Stolen Diary Problem’: Reflections on a Biographical Quiddity”, Age of Johnson, 4 (1991): 83–95 Evans, Bergan, “Dr Johnson’s Theory of Biography”, Review of English Studies, 10 (1934): 301–10 Folkenflik, Robert, Samuel Johnson, Biographer, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1978 Greene, Donald, “The Uses of Autobiography in the Eighteenth Century” in Essays in Eighteenth-Century Biography, edited by Philip B. Daghlian, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968 Lipking, Lawrence, Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998 Lynn, Steven, “Sexual Difference and Johnson’s Brain” in Fresh Reflections on Samuel Johnson: Essays in Criticism, edited by Prem Nath, Troy, New York: Whitston, 1987 McCarthy, William, “The Composition of Johnson’s Lives: A Calendar”, Philological Quarterly, 60 (1981): 53–67 Maner, Martin, The Philosophical Biographer: Doubt and Dialectic in Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets”, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988 Parke, Catherine N., Samuel Johnson and Biographical Thinking, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991 Rogers, Pat, “Johnson’s Lives of the Poets and the Biographic Dictionaries”, Review of English Studies, 31 (1980): 149–71 Wheeler, David (editor), Domestick Privacies: Samuel Johnson and the Art of Biography, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987

Selected Writings The Life of Admiral Blake, 1740 An Account of the Life of Mr. Richard Savage, Son of the Earl Rivers, 1744; as The Life of Savage, edited by Clarence Rupert Tracy, 1971 An Account of the Life of John Philip Barretier, 1744 “The Dignity and Usefulness of Biography” in Rambler, 60 (13 October 1750) “Autobiography” in Idler, no. 84 (24 November 1759) A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, 1775; edited by Peter Levi (with James Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides), 1984; edited by J.D. Fleeman, 1985 Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets, 10 vols, 1779–81; as The Lives of the English Poets, 1781; revised 1783; edited by George Birkbeck Hill, 3 vols, 1905; selection edited by J.P. Hardy, 1972 Letters to and from Samuel Johnson, 2 vols, edited by Hester Lynch Piozzi, 1788 The Celebrated Letter to the Earl of Chesterfield, edited by James Boswell, 1791 An Account of the Life of Samuel Johnson to His Eleventh Year, Written by Himself, edited by Richard Wright, 1805 A Diary of a Journey into North Wales in the Year 1774, edited by R. Duppa, 1816 Letters, 3 vols, edited by R.W. Chapman, 1952 Johnson on Johnson: A Selection of the Personal and Autobiographical Writings, edited by John Wain, 1976 Johnson’s periodical essays were issued in book form in the Rambler (6 vols, 1752), the Adventurer (2 vols, 1753–54), and the Idler (2 vols, 1761), and a selection appears in Essays from the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler, edited by Walter Jackson Bate, 1968.

Further Reading Alkon, Paul, “Johnson’s Concept of Admiration”, Philological Quarterly, 48 (1969): 59–81 Bronson, Bertrand H., Johnson Agonistes and Other Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965 Burke, John J., Jr, “Excellence in Biography: Rambler No. 60 and Johnson’s Early Biographies”, South Atlantic Bulletin, 44/2 (May 1979): 14–34

Jørgensen, Johannes

1866–1956

Danish poet, novelist, hagiographer, and autobiographer Johannes Jørgensen was the most prominent Danish artist to convert to Roman Catholicism during the Catholic revival in the late 19th century, establishing himself as the leading Scandinavian hagiographer with his biographies of the saints Francis of Assisi (Den hellige Frans af Assisi, 1907), Catherine of Siena (Den hellige Katerina af Siena, 1915) and Birgitta of Vadstena (Den hellige Birgitta af Vadstena, 1941–43). Strongly criticized, and facing domestic and personal troubles, he left Denmark for Italy in 1913. He wrote the first six volumes of his autobiography Mit livs legende (literally “The Legend of My Life”, abridged translation as Jørgensen: An Autobiography) between 1916 and 1919, and the last volume as a postscript in 1928, explaining the decisions that led him to choose voluntarily exile in Italy (most likely to defend himself against accusations that he had abandoned his art and converted in favour of publicity and financial support). Jørgensen therefore has a somewhat ambiguous reputation in Danish literature: most scholars agree that he revived poetry, and that few have exceeded his ability to describe human loneliness in the modern age; however, most critics condemn his conversion as an unworthy abandonment of art. All seem to agree with his diagnosis of the sufferings of modern man, but they repudiate his cure. Jørgensen’s autobiography is a strong personal record of the emotions of the author and a sharp if not unbiased picture of cultural life in Denmark between 1880 and 1913. It is one of the longest and most self-scrutinizing autobiographies written in Denmark, and it has been compared with the autobiographies of

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Augustine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Although in many ways a striking personal document, as an exhortation to religious conversion it could hardly achieve its mission. The message often becomes too personal, as the author is too willing to see his problems as the result of his own personal failings rather than ascribe them to the failings of common humanity or to the social and political failings of society. The proposed solution may also be too personal: modern commentators interpret his problems as a result of misogyny and fear of living, as he transforms his carnal fears and longings into refined spiritual love and becomes a modern hermit who abandons a troublesome world. The word legende in the title implies his intention to relate his story as a religious tale of conversion, expounding the incidents as stages in his conversion, and omitting details he considers irrelevant: “You do not intend to empty a wastepaper-basket crammed with facts upon your reader, you want to communicate to him an impression of life, of an evolution, of something that moves following certain lines and driven by certain powers.” Jørgensen assumes the role of a man who is acted upon rather than a man who acts according to his own free will. At crucial stages, his spiritual health and his financial well-being are saved by friends acting as divine guardians. He sees his fate as a result of God’s providence, as he explains his experiences according to the “Law of Nemesis” expounded by the Danish author Meïr A. Goldschmidt. However, the nemesis for Jørgensen is a more severe and demanding mistress than Goldschmidt’s benevolent and somewhat mischievous guardian of equilibrium: Jørgensen believes himself driven by providence that uses his own illconsidered acts to force him to acknowledge his failings, abandon his own aspirations, and become a spiritual guide to other men. Jørgensen often quotes extracts from his old diaries, almost suffocating the reader with detail, but at least leaving an overwhelming impression of credibility. On the other hand, the extracts often bloom into small gems of poetry, brightening the sombre mood of the autobiography, and showing the author’s talents as one of the most gifted of Danish poets. Although he believes his experiences to follow a pattern, he feels free to recreate episodes to press home his message. The original six-volume autobiography concludes with a dreamlike chapter called “A Vision”, where the author hears the newly ordained priest Jan Ballin, a son of his spiritual benefactor, celebrating mass and preaching St Matthew’s gospel comforting those who have abandoned worldly goods for the sake of the Saviour. When Johannes Jørgensen concluded “The Legend of My Life” with a new volume in 1928, he repeated the motif by introducing his friend the Dane Peter Schindler. Schindler, on his way to Rome to be ordained as a priest, tells him that he owes his decision to become a Catholic to the writings of Jørgensen: “All this is your doing. Without knowing it, without wanting it, only by being, only by walking ahead. You made us into whole human beings, although you never knew it.” Sceptics have doubted that any of these episodes took place, but they are crucial for the self-awareness of the author and enable the autobiography to achieve its end in a spiritual haven. Johannes Jørgensen paints a vivid if often self-denigrating picture of himself. Describing his youth, he blames himself for abandoning Christianity to embrace the gospels of atheism, naturalism, and radicalism. However, he is disappointed as he

discovers that even if radicalism defeats the bogey of national Romanticism, the spoils are won not by radicalism but by the new bourgeoisie of smug businessmen who have but little use for men of letters. Jørgensen must earn a precarious living as a freelance journalist in a way that reminds the reader of the semiautobiographical works of August Strindberg: Röda rummet (1879; The Red Room), and Knut Hamsum: Sult (1888; Hunger). Resenting the petit-bourgeois mentality, he and other poets form the Symbolism group, denouncing naturalism as too narrow-minded and advocating an aesthetical spiritualism inspired by the poems of Charles Baudelaire. Even if Symbolism may greatly have facilitated his religious evolution, the author condemns it as a flight away from God into the realm of fantasy. However, the poet is assailed by harsh reality when he becomes a father. He never mentions the name of his wife, but blames himself for being too lenient and a spendthrift, giving in to his wife’s demands to live above their means. According to his interpretation of the law of nemesis, his inability to lead a family is seen as a punishment for sexual transgressions in his youth, consisting of hopeless debts and humiliating scenes, and confrontations with disgruntled coal dealers and irate landlords. In 1894 he travels to Italy, where he first meets his friend the poet Sophus Clausen, who represents the author’s old worldly views, and then Mogens Ballin, a recent convert from Judaism to Catholicism, who intervenes in order to save Jørgensen from his financial and spiritual troubles by introducing him to Catholicism. In the haven of monasteries in Northern Italy the author regains his peace of mind, even as he describes his inability to accept the Draconian opinions of Ballin, who rejects all art not glorifying God as a waste. The author embraces Catholicism and returns to Denmark to promote his views, but is received with coolness. His conversion results in alienation, as the radicals and the Symbolists condemn him as a turncoat, and the religious movements in Denmark (all strictly Lutheran) claim that a devout man ought to show his faith by fulfilling his place in society, not by isolating himself in a monastery. Jørgensen tries unsuccessfully to call for a new Catholic-socialist world order, but finds himself isolated as an artist and ignored as a reformer, his place assumed by new writers who proclaim their atheism. Jørgensen mocks himself, describing how his tempers get the better of him in debates and how his confessor commands him as a penitence to abstain from any discussion with his former radical friends. The irony turns to tragedy when he decides to stay at home to take care of his family and promote the faith in Denmark, but financial problems compel him to travel in Europe as a lecturer and writer of biographies. Describing his travels he contrasts his own life and doubts with the serene beliefs and regulated lifestyle of his admiring audience while living at their expense. The situation reaches a climax when his friend Ballin, in 1913, confronts him with several cases of exploitation of the benevolence of his patrons. Ballin exhorts him to obtain a divorce and break off contact with his family in order to restore his reputation as an artist and a Christian. Jørgensen ends his autobiography of his search for a spiritual haven with an episode wherein the above-mentioned priest Schindler shows him the town of Siena, home of Saint Catherine, exclaiming: “Now you have come into your kingdom, Giovanni”. Jens Kristian L. Boll

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Biography Jens Johannes Jørgensen. Born in Svendborg, Denmark, 6 November 1866. Studied at the University of Copenhagen, c.1884. Influenced by the writing and work of Georg Brandes, and attracted by socialism and radicalism. Published first poems, 1887. Married Amalie Ewald. Left his studies to become a journalist to support his family. Unpaid editor of the art magazine Tårnet [The Tower], in which he advocated a more spiritual, mystical approach to life, 1893. Abandoned former lifestyle, and converted to Roman Catholicism, 1896. Earned a living by lecturing and writing, visiting Catholic groups in Europe. Divorced, 1913, and subsequently lived mainly in Italy, in particular Assisi. Wrote biographies of St Francis of Assisi (1907) and St Catherine of Siena (1915). Married Helen Klein, 1937. Left Italy because of his opposition to fascism. Spent the war years in Denmark and Sweden. Returned to Italy, mid-1940s. Moved back to Denmark because of ill-health, 1953. Died in Svendborg, Denmark, 29 May 1956.

Selected Writings Livsløgn og livssandhed, 1898 Den hellige ild (biographical study), 1902 Den hellige Frans af Assisi (biographical study), 1907; as Saint Francis of Assisi, translated by T. O’Conor Sloane, 1912 Breve fra Assisi (correspondence), 1924 Don Bosco (biographical study), 1929 Den hellige Katerina af Siena (biographical study), 1915; as Saint Catherine of Siena, translated by Ingeborg Lund, 1938 Mit livs legende, 7 vols, 1916–28; abridged as Jørgensen: An Autobiography, translated by Ingeborg Lund, 2 vols, 1928–29 Charles de Foucault (biographical study), 1934 Den hellige Birgitta af Vadstena (biographical study), 2 vols, 1941–43; as Saint Bridget of Sweden, translated by Ingeborg Lund, 1954 Breve fra Johannes Jørgensen til Viggo Stuckenberg (correspondence), edited by Jørgen Andersen, 1946

Further Reading Fibiger, Johannes, Litteraturens veje [Paths of Literature], Copenhagen: GAD, 1996 Frederiksen, Emil, Den unge Johannes Jørgensen [The Youth of Johannes Jørgensen], Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1946 Jones, W. Gwyn, Johannes Jørgensens modne år [Johannes Jørgensen’s Years of Maturity], Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1963

Journalism and Magazines The relationship between journalism and life writing emanates from the ways in which various textual and generic modes of recording “lives” and “life histories” have been incorporated, and often transformed, in a nexus of reviewing and reporting, beginning with the journal, newspaper, and magazine, but also extending to other components of the mass media. The reviewing of other published life writings may be seen as a journalistic practice that is rooted in the formation and growth of the press. For example, British periodicals of the 18th century, such as The Bee, The Tatler, The Spectator, and The Monthly Ledger, frequently carried reviews of biographies or published selected excerpts from these works. The reporting of “life histories” emerged along different – though not mutually exclusive – strands. What we now perhaps call “feature writing” stems from the 19th-century practices of the New Journalism, which generally relate to the reporting or representations of celebrities or other public figures as well as to individual life stories and / or the social contexts of these “lives”. Although New Journalism was a term coined by Matthew Arnold in 1887, in response to more “personal” tones adopted by journalists, there is some dis-

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agreement as to when these practices began (see Joel Wiener). Henry Mayhew’s periodical of 1851, London Labour and the London Poor, contains more than 400 allegedly “verbatim” interviews with individuals. Mayhew’s project was to record the lives of London’s poor, and as such it is often seen as an important landmark in journalism. Most especially, the periodical’s correspondence columns, and Mayhew’s published replies to readers’ queries, characterized a shift in the communication between journalist and reader. Mayhew’s presence as an editor, writer, and personality, and the life histories of the readers, mark out the development of the auto/biographical modes of address and narrative strategies in journalism. However, it has been argued that not until W.T. Stead’s journalism of the 1880s in Britain did British New Journalism really begin to take shape. In 1885 Stead, editor of the London newspaper the Pall Mall Gazette, ran a series of stories on “sexual danger” for urban women. Using interviews with women and a first-hand account of his own investigations into London’s vice trade, Stead constructed a sensational narrative, which, as a journalistic formula, had an impact on the style and methods of journalistic writings and practice. The “life story” was used to serve Stead’s own editorial purposes, and thus perhaps subjugated life histories to commercial imperatives (see Judith Walkowitz). Indeed, the construction and representation of the celebrity also help to illustrate the commercial orientation of the press. In the late 19th century, depictions of public figures in their homes, descriptions of “personalities”, and the uncovering of supposed secrets all have strong associations with other 19th-century biographical writings and practices, and may be equally viewed as having a connection with the relationship between scandal and life writing. For example, Edmund Yates’s “Celebrities at Home” series, which ran in The World: A Journal for Men and Women from 1876, constructs a conflation between character and home, thus aligning private space with inner self. This practice of “keyhole” journalism was adopted and adapted by other journalists of the period, and may be seen as the beginnings of 20th-century gossip columns. In the late 19th century, New Journalists such as W.T. Stead argued that investigative journalism, which often sought to publicize the private affairs of public figures, could reveal the “truth” about a person’s character. In these accounts, the journalist’s evidence was validated as truthful testimony because of his or her “personal” voice (see Stead, O’Connor). On the other hand, some commentators considered investigative journalism an invasion of privacy. In 1890, D. Samuel Warren and Louis D. Brandeis published “The Right to Privacy” in the Harvard Law Review, in which they argued that there was a need to establish privacy laws. In particular, they asserted that journalists intruded on the privacy of individuals, in order to “satisfy purient taste”, and that gossip had become a “trade, which is pursued with industry as well as effrontery”. While the sensational, the scandalous, and the celebrityconscious still inform the relationship between journalism and life writing, and still raise difficult questions about the right to privacy, auto/biographical modes of address and narratives in journalism nevertheless play an important part in recording lives and life experiences. George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia (1938) and John Hersey’s Men on Bataan (1942) recount wartime experiences, while David Finkell’s “The Last Housewife in America” (1990) and Madeline Blais’s “In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle” (1993) merge autobiographical and bio-

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graphical accounts of lives, giving temporal immediacy to social concerns and contexts (see Edd Applegate). At the same time, the personal intimacy among journalist, subject, and reader, which is often stylistically and methodologically foregrounded in these types of writings, must be considered in relation to the editorial control that the journalist and his or her publication’s editors and proprietors have over life stories. Plainly, the selection and interpretation of interviews, testimonies, and evidence may be predicated upon the publication’s policies, politics, or commercial operations. What then determines the relays between journalism and other forms of life writing should be seen within the complex social, cultural, and historical frameworks that inform these relays. The “personal” voice and experience of the reporter and the reported often enable a fluid relationship between autobiography and biography, as well as engaging the reader in this relationship, while representations of celebrities and celebrity life styles tend to offer more the characteristics of this lifestyle, rather than an in-depth account of the subject’s life story. As such, while journalism has played – and continues to play – a transforming role in the ways in which lives are recorded, the commercial imperatives of journalism, somewhat more than book publishing, also have a decisive impact on the kind of transformation that it enables. Sue McPherson See also Interviews

Further Reading Applegate, Edd, Literary Journalism: A Biographical Dictionary of Writers and Editors, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996 Brake, Laurel, Subjugated Knowledges: Journalism, Gender and Literature in the Nineteenth Century, New York: New York University Press, and London: Macmillan, 1994 Brown, Lucy, Victorian News and Newspapers, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985 Fader, Daniel and George Bornstein, British Periodicals of the 18th and 19th Centuries, Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms, 1972 Harrington, Walt, Intimate Journalism: The Art and Craft of Reporting Everyday Life, Thousand Oaks, California and London: Sage, 1997 Hollowell, John, Fact and Fiction: The New Journalism and the Nonfiction Novel, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977 Mayhew, Henry, The Essential Mayhew: Representing and Communicating the Poor, edited by Bernard Taithe, London: Rivers Oram Press, and Concord, Massachusetts: Paul, 1996 O’Connor, P.T., “The New Journalism”, New Review, 1/5 (1889): 423–34 Parthasarthy, Rangaswami, Journalism in India: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day, New Delhi: Sterling, 1989 Russell, Dennis, “The Journalistic Autobiography: How Reporters View Themselves and Order Their Experience”, Studies in Popular Culture, 18/1 (1995): 83–99 Stead, W.T., “The Future of Journalism”, Contemporary Review, 50 (1886): 663–79 Walkowitz, Judith R., City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, and London: Virago Press, 1992 Warren, D. Samuel and Louis D. Brandeis, “The Right to Privacy”, Harvard Law Review, 4/5 (1890): 234–56 Wiener, Joel H. (editor), Papers for the Millions: The New Journalism in Britain, 1850s to 1914, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1988 Yates, Edmund (editor), Celebrities at Home, London: Office of The World, 1877–79

Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor

1648/1651–1695

Latin American nun, poet, and autobiographer Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was recognized in her own lifetime as colonial Latin America’s greatest poet. Indeed, bibliographical studies indicate that her library was one of the largest in colonial Latin America, and convent records suggest that her life was far from that of an ascetic, attended as she was by servants, cooks, and literary and ecclesiastical figures. In much of her writing (which encompasses a range of genres) she complains bitterly of the consequences of celebrity: that although her fame has allowed her to enjoy intellectual pursuits with a freedom that would have been difficult for her female contemporaries, that same fame has classified her as a rara avis, a strange bird, has exposed her to special scrutiny, and has kept her under the glare of sometimes critical public opinion. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Respuesta de la poetisa a la muy ilustre Sor Filotea de la Cruz [1693; literally “Response of the Most Illustrious Poetess Sor Filotea de la Cruz”, translated as The Answer], which circulated widely in colonial Mexico and imperial Spain, received the same harsh reception at the hands of the reading public and the regal and ecclesiastical authorities. The Respuesta, considered to be Sor Juana’s autobiography, was written partly as a confession, partly as a self-defence against accusations of worldliness. In it, Sor Juana appears simply to describe in a rather random manner her childhood and upbringing, stressing her innocent thirst for knowledge and the fact that all her knowledge, divine and worldly, has been acquired in the service of God. She makes extensive use of sources (Latin, scholasticism, the ecclesiastical authorities, the Bible, and the writers of classical antiquity) in order to present a more collective view that women have always engaged and excelled in intellectual activities, and have always been condemned for it. These obscure and dense passages are often juxtaposed with literary and religious conventions more suited to the female writer or the nun, since Sor Juana presents her life achievements with a measure of self-effacement (combining the literary convention of affected modesty, the expected humility of the religious subject, and the required modesty of the female subject). In the centuries following its publication, the Respuesta was largely ignored, and it was not until the beginning of the 20th century that the work was once more subjected to critical attention, although primarily as a purely referential document. In a seminal study of the life and works of the writer by Dorothy Schons, the Respuesta was described as revealing “a struggle in which she was as a house divided against itself”, a first glimpse at the contradictions inherent within the work. However, it was only with the celebration of Sor Juana’s tercentenary in 1951, with the advent of feminist criticism in the 1960s, and especially since the 1980s, that the work as been re-evaluated under the lens of a variety of feminist approaches. During this time, the writer has been awarded such titles as “the first feminist of the Americas”. Although traditional critical approaches to the Respuesta have tended to subordinate textual analysis to the significance of Sor Juana’s life story, feminist and postcolonial theorists have embraced the text as one that problematizes both autobiographical identity and the act of self-writing. Indeed, what

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may at first strike the reader as deficiencies in the work – its fragmentation, random juxtapositions, disordered narrative, and repeated self-contradictions – are precisely what constitute its strength and originality for many. Sor Juana swings between the self-assertion necessary to the autobiographical subject and the self-effacement necessary to the bride of Christ and a woman of her time. She moves from a breathlessly showy display of her secular and religious knowledge to a pointed and enigmatic silence. She is at once determined to make public her life story while simultaneously pointing to the dangers of her private life being made public. Perhaps most significantly, she hints very strongly at the weight and importance of cultural prescription in the construction of the marginalized autobiographical subject. As a woman, as a colonial subject, her identity is marked by a kind of schizophrenia as she attempts to negotiate the space between her selfimages and the images bestowed on her by society. As a result, the reader is left unable to appropriate, categorize, and objectify her. Traditional concepts of the self and the writing of the self, preoccupied as they are with notions of unity, universality, referentiality, sincerity, and a sense of closure, are in this autobiographical text therefore seen to be an illusion. Par Kumaraswami Biography Born Juana Ramírez de Asbaje (or Asuaje) in San Miguel de Nepantla, Viceroyalty of New Spain (now Mexico), 12 November 1651 (some sources give 1648). Largely self-educated. Invited to attend the court of the Spanish Viceroy, the Marquis of Mancera and his wife Doña Leonor Carreto, in Mexico City, c.1659, and subsequently wrote poetry for official events. Entered the Carmelite convent in Mexico City, 14 August 1667: stayed for only three months. Entered the Jeronymite convent of Santa Paula, Mexico City, 1669, and adopted the religious name Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Continued her intellectual pursuits, writing poetry and dramatic works in verse and prose, and her international reputation grew. First of three volumes of her works, Inundación castálida, published 1689. Came under increasing pressure from church authorities to concentrate on theology and to cease writing “profane” works, c.1690. Chose to abandon writing and to lead a life of complete seclusion, c.1693. Contracted the plague. Died 17 April 1695.

Selected Writings Respuesta de la poetisa a la muy ilustre Sor Filotea de la Cruz, 1693; as Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz, edited by Giuseppe Bellini, 1953; as A Woman of Genius: The Intellectual Autobiography of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, 1982, revised 1987; as The Answer, edited and translated by Electa Arenal and Amanda Powell, 1994

Further Reading Franco, Jean, “Sor Juana Explores Space” in Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico, edited by Franco, London: Verso, and New York: Columbia University Press, 1989 Merrim, Stephanie (editor), Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991 Paz, Octavio, Sor Juana, or, The Traps of Faith, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1988; original Spanish edition, 1982 Schons, Dorothy, “Some Obscure Points in the Life of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz”, Modern Philology, 24/2 (1926) Whitley, David, “Cultural Identities under Pressure” in The Uses of Autobiography, edited by Julia Swindells, London and Bristol, Pennsylvania: Taylor and Francis, 1995

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Judaism and Life Writing Judaism is intimately connected to life writing for reasons that are innate as well as historical. The Jewish religious duty that is the study of the Torah generated from about 100 bce a body of significant writings concerning the non-finite interpretability of biblical texts. This expository Midrash, designed to produce new meanings and ethical implications, has often been used as a model to discuss the origins and effects of exemplary or distopic narratives, including those with a Jewish connection: thus Franz Kafka’s Das Schloss (The Castle) has often been described as a Midrash of the book of Job. In similar vein, the core cultural texts making up the Talmud (a collection of discussions and administration of Jewish law) contain commentraies or Gemara in addition to the actual Mishnah or legal code. At the heart of a culture centred on the Book, then, and occupying a central rather than incidental position, we find already a certain core practice of life writing, one focusing on both inscription and reception, and concerned with the remembrance and projection of individual and collective experience. Thus while autobiography’s evolution can be linked crucially to the Christian confessional tradition via the Augustinian model, it is worth recalling also the genre’s similarities to a more strictly Judaic structure and practice of recollection, analysis, and agonistic determination, based on the inexhaustible possibilities of the Book. In the contemporary period, one of the most extreme examples of writing generated by this model is that of the autobiographical poetry of Edmond Jabès, born into a Jewish French-speaking community in Egypt in 1912. His labyrinthine works Le Livre des questions (1963–66; The Book of Questions) and Le Livre des ressemblances (1976; The Book of Resemblances) employ the voices of imaginary rabbis in order to weave together allusions to the death camps, the poet’s own post-Nasser exile in France, and finally the fundamental exilic state that is language itself. To inherent tendencies can be added the strong tradition of testament generated by the history of the Jewish people. The consciousness of being a chosen race, the historic endurance of despite and diaspora, the importance of traditional and exiled communities, as well as, in the contemporary period, both the disaster and trauma of the Shoah or Holocaust and the regeneration of an Israeli state have each contributed to a distinct if dispersed body of life writing. One important element of this collection is the Yiddish novel, born out of popular romances or epics in the late 16th century, and later developed by Enlightenment, or reformist, trends in the 19th century. Classic writing combining Jewish nationalism with social realism is epitomized by the works of Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915), whose numerous collections depict the vicissitudes of Polish Jewry. (English translations include In This World and the Next, The Case Against the Wind, and The Book of Fire). Of the next generation, the most famous novelist is Sholem Asch (1880–1957), also born in Poland and at his best when portraying small community life; while David Ignatoff (1855–1953), a founder of the literary group “The Young Ones”, helped to create the modern Yiddish novel through his depiction of Jewish workers in the United States. Undoubtedly the best-known contemporary writer of Yiddish is Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904–91), whose nostalgic recreation of the

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Polish shtetl is strongly Hasidic. His novel Di familye Mushkat (1945; The Family Moskat) has been called the Jewish Buddenbrooks, while his collection of stories Gimpel tam (1957; Gimpel the Fool) is justly famous. Another equally important element is the modern revival of Hebrew, promoted ideally by Moses Mendelssohn and more politically by the move to Palestine. Here, an important Israeli Bildungsroman is Oreah natah la-lun [1938–39; A Guest for the Night] by Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888–1970). It describes the author’s Galician homeland, the war years, and the new Jewish life in Palestine, in a modernist form and often ironic tenor that ignore neither their Hasidic heritage nor a foreboding of the Holocaust. Other important writers of the Hebrew revival include Yehudah Amichai (b. 1924) and Amos Oz (b. 1939). Elsewhere, in English and other European languages, a realist depiction of exile and exclusion produced a loosely connected number of masterpieces, each characterized by an anguish constituting a psychological proximity to life writing. The German writer Lion Feuchtwanger (1884–1958) produced the autobiographies Moskau 1937 (1937; Moscow 1937) and Der Teufel in Frankreich (1941; The Devil in France), as well as the more famous novel Jud Süss (1925; Jew Süss) about a man who will not accept baptism to save his life. The Russian writer Vasilii Semenovich Grossman (1905–64) braved persecution to produce the posthumous Zhizn’ i sud’ba (1950–60; Life and Fate), a work praised more than once by the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas: here Stalinist oppression and Soviet antiSemitism are revealed through long introspection and stark first-person accounts. In European writing, however, historical influences arguably reach their pinnacle of expression less in realist recounting than in the modernist masterpieces of Marcel Proust and Franz Kafka. The latter’s bewildering dramas of law, guilt, and punishment, played out in The Judgement, The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle, draw constantly if obliquely on a Jewish sense of social acceptance and an entire exegetical tradition: here again, Hasidic traits are also discernable. The ambiguous tension between ethnic identity and nonJewish culture, or inherited restriction versus uncertain future, was also given increasingly powerful expression in the literature of the United States. An important early work is Call It Sleep (1934) by Henry Roth (b. 1906), which paints the painful experiences of an American Jewish immigrant boy. Roth was unable to repeat this achievement, but two generations of American Jewish writers, including Bernard Malamud (1914– 86), Saul Bellow (b. 1915), Leonard Michaels (b. 1933), and Philip Roth (b. 1933), further developed a Jewish presence. One of the most memorable, and morally unresolved, examples is Malamud’s second novel, The Assistant (1957). The storyline inverts the traditional autobiographical account of gradual distantiation from childhood roots: here a young non-Jewish Italian, atoning for having robbed an old Jewish shopkeeper, goes to work for him, comes to resemble him, and ultimately undergoes a conversion to Judaism that includes a painful circumcision. The most urgent recent conjunction of Judaism and life writing occurs in the context of the Holocaust. This has produced a whole sub-genre of accounts, direct and indirect, Jewish and non-Jewish, ranging from the unembellished record of personal survival to the most artful comprehension of catastrophe. In

recognition of this particular category, one that impacts on historiography as well as the art of life writing, a large and occasionally censorious commentary has also emerged, concerned often with the relative admissibility or otherwise of particular approaches. Two modern classics of this sub-genre, which in individual ways also address the question of the appropriateness of form, are Primo Levi’s Si questo è un uomo (1947; If This is a Man) and Elie Wiesel’s La Nuit (1958; Night). The former recounts Levi’s experiences as a prisoner in Auschwitz. Its measured tones, an effect of Levi’s scientific training and insistent adherence to observation and reason, met initially with bafflement and even hostility, but gradually were recognized as a truly redeeming response to the extremity of the experience, being a dignified resistance to hagiography and sentimentality (of the kind surrounding Anne Frank’s diary, the original edition of which was also published in 1947), and thus giving the powerful impression of accuracy and undeniability. Elie Wiesel’s own response to this imperative in Night advances through nine almost symmetrical chapters with an inexorability that reflects the deportation and forced marches it recounts. The text thus essentially repeats each of the systematic steps of dehumanization inflicted by the Nazis, and concludes not with the upbeat rhetoric of regeneration but with a more ambiguous image designed to reflect directly the incomparability of the Holocaust, that of a spiritually drained survivor who has nonetheless produced the unforgettable if unremittingly negative text that we have read. Subsequent generations, with increasing intertextual resonance, have continued to engage with the question of formal limits. One postmodern example of this complex involves first Robert Antelme’s L’Espèce humaine (1978; The Human Race), an account by a non-Jewish intellectual and resister of forced labour, deportation to Buchenwald and Dachau, and eventual repatriation. This in turn provoked philosophical reformulations in Maurice Blanchot’s L’Entretien infini (1969; The Infinite Conversation). Both writers then provided an enabling psychological structure for Sarah Kofman’s posthumous Paroles suffoquées (1987; Smothered Words), wherein she records the details of the deportation and murder at Auschwitz of her father, and through citation of the two previous writers explores the limits separating history, critical writing, and autobiography, in the absolute context of the death camps. Seán Hand See also The Bible; Christianity and Life Writing; Holocaust Writings; Israeli and Modern Hebrew Life Writing; Jewish American Life Writing

Further Reading Alexander, Edward, The Resonance of Dust: Essays on Holocaust Literature and Jewish Fate, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1979 Alter, Robert, Defenses of the Imagination: Jewish Writers and Modern Historical Crises, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1977 Blanchot, Maurice, The Writing of the Disaster, translated by Ann Smock, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986 Cicioni, Mirna, Primo Levi: Bridges of Knowledge, Oxford: Berg, 1995 Dan, Joseph, Theodore Weiner, and the editorial staff, entry on “Biographies and Autobiographies” in Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 4,

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edited by Cecil Roth, Jerusalem: Kefer, 1971; New York: Macmillan, 1972 Ellis, Frank, Vasiliy Grossman: The Genesis and Evolution of a Russian Heretic, Oxford: Berg, 1994 Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, New York and London: Routledge, 1991 Friedlander, Saul (editor), Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution”, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992 Hakak, Lev, Equivocal Dreams: Studies in Modern Hebrew Literature, Hoboken, New Jersey: Ktav, 1993 Hershinow, Sheldon J., Bernard Malamud, New York: Ungar, 1980 Lang, Berel (editor), Writing and the Holocaust, New York: Holmes and Meier, 1988 Lyons, Bonnie, Henry Roth: The Man and His Work, New York: Cooper Square, 1976 McAfee Brown, Robert, Elie Wiesel: Messenger to All Humanity, Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989 Miller, David Neal, Recovering the Canon: Essays on Isaac Bashevis Singer, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986 Roskies, David G., The Literature of Destruction: Jewish Responses to Catastrophe, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1989 Silberstein, Laurence J. and Robert L. Cohn (editors), The Other in Jewish Thought and History: Constructions of Jewish Culture and Identity, New York: New York University Press, 1994

Jünger, Ernst

1895–1998

German novelist, essayist, diarist, and entomologist There is no other German author who – active survivor of two world wars – also lived through more than a century of German history: the Reich of Wilhelm II, the Republic of Weimar, the Third Reich, democracy and Cold War, the breakdown of the Soviet zone and, finally, the unification of Germany. Jünger’s life was not only dedicated to writing, it was dedicated to life writing: the major part of his works consists of diaries and autobiographical essays. Gifted with a unique skill of observation and the ability to put these observations into a precise and almost crystalline language, Jünger produced works full of profound insights, stunning prophecies, and independent views. After escaping from both home and school in order to join the Foreign Legion – an event he would elaborate much later in Afrikanische Spiele [1936; African Games] – Jünger experienced the carnage of World War I on all major battlefields. He noted in his diaries In Stahlgewittern (1920; The Storm of Steel): “I made … the observation that there is a kind of horror, alien like an unexplored country. Thus I felt no fear in these moments, but a lofty and almost demonic lightness as well as fits of untameable laughter”. Fiercely opposed to the Republic of Weimar and the Treaty of Versailles (“Here any conversation must stop, for the imperative is that kind of silence which gives a presentiment of deathly silence”), Jünger collaborated with various nationalist circles without being absorbed by them. After Der Arbeiter [1932; The Worker], a large speculative essay on the future shape of industrial societies, the resistance parable Auf den Marmorklippen (1939; On the Marble Cliffs) provides a vision of the horrors of dictatorship – a topic further explored in Strahlungen (1949), his diaries of World War II. These diaries embrace Jünger’s participation in the occupation of France as a captain of the

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Wehrmacht, his stay in Paris as an administrative officer, his dishonourable discharge in the context of the attempted assassination of Hitler on 20 July 1944, and the years of occupation after the war. The entries comprise daily events, dreams, and political and philosophical reflections. Characteristic of Jünger’s style is the “desinvoltura” (serene detachment). When Allied bombers attack the bridges of Paris in May 1944, he writes: The second time, at sunset, I was holding a glass of Burgundy in my hand which had strawberries swimming in it. The city with its red towers and domes was lying there in a mighty beauty, like a calyx exposed to deathly pollination. After his dishonourable discharge from the army, living in fear of being killed either by National Socialists (Nazis) or Allied troops, he notes laconically in March 1945: Rivarol. I began with the translation of “Thoughts and Maxims”. Maybe, our language has only recently started to acquire the fluidity apt to be cast into such moulds. Death has approached so closely that one has to consider it even with regard to minor resolutions – for instance whether one should get a tooth filled or not. After the war, Jünger’s independent mind made him soon realize the threats of totalitarian democracy – Der Waldgang [1951; The Walk into the Forest] deals, like the novels Heliopolis (1949) and Gläserne Bienen (1957; The Glass Bees), with different models of the execution of power in technologically advanced societies. His life writings from here on consist of: further diaries; reports and reflections on entomological excursions, Subtile Jagden [1967; Subtle Hunts], and on experiences with drugs, Annäherungen: Drogen und Rausch [1970; Approaches: Drugs and Intoxication]. An autobiographical story of childhood – Die Zwille [1973; The Slingshot] – only superficially disguises Jünger’s historical pessimism, which was most profound in his late novels and essays. Winfried Thielmann Biography Born in Heidelberg, Germany, 29 March 1895. Grew up in Hanover, where he was educated at various schools, 1901–13. Enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, 1913, but was brought home by his father. Volunteer with the German army during World War I, serving on the Western Front, 1914–18; granted the Pour le Mérite order for bravery, September 1918. Officer in the Reichswehr, 1919–23; spent time in Paris as an adminstrative officer. Established national and international reputation with In Stahlgewittern (1920; The Storm of Steel). Studied biology in Leipzig and Naples, 1923–26, and eventually became a wellknown entomologist (a number of insect species bear his name). Married Gretha von Jeinsen, 1925 (died 1960): two sons (one died in infancy). Contributed to radical right-wing journals, including Standarte, Arminius, Widerstand, Die Kommenden, and Der Vormarsch, 1925–31. Moved to Berlin and became a freelance writer, 1927. Lived in Goslar, 1933–36, Überlingen, 1936–39, Kirchhorst, 1939–48, Ravensburg, 1948–50, and Wilflingen, from 1950. Turned down an offer to head the Nazi Writers’ Union, 1933. Wrote the novel Auf den Marmorklippen (1939; On the Marble Cliffs). Served as a captain in the German army during World War II: dishonourable discharge after participating in anti-Nazi activities, 1944. Banned from publishing his work, 1945–49. Wrote the novel Heliopolis (1949). Travelled extensively in the 1950s and 1960s. Co-editor of Antaios journal, 1959–71. Married Liselotte Lohrer, 1962. Great Order of Merit (Federal Republic of Germany), 1959. Died in Wilflingen, 16 February 1998.

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Selected Writings In Stahlgewittern: aus dem Tagebuch eines Stosstruppführers, 1920; as The Storm of Steel: From the Diary of a German Storm-Troop Officer on the Western Front, translated by Basil Creighton, 1929 Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis, 1922; as Der Krieg als inneres Erlebnis, 1933 Das Wäldchen 125: Eine Chronik aus den Grabenkämpfen 1918, 1925; as Copse 125: A Chronicle from the Trench Warfare of 1918, translated by Basil Creighton, 1930 Gärten und Strassen: aus den Tagebüchern von 1939 und 1940, 2 vols, 1942 Myrdun: Briefe aus Norwegen, 1943 Atlantische Fahrt (diaries), 1947 Ein Inselfrühling: ein Tagebuch aus Rhodos, 1948 Strahlungen (diaries), 1949 Der Waldgang, 1951 Geburtstagsbrief: Zum 4. November 1955, 1955 Jahre der Okkupation (diary), 1958 Subtile Jagden (essays), 1967 Annäherungen: Drogen und Rausch, 1970 Die Zwille (autobiographical fiction), 1973 (with Alfred Kubin) Eine Begegnung (correspondence), 1975 Essays, 1978– Tagebücher, 1978– Siebzig verweht (diary), 3 vols, 1980–93 Ernst Jünger, Rudolf Schlichter: Briefe 1935–1955, edited by Dirk Heisserer, 1997 Briefe 1930–1983, edited by Carl Schmitt and Helmuth Kiesel, 1999

Further Reading Beltran-Vidal, Daniele (editor), Images d’Ernst Jünger: actes du colloque, Bern and New York: Peter Lang, 1996 Brandes, Wolfgang, Der “Neue Stil” in Ernst Jüngers “Strahlungen”: Genese, Funktion und Realitätsproduktion des literarischen Ich in seinen Tagebüchern, Bonn: Bouvier, 1990 Bullock, Marcus Paul, The Violent Eye: Ernst Jünger’s Visions and Revisions on the European Right, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992 Kaempfer, Wolfgang, Ernst Jünger, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1981 Meyer, Martin, Ernst Jünger, Munich: Hanser, 1990 Müller, Hans-Harald and Harro Segeberg (editors), Ernst Jünger im 20. Jahrhundert, Munich: Fink, 1995 Paquet, Roger, “Ernst Jünger, centenaire: l’art de vivre et la longevité”, Revue-Generale, 130/6–7 (June–July 1995): 65–70 Schirnding, Albert-von, “Lynkeus, den Schrecken im Aug: Ernst Jünger in seinen späten Tagebüchern”, Merkur: Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken, 35/402 (1981): 1287–94 Schwilk, Heimo (editor), Ernst Jünger: Leben und Werk in Bildern und Texten, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1988 Stern, J.P., Ernst Jünger: A Writer of Our Times, Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes, 1953

Jung, C.G.

1875–1961

It is now clear that Erinnerungen, Träume, Gedanken is a complicated pastiche of diverse material, integrated and sometimes written or rewritten by Aniela Jaffé, Jung’s devoted assistant in his last years and the editor of the work. Alan Elms was the first to document the history of the project and its censorship (by press editors, Jung’s adult children, Jaffé, even by Jung himself) at the different stages of its progress. Jung wrote much of it and edited the parts of Jaffé’s manuscript that he did not write. Jaffé, who was to be the biographer when the project was first planned in 1956, added to what Jung had written by drawing upon material from their interviews and “pieced together large portions of the remaining chapters from his earlier unpublished writings” (Elms). So it is not easy to ascertain exactly how much of this “bio” is “auto” and precisely how it reflects the will of its subject. In the prologue Jung refers to his life as “a story of the selfrealization of the unconscious” and claims that he can understand himself “only in the light of inner happenings”. The focus from beginning to end is on psychological reality, not social context; on the privileged authority of personal and private experience without much recourse to documentable details and verifiable occurrences of the outward life. As its title so succinctly puts it, this “life” is meant to be taken as a construct of “memories”, “dreams”, and “reflections”, and as such allows for considerable latitude in moving along the fiction–nonfiction continuum. Also in the prologue Jung refers to this work as a “personal myth”. He shapes his myth as an heroic journey of selfdiscovery (or what he termed “individuation”) with himself in the central role of hero. There are scores of heroic allusions and echoes in the work, making it clear that Jung wished to depict himself as chosen and separate, and to align himself with the gifted, solitary, visionary, often romantic and heterodox questers of the literature, mythology, and wisdom in which he steeped himself from childhood to old age. His self-image is dominated and shaped, from beginning to end, by the isolated figure who obeys a higher will and is burdened by a special knowledge too difficult to communicate to humanity at large. In the “Retrospect” that concludes the book, Jung sums it up this way: … my relationship to the world … was the same in my childhood as it is to this day. As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.

Swiss psychologist, autobiographer, and letter writer Erinnerungen, Träume, Gedanken (1961, as Memories, Dreams, Reflections), Carl Jung’s autobiography, is probably his bestknown single work and certainly among the most interesting achievements of his long and immensely inventive, fruitful life. The product of his old age, and the focus of much of his final creative energy, Erinnerungen, Träume, Gedanken was nonetheless, by Jung’s specific request, published posthumously and excluded from The Collected Works (1953–79). It is a very unusual text, distinguished equally by its content and form. Its literary history is especially fascinating for the light it sheds on concepts of authorship and genre, casting doubt even upon its status as autobiography.

He portrays himself variously as the persecuted martyr, the scapegoat, the prophet, the Son of God, the knight errant, the Grail seeker, and the Romantic philosopher-poet. He identifies with the mythic heroes of classical and Germanic antiquity and with the figures of Jesus, Buddha, Faust, Nietszche, and most especially Goethe, none of whom, it might be noted, can be entirely separated from a legendary or mythic context. The largest and most impressive cluster of heroic images occurs in the justly celebrated chapter six, entitled “Confrontation with the Unconscious”. This is the chapter that describes what Jung called the central journey of his career: a period (perhaps from as early as 1913 to 1919) of intense introversion and repeated, self-induced trance states (later to be known as

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Jung’s technique of “active imagination”), a kind of intermittent, controlled psychosis accompanied by regular regression to childhood preoccupations. The development of the theory of “archetypes” may also be traced to this experimental period. The overall pattern of the “confrontation with the unconscious” is described in terms of heroic descent and return, the Nekyia of Odysseus, the labyrinthine confrontation of Theseus with the Minotaur. The even older myths of the cult of the sun, what Jung calls “hero and solar” myths, are equally prominent in the imagery of the confrontation. These myths conceive the souls of the dead as following the course of the sun in its night journey through the underworld. They are rebirth or resurrection stories, harbingers of a new day and a new life. Collectively they depict Jung’s self-conceived and self-induced heroic individuation, even “deification” if one accepts the thesis of Richard Noll. “Personal myth”, then, or the neologism “automythography” are apt descriptions for such a life narrative, one that uniquely blurs the boundaries of personal history and imaginative literature. Barry N. Olshen Biography Carl Gustav Jung. Born in Kesswil, Switzerland, 26 July 1875. His father was a pastor of the Swiss Reformed Church. Gained medical degree from the University of Basel [Basle]. Studied psychiatry under Eugen Bleuler at the Burghölzli, the mental hospital and university psychiatric clinic in Zurich, 1891–1910. Began research into word association tests and dementia. Met Sigmund Freud in Vienna, 1907. Elected president of the International Psychoanalytical Association, 1910. Concentrated on private practice from 1910. Began investigations into myths, legends, and fairy tales, publishing his first writings on the subject in 1911. Published Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (1912; Psychology of the Unconscious), then broke with Freud, disagreeing with his insistence on the psychosexual origins of neuroses. Developed his own school of “analytical psychology” and developed the theory of the “collective unconscious”; also introduced the concepts of “introvert” and “extrovert” personalities. Held professorships in Zurich, 1933–41, and Basle, 1944–61. Died in Küssnacht, Switzerland, 6 June 1961.

Selected Writings Collected Works, edited by Herbert Read et al., 1953–; 2nd edition, 1966– Erinnerungen, Träume, Gedanken, edited by Aniela Jaffé, 1962; as Memories, Dreams, Reflections, translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston, 1961, revised 1965 Briefe, edited by Aniela Jaffé, 3 vols, 1972–73; as Letters, edited by Aniela Jaffé and Gerhard Adler, 2 vols, 1973–75 (with Sigmund Freud) Briefwechsel, edited by William McGuire and Wolfgang Sauerländer, 1974; as The Freud / Jung Letters: The Correspondence between Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung, translated by Ralph Manheim and R.F.C. Hull, 1974 Selected Letters of C.G. Jung, 1909–1961, edited by Gerhard Adler, 1984

Further Reading Elms, Alan C., “The Auntification of C.G. Jung” in Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Alliance of Biography and Psychology, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994 Franz, Marie-Louise von, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, translated by William H. Kennedy, New York: Putnam, and London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975 Hannah, Barbara, Jung, His Life and Work: A Biographical Memoir, New York: Putnam, 1976; London: Michael Joseph, 1977 Noll, Richard, The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung, New York: Random House, 1997 Olney, James, “Jung” in Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of

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Autobiography, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972 Olshen, Barry N., “Memories, Dreams, Reflections: The Automythography of Carl Gustav Jung”, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 14/2 (1999): 292–308 Wehr, Gerhard, Jung: A Biography, translated by David M. Weeks, Boston: Shambhala, 1987 (German edition, 1985)

Jung Chang

1952–

Chinese / British autobiographer Jung Chang’s reputation as an autobiographer rests upon the phenomenal success of her life story, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, first published in 1991. It received wide critical acclaim, with high praise from writers such as J.G. Ballard, Martin Amis, and Antonia Fraser. As the title of her book suggests, the story is not just of Jung’s life, but it tracks the lives of both her mother and her grandmother as well. As such, it has an almost epic span: covering the period 1909 to 1978, when Chang moved to Great Britain. It therefore covers a turbulent period in China’s own history: from the period of Japanese control, through the fall of the Kuomintang and the subsequent consolidation of the Communist party, through to the revolutionary years under Mao Zedong. Chang’s style is quite informal and compelling, and this auto/ biographical text has been hailed by critics as a master-piece of popular historical writing. Chang’s current professional occupation as a lecturer at the University of London School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) is evident in her skilful blending of personal testimony and popular history in the vein of historian Howard Zinn. The narrative, written in the first person, traces Chang’s family fortunes against the backdrop of China’s dramatic history. Included in the autobiography is a chronology that charts the rise and fall of the Kuomintang, and the rise of the Communist party, alongside corresponding events in the lives of the Chang family. Chang’s family were not only extensively affected by the Japanese occupation, the fall of the Kuomintang, and the Cultural Revolution, but were also actively involved in these changes. For instance, her grandmother became the concubine of the chief warlord General Xue, her father was governor of Yibin, her mother a head of public affairs in Yibin, and Jung Chang herself a member of the Red Guard. The photographs that accompany the text are particularly important in documenting the tandem histories of the Changs alongside China more generally. Many of the photographs show the Changs in their official capacities: Jung’s grandfather, General Xue Zhi-heng, in his official uniform; Jung’s parents in Communist party uniforms; Jung as a Red Guard; and Jung’s father’s funeral in 1975, which depicts an official reading the Communist party’s valedictory. The many photographs are, in fact, one of the most remarkable features of the text, marking its distinction from other “Red China” life writing. They offer an intensely personal perspective upon this turbulent period of Chinese history. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China has important precursors in Chinese diaspora literature. Han Suyin’s Destination Chungking (1942) is an autobiographical novel that intertwines personal and national history concerning the Kuomintang.

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Helena Kuo’s I’ve Come a Long Way (1942) tells of Kuo’s experiences of war-torn China and her subsequent removal to the West. Other examples in this genre are Maria Yen’s The Umbrella Garden: A Picture of Student Life in Red China (1954), Yuan-tsung Chen’s autobiographical novel The Dragon’s Village (1980), and perhaps most importantly, Nien Cheng’s Life and Death in Shanghai (1987). Life and Death in Shanghai describes Cheng’s suffering during the Cultural Revolution (during which time she was a political prisoner), and her later emigration to the United States. Also worth mentioning are the novels of Eileen Chang (Zhang Ai-ling), which also take a critical stance towards the history of China during this period. Wild Swans has invigorated the publication of texts about Red China. Since the appearance and subsequent success of Chang’s life story, several other books have appeared that are written in the same vein. These include Anchee Min’s Red Azalea (1993), Jan Wong’s Red China Blues (1997), Adeline Yen-Mah’s Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter (1997), and Pang-Mei Natasha Chang’s Bound Feet and Western Dress (1996). Helena Grice

father became deputy head of the provincial Public Affairs Department. Sent to public boarding nursery while her mother was detained under suspicion of having counter-revolutionary tendencies, 1955–56. Started school in Chengdu, 1959. Attended Plane Tree school in Chengdu for children of senior officials in the Communist party, from 1962. Became involved with the cult of Mao, 1963–66. Joined the Red Guards, 1966. Made pilgrimage to Peking, late 1966. Left the Red Guards, end 1966. Parents persecuted for political correctness during the Cultural Revolution, resulting in exile to forced labour camps. Sent from Chengdu to a camp in Ningnan in the Himalayan mountains to be “re-educated” as a peasant, 1969. Worked on the land and became a “barefoot doctor”, 1969–71. Returned to Chengdu and worked as a steelworker and electrician, 1971. Mother rehabilitated, 1971, and father released, 1972. Started to study at Sichuan University, 1973. Father died, 1975. Met foreigners for the first time, 1975. Became assistant lecturer in English at Sichuan University after the death of Mao in 1976; sent to countryside outside Chengdu to prepare for profession, 1977. Won scholarship to study in the West and moved to England, 1978. Received a doctorate in linguistics from York University, 1972. Made permanent home in London, 1982. Teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

Selected Writings Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, 1991

Further Reading Biography Born in Yibin, Sichuan province, China, 25 March 1952. Her parents were senior officials in Mao’s Communist party and held public appointments; her father was governor of Yibin at the time of her birth. Moved with her family to Chengdu, Sichuan province, where her

Hsia, C.T., A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, 2nd edition, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1971 (1st published, 1961) Ling, Amy, Between Worlds: Women Writers of Chinese Ancestry, New York: Pergamon, 1990

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partially alleviate this fear. Movingly, if perhaps disingenuously, he asked that after his death all of his letters and diaries be destroyed, all unpublished work burned, and none of his small body of published work be allowed to go to second printing. Almost embarrassed that his work should be taken up by the institutions of “literature”, Kafka argued that, in his own case, writing was not motivated by a desire for external recognition but was the medium and process in which the legitimacy of his own continuing existence in the world could be articulated. Writing, he explained, was for him less a communicative than a figuratively metabolic process; it was an almost physical compulsion to “digest” his experience and convert it into a form that justified the fact of his life. Kafka’s work, then, is autobiographical not in the sense that it offers a narrativized account of an individual life and mind, but in that it is a product of the inability to formulate the illusion of a coherent life that can be rendered in narrative form. To his friend, literary executor, and first biographer Max Brod, he wrote:

1883–1924

German-Czech fiction writer, diarist, and letter writer Franz Kafka, the Prague writer often associated with European high modernism, is best known for the strange, dark quality of his short stories, his novella Die Verwandlung (1915; Metamorphosis), and his fragmentary novels Der Prozess (1925; The Trial), Das Schloss (1926; The Castle), and Amerika (1927; America). Kafka did not write an autobiography, yet, as Erich Heller puts it, “the vicinity of literature and autobiography could hardly be closer than it is in Kafka; indeed it almost amounts to identity”. On the one hand the enigmatic nature of Kafka’s “literary” work seems to demand some kind of explanation, an explanation that is sought in the story of its author. On the other hand his voluminous “extra-literary” work – his diaries and several volumes of letters – is itself often formally and stylistically continuous with his fictional work. The diaries and letters seem less expressions or descriptions of a life than imaginative re-creations of a self encountering an often profoundly unreal world. In his extra-literary writing Kafka often dwells upon the chasm between the promise of self-expression presumed by the act of writing letters or diaries and the absolute inadequacy of writing to bring forth a self that could correspond to the self that lives in the world of people. Indeed, in Kafka’s writing the distinction between life writing and literary representation becomes almost unworkable because it is marked by what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari call a “stutter in language”; in its representation of the most bizarre events in chillingly clear diction and sparse, direct imagery, the language of his writing, whether fictional or “autobiographical”, seems to withdraw from its object and reveal in it a dimension of utter alienness. The malaise that permeates Kafka’s work he describes as a manifestation of his “soul sickness”, that same illness of spirit manifest in the tuberculosis that consumed his body for most of his adult life. As a German-raised, secularized Czech Jew in Prague, Kafka felt the alienation of the German from the Czech majority, of the Jew from the Christian majority, and of the freethinker from the institutions and traditions of Judaism. These tensions, which rive his upbringing and familial situation, are identified by Kafka as conduits of what he describes in a letter as “a fear, which I cannot know, except through the crushing grip of its hand always at my throat”. Writing, Kafka suggests, is the medium of his essential struggle somehow to apprehend and

… the writing of my autobiography would be sheer pleasure, because it would go so easily, just like writing down one’s dreams, yet would have an entirely different result, a great result that would influence me forever, and that would at the same time be accessible to the understanding and feelings of everyone else. Autobiography would be the medium of expressing his understanding of the world and of allowing the world to understand him, effectively breaking the “glass wall” of estrangement behind which some of his contemporaries felt he was inescapably imprisoned. If he were capable of autobiography, Kafka suggests, he would also be capable of participating adequately in the institutions of social life. But, despite his friends’ general perception of him as a warm, sociable individual with a lively sense of humour, as Kafka’s diaries and letters so profoundly attest, he felt that he was capable of neither selfarticulation nor social existence. His best-known “autobiographical” work, his Brief an den Vater (written 1919; Letter to His Father), illustrates the slippage of “life” into “writing” for Kafka. This letter, in which he describes events from his miserable childhood, is an attempt to explain himself to his father, presumably in an attempt to gain his father’s understanding. But, as he tells a friend, it is “unsendable and unnecessary”. It is less an accurate account of his child515

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hood, he admits, than a literary reconstruction of selected events that his father, he fears, would not even remember or recognize. And, he opines, it is more rhetorical than autobiographical, “a lawyer’s letter, full of a lawyer’s tricks”, constructed more to intervene in the tortuous adult relationship with his father than faithfully to represent past events. Occasionally in Kafka’s letters and diaries the conflation between writing and life is a source of joy; much more often it is a source of profound anxiety. Kafka often remarks in his letters that most of his “real” life, apart from what he represents as the banal and mundane chores of work and maintaining familial relations, was spent either writing or thinking about his correspondence. The addressee of his correspondence – whether his current epistolary love interest or the peculiarly unstable addressee of his diaries – functions for Kafka as an object against which he can strive to articulate his reality. To Felice Bauer (to whom Kafka was engaged for five years yet rarely met) Kafka portrays writing as the function that displaces “life”; he represents himself as an ascetic monk whose devotion to literature precludes the possibility of realizing happiness in a more conventional marriage. To Milena Jesenská, his Czech translator and great (but again, almost entirely epistolary) love, he writes that he “is” literature, a condition incompatible with the realization of “life” or “love”. Early in their affair he revels in the ability that writing grants him to be “with” his love (who is “more real than the real Milena”) “the whole day” as she is “in the room, on the balcony, in the clouds”. Later his figuration of their virtual communion darkens: writing letters, he suggests, is “an intercourse with ghosts, and by no means just with the ghost of the addressee, but with one’s own ghost, which secretly evolves inside the letter one is writing”. They meet twice. The first time is exhilarating and tormenting, leading to endless epistolary analysis; the second time confirms (for Kafka) his inability “to go beyond the letters”, to support the immediacy and intimacy of a non-epistolary relationship, and he begs that they cease their correspondence. For the same reason that Kafka felt inadequate to the task of autobiography, so too did he reject biographical criticism: the formal separation of “life” from “writing” presumed by both of these discourses is fundamentally alien to the spirit of his writing. That has not made the project of biographical criticism any less appealing because the combination of absolute clarity and unyielding enigma that characterizes Kafka’s work almost demands that a biographical figure of “Kafka” be invented to contain, if not explain, the less comprehensible aspects of his writing. By moving the reality of Kafka’s life inwards (and articulating it in psychological terms) or moving it outwards (and articulating it in theological or metaphysical terms) the critic gains some ability to translate the stubbornly particular images in Kafka’s literature into more general discourses, while retaining the ability to construe what remains inassimilable to his originality or idiosyncrasy. In an almost tautological equation, biography and exegesis converge in the interpretive attribution of style: Kafka’s work is precisely “Kafkaesque”. Thus the author, as the locus of a specific construction of narrative lucidity and incomprehensibility informed but not explained by discourses of psychology or spirituality, can become, for many, the figure of a paradigmatic modern human being, oscillating between the grip of paralysing anxiety and the liberating recognition of absurdity, or, for others as a late-day

Judaic parabolist, a dark visionary in a world on the brink of Holocaust. Kenneth Paradis Biography Born in Prague, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in the Czech Republic), 3 July 1883. His parents were German Jews, his father a prominent merchant. Educated at the Staatsgymnasium, Prague, 1893–1901. Studied law at Karl Ferdinand University, Prague, 1901–06. Carried out unpaid work in law courts, 1906–07; qualified in law, 1907. Worked for the insurance company Assicurazioni Generali, 1907–08; Workers Accident Insurance Institute, 1908–22. Wrote the stories Die Verwandlung (1915; The Metamorphosis), 1912, and In der Strafkolonie (1919; In the Penal Settlement), 1914. Proposed to Felice Bauer, 1913, but broke off the engagement in 1914. Began Der Prozess (1925; The Trial), 1914. Became unofficially engaged to Felice Baur again, 1916; but again broke off the engagement, 1917. Developed tuberculosis, 1917. Confined to a sanatorium, 1920–21. Began Das Schloss (1926; The Castle) in 1920. Met Dora Dymant, a young student, and moved with her to Berlin, 1923. Returned to Prague because of his declining health and moved in with his parents, 1924. Entered a sanatorium near Vienna. Died in Kierling, Austria, 3 June 1924.

Selected Writings Die Verwandlung, 1915; edited by Peter Hutchinson and Michael Minden, 1985; as Metamorphosis, translated by Eugene Jolas in Transition (Paris), 1936–38; translated by A.L. Lloyd, 1946; as The Metamorphosis, translated by Willa Muir and Edwin Muir in The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces, 1948; edited and translated by Stanley Corngold, 1972; translated by Malcolm Pasley in The Transformation (“Metamorphosis”) and Other Stories, 1992; translated by Joachim Neugroschel in The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, 1993 Der Prozess, edited by Max Brod, 1925; as Der Process, edited by Malcolm Pasley, 1990; as Der Prozess, edited by Heribert Kuhn, 2000; as The Trial, translated by Edwin Muir and Willa Muir, 1937, revised by E.M. Butler, 1956; translated by Douglas Scott and Chris Waller, 1977; translated by Idris Parry, 1994; translated by Breon Mitchell, 1998 Das Schloss, 1926; edited by Malcolm Pasley, 1982; as The Castle, translated by Willa Muir and Edwin Muir, 1930, revised by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser, 1953; translated by Mark Harman, 1998 Amerika, 1927; original version, as Der Verschollene, edited by Jost Schillemeit, 1983; translated by Edwin Muir and Willa Muir as Amerika, 1938, and America, 1967 Tagebücher 1910–1923, 1949; as Tagebücher, edited by Hans-Gerd Koch, Michael Müller, and Malcolm Pasley, 3 vols, 1990; as The Diaries of Franz Kafka, edited by Max Brod, vol. 1, 1910–1913, translated by Joseph Kresh, 1948, vol. 2, 1914–1923, translated by Martin Greenberg with Hannah Arendt, 1949 Briefe an Milena, edited by Willy Haas, 1952; edited by Jürgen Born and Michael Müller, 1983; as Letters to Milena, translated by Tania Stern and James Stern, 1953; translated by Philip Boehm, 1990 Brief an den Vater, 1953; as “Lieben Franz! Mein lieber Sohn!”, edited by Helmwart Hierdeis, 1997; as Letter to His Father / Brief an den Vater, translated by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins, 1966 Briefe 1902–1924, edited by Max Brod, 1958; as Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors, translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston, 1977 Briefe an Felice und andere Korrespondenz aus der Verlobungszeit, edited by Erich Heller and Jürgen Born, 1967; as Letters to Felice, translated by James Stern and Elisabeth Duckworth, 1973 Briefe an Ottla und die Familie, edited by Hartmut Binder and Klaus Wagenbach, 1974; as Letters to Ottla and the Family, translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston, 1982 I Am Memory Come Alive: Autobiographical Writings by Franz Kafka, edited by Nahum N. Glatzer, 1974 Schriften, Tagebücher, Briefe, edited by Jürgen Born et al., 1982– Max Brod, Franz Kafka: ein Freundschaft (correspondence), 2 vols, 1987–89

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Briefe an die Eltern aus den Jahren 1922–1924, edited by Josef Cermák and Martin Svatos, 1990 Briefe, 1900–1912, edited by Hans-Gerd Koch, 1999

Further Reading Benjamin, Walter, “Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death” in Illuminations: Walter Benjamin, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1968; London: Fontana Collins, 1973 Brod, Max, Franz Kafka: A Biography, 2nd edition, translated by G. Humphreys-Roberts and Richard Winston, New York: Schocken Books, 1960 (original edition, 1947) Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, translated by Dana Polan, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986 Gray, Richard T., “Biography as Criticism in Kafka Studies”, Journal of the Kafka Society of America, 10/1–2 (1986): 46–55 Gray, Richard T., “Aphorism and Autobiography: Self-Observation and Self-Projection” in his Constructive Destruction: Kafka’s Aphorisms: Literary Tradition and Literary Transformation, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1987 Harman, Mark, “Biography and Autobiography: Necessary Antagonists?”, Journal of the Kafka Society of America, 10/1–2 (1986): 56–62 Heller, Erich, Franz Kafka, edited by Frank Kermonde, New York: Viking Press, 1974 Karl, Frederick R., “Writing Kafka’s Biography”, Biography and Source Studies, 3 (1997): 19–37 Koelb, Clayton, “The Lived Rhetoric of Franz Kafka”, Journal of the Kafka Society of America, 10/1–2 (1986): 63–67 Kundera, Milan, “Somewhere Behind” in Critical Essays on Franz Kafka, edited by Ruth V. Gross, Boston: G.K. Hall, 1990

Kallas, Aino

1878–1956

Finnish-Estonian fiction writer and diarist The Finnish-Estonian writer Aino Kallas kept a diary throughout her life. When five volumes of the diary, dating from 1897 to 1931, were published in 1952, she was an internationally known author and public figure. Today she is known as much for these diaries as for her fictional works. They continue to interest readers for many reasons: as an account of the dramatic events of Kallas’s life; as a remarkably frank portrayal of her personal and artistic development; and as a continually evolving literary text. In her preface, Kallas writes that she does not know why she kept the diary, but indicates that it became indispensable to her as a place in which her hidden private life could find an outlet. Although she had originally left instructions for the diaries to be destroyed after her death, she eventually agreed to publish them with minimal revisions. The diaries divide into distinct periods both in terms of Kallas’s biography and her approach to diary keeping. The first volume begins as the fairly conventional diary of a young girl, mainly focusing on Kallas’s early romances. She confides her feelings and reflects on her own writing in long and regular entries. Later entries tell of the first years of her marriage to the Estonian folklorist Oskar Kallas; their life in St Petersburg and in Tartu, Estonia; her experience of motherhood; and her efforts to join Oskar in his patriotic work for Estonia. Volume 2 (1907– 15) covers the productive period when Kallas was living in Tartu and purposefully developing her own writing. She makes notes about her reading, the progress of her work, and her thoughts

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about current literary developments. During this period, she wrote fiction in a realistic style, and her diary becomes in part a repository for material that she would use in her writing: detailed observations of Estonian life, people, and anecdotes. She also began to write about her “dualism” – the conflict between her domestic life and her powerful drive to write. Volume 3 covers the events of World War I, leading to the independence of both Finland and Estonia; but above all, this part of the diary is about Kallas’s passionate relationship with the Finnish poet Eino Leino, which became an enduring and powerful catalyst for her work. She expresses her anguish at having to choose between Leino and her family, records their conversations in detail, and copies many of his letters. For a few months her diary is addressed to him. The last two volumes (1922–31) are dramatically different. The family moved to London when Oskar Kallas became Estonian ambassador to Britain, and Aino Kallas entered into a feverishly active society life. She recorded her impressions of the daily rounds of visits, balls, court receptions, new acquaintances, and gossip. For most of the year, she worked to promote the new republic and her own literary career, making contacts with important writers and embarking on several lecture /reading tours, both in the UK and in North America. During the summers she retreated to the family’s cottage in the Estonian countryside, where she produced her most famous works, the group of short novels in an archaic style published in English as Eros the Slayer: Two Estonian Tales (1927) and The Wolf’s Bride (1930). It is interesting to observe the different approaches that Kallas took to diary writing over the years, and its changing function in relation to her other writing. Life, diary, and fiction are intertwined throughout. From the very first pages, Kallas refers to the “novel” of her life, an image that she frequently repeats. She sometimes comments on her own diary as a literary text, at one point remarking that it should contain more secondary characters and more descriptions of events. She uses her diary as a source of material for her fiction, but also seems to create her self through her writing, not only analysing her own emotions and reactions but also imagining the impression that she makes on others. Often, when describing a particularly dramatic encounter, she records her own gestures – steadying herself against a piano, or turning pale – as if re-staging the event from the outside. In fact her diary, especially during the Leino period, reads at times like a novel. After the crisis of her separation from her husband, her diary entries are almost exclusively about her external life, with the exception of some comments about her creative work. As she explains it herself, after this break the emotional intensity and drama that previously characterized her life were entirely channelled into her public writing. Sonia Wichmann Biography Born Ainas Krohn in Viborg, Finland, 1878. Her father, the literary scholar and poet Julius Krohn, was an important figure in mid-19thcentury Finnish nationalism. Began writing a diary, 1897. Married Oskar Kallas, an Estonian folklorist and nationalist, 1900. Lived in St Petersburg, Russia, 1900–03. Settled with Kallas in Tartu, Estonia, 1904, and involved herself in the emerging Estonian nationalist movement. Wrote stories focusing on the theme of nationalism in Estonia, written in Finnish and translated into Estonian: Meren takaa [1904–05; From Beyond the Sea] and Lähtevian laivojen kaupunki

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[1913; The Town of Departing Ships]. Developed passionate relationship with the poet Eino Leino during World War I. Moved to London when her husband became Estonian ambassador to Britain, 1922. Developed close connections with the literary world of both Britain and the United States, and made several lecture tours there, promoting the cause of Estonian self-determination. Wrote important series of novellas, including Barbara von Tisenhusen (1923), Reigin pappi (1926; The Pastor of Reigi), and Sudenmorsian (1928; The Wolf’s Bride). Lived in Sweden, 1941–44, while Estonia occupied by Nazi forces. Returned to Finland, 1953. Received the Finish State Prize for Literature on several occasions. Died in Helsinki, Finland, 9 November 1956.

Selected Writings Päiväkirja vuosilta (diary), 5 vols, 1952–56; as Elämäni päiväkirjat [The Diaries of My Life], edited by Kai Laitinen, 2 vols, 1978 1. 1897–1906, 1952 2. 1907–1915, 1953 3. 1916–1921, 1954 4. 1922–1926, 1955 5. 1927–1931, 1956 Vaeltava vieraskirja vuosilta 1946–1956 [Wandering Guestbook], edited by Annikki Setälä, 1957 Kolme naista, kolme kohtaloa: Aino Kallaksen kirjeenvaihtoa Ilona Jalavan ja Helmi Krohnin kanssa vousina [Three Women, Three Fates: Aino Kallas’s Correspondence with Ilona Jalava and Helmi Krohn], edited by Riitta Kallas, 2 vols, 1988–89

Further Reading Laitinen, Kai, introduction to Kallas’s Elämäni päiväkirjat, Helsinki: Otava, 1978 Laitinen, Kai, Aino Kallaksen mestarivuodet: Tutkimus hänen tuotantonsa päälinjoista ja taustasta 1922–1956 [Aino Kallas’s Master Years: A Study of Her Production and Its Background 1922–1956], Helsinki: Otava, 1995 Schoolfield, George (editor), A History of Finland’s Literature, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998

Kassák, Lajos

1887–1967

Hungarian poet, painter, and autobiographer When Lajos Kassák began to write his eight-volume autobiographical work, Egy ember élete (1928–32; part translated as “The Life of a Man”) in 1927–28, he was already known as a modern socialist poet and had years of miserable toil, restless wandering, and calamitous relationships behind him. The book touches on his early life experiences only, from the turn of the century until 1916. Kassák’s work reflects the emerging new social and artistic forces in Austria-Hungary, where the burdensome heritage of social and cultural underdevelopment aggravated the ruthless processes of evolving into a modern, industrialized, mass society. The autobiography starts on the day when the 11-year-old boy decides to drop out of school and exchange the suffocating boredom of institutional education for the torturous excitement of manual labour in a locksmith’s workshop. Kassák’s narrative conspicuously avoids the intimately personal or confessional elements and is more interested in creating an authentic world and characters than in constructing a prominent self. In many ways, “The Life of a Man” is a socio-graphic autobiography. It is a kind of novel in which Emile Zola’s naturalism is mixed with Maxim Gorki’s social realism and sensitivity for human suffering. The protagonist’s persistent poverty and daily struggles for

existence, food, and love, especially during the time of his penniless wanderings in Europe, are also reminiscent of the world of George Orwell’s Down and Out in London and Paris. Kassák, however, is not an observer-visitor among Europe’s homeless and jobless. He is one of them. Also, he never makes it to London, and his Europe ends in Paris. The “grand trip” concludes with a bitter realization that it is no less shameful to beg your way across Europe than to sell your labour and cripple your mind and body in sweatshops for wages that provide for hardly better living than begging does. Honesty is a choice term to describe Kassák’s autobiography. Since he is more interested in his surrounding social and psychological reality than in his own subjectivity, Kassák relentlessly depicts himself as an insensitive father, or an unscrupulous tramp, while one of the great figures of the Hungarian avantgarde art world – and his own brother-in-law – is presented as an unpleasant parasite. Kassák’s honesty is unshattered even when he writes about his artistic development and taste. He expresses his genuine dislike for many Hungarian authors’ canonical works, and with similar sincerity recounts his editors’ condescending comments on his own limited talent or poor grammar. He successfully turns himself into one of the characters in this narrative, allowing the reader to decide what is right and wrong and saving his analysis to comment on the political ideas of his times rather than on his own actions. Kassák’s writing has a vivacious pace and structured composition although his tone is uneven. The early years are described in great detail, with poetic insight and realism. Towards the end, however, there is abundant political analysis of the socialist movement, and the narrative is often interrupted by polemic discussions of the pre-World War I ideas of social reformers and labour leaders. The book ends where the war starts and where Kassák’s new life as a resistant avant-garde editor begins. It is a remarkable document of an extraordinary man’s life as well as that of the early Hungarian labour and socialist movements. Ildikó Melis Biography Born in Érsekújvár, Austro-Hungarian empire (now in Hungary), 21 March 1887. His father was a pharmaceutical technician. Left school at the age of 12 to become a locksmith’s apprentice. Left Érsekújvár to live in Gyo˝r Angyaföld, 1903. Moved to Angyalfold, a suburb of Budapest, with his mother and two sisters, 1904. Became interested in the working-class movement. Published first poem, 1908. Went to Vienna and walked to Paris via Germany and Belgium, 1909. Arrested and expelled from Paris as a vagrant, 1909. Returned to Hungary and joined the Social Democratic party, 1913. Published the free-verse poem Mesteremberek [Craftsmen], 1914. Founded A Tett [Action], the first avant-garde Hungarian journal, which was banned by the authorities, 1916; subsequently founded Ma [Today], also later banned. Spent time in prison after the fall of the Hungarian commune. Lived in exile in Vienna from 1920. Wrote A ló meghal a madarak kirepo˝lnek [The Horse Dies the Birds Fly Out], 1922. Returned to Hungary and worked as a poet and visual artist, 1926. Wrote his bestknown novel, Angyalföld, about the suburb of Budapest where he lived, 1929. Entered politics as a Social Democrat in the parliamentary elections of 1947. Retired after the communists took control of Hungary. Returned to artistic work, which was officially recognized, in 1956. Died in Budapest, 22 July 1967.

Selected Writings Egy ember élete (autobiography), 2 vols, 1928–32; part as “The Life of a Man”, translated by Eszter Molnár in New Hungarian Quarterly, 28/106 (1987)

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Further Reading “Lajos Kassák 1887–1967”, New Hungarian Quarterly, 28/108 (1987): 73–124 Lengyel, Balázs, “The Other Kassák”, New Hungarian Quarterly, 30/115 (1989): 148–51 Mezey, Katalin, “The History of Kassák’s MA”, New Hungarian Quarterly, 54 (1974): 88–92 Nagy, Ágnes Nemes, “In Memoriam Lajos Kassák: From Odd Job Tramp to Avant Garde Artist”, New Hungarian Quarterly, 28 (1967): 94–97 Szabó, Júlia, “Kassák and the International Avant-Garde”, New Hungarian Quarterly, 28/106 (1987): 117–24 Szávai, János, “The Writer of a Class and of a Life” in his The Autobiography, translated by Zsuzsa Rakovszky, Budapest: Akadémiai kiadó, 1984

Kazantzakis, Nikos

1885–1957

Greek novelist, playwright, poet, and travel writer Judging from his earliest recorded memories, Nikos Kazantzakis always possessed an intense intellectual and exploratory drive. Born to peasant parents in Iraklion [Heraklion], Crete, he spent his life in pursuit of knowledge, self and national identity, and the divine. Though best known to readers through his novels, most of which were composed in his later years, Kazantzakis actually began his literary career writing poetry, drama, and travel correspondence for newspapers. Heavily influenced by the philosophies of Henri Bergson and Friedrich Nietzsche, his writings often explored the events of his own life vis-à-vis the biographies of folkloric or actual heroic men, among them Buddha, Odysseus, Jesus, and St Francis. Kazantzakis’s contribution to life writing falls largely into two groups: the autobiographical Anaphora ston Gkreko (1961; Report to Greco) and his collected travel writings, Taxideuontas (1927; Journeying), Ta eida set Rousia (1928; Russia) Hispania (1937; Spain), Iaponia, Kina (1938; Japan, China), O Morias (1937; Journey to the Morea), and Anglia (1941; England). Perhaps the most intriguing facet of Report to Greco is Kazantzakis’s insistence that it is not autobiography in the strictest sense. The introduction by his wife, Helen, clearly directs the reader’s interpretation of the text by stating that: The Report is a mixture of fact and fiction – a great deal of truth, a minimum of fancy. Various dates have been changed. When he speaks about others, it is always the truth, unaltered … When he speaks about his personal adventures, there are some small modifications.

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Kazantzakis struggles to reconcile the two disparate natures of asceticism and rebellion, both of which he felt raging in his own blood. He felt compelled to choose between a life of quiet and respectable introspection, symbolized on the one hand by his mother, of Cretan peasant stock, and a life of violent action, inherited from his father, whom Kazantzakis claimed was descended from “bloodthirsty pirates”. The detail and care with which he painted the portraits of his grandparents and greatgrandparents signifies the degree to which Kazantzakis was concerned with death and memory. This comes as little surprise, perhaps, as he wrote Report to Greco in 1955 and 1956, the last two full years of his life. Report to Greco also presents an interpretive key to Kazantzakis’s novels. Throughout the text, he subtly unmasked many of his fictional characters, several of whom, most notably the narrator from Vios ke politia tou Alexi Zorba (1946; Zorba the Greek), represent the author himself. A childhood friend forced to play Judas in Iraklion’s Easter pageant pre-figures the Judas characters of O Christos Xanastrauronetai (1954; The Greek Passion) and O telefteos pirasmos (1955; The Last Temptation of Christ), just as Kazantzakis’s father clearly parallels Captain Michales of O Kapitan Michalis (1953; Freedom or Death). The device emphasizes that fact and fiction are not so easily distinguished. Although his travel writings surely offer intriguing records of their various subjects, more often Kazantzakis’s goal lay in explaining his own reactions to, and communion with, some significant land or people. Even the choices of subject clearly reflect his own political and spiritual struggles, with Russia chronicling the Bolshevik Revolution, a cause dear to Kazantzakis’s own heart, and Journeying outlining his trip to the Holy Land. Yet these works are not simple encomia; his impressions of the land and people, as in the following quote from Russia describing the industrialized city of Baku, often appear firmly ambivalent. It was raining, a biting cold. We waded in the mud, inside a forest of drilling towers. The air was greasy, the earth vomited oil. Black-green bogs everywhere. Deep wells, engines pumping the precious dirty liquid from the bowels of the earth … Here in this contemporary inferno, blackened workers, oiled like rats, struggled to earn their daily bread, smeared by fumes and petroleum. Just as in his fiction, Kazantazakis’s life writing obsessed over the spiritual and the political, the sacred and the profane, the life of asceticism and the life of action. Paul D. Streufert

In so doing, Kazantzakis provoked those readers searching for textual veracity. By subverting traditional claims to veracity of the autobiographical genre in Report to Greco, he asked his audience to acknowledge fiction’s potential truth and memory’s all too common slipperiness. Report to Greco is organized both topically and chronologically, with the earliest chapters devoted to Kazantzakis’s ancestry and childhood, and later ones explaining his travels and philosophies. The early vignettes are often short and concise, offering not only a look at Kazantzakis’s own childhood, but also at life in a Cretan village in the late 19th century. The theme of ancestral identity dominates the early portion of the book, as

Biography Born in Candia (later Iraklion), Crete, Greece, 2 December 1885 (some sources give 18 February 1883). His father was a poor farmer. Educated at the Franciscan School of Holy Cross, Naxos, 1897–99, and the Gymnasium, Iraklion, 1899–1902. Studied law at the University of Athens, 1902–06. Studied in Paris under the philosopher Henri Bergson, 1907–09; subsequently also studied literature, art, and philosophy for four years in Italy and Germany. Influenced by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Retreated to a Greek Orthodox monastery on Mount Athos, Greece, for six months. Married Galatea Alexiou, 1911 (divorced 1926). Worked for the Greek government in various positions, including director general of the Ministry of Public Welfare, 1919–27. Began writing and producing a series of verse plays

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and translated philosophical works into Greek. Moved to Vienna, 1922. Travelled to the Soviet Union on several occasions and worked on the epic poem I Odysseia (1938), a continuation of Homer’s Odyssey. Cabinet minister without portfolio, 1945. Married Elenì Samios, 1945. Gained international recognition with the novel Vios ke politia tou Alexi Zorba (1946; Zorba the Greek). Stayed in England, 1946. Served in UNESCO’s Department of Translations of the Classics, 1947–48. Lived in Antibes, southern France, during the last ten years of his life. Wrote his best-known work, O teleutaios peirasmos (1955; The Last Temptation). Awarded the Lenin peace prize, 1957. Visited China, 1957. Died in Freiburg, West Germany, 26 October 1957. Denied a public funeral mass in Athens by the Greek Orthodox church.

Selected Writings Taxideuontas (travel writing), 1927; as Journeying: Travels in Italy, Egypt, Sinai, Jerusalem, and Cyprus, translated by Themi Vasils and Theodora Vasils, 1975 Te eida set Rousia, 2 vols, 1928, as Taxideuontas: Rousia, 1956; as Russia: A Chronicle of Three Journeys in the Aftermath of the Revolution, translated by Michael Antonakes and Thanasis Maskaleris, 1989 Taxideuontas: Hispania, 1937; as Spain, translated by Amy Mims, 1963 O Morias, 1937; translated by F.A. Reed as Journey to the Morea, 1965, and Travels in Greece, 1966 Taxideuontas: Iaponia, Kina, 1938; translated by George C. Pappageotes as Japan, China, 1963, and Travels in China and Japan, 1964 Taxideuontas: Anglia, 1941; as England: A Travel Journal, 1965 Epistoles pros te Galateia (correspondence), 1958; as The Suffering God: Selected Letters to Galateia and to Papastephanou, translated by Philip Ramp and Katerina Anghelaki Rooke, 1979 Anaphora ston Gkreko, 1961; as Report to Greco, translated by Peter A. Bien, 1965 Tetrakosia grammata tou Kazantzakis sto Prevelaki (correspondence), 1965

Further Reading Beaton, Roderick, An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994 Bien, Peter, Kazantzakis and the Linguistic Revolution in Greek Literature, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972 Bien, Peter, Kazantzakis: Politics of the Spirit, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989 Bien, Peter, Nikos Kazantzakis, Novelist, Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, and New York: Caratzas, 1989 Dombrowski, Daniel A., Kazantzakis and God, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997 Kazantzakis, Helen, Nikos Kazantzakis: A Biography Based on His Letters, translated by Amy Mims, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968; Oxford: Cassirer, 1979 Lea, James F., Kazantzakis: The Politics of Salvation, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1979 Middleton, Darren and Peter Bien (editors), God’s Struggler: Religion in the Writings of Nikos Kazantzakis, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1996 Politis, Linos, A History of Modern Greek Literature, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973 Prevelakis, Pandelis, Nikos Kazantzakis and His Odyssey: A Study of the Poet and the Poem, translated by Phillip Sherrard, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961

Kazin, Alfred

1915–1998

American critic, editor, scholar, and autobiographer Alfred Kazin’s reputation rests on his astute cultural and literary criticism and his engaging prose style. He is also the best-known and most popular American-Jewish autobiographer, having chronicled his rise from a poor immigrant neighbourhood to academic distinction as an editor, critic, and intellectual. In his essay “The Self as History: Reflections on Autobiography”, he states: What I have tried to write in A Walker in the City, Starting Out in the Thirties, New York Jew, is personal history, a form of my own influenced by the personal writings of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman. Its passion and beat come from my life in history, recorded since I was a boy in notebooks that I value not for their facts but for the surprise I attain by writing to myself and for myself. A central factor is what Kazin attempts to do with history in autobiography. In writing not for an audience but for himself, to organize and make sense out of the events in his life, he becomes a character in the narrative. This accounts for the combination of factual and fictional qualities of his autobiographies. A Walker in the City (1951) is the most lyrical of the three works, nostalgically evoking the turbulence in a sensitive Jewish child who longs to move “beyond” the Brownsville ghetto in Brooklyn for Manhattan where the “Americans” live. Desperate for the larger world of American culture, he tries to enter it through books: “I read as if books would fill my every gap, legitimize my strange quest for an American past.” He is also attached to the Jewish world in which he grew up, however, and this ambivalence is summed up in Allen Guttmann’s observation that “one begins to imagine how fiercely the young man sought to escape the world that the autobiographer lovingly reconstructs”. This volume contains a sensuous depiction of the issue of assimilation, one of the main social problems Jews faced as the immigrant generation was replaced by its American children. In Starting Out in the Thirties (1965), Kazin immerses readers in the Depression decade, seen through the eyes of a young man trying to enter the New York literary world. He considers himself a socialist, “like everyone else I knew”. However, for him it is literature that defines his radicalism, his sense of the need for “liberation”. His life is entwined with the historical and social movements of the 1930s, and he sees his past in Brownsville in relation to the socialist agenda. When he obtains a job as an occasional reviewer for The New Republic, he cannot identify with other radical writers for “they were so plainly with the haves”. His past gives him a solidity of understanding beyond intellectual discussion alone. In Clifford Odets’s play Awake and Sing! (1935), he sees his parents and their friends on the stage, and feels that his people and his struggle for success are related to the struggle for the New Deal and against fascism: “The unmistakable and surging march of history might yet pass through me. There seemed to be no division between my effort at personal liberation and the apparent effort of humanity to deliver itself.” The depiction of this phase of Kazin’s life combines autobiography and social analysis inextricably; for him the 1930s were an “age that carried the individual out of

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himself, that made him feel he was being carried on universal strivings”. New York Jew (1978) continues Kazin’s life from 1940 to the 1970s. Again there is a rendition of his personal life, but also a cultural, literary, and social commentary on the United States and the world of New York Jewish intellectuals. We see how Kazin developed from his first memoir to a point where he was confidently part of the New York intellectual establishment. Many of the intellectuals he describes took a path from poverty to influence similar to his own, with their Jewish religious past being discarded but their “Jewishness” still influencing them: “their creativity was to arise out of a historic tension between whole traditions and systems of ideas”. Mention must also be made of the brief memoir Writing Was Everything (1995), in which Kazin uses his effective combination of autobiography, biography, history, and criticism to illuminate the writers, books, thoughts, and events that meant the most to him over 60 years as a cultural and literary critic. It is a fitting closure to his autobiographical writings, and is a successful depiction of his goal “to render this excess of outer experience as personal but not private experience”. Edward A. Abramson Biography Born in Brooklyn, New York, 5 June 1915, to Jewish parents who had emigrated from Russia. His father was a house painter, his mother a dressmaker. Attended Franklin K. Lane High School, Brooklyn. Studied at the College of the City of New York, Manhattan, 1931–35. Earned money while a student by tutoring colleagues and working as a researcher for literature professors and students. Began to review books for the journal New Republic, 1934. Attended Columbia University, New York (MA in literature, 1937). Married for the first time, 1938. Received Guggenheim fellowship for literary research, 1940. Published his first book, On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature, which gained him instant recognition as a critic, 1942. Became literary editor, 1942, and contributing editor, 1943–45, New Republic. Associate editor, Fortune magazine, 1943–44. Visiting lecturer, Black Mountain College, North Carolina, 1944. Rejected for military service in World War II because of a speech impediment. Commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation to report on education in the British army: visited England, 1945. Married Caroline Bookman, 1947: one son (divorced c.1950). Married Ann Birstein, 1952; one daughter. Research professor at Smith College, 1953–54; professor of American studies, Amherst College, 1955–58. Lecturer at Princeton University, 1961; professor at the City College of the City University of New York, 1962, and the University of California at Berkeley, 1963. Distinguished professor of English at State University of New York, 1963–73; distinguished professor of English, 1973–84, and distinguished professor emeritus, 1984–98, City University of New York. Married Judith Dunford, 1983. Published the first of his autobiographical works, A Walker in the City, 1951. Also wrote a number of books of literary criticism and essays, including Bright Book of Life (1973) and An American Procession (1984). Died in New York, 4 June 1998.

Selected Writings A Walker in the City (autobiography), 1951 Starting Out in the Thirties (autobiography), 1965 New York Jew (autobiography), 1978 Writing Was Everything (memoir), 1995

Further Reading Guttmann, Allen, The Jewish Writer in America: Assimilation and the Crisis of Identity, New York: Oxford University Press, 1971 Kazin, Afred, “The Self as History: Reflections on Autobiography” in The American Autobiography: A Collection of Critical Essays,

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edited by Albert E. Stone, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1981 Rosenfeld, Alvin H., “Inventing the Jew: Notes on Jewish Autobiography” in The American Autobiography: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Albert E. Stone, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1981 Rubin, Steven J., “American-Jewish Autobiography, 1912 to the Present” in Handbook of American Jewish Literature: An Analytical Guide to Topics, Themes, and Sources, edited by Lewis Fried, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1988

Keats, John

1795–1821

English poet and letter writer Keats’s major contribution to life writing is undoubtedly his letters. They were written over a period of seven years, between 1814 and 1821, but the most interesting were composed between 1817 and 1820, when the poet was in the process of producing his major poetic works. They were written to his brothers George and Tom, to his sister Fanny, to his friends John Reynolds, Benjamin Haydon the painter, James Rice, Benjamin Bailey, Charles Brown, Richard Woodhouse, and to his fiancée Fanny Brawne. Keats was an excellent letter writer, who could use humour and wit, and knew how to interest his readers. He was very good at adapting his writing to the person he was addressing, and the letters demonstrate his skills as a “camelion poet”, to quote his own words in the letter to Woodhouse in which he defined the art of the poet. Biographically, the letters trace Keats’s life from the moment when he decided to give up the study of medicine and become a poet, through the period of doubts when his first poems were received with contempt by the critics, and ending with the final illness and gradual withdrawal from society. However, the interest of his letters goes far beyond the merely anecdotal aspect, since Keats records in them his exploration of the self, his questioning about the human condition and the value of poetry. The letters reveal an evolution, from early optimism (“The Imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream – he awoke and found it truth”, To Bailey, 22 November 1817), to later loss of faith in his own poetic powers, and a conception of beauty as mere consolation: “By a superior being our reasoning[s] may take the same tone – though erroneous they may be fine – This is the very thing in which consists poetry; and if so it is not so fine a thing as philosophy” (To the George Keatses, 19 March 1819). Like the other Romantic poets, Keats believed in the artist’s power to improve society. However, to a much greater extent than his contemporaries, he stresses the healing quality of art: his training as a surgeon no doubt accounts for this. In 1818, he describes life as “a Mansion of many Apartments”; a year later as “a vale of soul-making”. These two metaphors reflect Keats’s mode of exploration in his letters: he tries to remain concrete, and grounds his arguments on self-observation. He believes in evolution, desperately trying to find reasons to hope, despite his own unhappiness. In his letters, we see him using his experience of life as food for thought; he is eager to observe human life, and to interpret it. In the letters Keats argues, questions, tries to convince his readers; in the poems this process is transformed into art. The letters are indeed related to the poems in many ways: they pave the way for the

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creation of certain poems, such as Hyperion or the odes, but they also reflect Keats’s thoughts after completing a poem. In fact, in Keats’s writings, there is a constant dialogue between prose and poetry. The first publication of his letters was in 1848 in R.M. Milnes’s biography Life, Letters and Literary Remains of Keats. In 1883, the Victorians were shocked when they discovered Keats’s letters to Fanny Brawne, considering them to be indecently intimate. In fact, their publication gave rise to the same sort of critical response as that received by his first poems in 1817: the poet was rejected as unmanly. This assessment has since changed, and Keats’s letters are now unreservedly praised, both for their style and for the man they reveal. His contemporaries also wrote letters, and volumes of them survive. But Keats may be considered as original: if we compare his views of the landscape in Scotland with those of Wordsworth or Shelley, we cannot but notice Keats’s more acute vividness. Where a more learned man uses his knowledge to build rational discourse, Keats records his own sensations, sometimes awkwardly, without any apparent order, but most of the time with endearing faithfulness. The Keats that the letters reveal often discusses poetry or human suffering after telling an anecdote or before gossiping about his friends. This way of moving from light conversation to deeper thinking accounts for the vividness of the letters, which seem to mirror the very texture of life.

Further Reading Bate, Walter Jackson, John Keats, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963 Bennett, Andrew, Keats, Narrative and Audience: The Posthumous Life of Writing, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994 Bradley, A.C., “The Letters of Keats” in Oxford Lectures on Poetry, London: Macmillan, 1909; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1914 Chatterjee, Bhabatosh, John Keats: His Mind and Work, Bombay: Orient Longman, 1971 Coote, Stephen, John Keats: A Life, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1995 Crinquand, Sylvie, Lettres et poèmes de John Keats: portrait de l’artiste, Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2000 Gittings, Robert, John Keats, London: Heinemann, and Boston: Little Brown, 1968 Motion, Andrew, Keats, London: Faber, 1997; New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1998 Perkins, David, “Keats’s Odes and Letters: Recurrent Diction and Imagery”, Keats–Shelley Journal, 2 (1953): 51–60 Ricks, Christopher, Keats and Embarrassment, Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1974 Roe, Nicholas, John Keats and the Culture of Dissent, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997 Trilling, Lionel, “The Poet as Hero: Keats in His Letters” in The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism, New York: Viking Press, and London: Secker and Warburg, 1955

Sylvie Crinquand

Keller, Helen Biography Born in London, 31 October 1795. His father, a manager of a livery stable, died when he was aged eight. Educated at the Revd John Clarke’s private school, Enfield, Middlesex. Withdrawn from school by his guardians after his mother’s death in 1810, and apprenticed to Thomas Hammond, a surgeon and apothecary, in Edmonton, London. Often visited his old school, where the headmaster’s son, Cowden Clarke, lent him books and eventually introduced him to the circle of the poet and essayist Leigh Hunt. Broke off his apprenticeship, 1814. Studied medicine at St Thomas’s and Guy’s hospitals, London, 1815–16. Licensed to practise as an apothecary and surgeon, 1816, but abandoned medicine for poetry, encouraged by Hunt. Moved to Well Walk, Hampstead, 1817. Published Poems, 1817, and Endymion, 1818, the latter attracting savage criticism. Made walking tour of the Lake District, Scotland, and northern Ireland, 1818. Nursed his brother in Hampstead until his death from tuberculosis, 1818, then moved to Wentworth Place, Hampstead. Met Fanny Brawne, to whom he became engaged, 1818. Published Lamia and Other Poems, which contains his best-known works, including “Ode on Melancholy”, “Ode to a Nightingale”, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, and “To Autumn”, 1820. Contracted tuberculosis and went to Italy in an attempt to improve his health, accompanied by the artist Joseph Severn, 1820. Died in Rome, 23 February 1821.

Selected Writings Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne, 1878, revised 1899 Letters of Keats to His Family and Friends, edited by Stanley Colvin, 1891, revised 1918 (excludes letters to Fanny Brawne) The Letters, 2 vols, edited by Maurice Buxton Forman, 1931; expanded 4th edition, 1952 The Keats Circle: Letters and Papers 1816–78, edited by H.E. Rollins, 1948 More Letters and Poems of the Keats Circle, edited by H.E. Rollins, 1955 The Letters of John Keats, 2 vols, edited by H.E. Rollins, 1958 Letters of John Keats: A New Selection, edited by Robert Gittings, 1970, corrected 1975

1880–1968

American autobiographer and social campaigner Helen Keller presents an account of her childhood and youth in The Story of My Life (1903). This well-known autobiography was adapted for the film Deliverance (1919), in which Keller herself appeared. She continued her personal history in Midstream: My Later Life (1929). Other works that have the character of life writing include The World I Live In (1908), a set of essays descriptive of Keller’s ways of living and communicating as a deaf and blind person in “the five sensed world”, and Teacher (1955), an account of her life and close friendship with Anne Sullivan Macy, the woman who taught her to communicate through systematized “touch-sensations”. Keller describes her Swedenborgian faith in My Religion (1927). Helen Keller’s Journal, 1936–1937 (1938), a record of travel in Britain, Europe, and the United States, has found readers who are interested in tracing Keller’s consistently progressive, anti-fascist political orientation. Early in The Story of My Life Keller recalls “the most important day I remember in all my life” as “the one on which my teacher Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me”. She effectively contrasts her life before and after the intervention of Sullivan. Born into a comfortable family in northern Alabama, Keller enjoyed normal life until the age of 19 months, when a serious illness, perhaps scarlet fever, left her deprived of sight and hearing. Until the age of seven she lived in virtual isolation with regard to linguistic communication. Her mother’s reading of Dickens’s American Notes with its account of the successful education of Laura Bridgman, who was deaf and blind, led to hope and efforts to find help for the disabled child. Through the help of leading hearing and sight specialists, including Alexander Graham Bell, who became a close friend of Keller, the

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services of Anne Sullivan were obtained. Twenty years old when she began to work with Keller, Sullivan not only successfully applied the system of spelling through touching of the hand as developed at the Perkins Institution in Boston, but also became Keller’s lifelong friend and confidante. The passages early in The Story of My Life that describe Keller’s developing awareness of language as she learned to communicate through touch, are unique in American life writing. With the help of Sullivan, the child who had been isolated, as Keller recalled, “in the valley of twofold solitude” of deafness and blindness, discovered her linguistic ability: language “awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!”. Most interestingly, Keller explicitly attributes burgeoning intellectual and emotional growth to her acquisition of language: when she learned that “everything had a name” it followed that “each name gave birth to a new thought”. Keller’s life parallels the period of development of modern, analytic psychology, and it is not surprising that she was interested in the relationships between the acquisition of language and a perceived substantial deepening of emotional responses. Indeed, for Keller, language is instrumental to emotional awareness and expression as well as to intellectual development: when “the mystery of language was revealed … for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow”. Thus, Keller explicitly enters into a philosophical discourse on the relationships of thought, feelings, and language. She relates such issues to the process and experience of life writing at the opening of Midstream, the sequel to The Story of My Life. After learning to speak intelligibly and learning to read braille Keller achieved her goal of admission to Radcliffe College, then the women’s college of Harvard, having passed the entrance examination with honours in English and German. Keller’s life writing up to this point might be categorized with accounts of personal disability and the overcoming of disability; with her entrance into Radcliffe, another, more general, perspective is suggested, the autobiography of education. Although as a Radcliffe student Keller was taught by such luminous members of Harvard’s faculty as the philosopher Josiah Royce and the Shakespearean scholar George L. Kittredge, her perceptive criticism of this “best” of American higher education invites comparison with The Education of Henry Adams and other classics of academic disillusionment. Midstream, with its accounts of Keller’s experiences in Hollywood and on the vaudeville stage, will be of particular interest to readers concerned with American popular culture. Her goal for the film Deliverance, perhaps not fully realized, was to show how the “war-tortured world … could be saved from strife and social injustice, spiritual deafness and blindness”. For many, Keller’s chapter on her short stay at the home of Mark Twain is the high point of her recollections in Midstream. Both Twain and Keller, by the time of her writing about her adult life, had well-established public personae that masked highly sensitive and vulnerable inner characters. Twain and Keller understood each other, and her memories of their time together are as uniquely revealing of one of America’s most written-about authors as they are of Keller herself.

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marshal of North Alabama. Became seriously ill at the age of 19 months, and went totally blind and deaf. Sent to hearing and sight specialists for consultations without success. Started learning to spell and speak by touch with Anne Mansfield Sullivan, a partially blind tutor, who had been referred to her parents by Alexander Graham Bell, 1887. Started speech classes with Sarah Fuller, principal of Horace Mann School for the Deaf, Boston, 1890. Attended Wright-Humason School for the Deaf, New York, 1894–96. Adopted the religious and philosophical ideas of Swedenborg, 1896. Studied at Cambridge School for Young Ladies, Massachusetts, 1896–97. Learned to read and write in braille. Studied at Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1900–04; helped with lectures by Anne Sullivan Macy and graduated cum laude. Published autobiography, The Story of My Life, 1903. Moved to Wrentham, near Boston, to live with Sullivan Macy and her husband, 1905. Published The World I Live In, 1908. Joined the Socialist party, 1909; joined the radical socialist organization IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), 1918. Campaigned, lectured, and raised funds for the American Foundation for the Blind, and made stage appearances with Sullivan Macy, 1909–24. As a pacifist, publicly opposed World War I; also campaigned for women’s suffrage. Took out licence to marry Peter Fagan, 1916: broke off the engagement under parental pressure. Appeared in the film of her life, Deliverance, 1919. Financial assistance for the rest of her life established by the American Foundation for the Blind, 1930s. Awarded Roosevelt medal, with Anne Sullivan Macy, 1936. Travelled to Scotland and Japan with her secretary and housekeeper, Polly Thomson, after Sullivan Macy’s death in 1936. Settled with Thomson in Westport, Connecticut, on her return to the United States. Documentary films were made of her life: The Unconquered (1953) and The Miracle Worker (1962); the latter, originally a television and stage play, won the Pulitzer prize in 1960. Received Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964. Died in Westport, Connecticut, 1 June 1968.

Selected Writings The Story of My Life, 1903 The World I Live In, 1908 My Religion, 1927; as Light in My Darkness, edited by Ray Silverman, 1994 Midstream: My Later Life, 1929 Helen Keller’s Journal, 1936–1937, 1938 Teacher: Anne Sullivan Macy, 1955

Further Reading Barrick, Mac E., “The Helen Keller Joke Cycle”, Journal of American Folklore, 93 (1980): 441–49 Brooks, Van Wyck, Helen Keller: Sketch for a Portrait, London: Dent, and New York: Dutton, 1956 Chambliss, Amy, “The Friendship of Helen Keller and Mark Twain”, Georgia Review, 24/3 (1970): 305–10 Giantvalley, Scott, “A Spirit Not ‘Blind to His Vision, Deaf to His Message’: Helen Keller on Walt Whitman”, Walt Whitman Review, 28/2–4 (1982): 63–66 Herrmann, Dorothy, Helen Keller: A Life, New York: Knopf, 1998 Hickok, Lorena A., The Touch of Magic: The Story of Helen Keller’s Great Teacher, Anne Sullivan Macy, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1961 Lash, Joseph P., Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy, New York: Delacorte Press, 1980 Waite, Helen Elmira, Valiant Companions: Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy, Philadelphia: Macrae Smith, 1959; London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1961

Kempe, Margery

c.1373–after 1439

English spiritual autobiographer

James Robert Payne Biography Helen Adams Keller. Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, United States, 27 June 1880. Her father, a publisher and business entrepreneur, was

Margery Kempe is one of the earliest known English women writers. Prior to the discovery of the sole surviving manuscript of The Book of Margery Kempe in 1934, the only famous

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woman writer was Kempe’s contemporary, the mystic Julian of Norwich. The Book is often described as the first English autobiography. However, even though it is a retelling of the story of Kempe’s life (written when she was in her sixties), there are some problems with this definition. The Book is primarily concerned with Kempe’s spiritual life, and we are told nothing at all about her formative years. It begins when Kempe is 20, after she has married and become pregnant with her first child, at the time when she is first visited by a vision of Christ. The Book clearly bears some relationship to the genre of the conversion narrative. The subsequent chapters chart Kempe’s vacillations as she initially falls back into her old ways and succumbs to temptations to sin. What is striking about Kempe’s story is that, unlike many modern autobiographies, it stresses not her worldly successes and achievements, but what might be seen as the low points in her life. In a typical Christian rejection of all that is valued in the world, the narrative dwells on the reversals of her fortune – a period of madness, the failure of her brewing and milling businesses, and the frequent public humiliations she has to endure because of her faith. There are, nonetheless, aspects of The Book that are also uncharacteristic of the conversion narrative. The first is the amount of apparently gratuitous material detail that is included. The second is that only the opening chapters focus on Kempe’s conversion. The remainder are concerned with her subsequent tribulations and miracles, and in this respect the text is closer to the genre of saint’s life, or to what Alexandra Barratt has termed “hagio-autobiography”. A second problem with defining The Book as autobiography relates to the uncertainty about who actually wrote it. This problem arises not because The Book is written in the third person rather than the first: referring to herself as “this creature” and “she” rather than “I” is simply a strategy by which the converted Kempe can distance herself from her sinful past and also emphasize her relationship with God, her Creator. The real problem is that Kempe seems to have been illiterate – she relied on others both to read to her and to write for her. In fact, a total of three scribes were involved in the production of The Book. While this in itself is not that remarkable – most medieval authors relied on secretaries for the manual labour of writing – Kempe’s last scribe, an anonymous priest, seems to have played a particularly important role. In The Book’s first preface, he includes a fairly detailed history of its complex genesis. This preface explains why the narrative structure often appears disorganized and does not follow chronological order: The Book was dictated entirely from memory. Yet even though this scribe emphasizes that Kempe checked everything he wrote, the extent of his involvement has led some critics to think that he didn’t just copy or even edit the text but that he effectively co-authored it. Certainly the “voices” of two narrators – of Kempe herself and of her scribe – can be distinguished. However, Lynn Staley has argued that Kempe was herself a sophisticated and selfconscious writer and it is important to note that the scribe’s interventions function to authenticate Kempe’s experience. Whereas it would have seemed incongruous for Kempe to testify to her own saintliness, the scribe, a male authority figure, would have been able to do just that. One of the reasons why Kempe relied on her priest-scribe to sanction her experiences was that, as the text reveals, her religious life was a controversial one. A principal objection to

Kempe’s piety was that, by insisting on speaking about divine matters, she was seen to contravene St Paul’s prohibitions on women’s teaching. Equally problematic were her claims that she could talk directly to Christ, her insistence on wearing white (as if she were a member of a religious order or a virgin), her fasting, and her tendency to roar and cry whenever she thought about God. Clearly Kempe did not fulfil people’s expectations of how a woman should behave. While the writing of The Book must have been in part motivated by the author’s desire to vindicate herself, it is also a testimony to her originality and personal strength. Diane Watt Biography Born Margery Brunham in Norfolk(?), England, c.1373. Her father was a wealthy and prominent citizen of Kings Lynn, Norfolk. Married John Kempe of Kings Lynn, c.1394. Suffered a breakdown after the birth of her first child and contemplated suicide. Pursued her own trade as a brewer and miller, but devoted herself to religion after her businesses failed. Had visions and fits of “plenteous and continual weeping”, which others found intolerable. Condemned improper and immoral behaviour and disrupted church services. Took a vow of chastity while her husband was still alive, 1413. Went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 1413–14, to Santiago de Compostella, 1417, and to Northern Europe in 1433. Spent all her wealth and survived on alms. Suspected of heresy and was referred to the Bishop of Norwich, the Mayor and Abbot of Leicester, and the Archbishop of York. Spent her last years in Kings Lynn, where she was revered by monks, friars, and ordinary people, but reviled by others. Died after 1439.

Selected Writings The Book of Margery Kempe, 1436, modern version by W. Butler Bowdon, 1936; edited by Sanford Brown Meech, preface by Hope Emily Allen, 1940 (Early English Text Society edition); translated into modern English by B.A. Windeatt, 1985; edited by Lynn Staley, 1996 (Middle English text); translated into modern English by John Skinner, 1998; edited by Barry Windeatt (Middle English text), 2000

Further Reading Aers, David, “The Making of Margery Kempe: Individual and Community” in Community, Gender and Individual Identity: English Writing 1360–1430, edited by David Aers, London and New York: Routledge, 1988 Atkinson, Clarissa W., Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1983 Barratt, Alexandra (editor), Women’s Writing in Middle English, London and New York: Longman, 1992 Beckwith, Sarah, “A Very Material Mysticism: The Medieval Mysticism of Margery Kempe” in Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology and History, edited by David Aers, Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1986 Delaney, Sheila, “Sexual Economics, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and The Book of Margery Kempe” in Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect, edited by Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson, London and New York: Routledge, 1994 Hirsh, John C., The Revelations of Margery Kempe: Paramystical Practices in Late Medieval England, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989 Lochrie, Karma, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991 McEntire, Sandra J. (editor), Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays, New York: Garland, 1992 Mason, M.G., “The Other Voice: Autobiographies of Women Writers” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by James Olney, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Staley, Lynn, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994 Watt, Diane, Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England, Woodbridge, Suffolk and Rochester, New York: D.S. Brewer, 1997

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Wilson, Janet, “Communities of Dissent: The Secular and Ecclesiastical Communities of Margery Kempe’s Book” in Medieval Women in Their Communities, edited by Diane Watt, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997

Kepler, Johannes

1571–1630

German astronomer, mathematician, and horoscope writer Johannes Kepler had various plans to write an autobiography but never executed them, so that reports about him as an individual are limited to scientific and theological works. However his hand-written literary bequest (Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg) contain nativities (i.e. horoscopes) of interest to students of life writing that Kepler created for his grandparents, uncles, aunts, parents, and himself in 1595. He added a curriculum vitae and checked the validity of his prognoses throughout his life with the help of yearly comments on the actual events. These “yearly notes” are the basis of Kepler’s astrological family chronicle, which extends to the year of his death. In 1597, about two years after the family horoscopes were compiled, he again dealt intensively with his nativity, to which he added detailed descriptions of his characteristics, his readings, and his enemies. This Selbstcharakteristik (self-analysis), written in Latin, is not chronological but determined by the positive and negative aspects of his personality. Kepler devoted several works to astrology (De fundamentis astrologiae certioribus, 1601; De stella nova, 1606; Tertius interveniens, 1610; and Harmonice mundi, part 4, 1619). Like medicine, astrology was not an exact science for Kepler so that a collection of events could be interpreted with some degree of flexibility. Kepler believed in the connection of earthly events with the stars, but that the connection consisted mainly of the geometric pattern of the planetary constellations. These, he believed, only stimulate the human being’s innate powers so that certain trends, but not specific events, can be predicted. In the Selbstcharakteristik he categorically describes the reasons for a scholar’s decisions as extremely complex because they depend on religion, political status, or public opinion; that is why it is impossible for an astrologer to predict the opinion toward which the individual will lean in any matter. Therefore Kepler primarily analysed his basic characteristics, such as anger, playfulness, and bravery, in order to control them rationally. Human reason and free will are influenced by the stars, according to him. Contrary to the nativity in the “yearly notes”, prognosis no longer plays a role in the Selbstcharakteristik. While he attempted to discover an immediate connection between early erotic feelings and the Venus constellation in the “yearly notes”, this theme disappears entirely in the Selbstcharakteristik. At the end, Kepler reports that he had already chosen Jacob and Rebecca as his role models for marriage at the age of ten. With these biblical references, he was not only trying to express a long-gone childhood fantasy, but also his early inclination towards upholding morality, which he saw as the religious order of life: he “wanted to abide by the letter of the law”. The recollection of these two Old Testament characters was probably motivated by Kepler’s own marriage, which had, in

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contrast, begun under difficult circumstances some months earlier. The Selbstcharakteristik was also written under the immediate impression of the publication of the Mysterium cosmographicum and Kepler’s ensuing fame as a scientist. His horoscope gave him an opportunity to take a closer look at the social status he had achieved in the world of science. Religious disputes caused him to doubt Plato’s ideas, according to which the best politician is a philosopher; this doubt in the elite value of virtue in Plato, which accords the scholar moral rights over the “plebeian”, goes hand in hand with self-criticism, and Kepler blamed himself for despising the beliefs of ordinary people, and saw this as the influence of Mercury. He explained this arrogance as his fear of poverty, which to him was the same as a fear of shame and ridicule. The author writes all this with an awareness that he has overcome, as a scientist, the poverty that threatened him during his childhood. The literature on Kepler evaluates the Selbstcharakteristik as a text that is sui generis: “it is perhaps the most introspective piece of writing of the Renaissance” according to Arthur Koestler. If one studies Kepler’s numerous nativities, such as the one on Wallenstein, the extremely critical analysis of negative aspects will appear to be an integral part of this genre. In the Selbstcharakteristik, however, Kepler writes about himself, and the contemplation of the “dark” side of his personality is particularly lengthy. The section on his enemies, especially, both blames and justifies his attitudes. The work serves the psychological purpose of self-liberation from the emotional burdens of his university years and courtship. Ambition, rivalry, and pressure from above, but also disappointment and frustration are some of the faults that Kepler deals with. One of the peculiarities of the Selbstcharakteristik is Kepler’s synthesis of his own characteristics with those of a dog’s (hydrophobia, growling, avarice, thirst for knowledge, etc.). In iconographic tradition the dog is depicted as an intelligent and sensitive animal and is thus a typical motif found in the portraits of scholars. (Albrecht Dürer’s famous etching Melencolia I places a dog between geometrical instruments.) In referring to this iconographic interpretation of the dog as a symbol of scientific research the young scholar Kepler emphasizes his vocation for studies. In only a few strokes, the astronomer creates an ironic self-portrait in its mixture of vocational affirmation and self-criticism. Harald Tersch Biography Born in Weil der Stadt, Württemberg, Swabia, then a German territory of the Holy Roman Empire (now in Germany), 27 December 1571. Sickly as a child. Left in the care of his grandparents while his mother joined his father abroad, 1575–76. Educated at the Latin school in Leonberg from the age of seven. Studied theology at the Higher Seminary in Maulbronn, 1584–89; at the University of Tübingen, 1589–91 (MA). Influenced at Tübingen by the professor of astronomy, Michael Mästlin, who supported the theories of Copernicus. Taught mathematics at the Lutheran high school of Graz, Austria, from 1593. Served as astrologer to Herzog (duke) Albrecht von Wallenstein. Published his first major work, Mysterium cosmographicum, concerning the distances of the planets from the sun, which he related to the regular solids of Euclid, 1596. Married. Joined the scientist Tycho Brahe in Prague, 1600. Appointed imperial mathematician on Brahe’s death in 1601 and began the study of Mars. Published works on astrology, optics, and astronomy, including his greatest work, Astronomia nova (1609). Wife died, 1610. Moved to Linz, Austria, after his patron Rudolph II was deposed, 1611. Married Susanna

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Reuttinger, 1623. Conducted a successful defence in support of his mother, who was to be tried as a witch. Moved to Ulm, Swabia. Published Tabulae Rudolphinae, on the movements of the planets, 1627. Moved to Zagán, Silesia, 1628. Died in Regensburg, Bavaria, 15 November 1630.

Selected Writings Selbstcharakteristik, Latin original in Joannis Kepleri astronomi opera omnia, edited by Christian Frisch, vol. 5, 1864, and in Johannes Kepler: Gesammelte Werke, vol. 19: Dokumente zu Leben und Werk, edited by Martha List, 1975; translated into German in Johann Kepler: Sein Leben in Bildern und eigenen Berichten, edited by Justus Schmidt, 1970, and as Johannes Kepler: Selbstzeugnisse, edited by Franz Hammer, Esther Hammer, and Friedrich Seck, 1971; selections translated in Arthur Koestler`s The Sleepwalkers, 1959, and The Watershed: A Biography of Johannes Kepler, 1960 Johannes Keppler: Life and Letters, edited and translated by Carola Baumgardt, 1951

Further Reading Armitage, Angus, John Kepler, London: Faber, and New York: Roy, 1966 Caspar, Max, Johannes Kepler, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1948 Field, J.V., “A Lutheran Astrologer: Johannes Kepler”, Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 31 (1984): 189–272 Gerlach, Walther and Martha List, Johannes Kepler, 1571 Weil der Stadt – 1630 Regensburg: Dokumente zu Lebenszeit und Lebenswerk, Munich: Ehrenwirth, 1971 Gingerich, Owen, entry on Johannes Kepler in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 7, edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie, New York: Scribner, 1973 Gingerich, Owen, “Johannes Kepler” in Planetary Astronomy from the Renaissance to the Rise of Astrophysics, edited by René Taton and Curtis Wilson, part A: “Tycho Brahe to Newton”, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989 Hemleben, Johannes, Johannes Kepler in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1971 Hübner, J., “On Kepler’s Autobiographical Writing” in Kepler: Four Hundred Years. Proceedings of Conferences Held in Honour of Johannes Kepler, edited by Arthur Beer and Peter Beer, Oxford and New York: Pergamon, 1975 Lemcke, Mechthild, Johannes Kepler, Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1995 List, Martha, Der handschriftliche Nachlass der Astronomen Johannes Kepler und Tycho Brahe, Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1961 Schulze, Werner, “Mathematische und philosophiehistorische Grundlagen der Keplerschen Staatstheorie” in Kepler Symposion, edited by Rudolf Haase, Linz: Linzer Veranstaltungsgesellschaft, 1980 Simon, Gérard, Kepler: astronome, astrologue, Paris: Gallimard, 1979 Strauss, H.A. and S. Strauss-Kloebe (editors), Die Astrologie des Johannes Kepler: eine Auswahl aus seinen Schriften, Fellbach: Adolf Bonz, 1981 Sutter, Berthold, Johannes Kepler und Graz: im Spannungsfeld zwischen geistigem Fortschritt und Politik: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Innerösterreichs, Graz: Leykam, 1975

Kierkegaard, Søren

1813–1855

Danish philosopher and diarist Kierkegaard is unusual among philosophers in having tried to sum up his philosophy by writing his intellectual life-story. Amid the mass of his writings found after his death was the autobiographical work “Synspunkt for min forfatter-virksomhed” published posthumously in 1859 and first translated by Walter Lowrie, with an 1851 publication, as The Point of View for My

Work as an Author (1939). In his introduction, Lowrie describes the text as “profoundly autobiographical”, and Kierkegaard himself made it clear that his aim in writing it was to show that he was a religious writer: “The content of this little book is … what I really am as an author, that I am and always was a religious author, that the whole of my work as an author is related to Christianity, to the problem of becoming a Christian.” Kierkegaard is surely unusual among religious writers, too, in seeking to spell this out to his readers. Yet he wrote many literary and philosophical works that are not obviously related to Christianity at all – Gjaentagelsen (1943; Repetition), for example, is a love story, of a sort; Enten-eller (1843; Either /Or) is a bizarre and often hilarious conglomerate of epigrams and short pieces such as an essay on Don Giovanni and a “Seducer’s Diary”; the Afsluttende uvidenskabelig efterskrift (1846; Concluding Unscientific Postscript) is an extended meditation on a number of philosophical themes; and Forord (1844; Prefaces) is a book consisting purely of “emancipated” prefaces that are not actually prefaces to any book. Such “aesthetic” works as these were published under pseudonyms – often on the same day as Kierkegaard’s more obviously “religious” works or “edifying discourses” – although he includes “A First and Last Explanation” in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, in which he owns up to being the author of the pseudonymous aesthetic works. He adds, however, an important qualifier: in the pseudonymous works, he writes, there is “not a single word which is my own”, while he is “quite authentically and straightforwardly the author of, for example, the edifying discourses, and of every word in them”. The main thrust of The Point of View, then, is to explain that the pseudonymity has been a maieutic strategy adopted by a religious author wishing to capture and retain the attention of the reader. In it, Kierkegaard describes how he has been led by Providence to write as he has, why the “indirect communication” of the aesthetic works was necessary in order to “deceive” his readers “into the truth”, and the various tricks and tactics he employed in order to achieve this. For his contemporaries, he believed, had lost all sense of the true meaning of Christianity; they assumed that reciting the right words and attending church regularly entitled them to call themselves Christian, and Kierkegaard sought to shatter this illusion by bringing them to recognize the wholehearted existential commitment that religious faith entailed. This could only be achieved indirectly, however, for “an illusion cannot be destroyed directly, and only by indirect means can it be radically removed”. The Point of View, therefore, is presented as the very last explanation that Kierkegaard’s life and writing had been devoted to this task. And this is how the work has been received – as, in the words of the subtitle, “A Direct Communication”. But more recently questions have been raised as to just how authentic and straightforward a “direct communication” it is. For the key that Kierkegaard offers us as a means to unlock the secret of his entire authorship may not fit as neatly as has often been assumed. The Point of View claims to be a meta-text – the text that explains all the other texts – yet it describes Kierkegaard’s entire authorship as a deception. How can we be sure, then, that this text is not deceiving us as well, that the master of disguise and deception is not making merry with his reader once again? In his Journals (published in Danish as Papirer) Kierkegaard wrote that “after my death no one will find among my papers

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a single explanation as to what really filled my life”. In thus leaving open the possibility that The Point of View could be as fictive as his other fictional works – a meta-trick rather than a meta-text – the book raises questions about the authority of autobiographical writing and alerts us to the influence such texts can have over the reception of an author’s work. Rather than being the last word that explains the whole, The Point of View might be Kierkegaard’s last laugh. Jane Chamberlain Biography Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, 5 May 1813. His father was an affluent, self-made businessman. His mother and five of his siblings died before he was 21. Studied theology at the University of Copenhagen. Father died, 1838. Became engaged briefly to Regina Olsen, 1840. Received his doctorate, 1841. Studied in Berlin for several months. Produced the bulk of his works, 1843–50, including Frygt og baeven (1843; Fear and Trembling), under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio, Philosophiske smuler (1844; Philosophical Fragments) and Afsluttende uvidenskabelig efterskrift til de philosophiske smuler (1846; Concluding Unscientific Postscript). Opposed much of organized Christianity and stressed the need for individual choice. Died in Copenhagen, 11 November 1855.

Selected Writings Stadier paa livets vej: studier af forskhellige, 1845; edited by N.C. Nielsen, 1926; as Stages on Life’s Way, translated by Walter Lowrie, 1940; translated by Howard Vincent Hong and Edna Hatlestad Hong, 1988 Om min forfatter-virksomhed, 1843; edited by A. B. Drachmann, vol. 18 of Samlede vaerker, 1964; as The Point of View, etc. including The Point of View for My Work as an Author, Two Notes about “the Individual” and On My Work as an Author, edited and translated by Walter Lowrie, 1939; as The Point of View: On My Work as an Author; The Point of View for My Work as an Author; Armed Neutrality, edited and translated by Howard Vincent Hong and Edna Hatlestad Hong, 1998 Af en endnu levendes papirer, 1872 Søren Kierkegaard og Emil Boesen: breve og indledning, med et tillaeg, edited by Carl Koch, 1901 Efterladte papirer (journals), edited by H.P. Barford and Hermann Gottsched, 9 vols, 1869–81 Søren Kierkegaards papirer, edited by P.A. Heiberg, V. Kuhr and E Torsting, 11 vols, 1909–48; 2nd edition, with supplementary material, edited by Niels Thulstrup, 13 vols, 1968–70; selections as: Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, edited and translated by Howard Vincent Hong and Edna Hatlestad Hong, 7 vols, 1967–78; Papers and Journals: A Selection, edited and translated by Alastair Hannay, 1996 The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard: A Selection, edited and translated by Alexander Dru, 1938, abridged 1958 Breve og aktstykker vedrørende Søren Kierkegaard, edited by Niels Thulstrup, 2 vols, 1953; as Letters and Documents [of] Kierkegaard, edited and translated by Henrik Rosenmeier, 1978 Dagbøger, edited by Peter Preisler Rohde, 1953; edited by Rohde, 4 vols, 1964; as The Diary of Søren Kierkegaard, translated by Gerda M. Andersen, 1960 Om mig selv: Søren Kierkegaards breve og optegnelser, edited by Ole Jacobsen and Rasmus Fischer, 1957 Armed Neutrality and An Open Letter, with Relevant Selections from his Journals and Papers, edited and translated by Howard Vincent Hong and Edna Hatlestad Hong, 1968 The Last Years: Journals, 1853–1855, edited and translated by Ronald Gregor Smith, 1968 Dagbøger i udvalg 1834–1846 (diary), edited by Niels Jorgen Cappelorn and Jorgen Dehs, 1992

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Further Reading Agacinski, Sylviana, Aparté: Conceptions and Deaths of Søren Kierkegaard, translated by Kevin Newmark, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1988 Bloom, Harold (editor), Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, New York: Chelsea House, 1989 Caputo, John D., Radical Hermeneutics, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987 Gardiner, Patrick, Kierkegaard, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988 Hannay, Alastair, Kierkegaard, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982 Lowrie, Walter, A Short Life of Kierkegaard, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1942 Mackey, Louis, Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971 Norris, Christopher, “Fictions of Authority: Narrative and Viewpoint in Kierkegaard’s Writing” in his The Deconstructive Turn, London: Methuen, 1983 Rée, Jonathan and Jane Chamberlain (editors), Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998 Thompson, Josiah (editor), Kierkegaard: A Collection of Critical Essays, New York: Anchor, 1972

Kilvert, Francis

1840–1879

English curate and diarist Kilvert started his diary on 1 April 1870, while he was curate of Clyro in mid-Wales, and kept it continuously until 13 March 1879. He died suddenly in 1879, five weeks after his marriage. Selections from the diary (about one-third of the whole), chosen and edited by William Plomer, were published in three volumes (1938, 1939, and 1940). Two sections were missing, in the accounts of 1875 and 1876, removed by his widow for personal reasons. It has not been possible to publish the complete diary since all but three of the 22 original notebooks were destroyed in the mid-1950s by a descendant of Kilvert. The three surviving notebooks have now been published in full, one in 1982 and two in 1989. These complete sections are immensely valuable since we get the fullness and detail of Kilvert’s writing; they also show that Plomer’s selections were made with a sensitivity to the spirit of the original. Kilvert records the sights and sounds of the countryside of his parishes, the ways of the country people – labourers, farmers, and their children – and the social life of the gentry. There is much else – folklore, visits to London art exhibitions, nights spent doctoring a sick horse, hopeful friendships with young women, romantic and sensuous admiration of little girls, difficulties with the local squire over a harmonium for the church, and the surprise of finding a vicar’s daughters castrating lambs. But it is the countryside and the country people whom he knew through his parish work that engage Kilvert’s constant interest and inspire his best writing, as this for 20 June 1870: At the school Eliza Wall asked me to go to Penrheol to baptize [a sick baby] … It was a splendid morning but boiling hot … The hedges starred and blazing with myriads of sweet wild dog-roses, white, faint pink and deep red. Near Pentwyn we met Lucretia Wall prettily dressed in silvergrey and walking to Hay under the shade of a parasol … A funny little old fashioned woman, trim and tidy, came to the door [of the house with the sick baby] … She confided

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to me that she was obliged to take a stick to help her walk to market [she was 82], but that when she got near Hay she hid her staff in a hedge and walked into the town light and jaunty. The literary and historical value of the diary was recognized as soon as it was published. Critics have sought to pinpoint why it is so good – though noting, too, occasional lapses into unrestrained sentimentality or passages overladen with adjectives. Rowse refers to “an observant gift for writing, translucent and pure … the gift of catching life on the wing”. It is the pace of the diary that is one of its admirable qualities, not urbanly hectic, but ready for the next experience; Kilvert days are filled with events worthy of notice. The diary is not simply a record of an arcadian world, since there is poverty and illness too; moreover, though emerging only in flashes, and largely inexplicitly, Kilvert is not unquestioningly in tune with the social order and the mentalité of the time. Le Quesne finds “beneath the conventionality … something wild, something untamed, something strong: … an acute, sometimes painful susceptibility to the beauties of the natural world and the idiosyncrasies of the human one, that he had not learned in the vicarage”. Kilvert’s background was a clerical, conventional middleclass one, but his uncle, the Revd. Francis Kilvert (1793–1863), was an antiquarian and literary man, and it is from him that Kilvert’s love of poetry may have come. His response to poetry, particularly that of Wordsworth, is evident in the diary, but at the time (Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal had not then been published) he had little in the way of models for his own journal, which has, as Le Quesne observes “a sensibility descended from Wordsworth, but authentically Kilvert’s own”. Kilvert’s own poetry, little of which was published in his lifetime, has the conventional form and sentiment of Victorian verse, but the diary has more than this. It is as if, untrammelled by constricting form, Kilvert could reach for immediate response to whatever he encountered, and his sensuous, sometimes unconsciously erotic response to the beauties of nature and people could emerge. There is little of an “autonomous self” and deliberate selfdisclosure in the diary, but Fothergill notes “a consciousness on the part of the writer [of] living a life that is an organic whole”, which embodies “a deeply implanted literary conception of the texture and value of his experience”. “Why do I keep this voluminous journal?” wrote Kilvert on 3 November 1874: Partly because life appears to me such a curious and wonderful thing that it seems almost a pity that even such a humble and uneventful life as mine should pass altogether away without some such record as this, and partly too because I think the record may amuse and interest some who come after me. Hilary Dickinson Biography Born in Hardenhuish, Wiltshire, England, 3 December 1840, into a clerical family. Educated at Claverton Lodge, Bath, Somerset. Studied at Wadham College, Oxford, 1859–62 (BA 1862, MA 1866). Ordained deacon, 1863, and priest, 1864. Curate at Langley Burrell, Wiltshire (under his father), 1864; Kington St Michael, Wiltshire, 1864; and Clyro, Radnorshire, 1865–72. Began his diary in Clyro, 1870. Curate to his father at Langley Burrell again, 1872–75. Vicar, St Harmon, Radnorshire, 1876–77, and Bredwardine, Herefordshire,

1877–79. Married Elizabeth Anne Rowland, 1879. Died in Bredwardine, 23 September 1879.

Selected Writings Kilvert’s Diary: Selections from the Diary of the Rev. Francis Kilvert, 3 vols, edited by William Plomer, 1938–40; one-volume edition, 1944 The Diary of Francis Kilvert, April–June 1870, edited by Kathleen Hughes and Dafydd Ifans, 1982 The Diary of Francis Kilvert, June–July 1870, edited by Dafydd Ifans, 1989 Kilvert’s Cornish Diary, edited by Richard Maber and Angela Tregoning, 1989 Kilvert, the Victorian: A New Selection from Kilvert’s Diaries, edited by David Lockwood, 1992

Further Reading Blythe, Ronald (editor), The Penguin Book of Diaries, London: Viking Press, 1989 Brereton, J.M., “The Curate of Clyro”, Blackwood’s Magazine, 323 (September 1977): 232–50 Fothergill, Robert A., Private Chronicles: A Study of English Diaries, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1974 Grice, Frederick, Who’s Who in Kilvert’s Diary, Broomy Hill, Hereford: Kilvert Society, 1977 Grice, Frederick, Francis Kilvert and His World, Horsham, Sussex: Caliban Books, 1982 Le Quesne, A.L., After Kilvert, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978 Morgan, R.I., Kilvert and the Wordsworth Circle: Wordsworthian References in Kilvert’s Diary, Broomy Hill, Hereford: Kilvert Society, 1970 O’Brien, Kate, English Diaries and Journals, London: William Collins, 1943 Pritchett, V.S., In My Good Books: Essays on Literature, London: Chatto and Windus, 1942; reprinted, New York: Kennikat Press, 1970 Rowse, A.L., “Post Kilvert: A Moral Tale”, Blackwood’s Magazine, 326 (March 1979): 215–21

Kincaid, Jamaica

1949–

American novelist and prose writer Jamaica Kincaid was born on the Caribbean island of Antigua and has lived in the United States since 1965/66. Her writing, first known through publication in The New Yorker, comprises six volumes of prose and numerous uncollected stories and essays. While she has been described both as a writer of the Caribbean diaspora, and as a black American woman writer, she consistently rejects such classifications, preferring to see herself in more individual terms. Kincaid sees her writing as a – necessarily autobiographical – act of survival (see Ferguson interview). It stems from her urgent need to make sense of the devastating emotional effects of domination in her childhood – both colonial attempts to overwrite indigenous identities with Britishness, and the domination of Kincaid’s mother, a kind of colonization on a personal, but from the point of view of the child all the greater and more significant, scale. Her need to redefine her life, because of identities stolen and imposed by those with power, led Kincaid to her particular kind of fictionalized autobiography, a form common to Caribbean women writers. It also led her to change her name, in an act of

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separation and liberation from her family, and of “re-creation” of her origins in the Caribbean (see Cudjoe). She reveals an awareness of the politics of naming through her eponymous character Lucy, who comments that her surname – Potter, also one of Kincaid’s birth names – must have belonged to the owner of her ancestors. Kincaid has said that her first novel, Annie John (1985), a first-person narrative of a childhood in Antigua, is strongly autobiographical, but that recording events exactly would have had “a limited power”, been “less than what I knew happened” (quoted by Perry). A “long rain” and Annie’s protracted illness “both really happened [but not simultaneously] … In an autobiography … I could not have had [them] coincide” (ibid.). Doing so provided her with powerful imagery that heightens the – very real – oppressive feelings of the illness: “the sound the rain made as it landed on the roof pressed me down in my bed, bolted me down, and I couldn’t even so much as lift my head”. Much of her work, though fictionalized, is at its core life writing. Moreover, the themes, individual images, and moments that echo across Kincaid’s work illustrate how her writings complement each other, with individual works reflecting different life stages, and together making up a particular picture of her life. Her intense love / hate relationship with her mother is evoked in At the Bottom of the River (1983), a short-story collection that conveys, through dreamlike sequences and imagery, her struggle to experience and express herself in resistance to what threatens powerlessness and silence. This relationship is present in two subsequent, more straightforwardly autobiographical, narratives – her second novel, Lucy (1994), the story of a young Antiguan au pair in the US, and, most fully, in Annie John. The latter portrays the protagonist’s confusion and pain at her mother’s sudden and incomprehensible distancing which leads the child, too, to pull away. The three volumes together paint a picture of the initially tender but increasingly fraught relationship between Kincaid and her mother. They are permeated by a legacy of betrayal, the characters’ sense of erasure, and of longing for a lost intimacy. Kincaid is concerned throughout her work with “the relationship between the powerful and the powerless” and makes important connections between personal and political experiences of domination (see Ferguson, interview and critical work). But she never fully addresses either the politics of identifying her mother as a black Antiguan woman with the European colonizers, or how this identification might deflect from the responsibility of both colonizers and male family members. My Brother (1997), about the death of Kincaid’s brother from AIDS, adds further to the story of Kincaid’s feelings about her family and Antigua, re-evoked by her return there later in her life. Again, Kincaid writes out of desperation in an effort to come to terms with her “combustion of feelings” around his death and to resist being sucked back into the family’s influence. Perhaps because of her urgent and stark emotions here, this is her most explicitly autobiographical volume, written in a style that is harsh, painful, and relentless. Many of Kincaid’s writings, however, reveal cool detachment in which both she, in relation to her readers, and her characters present invulnerable or manipulative personae. This sense of distance is evident in the expression she gives to sexuality in her writings. There are overtones of lesbian relationships in the

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fiction set in Antigua, and in Lucy, but perhaps because intimacy with women feels too dangerous, Kincaid seems to shut out the possibility of lesbianism. The aggressive heterosexuality in Lucy, and “Putting Myself Together”, intended to shock her mother, may offer a distance that is safer. Kincaid’s angry critiques of her white audience, of colonialism, and of white feminism (Lucy) are significant contributions, grounded in her life experience, to political debate. But the anger in her writings is not always welcomed. Many American reviewers deemed A Small Place, a political essay dealing with post-independence Antigua and its colonial past, too bitter. Antiguans’ reaction to it was, says Kincaid, to acknowledge its truth but to wonder: “did she have to say it?” (quoted in Perry). But responses to Kincaid have highlighted the psychoanalytical at the expense of more political readings, and may explain why Kincaid – despite her anger – seems relatively accepted by mainstream US audiences. Kincaid’s migration to the United States has been vital to her self-redefinition and ability to write about her past. Either because there is not the same urgent need to write about her present, or because her life with her husband and two children is more intimate than her invulnerable persona would allow, she writes little about her current life. But her New Yorker gardening columns (some of which appear in the collection My Garden, 1999) reveal the importance to her of her Vermont garden as a location of possibility. And in “Homemaking” (renamed “The House” in My Garden) she writes about the house where she lives, its previous inhabitants and the house’s significance for them, and her sense of the continuing presence of that history within the house. It would seem that she finds meaning in this connection with a physical place, and that here she can safely root herself. Sharon Krummel Biography Born Elaine Potter Richardson in St John’s, Antigua, West Indies, 25 May 1949. Educated at Princess Margaret girl’s school in Antigua. Left to work as an au pair in New York, 1966. Attended photography classes at the New School for Social Research, New York. Won a scholarship to study photography at Franconia College, New Hampshire, 1969. Left before graduating and returned to New York. Contributed to the New Yorker from 1974. Became a staff writer on the journal, 1976. Married Allen Evan Shawn, a composer, 1979: one daughter and one son. Published a collection of short stories, At the Bottom of the River, 1983, and her first novel, Annie John, 1985.

Selected Writings “Jamaica Kincaid’s New York” in Rolling Stone (6 October 1977) “Antigua Crossings: A Deep and Blue Passage on the Caribbean Sea” in Rolling Stone (29 June 1978) At the Bottom of the River (short stories), 1983 Annie John (autobiographical fiction), 1985 A Small Place (non fiction), 1988 Lucy (autobiographical fiction), 1990 “On Seeing England for the First Time” in Transition: An International Review 51 (1991) “Flowers of Evil” in New Yorker (5 October 1992) “A Fire by Ice” in New Yorker (22 February 1993) “Just Reading” in New Yorker (29 March 1993) “Alien Soil” in New Yorker (21 June 1993) “This Other Eden” in New Yorker (23 and 30 August 1993) “The Season Past” in New Yorker (7 March 1994) “Earthly Delights” in New Yorker (12 December 1994) “Putting Myself Together” in New Yorker (20 and 27 February 1995) “Plant Parenthood” in New Yorker (19 June 1995)

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“Homemaking” in New Yorker (16 October 1995) The Autobiography of My Mother, 1996 My Brother (autobiographical fiction), 1997 My Garden (essays), 1999

Further Reading Birbalsingh, Frank, “Jamaica Kincaid: From Antigua to America” in Frontiers of Caribbean Literature in English, edited by Birbalsingh, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996 Cudjoe, Selwyn R., “Jamaica Kincaid and the Modernist Project: An Interview” in Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International Conference, edited by Cudjoe, Wellesley, Massachusetts: Calaloux, 1990 Davies, Carole Boyce and Elaine Savory Fido (editors), Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature, Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1990 Donnell, Alison, “Dreaming of Daffodils: Cultural Resistance in the Narratives of Theory”, Kunapipi, 14/2 (1992): 45–52 Donnell, Alison, “When Daughters Defy: Jamaica Kincaid’s Fiction”, Women: A Cultural Review, 4/1 (1993): 18–26 Donnell, Alison and Sarah Lawson Welsh (editors), The Routledge Reader in Caribbean Literature, London and New York: Routledge, 1996 Ferguson, Moira, “Lucy and the Mark of the Coloniser”, Modern Fiction Studies, 39/2 (1993): 237–59 Ferguson, Moira, Jamaica Kincaid: Where the Land Meets the Body, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994 Ferguson, Moira, “A Lot of Memory: An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid”, Kenyon Review, 16/1 (1994): 163–88 Kincaid, Jamaica, “Ovando”, Conjunctions, 14 (1989): 75–83 Mordecai, Pamela and Betty Wilson (editors), Her True-True Name, London and Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1989; corrected edition, 1990 (anthology of Caribbean Women’s Writings) Nasta, Susheila (editor), Motherlands: Black Women’s Writing from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia, London: Women’s Press, 1991; New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992 Perry, Donna, “An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid” in Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr, New York: Meridian, 1990 Petersen, Kirsten Holst and Anna Rutherford (editors), A Double Colonization: Colonial and Post-Colonial Women’s Writing, Oxford: Dangaroo Press, 1986 Simmons, Diane, Jamaica Kincaid, New York: Twayne, 1994

Kingsley, Mary

1862–1900

English travel writer “My life can be written in very few lines”, wrote Mary Kingsley. “It arises from my having no personal individuality of my own whatsoever. I have always lived in the lives of other people, whose work was heavy for them.” Kingsley’s fascinating life story does not support this claim but her declaration makes itself felt in much of her work. After the death of her father, George Kingsley, she edited his Notes on Sport and Travel (1892), adding a dutiful memoir according to the accepted conventions of Victorian life writing. Kingsley is self-effacing and tactful but her parents do not emerge well. Self-centred, cruel, and selfish, they take their daughter’s servitude for granted and Kingsley writes of a claustrophobic childhood and youth spent almost entirely at home. Another autobiographical fragment, later published as a magazine article, “In the Days of My Youth: Chapters of an Autobiography” (1899), helps to complete the picture of a lonely child, uneducated but striving for intellectual stimulation and escape.

Kingsley made her reputation as a writer with the critically acclaimed Travels in West Africa (1897). This was an account of her unique experiences after the deaths of her parents when, in 1893 and 1895, she became the first white woman to explore Sierra Leone and West Africa unaccompanied by Europeans. Her journeys had been undertaken with the aim of collecting specimens for Kew Gardens and the British Museum but she also wrote of her experiences as a trader, an occupation that took her into previously unexplored territory. Kingsley viewed Travels in West Africa as so personal that she called it “publishing a diary”, an act of self-publicity she facetiously called “a literary crime”. Yet far from being deliberately selfaggrandizing, Kingsley’s account of her experiences worked to undermine the glorification of self traditionally associated with the literature of empire (as popularized in the works of H. Rider Haggard and Richard Burton). Written in a scientific, somewhat racy, but also self-parodying style, Kingsley’s critique of colonialism and the rapidly growing British empire was influential in African affairs and helped to define the 1890s notion of empire. Her firsthand knowledge added authenticity to the book. She had stayed in remote areas with Africans, from whose information she obtained her data, and in the larger towns with white settlers, with whom she exchanged ideas. Despite receiving considerable acclaim, Kinglsey criticized the anthropological worth of the book, believing that “it is the greatest mistake to write a book about a place you have been to … for personal experience gets in the way”. In the wake of Travels in West Africa Kingsley became a media celebrity. She was a popular subject for the new genre of the celebrity interview, which had emerged as part of the so-called new journalism. She was also much in demand as a lecturer, touring the country and using her performances on the public platform to propound and further her political goals. Her own newspaper and journal articles also reveal this development from popular intrepid traveller to political propagandist and illustrate the main causes she became involved in. These included the campaign to ban the importation of trade alcohol to West Africa and the movement to further the employment of British nurses in colonial hospitals. Kingsley’s more ambitious second book, West African Studies (1899), which sold 1200 copies in its first week of publication, also undermined the individual focus of conventional travel narratives and autobiography. In it, Kingsley was still an Englishwoman in Africa but she de-centred herself, packing the book with ethnographical detail about the lives of the people she observed and including, somewhat controversially, plans as to the future government of West Africa. Kingsley suggested a system of government that put administrative control in the hands of European trading interests and to a limited extent incorporated African opinion. She believed that only by learning African languages could colonial administrators begin to understand the African outlook and customs and thus avoid bloodshed. Although angered by the inevitable interest in her achievement as a woman travelling alone, Kingsley is unique among Victorian women and within Victorian society as a whole. On 5 June 1900 news of her death in South Africa, while serving as a nurse in the Anglo-Boer War, hit the British news-stands. Obituaries praised her different capacities as writer, traveller, anthropologist, and political adviser. As her memoirs and travel

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books reveal, she was a woman of her time in her contradictory attitudes to race and women’s rights (she was against female suffrage) but she stands at the head of the procession of women who emerged from the ghetto of expectations placed on them by Victorian society. Her work is of interest not simply because it is an example of autobiographical writing that achieved bestseller status but for its manipulation of genres: autobiography, travel romance, and science are mixed together in ways that are truly distinctive. Andrew Maunder

Pearce, Robert D., Mary Kingsley: Light at the Heart of Darkness, Oxford: Kensal Press, 1990 Thiesmeyer, Lynn, “Imperial Fictions and Nonfictions: The Subversion of Sources in Mary Kingsley and Joseph Conrad” in Transforming Genres: New Approaches to British Fiction of the 1890s, edited by Nikki Lee Manos and Meri-Jane Rochelson, London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994

Biography

American memoirist and novelist

Mary Henrietta Kingsley. Born in London, 13 November 1862. Her father, Dr George Kingsley, was a traveller, naturalist, and writer, the brother of the writer Charles Kingsley. Educated informally at home in Highgate, London; read widely in her father’s scientific library and learned German. Moved with her family to Bexley, Kent, 1879. Developed interests in scientific subjects, ethnography, and anthropology. Moved with her family to Cambridge, 1886. Visited Paris, 1888. Nursed invalid parents at home in Cambridge until their deaths in 1892. Moved with her brother to London, 1892. Developed her father’s notes on West African religion and law, Notes on Sport and Travel (1892), and decided to continue with her own study of the subject. Travelled to West Africa, August 1893. Visited Parts of Cabinda (now Angola), the Congo River, and Old Calabar (Nigeria). Returned home with specimens of beetles and fish and notes on the anthropology and religions of the region, January 1894. Made further visit to West Africa, with equipment from the British Museum in London, to study the natural history and religion of French Congo and present-day Gabon and Cameroon, trading in rubber and oil to finance her work, 1894–95. Returned with extensive collections of specimens, 1895. Wrote accounts of her journeys and gave lectures and papers at learned societies and meetings around the country, 1895–1900. Published Travels in West Africa, 1897, West African Studies and The Story of West Africa, 1899. Elected a fellow of the Anthropological Society, 1898. Consulted on West African anthropological matters by British colonial administrators in Europe, including Joseph Chamberlain. Travelled to South Africa to serve as a nurse in the Anglo-Boer War, 1900. Contracted typhoid fever while nursing wounded soldiers in Simonstown. Died in Simonstown, 3 June 1900.

Selected Writings Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (autobiography/ travel narrative), 1897; edited by Elspeth Huxley, 1976 “In the Days of My Youth: Chapters of an Autobiography”, Mainly about People, 29 (May 1899): 468–79 The Story of West Africa (travel narrative), 1899 West African Studies (autobiography/ travel narrative), 1899, revised 1901 Mary Kingsley in Africa: Her Travels in Nigeria and Equatorial Africa Told Largely in her Own Words, edited by Rosemary Glynn, 1956 Also edited Notes on Sport and Travel by her father, G.H. Kingsley, adding a Memoir, 1892

Further Reading Birkett, Dea, Mary Kingsley: Imperial Adventuress, London: Macmillan, 1992 Birkett, Dea, Mary Kingsley (1862–1900): A Biographical Bibliography, Bristol: Bristol University Press, 1993 Frank, Katherine, A Voyager Out: The Life of Mary Kingsley, London: Hamish Hamilton, and Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986 Gwynn, Stephen, The Life of Mary Kingsley, London: Macmillan, 1932 Hayford, Mark C., Mary H. Kingsley from an African Standpoint, London: Bear and Taylor, 1901 Myer, Valerie Grosvenor, A Victorian Lady in Africa: The Story of Mary Kingsley, Southampton: Ashford Press, 1989

Kingston, Maxine Hong

1940–

A memoirist, novelist, and essayist, Maxine Hong Kingston has had a remarkable influence on women’s studies and literary studies since the late 1970s, in particular after the publication of her celebrated mixed-genre work, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1976). Although born in California in 1940 and educated in American schools, Hong Kingston’s upbringing was decidedly Chinese. She was a first-generation Chinese American woman, and this is implicitly related to the interweaving of her autobiographical narrative with fictional elements in The Woman Warrior. In order to magnify the contradictions she experienced in a white, sexist society in the West, she marries the realistic genre of life writing and a creative version of the memoir, adding invocations of Chinese myth and legend. In the real world of her parents, Chinese girls and women were not highly valued; in the real world of America, girls and women are treated as both elevated and subservient. In the world of the imagination and imaginary heroes, there are Chinese women warriors, such as the narrator’s hero, the female avenger Fa Mu Lan (based on the warrior of that name, though also drawing on a mythical male warrior, Gnak Fei). But in order to represent the double message that Hong Kingston receives from her mother’s story about Fa Mu Lan (one of the “talk-stories” in the book, as she calls them), the narrative both describes the present in realistic terms and interlaces it with fantastic tales from Chinese legend. Thus, the narrator Maxine’s mother, Brave Orchid, predicts that her daughter will “grow up to be a wife and a slave” but Maxine acknowledges that Brave Orchid “taught me the song of the warrior women”. There are, then, two options for the reader, as for the author / narrator: the “reality” of the world in which the author / narrator lives, which is constructed as a sexist and racist one; and a better reality that can be imagined, which can be viewed as enabling and empowering. The narrative of The Woman Warrior contains the author’s autobiography, but it also comments on that autobiography as an outsider and a critic: it runs somewhere between the real life the author lived, which still haunts her, and the life of legendary Chinese women who, through their wits, somehow survived in battle. As the narrative progresses, it reads increasingly like the dream of Fa Mu Lan, although it is, in fact, written in memory of the “No Name Woman” whose story begins the book. Kingston writes: “… whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strength to establish realities.” The No Name Woman is, in reality, Kingston’s aunt. Pregnant out of wedlock in “the old China”, Kingston’s aunt was punished by her community. Eventually she killed herself and her baby in the village

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well, and, to this day, Kingston writes, “my aunt haunts me”. It is the ghost of the aunt that forces her to write the aunt’s life and thereby commit her to a voiced memory “after fifty years of neglect”. As Joy Kogawa later did in her books Obasan (1981) and Naomi’s Road (1986), Kingston rewrites the history of her family, and rebukes the ghosts of her past. In China Men (1980), Kingston shifts her attention from women to the racism and its consequences as experienced by Chinese men working in America. Although originally conceiving of The Woman Warrior and China Men as one combined work, Kingston felt that combining the male and female perspectives and experiences weakened the feminist points she wished to stress, and hence the separation of male and female themes into two books. Once again, in China Men, she mixes fiction (myth) and non-fiction (auto/biographical fact). Eschewing the first-person narrative of The Woman Warrior, China Men is ostensibly about the lives of four generations of Chinese American men of the narrator’s family, from the greatgrandfather, a sugar-plantation worker in Hawaii, through the grandfather (a railroad worker), the father (husband of Brave Orchid, who runs a laundry and gambling house), to the teacher-brother, who becomes a Vietnam draftee. The narrator’s relationship with her father is central, both as a source of bewilderment at his culturally conditioned ideas about women, and as a source of auto/biographical mystery, as alternative versions of his arrival in America are narrated. The social, mythical, and historical dimensions of the book coalesce around the hardships and discrimination faced by Chinese manual workers in the United States: at one stylistic extreme, the emasculation described in the mythical Tang Ao opening chapter becomes a metaphor for the exploitation suffered by the Chinese workers who contributed so much to American economic development by way of the sugar plantations and the laying of railroads; while at the furthest remove from the mythical and the imaginative, one part of the book simply enumerates “The Laws” that existed historically to limit the rights of Chinese immigrants. Hong Kingston’s writings resist easy classification, by virtue of their generic ambiguity, and because the author – and some of the lives she articulates – encapsulates a conflict of cultures, masculine and feminine, Chinese and American. But both The Woman Warrior and China Men represent a protest against racist practices and laws, and sexist traditions in both American and Chinese societies; Hong Kingston’s life writing will be remembered because it tries to represent these practices, laws, and traditions as fluid and contingent, and because she conveys the power of the imagination to fill in the gaps of the official record of the Chinese and American experience. Marlene Kadar Biography Born in Stockton, California, United States, 27 October 1940. Her father, an immigrant from China, was a poet who worked in a gaming house then bought a laundry. Studied engineering then English literature at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1962 (BA). Married Earll Kingston, 1962: one son (the musician Joseph Lawrence Chung Mei). Studied for teaching certificate at Berkeley, 1964–65. English and mathematics teacher, Sunset High School, Hayward, California, 1965–67; teacher, Kahuku High School, Hawaii, 1967–68; teacher, Drop-In School, Kahaluu, Hawaii, 1968–69; Kailua High School, Hawaii, 1969; English teacher, Honolulu Business

College, Hawaii, 1969–70; teacher of creative writing, Mid-Pacific Institute, Honolulu, 1970–76. Became famous with the publication of The Woman Warrior (1976), followed by China Men (1980). Visiting associate professor of English, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, 1977–78; visiting professor at Eastern Michigan University, 1986–87. Wrote the novel Tripmaster Monkey (1987), a critical success. Appointed English and creative writing instructor, University of California at Berkeley, 1990.

Selected Writings The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (auto/biographical fiction), 1976 China Men (auto/biographical fiction), 1980

Further Reading Cheung, King-Kok, Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1993 Janette, Michele, “The Angles We’re Joined At: A Conversation with Maxine Hong Kingston”, Transition, 71 (Spring 1997): 140–57 Kogawa, Joy, Obasan, Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1981; Boston: Godine, 1982 Kogawa, Joy, Naomi’s Road, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1986 Lim, Shirley Geok-lin (editor), Approaches to Teaching Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1991 Skandera-Trombley, Laura E. (editor), Critical Essays on Maxine Hong Kingston, New York: G.K. Hall, 1998 Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia (editor), Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: A Casebook, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999

Kipling, Rudyard

1865–1936

English fiction writer, poet, prose writer, and autobiographer Although much of Kipling’s fiction, travel writing, and verse contains significant autobiographical elements, he produced, at the very end of his life, only one short work of autobiography. Left uncompleted at the time of his death in 1936, Something of Myself was published in the following year after serialization in various newspapers. It was begun on 1 August 1935, less than six months before the author’s death. The manuscript was edited for publication by his widow, Caroline (Carrie) Kipling, in collaboration with two friends, H.A. Gwynne and Sir Alfred Webb-Johnson, the latter of whom had suggested the title to Kipling. Autobiographical sketch rather than formal autobiography, Something of Myself fully lives up to the disclaimer or warning implicit in its title, being selective in its treatment of the various phases of the author’s eventful life and career, and notable for its reticence. A number of sensitive and painful topics, likely to be regarded as crucial by any Kipling biographer, find no mention: there is no allusion, for example, to Florence Garrard or Edmonia Hill, both important in Kipling’s early life, or to his brother-in-law Wolcott Balestier, to whom he was closely attached and who died tragically young. Nor is there any reference to the bitter family dispute that led to the Kiplings’ departure from the United States despite their evident intention of settling there; and although the births of his son and his elder daughter are recorded, their early deaths are not. Again, while the agonies of his years in Southsea, England, are unsparingly

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conveyed, there is no speculation on why his loving parents should have left their children with strangers, and no defence of what must seem puzzling or inexplicable. The most vivid and personal portions of the book are contained in the first three chapters, dealing, respectively, with the author’s early childhood spent first in India and then with foster parents at the “House of Desolation” in Southsea, his schooldays in England, and his early years as a journalist in India. The writing here has the sharpness and precision of observed and remembered detail found in the best of Kipling’s fictional prose: his evocation, for instance, on the opening pages of his early impressions of the heat, colour, and varied life of Bombay is an impressive re-creation, nearly 70 years after the event, of the dawning of consciousness. Later chapters, however, become more generalized and distanced – the chapter on South Africa, for instance, deals extensively with public figures and issues – and a somewhat self-indulgent, self-congratulatory facetiousness takes the place of the directness and honesty with which he confronted, say, his intense sufferings at the hands of a sadistic foster mother. This shift of focus corresponds to a gradually emerging central purpose implicit in the work. Taken as a whole (for, though strictly speaking a fragment, it appears to be substantially complete), Something of Myself is less a record of personal experiences than an account of Kipling’s professional life as a writer – and, more than this, an attempt to discern not only an underlying pattern in his long and productive career, but also the workings of a force outside himself in generating and shaping his writings. There are frequent references to his “Daemon”, by which he sometimes seems to mean little more than the creative unconscious but at other times has in mind a kind of literary guardian angel: “My Daemon was with me in the Jungle Books, Kim, and both Puck books, and good care I took to walk delicately, lest he should withdraw.” Elsewhere, Kipling seems to suggest that his whole career has been determined by some overmastering fate, making him the instrument of a higher power, as when he addresses the reader directly: “You see how patiently the cards were stacked and dealt into my hand?” At such points it seems that this retrospective narrative of an exceptionally long literary career constitutes less a personal case-history than a tribute to the unseen forces shaping human lives, and in particular lives devoted to creative endeavour. In the light of this interpretation, the various phases of the author’s life identified by the structure of this autobiography can be seen to fall into place as further evidence of an underlying pattern. His arduous years (the third chapter is titled “Seven Years’ Hard”) of journalistic hack-work on Indian newspapers are interpreted as constituting an indispensable, though largely unconscious, preparation for his later life as professional author. Similarly, it is suggested that various chance meetings and conversations played a part in some master plan of obscure (but presumably supernatural) origin. The overall effect of the autobiography, therefore, is less to narrate and interpret personal experience than to trace a meaningful pattern in his professional life. Norman Page Biography Born in Bombay, India, 30 December 1865. His father held a post in architectural sculpture at the Bombay School of Art; his mother was

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the sister-in-law of the artist Edward Burne-Jones. Sent home to England, 1871. Educated in Southsea, Hampshire, while living in the home of a retired sea captain, 1871–77: this unhappy experience was alleviated by Christmas holidays spent with the Burne-Jones family in Fulham, London. Taken away from Southsea by his mother on a visit to England in 1877; his father’s promotion to curator of the museum at Lahore, India (1875), enabled him to be educated at the United Services College, Westward Ho, Devon, 1878–82. Visited Paris with his father, 1878. Worked as a journalist in India, 1882–89: assistant editor, Civil and Military Gazette, Lahore, 1882–87; assistant editor and overseas correspondent, The Pioneer, Allahabad, 1887–89. First achieved fame with the satirical verses Departmental Ditties (1886) and with short stories, such as Plain Tales from the Hills (1888). Visited Japan and the US, then returned to England to become a fulltime writer, 1889. Lived in London, 1889–92, visiting India for the last time in 1891. Wrote the popular Barrack-Room Ballads, 1892. Married Caroline Starr Balestier, the sister of his American agent, 1892: two daughters and one son. Lived in Brattleboro, Vermont, for four years after his marriage: wrote The Jungle Books (1894, 1895) and began his best-known novel, Kim (1901). Returned to England, and settled in Rottingdean, Sussex, 1897; moved to Burwash, Sussex, after the death of one of his daughters, 1902. Often travelled abroad, visiting South Africa during the Anglo-Boer War. Wrote further books for children, including Just So Stories (1902) and Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906), and the verse collection The Five Nations (1903). Awarded the Nobel prize for literature, 1907. Son killed in action during World War I, 1915. Rector, University of St Andrews, Fife, 1922–25. Died in London, 18 January 1936.

Selected Writings The City of Dreadful Night and Other Sketches, 1890 Letters of Marque (articles from Pioneer), 1891 Out of India: Things I Saw, and Failed to See, in Certain Days and Nights at Jeypore and Elsewhere, 1895 A Fleet in Being: Notes of Two Trips with the Channel Squadron, 1898 From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel, 2 vols, 1899; as From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, 1900 Letters to the Family: Notes on a Recent Trip to Canada, 1908 Letters of Travel (1892–1913), 1920 Souvenirs of France, 1933 Something of Myself, for My Friends Known and Unknown (autobiography), 1937; with Other Autobiographical Writings, edited by Thomas Pinney, 1990 Letters from Japan, edited by Donald Ritchie and Toshimiri Harashima, 1962 Rudyard Kipling to Rider Haggard: The Record of a Friendship (letters), edited by Morton Cohen, 1965 American Notes: Kipling’s West, edited by Arrell M. Gibson, 1981 O Beloved Kids: Kipling’s Letters to His Children, edited by Elliott L. Gilbert, 1983 Kipling’s India: Uncollected Sketches 1884–1888, edited by Thomas Pinney, 1986 Kipling’s Japan, edited by Hugh Cortazzi and George Webb, 1988 The Letters of Rudyard Kipling, 2 vols, edited by Thomas Pinney, 1990

Further Reading Birkenhead, Lord, Rudyard Kipling, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, and New York: Random House, 1978 Carrington, Charles, Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Work, London: Macmillan, 1955 Orel, Harold (editor), Kipling: Interviews and Recollections, London: Macmillan, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1983 Orel, Harold, A Kipling Chronology, London: Macmillan, and Boston: G.K. Hall, 1990 Page, Norman, A Kipling Companion, London: Macmillan, 1984 Seymour-Smith, Martin, Rudyard Kipling, London: Queen Anne Press, 1989 Wilson, Angus, The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Works, London: Secker and Warburg, 1977; New York: Viking Press, 1978

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Korea In Korea, life writing as we know it today was established as a genre during the Yi dynasty (1392–1910). During this period, there appeared all of the narrative modes familiar to us now, such as biography, autobiography, autobiographical fiction, poetry, memoir, personal essay, journals, and diaries. Since individualist attitudes and behaviour were strictly forbidden, life writing during the Yi dynasty emphasized one’s commitment to the family, the clan, the country, and to the king. Even the most progressive writers abstained from expressing a self separated from the collective good of their community, their revolutionary zeal largely confined within a range permissible in the collectively oriented, ruler-centred Confucian system. Some works exemplifying such a scope are (all titles rendered in English equivalents): General Yi Soon Shin’s “War Diaries” (1592–98), a journal of his patriotism and his resistance against the Japanese invasion; Chung Yak Yong’s “Guilty of Self-Praise” (an early 19th-century autobiography); and “A Father’s Teaching”, a biography of Pak Ji Won written by his son, Pak Jong Chae. Chung proposed a more pragmatic approach to life against the theory-oriented Confucian ideology. Pak indicted the rigid classism of the Yi dynasty and argued for economic reform. While men’s life writing stays within these Confucian boundaries, however, women’s life writing during the Yi dynasty goes beyond them. Although it is restricted, on the narrative surface, to the community-oriented Confucian norms, it reveals beneath an acute longing for a world free from the constraints of the Confucian patriarchy. Because changing the Confucian patriarchy as a social institution was unthinkable for women of the Yi dynasty, they were divorced from proposing or practising any external, socially active alternatives toward another system. But their narratives were full of oblique challenges to the brutal gender constraints, expressing individualized selves struggling to liberate themselves in imaginary constructs. Women’s life writing during the Yi dynasty was a literary attempt to transcend the confines of the Confucian patriarchy, a series of private declarations against their binding circumstances. Among the most renowned of these women are Princess Hong, whose memoir, “In Burning Heart” (1795–1805), describes her experience as a prince’s wife; Huh Nan Sul Hun (1563–89), a lady of high birth who left a number of essays, poems, and journals about her wishes to live without the Confucian female virtues being imposed on her; Hwang Jin Ee (16th century), a brilliant geisha whose poems sing of unfulfilled love and thwarted aspirations; Shin Saim Dang (1512–59), whose poems and essays reveal an individualized self disguised under the appearance of a good Confucian wife and mother; and Mrs Cho, who wrote “Diaries of the Byong Ja War” (written c.1636) during the Chinese invasion of Korea, as a refuge and from a woman’s point of view. Mrs Cho was unusual in that she transcended the gender boundaries of the Yi dynasty and wrote daily observations of a war, a narrative activity normally assigned to a man. But she described the consequences of a war on the civilians rather than the battle scenes at the front, condemning violence through her writing. Diaries has a unique place in the history of Korean life writing because it deals with a male-dominated subject from a woman’s gendered perspective. Since the Confucian patriarchy continued to thrive after the

Yi dynasty, the life writing of modern Korean women shows similar struggles for an individualized self. Much less constrained than the Yi dynasty women, however, modern Korean women are much more explicit in their longings for an autonomous self, and their opposition to Confucian injunctions. They even harbour a social will to change the external environment. Although they continue to write in the tradition established by the Yi dynasty women, constructing imaginary selves and confessing private resistance, they go much further. Some of the women not only describe selves engaged in social action but also become the selves they describe in their life writing. Na Hae Suk obtained a divorce from her husband and shamelessly wrote a memoir about it, “Confessions of a Divorcee” (1931); Kim Il Yop wrote an autobiography about her life as an independent woman, “All My Youth” (1964); and Kim Myong Soon (1896–1971) wrote poems, essays, criticism, and autobiographical fiction. In less than two decades after the Yi dynasty ended, these women broke new ground not only in their narrative constructs but also in their daily lives. They were vindicated by the numerous women who continued to follow in their footsteps up to the end of the century. The plethora of women’s life writing in the 1990s was a natural harvest of the seed sown and perpetuated by their modern precursors. Korean women’s life writing of the 1990s is abundant, bold, and diverse. Examples are Suh Kap Sook’s “I Sometimes Dream of Being a Porn Star” (1999), an autobiography about a woman’s unabashed sexual adventures, in addition to Bae Kum Ja’s “I Disagree” (1995), a woman lawyer’s memoir; Suh Jin Kyu’s “I Want to Be Proof of Hope” (1999), a success tale of a woman who rose from the bottom of a society to the top; Joan Lee’s “Love at Twenty Three, Success at Forty Nine” (1994), an autobiography about her life with a Jesuit priest; Pak Suh Won’s “A Thousand-Year-Old Woman” (1998), an autobiography of a woman who suffered from the consequences of a sexual assault for many years; and Kim Yoon Shim’s autobiographical poems (1999) about her experience as one of the “comfort women” for Japanese soldiers during World War II. While the life writing of modern Korean women testifies to the wish to liberate the self from Confucianism, that of modern Korean men also reveals a common preoccupation – the establishment of a country free from Confucian despotism. Politics is these authors’ narrative obsession, their lives invariably driven by a zeal to establish a government untouched by a vestige of feudalism. In that it emphasizes commitments to one’s community and country, modern Korean men’s life writing is a continuation of Yi dynasty priorities. But because it is defined by a political passion to terminate the monarch-oriented Confucian system and to engraft a republic, it represents a discontinuation of Yi dynasty organizing principles. Modern Korean men’s life writing is dominated by politicians who see themselves as fighters for democratization, produced mainly by men in public service and by men with a strong commitment to the collective well-being of the country. The most prominent are: Yuh Woon Hyung, whose biography describes his activities as a nationalist leader during the decades around 1945, the critical year during which Korea was emancipated from Japanese occupation and was divided into North and South (since Yuh was a socialist assassinated during the right-wing terrorist regime of Syng Man Rhee, information about him is scarce in South Korea; the title

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and author of his biography are not known to the public, although the year of its publication is believed to be some time during the second half of the 20th century); Kim Koo, another nationalist leader whose autobiography, “Paek Bom’s Diaries” (1947), records his activities during the decades around 1945; Kim Sung Chil, a historian whose “In Front of History: Diaries” (written in 1950; published 1992) recounts, from a patriotic citizen’s point of view, the atrocities committed by North Korean soldiers in South Korea during the Korean War; Hong Sae Hwa, whose autobiography, “I Was a Taxi Driver in Paris” (1995), tells of the life of an exile who was accused in 1979 of having plotted a revolt against the South Korean government, and reveals an intense yearning for a democratized motherland; Kim Dae Jung, whose autobiography, “My Life, My Way” (1997), bares the details of his life as a dissident and activist against the late president and military dictator, Pak Chung Hee (whose biography, “Spit on My Grave” (1998), was written by Cho Kap Chae); and Kim Young Sam, the former president whose autobiography is forthcoming at the time of writing. Since many nationalist leaders and intellectuals in South Korea were in alliance with the Left and therefore fled to North Korea after 1945, it is reasonable to speculate that North Korea may have some, or even plenty, of life writing unknown to South Korean readers. But it is also reasonable to guess that since these nationalist leaders and intellectuals were brutally purged by Kim Il Sung after they fled north, their life writing, too, was destroyed without a trace. From outside North Korea, one cannot tell whether or not there has been much life writing produced after 1945, but one can presume that even to the citizens within the country, the genre would be considered foreign except in its function to inculcate socialism founded on idol worship. There is only one book of life writing from contemporary North Korea that is known to the readers outside the country, and that is Hwang Jang Yop’s memoir, “I Saw the Truth of History” (1998). Hwang, a former Secretary of the Labour Party in North Korea, defected to South Korea through China after failing to survive the power struggle within the North Korean government and wrote the memoir about the making of North Korea’s ideological infrastructure. With only this recent book known to the outside, one must look to earlier times to find examples of North-related life writing. Some of these life writings by and about the nationalist leaders and intellectuals include Lee Keuk Ro’s “A Forty-Year Struggle” (first published in the 1940s; re-published in 1999), an autobiography of a linguist re-published after it had been buried for over half a century; “The Times of the Heroes” (1984), a biographical novel about a socialist written by his son, Lee Moon Ryul; and Chung Byong Ho’s biography of the first Korean modern dancer who followed her socialist husband to North Korea, “Choi Seung Hee the Dancer” (1995). Jid Lee Further Reading Since literary studies on the genre have just begun in Korea, there is as yet little criticism on it, and the incipient criticism on the genre has largely been that of women scholars writing about women’s life writing. Ahn, Sook Won, “Looking at History from a Comprehensive Perspective: On Mrs. Cho’s Diaries of the Byong Ja War”, Studies of Women’s Literature, 2 (30 December 1999): 191–228 (Ahn

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examines why Cho’s Diaries were not published for 350 years. She argues that, as a woman’s observations on a war, Diaries were not seen as a noteworthy record of the scenes of history.) Choi, Hae Shil, What New Women Must Have Dreamed Of, Seoul, Korea: Tree of Thoughts, 2000 (Choi writes about the life writings of the “New Women” such as Nae Hae Suk, Kim Myong Soon, and Kim Il Yop, and about how these women were vilified by some of the “enlightened” male authors at the beginning of the 20th century) Hoare, J.E., Korea, World Bibliographical Series, vol. 204, Oxford and Santa Barbara, California: ABC-Clio, 1997 (contains section “Biographies and Memoirs”) Lee, Helie, Still Life with Rice: A Young American Woman Discovers the Life and Legacy of Her Korean Grandmother, New York: Scribner, 1996 Lee, Sang Kyong, A Woman Who Wanted to Live as a Human Being: Na Hae Suk, a New Woman Forever, Seoul: Han Kil, 2000 (a critique on Na) Pak, Moo Young, “Woman’s Language, Woman’s Strategies”, Studies of Women’s Literature, 2 (30 December 1999): 15–42 (Pak discusses the autobiographical poems written by women during the Yi dynasty. She illuminates the various ways in which the Yi dynasty women used language as tools for survival.)

Kuo Mo-jo see Guo Moruo

Kuzwayo, Ellen

1914–

South African social worker, reformer, and autobiographer Ellen Kuzwayo’s contribution to life writing took the form of an autobiography aptly entitled Call Me Woman (1985), which combines autobiographical self-portrayal with political commentary, as well as historical and cultural analysis. Written during the politically turbulent 1980s in South Africa, Kuzwayo’s autobiography is a story of personal triumph in her struggles against domestic and socio-political obstacles to assert her identity as a talented black woman with outstanding leadership qualities. However, while telling the story of her eventful life Kuzwayo simultaneously records the struggles of other black women who successfully challenged the value system underpinning various forms of gender oppression and the racist ideology of apartheid. Therefore, in her autobiography she consciously assumes the role of the spokesperson for two sometimes distinct social groups, namely black South Africans in general and South African black women in particular. Thus Kuzwayo’s selfrepresentation in Call Me Woman is largely informed by the ideology of Black Consciousness, of which she was an advocate, and African feminism evident in her portrayal of self-assertive and strong-willed black mothers. Call Me Woman became an international bestseller soon after its publication in 1985 and was subsequently translated into seven European languages. Chiefly because of its personalized historical insights and its decidedly feminist orientation, it succeeded in capturing the attention of a linguistically diverse international readership. In South Africa the book was awarded the CNA Literary award of 1985 in recognition of its literary and historical significance.

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Kuzwayo recounts the story of her upbringing in a lower-middle-class family in the 1920s and 1930s; her education in missionary educational institutions such as Lovedale and Adams College where she qualified as a teacher; her short-lived teaching career; and her involvement in a variety of community projects in Soweto as a social worker and community leader. The book is divided into three fairly distinct parts. The first part, simply entitled “Soweto”, takes the form of a commentary on the political instability and violence that characterized all the urban residential areas (townships) during the 1970s and 1980s. Although Soweto is the name of a particular cluster of black townships near Johannesburg, in Kuzwayo’s life history it also functions as a metaphor for all the materially deprived residential areas set aside for blacks during the apartheid era. In its combination of political commentary and self-definition Kuzwayo’s autobiography could be said to epitomize the common tendencies in the black life writing emanating from South Africa. Black South African autobiographers have always used the form of autobiography not merely as a means of narcissistic self-analysis but as a tool for articulating the common concerns, grievances, and aspirations of the disenfranchised (until the ANC came to government in 1994) and underprivileged black community. In this regard Kuzwayo’s autobiography continues a trend inaugurated by the early black autobiographies such as Peter Abrahams’s Tell Freedom (1954), Es’kia [Ezekiel] Mphahlele’s Down Second Avenue (1959), and Bloke Modisane’s Blame Me on History (1963). As far as South African women’s autobiography is concerned, Kuzwayo’s book falls into the category of the life histories of political activists such as Winnie Mandela’s Part of My Soul (1985), Emma Mashinini’s Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life (1989), Maggie Resha’s My Life in the Struggle (1991), and Frieda Matthews’s Remembrances (1995). Mandela, Matthews, and Resha are all wives of prominent leaders of the African National Congress (ANC). Significantly, the autobiographies of these women have as their central aim the need to demonstrate that although they often had to make sacrifices in support of their husbands who were in the public limelight, they too had their own lives to live and talents and interests to pursue. In contrast, Kuzwayo’s life story, like Mashinini’s, celebrates the achievements of women who, like her, were not married to prominent leaders in resistance politics but who earned the respect and admiration of their people because of their own, often single-handed, efforts. It is perhaps for this reason that Kuzwayo appends a long list of black women medical doctors and lawyers to her autobiography. For Kuzwayo, these women’s singular achievement consisted of transgressing gender boundaries and entering professions traditionally dominated by men. But more than anything else Kuzwayo’s autobiography is a celebration of African motherhood: women such as Charlotte Maxeke, the first black woman graduate in South Africa, Winnie Mandela, the versatile but controversial leader of the ANC’s Women’s League, and a host of other exemplary black women are singled out for praise for their roles as mothers, as well as for being professionals and political activists. Kuzwayo has chosen a humanist branch of feminism to highlight the plight of women in the patriarchal and racist society of South Africa before 1994. To postmodernist feminists such as Carmela J. Garritano and Desiree Lewis, this may seem like a regression to an essentialist portrayal of women, which gives

undue prominence to their status as mothers. On the contrary, a careful reading of Kuzwayo’s autobiography reveals that she strategically aligns the notion of “motherhood” with the central concerns of the feminist struggle against racial and gender oppression. Thengani H. Ngwenya Biography Born Ellen Kate Serasengwe in Thaba ’Nchu, Orange Free State, South Africa, 29 June 1914. Brought up on her grandparents’ farm, Tshiamelo, in Thaba Patchoa, Thaba ’Nchu, by her mother, aunts, and cousins after her parents’ divorce in 1916. Mother remarried, 1921. Moved to Thaba ’Nchu to live with an aunt, 1927. Attended St Paul’s School. Educated at St Francis’s College, a boarding school in Marianhill, Natal, 1930–32. Moved to Durban and trained as a primary school teacher at Adams College, graduating in 1933. Further study at Lovedale College, 1936. Took up first teaching post at Inanda Seminary, Natal; suffered nervous breakdown and returned to live with her aunt and stepfather. Left home in 1938; went to live with her father in Johannesburg and subsequently with another aunt in Heilbron. Married Ernest Moloto, 1941: two sons. Moved to Rustenburg after her marriage. Became ill after a miscarriage. Marriage broke down, 1946 (divorced 1947). Moved to Johannesburg, leaving children behind. Secretary of Youth League of African National Congress (ANC), 1946. Taught at Orlando East, 1947–53. Took part in the film Cry, the Beloved Country, 1949–51. Married Godfrey Kuzwayo, 1950: one son. Went to live in Kliptown. Trained as a social worker at the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work, 1953–55. Met fellow student Winnie Mandela. Social worker in Johannesburg, 1956–62. Elder sons joined her, 1958 and 1964. Worked for the YWCA, 1963: general secretary of the Transvaal section, 1964–76. Husband died, 1965. Her family farm, Tshiamelo, appropriated by the South African government as a white area, 1974. Appointed to post in School of Social Work, University of the Witwatersrand, 1976. Became a member of the Committee of Ten and founder and Board member of the Urban Foundation after Soweto violence. Detained without trial at Johannesburg Fort for five months, 1977–78. Consultant to Zamami Soweto Sisters Council, 1978. Chair of the Maggie Magaba Trust, 1979. Chosen as Woman of the Year by Johannesburg newspaper the Star, 1979. Treasurer of A re Godiseng Chelete Basadi, and received diploma in advanced social work practice, 1980. First president of the Black Consumer Union, 1984. Published the autobiographical work Call Me Woman, 1985, and a collection of stories and fables, Sit Down and Listen, 1990.

Selected Writings Call Me Woman (autobiography), 1985

Further Reading Abrahams, Peter, Tell Freedom, London: Faber, and New York: Knopf, 1954; “complete” edition, London and Boston: Faber, 1981 Daymond, M.J., “Seizing Meaning: Language and Ideology in the Autobiographies of Ellen Kuzwayo and Emma Mashinini”, Journal of Literary Studies, 9/1 (1993): 24–35 Dietche, Julie Phelps, “Voyaging Toward Freedom: New Voices from South Africa”, Research in African Literatures, 26/1 (1995): 61–74 Driver, Dorothy, “M’a-Ngoana O Tsoare Thipa ka Bohaleng – The Child’s Mother Grabs the Sharp End of the Knife: Women as Mothers, Women as Writers” in Rendering Things Visible: Essays on South African Literary Culture, edited by Martin Trump, Johannesburg: Ravan Press, and Athens: Ohio University Press, 1990 Garritano, Carmela J., “At an Intersection of Humanism and Postmodernism: A Feminist Reading of Ellen Kuzwayo’s Call Me Woman”, Research in African Literatures, 28/2 (1997): 57–65 Kuzwayo, Ellen, interview with Cherry Clayton, in Between the Lines: Interviews with Bessie Head, Sheila Roberts, Ellen Kuzwayo, Miriam Tlali, edited by Clayton and Craig Mackenzie, Grahamstown: National English Literary Museum, 1989

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Lewis, Desiree, “Myths of Motherhood and Power: The Construction of ‘Black Woman’ in Literature”, English in Africa, 19/1 (1992): 35–51 Lewis, Desiree, “Gender Myths and Citizenship in Two Autobiographies by South African Women”, Agenda, 40 (1999): 38–44 Mandela, Winnie, Part of My Soul, revised edition, edited by Anne Benjamin and adapted by Mary Benson, Harmondsworth: Penguin, and New York: Viking Press, 1985 Mashinini, Emma, Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life: A South African Autobiography, London: Women’s Press, 1989; New York: Routledge, 1991 Matthews, Frieda Bokue, Remembrances, Bellville: Mayibuye, 1995

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Modisane, Bloke, Blame Me on History, London: Thames and Hudson, 1963; Johannesburg: Donker, 1986; New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990 Mphahlele, Ezekiel, Down Second Avenue, London: Faber, 1959; New York: Anchor, 1971 Nixon, Rob, “Aftermaths: South African Literature Today”, Transition, 6/4 (1996): 64–78 Nuttal, Sarah, “Reading and Recognition in Three South African Women’s Autobiographies”, Current Writing, 8/1 (1996): 1–18 Resha, Maggie, My Life in the Struggle, Johannesburg: Congress of South African Writers, and London: SA Writers, 1991 Ryan, P., “Singing in Prison: Women Writers and the Discourse of Resistance”, Journal of Literary Studies, 9/1 (1993): 57–68

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l Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1495–1584), and Pero Vaz da Caminha (late 15th and early 16th centuries), for example, the “I” that dominates their text is an imperial “I”, which, modelled after that of the famous explorers and religious crusaders of the day, more often than not enabled the chroniclers to conceal the very real fact that in many instances the outcomes of their expeditions were quite different from those that had been anticipated. Although the chronicles written during the period of imperial establishment are quite distinct from one other, they have in common the fact that the self constructed is continually contrasted with that of the Native American “other” with whom the chroniclers came into contact. By contrasting their own “civility” with the “savagery” of the natives, the chroniclers were able to paint a picture of themselves as rational and noble beings whose superiority justified both the seizure of the American lands and the destruction of the communities of those living within them. However, although denied a voice within the texts of the chroniclers, the indigenous peoples of the Americas were never completely silenced. On the contrary, in acts of what the critic Mary Louis Pratt would call auto-ethnographic expression, or “instances in which colonized subjects undertake to represent themselves in ways which engage with the colonizer’s own terms”, many of the indigenous groups took the very written word that they had been forced to learn and used it to write their own accounts of their collective history. Although resulting from years of violently forced conversion, these accounts, for example the Popol Vuh (1554?–58?) of the Highland Maya, the Huarochirí (compiled 1598) of the peoples of the Andean region, and the various codices of the Nahuas of central Mexico served as a form of collective auto-ethnography which ironically enabled the indigenous peoples to preserve their legends, histories, and traditions, and thus maintain their collective sense of self during the many turbulent years to come. Later, ethnic histories written by mestizos (people of both Spanish and indigenous descent), such as Garcilaso de la Vega’s Comentarios reales de los Incas (1609; Royal Commentaries of the Incas), and Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl’s (1578–1650) Historia de la nación chichimeca [written 1608–25?; History of the Chichimec Nation] would further guarantee the preservation of indigenous history and culture. However, unlike the communal ethnic “we” that characterizes the texts of their ancestors, in these mestizo histories it is the individual “I” that dominates the text. A hybrid “I” oscillates between Spanish and indigenous subject positions, as well as between the positions of conqueror and conquered, and retells the history of the author’s people in order to

Latin America: 15th to 18th Centuries As many critics in the field have attested, in the study of Latin American literature, especially as regards texts written between 1500 and 1800, autobiographical writing is a genre that has been virtually ignored (see Molloy). The reason for this lack of attention stems not from a lack of texts definable as autobiographical, but rather from a past unwillingness on the part of critics to read them in this manner. Although generally written in the first person, and characterized by their authors’ ongoing processes of self-construction and presentation, colonial texts have traditionally been read as historical documents rather than examples of life writing. However, motivated by the reconsideration of what constitutes autobiographical writing, and the opening of the genre to a wider variety of forms of life writing, in recent years critics have begun to study the “autobiographic” at work within the colonial text. Because of their efforts we now see that, in most colonial texts, what dominates is the construction and presentation of a questing self. This quest, in the case of the three principal forms of life writing of the early colonial period – the chronicle, the native auto-ethnography, and the spiritual vida (life) – was generally for one of two reasons. The first reason was to seek justification and absolution for actions considered to be treasonous or even heretical in the eyes of the crown and/or the Catholic church. The other was to present the authors and their communities in such a way as to secure both favour and authority from the reigning political and religious leaders and in the process improve their social standing within the recently established New World empires. Although generally thought of strictly in terms of a series of military campaigns, the consolidation of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Americas would have been impossible without the help of the many chroniclers who sent home firsthand testimony of what they witnessed during their travels in the New World. Given the importance of chronicles in the establishment of imperial control over the Americas, for their writers, who for the most part were not members of the upper class, they offered a unique opportunity to gain power and prestige. Postulating themselves as either intrepid conquerors or religious messiahs exploring new territory, winning battles, and saving souls in the name of God and Country, these writers hoped to garner the favour of both the crown and the church. Thus, as we see in the chronicles of Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), Hernán Cortés (1485–1547), Cabeza de Vaca (1490?–1564?), 539

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“correct” the image of them held by the Europeans, and in the process reconfigures the terms of their subjectivity in such a way as to improve their social standing within the Spanish empire. Given that most colonial women were illiterate or, if educated, discouraged from writing, they were for the most part uninvolved with the writing of the chronicles and native histories that so dominated the early colonial period. However, this is not to say that colonial women did not write. On the contrary, as Electra Arenal and Stacey Schlau have so effectively demonstrated, although there is not much evidence of writings by secular women of the period, there are in existence an abundance of texts, many of which have not yet been thoroughly analysed, which were produced by nuns writing within convent walls. Probably the most common type of such text was the vida, a form of spiritual autobiography that has its roots in Augustine’s Confessions, and that by the 15th century had come to be required of practically all Latin American religious women. Although used by the patriachal church authorities to monitor the women of the convent, in the hands of the nuns the vidas were often transformed from an instrument of power into a very important form of resistance. Under the pretence of following orders, colonial religious women such as Madre María Magdalena (1576–1636), María de San José (1656–1719), and Madre María Marcela (b. 1759) (excerpted in Untold Sisters) did much more than just offer their confessions or give evidence of their dedication to the church. They used the vida as a platform for the construction of a self that, because of its intimate connection with both Christ and the Virgin Mary, would legitimize their claims to religious authority and thus enable them to wield power without the threat of persecution. For those religious “rebels”, such as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648?–95), who had dared to intervene in theological matters, Ursula Suarez (1666–1749), who had had the audacity to entertain men from within the walls of the convent, and Catalina de Erauso (b. c.1592), who had for years dressed and lived as a man, accused by the church authority of displaying unconventional, even heretical behaviour, the writing of the vida took on an even greater importance. Serving as a means by which to both prove their humility as well as to justify their “wayward” actions in the unforgiving eyes of the Inquisition, for these women the writing of the vida represented an act of personal redemption and salvation as well as a means by which to legitimate a very public and often quite unconventional way of life. Thus, it is with the utmost of care that these religious colonial women both construct and present themselves within their particular vidas. Because the historical and social circumstances that surround an autobiographer have a tremendous influence over the way in which they construct their discursive “I”, the spiritual vidas of the religious women of New Spain represent an excellent source of historical information regarding the early colonial period in Latin America. However, as with the chronicles and native autoethnographies, given the prominence of the “I” within the text it is essential that we read these works as examples of autobiographical writing. While it is true that many critics in the field have begun to read them in this manner, as regards the study of Latin American life writing of the early colonial period, there remains much work to be done. Christine Cloud

Further Reading Life Writings: Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez de, Naufragios, edited by Trinidad Barrera, Madrid: Alianza, 1985 Camhina, Pero Vaz de, Carta a El Rei D. Manuel [Letter to King D. Manuel], edited by Leonardo Arroyo, Rio: Dominus, 1963 Colón, Cristobal, Cristóbal Colón: Textos y documentos completos: relaciones de viajes, cartas y memoriales, edited by Consuelo Varela, Madrid: Alianza, 1982; revised edition 1992 Cortés, Hernán, Cartas de relación, México: Porrúa, 1960; as Letters from Mexico, translated by A.R. Pagden, New York: Grossman, 1971 Díaz de, Castillo Bernal, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, edited by Miguel León Portilla, Madrid: Historia 16, 1984; translated by J.M. Cohen as The Conquest of New Spain, Baltimore: Penguin, 1963; London: Folio Society, 1974 Erauso, Catalina de, Vida i sucesos de la Monja Alférez: autobiografía atribuida a Doña Catalina de Erauso, edited by Rima de Vallbona, Tempe, Arizona: ASU Center for Latin American Studies, 1992; as Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World, translated by Michèle and Gabriel Stepto, Boston: Beacon Press, 1996 Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, Fernando de, Historia de la nación chichimeca, edited by German Vazquez, Madrid: Historia 16, 1985 Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sigter, The Answer / La Respuesta, edited and translated by Electra Arenal and Amanda Powell, New York: Feminist Press, 1994 Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life, revised edition, edited and translated by Dennis Tedlock, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996 Saloman, Frank and George L. Urioste (editors), The Huarochirí Manuscript: A Testament of Ancient and Colonial Andean Religion, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991 Suarez, Ursula, Relación autobiográfica, edited by Mario Ferreccio Podestá, Santiago: Academia Chilena de la Historia, 1984 Vega, Garcilaso de la, Comentarios reales de los Incas, edited by Nuria Nuiry, Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1973; as Royal Commentaries of the Incas, and Gerneral History of Peru, translated by Harold V. Livermore, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966

Analysis: Altamiranda, Daniel and David William Foster (editors), Writers of the Spanish Colonial Period, New York: Garland, 1997 Arenal, Electra and Stacey Schlau (editors), Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in their Own Works, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989 González Echevarría, Roberto and Enrique Pupo-Walker (editors), The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature, vol. 1, Discovery to Modernism, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996 Jara, René and Nicholas Spadaccini (editors), 1492–1992: Re/ Discovering Colonial Writing, Minneapolis: Prisma Institute, 1989 Lavrin, Asunción, “La vida femenina como experiencia religiosa: biografía y hagiografía en Hispanoamérica colonial”, Colonial Latin American Review, 2/1 (1993): 27–52 Llanos, Bernadita, “Autobiografía y escritura conventual femenina en la colonia”, Letras Femeninas (1994): 23–30 Molloy, Sylvia, At Face Value: Autobiographical Writing in Spanish America, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991 Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London and New York: Routledge, 1992

Latin America since the 18th Century see Brazil; Spanish America entries; Testimony

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Latvia Autobiographical writing has an important place in Latvian literature both in terms of the relative numbers of published autobiographies and in terms of the importance attributed to them. The traditional folk-songs collected by Krisjanis Barons in the 1890s were systematized and arranged so as to reflect the life cycle, and in doing so to instil appropriate sentiments and behaviours in their readers. In an extended, yet important sense, therefore, the folk-songs or dainas are thought of by Latvians as constituting a collective life story or national autobiography. As Andrups has written: “The ‘I’ in the Latvian folk-song embodies the feelings of a whole community; it is a member of a community and therefore gives voice to words that could equally well have been spoken by hundreds of thousands of other members of the community” (Andrups and Kalve). Only those experiences that are common to many came to be recorded and reiterated in folk-songs, those experiences shared by the community and transmitted from one generation to the other. The experience of serfdom, long military service, bereavement, as well as the celebration of physical love and singing are all recorded in these songs. However, life writing in a more conventional sense began to make an appearance at the end of the 19th century. Many of the major literary figures chose to write autobiographies, in particular concentrating on their childhood. Invariably these childhood memories are set in a rural context and are recalled with passionate longing. The playwright and poet Anna Brigadere (1861–1933) published the first volume of her autobiography, Dievs, Daba, Darbs [God, Nature, and Work], in 1926. Although not sentimentalized, the liberating recollection of a rural childhood is in sharp contrast to the constrictions of urban life described in the second volume, Akmen¸u Sprodz÷ [Trapped among Stones], published in 1933. Jƒnis Jaunsudrabin¸sˇ (1877–1962) also chose to focus on his childhood, providing both the text and illustrations, in his autobiography Baltƒ Grƒmata [The White Book], serialized between 1914 and 1921. Although both writers had long since moved to Riga, their preoccupation with, and idealization of, their rural roots and the dissemination of their writing through school textbooks helped to shape a national identity that was proud of its peasant heritage. Jaunsudrabin¸sˇ subsequently rewrote his memories from the perspective of a refugee camp in Germany and this time they appeared under the title Zala Gramata [1950; The Green Book]. The independence period between 1919 and 1939 witnessed a flowering of autobiographical writing, but this came to a halt with the Soviet occupation, when life writing was confined to communist hagiographies. However, among the 200,000 refugees who fled to the West, the need for autobiographical writing that could find links between a lost world and identity and the present assumed a greater urgency. The ruptures of war and migration highlighted the need for personal continuity. The historian Arveds ¤vƒbe’s autobiography (1947), written in exile in Sweden, concentrates on reconstructing a lost world. The publishing house Grƒmatu Draugs brought out a three-volume series on writers, Sejas un Prose [Faces and Prose]. The second volume, entitled Pa¢portr÷ti: autori stƒsta par sevi [1965; Self Portraits: Authors Speak about Themselves] gives brief autobiographical accounts

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of some 124 Latvian writers in exile. The continuity of Latvian identity was an important impetus to the writing of lives in exile. A Woman in Amber is an autobiography by Agate Nesaule, a Latvian-American academic written originally in English and translated into Latvian (1995). It opens in the autumn of 1944 and charts her memories as a six-year-old child fleeing the family’s country vicarage in western Latvia in the face of the advancing Soviet army, their move to refugee camps in Germany, and the eventual transfer of the family to America. A contemporaneous autobiography, Bille (1992), by the acclaimed poet Vizma Bel¢evica describes an impoverished and unloved urban childhood with painful realism. The largest outpouring of autobiographical writing in the post-Soviet period, however, is composed of the numerous anthologies whose editors have invited personal accounts from forest partisans, deportees, and those imprisoned or sentenced to labour camps. One of the first of this rapidly growing genre was Via Dolorosa, edited by the poet Anda Lice and published in 1990. An English translation appeared in 1999 under the title We Sang through Tears: Stories of Survival in Siberia. Other collections have since appeared very much in the spirit of testimonies to the national history of Latvians. There are also a number of book-length individual accounts of deportation and imprisonment. Those available in English include Silva Darrel’s Sparrow in the Snow (1974), Ruta Up¡te’s Dear God, I Wanted to Live (1974), and Hel÷na Celmin¸a’s Women in Soviet Prisons (1986). Vieda Skultans Further Reading Andrups, Jƒnis and Vitauts Kalve, Latvian Literature: Essays, Stockholm: Goppers, 1954 Celmin¸a, Hel÷na, Women in Soviet Prisons, New York: Paragon, 1985 Darrel, Silva, Sparrow in the Snow, London: Souvenir Press, 1974 Ekmanis, Rolfs, Latvian Literature Under the Soviets 1940–1975, Belmont, Massachusetts: Nordland, 1978 L¡ce, Anda, We Sang through Tears: Stories of Survival in Siberia, Riga: Jƒni Roze, 1999 Nesaule, Agate, A Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile, New York: Soho, 1995 Skultans, Vieda, The Testimony of Lives: Narrative and Memory in Post-Soviet Latvia, London and New York: Routledge, 1998 Vik¸is-Freibergs, Vaira, The Linguistics and Poetics of Latvian Folk Songs, Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989 Up¡te, Rutin¸a, Dear God, I Wanted to Live, translated by Rita Liepa, London: Souvenir Press, 1974; New York: Grƒmatu Draugs, 1978 Zeltin¸¢, Teodors (editor), Pa¢portr÷ti: autori stƒsta par sevi, New York: Gramƒtu Draugs, 1965

Laye, Camara see Africa: West and Central (Francophone); Africa: Autobiographical Fiction

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Leduc, Violette

1907–1972

French novelist and autobiographer Violette Leduc became known on the literary scene in 1964 with the publication of La Bâtarde, which was nominated for the prestigious Prix Goncourt. Although this text was her first overtly autobiographical work, relating the first 37 years of her life, Leduc’s entire corpus exhibits an autobiographical dimension. Indeed, all of her early works, including L’Asphyxie (1946; In the Prison of Her Skin), L’Affamée (1948; Ravenous), and Trésors à Prendre (1960; Treasures for the Asking), can be considered semi-autobiographical and confessional in nature, while the heavily censored Ravages (1955; Ravages), with its explicit description of a lesbian love affair, could be classified as fictional autobiography. Many episodes that first appear in fictionalized form are taken up again in the three autobiographical volumes – La Bâtarde (1964), La Folie en tête (1970; Mad in Pursuit), and La Chasse à l’amour [1973; Hunting for Love] – while recurrent themes, characters, and images create multiple echoes among the different texts. Much of Leduc’s writing is shaped by her childhood experiences, which she recounts repeatedly as a way of gaining selfunderstanding and coming to terms with the deep-rooted sense of alienation that stemmed from her illegitimate birth and from being rejected by her mother. L’Asphyxie, written while Leduc was living in Normandy with writer Maurice Sachs, focuses primarily on childhood memories, adolescent sexuality, and the mother–daughter relationship, thus anticipating many of the elements found in the later and more celebrated La Bâtarde. Leduc’s account of the war period, which emphasizes the sense of fulfilment she derived from being able to support herself through black-market activities, reinforces her image of herself as being “outside the law” (Evans). Here, as in the rest of her work, the text remains obsessively centred on Leduc herself and on a series of influential figures, including a number of lesbian and heterosexual lovers and a well-known group of writers and intellectuals, many of them homosexual men who served as father figures or models for her writing. Simone de Beauvoir, in particular, encouraged Leduc’s talents and served as her mentor: idolized by Leduc, de Beauvoir appears in many of her works in the fictional form of “Madame”. Recurrent themes in Leduc’s works centre on her problematic relationship with her mother, the stronger bond forged with her grandmother, and her sexual liaisons with both women and men. Underlying all of these relationships, which generally exhibit a similar pattern of attraction and rejection, is Leduc’s sense of physical ugliness; her negative conception of her appearance occupies an important place in her self-mythologizing strategy. The theme of physical monstrosity is mirrored in that of psychological alienation. The inscription of madness frequently intersects with the textual evocation of loneliness, rejection, and an intense desire for affection. Perceiving herself as unwanted and unloved, Leduc turned to writing as a form of salvation: by recounting her life and giving voice to strong, often violent, emotions, she engaged in an exploration of her identity that made the act of writing itself a major theme of her work. Leduc’s pivotal position in the history of autobiography can be seen in the controversy following the publication of La Bâtarde. Critics, who were sharply polarized, viewed it either as

scandalous, exhibitionist, and immoral, or as an exciting, innovative work. The difficulty of classifying the text is further evident in the range of writers to whom Leduc has been compared – Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the surrealists, Colette, LouisFerdinand Céline, and Jean Genet, among others. Likewise, the variety of critical perspectives (existentialist, psychoanalytical, feminist) from which Leduc’s work has been approached over the years demonstrates the complexity and the modernity of it. In many respects, then, Leduc is a transitional figure, caught, as Isabelle de Courtivron puts it, “between an older generation of French women writers … and a new group of post-1968 feminist writers who set forth revolutionary new female myths”. The modern aspects of Leduc’s work that have attracted the most critical attention in recent years include her use of experimental autobiographical form, her presentation of gender issues, and her portrayal of lesbian relationships. Unlike traditional autobiographies that relate the achievements of illustrious individuals and highlight universal themes and values, Leduc’s is the anti-heroic account of an unrepresentative woman and selfproclaimed outcast – the narrative makes manifest the negative concepts of monstrosity and illegitimacy and focuses on various forms of failure and rejection. The notions of alienation and disorder are further reflected in the fragmented style of the narration, with its non-linear structure and its juxtaposition of factual accounts and hallucinatory images. With her provocative thematization of the woman as autobiographer, Leduc provided a new model of female authorship. Susan Ireland and Patrice J. Proulx Biography Born in Arras, France, 7 April 1907, the illegitimate child of the son of a prosperous family and one of their servants. Disowned by her father and brought up by her grandmother. Became further embittered by her mother’s subsequent marriage and the birth of a legitimate son. Expelled from boarding school for a lesbian relationship. Married briefly. Worked in a variety of poorly paid jobs. Became a close friend of the homosexual writer Maurice Sachs, who encouraged her to write. Worked for a publisher and a film director and wrote articles for women’s magazines. Became involved in black market profiteering during World War II at the instigation of Sachs, who lived next door. Patronized by Simone de Beauvoir, who arranged for her first manuscript to be published in Les Temps Modernes and introduced her to the publishing house Gallimard, which published L’Asphyxie (1946). Spent time in a psychiatric clinic after suffering from hallucinations. Lionized in Paris after the publication of La Bâtarde (1964), her first autobiographical work, which was nominated for the Prix Goncourt. Bought a house in Provence and spent long periods there. Contracted cancer. Died in Faucon, Upper Provence, 15 (some sources give 28) May 1972.

Selected Writings Ravages (fictional autobiography), 1955; as Ravages, translated by Derek Coltman, 1966 La Bâtarde, 1964; as La Bâtarde, translated by Derek Coltman, 1965 La Folie en tête, 1970; as Mad in Pursuit, translated by Derek Coltman, 1971 La Chasse à l’amour, 1973

Further Reading Brée, Germaine, Narcissus Absconditus: The Problematic Art of Autobiography in Contemporary France, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978 Courtivron, Isabelle de, Violette Leduc, Boston: Twayne, 1985 Evans, Martha Noel, “Writing as Difference in Violette Leduc’s Autobiography, La Bâtarde” in The (M)other Tongue: Essays in

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Feminist Psychoanalytic Interpretation, edited by Shirley Nelson Garner, Claire Kahane, and Madelon Sprengnether, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1985 Evans, Martha Noel, “Violette Leduc: The Bastard” in Masks of Tradition: Women and the Politics of Writing in Twentieth-Century France, edited by Evans, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1987 Hall, Colette Trout, “L’Ecriture féminine and the Search for the Mother in the Works of Violette Leduc and Marie Cardinal” in Women in French Literature: A Collection of Essays, edited by Michel Guggenheim, Saratoga, California: ANMA Libri, 1988 Hall, Colette Trout, Violette Leduc: La Mal-aimée, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999 Hughes, Alex, Violette Leduc: Mothers, Lovers, and Language, London: Maney, 1994 Jansiti, Carlo, Violette Leduc, Paris: Grasset, 1999 Marks, Elaine, “Lesbian Intertextuality” in Homosexualities and French Literature: Cultural Contexts, Critical Texts, edited by George Stambolian and Elaine Marks, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1979 Schoenfeld, Jean Snitzer, “La Bâtarde or Why the Writer Writes”, French Forum, 7 (1982): 261–68 Sheringham, Michael, “The Sovereignty of Solitude and the Gift of Writing in Violette Leduc’s La Folie en tête” in Autobiography and the Existential Self: Studies in Modern French Writing, edited by Terry Keefe and Edmund Smyth, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995 Yalom, Marilyn, “They Remember Maman: Attachment and Separation in Leduc, de Beauvoir, Sand, and Cardinal”, Essays in Literature, 8/1 (1981): 73–90

Leiris, Michel

1901–1990

French autobiographer, diarist, ethnographer, and novelist Michel Leiris is increasingly appreciated as an exemplary intellectual in the postmodern field, and no more so than in the genre of autobiography. He demonstrated the same psychological complexity and formal innovation in relation to several distinct intellectual movements (surrealism, existentialism, anti-racism), disciplines (psychoanalysis, ethnography), and genres (diaries, art criticism, poetry, the novel, and most importantly autobiography itself), as he continued to pursue the impossible balance between self-determination and the autonomy of the “other”. In turn his protracted self-analyses provoked a wide range of intellectual responses, from the dynamic and contractual responses of Philippe Lejeune, through the dense structural analysis of Jeffrey Mehlman, or the psychoanalytic reading of Pontalis, to the deconstructionist use of Leiris as an exemplary figure in the margin of Derrida’s Margins of Philosophy (1982). Indeed, although Leiris was never as notorious a figure as André Breton or Georges Bataille or Jean-Paul Sartre, he not only shared their ideas but even predicted and inspired them, arguably producing in the process a more ambitious integration of their partial and partisan positions. There are at least four overlapping, yet contrasting, phases in Leiris’s life writings, running from the end of World War I to the end of World War II, and corresponding roughly to a shift in self-representation from the artistic tenets of surrealism through ethnographic analysis and then existential psychoanalysis, to the beginnings of a structural and linguistic view of subjectivity. Leiris’s first autobiographical portrait in fact can be found in the

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early surrealist novel, Aurora, completed in the 1920s but not published until 1946, since the character Damoclès Siriel, as his surname suggests, plainly represents an anagramatic selfprojection, while several scenes correspond closely to events in Leiris’s own life. In typically contrapuntal fashion, the vertiginous nature of this hallucinatory roman d’amour also acts as the negated approach preconditioning Leiris’s recourse at the beginning of the 1930s to ethnography. Within the specific context of a twoyear expedition across sub-Saharan Africa, Leiris composed a remarkable fieldwork diary, L’Afrique fantôme [1934; Phantom Africa], in which the desire for surrealist possession, now located in a non-European world of dreams, fetishes, and secret languages, alternates with a realist irony and anti-colonialist outrage at the expedition’s very precepts. Surviving the scandal of its original appearance, it has come to be acknowledged as the prototype of postcolonial anthropology. The lessons of this fieldwork notation were then combined with those of the psychoanalysis that the expedition had interrupted, to produce L’Age d’homme (1939; Manhood ), a cathartic autobiographical portrait of Leiris’s painful progress from infancy to the age of 34, which overlays its syntagmatic adherence to the formative years with these paradigmatic explanations of childhood trauma, together with their ideological rejection of surrealist transcendence. This text in turn then gives way to the magnum opus of Leiris’s life writing: the four-volume La Règle du jeu (1948–76; Rules of the Game). Here once again the contrasts are extreme, on both a formal and a philosophical level. Where L’Age d’homme constructs a composite image of the subject from a relatively static and ego-dominated position, La Règle du jeu spans four volumes and 30 years of writing, and as such registers not just the self’s circumstantial formations, but the work’s own formal evolution. The first volume, Biffures (1948; Scratches), thus has eight chapters, each one marking a stage in Leiris’s linguistic education; the second volume, Fourbis (1955; Scraps), has three chapters dealing with the subject’s attempts to engage more with the world; the third volume, Fibrilles [1966; Fibrils], collects four numbered sections under one heading as it seeks to fuse self and articulation into one revolutionary gesture; and the final volume, Frêle bruit [1976; Feeble Sound], survives the crisis point and the failure induced to offer instead a constellation of passages whose structural logic is given over to a marvellous rather than willed confluence of self and world. The philosophical dimension of this evolution is even more fundamental. Where the aim of L’Age d’homme was to demonstrate the results of an essentially cognitive and clinical selfexamination, La Règle du jeu begins with the knowledge that it is a game in search of its own rule, i.e. that it is affectively and sensually engaged in the structuring of self-identity. Where L’Age d’homme thus explained every event in terms of derivation and norm, La Règle du jeu takes derivation as its norm. This radical departure assists in a desacralization of selfhood, a decentring of the confessional and dualist forms traditionally associated with autobiography, and the development of a selfrepresentation that acknowledges the primary place of diversion, differentiality, and unending process. If the ensuing idea – namely that the autobiographical subject is the effect of the textuality of autobiography – is one that each renewal of the genre rediscovers in its own fashion, there are none the less few

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examples that match the exemplary, pyrotechnic, sustained, and morally challenging heights of Leiris’s lifelong project.

Leonora Christina

1621–1698

Danish aristocrat and memoirist

Seán Hand Biography Born in Paris, 20 April 1901. His father was a stockbroker’s agent. Educated at the Lycée Jandon-de-Sally, Paris (bacccalauréat); later claimed to have been expelled on several occasions. Studied literature at the Sorbonne (licence), then chemistry at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques et Religieuses (diploma). Met André Masson, who introduced him to the surrealists, 1924. Married Zette, 1926. Went to Egypt. Worked on the novel Aurora (1939) and wrote poetry (Haut mal, 1943, enlarged 1969), late 1920s. Began his classic work L’Age d’homme (1939; Manhood), c.1930. Participated in the trans-African Dakar–Djibouti expedition under Marcel Griaule, 1931–33. Wrote L’Afrique fantôme. Worked at the Musée de l’Homme, Paris, from 1934. Mobilized and sent to the Sahara, 1939; demobilized in France. Ran a Resistance cell at the Musée de l’Homme and harboured Jews in his apartment. Became friendly with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir: founder-member (with them) and literary editor of the avantgarde journal Les Temps Modernes, 1945. Began ethnographic journeys to Africa, the West Indies, and China, 1947. Published the first volume of La Règle du jeu (Rules of the Game), 1948. Wrote Afrique noire (1967; African Art) with Jacqueline Delange. Attended the congress of intellectuals in Cuba, 1968. Member of the editorial board of L’Ephémère from 1969. Died in Paris, 30 September 1990.

Selected Writings L’Afrique fantôme (diary), 1934; edited by Jean Jamin in Miroir de l’Afrique, 1996 L’Age d’homme, 1939 (also as L’Age d’homme, précédé de De la Littérature considérée comme une tauromachie); translated by Richard Howard as Manhood: A Journey from Childhood into the Fierce Order of Virility, 1963, and Manhood: Preceded by the Autobiographer as Torero, 1968 Aurora: roman (autobiographical fiction), 1946; as Aurora: A Novel, translated by Anna Warby, 1990 André Masson et son univers (biographical study), 1947 La Règle du jeu (autobiography), 4 vols, 1948–76; as Rules of the Game, translated by Lydia Davis, 1991– 1. Biffures, 1948; as Scratches, 1991 2. Fourbis, 1955; as Scraps, 1997 3. Fibrilles, 1966 4. Frêle bruit, 1976 Wilfredo Lam (biographical study), 1970; translated as Wilfredo Lam, 1970 Francis Bacon: face et profil (biographical study), 1974; translated by John Weightman as Francis Bacon: Full Face and Profile, 1983, and Francis Bacon: Full Face and in Profile, 1983 Journal, 1922–1989 (diaries), edited by Jean Jamin, 1992 Journal de Chine (diaries), edited by Jean Jamin, 1994

Further Reading Armel, Aliette, Michel Leiris, Paris: Fayard, 1997 Bréchon, Robert, L’Age d’homme de Michel Leiris, Paris: Hachette, 1973 Chappuis, Pierre, Michel Leiris, Paris: Seghers, 1973 Derrida, Jacques, Margins of Philosophy, translated by Alan Bass, Brighton: Harvester Press, and Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1982 Lejeune, Philippe, Lire Leiris: autobiographie et langage, Paris: Klincksieck, 1975 Mehlman, Jeffrey, A Structural Study of Autobiography: Proust, Leiris, Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1974 Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand, Après Freud, revised edition, Paris: Gallimard, 1971 Sheringham, Michael, French Autobiography: Devices and Desires, Rousseau to Perec, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993

The autobiography of Leonora Christina, Jammers minde (written 1673, 1685; first published in 1869), literally “Recollections of Woe”, is the most famous Danish autobiography. It describes the ordeals of the author who was imprisoned for 22 years (1663–85) under suspicion of high treason. Her autobiographical works remind the reader of Benvenuto Cellini’s Vita (Life), as she mirrors and occasionally surpasses his selfconfidence and belief in the rightness of his actions. Leonora Christina claimed her life to be “an adventure worthy of a novel”. It was her good fortune that she was able to write what amounted to her own “novel”. The daughter of King Christian IV and the noblewoman Kirsten Munk (whose union had never been confirmed by the church), she had married the gifted and ambitious statesman Corfitz Ulfeldt (1606–1664) in 1636 and become the first lady of Denmark during her husband’s de facto one-man government. When her halfbrother ascended the throne as Frederik III, Leonora and her husband lost power. They fled Denmark in 1651 to hatch unsuccessful plots against the king, perhaps in the hope of supplanting him with their eldest son. After supporting the 1658 Swedish invasion of Denmark, and falling out with the Swedes, they fled Denmark again in 1662. Ulfeldt was convicted of high treason in absentia and he died a broken fugitive in 1664. Leonora Christina was captured and imprisoned in 1663 without trial: her 22-year confinement in the Blåtårn “Blue Tower” of Christiansborg Castle is the main subject of her writing. Leonora Christina composed four autobiographical works: Den Franske Levnedsskildring [1673; The French Autobiography] which describes the events leading to exile and arrest; Rejsen til Korsør 1656 [1657?; Voyage to Korsør], the tale of a failed attempt to reconcile her husband with the Danish king; Konfrontationen i Malmø 1659 [after 1685; The Confrontation in Malmø, 1659] where she defends her husband before a High Commission; and the Memoirs (as Jammers minde was the first translated), her most significant work. The latter displays the existential features of much prison writing in describing a life reduced to the bare essentials as the subject struggles to survive against overwhelming odds. The book is also a classic “captivity tale”, and the four autobiographies may be read together as investigations into the possibilities and the limitations of life for a gifted woman in a male world of political machinations. Leonora Christina shows herself to be well read, and draws heavily on French novels, experiencing the world and her life within the imaginative framework of the novel. A skilled writer, she is yet able to break out of the limitations of the novel genre and reinterpret it in a way that suits her purposes. She must also have been a connoisseur of contemporary theatre, as she is able to use stage technique to demonstrate how the people surrounding her prove their worth (or more often their worthlessness) by their own actions. In her autobiographies Leonora Christina successfully transforms the world into a stage, wherein she plays the leading role. She presents her case in a most persuading way, but omits details that may compromise her role as heroine: she describes how she planned the daring but unsuccessful escape from

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Hammerhus in 1660–61, and claims that she called off the attempt herself – to the consternation of the guards, who did not discover the absence of the prisoners until she had alerted them. (By contrast, the commandant of the castle, in his report, claims that his timely intervention alone saved Leonora Christina and her husband Corfitz Ulfeldt from being lynched by outraged citizens, who for years had smarted under the leash of Ulfeldt’s brutal and pro-Swedish brother Ebbe Ulfeldt.) She also omits the accusations of her guard that she had tried to set fire to her rooms, hoping to ignite the powder magazines of the castle as her farewell to it. Leonora Christina limits her role to that of a dutiful wife and mother as long as her husband is in health and power, vaguely hinting that she warned Corfitz Ulfeldt not to trust the false promises of their enemies, but telling nothing about their own plans. When her husband’s health declines she assumes the active role of his defender. In “Voyage to Korsør” and “The French Autobiography” she describes the defeat of her adversaries and their schemes through her sharp wits and her equally accurate pistols (not to mention a hairpin). When she gives up her voyage to Korsør and returns to sanctuary abroad, the secretary of the royal prefect arrives with armed retainers and tries to talk her into surrender. Leonora Christina mockingly describes the terror of her own servants, and describes how the secretary loses his courage and backs off when she hints that she intends to blow out his brains. At Hammerhus she is threatened by the brutal commander Fuchs, who draws his rapier to issue a mock challenge: she draws her long hairpin and offers to meet the challenge. “The French Autobiography” is enlivened by comedy, as Leonora Christina recounts how she once had to disguise herself as a youth and attracted the passions of a most persistent young wench. In “The Confrontation in Malmø” Leonora Christina plays the part of a shrewd lawyer, who triumphs over her adversaries by virtue of her sharp intellect, as she defends her ailing husband from testimonies that implicate him in a Danish coup to recover Malmø. Leonora Christina skilfully evades the traps set by the examining magistrates, even repudiating their claims that her husband is a subject of the king of Sweden, and reduces the damaging testimonies to absurdity. Arrested in Blåtårn, and abandoning any hope of victory, Leonora Christina retires to bed to die. But there is to be no tragic novelesque ending. The pastor refuses to listen to her litany of forgiveness towards her enemies, instead gruffly asking her to lighten her own conscience by divulging the plots of her husband. And she doesn’t die, as her hunger raises her will to live on. Disappointed, she scolds God for refusing her the death of a heroine, but in her sleep a voice tells her that the sufferings are only a means to enable her to prove the sincerity of her Christian belief. This experience is not one of religious conversion, so typical of many captivity tales, wherein the prisoner bows to his or her fate as a just punishment. This is particularly evident if Leonora Christina’s narrative is compared to the well-known American tale of Puritan housewife Mary Rowlandson, who was carried off by local Native American tribes. Rowlandson interprets her tribulations among the “Savages” as a just punishment for her failings, in particular her previous failings to appreciate the benevolence of God. Leonora Christina, on the other hand, never even questions whether she might be guilty of any lapse,

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instead reminding God that she has fulfilled all His demands to the letter. Leonora Christina’s approach is more in line with the work of the 20th-century African American leader Malcolm X, who interprets his ordeals in prison as the necessary means from Allah to awaken him to new self-awareness and pride as the champion of the oppressed. Leonora Christina thus turns her experience of captivity into a game between her and the Almighty, and reduces her enemies to unwitting tools which the Almighty never hesitates to discard when their usefulness comes to an end. Never compromising her description with any drop of charity, she informs the readers how her enemies die in painful and humiliating circumstances, often blaspheming wildly as they fall into the hands of God. Leonora Christina confronts their lack of faith with the serenity and calm of her own faith. The physical boundaries of confinement are another notable feature of Leonora Christina’s narrative. The description of the prison cell is particularly grim: at first she mistakes the floor for earth, but when her maidservant scrubs it, she discovers it to be a deep layer of dried human faeces, and the stench almost suffocates her. She describes how she is deprived of any personal items, but skilfully compensates by making tools for her convenience and entertainment from discarded objects, such as a broken needle to cut her nails and equipment for sewing, weaving, and writing. She relates how her personal space is violated when she is subjected to a bodily search that degenerates into looting at the hands of the female wardens. And she also hints that she is threatened with violence, apparently at the urgings of the queen. Leonora Christina brightens the sombre mood of her ordeal with burlesque episodes, in which her enemies often expose themselves as simpletons. However, even at moments of mirth the reader is not allowed to forget that the wardens remain potentially dangerous. The warden Johan Waltpürger, for example, tries to cheer up his noble prisoner with bawdy stories and ribald ballads; but one evening he changes his tune and sits outside her cell reading prayers for condemned prisoners in a loud voice, taking special delight in a prayer for the salvation of those to be burned alive. Yet he is described as an almost likeable man. Once Leonora Christina silences his babbling with an oath, “Dieu vous punisse” (May God punish you); he misunderstands the message, exclaims “Sie wollen pissen” ( Oh, you want to piss), and calls for a chamberpot. The description of the brutal and scheming prisoner Christian, who advances to become an unofficial guard over his fellow prisoners, and who unsuccessfully tries to blackmail Leonora Christina to get wine and supplies, is a masterpiece. She also gives a vivid portrayal of the women who are ordered to become her maidservants and virtual fellow prisoners. Confronted with the lowest order of society, Leonora Christina is able to cross social barriers with these women and to understand, if not condone, their actions when they tell the stories of their lives and even of their distressing habit of doing away with “unnecessary children” or occasionally a husband. Leonora Christina’s influence on the literature of her own age was somewhat limited, as her autobiographies remained hidden in the library of her descendants until 1868. However, at their rediscovery they became national treasures. Artists and writers offered their interpretations of the author and her era, and she came to be viewed as a paragon of patience and endurance,

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ironically a national heroine for the country that she had almost destroyed. Jens Kristian L. Boll Biography Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, 8 July 1621. Her father was King Christian IV of Denmark, her mother a Danish noblewoman, Kirsten Munk; it is uncertain whether they married (Leonora Christina held the rank of countess from her birth). Lived with her maternal grandmother on the island of Fyn until the age of six. Spent a year in Friesland. Moved to Copenhagen, where she was brought up and educated at the royal palace, 1629(?); showed unusual literary and artistic talent. Parents separated, 1630. Married Corfitz Ulfeldt, 1636 (had been engaged to him since the age of nine): two sons. Husband appointed privy councillor and governor of Copenhagen (1637) after their marriage. Became first lady when husband was made royal seneschal, Denmark’s highest official, 1643. Travelled abroad, visiting the French court, 1647. Incurred hatred of the new queen, Sophia Amalia, for her support of Ulfeldt after he lost power when her half-brother, Frederik III, acceded to the throne in 1648. Fled to Sweden with her husband and children to hatch unsuccessful plots against the king. With Ulfeldt, who acquired an influential position at the Swedish court, supported the king of Sweden in his invasion of Denmark, 1658. Forced to return to Denmark after her husband was sentenced to death because of suspected treachery against Sweden, 1660. Imprisoned in Hammerhus, on the island of Bornholm. Subsequently released and forced to relinquish property rights. Left Denmark again with her family after accusations of conspiracy, 1662. Captured by Danish forces in Dover, England, after her husband was convicted of high treason while in exile in The Netherlands and his effigy executed by proxy in Denmark, 1663. Imprisoned in the Blåtårn (“Blue Tower”) in Copenhagen for the next 22 years. Husband died, 1664. Released by Christian V after the death of his mother, Queen Sophia Amalia, and settled in Maribo Cloister with a financial allowance, 1685. Spent her last years completing her memoirs. Sent the manuscript to her son in Vienna for publication, but it remained in the family library until it was discovered in 1868 (its publication made Leonora Christina a national heroine). Died in Maribo, Denmark, 16 March 1698.

Selected Writings Leonora Christinas franske levnedsskildring, 1673; as Franske levnedsskildring 1673, edited by C.O. Bøggild-Andersen, 1958 Leonora Christina Ulfeldt’s Jammers-minde, edited by S. Birket Smith, 1869; facsimile edition as Den fangne grevinde Leonora Christinas Jammers minde, edited by O. Andrup, 1931; edited by Vagn Lundsgaard Simonsen, 1964; edited by Poul Lindegård Hjorth and Marita Akhøj Nielsen, 1998; as Memoirs of Leonora Christina, Daughter of Christian IV of Denmark, Written during Her Imprisonment in the Blue Tower at Copenhagen, 1663–1685, translated by F.E. Bunnett, 1872; as Memoirs of Leonora Christina …, translated by Bunnett, 1872 Danske levnedsboger: Leonora Christina, Johannes Ewald, H.C. Andersen, edited by Verner Seemann, 1930 Jammers minde, og andre selvbiografiske skildringer, edited by Johs. Brøndum-Nielsen and C.O. Bøggild-Andersen, 1949, revised 1960 Hoeltinners Pryd, edited by Christopher Maaløe, 1977

Further Reading Birket-Smith, S., Leonora Christina Grevinde Ulfedts historie [The Story of Leonora Christina, Duchess of Ulfeldt], 2 vols, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1879–81 Fibiger, Johannes, Litteraturens veje [Paths of Literature], Copenhagen: GAD, 1996 Heiberg, Steffen, Enhjørningen Corfitz Ulfeldt [Corfitz Ulfeldt the Unicorn], Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1993 (a startling investigation into the schemes of Corfitz Ulfeldt and Leonora Christina; the author describes Ulfeldt as “a deadly combination of intelligence and madness”) Mai, Anne-Marie (editor), Leonora Christina: historien om en heltinde [Leonora Christina: The Story of a Heroine] Aarhus: Arkona, 1983 Storstein, Eira and Peer E. Sørensen, Den barokke tekst [The Text in the Era of Baroque], Viborg: Dansklaererforeningen, 1999

Leopardi, Giacomo

1798–1837

Italian autobiographical poet and essayist On the basis of a collection of only 41 poems, the Canti (1831; Poems), Giacomo Leopardi is regarded as the foremost Italian Romantic poet. As an adolescent, he devoted himself so obsessively to the study of ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Latin literature in his aristocratic father’s private library at Recanati, in central Italy, that he developed a spinal deformity and a nervous disorder that were to impair his personal life and contribute to his early death. While the cosmic pessimism that characterizes not only his poetry but also his prose works doubtless derives in part from these circumstances, it also has a quite scholarly, philosophical dimension. Leopardi had no need to write a conventional autobiography in prose, since all of his work reflects and refracts his intense imaginative and emotional life. In this sense, he is comparable to Wordsworth as a supreme exemplar of verse autobiography, while the philosophical nature of his poetry has also been compared to that of Coleridge. A short poem entitled “L’infinito” (1819; “The Infinite”) illustrates the escapist move from observation of a natural scene to dreamy reflection that typifies his early poetry: Dear to me ever was this lonely hill, And, round about, the clustering trees that shut So much of the horizon from my view. But as I sit and gaze, within my thought I feign, beyond them, boundless distances, Silences such as man has never known, And profound quietness, wherein my heart Is lost in awe. Several poems are addressed to a woman, but she is either an ideal, seen in dream or vision, as in “Alla sua donna” (1823; “To His Lady”), or a figure nostalgically remembered and now dead, as in “A Silvia” (1828; “To Silvia”). One of Leopardi’s most intensely emotional poems is “A se stesso” (1833; “To Himself”), an expression of bitterness at the discovery that a woman with whom he had fallen in love did not return his affection. In other poems, such as “Il passero solitario” (1829; “The Solitary Thrush”) and “Il sabato del villaggio” (1829; “The Village Saturday Evening”), he projects his increasingly pessimistic outlook on to the natural and social world around him. In the last of these, a girl comes home from the fields with flowers she plans to wear the following day, and a labourer returns from the fields whistling, in anticipation of a day of leisure. But the following day will bring only boredom, and thoughts of another week of hard work to come. One of his last poems, “La ginestra” (1836; “The Broom Plant”), embodies his final vision of humans clinging to life and its illusions, as the broom plants cling to the slope of Mount Vesuvius, unaware of the ease with which the forces of indifferent nature will engulf them. The prose work for which Leopardi is best known is his Operette morali (1827; Moral Tales), a series of essays, many in dialogue form, which elaborate vividly his ironic reflections on the absurdity of human existence. The imaginary dialogue, which probably reflects most closely a debate that Leopardi

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must actually have had with himself, is that between the ancient Roman philosopher Plotinus and his pupil Porphyry, concerning suicide as a means of escaping the misery of human existence. Leopardi appears to side with Plotinus, who condemns those who commit suicide for inflicting unhappiness on their loved ones. In most of the Operette, he tends to translate his personal experience into general, more or less theorized assertions. The prose works of Leopardi in which he most explicitly records the detail of his intellectual and emotional development are his Zibaldone [1898–1900; Miscellany] and his letters, neither of which was published in his lifetime. The Zibaldone is a collection of 4500 manuscript pages of notes, written over the period from 1817 to 1832, in which Leopardi recorded, in an unsystematic manner, his observations on literature and aesthetics, and on philological, philosophical, and historical questions. In these notes may be found the seeds from which much of his poetry and reflective prose grew. The notes, preserved in manuscript in the principal Naples library, and published to mark the centenary of his birth, are a precious resource for Leopardi scholars. The 900 letters written by the poet that are extant add up to a rather full and detailed narrative which alludes to most of the significant, and generally painful, episodes of his life. To the reader whose acquaintance with Romanticism is primarily through poets in English, the encounter with Leopardi may be rather refreshing, despite his pessimism. While his work has the emotional intensity of Wordsworth and Keats, this is combined with a classical spareness that is characteristic of Italian Romanticism.

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Zibaldone di pensieri stabilita sugli indici leopardiani, edited by Fabiana Cacciapuoto, 1997– Epistolario, edited by F. Moroncini and others, 7 vols, 1934–41 Lettere, 1949 Selected Prose and Poetry, edited and translated by Iris Origo and John Heath-Stubbs, 1966 Lettere, edited by Sergio Solmi and Raffaella Solmi, 2 vols, 1977 Storia di un’anima: scelta dall’Epistolario, edited by Ugo Dotti, 1982 La vita e le lettere, edited by Nico Naldini, 1983 Lettere agli amici di Toscana, edited by William Spaggiari, 1990 Lettere, edited by Giorgio Ficara, 1993 Scritti e frammenti autobiografici, edited by Franco D’Intino, 1995 Carissimo Signor Padre: lettere a Monaldo, edited by Matteo Palumbo and Franco Foschi, 1997 Diario del primo amore, edited by Matteo Palumbo, 1997 Lettere al fratello Carlo, edited by Renzo Bragantini and Franco Foschi, 1997 Paolina mia: lettere alla sorella, edited by Mariella Muscariello and Franco Foschi, 1997 Signore ed amico amatissimo: lettere all’editore Stella, edited by Francesco Paolo Botti and Franco Foschi, 1997 The Letters of Giacomo Leopardi, 1817–1837, edited and translated by Prue Shaw, 1998

Further Reading Barricelli, Jean Pierre, Giacomo Leopardi, Boston: Twayne, 1986 Bini, Daniela, A Fragrance from the Desert: Poetry and Philosophy in Giacomo Leopardi, Saratoga: ANMA Libri, 1983 Carsaniga, Giovanni, Giacomo Leopardi: The Unheeded Voice, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1977 Origo, Iris, Leopardi: A Study in Solitude, revised and enlarged edition, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953 Perella, Nicolas J., Night and the Sublime in Giacomo Leopardi, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970 Whitfield, J.H., Giacomo Leopardi, Oxford: Blackwell, 1954

Michael Hanne Biography Born in Recanati, Marche, central Italy (then part of the Papal States), 29 June 1798, into an impoverished aristocratic family. Suffered from chronic ailments from early childhood, and was physically deformed. Educated privately by tutors and became conversant with classical and modern languages. First became known through his patriotic poem, All’Italia (1818). Lived in Rome, 1822–23, Milan, 1825, Bologna, 1825–26, Florence, 1826, 1830–33, and Naples, 1833–36. Wrote for Fortunato Stella publishers, Milan, 1825–28. His works include lyrics, collected in I canti (1831; The Poems), dialogues and essays in Operette morali (1827) and Pensieri (1898–1900; Thoughts), and letters. Died in Naples, 14 June 1837.

Selected Writings Operette morali, 1827, revised 1836; edited by Cesare Galimberti, 1978; as Essays and Dialogues, translated by Charles Edwardes, 1882; as Essays, Dialogues and Thoughts, translated by Patrick Maxwell, 1893, and James Thomson, 1905; as Operette Morali, Essays and Dialogues, edited and translated by Giovanni Cecchetti, 1982; as Moral Tales, translated by Patrick Creagh, 1983 I canti, 1831, revised 1835; edited by I. Sanesi, 1943, Francesco Flora, 1949, Mario Fubini, 1970, Ugo Dotti, 1993, and Franco Gavazzeni and Maria Maddalena Lombardi, 1998; as Canti, translated by J.H. Whitfield, 1962; selection as The Canti, with a Selection of His Prose, translated by J.G. Nichols, 1994; selection as Canti, edited by Franco Fortini, translated by Paul Lawton, 1996 Pensieri di varia filosofia e di bella letteratura [Lo zibaldone], 7 vols, 1898–1900; edited by Anna Maria Moroni, 2 vols, 1972; as Zibaldone di pensieri, edited by Emilio Peruzzi, 10 vols, 1990–94; by Giuseppe Pacella, 3 vols, 1991; as Zibaldone, edited by Rolando Damiani, 3 vols, 1997; as Pensieri, edited by Matteo Durante, 1998; edited and translated by W.S. Di Piero (bilingual edition), 1981; selections as: Tutto è nulla: antologia dello Zibaldone di pensieri, edited by Mario Andrea Rigoni, 1997; Edizione tematica dello

Lesbian and Gay Life Writing The distinctive social stigmatization experienced by those who desire others of their own sex has led to a characteristic genre of life writing: the “coming out” story. Its essential plot is selfacceptance through public declaration of one’s sexuality. In Ken Plummer’s words: … [it] tells initially of a frustrated, thwarted and stigmatized desire for someone of one’s own sex – of a love that dares not speak its name; it stumbles around childhood longings and youthful secrets; it interrogates itself, seeking “causes” and “histories” that might bring “motives” and “memories” into focus; it finds a crisis, a turning point, an epiphany; and then it enters a new world – a new identity, born again, metamorphosis, coming out. It is a story that has been told in fiction, in film, in research, and of course in the daily lives of many. A tale “told by a few at the start of the century and by millions at its end”, the coming out story is associated with the unprecedented rise in visibility and cultural organization of lesbians and gays since the late 1960s. Although this rise can be found in urban centres worldwide, it is by far the most developed in North America, where a mass-supported gay liberation movement has proclaimed coming out as a crucial political strategy. The symbolically defining political moment of coming

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out was the two-day battle known as Stonewall between gays and police outside a New York gay bar in 1969. Feminism’s explicit focus on the politics of sexuality since the late 1960s has also had a definitive impact on lesbian life writing as an act of women’s solidarity. Personal narratives of self-acceptance are closely linked to, and in many ways precipitators of, political claims for equal rights and the right to be different. This political and personal unification in the coming out story can be traced in the development of its writing and publication. Early life writings, often disguised as fiction or by pseudonyms, were marked by the isolation of the narrator, where coming out did not lead to social acceptance. Redemption through confession was its double-edged term. John Addington Symonds’s Memoirs (written 1889–90; published posthumously in 1984), Oscar Wilde’s open letter to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas in De Profundis (published posthumously in 1905), Claude Hartland’s The Story of a Life (1901), Radclyffe Hall’s autofiction, The Well of Loneliness (1928), and Donald Webster Cory’s The Homosexual in America (1951) were high-profile examples of this model, although there were flamboyantly confident exceptions such as the French novelist André Gide’s tell-all autobiography Si le grain ne meurt (1920–21; If It Die …) and Gertrude Stein’s Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), in which she outrageously aggrandizes her life through the purportedly adoring eyes of her lover. These stories were seized upon as role models by isolated gay readers, paradoxically exemplary even when tragic. But since the 1970s a plethora of explicitly autobiographical texts have charted a much less qualified overcoming of adversity, in which the discovery of a community is itself a typical feature, often in tandem with a romantic ending in the arms of a lover. Significantly, these have often been published in the form of collections of testimonies. Paradigmatic anthologies such as The Coming Out Stories (1980), edited by Julia Penelope Stanley and Susan J. Wolfe, and Walking After Midnight: Gay Men’s Life Stories (1989), solicited by the Hall-Carpenter Archives and the London Gay Men’s Oral History group, have been followed by more specialized collections from such groups as American Jewish or Chinese writers, nuns, older people, or parents of gays and lesbians describing their own coming out. Especially important individual accounts (much more diverse than the basic coming out plot, and including essays, diaries, and letters) have come from James Baldwin, Christopher Isherwood, Adrienne Rich, Edmund White, Audre Lorde, Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, Joan Nestle, Samuel Delany, Martin Duberman, Jeanette Winterson, Margeurite Yourcenar, May Sarton, Leslie Feinberg, and Eddie Limonov. The Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima’s Kamen no kokuhaku (1949; Confessions of a Mask), Reinaldo Arenas’s account of gay life in Castro’s Cuba, Antes que anochezca (1992; Before Night Falls: A Memoir), and Anchee Min’s passionate coming-of-age story in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Red Azalea: Life and Love in China (1993), are important autobiographies of gay experience in nonWestern contexts. In addition, private life writings that record gay desire are being rediscovered, archived, and published, such as the rakish diaries (edited by Helena Whitbread, 1988 and 1992, and Jill Liddington, 1998) of Anne Lister, an English woman of the gentry class writing in the early 19th century and the extraordinary love letters reproduced in Aimee & Jaguar: eines Liebesgeschichte, Berlin 1943 (edited by Erica Fischer,

1994; Aimee & Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943) between the erstwhile Nazi Aimee and her Jewish lover in hiding, Jaguar. Yet, as critics such as Diana Fuss have remarked, the coming out story is ambiguous as a narrative of conversion. On the one hand it charts transformation, the rejection of an old life for a new one. On the other, in revealing a hidden aspect of the self, it asserts continuity with the past. Fuss articulates this as a familiar tension between a view of identity as “that which is always there (but has been buried under layers of cultural repression) and that which has never been socially permitted (but remains to be formed, created, or achieved)”. Robert Richmond Ellis argues that while lesbian and gay autobiography is viewed as constructionist to the extent that it seeks to produce a gay identity, its underlying thrust is essentialist, since identity is realized through the actualization of a potential essence. This perhaps explains the pull of many narratives towards a teleological coherence and unity that become easily conventionalized. Paradoxically, in a story of self-assertion against convention, the individual can find himself or herself searching for an inner type. The difficulty of telling a bisexual coming out story may be one symptom of this (see Kalowski). (Interestingly, the growing number of transsexual autobiographies, though quests for gendered rather than sexual self-realization, follow the coming out plot with relative consistency: see Prosser) A parallel tension between essentialism and constructivism defines the larger narrative of lesbian and gay historiography. In the “essentialist” view of gay sexuality, the contemporary flourishing of individual life stories represents the new visibility of those previously forced to disguise themselves, to “pass” as heterosexual, a position not so much defended by academics as by autobiographers themselves. In the “constructivist” view, gay sexuality is historical rather than essential or biological in any pure sense. Michel Foucault’s Histoire de la sexualité (1976–84; History of Sexuality), has been the most famous, if somewhat sweeping, articulation of this view. Foucault contends that the “homosexual” and the “lesbian” as distinct types of personality were “invented” in the 19th century with the development of Western sexology, psychology, and medicine. In this light, lesbian and gay autobiography is not so much a move from silence to speech, as rather just one product of a deeply political proliferation of discourse about sex. These discourses have, since the 18th century, psychologized sexual behaviour so that sex is now seen as the essence of identity. Rather than simply liberating a hidden self, therefore, modern sexual life writing is caught up in an insidious regime of social control and convention, far more subtle than previous forms of social control that merely policed the body. The confessional or even case history structure of much early autobiography of same-desire suggests quite obviously the power relations at work in this sense (see Tambling). But even stories of sexual arrival or recovery can readily be linked to a repressive socio-economic structure in which the mass media, the medical and therapy industry feed the needs of consumer capitalism. The huge market for gay and lesbian life stories in North America can arguably be seen as a reflection not so much of the strength of its liberation movement as of the exceptionally tight relation between sexuality, consumption, and a social structure articulated through individual psychology. Foucault’s vision seems over-negative to such critics as Ken Plummer, who reminds us of the enormous difference between

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the pathologizing and exoticizing “biographical” accounts by professional experts or even literary biographers, and the selfdefining “autobiographical” turn of recent years. Plummer, moreover, argues that we need not renounce a historical perspective in understanding the positive impact of coming out. He posits a culture of storytelling where gay and lesbian coming out narratives are exemplary devices of social cohesion. Oliver Buckton offers a parallel approach in his study of British Victorian same-sex autobiography, in viewing confession less as a straightforward revelation of the self’s secrets – designed to appease an external authority – than as a dialogic narrative strategy that negotiates rather than concedes cultural and personal power. The opening lines of Quentin Crisp’s The Naked Civil Servant (1968) may stand as one of the most explicit, if the most perverse, reclaimings of the terms of sexual pathologization: From the dawn of my history I was so disfigured by the characteristics of a certain kind of homosexual person that, when I grew up, I realized that I could not ignore my predicament. The way in which I chose to deal with it would now be called existentialist. Perhaps Jean-Paul Sartre would be kind enough to say that I exercised the last vestiges of my free will by swimming with the tide – but faster. In the time of which I am writing I was merely thought of as brazening it out. I became not merely a selfconfessed homosexual but a self-evident one. The historicizing of the coming out narrative can thus allow a nuanced reading of the play and performance amid humorous self-hatred such as Crisp’s. This view of the self as constructed, malleable, or even parodic is becoming more emphatic in today’s life writing, but in more positive, if often controversial, terms. As sexually dissident cultures develop, many are now seeking a literature that charts the gay or lesbian life beyond the coming out story, that can allow for more diverse forms of telling as it does more diverse interests. One strand of this is Anglo-American “Queer” writing characterized by the postmodern traits of irony, parody, experimentation with genre, and ludic instability. Writers such as David Wojnarowicz, Terenci Moix, Juan Goytisolo, Kathy Acker, and William Burroughs have written autobiographically in this vein. French life writing provides especially interesting examples of this more aesthetic than moral view of sexuality, in building on a long history of anti-realist sexual representation, from Rimbaud to Jean Genet, Roland Barthes to Violette Leduc and Monique Wittig. However, the difference between Wittig’s visionary lesbian separatism and Barthes’s muted comments on gender signals that there are still many political as well as aesthetic differences between lesbian and gay patterns of self-construction, despite Queer’s stance of coalition across feminist, gay, and transgendered interests. The writing of lesbian and gay biography has also been defined through the increasing sexualization of life writing in general. While the advent of psychoanalysis influenced the exploration of homosexual personality in such biographical milestones as Leon Edel’s Henry James (5 vols, 1953–72) and George Painter’s Proust (2 vols, 1959–65), popular biographies may delight in describing sexual dissidence or scandal of any kind. But Marjorie Garber’s discussion of the contradictory

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meanings of bisexuality in celebrity biographies represents a more postmodern take in asserting the general difficulty of narrating the truth of a “sex life”. Garber sees sexual narration as epitomizing the performative rather than descriptive nature of life writing: “If you could simply and objectively state the truth of a sex life it would cease to be truly sexy.” An alternative but equally cogent critique of biographies that seek to “explain” a person through their sexuality is Janet Montefiore’s article, “Sylvia Townsend Warner: Authority and the Biographer’s ‘Moral Sense’” (1993). Montefiore takes Warner’s outstanding 1967 biography T.H. White as exemplary for refusing to judge, speculate, or simply overemphasize White’s sadomaschochistic homosexuality, concentrating instead on his life’s work as a writer. Warner, herself an eccentric, brilliant lesbian, has received two biographical treatments that are representative of opposing ethical and aesthetic stances in current biography. Claire Harman’s official biography is both scholarly and elegant, and she also offers a treat in her edition of Warner’s diary, yet suggests Warner’s erotic or filial relationships are the motivating force in her life. By contrast, Wendy Mulford’s more contextualized approach to Warner’s sexuality attempts an ethically and historically rounded biography, in which desire can neither provide the key to a life story nor itself be totally explained. The most important recent development in gay male life writing, however, has been provoked by the devastating impact of AIDS since the 1980s, and the writing associated with it is recognized as a genre in its own right. Characterized by a need to come to terms not only with individual death but the death of a community, this writing has been compared to Holocaust testimony and World War I poetry. As autobiography, it takes the emphasis off sexuality, and, concomitantly, adolescent selfdiscovery, concentrating instead on adult themes of death, illness, spirituality, and legacy. As biography it has functioned as both public commemoration and political advocacy. Paul Monette’s prize-winning Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story (1994) is one of the best known, but this writing is particularly characterized by communal and self-circulated forms such as letters, diaries, and private memoirs, along with oral history and interview, photography, film memoir, and, uniquely, memorial quilt-making. Margaretta Jolly See also Gender and Life Writing; Love, Sexuality, and Life Writing; Sexuality and Life Writing

Further Reading Abelove, Henry, Michele Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin (editors), The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, New York and London: Routledge, 1993 Baruth, Philip E., “Consensual Autobiography: Narrating ‘Personal Sexual History’ from Boswell’s London Journal to AIDS Pamphlet Literature” in Getting a Life: Everyday Uses of Autobiography, edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996 Buckton, Oliver S., Secret Selves: Confession and Same-Sex Desire in Victorian Autobiography, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998 D’Emilio, John, “Reading the Silences in a Gay Life: The Case of Bayard Rustin” in The Seductions of Biography, edited by Mary Rhiel and David Suchoff, New York: Routledge, 1996 Ellis, Robert Richmond, The Hispanic Homograph: Gay SelfRepresentation in Contemporary Spanish Autobiography, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997

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Fuss, Diana (editor), Inside / Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, New York: Routledge, 1991 Garber, Marjorie, “Bisexuality and Celebrity” in The Seductions of Biography, edited by Mary Rhiel and David Suchoff, New York: Routledge, 1996 Hallett, Nicky, Lesbian Lives: Identity and Auto/Biography in the Twentieth Century, London: Pluto Press, 1999 Kalowski, Ann, “Returning to the Lesbian Bildungesroman: A Bisexual Reading [of] Nancy Toder’s Choices” in The Bisexual Imaginary: Representation, Identity and Desire, edited by Bi Academic Intervention, London: Cassell, 1997 Kubala, Juliana Marie, “Reconstructing the Subject: Personal Narrative and Political Critique in Lesbian Autobiographical Anthologies” (dissertation), Atlanta, Georgia: Emory University, 1997 Lippard, Chris (editor), By Angels Driven: The Films of Derek Jarman, Trowbridge, Wiltshire: Flicks Books, and Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996 Lister, Anne, Female Fortune: Land, Gender and Authority: The Anne Lister Diaries and Other Writings, 1833–36, London and New York: Rivers Oram Press, 1998 McRuer, Robert, The Queer Renaissance: Contemporary American Literature and the Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities, New York: New York University Press, 1997 Martin, Biddy, “‘Lesbian Identity and Autobiographical Difference(s)” in Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998 Montefiore, Jan, “Sylvia Townsend Warner: Authority and the Biographer’s ‘Moral Sense’” in Imitating Art: Essays in Biography, edited by David Ellis, London: Pluto Press, 1993 Müller, Klause, Aber in meinem Herzen sprach eine Stimone so laut: homosexuelle Autobiographien und medizinische Pathographien in neunzehnten Jahrhundert, Berlin: Rosa Winkel, 1991 Plummer, Ken, Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change, and Social Worlds, London and New York: Routledge, 1995 Pratt, Murray, “From ‘Incident’ to ‘Text’: Homosexuality and Autobiography in Barthes’ Late Writing”, French Forum, 22/2 (1997): 217–33 Prosser, Jay, Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998 Robinson, Paul, Gay Lives: Homosexual Autobiography from John Addington Symonds to Paul Monette, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999 Rowanchild, Anira, “‘My Mind on Paper’: Anne Lister and the Construction of Lesbian Identity” in Representing Lives: Women and Autobiography, edited by Alison Donnell and Pauline Polkey, London: Macmillan, 2000 Spear, Thomas C. (editor), “Queer Autobiographies”, special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 15/1–2 2000) Tambling, Jeremy, Confession: Sexuality, Sin, the Subject, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990 Toorawa, Shawkat M., “Language and Male Homosocial Desire in the Autobiography of ‘Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi”, Edebiyat, new series, 7/2 (1997): 235–49 Watson, Julia, “Unspeakable Differences: The Politics of Gender in Lesbian and Heterosexual Women’s Autobiographies” in Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, edited by Sidonie Smith and Watson, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998 Zimmerman, Bonnie, “The Politics of Transliteration: Lesbian Personal Narratives”, Signs, 9/4 (1984): 663–82

Lessing, Doris

1919–

English novelist, prose writer, and autobiographer Strictly speaking, Doris Lessing became an autobiographer with the publication of the first volume of her autobiography Under My Skin in 1995. This was published to rapturous reviews, and

it was followed by a second volume, Walking in the Shade, in 1997. The first volume begins with Lessing’s birth to an expatriate British family in Persia, now Iran, in 1919. In her autobiography, as in her fiction, Lessing is always aware of socio-historical context, and its profound effects on the shaping of the individual life. And so the fact that she was born in the year “when half of Europe was a graveyard” is important, not just for her memories of childhood but also her sense of her location as an intellectual in late 20th-century Britain. Lessing claims that this first volume, which continues until she leaves Southern Rhodesia for England in 1949, is “written without snags and blocks of conscience”. As a novelist she has experimented with various forms of narration to represent perceptions of everyday life, journeys into different states of consciousness, and the major shifts in ideological and intellectual history in the 20th century. Given this, it is not surprising that she does not trust the truth-telling claims of the autobiographical pact, and follows the lead of Simone de Beauvoir: “about some things I have no intention of telling the truth”. In fact, were it not that a small industry of critics is organized around her writing, and around readings of it that make connections between her fiction and her experience, one suspects that Lessing would not have written a “straight” autobiography at all, for memory is deceptive, and “we make up our pasts”. As it is, Lessing writes in terms of a repertoire of memories: lying memory, real memory, concocted memories, invited memory. Walking in the Shade offers insights into Lessing’s relationship with her parents, in particular her tormented relations with her mother, and this amplifies psychoanalytic readings of her fiction, particularly in terms of Jungian archetypes: “my early childhood made me one of the walking wounded for years”. This volume also offers a memoir of the early years of settlement in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Like Elspeth Huxley in The Flame Trees of Thika (1959), Lessing too can remember the ox-wagon trek into the settler colonies of east Africa. Problems of history haunt the narrator of this autobiography: how to connect with that self in those pre-independence social landscapes of Africa which were irretrievably tainted by colonialism? How does one come to terms with that child, and what remains of the child within, given that it was shaped in a state of racial apartheid, “a slave state”? One of the problems that is negotiated throughout this volume is the relationship between the reader and the autobiographic narrator, and that narrator and the settler child. Walking in the Shade is in another time, another place entirely, although the shape of the memoir as a form of social, cultural, and political history remains strong. This volume is a detailed and compelling presentation of the emergence and demise of the Left as a political force in postwar Britain. As in the first volume Lessing is concerned to capture a state of mind and political commitments that are now a “lost world”, profoundly out of tune with the autobiographical narrator’s present time and ideological commitments. In this way, the autobiography is a critical and yet sympathetic review of “progressive thinking” in the left-wing circles of Britain and Africa, written at the end of “a century of grand revolutionary romanticism”. It is, however, misleading to think of these two volumes of autobiography alone as the extent of Lessing’s autobiographical writing. Rather, these books confirm that much of her fiction has, in one way or another, been profoundly autobiographical,

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and that in fact she prefers the cloaked forms of autobiography she has practised in her fiction. So, for example, Lessing has written about her African years in a variety of autobiographical guises: the essays in In Pursuit of the English (1960) and Going Home (1957), the first four volumes (1952–65) of the Children of Violence pentalogy, The Golden Notebook (1962), the short stories gathered in This Was the Old Chief’s Country (1951), her travel writings, and The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974), which she sees as a kind of “dream autobiography”. Lessing holds on to the different forms of truthfulness enabled by these various genres and styles of autobiographical writing, and refuses to privilege the two volumes of autobiography as more authentic or truthful. Gillian Whitlock Biography Born Doris May Taylor in Kermansha, Persia (now Iran), 22 October 1919. Her father was a British army captain. Moved with her family to England, then to a farm at Banket, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), 1924. Attended a Dominican convent school in Salisbury [Harare], Southern Rhodesia, 1926–34, then Girls’ High School, Salisbury. Left school at 14 against her mother’s wishes. Worked in Salisbury as an au pair and a telephone operator and clerk. Married a civil servant, Frank Charles Wisdom, 1939 (divorced 1943): one son and one daughter. Married Gottfried Anton Nicolai Lessing, 1944 (divorced 1949): one son. Worked as a typist, 1946–48. Journalist, Cape Town Guardian, 1949. Left Southern Rhodesia, 1949, and moved to London. Established her literary reputation with the novel The Grass is Singing (1950). Published Martha Quest, the first volume of her autobiographical sequence, 1952. Secretary, 1950, and member of the editorial board, 1956, New Reasoner (later New Left Review). Left the Communist Party, after becoming a member briefly, 1956. Was declared a “prohibited immigrant” in Rhodesia, 1956. Described her experiences of working-class life in London in In Pursuit of the English (1960). Wrote the novels The Golden Notebook (1962) and Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), studies of mental breakdowns, The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974), The Good Terrorist (1985), and the short-story collection, The Story of a Non-Marrying Man (1972), among many other works.

Selected Writings This Was the Old Chief’s Country (autobiographical fiction), 1951 Children of Violence (autobiographical fiction), vols 1–4, 1952–65 1. Martha Quest, 1952 2. A Proper Marriage, 1954 3. A Ripple from the Storm, 1958 4. Landlocked, 1965 Going Home, 1957, revised 1968 In Pursuit of the English: A Documentary, 1960 The Golden Notebook (autobiographical fiction)¸ 1962 The Memoirs of a Survivor (autobiographical fiction), 1974 A Small Personal Voice: Essays, Reviews, Interviews, edited by Paul Schlueter, 1974 African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe, 1992 Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949, 1995 Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiography, 1949–1962, 1997

Further Reading Bertelsen, Eve (editor), Doris Lessing, Johannesburg and New York: McGraw Hill, 1985 Greene, Gayle, Doris Lessing: The Poetics of Change, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994 Peel, Ellen, “The Self is Always an Other: Going the Long Way Home to Autobiography”, Twentieth Century Literature, 35/1 (1989): 1–16 Sprague, Claire and Virginia Tiger (editors), Critical Essays on Doris Lessing, Boston: G.K. Hall, 1986

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Taylor, Jenny (editor), Notebooks, Memoirs, Archives: Reading and Rereading Doris Lessing, London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982 Whitlock, Gillian, The Intimate Empire: Reading Women’s Autobiography, London: Cassell, 2000 Yelin, Louise, From the Margins of Empire: Christina Stead, Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1998

Letters: General Survey Letters have traditionally been defined in terms of being a substitute for an oral conversation, generally between friends, that has been made impossible because of the distance between the two people taking part in it. Thus René Milleran’s Le Nouveau Secrétaire de la Cour, a manual of letter writing published in France in 1737, states that “Letters were invented so that one can communicate one’s thoughts to people that one cannot converse with; they bring the absent closer, making them, as it were, present to each other. They have very ancient origins.” In other words, absentium amicorum quasi mutuus sermo. Letters differ from conversations, however, in a number of ways. First, a letter is addressed, at least in principle, by one person to one other person; multiple authors or multiple recipients are exceptional. Accordingly, letters have a unity that is lacking from conversations, in which participants freely deploy statements of position, interruptions, responses, intonation, gesture, and mimicry. Second, the very fact that letters are written means that they are texts composed with some degree of care, and capable of being preserved, re-read, and published. They therefore have the status of signed documents to which their authors are committed. Finally, letters are generally dated, and sometimes also contain indications of the places where they were written. Letters undoubtedly came into existence as soon as writing became widely known. The earliest surviving letters date from the Akkadian and Sumerian civilizations established in Mesopotamia in the 3rd and 2nd millennia bce, and were written in cuneiform characters. They are concerned either with commerce or with diplomatic relations. In classical Greece, the teaching of rhetoric included the art of letter writing, but within a theoretical perspective dominated by a concern to classify letters according to their purpose: expressing thanks, congratulating, consoling, excusing, requesting, and so on. It was the Romans who provided the first exemplars of letter writers for Western Europe. Almost 1000 letters from the orator and politician Cicero are known today, among them most notably the letters sent to his family and his friend Atticus. He was followed by the philosopher Seneca (c.4 bce–65 ce), author of the didactic and moralizing Ad Lucilium epistulae morales (Letters to Lucilius), and by Pliny the Younger (c.61 ce–c.112 ce), who published his own letters, in which his concern for style and literary posturing functions to the detriment of spontaneity. During the Middle Ages the practice of letter writing by religious functionaries developed on the basis of those exemplary texts, the epistles of St Paul and certain other New Testament writers. Hence letters took on a symbolic authority. The rules that governed the writing of letters (the ars dictaminis) were influenced by Ciceronian rhetoric, which fixed the divisions of

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the text and helped to shape polite formulas in accordance with positions in society or a hierarchy. In the later medieval period, it became customary for university students to correspond with their parents: as a result, couriers circulated among educational institutions as well as among those of the church. The first of the great letter writers of the Renaissance was Petrarch (1304–74). His letters, which are in Latin, were first printed in Venice in 1492. Although Petrarch was influenced by Ciceronian ideas, his own personal reflections and intimate sensibility form the focus of his letters, and he may therefore be regarded as the father of the modern conception of letters as an “autobiographical” genre of literature. However, the two great theorists of letter writing in the age of humanism were Erasmus (De conscribendis epistolis, 1522) and Justus Lipsius (Epistolica institutio, 1591). According to Erasmus, letters belong to what is an essentially free and varied genre, which it is therefore impossible to define rigorously or to regulate. Nevertheless, they demand from those who write them a mastery of style and an attentive adaptation to the specific conditions in which they are being written. Lipsius separates letters, as a written genre, more sharply from the oral genre of conversation, and sets out the distinctive qualities of letter writing: a simple or familiar style (which he calls sermo humilis), an absence of longueurs, and the capacity to be read with pleasure. The theory of letter writing changed little over the centuries that followed. Instead, it became dogmatic, since it was diffused by way of numerous manuals, handbooks or guides, and anthologies that mingled advice to the less educated with examples drawn from the great letter writers of each period and country, such as Guez de Balzac or Voiture in 17th-century France. After the publication in the 18th century of the letters exchanged between Madame de Sévigné and her daughter, the former in particular came to be regarded throughout Europe as the supreme model of a letter writer. People were expected to make an effort to imitate her naturalness, easy style and wit, varied subject matter, and tone, at once grave and pleasing. As for the structure of letters, the genre is now no longer subject to strict precepts. The “good usage” that governs letter writing varies infinitely, in line with the possible circumstances of the correspondents. The essential requirement is that the addressee, and the relationship that the writer has with him and her, should be the main consideration. This does not merely determine the tone and the subject of a letter, in particular the degree of freedom to write about oneself. It also has an impact on the choice of medium (whether to use headed or decorated letter paper, or a picture postcard, not to mention modern means of written communication, such as fax or e-mail); the arrangement of the text on the paper; the degree of care taken in dating the letter, and adopting a style and a form of handwriting; the forms of address (ranging from “The Minister of …” to “My dear friend …”) and the polite formulas that end the letter; the wording of the address on the envelope; and, finally, the method adopted for sending the letter (whether slow or rapid). The note or billet has now lost its character as a specific, shorter form of letter in which the ceremonial formulas were abridged. It used to be adopted from time to time within a prolific and intimate exchange of letters, whenever the message to be transmitted was simple and of immediate interest. Indeed, such billets were generally entrusted to private intermediaries rather than to the public post.

Whatever the immediate purpose of a letter may be – whether it is to pay a compliment or simply to convey some news – the reading of the message should give the addressee a certain degree of pleasure (with the exception of letters of reproach, complaint, and so on). The addressee in turn will respond by expressing satisfaction and praising the missive that he or she has received. A correspondence – that is, a prolonged exchange of letters between two people who alternate as writers and receivers – is therefore normally a situation full of courtesies. If a letter is to be pleasing, however, it is also necessary to take care over its composition, with specific effects in mind, and to flavour it with various ingredients, such as narratives, descriptions, portraits, witty remarks, and original personal reflections. A certain gaiety of tone, appropriate to the epistolary dialogue, is not incompatible with messages that are pervaded by a pessimistic philosophy. On the other hand, the writing of letters is, in principle, spontaneous and rapid, for letters are expected to be artless expressions of the writer’s personality. Making rough drafts, or copies, is exceptional when it comes to intimate letters, which should accordingly disguise any skill or study, and promote the appearance of being natural. The great letter writers can be recognized by their easy mastery of this double and contradictory requirement for art and nature, labour and negligence, talent and grace. The love letter has a special status within the genre. For obvious reasons, this type of message has existed in every country and in every age. In reality, however, loving feelings can be expressed in writing only through a limited vocabulary, despite the diversity of individual circumstances. Hence, love letters from one century tend to resemble those from any other, however much the lovers may make an effort to affirm the uniqueness of their passion. Such letters cannot therefore be original except in regard to elements that accompany the declaration of love in the strict sense, for example narratives or fragments of self-portrayal. In the 1st century bce, Ovid provided one model in his Epistulae Heroidum (or Heroides), fictional letters in verse written by mythological heroines to those they loved, lyrically deploring their unfaithfulness or their absence. The love letter occupies an important place in fiction, because of the authenticity that it is taken to confer upon a sentimental plot that in fact is wholly invented. The presence of an “I” can be detected at every point in a letter, even where the writer follows the recommendations of guides to “good usage” and takes care to avoid beginning every sentence with “I”. It was said in the classical era that a letter was the “mirror of the soul”. Indeed, letters undeniably reveal the whole personality, from the shape of the letters on the page to the evocations of personal life that they customarily contain. They therefore undoubtedly form a part of “autobiographical” literature, but with a distinctive feature: that the letter writer’s account of his or her life is directed toward one or several addressees, perhaps with the intention of constructing a “selfimage” that will find favour with the reader but does not represent the writer’s authentic nature. Letters are thus documents that sometimes have to be deciphered. Nevertheless, the recent proliferation of edited collections of correspondence shows that, so far as modern criticism is concerned, knowledge of a writer is not complete until his or her output of letters has been taken into account. On the one hand, such letters provide information about writers’ lives and their relations with their con-

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temporaries; on the other hand, they echo writers’ creative work. Letters are distinctive in that they can be considered, depending on the perspective one adopts, either as instruments of communication, with a purely practical value, or as useful documentation for historical or sociological studies, or, finally, as independent fragments in the literary work of a lifetime. Bernard Bray translated by Monique Lamontagne Further Reading Altman, Janet Gurkin, Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1982 Altman, Janet, “The Letter Book as a Literary Institution 1539–1789: Toward a Cultural History of Published Correspondences in France”, Yale French Studies, 71 (1986): 17–62 Besnier, Nicolas, “Literacy and Feelings: The Encoding of Affect in Nukulaelae Letters” in Cross-Cultural Approaches to Literacy, edited by Brian Street, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 Bossis, Mireille (editor), La Lettre à 1a croisée de l’individuel et du social, Paris: Kimé, 1994 Chartier, Roger (editor), La Correspondance: les usages de la lettre au XIXe siècle, Paris: Fayard, 1991; as Correspondence: Models of Letter-Writing from the Middle Age to the Nineteenth Centuries, translated by Christopher Woodall, Cambridge: Polity Press, and Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995 Constable, Giles, Letters and Letter Collections, Turnhout: Brepols, 1976 Ferguson, Frances, “Interpreting the Self through Letters”, Centrum, 1/2 (1981): 107–12 Goldsmith, Elizabeth C. (editor), Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolary Literature, Boston: Northeastern University Press, and London: Pinter, 1989 Goodman, Dena, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1994 Henderson, Judith Rice, “Erasmus on the Art of Letter-Writing”, Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric, edited by James J. Murphy, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983 Jardine, Lisa, Erasmus Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in Print, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993 McKenzie, Alan T. (editor), Sent as a Gift: Eight Correspondences from the Eighteenth Century, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993 Melançon, Benoit (editor), Penser par lettre: actes du colloque d’Azayle-Ferron, Saint Laurent, Quebec: Fides, 1998 “Men / Women of Letters”, special issue of Yale French Studies, 71 (1986) Porter, Charles A., foreword to “Men / Women of Letters”, special issue of Yale French Studies, 71 (1986): 1–16 Redford, Bruce, The Converse of the Pen: Acts of Intimacy in the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986

Levi, Carlo

1902–1975

Italian autobiographer, travel writer, and painter Carlo Levi, who grew up within the anti-fascist circles of Turin and was subsequently elected twice an independent left-wing senator, dramatized in his life writings the problematic situation of being an artist at a time of deep and rapid changes and strong ideological tensions as was the postwar period in Italy. Although he opted for a persona of engaged intellectual, he did so, as

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Gigliola De Donato pointed out, by questioning the model of the Italian naturalist novel (the so-called romanzo verista), to which his neo-realist contemporaries were going back, by updating the content to the present concerns of the changed historical context. Levi did not believe in the rationalist and positivist assumptions behind that model, and preferred instead a type of writing where symbolic and irrationalist nuances are grafted on to an autobiographical narrative self-consciously espousing a progressive agenda. In Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (1945; Christ Stopped at Eboli) Levi reports his forced residence in the villages of “Grassano” and “Gagliano”, based on the actual villages in the southern region of Lucania (Basilicata), which the writer experienced in internal exile from 1935 to 1939. The setting of the book gives the author the chance to mythologize the lives of the dispossessed southern peasants together with their rural archetypes, and to condemn the fascist petite bourgeoisie. As the Marxist critic Alberto Asor Rosa has emphasized, Levi’s populism lies in his indication of the peasants’ world as a model for humankind and as a bearer of positive values. “A bond of love”, as Levi calls it, between the intellectual and the peasants is what makes knowledge of that world possible. Yet, this progressive utopia is questioned by Levi’s intellectual awareness of the peasants’ backwardness. Significantly, the narrative opens by contrasting the world of the writer and that of the peasants. Levi clearly distinguishes himself from the peasant masses as he takes on the role of an observer, an ethnographer who records the habits of a primitive, exotic society, outside history. This leads to an essentialist attitude: the peasants seem to act more as a chorus, a group of people, than as individuals. Not surprisingly, their selfdefinition as non-Christians which to them is synonymous with not being human, is not given by one specific character, but by a generic “they”. The title of the book (“stopped at” meaning “went no further than”) derives from this definition, Eboli being the last village before the Lucania region. The narration of Cristo si è fermato a Eboli is episodic and moves backwards and forwards through flashbacks between Gagliano, where Levi has to move at the beginning of the book, and Grassano, the village where he had been sent at first. The various episodes are interspersed with essayist digressions of historical, political, mythological, or biblical character, all of which highlight the disadvantaged status of the southern peasants from Aeneas up to the present day. These digressions also have the effect of emphasizing Levi’s erudition and intellectualism, thus marking his omnipresence and his egotism, while the peasants seem to live in an undistinguished continuum with nature, animals, and objects, to which they are often compared. With his last books, Le parole sono pietre (1955; Words Are Stones), Il futuro ha un cuore antico [1956; Future Has an Ancient Heart], La doppia notte dei tigli (1959; The Linden Trees), and Tutto il miele è finito [1964; All the Honey is Finished], Levi reported his travels to Sicily, the then USSR, Germany, and Sardinia. These books are still concerned with the encounter between the left-wing intellectual and the masses. In Le parole sono pietre this encounter reaches a climax with Levi’s visit to Francesca, the mother of Salvatore Carnevale, a trade unionist killed by the Mafia. The visit becomes an occasion for a hagiography of Carnevale, which Levi skilfully constructs by alternating the mother’s narration with his own perspective and comments, thus creating an exemplary story in which the death

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of the son becomes a possibility of rebirth and increased awareness for the mother. Levi’s comments do not concern so much Francesca’s reconstruction of her son’s life, but Francesca’s own attitude towards life before and after her son’s death, which opened her eyes and transformed her. The tension between the intellectual and the masses runs throughout Levi’s life writings. The author describes himself as an intellectual at the service of the masses: in Le parole sono pietre, when he leaves the Sicilian village where Salvatore’s mother lives, she asks him “in her assured, imperious way, to write the ‘romance’ of her son’s death”, which is exactly what Levi will do. Yet, the masses too are at the service of the intellectual who appropriates, comments, and uses – at times patronizingly so – their stories for didactic purposes, with a mixture of fascination and detachment. Luca Prono Biography Born in Turin, Italy, 29 November 1902. His father was a merchant. Studied medicine at the University of Turin (MD 1924). Did military service, 1925–26. Gave up medical practice after a short period to be a painter. Held successful solo exhibitions in Turin, Milan, Roma, Genoa, London, and Paris, 1929–34. Lived in Paris, 1928–33. Participated in the expressionist show Six Painters of Turin, 1929, and subsequently at the Venice Biennale (a whole room was allocated to his work in 1954). Returned to Italy, 1933. Became active in political action and journalism. Contributed to Giustizia e Libertà, early 1930s; co-editor of the underground publication Lotta Politica. Arrested and jailed twice for anti-fascist activities, 1934 and 1935. Exiled to remote villages in Basilicata, where he practised medicine among the poor, 1935–36. Freed under a general amnesty, 1936. Later wrote about the experiences in Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (1945; Christ Stopped at Eboli), his most acclaimed work. Resumed political activity and emigrated to France, living in Saint-Nazare and Paris, 1939, then Cannes until 1941. Returned to Italy to work with the Resistance, 1941; in Florence during conflict, 1943–44, and re-arrested. Co-editor, La Nazione del Popolo, the publication of the National Liberation Committee (CTLN), 1944–45; editor of the Action Party’s L’Italia Libera, Rome, 1945–46; frequent contributor to La Stampa, Turin. Visited the United States, 1947. Independent parliamentary senator, on the Communist Party list, 1963–72. Died in Rome, 4 January 1975.

Selected Writings Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (autobiographical prose), 1945; edited by Peter M. Brown, 1965; edited by Italo Calvino and Jean-Paul Sartre, 1990; as Christ Stopped at Eboli, translated by Frances Frenaye, 1947 Le parole sono pietre: tre giornate in Sicilia, 1955; as Words Are Stones: Impressions of Sicily, translated by Angus Davidson, 1958 Il futuro ha un cuore antico: viaggio nell’Unione Sovietica, 1956 La doppia notte dei tigli (travel writings), 1959; translated by Joseph M. Bernstein as The Linden Trees, 1962, and as The Two-Fold Night, 1962 Tutto il miele è finito (travel writings), 1964 E questo il “carcer tetro”? lettere dal carcere 1934–1935, edited by Daniela Ferraro, 1991

Further Reading Asor Rosa, Alberto, Scrittori e popolo: saggio sulla letteratura populista in Italia, Rome: Samona and Savelli, 1965; as Scrittori e popolo: il populismo nella letteratura italiana contemporanea, Turin: Einaudi, 1988 Baldassaro, Lawrence, Carlo Levi, Oxford: Berg, 1998 Bollettino, Vincenzo, “Carlo Levi: The Pursuit of the Essential in Christ Stopped at Eboli”, Fusta, 8/1 (1990) De Donato, Gigliola, Saggio su Carlo Levi, Bari: De Donato, 1974 Falaschi, Giovanni, “Cristo si è fermato a Eboli di Carlo Levi” in Letteratura italiana, le opere, vol. 4, edited by Alberto Asor Rosa, Turin: Einaudi, 1996

Miccinesi, Mario, Invito alla lettura di Carlo Levi, Milano: Mursia, 1973 Moss, Howard, “The Politics of Cristo si è fermato a Eboli”, Association of Teachers of Italian Journal (Spring 1988) Ward, David, Antifascisms: Cultural Politics in Italy, 1943–46: Benedetto Croce and the Liberals, Carlo Levi and the Actionists, Madison, Wisconsin: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996

Levi, Primo

1919–1987

Italian autobiographer, fiction writer, and essayist The Jewish Italian writer and chemist Primo Levi conceived his autobiographical volumes both as a means to free himself from the haunting experience of Auschwitz (where he was deported in 1944) and as a testimony to be communicated to others about that very experience. As several critics have remarked, Levi remained unsure throughout his life about how to interpret the Shoah (Holocaust): was it a tragic yet well-defined and concluded event of contemporary history, or was it the natural result of the “progress” of the contemporary world spelled out by fast technological development and totalitarian regimes? Levi’s narration often alternates the present and the past tenses, thus reproducing this diverging interpretation. The author’s suicide in 1987 seems to point to a final pessimistic choice in favour of the second hypothesis. Just like one of the characters in his short sketches of Jewish life in the lager (concentration camp), Lilit e altri racconti (1981; Lilith and Other Stories), who, after having survived Auschwitz, once in Italy lets himself die, Levi “had seen the world, didn’t like it and felt it was crumbling into ruins; he wasn’t interested in living anymore”. Levi’s first book Se questo è un uomo (If This is a Man, also translated as Survival in Auschwitz) appeared in 1947 from a small publishing house after its rejection by the publisher Einaudi, who accepted it for publication only in 1958. It is this second longer edition that became an international success, and it has never ceased to be reprinted. Se questo è un uomo chronicles the author’s life in Auschwitz, often employing grotesque tones and references to Dante’s Inferno. The title of the book sums up Levi’s main accusation against the Nazis: that they reduced their victims to non-humans. Everything in the concentration camp is an attack on human dignity. Levi and the few others who have understood this dehumanizing logic try to oppose it by obeying the orders but with different values from those of the Nazis: “We must walk erect, without dragging our feet not in homage to Prussian discipline but to remain alive, not to begin to die.” They manage to survive because they do not allow themselves to adapt to the absurd system governing the lager and they are aided in their struggle by the willingness to narrate their experience to others: “The Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; … even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell his story, to bear witness.” Encouraged by the huge success of the Einaudi edition of Se questo è un uomo, Levi wrote La tregua (1963; The Truce, also translated as The Reawakening), which deals with his long journey back to Italy after he was freed from Auschwitz by the Red Army. Because of absurd bureaucratic mistakes, Levi’s journey home through Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, and

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Hungary lasted for nearly a year. He becomes a contemporary picaro whose odyssey throughout Europe as well as the author’s recovery of his human self are representative of the transition that the continent is undergoing. The title points precisely to this transition: “The months just past, although hard, of wandering on the margins of civilization now seemed to us like a truce, a parenthesis of unlimited availability, a providential but unrepeatable gift of fate.” Levi’s later autobiographical volume I sommersi e i salvati (1986; The Drowned and the Saved) goes back to the lager experience at a time when historical revisionism made the author wonder about the difficulty of maintaining a collective memory of the Shoah within a society that is chronologically far removed from it, and yet always on the verge of falling back into it. Levi’s autobiographical writings have usually been well received worldwide and critics have compared them favourably to the writer’s fiction. The only aggressively negative opinion on Levi’s oeuvre has been voiced by Fernanda Eberstadt in the Jewish American journal Commentary (1985). Eberstadt charges Levi, as well as the rest of the Jewish Italian writers of his generation such as Natalia Ginzburg and Giorgio Bassani, with “inauthenticity”: Levi is “a survivor without Jewish … inflections” who has gone too far in stressing “the ‘universal’ aspect of the Holocaust” and “is more at home in Dante and Homer than in the Bible”. Paradoxically coming from a Jewish critic, this blunt and unfair critical attack has not succeeded in overshadowing the legacy of Levi’s works: Auschwitz cannot be erased either from a man’s life or from history. Luca Prono Biography Born in Turin, Italy, 31 July 1919, into a middle-class Jewish family. His father was a civil engineer. Studied chemistry at the University of Turin (BSc 1941). Worked in the laboratory of a pharmaceutical factory in Milan, researching a cure for diabetes, and wrote poetry in his spare time. Took part in the Italian Resistance after the fall of Mussolini, living in the mountains, 1943. Captured and held in Fossoli, then sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, 1944. Freed at the end of World War II, and returned to Italy via Russia, Eastern Europe, and Austria, 1945. Worked as a chemist in a paint factory, DUCOMontecatini, 1945–47; as an industrial chemist for SIVA, Turin, 1947–77 (general manager from 1961). Married Lucia Morpurgo, a teacher, 1947: one son and one daughter. Contributed to La Stampa, Turin. His best-known works, drawing on the issues and experiences of the Holocaust, are Se questo è un uomo (1947; If This is a Man), Il sistema periodico (1956; Periodic Table), La chiave a stella (1978; Monkey’s Wrench), Se non ora, quando? (1982; If Not Now When?) and I sommersi e i salvati (1986; The Drowned and the Saved). Committed suicide in Turin, 11 April 1987.

Selected Writings Se questo è un uomo (autobiography/ testimony), 1947; enlarged edition, 1958; translated by Stuart Woolf as If This is a Man, 1959, and Survival in Auschwitz, 1961 La tregua (autobiography/ testimony), 1963; translated by Stuart Woolf as The Reawakening, 1965, and The Truce, 1965 La ricerca delle radici: antologia personale, 1981 I sommersi e i salvati (autobiography/ testimony), 1986; as The Drowned and the Saved, translated by Raymond Rosenthal, 1988

Further Reading Anissimov, Myriam, Primo Levi: Tragedy of an Optimist, translated by Steve Cox, London: Aurum Press, 1998; New York: Overlook Press, 1999

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Camon, Ferdinando, Conversations with Primo Levi, translated by John Shepley, Marlboro, Vermont: Marlboro Press, 1989 Carlà, Marisa and Luca De Angelis (editors), L’ebraismo nella letteratura italiana del Novecento, Palermo: Palumbo, 1995 Cases, Cesare, “L’ordine delle cose e l’ordine delle parole” in Opere, vol. 1, by Levi, Turin: Einaudi, 1987 Cicioni, Mirna, Primo Levi: Bridges of Knowledge, Oxford and Washington, DC: Berg, 1995 Eberstadt, Fernanda, “Reading Primo Levi”, Commentary (October 1985): 41–47 Levi, Primo, Conversazioni e interviste 1963–1987, edited by Marco Belpoliti, Turin: Einaudi, 1997 Nystedt, Jane, “I critici e l’opera letteraria di Primo Levi”, Studia Neophilologica, 64/1 (1992): 101–16 Regge, Tullio, Dialogo, 1984; translated by Raymond Rosenthal as Dialogo, 1989, and Conversations, 1989 Segre, Cesare, “Se questo è un uomo di Primo Levi” in Letteratura Italiana, vol. 4 of his Opere, edited by Alberto Asor Rosa, Turin: Einaudi, 1996 Sodi, Risa B., A Dante of Our Time: Primo Levi and Auschwitz, New York: Peter Lang, 1990 Vincenti, Fiora, Invito alla lettura di Primo Levi, Milan: Mursia, 1973

Lévi-Strauss, Claude

1908–

French social anthropologist In 1934, at the age of 26, Claude Lévi-Strauss was offered a post as professor of sociology at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. The young Sorbonne-educated academic was eager to give up the disciplines of philosophy and law for the field of sociology and accepted the offer, which would allow him to pursue his interests among the indigenous tribes of South America. During the tenure of this professorship from 1934 to 1937 he made frequent trips into the interior of Brazil. These field trips, together with a more extended excursion to the Mato Grosso and the Amazon region sponsored by the French government in 1938–39, formed the basis of his ethnographic knowledge about the native tribes of the Kaingang, Caduveo, Bororo, the Nambikwara and Tupi-Kawahib Indians. After his escape from Nazi-occupied France in 1940 he collaborated with the structural linguist Roman Jakobson, another refugee, at the New School for Social Research in New York and discovered the principles of structuralism and its relevance for his ethnographic studies. Author of the acclaimed works Anthropologie structurale (1958–73; Structural Anthropology) and the four-volume Mythologiques (1964–71), Lévi-Strauss first outlined his social anthropology in the autobiographical travel narrative Tristes Tropiques (1955), which concerns his Parisian education and his personal experiences in Brazil, New York, and Pakistan during a short field trip in 1950. The combination of autobiography, ethnography, and poetics makes Tristes Tropiques particularly accessible to readers and shows the intimate interrelation of the author’s life studies and that of the native tribes: “Anthropology affords me an intellectual satisfaction: it rejoins at one extreme the history of the world and at the other the history of myself, and it unveils the shared motivation of one and the other at the same moment.” At the outset of Tristes Tropiques Lévi-Strauss links his own situation in the 1930s and 1940s to that of Brazil’s indigenous people in two ways. The dialogic relationship between sanity

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and madness, which he had experienced as a student of the psychiatrist Georges Dumas, lends itself to the interaction between the anthropologist and the native tribes with the intention of redefining strangeness and exoticism as a sign of the Other in oneself. Likewise, his own marginalization as a Jew connects with the endangered status of the Brazilian tribes threatened with extinction through contact with Western culture. This correlation of sanity and madness, civilization and wilderness, needs to replace the oppositional constructions of false images about the exotic tropics and the savage mind. In his effort to change these false perceptions, Lévi-Strauss was guided by his “three mistresses”, geology, psychoanalysis, and Marxism, which investigate the relation between reason and sense-perception beyond surface reality. The primacy of geology seems to be the basis of his structuralist belief in the underlying universals of the human mind. Geological formations appear like a model for the cross-cultural relation of different peoples. In their simultaneous presence and complexity they resemble tribal myths, which he favours over historical processes of modern civilizations. Thus, structuralist universal models, such as Jakobson’s vowel triangle, which Lévi-Strauss transforms into his culinary triangle of raw, cooked, and rotten, supplant historical accounts of the past and correlate the realms of nature and culture. Lévi-Strauss’s autobiographical narrative reflects his ethnographical and structural methods. Denying historical processes of chronological sequence and opting for the presence of mythic consciousness, the autobiographer is not in search of lost time, as was one of his favorite writers Marcel Proust, but is in possession of “Le Temps retrouvé”, as the title of the penultimate chapter of The Savage Mind (1962) indicates. The encounter with the myths and magic of the Brazilian native people leads him back to himself and his own culture and his criticism of the colonizing attitude of Western societies. Against Diderot’s idealization of the natural state of being, Lévi-Strauss defends Rousseau’s insistence on the social condition of humankind and affirms language as the distinctive feature between nature and rule-guided culture. This affinity with Rousseau also explains why he felt that eventually all ethnographers write their own “Confessions” as a way of transforming human nature into culture. Tristes Tropiques has received high praise as “an intellectual autobiography” (Susan Sontag) or as a poetic anthropology (Clifford Geertz). The ahistorical construction of human life in terms of myth and poetry serves Lévi-Strauss as a link to the French symbolists and their private systems of signification, also evident in his joint interpretation, with Roman Jakobson, of Baudelaire’s poem “Les Chats”. Jacques Derrida, in turn, has used Lévi-Strauss’s idea of bricolage guiding the savage mind as the transition from structuralism to poststructuralism and deconstruction in “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of Human Science” (see Of Grammatology, chapter 2). Hence, Lévi-Strauss’s representation of native cultures and of his own life in the autobiographical form of Tristes Tropiques reinforces his conception of social anthropology as a branch of semiology and the primacy of the interpretation of signs. Further personal reflections on his life emerge from conversations with Didier Eribon in De près et de loin (1988). Alfred Hornung

Biography Born in Brussels, Belgium, 28 November 1908. His father was a painter. Sent to live with his grandfather, the rabbi of Versailles, near Paris, at the outbreak of World War I. Educated in Versailles. Abandoned studies at the Ecole Normale Supérieure to study law, then philosophy, at the University of Paris (agrégation 1932). Married Dina Dreyfus, 1932. Taught at lycées in Mont-de-Marsan and Laon, 1932–34. Professor of sociology, University of São Paulo, Brazil, 1934–37. Made several expeditions into the Brazilian backlands, visiting tribes such as the Nambikwara, Caduveo, and Bororo, 1938. Returned to Paris, 1939, and was pressed into military service at the outbreak of World War II. Escaped to the United States when France surrendered to the Nazis in 1940. Fellow, New School for Social Research, New York. Married Rose-Marie Ullmo, 1946: one son. Returned to Paris, then served as cultural attaché at the French Embassy in Washington, DC, 1945–47. Associate director, Musée de l’Homme, Paris, 1949–50. Director of studies and chair of comparative religion of nonliterate peoples, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, 1950. Carried out fieldwork in Pakistan and the South Pacific. Married Monique Roman, 1954: one son. Chair of social anthropology, Collège de France, 1959–82. Elected to the Académie Française, 1973. Commandeur, 1976, and Grand-Croix, 1991, Légion d’honneur. His best-known works are Tristes tropiques (1955), Anthropologie structurale (1958–73; Structural Anthropology), and his four-volume Mythologiques (1964–71; Introduction to a Science of Mythology).

Selected Writings Tristes Tropiques (autobiographical travel narrative), 1955; partial translation by John Russell as A World on the Wane, 1961, and Tristes Tropiques, 1961; as Tristes Tropiques, complete translation by John Weightman and Doreen Weightman, 1973 (with Didier Eribon) De près et de loin (conversations), 1988

Further Reading Critique, special issue on Lévi-Strauss, 620–621 (January–February 1999) Derrida, Jacques, “The Violence of the Letter: From Lévi-Strauss to Rousseau” in his Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976 (French edition, 1967) Donato, Eugenio, “Tristes Tropiques: The Endless Journey”, MLN, 18 (1966): 270–87 Geertz, Clifford, “The World in a Text: How to Read Tristes Tropiques” in his Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1988 Leach, Edmund, Lévi-Strauss, London: Fontana, 1970 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, Anthropologie structurale, 2 vols, Paris: Plon, 1958–73; as Structural Anthropology, translated by Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf, New York: Basic Books, 1963–76; London: Allen Lane, 1968–77 Lévi-Strauss, Claude and Roman Jakobson, “‘Les Chats’ de Charles Baudelaire”, L’Homme: Revue Française d’Anthropologie, 2/1 (1962): 5–21 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, La Pensée sauvage, Paris: Plon, 1962; as The Savage Mind, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, Mythologiques, 4 vols, Paris: Plon, 1964–71; as Introduction to a Science of Mythology, 4 vols, New York: Harper and Row, 1969–81; London: Jonathan Cape, 1973–81 Mehlman, Jeffrey, “Punctuation in Tristes Tropiques” in his A Structural Study of Autobiography: Proust, Leiris, Sartre, LéviStrauss, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1974 Sontag, Susan, “A Hero of Our Time” in her Against Interpretation and Other Essays, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1966

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Lewis, C.S.

1898–1963

English critic, children’s writer, prose writer, and autobiographer C.S. Lewis delineates “the shape of [his] early life” in Surprised by Joy (1955). This vivid self-portrait chronicles his conversion from atheism to Christianity. Although Lewis cautions readers at the outset not to expect a “general autobiography” or a modern Confessions, he nevertheless draws on Augustine in the epigraph to the final chapter of his book, which he intriguingly titles “the beginning”. The end of Lewis’s story, like that of his illustrious predecessor, marks an initiation into a new life. The quality Lewis calls “Joy”, a longing for the unknown or the numinous, haunts the steps of his spiritual journey. Experiences of Joy, momentary yet indelibly etched on the imagination, punctuate the narrative. Lewis identifies three such episodes that allowed him to glimpse a mysterious other world. The first is a childhood memory of his older brother bringing his “toy garden” into the nursery. A powerful sensation of desire came over the younger Lewis, but before he could describe it, the desire itself was gone, “the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased”. The second and third glimpses came through reading books. Beatrix Potter’s Squirrel Nutkin awakened an ineffable desire evoked by the season of autumn, while Longfellow’s Saga of King Olaf transported him into the vast regions of Northern mythology. The element common to the three experiences, that of “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction”, was not happiness or pleasure but Joy. These ordinary moments transfigured by the imagination recall the “spots of time” William Wordsworth records in book XII of his autobiographical poem The Prelude. (The Romantic poet’s sonnet, “Surprised by Joy”, in fact, furnished Lewis with the title of his autobiography.) For Lewis, however, such moments do not provide an aesthetic index of the growth of the writer’s mind. Joy does not act as a “substitute for sex” either, even if “sex is very often a substitute for Joy”. Because he regarded his emotional experiences as merely subjective phenomena, Wordsworth failed to realize that “all that sense of the loss of vanished vision which fills The Prelude was itself vision of the same kind”. Unlike Wordsworth, Lewis retained the visionary gleam of his youth, but, perhaps surprisingly, after his conversion he began to lose interest in the subject, realizing that it was “valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer”. As T.S. Eliot would say, Lewis had the experience but missed the meaning. Seen in a new light, those fleeting childhood moments represented flashes of the divine presence, the “bright shadow” of “Holiness” permeating everyday life. Prior to his discovery of the transcendent, Lewis reveals that a sharp division between his “inner” and “outer” life perplexes his story. His imaginative life, anchored in “a many-islanded sea of poetry and myth”, captivated him, while his intellectual life, fuelled by a “shallow rationalism”, paled into meaninglessness. How to integrate the divided self – a predicament faced by autobiographers since Augustine – provides much of the drama in Surprised by Joy. Friends, no less than books, proved instrumental in this process of self-integration. Lewis mentions specifically the influence of Arthur Greeves, a classmate in Belfast who shared

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his love of the Norse myths, and Owen Barfield, an Oxford colleague who frequently took the opposing view in their discussions. The first acted as an alter ego, the second as an “antiself”. Through their mediation, and that of other friends, Lewis united the two sides of his personality. Barfield, for instance, helped Lewis to eradicate his ingrained “chronological snobbery”, that is, the tendency to accept at face value anything that is modern and to reject outright anything that isn’t (p.207). Greeves, along with friends such as J.R.R. Tolkien, helped to “baptize” Lewis’s imagination. His delight in pagan myths, especially those that featured the figure of the Dying God, eventually led Lewis to the Christian Gospels: “Here and here in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man” (p.236). Moved by this ageless and true story, Lewis no longer regarded God as a “transcendental Interferer” but as a “Person” to encounter. The personal experience of a grace beyond the reach of art enabled Lewis to restore the connection between faith, imagination, and reason in his life (Leigh). This newly acquired faith was later put to a severe test. When an unusual set of circumstances led to his sudden marriage to Joy Davidman Gresham, it seemed that Lewis had been once again, as his friends punningly remarked, “surprised by Joy”. Yet after four brief, happy years together, his wife died of cancer, leaving Lewis inconsolable. A Grief Observed (1961), published under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk, is a remarkable book that shocked its first readers because of Lewis’s brutal sincerity in revealing his raw emotional life as he never had before. In some moments of intense introspection, his persona freely probes his doubts, his fears, and his rage at the passing away of an anonymous person he refers to simply as “H”. The searing journal entries that open the narrative of this fictional diarist (see Musacchio) recall the sufferings of Job. Adopting the temporary scepticism of his biblical counterpart, Lewis’s distressed narrator directs an array of pointed questions to an absent deity whom he abusively calls “Cosmic Sadist” or “Eternal Vivisector”. These tirades are met with an emphatic silence, as if a door had been repeatedly slammed in his face. On reading over his initial jottings, the diarist is appalled by their self-centred focus. Instead of knocking on the door, he had hammered and kicked it “like a maniac”. More than this, his monologic babble had prevented a real dialogue with the wholly Other: “Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you had hoped to hear”. The door gradually opens once the hatred and resentment subside. This change of heart prompts the “new man” to discover the mode of love that always contains some joy: “Praise in due order; of Him as the giver, of her as the gift”. Accordingly, he compares his beloved to a fragrant and secret garden that leads him to contemplate “the Gardener … the life-giving Life and the Beauty that makes beautiful”. As a result of this epiphany, one night, quite unexpectedly, the narrator feels some sense of his spouse’s real presence for the first time since her death. Though “incredibly unemotional”, the impression of “her ‘mind’ momentarily facing [his] own” radiated “an extreme and cheerful intimacy”. Just as Beatrice enraptures the mind of Dante when she smilingly departs from her prodigal lover, so too the beloved here turns to the eternal fountain that satisfies her thirst without satiating it. To the imperfect mortal sight of the mourner, the deceased had seemed aloof and far away. After the “spring cleaning” of the interior vision, however, the mind in love sees that nothing

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separates in the realm of the spirit. Lewis was indeed surprised by the Joy that emanated from the One who brings peace to those who grieve. Dominic Manganiello Biography Clive Staples “Jack” Lewis. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 29 November 1898. His father was a successful solicitor, his mother a writer and mathematician. Educated at boarding schools in England after his mother’s death in 1908: Wynyard House, Watford, Hertfordshire, 1908–10; Campbell College, Belfast, 1910; Cherbourg School, Malvern, Worcestershire, 1911–13; and Malvern College, 1913–14; educated privately, in Great Bookham, Surrey, 1914–17. Won a classical scholarship to University College, Oxford, 1916, then served as an officer in the Somerset Light Infantry, 1917–19; wounded at the battle of Arras, 1918. Resumed his studies at University College, Oxford, 1919–23 (BA 1922). Philosophy tutor and lecturer in English, University College, Oxford, 1924; tutor in English and fellow, Magdalen College, Oxford, 1925–54. Returned to Christianity, having lost his faith at school, 1929–31. At Oxford, met J.R.R. Tolkein and Charles Williams, who became members of the group later known as “The Inklings”, meeting in his Magdalen rooms. Established his academic reputation with The Allegory of Love (1936). Became widely known for such popular religious and moral writings as The Problem of Pain (1940), The Screwtape Letters (1942), and The Four Loves (1960), and as a writer of children’s stories (The Chronicles of Narnia, 1950–56). Won a wide popular audience for broadcast talks during World War II (collected as Mere Christianity, 1952). Gave Clark lectures in Cambridge, 1944, which formed the basis for English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1954), his most substantial work of literary history. Appointed to chair of Medieval and Renaissance English, Cambridge University, 1954. Wrote the spiritual autobiography Surprised by Joy (1956). Married Joy Davidman Gresham, 1956: two stepsons. Wrote A Grief Observed (1961) after his wife’s death from cancer in 1960. Died in Oxford, 22 November 1963.

Selected Writings Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (autobiography), 1956 A Grief Observed (pseudonymously as N.W. Clerk; autobiography), 1961 Beyond the Bright Blur (letters), 1963 Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer, 1963 Letters to an American Lady, edited by Clyde Kilby, 1967 Mark Versus Tristram: Letters between C.S. Lewis and Owen Barfield, edited by Walter Hooper, 1967 Lewis at the Breakfast Table and Other Reminiscences, edited by James T. Como, 1979 They Stand Together: The Letters of Lewis to Arthur Greeves 1914–1963, edited by Walter Hooper, 1979 Letters to Children, edited by Lyle W. Dorsett and Marjorie Lamp Mead, 1985 Letters, edited by W.H. Lewis; revised edition, edited by Walter Hooper, 1988 Letters: C.S. Lewis, Don Giovanni Calabria, edited and translated by Martin Moynihan, 1989

Further Reading Green, Roger Lancelyn and Walter Hooper, C.S. Lewis: A Biography, London: Collins, and New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974 Leigh, David S.J., “The Psychology of Conversion in Chesterton’s and Lewis’s Autobiographies” in The Riddle of Joy: G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, edited by Michael H. Macdonald and Andrew A. Tadie, London: Collins, and Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1989 Musacchio, George “Fiction in A Grief Observed”, Seven: An AngloAmerican Literary Review, 8 (1987): 73–83 Sayer, George, Jack: C.S. Lewis and His Times, London: Macmillan, and New York: Harper and Row, 1988

Liang Qichao

1873–1929

Chinese political activist, journalist, scholar, and biographer I was born on the twenty-sixth day of the first month of the year Guiyou [1873] during the Tongzhi reign. It was ten years after the Taiping Kingdom perished in Jinling, one year after the Qing grand secretary Zeng Guofan died, three years after the Franco-Prussian War, and the year that Italy was founded in Rome. This striking and original account of his birth date in Sanshi zishu [1903; Autobiographical Account at Thirty], in which Liang Qichao juxtaposes his birth with the rise and fall of nations East and West, indicates the principal concerns in his life writing: patriotism and nationalism. These concerns, driven by his modernizing ideals at a time when the old imperial order was breaking up, were more substantially developed in his extensive biographical writing. Traditionally, Chinese biographies, especially those in later “official histories”, often treat lively subjects as dry-as-dust stereotypes. Liang Qichao’s determination to renovate this old form and to educate a “new people” for a “young China” makes him the first major reformer of modern Chinese biographical writing. Immediately after the failure of the Wuxu Reform Movement in 1898 and his exile to Japan, Liang Qichao wrote for his newspaper a series of biographies of foreign heroes, including Lajos Kossuth, Giuseppe Mazzini, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Camillo Benso di Cavour, Mme Marie Jeanne Roland, and Oliver Cromwell. His aim was to provide “role models for the Chinese people today”. One feature of these biographies is that Liang Qichao underscored an ordeal undergone by his heroes. In his view, “a self must be cultivated in order to be a great achiever in ancient times”. He therefore always devoted one chapter to his subjects most difficult experiences. Kossuth’s days in prison, Cavour’s years of tilling, Mazzini’s and Garibaldi’s life in exile, and Cromwell’s life as a herder were related to demonstrate their roles in the formation of heroes. Furthermore, he also described one or two anecdotes to make his readers appreciate his subjects’ charisma, though details for his portraits were generally scant. Kossuth, for example, slept for only three hours each day when he wrote for his newspaper, while Napoleon slept for four hours. In an age of inner crisis and outer invasion, these heroic biographies were stimulants. And according to Liang Qichao, China at that time was badly in need of them. The unfolding of a great historical event as the centre of a subject’s life, usually the struggle for the independence of a nation, nation building, and the birth of a modern state, is another feature of this group of biographies. Kossuth’s life revolved mainly around the Hungarian revolution of 1848. The Italian unification movement was a whirlpool that drew together Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Cavour. For Mme Roland, the French Revolution possessed a force as inescapable as the pull of gravity. The English civil war virtually dominated the story of Cromwell. The event-orientation in these biographies not only made it easy for Liang Qichao to illustrate his overriding theme – “the very base for the founding of a country is nationalism” – but it helped to highlight the titanic efforts of his heroes and heroines. None the less, Liang Qichao also paid the price: the

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individuality of his heroes and heroines was greatly diluted, though admittedly subjects in heroic biographies are generally flat characters. His longer biographies about Chinese politicians such as Li Hongzhang (1898), Wang Jinggong (1908), and Guanzi zhuan (1909) are generally considered more representative of his biographical writing. Despite his emphasis in his self-narrative on the fact that he could recite eight- or nine-tenths of Sima Qian’s biographies, he did not follow his example. Historical biography was not his forté. Instead of focusing on the lives of his subjects, he chose mainly their books or principal achievements. Consequently, one characteristic of this group of biographies is the “oceanic quotation”. In his life of Guanzi, he gave his readers the impression that nearly the whole book of Guanzi was fused into the biography, and in one section of the biography his quotation ran as long as eight pages. He defended his own biographical practice by accusing Sima Qian of failing to portray the true Guanzi in Shiji (Historical Records), pointing out that he frequently clothed his subjects in his own feelings. For Liang Qichao, the true face of Guanzi can be discovered only in the writings of Guanzi. He further explained his idea of why a subject’s work should be cited in a biography in Zhonguo lishi yanjiufa bubian [1926–27; Supplement to Methodology of Chinese Historical Research]. This practice may be justified when a biographer confronts a tantalizing dearth of biographical materials, as in the case of Guanzi who died in 645 bce. Yet while he once complained that there were too many comments and too few facts in Sima Qian’s life of Qu Yuan, he himself also ran the risk of overloading books and ideas with excessive comments at the expense of presenting lives. The life of Qu Yuan in Historical Records is one of Sima Qian’s few exceptions, but the over-interpretation in Liang Qichao’s biographies reveals his inability to maintain a balance between an interpretative and a narrative biographer. Most remarkably, though, Liang Qichao filled these biographies with a “vision of the citizen of the world” (shijiezhiren zhi yanguang). Instead of merely comparing his subjects with their ancient predecessors, he broadened the minds of his parochial fellow countrymen by equating his subjects with their foreign counterparts, especially their contemporaries. A case in point is the last chapter of Li Hongzhang. Not only were Chinese predecessors and contemporaries such as Huo Guang, Zhuge Liang, Li Xiucheng, and Zhang Zhidong taken to serve as reflective mirrors, but foreign politicians such as Metternich, Bismarck, Gladstone, Thiers, and Hirobumi were presented as points of reference. The synchronic comparative vision proved explosive, undermining the roots of the traditional mode of linear thinking and prying open the eyes of Chinese intellectuals. There is little doubt that this would be Liang Qichao’s most abiding contribution to Chinese biographical writing. Liang Qichao’s biographical practices may be better understood if we take his lectures on biographical writing into consideration. In order to write a special history of human beings, he proposed five forms: parallel lives (lie zhuan), annual records (nian pu), individual biography (zhuan zhuan), collective biography (he zhuan), and biographical table (ren biao). Though he did not mention the correlation between these five forms in presenting a whole picture of a life, we may get some idea of how to employ the different forms for different historical figures from his examples. For instance, he suggests that Zeng Guofan, a cen-

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tral figure in the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), must be dealt with in an individual biography, while insignificant people such as imperial concubines of the same dynasty should be listed only in a biographical table. After discussing ideal subjects for an individual biography, he devoted four chapters to each of the first four forms, specifying their methods of writing. His example of how to write a life of Confucius as an individual biography is very revealing. The first step, he argued, was to distinguish and validate biographical materials. As for those materials mystifying Confucius, an appendix needed to be compiled to show the mentality of the people of that time. Then he proceeded to explain how to select material to weave into the biography. As to how to narrate a life story, he resorted to omission, saying that the most difficult thing in writing the biography of Confucius is the discrimination and selection of materials. His arguments show that he approached life writing more from the perspective of a historian than from that of a biographer. That is why his lectures on life writing appeared in the “Supplement to Methodology of Chinese Historical Research”. Yet despite their incompleteness, his lectures were among the first important essays on life writing in modern China. While Liang Qichao admirably explored the relationship between his subjects and their times, his greatest assets were a sweeping vision, a rich mind offering penetrating interpretations, and a flair for imbuing his readers with a passion to act. Guo Moruo, a leading Chinese poet, said of Liang Qichao: … we despised him, for at that time Liang Rengong [Qichao] became a royalist, but we treasured his books. I was fascinated by Biography of Three Italian NationBuilding Heroes … Besides Napoleon and Bismarck, Cavour, Garibaldi, and Mazzini became my idols. Although his biographies have lost much of their appeal, they paved the way for the rise of modern Chinese biographical literature. Zhao Baisheng Biography Born in Zinhui, Guangdong province, China, 23 February 1873. Received a classical Chinese education based on Confucian texts. Passed the provincial examination, ju ren degree, 1889. Founded the first Chinese newspaper in Beijing, 1898. Associated with Kang Yuwei in the “Hundred Days of Reform”, 1890s, then took refuge in Japan after its failure. Returned to China after the revolution of 1911, which ousted the Qing dynasty. Served in various ministries, and as adviser to the Chinese delegation to the Versailles peace conference, 1919. Taught at Qinghua [Tsinghua] University, Beijing; and Nankai University, Tianjin [Tientsin], 1923–29. Made translations of Darwin and Spencer. Died in Beijing, 19 January 1929.

Selected Writings Li Hongzhang, 1898 Xunnan liu lieshi zhuan [Biography of Six Martyrs], 1898 A Discussion on Relations of Story and Governing Society in Chinese, 1902; in Yinbingshi heji, wenji [Collected Works from the IceDrinker’s Studio], 1936 Jinshi diyi nujie Luolan furen zhuan [Biography of Mme Roland, the Number One Heroine of Modern Times], 1902 Xinshixue [The New Historiography], 1902 Xiongjiali aiguozhe gasushi zhuan [Biography of Kossuth, a Hungarian Patriot], 1902 Yidali jianguo sanjie zhuan [Biography of Three Italian NationBuilding Heroes], 1902

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Zhang Bowang Ban Dingyuan hezhuan [Zhang Bowang and Ban Dingyuan: A Collective Biography], 1902 Zhao Wulingwang zhuan [Biography of Zhao Wulingwang], 1902 Sanshi zishu [Autobiographical Account at 30], 1903 Xin yingguo juren kelinwei’er zhuan [Biography of Cromwell, a Giant of New England], 1903 Yuan Chonghuan zhuan [Biography of Yuan Chonghuan], 1904 Zhongguo zhimin ba da weiren zhuan [Biography of Eight Great Chinese Colonizers], 1904 Zheng He zhuan [Biography of Zheng He], 1905 Wang Jinggong (biography), 1908 Guanzi zhuan [Biography of Guanzi], 1909 Zhongguo lishi yanjiufa bubian [Supplement to Methodology of Chinese Historical Research], 1926–27 Yinbingshi heji, wenji [Collected Works from the Ice Drinker’s Studio], 1936

Further Reading Beasley, W.G. and E.G. Pulleyblank (editors), Historians of China and Japan, London: Oxford University Press, 1961 Chang Hao, Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Intellectual Transition in China, 1890–1907, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971 Chen Lanchun and Zhang Xinke, Zhongguo gudian zhuanji lungao [Draft Essays on Classical Chinese Biography], Xi’an: Shangxi renmin jiaoyu chubanshe, 1991 Chen, Pingyuan, Zhongguo xiandai xueshu zhi jianli [The Establishment of Modern Chinese Scholarship], Beijing: Beijing University Press, 1998 Han, Zhaoqi (general editor), Zhongguo zhuanji wenxueshi [A History of Chinese Biographical Literature], Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 1992 Howard, Richard C., “Modern Chinese Biographical Writing”, Journal of Asian Studies, 21/4 (1962): 465–75 Huang, Philip C., Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Modern Chinese Liberalism, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972 Larson, Wendy, Literary Authority and the Modern Chinese Writer: Ambivalence and Autobiography, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1991 Levenson, Joseph R., Liang Ch’i-Ch’ao and the Mind of Modern China, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1953; revised edition, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967 Li Yu-ning (editor), Two Self-Portraits: Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Hu Shih, New York: Outer Sky Press, 1992 Wang Gungwu (editor), Self and Biography: Essays on the Individual and Society in Asia, Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1976 Wills, John E., Jr, Mountain of Fame: Portraits in Chinese History, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994 Wu Pei-yi, The Confucian’s Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990 Yang Zhengrun, Zhuanji wenxue shigang [A Concise History of Literary Biography], Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe, 1994

Lionheart Gal Dramatized life stories by the Sistren Theatre Collective Lionheart Gal: Life Stories of Jamaican Women (1986) is a collection of life stories by mainly working-class Jamaican women. It is a product of the Sistren Theatre Collective, an independent women’s drama group that emerged in Jamaica after the country gained independence from Britain in 1962. The Sistren (Jamaican Creole for “sisters”) is community-based, and uses drama as a means of exploring women’s issues and promoting awareness that leads to women’s empowerment. Workshops are a mainstay of its methodology, functioning as “play-study” sites of intervention where women’s testimonies are communally

developed into performance pieces. In this respect, Sistren reveals its roots in Jamaican indigenous theatre; its use of the Creole (patwah / patois) language and communal creativity are characteristics of early popular theatre such as the open-air theatres of slaves, Brucknins and Tea Meetings, and 20thcentury political drama. Lionheart Gal, like the plays, subverts conventional literary traditions. In this instance, the subject positions generally occupied by the educated and literate are replaced by the uneducated and marginalized. Language convention is also subverted, as a working-class patwah /patois voice claims narrative authority. Caribbean life writing, even that by women, favours the literate class. Autobiographical fictions such as Merle Hodge’s Crick Crack Monkey and Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John and Lucy rely on precocious, cultivated protagonists. Lionheart Gal ruptures these conventions, placing new subjects, marked by linguistic and class difference, as the unedited narrators of their own stories. Even a Sistren member who remarks of herself “tru me only go a school one and few times, me never bright” (“Rebel Pickney”) thus breaks out of silence. Language use in Lionheart Gal also reflects the varied and complex continuum of the Jamaican Creole system. Two stories in the collection of 15 – “Red Ibo” and “Grandma’s Estate” – are written in a formal, standardized English by the more literate middle-class authors. The recording of women’s stories was one of the important goals of the collective. Under Honor Ford-Smith, the first director of Sistren Theatre and the faculty of the Jamaica School of Drama, in its first phase the group relied on a method of collective interviews and discussions, from which there emerged themes common to the oral material on which could be based a set of questions for individual interviews. According to FordSmith these more structured individual interviews were transcribed verbatim, with little editing. The women were asked to answer the questions: How did you first become aware of the fact that you were oppressed as a woman? How did that experience affect your life? How have you tried to change it? These questions – “throughline” as Ford-Smith refers to them – do, however, denote a superimposed editorial authority. Domestic violence, sexual exploitation, poverty, domestic work and its impact on family life, class and colour discriminations, and even socially taboo subjects such as rape and incest are subjects recounted continuously in Lionheart Gal, as they are in dramatic productions such as Downpression Get a Blow (1977), Bellywoman Bangarang (1978), Bandoolu Version (1979), and Domestick (1982) – four harrowing stories of pregnancy. The narratives speak of childhood poverty, fear, disappointment, and confusion. Abuses of all types – physical, mental, and sexual – are a common experience. Moreover, the largely miserable childhoods are all too soon afflicted with the travail of womanhood, since many of them find themselves pregnant at young ages. Motherhood is often not enjoyed; as one mother remarks, “being a madda meself so young, me never enjoy it” (“Rock Stone a Riber Bottom No Know Sun Hot”). Motherhood also traps them within a familiar cycle of hardship and poverty, from which it is hard to escape. In the stories of Lionheart Gal, women discuss the saving role of drama in their lives. Not only has it provided a creative and cathartic outlet, but the community has served as a resource in material and practical ways. The 13 women came to drama out of their own volition. They were street cleaners – some of the

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10,000 women employed by the government’s Impact Programme (1972–80), which sought to provide work for the unemployed – interested in performing for the Workers’ Week concert. When they were approached by Ford-Smith, they announced a strong desire “to do plays about how we suffer as women” (Ford-Smith, 1981). The title of the collection symbolizes the courage and mettle of the Sistren women as they struggle against oppressions both personal and social and survive of independent spirit, for some were nurtured by mothers who insisted that they make “a bed fi yuhself” (“Rock Stone a Riber Bottom No Know Sun Hot”). They bear a rebel consciousness with roots in the ancestral history of Jamaican women; like Nanny (Ni), an 18th-century warrior and leader of the Maroons who successfully fought against the slave-holding British, eventually gaining independence, the Sistren women conquer a fractured past in an attempt to secure a brighter future. Evelyn J. Hawthorne Further Reading Banham, Martin, Errol Hill and George Woodyard (editors), The Cambridge Guide to African and Caribbean Theatre, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994 Cooper, Carolyn, “Writing Oral History: Sistren Theatre Collective’s Lionheart Gal”, in her Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender and the “Vulgar” Body of Jamaican Popular Culture, London: Macmillan, 1993 Di-Cenzo, Maria and Susan Bennett, “Women, Popular Theatre, and Social Action: Interviews with Cynthia Grant and the Sistren Theatre Collective”, Ariel, 23/1 (1992): 73–94 Ford-Smith, Honor, “Sistren Women’s Theatre – a Model for Consciousness Raising” in Journey in the Shaping: Report of the First Symposium on Women in Caribbean Culture, edited by Margaret Hope, St Michael, Barbados: Women and Development Unit (WAND), University of the West Indies, 1981 Ford-Smith, Honor, “Sistren: Exploring Women’s Problems Through Drama”, Jamaica Journal, 19/1 (1986): 2–12 Ford-Smith, Honor, “Notes Toward a New Aesthetic”, MELUS, 16/3 (1989): 27–34 Hill, Errol, The Jamaican Stage 1655–1900: Profile of a Colonial Theatre, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992

Lister, Anne

1791–1840

English diarist Anne Lister, of Shibden Hall, near Halifax, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, produced a four-million-word diary between 1806 and her death in 1840. It documents the daily life of a provincial gentlewoman, detailing estate business, and her intimate thoughts, ambitions, sexual and emotional adventures with women, and her musings on the nature of her sexuality. About a sixth of the whole is written in her “crypt hand” or cipher. The diary was popularized by Helena Whitbread’s publication (1988), a selection of transcripts from the enciphered text, which takes its title from a diary entry in which Lister quotes from Rousseau’s Confessions: “I know my own heart and understand my fellow man. But I am unlike anyone I have ever met. I dare to say that I am like no one in the whole world” (all quotations are from Whitbread’s selections). Lister’s admiration for Rousseau signals her attachment to Romanticism and offers

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a rationale for her autobiographical writings: the exploration and extension of a unique individual identity through imaginative self-examination. Although she professed an “ambition in the literary way”, Lister did not ascribe literary value to her diary, although she clearly regarded it as therapeutically valuable: “Come what may, writing my journals – thus, as it were, throwing my mind on paper – always does me good.” Its careful episodic construction suggests that, while ostensibly disapproving of novels, she drew from them a variety of themes that entered her literary selfconstruction as Romantic hero, Gothic villain, or long-lost heir. This masculinized self-presentation was not necessarily one she enacted in daily life. She was pleased to be considered masculine, but did not attempt to pass as a man. As a high Tory and Anglican, she supported social divisions based on class and gender. In her diary, however, she created a space in which the norms she outwardly observed were sometimes disrupted and reconfigured, as the following encrypted entry demonstrates: “building castles in the air about the part I myself might take in furthering [Halifax’s newly established Literary & Philosophical society] … All this leads to my old thought and wish for ladies under certain restrictions to be restored to certain political rights – voting for Members etc.” (Liddington, 1998). Lister’s diary was supposedly a private document, unlike the family diaries of her older contemporaries Dorothy Wordsworth or Fanny Burney. But while many diarists have used secret writing and ciphers to provide extra security for their private journals, Lister complicated her crypt’s function by distributing the “alphabet” to her lovers, who used it in their letters and diaries. Thus the cipher became a currency between a network of women who were “too fond of women”, privileging them as potential readers of the secret documents. In its frank exploration of woman-to-woman desire, Lister’s diary challenges both the alleged absence of discourse on female homosexual experience and identity in the early 19th century, and the categorization of intimate relations between women of this period by the asexual term, “romantic friendship”. In this entry, Lister addresses the topic in typically laconic style: Went to Mrs Barlow & sat with her an hour. Somehow began talking of [sic] that one of the things of which Marie Antoinette was accused of was being too fond of women. I, with perfect mastery of countenance, said I had never heard of it before and could not understand or believe it … but owned I had heard of the thing … Mrs Barlow said it was mentioned in scripture … I said I believed that when reduced to the last extremity – I was going to mention the use of phalli but luckily Mrs Barlow said, “You mean two men being fond of each other?” & I said “Yes,” turning off the sentence. Within the restrictive therapeutic and autodidactic conventions of women’s diary writing, Lister devised a self-constructive form that underpinned and reinforced her social identity, her sense of self, and her sexuality. Indeed, her literary selfpresentation extended beyond the act of writing into editorial and taxonomic procedures. She was a prolific correspondent and regularly reviewed and catalogued her collection of letters received and copies of letters sent, shaping the chronology and narrative thus produced by destroying items along the way. As

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the following quotation indicates, she consciously engaged with the project and processes of self-narration: “The general rummage among my letters & papers takes a great deal of time … but … ’tis high time to begin if I mean to get it done in my lifetime.” Anira Rowanchild Biography Born in Halifax, Yorkshire, England, 3 April 1791. Her father was an army captain who had fought in the American War of Independence (the Revolutionary War). Went to live with aunt and uncle at Shibden Hall, Halifax, West Yorkshire, after an unhappy home life, 1815. Became financially dependent on her uncle, because her father was unable to support her. Travelled and studied languages, mathematics, and history with the vicar of Halifax. Started keeping her journal, sometimes in code, 1806. Became involved in relationships with Marianne Lawton (née Belcome) and Isabella Norcliffe. Travelled widely in Europe. Became sole owner of Shibden Hall on the death of her uncle, 1826. Settled with Anne Walker, a local heiress, with whom she continued to travel, including her last journey, an extended tour of Europe and Russia. Caught a virulent fever in the west Georgian capital of Kutaisi in the Caucasian mountains, Russia. Died in Kutaisi, 22 September 1840.

Selected Writings I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister 1791–1840, edited by Helena Whitbread, 1988 No Priest But Love: Excerpts from the Diaries of Anne Lister, 1824–1826, edited by Helena Whitbread, 1992 Miss Lister of Shibden Hall: Selected Letters 1800–1840, edited by Muriel M. Green, 1992

Further Reading Ballaster, Ros, “‘The Vices of Old Rome Revived’: Representations of Female Same-Sex Desire in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century England” in Volcanoes and Pearl Divers: Essays in Lesbian Feminist Studies, edited by Suzanne Raitt, London: Onlywomen Press, and Binghamton, New York: Harrington Park Press, 1995 Castle, Terry, The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993 Liddington, Jill, Presenting the Past: Anne Lister of Halifax 1791–1840, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire: Pennine Pens, 1994 Liddington, Jill, Female Fortune: Land, Gender and Authority: The Anne Lister Diaries and Other Writings, 1833–36, London and New York: Rivers Oram, 1998 Moore, Lisa, “‘Something More Tender Still than Friendship’: Romantic Friendship in Early Nineteenth-Century England” in Lesbian Subjects: A Feminist Studies Reader, edited by Martha Vicinus, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996 Rowanchild, Anira, “‘Everything done for effect’: Georgic, Gothic and Picturesque in Anne Lister’s Self-Production”, Women’s Writing, 7/1 (2000): 89–104 Rowanchild, Anira, “‘My Mind on Paper’: Anne Lister and the Construction of Lesbian Identity” in Representing Lives: Women and Auto/Biography, edited by Alison Donnell and Pauline Polkey, London: Macmillan, 2000 Rowanchild, Anira, “Skirting the Margins: Anne Lister and the Presentation of Lesbian Identity in Early Nineteenth-Century Yorkshire” in Centres, Margins and Sexual Dynamics, edited by Richard Johnson, David Shuttleworth and Diane Watt, London: Routledge, 2000 Vicinus, Martha, “‘They Wonder to Which Sex I Belong’: The Historical Roots of the Modern Lesbian Identity” in Lesbian Subjects: A Feminist Studies Reader, edited by Martha Vicinus, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996

Literary Autobiography Literary autobiography often refers to autobiography written by a self-defined or publicly recognized writer. However, many autobiographies that might be considered of literary value have not been produced by professional writers – indeed, the very accessibility of the genre has made it a place for amateur or private literary experiment by those who have written nothing else but their own life story. Thus the criteria for literary autobiography may be more safely defined through formal attributes of linguistic sophistication, such as the manipulation of chronological narrative, or the development of themes relating to how personal memory and identity shape artistic creation. However, many critics since the late 1960s have found making even such formal distinctions between “literary” and “not-literary” autobiography difficult or unproductive. According to Stephen Shapiro in his groundbreaking essay “The Dark Continent of Literature: Autobiography” (1968), all autobiography is “literature” because, like literature, autobiography “restructures existential material through the poetic organization of language in such a way that each part of a work contributes to a resonant whole”. Others who argue for the literariness of all autobiography, such as Albert E. Stone, point to the form’s uniform reliance on such literary devices as “narration with its characteristics of pace and momentum; metaphors of self through which verbal patterns and bridges are constructed from narrative details; description, reflection, argument, and meditation; and other common literary features, including characterization, dialogue, dramatic scenes, and synecdoche”. Certainly almost all autobiographies employ some of these formal strategies. Yet this move to render all autobiography literary can be countered by poststructuralist and feminist critics (such as Laura Marcus and Julia Swindells) whose interest has been rather to deconstruct or even dispense with the notion of literary value altogether in analysing the autobiographical text as cultural or social artifact and discourse. Despite the difficulties of sustaining a distinction between literary and non-literary autobiography, the ensuing discussion will focus on autobiographies that have been recognized as exceptional for their structural and thematic complexity. Even in this narrower sense, “literary autobiography” poses another question of definition: if the form is defined principally by theme, does that mean that any of the three traditional literary genres of drama, fiction, and poetry may provide a vehicle for literary autobiography? In the case of drama, the answer seems to be no. Jerome Buckley, in his study The Turning Key: Autobiography and the Subjective Impulse since 1800 (1984), explains that drama is ineffective for exploring the relation between mental process and textual structure because the form necessarily “conceals and to some degree objectifies through dialogue any subjective intention the playwright may have had”. However, both poetry and fiction have proved fertile ground for literary autobiography in the past 200 years. In both of these genres, literary autobiographies have shared a tendency toward a particular story type: namely, Kunstlerroman (literally, “artist-novel”). This story type traces an artist’s growth from an awakening sense of vocation into an artistic fulfilment. Because the writer of the Kunstlerroman proves his or her intellectual and artistic mastery through the very text (poem, story, or

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novel) that tells his or her story, the Kunstlerroman is a paradigmatic example of literary autobiography. Despite this fundamental thematic similarity, poetry and fiction do raise distinctly different theoretical issues for literary autobiography. In the case of autobiographical fiction, these issues centre on the author’s credibility. Early writers worried little about distinctions between “autobiography” and “fiction”, because they saw no qualitative difference between memory (the autobiographer’s tool, which enables him or her to provide a “true account” of his or her life) and imagination (the novelist’s territory, in which “truth” is subordinate to verisimilitude). Consequently, a large number of 18th- and 19th-century novels bear such genre-bending titles as The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Told by Himself (Daniel Defoe, 1719), and Jane Eyre: An Autobiography (Charlotte Bronte, 1847). But by the turn of the 20th century, writers and readers alike began to stress an epistemological distinction between memory and imagination. Patricia Meyer Spacks notes that when 20th-century autobiographers thus began to “realize how much self-depiction derives from imagination and to exploit this fact”, autobiographical fiction began to proliferate. A few earlier writers demonstrated a precocious selfawareness: the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1811; The Sorrows of Young Werther), the British novelist Charles Dickens in David Copperfield (1850–51), and the Swiss writer Gottfried Keller in Green Heinrich (1879–80). However, autobiographers in the last 80 or so years have shown a new consistency and deliberateness in blurring the line between fact and fiction, memory and imagination. One common device for such blurring has been the autobiographical novel that casts its subject-author as a thirdperson protagonist. Many of these novels follow the Kunstlerroman pattern: the Irish writer James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914–15) details Stephen Dedalus’s search for vocation, the American writer Henry Adams’s The Education of Henry Adams (published privately 1907; publicly 1918) traces Adams’s quest to overcome his disillusionment and find purpose, and the French novelist Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27; Remembrance of Things Past) employs a complex, circular, seven-book structure to reflect on the workings of memory and the evolution of the artistic powers of its narrator Marcel. A second tactic of these literary autobiographers has been the multiple autobiography, which Ian Fletcher describes as a single writer producing several autobiographies, making different “approaches to the past made at distinct times in differing modes”. While writers as diverse as the Irish poet W.B. Yeats and the African American writer Maya Angelou have used this form (see Yeats’s Autobiographies, 1955, and Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1969, Gather Together in My Name, 1974, Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas, 1976), the Russian American writer Vladimir Nabokov provides a particularly interesting case study. Nabokov substantially revised his 1951 autobiography, Conclusive Evidence, into Speak, Memory after writing a parodic autobiography of Humbert Humbert in Lolita (1958). But despite the perspective of an additional 15 years, the Nabokov of Speak, Memory is, if anything, even more dubious about his ability to reconstruct what he calls “the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past”. Roy Pascal, in Design and Truth in Autobiography, suggests that these experimental,

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literary 20th-century autobiographical novels fundamentally change the relationship between writer and reader. Because they decrease autobiography’s traditional intimacy through such devices as the detached third-person protagonist or the writer’s perpetual and explicit indeterminacy, these autobiographies preclude the readers’ “practical moral judgments” far more easily than do more conventional, arguably less “literary” exemplary or didactic autobiographies. Poetry raises different theoretical issues for literary autobiography. Its issues centre less on the author-subject’s credibility than on his or her claim to representativeness. To be sure, not all autobiographical poetry has such representative designs; lyric poets since classical antiquity have written deeply personal poems that make few totalizing claims. But poets who do use the genre as a vehicle for literary autobiography – that is, who focus on how their intellect and memory produce the textual artifact – generally do posit themselves as both ideal and representative human specimens. In William Wordsworth’s 13-book autobiographical poem The Prelude: On the Growth of a Poet’s Mind (1850), for instance, Wordsworth offers his own Kunstlerroman, but also uses the first-person plural to generalize from his experience to all of humanity’s. When Wordsworth asserts that “There are in our existence spots of time, / Which with distinct pre-eminence retain / A renovating Virtue”, he not only describes the structure of his memory, but assumes that his readers share his memory’s particular architectonics. The American poet Walt Whitman takes a slightly different tack in his Song of Myself, which first appeared in 1851, and was continually revised throughout his life. In this poem, the centrepiece of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass project, he describes his autobiographical poem as a Janus-faced document that both recalls his personal past and ensures his place in a collective future. Song of Myself not only makes manifest Whitman’s mental life, but allows him to remain in perpetuity the “mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself”. The American confessional poets of the 20th century have continued to take themselves as subjects – see Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1956), for example, or Anne Sexton’s first volume of poems, Bedlam and Part Way Back (1961) – but perhaps because of the modernist scepticism about cohesive selfhood and the ability either to know or to tell the “truth” about such a self, 20thcentury poets have not fully shared the totalizing ambitions of Wordsworth, Whitman, or their German and Italian counterparts Goethe (Dichtung und Wahrheit, from 1811; Poetry and Truth) and Leopardi (Canti, 1831). One crucial difference between literary autobiography and most other autobiographies involves its author’s intent. As Jill Ker Conway notes, most autobiographers write primarily for didactic or exemplary reasons, “to convince their readers to take up some important cause, follow a new spiritual path, be aware of particular hazards, develop a new moral sense”. While literary autobiographers do not eschew exemplarity, they tend to privilege aesthetics; their primary concern, finally, is how mind and memory make art. Bonnie J. Gunzenhauser

Further Reading Bruss, Elizabeth W., Autobiographical Acts: The Changing Situation of a Literary Genre, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976

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Buckley, Jerome Hamilton, The Turning Key: Autobiography and the Subjective Impulse Since 1800, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984 Conway, Jill Ker, When Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography, New York: Knopf, 1998 Fletcher, Ian, “Rhythm and Pattern in Autobiographies” in An Honoured Guest: New Essays on W.B. Yeats, edited by Denis Donoghue and J.R. Mulryne, London: Arnold, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1965 Hunter, J. Paul, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of EighteenthCentury English Fiction, New York: Norton, 1990 Marcus, Laura, Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994 Olney, James, Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972 Olney, James (editor), Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980 Pascal, Roy, Design and Truth in Autobiography, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1960 Shapiro, Stephen A., “The Dark Continent of Literature: Autobiography”, Comparative Literature Studies, 5/3 (1968): 421–54 Spacks, Patricia Meyer, Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1976 Spengemann, William C., The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1980 Stone, Albert E., “Modern American Autobiography: Texts and Transactions” in American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect, edited by Paul John Eakin, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991 Swindells, Julia, Victorian Writing and Working Women: The Other Side of Silence, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985

Literary Biography The facts known about an author’s life that were occasionally placed in the front of folio volumes as early as the 16th century may qualify as the first literary biography in English, although the word biography had yet to enter the English language. Its first recorded use was in 1661 and, although the writing of lives, in verse and prose, had been practised since Anglo-Saxon times, these early examples had taken the form of the saint’s legend or tales of the rich, powerful, and heroic. The re-discovery of classical biographical writing, in particular Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Vitae parallelae, as Lives in 1579, gained respectability for the genre, but its development was slow. The development of literary biography was even slower. The term, as we know it today, would have been incomprehensible during the Middle Ages, when the poet was seen as a humble craftsman serving God; and even during the Renaissance when art and literature were valued, the life of the artist or the poet was of slight interest. The poet’s life, during the Renaissance, was of less concern than his or her gift. An interest in the lives of writers strengthened during the 18th century when writing became a profession. That age was interested in the inner man or woman who wrote, but the period was characterized by public and social concerns. Writers were known via habits of dress, table manners, peculiarities of speech or gestures, and above all via anecdote and conversation. Addison, Steele, and others were voracious collectors of anec-

dotes and literary fragments which readers enjoyed under such titles as “Swiftiana”. These collections, however, did not necessarily constitute literary biography and it is the biography of Samuel Johnson that looms largest in the 18th century. Johnson was an able biographer himself, and his Lives of the Poets was written, at the request of booksellers, between 1777 and 1781. He was the first English critic to theorize on the art of biography, seeing its possibilities for instruction and moral growth, and his own life was the subject of a great literary biography: James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, which was published in 1791 and on which Boswell’s fame rests. When Johnson died in 1784, various articles and books appeared about his life. He was, after all, a celebrity – but there was no model for the work that Boswell undertook. Since meeting Johnson in 1763 Boswell had kept notes similar to those found in volumes of anecdotes about writers, and his friendship with Johnson had lasted for 21 years. His problem was to separate out, from his informal diaries and notebooks, material pertinent to a biography. Like the modern biographer, he gathered the recollections of friends and acquaintances, which became a part of his manuscript. Aided by Edmond Malone, Boswell had published (1785) a journal of the tour of the Hebrides he had undertaken with Johnson in 1773, but in the following years, as he toiled to render his biography historically accurate, he differed from earlier biographers in a variety of important ways. He did not eulogize his subject: Johnson’s weaknesses as well as his strengths were depicted. He enlivened the biography by the use of detail, the observations of the senses, so that readers could gain a sense of Johnson’s dress, his conduct, and habits of speech. The geography within the biography is similarly detailed: names of streets are mentioned, and the sights and sounds of those streets re-created. Johnson’s conversations are dramatized, so readers see him through the eyes of others. Boswell’s biography took a form of reportage previously unknown, and although as a biography it had structural weaknesses – for example, Johnson was almost 54 when Boswell met him, so that the last eight years of Johnson’s life occupy half the book – the Life of Samuel Johnson nevertheless ensured that the literary biography, as it emerged, would find a ready readership. The emergence of literary biography as we know it today, however, required the critical impetus of the Romantic movement. During that period the poet’s interest shifted from the public arena to the private and inner self, and the cult of the author was consolidated in the context of a shift from patron to market-sponsored literature. Wordsworth’s The Prelude, finished in 1805 but not published until after his death, undertook to reveal the growth of a poet’s mind. In The Prelude Wordsworth, in common with other Romantic poets like Shelley, Coleridge, and Keats, made clear a connection between the life and the literature. As the genre evolved in the course of the 19th century, the Romantic idea of the poet as a sensitive and gifted individual rendered writers interesting subjects for biography, but the genre created problems. Romantic ideals of human endeavour appealed to, but also conflicted with, Victorian notions of realism, so that the genre was caught somewhere between history, with its non-biographical utility, and fiction, with its capacity to create heroes. Literary biography did not enjoy the critical interest aroused by poetry and the novel. There were exceptions – Thomas Jefferson Hogg’s reminiscences of Percy Bysshe Shelley at Oxford, published in Bulwer’s

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New Monthly Magazine in 1832, is one such, and Mrs Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) is another – but the early Victorians took to heart Johnson’s notion that biography could instruct and that it was from the actions of great men that lessons could be learned. Biography reduced morality to the individual case and, as industrial life eroded individuality and Darwin’s theories of evolution eroded religious faith, heroes and hero-worship went some way to offset Victorian anxieties as to the relevance of the individual. Literary figures did not always lend themselves to overt moralizing. The possibility of another purpose for literary biography emerged, if it was not resolved, in the latter part of the 19th century. This was the idea that the lives of individual writers could illuminate their literature and the literature the life. Literature was newly interpreted as an index to personality, novels and poems became pseudo-autobiographical documents that were quoted as having a bearing on experiences described, and biographers regularly passed judgement as to the merit of their subject’s work. Yet the emphasis, given by Wordsworth and other Romantic poets, to the workings of the inner mind was largely discarded as the 19th century progressed, on the basis that such things could never be known. The zeal with which some biographers had studied childhood in order to illustrate the mental development of their subject gave way to a less speculative presentation of the facts and the letters so assiduously collected. The Victorian invention of childhood, as demonstrated by the fictional creations of the age such as David Copperfield, was evident, as in the autobiographical revelations of, for instance, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, and Leigh Hunt, but depictions of childhood, like those in Dickens’s novels, tended to occupy the extremes of hardship and idyll and served a different purpose. Recounted hardship reinforced self-worth, and could implicate, without accusation, those who had abused in order to demonstrate the moral strength of the subject. The idyllic depiction of childhood, sometimes occurring in the same biography, allowed through memory a kind of relief from adult anxiety. The incipient psychological possibilities of the biographer’s task were largely abandoned, although the popularity of literary biography continued unabated. It was strengthened and sustained by an idea that writers, so often, led interesting lives. The idea of the writer and artist as a rebel or an outsider symbolized a resistance to social pressures, but literary biography as a genre did not keep pace with the changes that occurred in novels and poetry during the Edwardian era. The literary biography remained fast in its Victorian utility until Lytton Strachey demolished ideas of heroes and hero-worship in his Eminent Victorians of 1918. Although none of the subjects of the book was primarily a literary figure, Strachey is important to the genre because of the emphasis he placed on the interpretive act. The literary biographer, like other biographers, ceased to be a mere assembler of facts from the by-now copious quantities of letters and materials left by the writer. The biographer became the speculative and organizing intelligence, a creative artist. Inevitably there were a host of imitators. Some, fuelled by Freud’s theories and schools of psychology, widened the field of speculation, and catered to sensationalism by emphasizing the specifically sexual implications of their material. In the 1920s literary biographies vied with novels on the bestseller lists, in no small part because writers such as George Bernard Shaw were

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inclined to render accurate biography difficult by inventing stories about themselves. Other changes took place after World War I. During the early part of the 20th century literary scholarship had concentrated on Chaucer, Shakespeare, and their contemporaries, concentrating on the philological difficulties associated with the work, but the field gradually broadened. American academics in particular, recognizing the inadequacy of existing biographies, re-wrote them. Wilbur Lucius Cross wrote biographies of Sterne and Fielding, Carl Van Doren wrote of Thomas Love Peacock in 1911, and William Haller published The Early Life of Robert Southey in 1917. These, and works like them, pioneered the meticulously researched scholarly literary biography that could stimulate and sharpen literary insight. The influence of the literary biography, in this regard, has not always been beneficent. It is perhaps too easy to confuse the moral or biographical detail of a work with its aesthetic and therefore critical value and adversely affect reader response. Nevertheless, the work and the mind that produced it remain inextricably linked so that literary biography, at its best, enlarges and expands the literary experience. Jan Pilditch Further Reading Altick, Richard D., Lives and Letters: A History of Literary Biography in England and America, New York: Knopf, 1966 Amigoni, David, Victorian Biography: Intellectuals and the Ordering of Discourse, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993 Bell, R., “Autobiography and Literary Criticism”, Modern Language Quarterly, 46/2 (1985): 191–201 Carswell, John, Lives and Letters: A.R. Orage, Beatrice Hastings, Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton Murry, S.S. Koteliansky 1906–1957, London and Boston: Faber, 1978 Hamilton, Ian, Keepers of the Flame: Literary Estates and the Rise of Biography, London: Hutchinson, 1992; Boston: Faber, 1994 Kadar, Marlene (editor), Essays on Life Writing: From Genre to Critical Practice, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992 Landow, George P. (editor), Approaches to Victorian Autobiography, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1979 Loeffelholz, Mary, Experimental Lives: Women and Literature: 1900–1945, Boston: Twayne, 1992 Marcus, Laura, Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994 Nicolson, Harold, The Development of English Biography, London: Hogarth Press, 1927; New York: Harcourt Brace, 1928 Walton, Izaak, The Lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert and Robert Sanderson, with introduction by George Saintsbury, London: Humphrey Milford and Oxford University Press, 1927 (original edition, 1888) Woodmansee, Martha, “The Genius and the Copyright: Economic and Legal Conditions of the Emergence of the ‘Author’”, EighteenthCentury Studies, 17/4 (1984): 425–48

Lockhart, John

1794–1854

Scottish biographer and editor First published in 1837–38, Lockhart’s Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott is a huge work in seven volumes. The fact that ten years later its author consented to prepare an abridgement might be taken as an admission that he had made too much of

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his subject. While it is true that there was some commercial demand for a shorter, cheaper edition, the length of the original was justified by Scott’s quite extraordinary reputation at the time of his death, the abundance of materials available to Lockhart, and his ambition to provide an account of the great writer on a scale and in a manner more ambitious than a conventional memoir. It is arguable that the influence of the Life of Scott on the development of Victorian biography was in some degree baleful. But Lockhart cannot fairly be blamed for the excesses of less gifted imitators who are more deserving than he is of Carlyle’s criticism that his work is more a compilation than a composition, a mass of materials waiting to be transformed into a coherent whole. In April 1820 Lockhart married Sophia, the eldest daughter of Scott. He was already well acquainted with his father-in-law and enjoyed an exceptionally close relationship with him up to his death in 1832. In personal terms, then, there was nothing very surprising in Lockhart’s readiness to embark on a biography of Scott. It was, moreover, a task for which he was by that time also professionally well qualified. Highly intelligent and well educated, taking an interest in literary developments in Germany while, like Scott, participating fully in Edinburgh’s bustling intellectual life, he was an active, recklessly acerbic contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine. Then, after trying his hand as a novelist and next becoming editor of the Quarterly Review, he wrote a Life of Robert Burns (1818) and a two-volume study of Napoleon (1829). So Scott plainly knew what he was about when appointing Lockhart as his biographer; it was not just a matter of forestalling other, less well-informed writers who fancied the opportunity. Lockhart’s Life of Scott is indebted to the example of two important 18th-century biographies. Based on a rich fund of material sedulously collected over years of friendship, Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) was remarkable for the importance it gave to the personal details of the writer’s life. William Mason, no less in awe of his subject, is credited with changing the course of biography in his Life and Writings of Thomas Gray (1775) by making a point of embracing, if not always perfectly following, a policy of presenting Gray wherever possible by quotations from his own writings. The growth of interest in the artist or writer that is an element in Romanticism – or as Scott disapprovingly put it “a desire, or rather a rage, for literary anecdote and private history” that “the present age” had discovered – encouraged Lockhart to follow Boswell and Mason in essaying a comprehensive portrait of one of the major literary figures of his day, not just to salute his eminence but also to attempt to fathom the workings of the creative personality in which no detail was too insignificant. Robert Southey paid tribute to what he called “the most complete biography that has yet appeared of a great man”. Lockhart also adopted the biographical method of allowing Scott to speak for himself, as it were, at every opportunity. “He shall be”, declared Lockhart, “as far as possible … his own biographer.” In fact, the Life of Scott begins with the account that Scott had himself given of his early years, the period before Lockhart’s acceptance into Scott’s family circle. Lockhart is always anxious to do justice to his father-in-law. Whether that invariably persuades readers of his merits is questionable. Repeatedly and with no chariness about using the first person singular, arguments are marshalled to prove Scott’s

superior qualities in every field. For instance, despite Scott’s acknowledged triumphs in poetry and fiction, Lockhart feels obliged to try to show what a fine advocate he might have been, had opportunity only offered. It is good to move from such special pleading to the portrayal of a conspicuously industrious writer completing mammoth tasks at a remarkable pace and taking frank pleasure, for example, in “the extraordinary and gratifying news that Woodstock is sold for £8,228, all ready money – a matchless sale for less than three months”, even if Scott has to set aside such sums to meet debts. Generous and genial, the laird of Abbotsford, if not quite the embodiment of virtue as Lockhart presents him, emerges from his background as richly human and as vivid as any character in a novel. Christopher Smith

Biography Born in Cambusnethan, Lanarkshire, Scotland, 14 July 1794. His father was a Church of Scotland minister. Grew up in Glasgow and educated at Glasgow High School. Studied at the University of Glasgow and Balliol College, Oxford, 1809–13. Visited Goethe in Weimar, Germany. Studied law in Edinburgh. Admitted to the Scottish bar, 1816, but was unsuccessful in practice. Contributed to Blackwood’s Magazine. Met Sir Walter Scott, 1818, and subsequently took over from Scott as editor of the Ballantyne Annual Register. Married Scott’s eldest daughter Sophia, 1820: two sons (both died) and one daughter. Moved to London to edit the Quarterly Review, 1825. Published The Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott (1836–38), to literary acclaim. Also wrote biographies of the poet Robert Burns and Napoleon Bonaparte, as well as some ballad poems and four novels. Appointed auditor of the Duchy of Cornwall, 1843. Suffered from poor health and depression in his last years. Retired from the Quarterly Review, 1853. Spent the winter of 1853–54 in Italy, hoping to restore his health. Died in Abbotsford, near Melrose, Roxburghshire, 25 November 1854.

Selected Writings The Life of Robert Burns (biographical study), 1818; revised by William Scott Douglas, 1882 The History of Napoleon Bonaparte (biographical study), 2 vols, 1829, revised 1856 Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott (biographical study), 7 vols, 1837–38; abridged as The Life of Sir Walter Scott, 1871

Further Reading Altick, Richard D., Lives and Letters: A History of Literary Biography in England and America, New York: Knopf, 1966 Carlyle, Thomas, “Scott”, London and Westminster Review (January 1838): 293–345; reprinted in Miscellaneous Essays, vol. 4, London: Chapman and Hall, 1899 (review of Lockhart’s biography) Hart, Francis R., Lockhart as Romantic Biographer, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971 Johnson, Edgar, Sir Walter Scott, 2 vols, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1970 (includes assessment of Lockhart’s biography) Lochhead, Marion, John Gibson Lockhart, London: Murray, 1954 Marcus, Laura, Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994 Parker, W.M., “Autobiography”, Quarterly Review, 35 (1827): 148–65

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Lorde, Audre

1934–1992

American poet and diarist A self-proclaimed “black lesbian feminist mother lover poet”, Audre Lorde is internationally recognized for having made the personal political. Linking her search for identity in the literary realm with social activism, Lorde wrote self-revealingly in a variety of genres, including poetry, prose essays, and what she called “biomythography”, a strategic combination of biography, history, and myth. Her two autobiographical works, The Cancer Journals (1986) and Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982), defy generic boundaries much as Lorde resisted any single definition of self. While sometimes misunderstood as fiction, her biomythography, Zami, incorporates events from her youth. Written while she was undergoing diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer, an experience that would later be translated into The Cancer Journals, Zami is both a comingof-age and a lesbian coming-out story that chronicles Lorde’s growing recognition of racial injustice and increasing acceptance of her sexuality. Both texts represent her active resistance to the separation and powerlessness that accompany the imposed silences surrounding taboo topics. Lorde’s resistance to silencing grew out of her own experiences of fear and shame about race, sexuality, and disease. Believing that “the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation”, she intentionally made visible all that was meaningful in her life, even while knowing that it might be misunderstood and judged. Writing in such a confessional way was, for Lorde, an act of survival. “I could die of difference”, she wrote, “or live myriad selves.” As in much contemporary life writing, Lorde includes multiple selfrepresentations, writing self-consciously, in a non-linear fashion, and juxtaposing memory with reflective commentary to emphasize the relationship between past and present. In Zami, she recalls how the insular world her parents provided to protect their children from racial injustice ironically fostered her own fear of difference. The illusion of racial and sexual invisibility accompanied her into adulthood and exacts a price as she comes to believe that something is inherently wrong with her. Using her fears as her “fuel”, however, Lorde recounts in Zami a journey toward a life that can be lived at a “crossroads of difference”. In so doing, she illustrates how she cannot be reduced to any one bounded category; instead, she assumes contradictory, superimposed, and shifting identities, as she moves through different racial and sexual worlds in her travels from Harlem to Connecticut to Mexico and back again to New York. Always present in the background is the mythic and elusive West Indian island, Cariacou, her mother’s home that represents a safe haven for her sexuality. Many critics have noted that Lorde’s act of re-naming herself Zami reconciles the fragmented pieces of herself, and they have read Zami as Lorde’s journey toward wholeness. Additionally, some critics have argued that Lorde’s use of the Goddess Afrekete is a gesture toward a collective heritage. However, Lorde’s call for community does not deny the complexities of women’s existences, and, in fact, she emphasizes and affirms difference. She explains that “it was a while before we came to realize that our place was the very house of difference rather [sic] the security of any one particular difference”. Celebrating

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differences as liberating and empowering rather than as threats to identity and to political agency, Lorde gives voice to her pain and fears, and thus frees herself from the tyrannies of silence. Moreover, through the use of corporeal language in both Zami and The Cancer Journals, Lorde marks the body as a location of physical, emotional, and spiritual integrity. In particular, her descriptions of her sensual life in Zami call upon the use of, in her words, “the erotic as power” – the “assertion of the lifeforce of women”. The Cancer Journals, a chronicle of Lorde’s experience of breast cancer and subsequent mastectomy, consists of selected journal entries, commentary, speeches, and excerpts from medical research and articles. The fragmented collage enables Lorde to call attention to the devastating effects of the disease and its therapies on women’s bodies and psyches. Especially powerful is her argument that the use of breast prostheses isolates women who suffer from breast cancer, perpetuates the devaluation and depersonalization of women, and, most importantly, masks the realities of cancer by encouraging the “acceptance of an illusion and appearance as reality”. Detailing her defiance of the medical establishment’s definition of “normal”, The Cancer Journals also continued her resistance to being defined by others. As she emphatically states, “If the world defines you, it will define you to your disadvantage. So either I’m going to be defined by myself or not at all.” Lisa Dresdner Biography Born in New York, 18 February 1934, into a family of Grenadan immigrants. Studied at Hunter College, New York, 1951–60 (BA); National University of Mexico, 1954; studied library science at Columbia University, New York, 1960–61 (MLS). Married Edwin Ashley Rollins, 1962 (divorced 1972): one son and one daughter. Worked as a librarian in Mount Vernon Public Library, Mount Vernon, New York, 1961–63; as head librarian, Town School Library, New York, 1966–68. Poet-in-residence at Tougaloo College, Georgia, and distinguished visiting professor, Atlanta University, 1968. Published her first collection of poetry, The First Cities, 1968. Lecturer in creative writing, City College, New York, 1968; lecturer in education department, Herbert H. Lehman College, Bronx, New York, 1969–70; associate professor of English, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, from 1970. Published the critically acclaimed collection of poems From a Land Where Other People Live, 1973. Diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a radical mastectomy, late 1970s: chronicled the experience in The Cancer Journals (1980). Professor of English, Hunter College, New York, 1980–87. Published her second prose work, the autobiographical Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, 1982, and collections of her essays and speeches: Sister Outsider (1984) and A Burst of Light (1988). Thomas Hunter Professor, Hunter College, 1987–92. Visiting lecturer throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, and Australia. Founder, Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press and Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa. Poetry editor, Chrysalis and Amazon Quarterly. Contributor of short fiction to Venture magazine under the pseudonym Rey Domini; also wrote as Gamba Adisa. Died in St Croix, Virgin Islands, 17 November 1992.

Selected Writings The Cancer Journals, 1980 Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, 1982

Further Reading Alexander, Elizabeth, “‘Coming Out Blackened and Whole’: Fragmentation and Reintegration in Audre Lorde’s Zami and The Cancer Journals”, American Literary History, 6/4 (1994): 695–715

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Carlston, Erin G., “Zami and the Politics of Identity” in Sexual Practice, Textual Theory: Lesbian Cultural Criticism, edited by Susan J. Wolfe and Julia Penelope, Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1993 DiBernard, Barbara, “Zami: A Portrait of an Artist as a Black Lesbian”, Kenyon Review, 13/4 (1991): 195–213 Gillan, Jennifer, “Relocating Home and Identity in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name” in Homemaking: Women Writers and the Politics and Poetics of Home, edited by Catherine Wiley and Fiona R. Barnes, New York: Garland, 1996 Gilmore, Leigh, Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women’s SelfRepresentation, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1994 Hammond, Karla, “Interview with Audre Lorde”, Denver Quarterly, 16 (1981): 10–27 Kader, Cheryl, “‘The Very House of Difference’: Zami, Audre Lorde’s Lesbian-Centered Text” in Critical Essays: Gay and Lesbian Writers of Color, edited by Emmanuel S. Nelson, New York: Haworth Press, 1993 Keating, AnaLouise, “Making ‘Our Shattered Faces Whole’: The Black Goddess and Audre Lorde’s Revision of Patriarchal Myth”, Frontiers, 13/1 (1992): 20–33 Keating, AnaLouise, Women Reading Women Writing: Self-Invention in Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldua and Audre Lorde, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996 King, Katie, “Audre Lorde’s Lacquered Layerings: The Lesbian Bar as a Site of Literary Production” in New Lesbian Criticism: Literary and Cultural Readings, edited by Sally Munt, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992 Lorde, Audre, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, New York: The Crossing Press, 1984 Martin, Biddy, “Lesbian Identity and Autobiographical Difference[s]” in Life / Lines: Theorizing Women’s Autobiography, edited by Bella Brodzki and Celeste Schenck, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988 Olson, Lester C., “On the Margins of Rhetoric: Audre Lorde Transforming Silence into Language and Action”, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 83/1 (1997): 49–70 Prosser, Jay, Second Skins! The Body Narratives of Transsexuality, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998 Provost, Kara, “Becoming Afrekete: The Trickster in the Work of Audre Lorde”, MELUS, 20/4 (1995): 45–60 Raynaud, Claudine, “‘A Nutmeg Nestled Inside Its Covering of Mace’: Audre Lorde’s Zami” in Life / Lines: Theorizing Women’s Autobiography, edited by Bella Brodzki and Celeste Schenck, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988 Smith, Barbara, “The Truth That Never Hurts: Black Lesbians in Fiction in the 1980s” in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, edited by Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991 Wilson, Anna, “Audre Lorde and the African-American Tradition: When the Family is Not Enough” in New Lesbian Criticism: Literary and Cultural Readings, edited by Sally Munt, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992

Loss, Bereavement, and Life Writing Of the many forms of loss recognized by clinical practitioners – loss through death or permanent separation, loss of health, of body functions or parts, loss of home or country, loss of idealized self-image or of an important component of identity, loss of ideals, dreams, or hopes – each occasioning a parallel grieving process, bereavement is the one universal. In autobiography proper it is an experience among others, although exceptional circumstances may make it life-determining, like the successive losses of fiancé, best friend, and only brother in World War I recorded in Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth (1933). But it becomes the central theme in a whole category of life writing

that would not otherwise be undertaken: the bereavement memoir, often by individuals who would not otherwise be moved to write. Untimely or exceptionally cruel deaths give rise to a sense of outrage that needs to be heard. A parent seeks to come to terms with the loss of a child, a spouse to exorcize the pain of a partner’s dying, or, more and more frequently, the terminally ill themselves set out to record and thereby give meaning to the process of dying. Alice James’s 1890s diary anticipates Audre Lorde’s Cancer Journals (1980) among many accounts of terminal breast cancer which, like Paul Monette’s Borrowed Time (1988) and other AIDS memoirs, form part of a growing collection of autobiographical writings that deal with the premature ending of a life and the mourning of self-loss. In such “autothanatographies” – to adapt a term coined by Nancy K. Miller (1994) – the making public of private pain finds justification in the consciousness of bearing witness to a collective suffering that might otherwise pass unheard. Differing from the traditional ars moriendi accounts of exemplary deaths (of which Augustine’s narration of his mother’s death in Book IX of the Confessions is the classic example), many recent narratives of dying contain a search for meaning in a secular framework, explicitly rejecting the consolations of religion. Thus Simone de Beauvoir on the final page of Une mort très douce (1964; A Very Easy Death), having mercilessly documented the details of her mother’s death from cancer, concludes: “All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation.” Here, as for Augustine, the experience of bereavement tests and consolidates an attitude towards death. While de Beauvoir is taken aback by a grief she had not expected to feel, given her mother’s age and her own frankly acknowledged daughterly ambivalence, Augustine attempts to restrain his grief as a proof of his detachment from worldly love, expressing a sense of failure at being unable to prevent himself weeping. His response must now testify to Christian hope in contrast to the overwhelming grief and depression he had experienced prior to his conversion on the death of a close friend (Book 4). While Monica’s death is the occasion for her son to proclaim his love of God and faith in resurrection, other Christian autobiographers wrestle with doubt, anger, and despair. In an intimate journal (published posthumously as her Autobiography, 1899) the Victorian writer Margaret Oliphant (who had already lost three children in infancy) struggles to see the workings of Providence in the death of her ten-year-old daughter. Trying to imagine her in the company of angels, Oliphant can only picture the child calling for Mamma. In A Grief Observed (1961), a pseudonymously published examination of his response to his wife’s death from cancer (often cited in clinical literature for its anatomy of the phases of bereavement), even the devout C.S. Lewis momentarily considers the possibility that God is a “Cosmic Sadist”, commenting “Sometimes it is hard not to say ‘God forgive God’.” The experience of bereavement may be recorded in the immediate intensity of grief like Oliphant’s or Lewis’s, or retrospectively as a shock long past yet felt to have reverberated through life, like Virginia Woolf’s recollection of her mother’s deathbed in “A Sketch of the Past” (written 1939–40), or Thomas De Quincey’s account in his Suspira de Profundis (1845) of the death in childhood of a beloved older sister. (Both writers exemplify the connection noted in clinical literature

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between childhood bereavement and a literary vocation.) While de Quincey imparts dramatic, even mythic, coloration to the memory, Woolf tries to disentangle the histrionic from the authentic. Retrospective accounts of childhood loss perhaps more than others seek to comprehend what cannot be fully grasped at the time. With recent bereavement, the most pressing motive is often to exorcize traumatic images of pain and physical deterioration or the feelings of guilt, resentment, and inadequacy that haunt survivors. The bereaved are often counselled to give expression to their feelings in writing, the goal being recovery in the double sense of the term – to return to normality through the expression and healing of pain but also to recapture and fix the presence of the dead person, although C.S. Lewis fears the simulacrum here. When mourning is repressed or prohibited, grief itself must be recovered if it is not to take pathological forms. Robert Graves’s World War I memoir, Goodbye to All That (1929), illustrates the loss of ability to grieve as violent death becomes the norm. In the concentration camps, where the scale and horror of death, coupled with the struggle to survive, made mourning impossible, survivors were burdened with a lifelong obligation to mourn those who died. Of his father’s death in Buchenwald, Elie Wiesel wrote, “There were no prayers at his grave. No candles were lit to his memory. His last word was my name. A summons to which I did not respond.” Thus his La Nuit (1958; Night) stands in lieu of the unperformed rites of mourning. Under any circumstances bereavement is an out-of-theordinary experience confronting the survivor with unfamiliar emotions of frightening intensity or equally disturbing numbness. Reviewing Leon Wieseltier’s Kaddish (1998), a personal exploration of the Jewish mourning ritual, Adam Phillips remarks that Wieseltier’s purpose in writing is not “to find a way out, or even a way through, but a way into what has happened and is happening to him”. This is especially true for the professional writer for whom every experience is potential material and for whom writing is the natural response to all events, as de Beauvoir notes defensively in a later autobiographical work (Tout Compte fait, 1972; All Said and Done) against accusations that she had exploited her mother’s passing. Yet to write at such a moment may seem inappropriate and self-indulgent, or futile in the face of death. On the loss of her last surviving child in adulthood, Oliphant wrote: “And now here I am all alone. I cannot write any more.” But since, as Phillips comments, “the only taboo, where grief is concerned, is on not experiencing it: not feeling it and performing it appropriately”, to write one’s grief may be selfvalidating. Autobiographical accounts serve as a guide for others (both the bereaved and those concerned with them) to the emotional states and phases of the grieving process, offering reassurance that what is being experienced falls within norms. Even for non-bereaved readers, such accounts are therapeutic – providing catharsis for other unexpressed or imperfectly mourned losses, a sense of participation in collective mourning for the victims of war, genocide, or epidemic, or a potentially transforming confrontation with mortality. Driven by the modern preoccupation with authenticity, much recent life writing on bereavement displays a frankness about the deceased and the survivor’s emotions that would have shocked an earlier readership. The influence of a psychotherapeutic ethic of truth to one’s innermost feelings is especially

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marked in mid-life memoirs of the death of a parent. Selfexploration is as much the goal here as memorialization of the dead; biographic and autobiographic impulses conjoin under the stimulus of parental death, as Blake Morrison’s And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1993) eloquently demonstrates. But just as the pieties of exemplary death have been displaced by a new insistence on the medical facts of dying, eulogizing the departed has given way to anatomizing the ambivalences and unresolved conflicts of the parent–child relationship. Such increased openness has not gone unquestioned. To write about dying is to approach the most veiled and intimate zone of life (after sex). When the indignities of age – a parent’s incontinence or ravaged body – are exposed to the reader’s gaze, as in Une mort très douce or Phillip Roth’s Patrimony (1991), a previous boundary of reticence is crossed. When a dead parent’s private life becomes the subject of speculation or revelation, as in Morrison’s memoir or Susan Cheever’s Home before Dark (1984), frankness verges on violation. Nancy K. Miller’s Bequest & Betrayal (1996), a study of narratives of parental death interwoven with fragments of a memoir of her own parents’ deaths, explores this question, marking a new self-consciousness about the writing of loss, its conventions, strategies, and limits. Yet self-consciousness was there from the outset in Augustine’s reflections on grief in the Confessions, now inserted into the discourse of postmodernity in Circonfession (1991), Jacques Derrida’s meditation upon his own mother’s death. The contrast between such a work and conventional or non-literary expressions of bereavement could not be greater, but each initiates its readership into the final and inescapable life passage. Ann Pearson See also Elegies; Epitaphs; Obituaries; Suicide and Life Writing; Trauma and Life Writing; Survival and Life Writing

Further Reading Aberbach, David, Surviving Trauma: Loss, Literature and Psychoanalysis, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1989 Beauvoir, Simone de, A Very Easy Death, translated by Patrick O’Brian, New York: Putnam, and London: Deutsch, 1966 Bennington, Geoffrey and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida, Paris: Seuil, 1991; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 (contains Derrida’s Circonfession) Bowlby, John, Loss: Sadness and Depression, vol. 3 of Attachment and Loss, London: Hogarth Press and The Institute of Psychoanalysis, and New York: Basic Books, 1980 Couser, G. Thomas, Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and LifeWriting, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997 Danieli, Yael, “Mourning in Survivors and Children of Survivors of the Nazi Holocaust: The Role of Group and Community Modalities” in The Problem of Loss and Mourning: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, edited by David R. Dietrich and Peter C. Shabad, Madison, Wisconsin: International Universities Press, 1989 Egan, Susanna, review of Nancy K. Miller’s Bequest & Betrayal: Memoirs of a Parent’s Death, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 12/2 (1997): 279–81 Egan, Susanna, “Death and Its Points of Departure” in her Mirror Talk: Genres of Crisis in Contemporary Autobiography, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999 Langer, Lawrence L., The Age of Atrocity: Death in Modern Literature, Boston: Beacon Press, 1978 Lewis, C.S., A Grief Observed, London: Faber, and New York: Seabury Press, 1961 Miller, Nancy K., “Representing Others: Gender and the Subjects of Autobiography”, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural

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Studies, 6/1 (1994): 1–27 Miller, Nancy K., Bequest & Betrayal: Memoirs of a Parent’s Death, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996 Oliphant, Margaret, The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant: The Complete Text, edited by Elizabeth Jay, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990 Phillips, Adam, “Commanded to Mourn”, London Review of Books, 21/4 (18 February 1999): 3–6 Raphael, Beverley, The Anatomy of Bereavement, New York: Basic Books, 1983 Rosenfeld, Alvin H., A Double Dying: Reflections on Holocaust Literature, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980 Wiesel, Elie, Night, translated by Stella Rodway, London: MacGibbon and Kee, and New York: Hill and Wang, 1960 Wieseltier, Leon, Kaddish, New York: Knopf, 1998; London: Picador, 1999

Love, Sexuality, and Life Writing “Through the first year or two of my marriage, in every depth of pain and loss and loneliness, yours was the name my heart cried – not his. I loved you better than any one, in those days when I had a heart to love and ache.” This cry from the heart was written down by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in a letter to her friend Martha Lane Luther at the end of the 19th century. A hundred years later the biographer Ann J. Lane, in To Herland and Beyond: The Life and Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1990), commented of this letter to a woman friend, “Love relationships between women were so common in that century that there were specific terms used to describe them: ‘Boston marriage’, ‘sentimental friendship’, ‘the love of kindred spirits’.” She adds that while nowadays we are inclined to assume sexual passion in such an intense love relation, for a correct understanding of Gilman’s declaration to her friend it is important to remember that in the 19th century eroticism was defined almost entirely in heterosexual terms with little acknowledgement of female sexuality. While it is arguable that there were lesbian undercurrents in many women’s apparently platonic friendships, it is clear that love and sexuality are by no means necessarily linked together, even unconsciously, but are ideas that evolve under the influence of cultural, social, and even economic factors. Auto/biography has played a crucial role in understanding the development of the relationship between love and sexuality, beginning with the Confessions (written 397–400) of Augustine, the church father. This first Western autobiographical text postulates a connection, inspired by Christian thinking, between sex and sin. Where the author narrates his youth and formative years, we read of his conversion from a sensual reaper of life’s joys and a scholar rooted in antiquity to a Christian ascetic. Love for God was outside the bonds of the family and outside the realm of material production, just as later was courtly love, where women were revered as spiritual beings. More complicated is the relationship between love and sexuality in the first modern autobiography based on Augustine’s Confessions, the Confessions (1782–89) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In this work, Rousseau attempts to transform each of his desires into discourse, in an effort to get at the truth about himself. In doing so, he does not view sexuality as a thing inherently sinful, but as something inevitably connected with a

certain love ethic and with the founding of a family. Not only is sexuality meant to be used for the “natural” cohabitation between husband and wife, but sexuality and love have to be intrinsically linked, according to Rousseau. In a manner of speaking, sexuality should make love present. It is for this reason that in his Confessions Rousseau grapples openly with his habit of masturbating, a habit that he regards as unnatural, a contingent evil coming from without to affect the integrity of the subject. Rousseau belongs to a tradition of writing about sexuality that lies at the root of our modern thinking, and had its own source in the 17th century. This aims towards consciousness of our confusion about lust, a confusion hard to perceive and hard to put into words. This lust is frightening and fascinating at the same time: Enjoyment! Is such a thing made for man? Ah! if I had ever in my life tasted the delights of love even once in their plenitude, I do not imagine that my frail existence would have been sufficient for them, I would have been dead in the act (Book 8) To Rousseau, ideal love constitutes a form of heterosexual love in which the woman submits to the man. It is for this reason that in Emile (1762), he counsels the encouragement of natural female docility in young girls: “For, since to women dependence is a natural state, girls feel born to obedience.” In addition, nature has equipped women with a chastity that saves men from excessive abandonment to their feelings of lust. Thus, for the first time in history, through Rousseau’s passionate longing to submerge himself in undistorted nature, and his belief in the naturally complementary desire inherent in the sexuality between men and women, a philosophy of love and sexuality was expressed – one which, in Freud’s work, was to be formulated as the basis of civilization and its discontent. This discontent is caused by the linkage of desire to prohibition. Rousseau’s Confessions illustrate the claim expounded by Foucault some 200 years later in his theoretical treatise, Histoire de la sexualité (1978). Foucault claims that whereas Western culture is inclined to regard itself as a culture in which sexuality has been repressed and silenced, it has in fact been continually discussed in the confession box, and more generally through society’s injunctions and prohibitions. The way in which this discursive practice materialized from the experience of sexuality and love in late 19th-century Europe is aptly elucidated by Ernst Pawel in The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka (1984). The indifference that in his diaries Kafka claims to feel towards sexuality (“As a boy I used to be as innocent and uninterested in matters sexual as I am now with regard to, for instance, the theory of relativity”) is analysed as suppressed fear by Pawel. Admittedly, such fear is understandable as a reaction to the over-heated atmosphere in late 19thcentury Europe with its omnipresent sexuality and its tension between the extremes of tolerance and suppression. Not only in literature but in everyday goings-on, Eros and Thanatos were closely interrelated in Prague. Against that background, Kafka was never able to cope with the antithesis between the beautiful and the beastly. On 14 August 1913, he summarized his experiences in this respect in a single phrase: “coition as a sanction against the joy of being together”.

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It is in this undissolved tension between suppression and excess that, in Britain, the seed of the patriarchal Victorian family lies. We read in the works of Virginia Woolf and many other auto/biographers about the excesses that were the outcome of these injunctions and prohibitions (not always imposed successfully) with regard to contacts between the sexes. Louise DeSalvo caused quite a stir with her analysis of Woolf’s writings (Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work, 1989), in which she pointed to Woolf’s understanding of the patriarchal Victorian family as an abusive system. As early as in her youthful stories for the family newspaper Hyde Park Gate News (1892), Woolf demonstrated her insights into the tendency in men towards sexually exploitative behaviour, including rape and incest – not as deviations from the ethics of family care, but rather as logical outgrowths of how the patriarchal family is organized. As DeSalvo puts it: “No wonder the world was frightening, for society is not what held the passions in place: it was the cover behind which the passions ran wild.” Against the background of a sexuality organized along gender-specific lines, where the man, whether guiltily or not, is the trespasser, and the woman, whether forced or not, acts as the guardian of limits, the appearance of life writings in which women describe their active feelings of love and sexuality must be described as, at the outset, subversive. It was not without good reason that Anaïs Nin’s diaries (published from 1966) caused a sensation, since, in her dialogues with her psychoanalyst and elsewhere, she speaks openly of her female sexuality, and, in connection with this, of her unwillingness to emulate her mother in having to feel dependent on one and the same male for an entire lifetime. If it is transgressive for white women to articulate their sexuality autobiographically, for many groups of black women this is true to a greater degree, not least because of the history of slavery and colonialism and its concomitant cult of true womanhood. As Hazel Carby eloquently points out, the ideology of true womanhood was as racialized a concept in relation to white women as it was in its exclusion of black womanhood. True womanhood referred to the purity, the virtue, and the chastity of “(white) women”. Their passions were thought to concern their homes, their children, and their domestic duties. By contrast, the female slave’s ability to survive rape and degradation was made to connote at the very least a less sensitive spirit than that of white women; in the worst cases it resulted in the exclusion of black women from the category of womanhood altogether. Although the cult of true womanhood did not remain the dominant ideology, it should be remembered that the exclusion of black women from prevailing codes of Western morality continued throughout the 19th century, and its echoes are to be heard in life writings of black and white women throughout the following decades. Caught in such tension, Harriet Jacobs in her Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) attempts to justify why she deliberately chose to bear two children out of marriage, to a white man who was not her owner: “It seems less degrading to give one’s self, than to submit to compulsion. There’s something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you except that which he gains by kindness and attachment.” But it was only in 1982 that Audre Lorde published Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, in which she explicitly discusses and ponders her strategies for a complex and contradictory self-

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representation in terms of gender, race, class, sexuality, and disability, in order “to move history beyond nightmare into structures for the future”. Rosemarie Buikema Further Reading Badinter, Elisabeth, L’Amour en plus: histoire de l’amour maternal (XVIIe–XXe siècle), Paris: Flammarion, 1980 Barthes, Roland, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, translated by Richard Howard, New York: Hill and Wang, 1978; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990 Beauvoir, Simone de, Lettres à Nelson Algren: un amour transatlantique, 1947–1964, Paris: Gallimard, 1997 Carby, Hazel V., Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987 Du Plessix Gray, Francine, Rage and Fire: A Life of Louise Colet, Pioneer Feminist, Literary Star, Flaubert’s Muse, London: Penguin, and New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994 Freud, Sigmund, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, translated by James Strachey, London: Imago, 1949; New York: Basic Books, 1962 Kafka, Franz, Briefe an Milena, New York: Schocken Books, 1952 Lorde, Audre, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” in her Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Trumansburg, New York: Crossing Press, 1984 Nicolson, Nigel, Portrait of a Marriage, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, and New York: Atheneum, 1973 Pawel, Ernst, The Nightmare of Franz Kafka, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1984 Ramphele, Mamphela, A Life, Capetown: David Philip, 1995 Steedman, Carolyn, Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives, London: Virago Press, 1986; New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1987 Weeks, Jeffrey, Sexuality and Its Discontents: Meanings, Myths, and Modern Sexualities, London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985

Loyola, Saint Ignatius of

1491–1556

Spanish founder of Jesuit order, and autobiographer Religious convert, founder of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), author of the profoundly influential Ejercicios espirituales (1548; Spiritual Exercises), Inigo de Loyola was born in 1491 in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa in northern Spain. As a young man, he served as a cleric in the house of Juan Velásques de Cuéllar, treasurer of the kingdom of Castile. Intense, competitive, even contentious, fond of gambling, women, and swordplay, Ignatius eventually found himself at the age of 30 an officer in the Spanish army, defending the town of Pamplona against French forces. A serious leg injury suffered during the battle resulted in a long period of convalescence, during which time he read a copy of the life of Christ and a book on the saints (only because the romance novels he requested were not available). His conversion began with the realization that thinking of the saints and Christ brought about an inner peace and satisfaction that was utterly lacking when he thought of worldly rewards such as fame and glory. After making his confession and renouncing all material possessions, Ignatius travelled to Jerusalem, Barcelona, Paris, and finally Rome, where he would spend years composing the Constitutiones (Constitutions) of the Society of Jesus. In 1544–45, Ignatius recorded on a daily basis his process of discernment during prayer. Together with the

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Autobiografía (Reminiscences), a selective biography written up by an adoring scribe from Ignatius’s own spoken narrative, and a voluminous collection of letters (the total number approaches 7000), the Diário espirituel (Spiritual Diary) constitutes a remarkable and varied collection of life writing. Besides Ignatius himself, we have the Jesuit officers Jerónimo Nadal and Luis Gonçalves da Câmara to thank for the Reminiscences (1553, 1555). Nadal recognized that intimate familiarity with the events of Ignatius’s life would be of immense benefit to future generations of spiritual seekers, and Gonçalves da Câmara took on the task of pleading with a reluctant Ignatius to commit his personal history to posterity. Although the text is commonly classified as “autobiography”, many readers remain unconvinced; transcribing Ignatius’s spoken words inevitably called for greater editorial selectivity than is typical for the genre. In addition, the Reminiscences covers only a 17-year period of Ignatius’s life, from 1521 to 1538, and so leaves out many of his early and late experiences. Nevertheless, the essence of Ignatius’s distinctive style – one that vacillates between the vivid and the cryptic – comes across beautifully, as does the future saint’s heroism, humility, commitment to service, and love of God. Though widely read on its initial publication, the Reminiscences fell into oblivion for more than 300 years. Today, the text is used in Jesuit training sessions, and more generally in connection with the giving of the Spiritual Exercises. Contrasting sharply with the sketchy and idiosyncratically organized Reminiscences, the Spiritual Diary focuses on Ignatius’s intense internal experiences during mass over a tenmonth period. The psychological tension so characteristic of the saint – reflected in his relentless questioning of motives, his selfcriticism, and his quest for certain knowledge of God’s will – here finds an external object, as he spends a great deal of time and energy debating whether the Society of Jesus should accept outside income. Although the elliptic and often repetitive style of the Diary makes for strenuous reading, it is Ignatius’s ability to convey his mystical experiences and spiritual consolations on the printed page that accounts for the power of the text. “Once the mass had started”, he writes in a typical entry, “the devotion was so great and tears so numerous that, as it proceeded, I began to wonder if with more masses I should not become blind in one eye, for it was aching badly owing to the tears” (4 March 1544). If one is not moved by Ignatius’s emotional response to contemplation of the divine, at the very least one must be impressed with his sincerity. The 12 volumes of Ignatius Loyola’s correspondence present yet another side of the saint, or rather, other sides, as the bulk of his letters can be divided up fairly easily according to the predominant aspect of his persona. There is Ignatius the supportive and gracious friend, Ignatius the spiritual guide, Ignatius the public figure, and, especially later in life, Ignatius the leader and official spokesperson for the Society of Jesus. From 1547 onwards, the number of letters sent out in Ignatius’s name per year increased dramatically, largely because of the assistance of one Juan Polanco, Secretary to the Society in Rome for over 25 years. Comparing Ignatius’s life writing with his masterwork, the Spiritual Exercises, one begins to appreciate his unique ability to fashion a popular and practical guidebook for the masses out of personal religious experience. Steven Schneider

Biography Born Inigo de Loyola in Loyola, Guipúzcoa province, Spain, 1491, into a noble family of Basque descent. Educated at home by the village priest. Entered the service of a relative, Juan Velázques de Cuéllar, treasurer of Castile and royal major domo at court, at the age of 16. Travelled with his master and the royal court around Castile. Enlisted in the viceroy’s army after Juan Velázques’s death, 1517. Served as a captain under the Duke of Najera, defending Navarre against the French, 1517–21. Severely wounded in the leg in the defence of Pamplona, 1520. Convalesced at home; read the lives of Christ and the saints and determined to imitate them. Renounced military life and went on a pilgrimage to Montserrat in Catalonia, 1522. Spent a year in Manresa, following a programme of prayer and penance, and conceived the idea of a “spiritual militia” in the service of the church. Began writing his Ejercicios espirituales (1548; Spiritual Exercises) for the use of directors on spiritual retreats. Stayed in Barcelona on his way to Rome, and visited hospitals and prisons, 1523. Embarked on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, receiving Pope Adrian VI’s blessing in Rome en route. Returned to Barcelona from Jerusalem, via Italy, 1524. Studied grammar at the University of Barcelona. Studied logic, theology, and physics at Acalá University, 1526; also begged for alms for the poor and taught the Spiritual Exercises. With four companions, including Francis Xavier, founded the Society of Jesus, and taught Christian doctrine in the city. Studied Latin grammar, classical texts, theology, and literature at the University of Paris to prepare for a preaching career, 1528–34 (licentiate 1533, MA 1534). Went to Rome with his companions, now nine in number, to seek papal approval for the new order, 1537. Granted canonical aproval, 1540. (The Society took a vow of total obedience to the pope and to serve when and where needed; it focused on education as a tool for reform in the church.) Ordained priest and settled in Rome, 1540. First missionaries sent out, to Japan, India, and Brazil, 1540. Elected first general of the Society of Jesus, 1541; began drafting the Constitutions. Began narrating his autobiography, 1553. Died in Rome, 31 July 1556. (Beatified 1609, canonized 1622.)

Selected Writings Diário espirituel, n.d.; with Autobiografía, edited by R.P. Victoriano Larranaga, vol.1 of Obras completas de San Ignacio de Loyola, 1947; as The Spiritual Diary of St Ignatius: February 2, 1544 to February 27, 1545, translated by William J. Young, 1958; as Inigo Discernment Log-book: The Spiritual Diary of Saint Ignatius Loyola, edited and translated by Joseph A. Munitz, 1987; selections in Personal Writings, edited and translated by Joseph A. Munitiz and Philip Endean, 1996 Autobiografía, transcribed by Gonçalves da Câmara, 1553–55; with Diário espirituel, edited by R.P. Victoriano Larranaga, vol.1 of Obras completas de San Ignacio de Loyola, 1947; as St Ignatius’ Own Story, translated by William J. Young, 1956; as The Autobiography of St Ignatius Loyola, edited by John C. Olim, translated by Joseph F. O’Callaghan, 1974; as A Pilgrim’s Testament, translated by Parmananda R. Divarkar, 1995; selections as Reminiscences, in Personal Writings, edited and translated by Joseph A. Munitiz and Philip Endean, 1996 Ignatius von Loyola: Briefwechsel mit Frauen, edited by Hugo Rahner, 1956; as Letters to Women, translated by Kathleen Pond and A.H. Weetman, 1960 Personal Writings: Reminiscences, Spiritual Diary, Select Letters Including the Text of the Spiritual Exercises (selections), edited and translated by Joseph A. Munitiz and Philip Endean, 1996

Further Reading Barthes, Roland, Sade, Fourier, Loyola, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1971; translated by Richard Miller, New York: Hill and Wang, 1976; London: Jonathan Cape, 1977 Bertrand, Dominique, La Politique de Saint Ignace de Loyola: l’analyse sociale, Paris: Cerf, 1985 Caraman, Philip, Ignatius Loyola: A Biography of the Founder of the Jesuits, San Francisco: Harper and Row, and London: Collins, 1990 Dalmases, Cándido de, Ignatius of Loyola; Founder of the Jesuits, His Life and Work, translated by Jerome Aixala, St Louis, Missouri:

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Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1985 Divarkar, Parman and a R., Ablaze with God: A Reading of the Memoirs of Ignatius of Loyola, Anand, India: Giyarut Sahitya Prakash, 1990 Egan, Harvey D., Ignatius Loyola the Mystic, Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, 1987 Lonsdale, David, Eyes to See, Ears to Hear: An Introduction to Ignatian Spirituality, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1990 Meissner, W.W., Ignatius of Loyola: The Psychology of a Saint, New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 1992 Purcell, Mary, The First Jesuit: St Ignatius Loyola, Dublin: Gill, 1956; Westminster, Maryland: Newman Press, 1957 Rahner, Karl and Paul Imhof, Ignatius of Loyola, translated by Rosaleen Ockenden, London: Collins, 1979 Rahner, Hugo and Leonard von Matt, St Ignatius of Loyola: A Pictorial Biography, translated by John Murray, Chicago: Regnery, and London: Longmans Green, 1956 Ravier, André, Ignatius of Loyola and the Founding of the Society of Jesus, translated by Maura Daly, Joan Daly and Carson Daly, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987 Tellechea Idígoras, José I., Ignatius of Loyola: The Pilgrim Saint, edited and translated by Cornelius Michael Buckley, Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1994

Lu Xun

1881–1936

Chinese fiction writer, translator, diarist, and letter writer As the most admired and respected writer in 20th-century China, Lu Xun has had an indelible influence in the fields of fiction, essay, translation, and literary theory. Life writing, however, was not a genre that Lu Xun cultivated with the same degree of care and diligence. He once wrote to a friend: “I do not want to write my autobiography, nor am I enthused to have others write my biography, because my life is too ordinary.” Consciously or not, Lu Xun did produce a considerable collection of recognizable life writings. This includes one brief sketch of himself, a few autobiographical essays, two volumes of diaries, and nearly 1000 letters. Lu Xun is not a readable diarist; his cable-like succinctness and bookkeeping accuracy can be of interest only to expert readers. His letters to family, friends, and colleagues often continue his published social and cultural criticism but occasionally illuminate his complicated personality, rarely seen otherwise. There is no evidence that Lu Xun intended to publish the letters except those related to Xu Guangping, Lu Xun’s second wife, and the publication of these as Liangdi shu [Letters from Two Places] in 1932 was an unprecedented event in modern Chinese life writing. “Letters from Two Places” collects letters between Lu Xun and Xu Guangping (78 by Lu Xun and 82 by Xu). It records their development from acquaintances, friends, lovers, to husband and wife. Because of their great differences in age and status (when they first met, Lu Xun was 42, married, a professor and famous writer, Xu a 24-year-old student in her second year of college), Lu Xun and Xu’s relationship was under tremendous social pressure at the start, and was conveniently used by Lu Xun’s enemies to launch a character attack, about which Lu Xun had kept an un-Lu-Xun-like silence until the publication of “Letters from Two Places”. In the preface, Lu Xun explains his motive for publishing the collection as “to reveal the truth” about this love with Xu to the whole world, and most import-

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antly, to let their only child understand his parents’ difficult love experience. The “truth” revealed in “Letters from Two Places” is that Lu Xun and Xu Guangping’s love is not an affair of candlelight, or carnal pleasure. Rather, it is a love story of two extraordinary individuals embracing each other because of mutual respect and a shared commitment to China’s cultural renaissance. The letters vividly portray how Lu Xun and Xu trod gingerly from the roles of teacher /student to those of lovers, how Lu Xun hesitated at length before the demands of fame and morality, how Xu persevered and sacrificed, and finally how they both dealt vigilantly with the burdens of work, family, and social responsibility after marriage. For those readers who are familiar with Lu Xun’s sarcastic and sombre image in his writings and in public, it is also refreshing to have a glimpse of Lu Xun’s jovial side, for example, his frolicking with Xu at drinking games and his mischievous attempts at giving Xu various nicknames. Any meaningful reading of “Letters from Two Places” must take into account the shadowy figure of Zhu An, Lu Xun’s first wife through an arranged marriage by his mother. Lu Xun called Zhu An his “mother’s gift” and never consummated the marriage. It is clear that Lu Xun harboured no personal enmity towards Zhu An, for she herself was a victim of a dying tradition, but in “Letters from Two Places” Zhu An becomes the very symbol of traditional morality and a mother’s will with which Lu Xun is trying but unable to break resolutely and cleanly. Although never mentioned by name, her presence is felt in every sentence, hiding behind a façade of ambiguous references and double-talk, particularly in the early letters in which Lu Xun and Xu even feel the need to address each other in the third person. Lu Xun’s momentary vacillation before the power of tradition of course does not mitigate his earlier ascetic criticism of Chinese culture in his short stories and essays, but it does provide a window into the psychology of this very complex man. Love triumphed in the end, even if it had left in its trail some bitter fruits. In affirming the belief that “I am capable of love”, Lu Xun experienced the sensation of liberation that he so diligently trumpeted, while in his admission of weakness he revealed the greatness of a man living through the difficult transition from the old to the new. Dian Li Biography Born Zhou Shuren in Shaoxing, Zhejiang (Chekiang) province, China, 25 September 1881, into a family of scientists; older brother of Zhou Zuoren. Received a classical Chinese education based on Confucian texts. Studied at the Jiangnan Naval Academy, Nanjing, 1898–99; School of Mining and Railways, Nanjing, 1900–02. Won a government scholarship to study medicine in Japan: studied the Japanese language at Kobun College, Tokyo, 1902–04, then medicine at Sendai Medical School, Japan, 1904–06. Studied literature privately in Japan, with the aim of arousing the Chinese people to the need for revolutionary change, 1906–09. Arranged marriage to Zhu An, 1906. Taught in Hangzhou, 1909–10, and Shaoxing, 1910–11. Served in the Ministry of Education, Beijing, 1912–26. Launched his literary career with the short story Kuangren riji (1918; Diary of a Madman). Contributed to various journals, including Xin qingnian [New Youth], from 1918. Wrote 26 short stories between 1918 and 1925, collected in Cry and Hesitation; his most successful book, The True Story of Ah Q, published 1921. Lecturer in Chinese literature at Beijing University, 1920–26, Beijing Women’s Normal College, from 1923, and Xiamen (Amoy) University, 1926. First met Xu Guanping, whom he later married, 1923. Forced into hiding after the government massacred

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demonstrating students in Beijing, 1926. Taught briefly at the Sun Yatsen University, Canton, 1927; resigned his position in protest at the Kuomintang regime’s brutal purge of leftist elements. Subsequently lived in the international settlement of Shanghai. Founder, Yusi [Thread of Conversation], 1924, and Mangyuan [The Wilderness], 1925; co-founder, Zhaohua she [Dawn Blossoms Press], 1928. Editor of Benliu [The Torrent], 1928. Began to cooperate with the communists, 1929, but never joined the Communist Party. Founder member, League of Left-Wing Writers, 1930; China Freedom League, 1930. Member, League for the Defence of Civic Rights, 1933. Editor of Yiwen [Translation], 1934. Translated many works by Russian, German, and Japanese writers into Chinese. Also produced woodblock engravings. Died in Shanghai, 19 October 1936.

Selected Writings Liangdi shu [Letters from Two Places], 1932; as Lu Xun Jingsong tongxin ji: Liangdi shu de yuanxin [The Correspondence between Lu Xun and Xu Guangping: The Original Version of Letters from Two Places], 1984 Lu Xun xiansheng quanji (complete works), 20 vols, 1938, revised 1973; supplements edited by Tang Tao, 2 vols, 1942–52; his original works republished as Lu Xun quanji, 10 vols, 1956–58 Lu Xun Shuxinji (correspondence), 1946, revised in 3 vols, 1976; edited by Xu Guangping, 1953; selection translated as Letters, 1973 Lu Xun riji (diary), 1951, revised in 3 vols, 1976 Selected Works, translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang, 4 vols, 1956–60

Further Reading Hsü, Raymond S.W., The Style of Lu Hsün: Vocabulary and Usage, Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1980 Lee, Leo Ou-fan, Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987 Lyell, William A., Lu Hsun’s Vision of Reality, Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1976 Pusey, James Reeve, Lu Xun and Evolution, Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1998 Wang Shiqing, Lu Xun: A Biography, edited by Bonnie S. McDougall and Tang Bowen, translated by Zhang Peiji, Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1984 Weiss, Ruth F., Lu Xun: A Chinese Writer for All Times, Beijing: New World Press, 1985

Luthuli, Chief Albert

c.1898–1967

South African political activist and autobiographer Luthuli was the first African to win the Nobel Peace prize, and his main contribution to South African life writing is his autobiography, Let My People Go (1962), in which he tells the story of his Christian upbringing, his education in missionary schools, his role as a teacher at Adams College, and his involvement in leadership roles as chief of the Groutville mission reserve and President General of the African National Congress (ANC). As in the political writings of most of the members of the missioneducated African intelligentsia of his time, the controlling vision in Luthuli’s autobiography reflects a combination of Christian values and liberal principles. As he strikingly remarks in Let My People Go, his involvement in politics was motivated by his Christian convictions: “It became clear to me that the Christian faith was not a private affair without relevance to society. It was, rather, belief which equipped us in a unique way to meet the challenges of our society.”

As shown in his autobiography, Luthuli’s religious faith reinforced his belief in non-violence and his optimistic view that whites would somehow undergo a change of heart about racist policies and oppressive government. His conscious combination of the underpinning principles of liberal philosophy and the Christian religion conforms to a pattern set by the early leaders of the ANC, such as John Langalibalele Dube and Pixley Ka Izaka Seme, both of whom conceived of their roles as political leaders in patently moralistic terms. As with Alan Paton’s two volumes of autobiography, Towards the Mountain (1980) and Journey Continued (1988), Luthuli’s account of his life in Let My People Go is basically the story of moral growth and maturation for the protagonist who undertakes a symbolic journey that leads to a heightened state of moral and political consciousness. The thematic concerns of Luthuli’s autobiography are in line with an established pattern in South African black life writing of using autobiography as a means of political protest, a tradition that includes Peter Abrahams’s Tell Freedom (1954), Es’kia [Ezekiel] Mphahlele’s Down Second Avenue (1959), and Bloke Modisane’s Blame Me on History (1963). However, as the autobiography of a political leader, Luthuli’s life story also exhibits thematic affinities with the life stories of prominent leaders such as Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom (1994), Z.K. Matthews’s Freedom for My People (1981), Carl Niehaus’s Fighting for Hope (1993), Joe Slovo’s The Unfinished Autobiography (1995), Helen Joseph’s Side by Side (1986), and Maggie Resha’s My Life in the Struggle (1991). While creative writers such as Abrahams and Mphahlele tend to emphasize the evolution of their literary talent in their autobiographies, political autobiographers focus almost exclusively on their involvement in resistance politics, and generally have made no other contribution to “literature” apart from their memoirs. In keeping with this trend, Luthuli devotes 13 of the 20 chapters of his autobiography to the crucial events in the various attempts of the ANC to bring about political change in South Africa. These include the Defiance Campaign of 1951, the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955, the treason trial of 1956, and numerous other political meetings and rallies in which important decisions and resolutions were taken. Thus, like most political autobiographies, Let My People Go has a significant historical dimension. As Luthuli explains in the preface, his autobiography would not have been written had it not been for the persistent efforts of Charles and Sheila Hooper, whom Luthuli describes as his “amanuenses”: Each of the Hoopers made independent records as I dictated to them what I had to say. Out of these records they compiled a first draft of the book, arranged – I fear it was not thus dictated – chronologically. To this draft I added my afterthoughts, occasional corrections, and this preface. Luthuli’s name also features prominently in praise-poetry (izibongo), another important mode of life writing in South Africa. The famous South African writer Alan Paton composed a moving tribute to Luthuli entitled “Praise Song for Luthuli”, which, although published as a written text, assumes the conventional form of a praise poem. Elizabeth Gunner and Mafika

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Gwala have also included a praise poem on Luthuli in their anthology Musho!: Zulu Popular Praises (1991). This long poem was composed and performed at Luthuli’s funeral in July 1967 by Nkosinathi Yengwa. The South African biographer Mary Benson published the only biography of Luthuli, Chief Albert Lutuli of South Africa (1963). Published four years before its subject’s death, the biography is comprehensive, detailed, and carefully researched. Thengani H. Ngwenya Biography Albert John Mvumbi Luthuli [Lutuli]. Born in Solusi mission station, near Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), c.1898. His father, a congregationalist church worker, evangelist, and interpreter, died soon after his birth. Returned with his mother to his family’s native country, South Africa, and went to live with an uncle in Groutville, near Durban. Attended Ohlange Institute school in Groutville, 1913–15. Trained as a teacher at Edendale, a Methodist teacher training college near Pietermaritzburg, 1915–17. Became principal of a small school in Blaauwbosch, Natal, 1917. Became lay preacher in Methodist church. Won scholarship to study at Adams Mission Station College, Natal, 1920–22. Taught at Adams College, 1922–35. Also founded Zulu Language and Cultural Society, taking on role of choirmaster and acting as secretary of the South African Football Association. Married Nokukhanya Bhengu, teacher and descendant of a Zulu chief, 1927: seven children. Elected chief of Umvoti Mission Reserve Zulu tribe, the Abasemakholweni, 1936. Delegate to International Missionary Council, India, 1938. Joined Natal chapter of the African National Congress (ANC), 1945. Became member of the Natives Representative Council, 1946. Travelled to United States, after apartheid policies imposed in South Africa, to warn of political crisis in the country, 1948. President of the Natal Provincial Division of the ANC, 1951. Mounted peaceful anti-apartheid protest, “Defiance Campaign”, 1952. Jailed in Natal. Refused to resign either his status as chief or his ANC position, and was removed from chieftaincy. Became national president of the ANC. Banned by the government from attending any gathering of more than three people. Re-elected president of the ANC, 1955. Arrested and imprisoned under the Suppression of Communism Act and tried for treason, 1956, but released in 1957. Travelled on speaking tour of Cape Province, 1959. Left ANC with Nelson Mandela, after failing to assume leadership, 1959. Burned pass-book publicly in protest at the apartheid pass laws and declared a national day of mourning after the Sharpeville massacre, 1960. Arrested, fined, and given a six-month suspended sentence; forced to retire to his farm in Natal province, 1960. Awarded Nobel Peace prize, 1960; received it in Oslo, Norway, 1961. Was offered sanctuary in the United States, but returned to South Africa. Died after being hit by a train near his home in Stanger, near Groutville, 21 July 1967.

Selected Writings Let My People Go (autobiography), 1962

Further Reading Abrahams, Peter, Tell Freedom, New York: Knopf, 1954; “complete edition”, London and Boston: Faber, 1981 Benson, Mary, The African Patriots: The Story of the African National Congress of South Africa, London: Faber, 1963; Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Press, 1964; revised as South Africa: The Struggle for a Birthright, Baltimore and Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966 Benson, Mary, Chief Albert Lutuli Of South Africa, London: Oxford University Press, 1963 Deane, Dee Shirley, Black South Africans: A Who’s Who – 57 Profiles of Natal’s Leading Blacks, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1978 Gerhart, Gail, Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978 Gunner, Liz and Mafika Gwala (editors), Musho!: Zulu Popular

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Praises, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, and East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1991 Joseph, Helen, Side by Side: The Autobiography of Helen Joseph, Johannesburg: Donker, New York: Morrow, and London: Zed, 1986 Lodge, Tom, Black Politics in South Africa since 1945, Johannesburg: Ravan Press, and London and New York: Longman, 1983 Luthuli, Albert, Luthuli: Speeches of Chief Albert John Luthuli, edited by E.S. Reddy, Durban: Madiba, 1991 Mandela, Nelson, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, Johannesburg: Macdonald Purnell, and Boston: Little Brown, 1994 Matthews, Z.K., Freedom for My People: The Autobiography of Z.K. Matthews, Southern Africa 1901 to 1968, Cape Town: David Philip, and London: Collings, 1981 Modisane, Bloke, Blame Me on History, London: Thames and Hudson, 1963; Johannesburg: Donker, 1986; New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990 Mphahlele, Ezekiel, Down Second Avenue, London: Faber, 1959; New York: Anchor, 1971 Niehaus, Carl, Fighting for Hope, Cape Town: Human and Rousseau, 1993 Paton, Alan, Songs of Africa: Collected Poems, Durban: Gecko, 1995 Resha, Maggie, My Life in the Struggle, Johannesburg: Congress of South African Writers, London: SA Writers, 1991 Rule, Peter, Nokukhanya: Mother of Light, Braamfontein: Grail, 1993 Sampson, Anthony, The Treason Cage: The Opposition on Trial in South Africa, London: Heinemann, 1958 Slovo, Joe, Slovo: The Unfinished Autobiography, Randburg: Ravan Press, and London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1995 Zondi, C.D., Izingwazi Zase-Afrika (Umqulu 1), Pietermaritzburg: Reach Out Publishers, 1996

Luxemburg, Rosa

1871–1919

German political and social revolutionary, and letter writer Rosa Luxemburg was one of the principal contributors to the development of socialist thought in the post-Marxian era before World War I. In 1968 the German student movement rediscovered her brand of humanitarian Marxism based on democracy, internationalism, and revolutionary mass action and she became one of the icons of the protest generation. The new relevance attributed to her political thinking revived interest in her life: Helmut Hirsch’s popular biography appeared in 1969 and a number of collections of her letters came out in German- and English-speaking countries in the following years. Although not a political feminist herself, the women’s movement and interest in women’s writing have since been important factors in keeping the memory of Rosa Luxemburg alive. The importance of Rosa Luxemburg’s letters is beyond question. A popular German anthology of women’s letters rightly allots her pride of place and ranks her among the foremost female letter writers of the last three centuries (Schmölders). Luxemburg was an avid if not obsessive letter writer. There were days when she wrote three letters to the same person. The five-volume edition of her letters (Gesammelte Briefe) published in the former East Germany (GDR) between 1982 and 1984 contains a total of 2360 letters to some 50 recipients. They have since been augmented by a sixth volume (1993) of further letters. Only a small selection of them have so far been translated into English. While questions of political theory and practice make up a considerable portion of her correspondence,

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the letters also yield a good insight into the private life of Luxemburg. They highlight a considerable discrepancy between her public and private persona. In public, she was the revered orator capable of swaying the proletarian masses by way of her extraordinary rhetorical gift, her unflinching radicalism, her fearlessness, and her denouncing of cheap compromises – all of which made her a prime hate figure of the political right; in private she was a warm-hearted, sensitive, fragile woman, needy of constant encouragement and reassurance, craving close contact, emotional security, and a rather bourgeois family idyll with a child of her own. Her private needs remained largely unfulfilled. Luxemburg’s letters reveal the contradictions and contortions arising out of the conflict between the life of a politician and agitator and the physical and emotional needs of a woman. Being a woman in the male domain of German political discourse and action only further accentuated her position as an outsider – if not a curiosity. The letters are thus also documents of the marginalization and discrimination that Luxemburg experienced throughout her life. Small of stature, born of Jewish parents in the Polish village of Zamosc, southeast of Lublin, she had all the odds stacked against her from her early childhood years onwards: apart from being female, she was a Pole, a Jew, and – because of a hip dislocation diagnosed too late – physically disabled. From childhood onwards she wanted nothing so much as to belong. Many of her letters deal with her unsuccessful and often selfdestructive relationships with men. For years, she was tied emotionally to the Russian revolutionary Leo Jogiches whom she got to know in Zurich during her university years and with whom she maintained an intimate love–hate relationship throughout her life. The letters to him (published in their original Polish in three volumes in 1968–71, a German selection in 1971, an English selection in 1979) number almost 1000 and reveal a painful relationship with a man who was incapable of returning the love and affection Luxemburg felt for him. She also had a brief relationship with the son of her friend Clara Zetkin, Konstantin (Kostja) (1885–1980), who was 15 years her junior, and a more platonic affair with the young doctor Hans Diefenbach shortly before he was killed in action in 1917. Other correspondents include Social Democrat politicians such as August Bebel, Franz Mehring, and Karl Kautsky, Kautsky’s second wife Luise, the socialist feminist Clara Zetkin, her close political ally Karl Liebknecht and his wife Sophie, and Luxemburg’s secretary Mathilde Jacob. A substantial part of Luxemburg’s correspondence was composed in prison where she spent more than four years at various times, more than three years during World War I on account of her anti-war agitation. Cut off from physical contact with her friends, the prison letters reveal the bouts of depression that resulted in a sequence of illnesses, but also her unbent will to survive and to continue the political struggle. When in 1919 the Communist Youth International published Rosa Luxemburg’s letters to Sophie Liebknecht, composed in prison and full of human warmth and compassion, they were clearly intended to increase public outrage against those who had assassinated their author in January 1919; they were published to counter the widespread “bloody Rosa” myth. The tendency to use the letters to reveal the other side of Luxemburg can be traced right down to today. The division of her writings into two quite separate categories – the political and the personal – can be detected in biographies and in editions of her

works, and has led to an often unacceptable degree of onesidedness in portrayals of her. There has been a noticeable preponderance of women among the editors of Luxemburg’s letters, from Luise Kautsky down to Charlotte Beradt, Elzbieta Ettinger, and Annelies Laschitza, while her political works have been almost exclusively edited by men. In 1985 Margarethe von Trotta’s film Rosa Luxemburg rekindled the debate about Luxemburg and her legacy: the director was accused of depoliticizing the towering Marxist figure of Rosa Luxemburg so as to make her acceptable to the middle-class, cinema-going public. It can certainly be argued that it was precisely the sidelining of Luxemburg’s revolutionary politics that made the film a considerable box office success, especially in the United States. The fascination with her life writing should, however, not blind us to the fact that Rosa Luxemburg herself never published anything autobiographical during her lifetime and confined herself in her writing to the political struggles of the day and questions of Marxist ideology. There is no indication that she ever intended her letters for publication. Luxemburg clearly subordinated her private life to political agitation; concentrating on the private details revealed in the letters at the expense of her theoretical and active political work would misrepresent her life’s legacy. Joachim Fischer Biography Born Rosalia Luxenburg [sic] in Zamosc, Poland (then under Russian control), 5 March 1871. Her parents were assimilated middle-class Jews. Educated at a school in Warsaw. Studied mathematics and science, and later law, at the University of Zurich from 1889 (PhD 1897). Joined the Proletarian revolutionary party, later the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP), 1894. Main contributor to the party paper, Sprawa Rabotnicza. Contracted a marriage of convenience in Basel to Gustav Lübeck to enable her to enter Germany, 1898; moved to Germany as Rosalia Lübeck. Became a central figure in the International Labour Movement in Germany, 1898, and main contributor to the Marxist theoretical journal Die Neue Zeit, edited by Karl Kautsky. Held debates with Lenin, 1903–04. Sentenced to imprisonment for insulting the Kaiser, 1904, but served only one month. Developed idea of permanent revolution. Smuggled herself into Russian Poland, 1905; arrested, imprisoned, then released because of ill health and deported, 1906. Delegate for the Russian and Polish parties at the Congress of Socialist International in Stuttgart, 1907. Lecturer at the central party school, Berlin, from 1907. Wrote her principal theoretical work, Die Akkumulation des Kapitals (1923; The Accumulation of Capital), based on her lectures. Broke with Kautsky on the question of the “workers’ road to power”, 1910. Arrested for inciting soldiers to mutiny, 1914. Co-founder, with Karl Liebknecht, of the Communist revolutionary group Spartakusbund [Spartacus League], 1914, which became the core of the German Communist Party (KPD). Imprisoned for most of World War I. Followed the progress of the Russian Revolution from prison and wrote tracts urging German workers and soldiers to follow the Russian example. Devoted herself to the revolution after her release from prison and took part in an abortive uprising in Berlin. Arrested in Berlin and shot, 15 January 1919.

Selected Writings Briefe aus dem Gefängnis (to Sophie Liebknecht, 1914–18), 1919 Briefe an Karl und Luise Kautsky (1896–1918), edited by Luise Kautsky, 1923; as Letters to Karl and Luise Kautsky from 1896 to 1918, translated by Louis P. Lochner, 1925 Letters from Prison, translated by Eden Paul and Cedar Paul, 1946 Briefe an Freunde, edited by Benedikt Kautsky, 1950 Briefe an Leon Jogiches, 1971; selection as Comrade and Lover: Rosa Luxemburg’s Letters to Leo Jogiches, edited and translated by Elzbieta Ettinger, 1979

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Prison Letters to Sophie Liebknecht, 1972 Rosa Luxemburg im Gefängnis: Briefe und Dokumente aus den Jahren 1915–1918, edited by Charlotte Beradt, 1973 The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, edited by Stephen Eric Bronner, 1978, revised 1993 Gesammelte Briefe, edited by Georg Adler, Annelies Laschitza, and Günter Radzun, 6 vols, 1982–93 Briefe an meine Freunde, edited by Annelies Laschitza, 1988

Further Reading Dunayevskaya, Raya, Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution, Brighton: Harvester Press, and

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Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1982 Ettinger, Elzbieta, Rosa Luxemburg: A Life, Boston: Beacon Press, 1986; London: Harrap, 1987 Hirsch, Helmut, Rosa Luxemburg mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1969 Kuhn, Anna K., “A Heroine for Our Time: Margarethe von Trotta’s Rosa Luxemburg” in Gender and German Cinema: Feminist Interventions, edited by Sandra Frieden et al., Oxford and Providence, Rhode Island: Berg, 1993 Nettl, John P., Rosa Luxemburg, 2 vols, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1966 Schmölders, Claudia (editor), Briefe von Liselotte von der Pfalz bis Rosa Luxemburg, Frankfurt: Insel, 1988 (anthology)

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m McCarthy, Mary

Paradoxically, the advantage of autobiography over fiction is that the author no longer needs to give a “realistic” account for the characters, like her redoubtable grandmother. As McCarthy re-reads and corrects her text for publication, she is in fact editing her memories, making the project of self-writing seem a hopeless task, a rearguard action against fiction. This ties in with the manner in which she presents the character of her younger self. The young Mary is described as “suggestible”, attention-seeking, always embellishing her stories, fictionalizing her own life. Thus, her memories of her father are compromised by “an untruthfulness that I must have caught from him”. Her psychological tendency towards compromise and pretence are the subject of several sections, as in “C’est le Premier Pas Qui Coûte”, where a pretended loss of faith results in the young Mary really losing her faith, a situation that she then, paradoxically, feels compelled to hide. As so often in this autobiography, the story twists and turns several times. Another “handicap to this task of recalling” is the siblings’ status as orphans: “The chain of recollection – the collective memory of a family – has been broken.” As a result, they become obsessed with investigating their history:

1912–1989

American critic, novelist, travel writer, and autobiographer In 1957 Mary McCarthy published Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, the account of her remarkable childhood, to be followed by the first two volumes of a more traditional memoir, How I Grew (1987) and the posthumous Intellectual Memoirs: New York, 1936–1938 (1992). A number of essays collected in On the Contrary (1961), such as “My Confession”, “The Vassar Girl”, and “Artists in Uniform”, are generally considered autobiographical sketches, while The Oasis (1949) is, despite the author’s protests, often read as a roman-à-clef. Collected in Memories of a Catholic Girlhood are a number of autobiographical essays, published since the 1940s in magazines such as The New Yorker. The most remarkable aspect of Memories is the sustained meta-autobiographical commentary added in italics at the end of each chapter. Discussing the trustworthiness of memory and issues of truthfulness and sincerity, McCarthy here flaunts the inevitable fictionality of self-writing. Typically, “Yonder Peasant, Who is He?”, the description of her early youth, and her parents’ death in the influenza epidemic of 1918, includes the following italicized comments: “There are several dubious points in this memoir”, and “I believe this is pure fiction”. McCarthy involves additional testimony by other family members, conflicting family accounts, and uncertainty concerning her own reactions. But the commentary also intervenes from an aesthetic perspective, criticizing how the writing has turned the memory into a story that is “too sentimental” and “decidedly inferior”. Where the young Mary accepted her family’s treatment of the orphaned children, the story has become “an angry indictment of privilege for its treatment of the underprivileged, a single, breathless, voluble speech on the subject of human indifference”. In fact, the ambiguous status of memory in its relationship to narration and writing is the subject here:

As orphans, my brother Kevin and I have a burning interest in our past, which we try to reconstruct together, like two amateur archeologists, falling on any new scrap of evidence, trying to fit it in, questioning our relations, belabouring our own memories. How I Grew, the first volume of a new autobiographical project, links up with the previous text by means of a short statement: “I was born as a mind during 1925, my bodily birth having taken place in 1912.” Consistent with its title, this second memoir focuses on McCarthy’s intellectual development, detailing her childhood reading, her schooling, college, and university education, and the intellectual influence of friends. While the explicit, metatextual commentary is now omitted, the same doubts about memory, writing, and truth surface. Concerning a letter criticizing Vassar to her future husband, she writes:

Many a time, in the course of doing these memoirs, I have wished that I were writing fiction. The temptation to invent has been very strong, particularly where recollection is hazy and I remember the substance of an event but not the details … Then there are cases where I am not sure myself whether I am making something up, I think I remember but I am not positive.

In other words, the feelings I remember, of rapturous discovery that was like a rediscovery, are almost the opposite of those I wrote down … It raises the awful question of whether there can be multiple truths or just one. About truth I have always been monotheistic. It has been an article of faith with me, going back to college days, that there is a truth and that it is knowable. 579

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In school, the young Mary is still defined as allowing the need “to appear other than I am” to dominate “every social relation except those with my teachers”, while the theme of social compromise surfaces when she is almost expelled shortly before graduation from the Annie Wright Seminary. At the Annie Wright Seminary, McCarthy started to write short stories, and this more traditional memoir details her interest in school politics, acting, and public debate, her first sexual experiences, and the meeting with her first husband. Vassar is described as a “transformational” place, where the students were taught to “unlearn” and question what previous schools had taught them. As in her fiction, certain themes surface in both memoirs. Catholicism is described as both a religion of beauty and goodness, providing the young girl with an artistic outlet, and a doctrine full of hatred and ignorance from the perspective of the older, lapsed Catholic. As I Grew develops, in a strange, circular motion, a discussion around anti-Semitism and McCarthy’s perception of her own Jewish grandmother. Returning in both memoirs, however, is McCarthy’s satiric vision, the need for social acceptance and compromise, and her constant disillusionment as a result of the chasm between expectation and reality.

Further Reading Bennett, Joy and Gabriella Hochman, Mary McCarthy: An Annotated Bibliography, New York: Garland, 1992 Brightman, Carol, Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World, New York: Clarkson Potter, 1992, and retitled as Writing Dangerously: A Critical Biography of Mary McCarthy, 1992 Eakin, Paul John, Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of SelfInvention, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985 Gelderman, Carol, Mary McCarthy: A Life, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988 Gelderman, Carol (editor), Conversations with Mary McCarthy, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991 Kiernan, Frances, Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy, New York: Norton, 2000 McKenzie, Barbara, Mary McCarthy, New York: Twayne, 1966 Stock, Irvin, Mary McCarthy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1968 Swertka, Eve and Margo Viscusi (editors), Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at Mary McCarthy: The Writer and Her Work, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996

Maghrib see Africa: North

Sabine Vanacker Biography Mary Therese McCarthy. Born in Seattle, Washington, United States, 21 June 1912; sister of the actor Kevin McCarthy. Her family was of mixed Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant ancestry. Brought up by relatives in Minneapolis after her parents died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. Educated at Forest Ridge Convent, Seattle, and Annie Wright Seminary, an Episcopal boarding school in Tacoma, Washington. Studied literature at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York (BA 1933). Married the theatre director Harold Johnsrud, 1933 (divorced 1936). Worked as a book reviewer for the Nation and the New Republic. Worked as an editor for Covici Friede publishers, New York, 1936–37. Editor, 1937–38, and drama critic, 1937–62, Partisan Review. Liaison with the critic Philip Rahv. Married the writer and critic Edmund Wilson, 1938 (divorced 1946): one son. Encouraged to write fiction by her husband. Published her first novel, The Company She Keeps, 1942. Taught at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, 1945–46. Married Bowden Broadwater, a writer and teacher, 1946 (divorced 1961). Taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, 1948. Contributed to many journals and newspapers, including the New York Review of Books, the Observer, and the Sunday Times. Wrote novels including The Groves of Academe (1952), A Charmed Life (1955), The Group (1963), her best-known work, and Birds of America (1971), and the travelogues Venice Observed (1956) and The Stones of Florence (1959). Published the first volume of her autobiography, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, 1957. Married the diplomat James Raymond West, 1961. Lived in Paris and in Castine, Maine; also travelled to Italy. Visited Saigon and Hanoi during the Vietnam War, where she opposed US action. Northcliffe lecturer, University College, London, 1980. President’s distinguished visitor, Vassar College, 1982. Subject of a defamation suit by the writer Lillian Hellman (suit dropped because of Hellman’s death in 1984). Stevenson professor of literature, Bard College, 1986. Died in New York, 25 October 1989.

Selected Writings The Oasis (autobiographical fiction), 1949; as A Source of Embarrassment, 1950 Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (autobiography), 1957 On the Contrary (autobiographical sketches), 1961 How I Grew, 1987 Intellectual Memoirs: New York, 1936–1938, 1992 Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, 1949–1975, edited by Carol Brightman, 1995

Malcolm X

1925–1965

American civil rights leader and autobiographer The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) is the life story of one of the most remarkable leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States. Written in collaboration with Alex Haley, it details the story of Malcolm’s decline from poor orphan to criminal and drug addict and his subsequent rise from prison autodidact to sectarian revolutionary to religious visionary. Published within months of his assassination, the book disseminated his self-constructed image to a broad audience and solidified his reputation as a legitimate representative of the black masses. As many scholars have noted, Malcolm’s legacy is overwhelmingly a product of this book. Alex Haley’s role in the making of The Autobiography of Malcolm X is a crucial issue. Much of the life writing by African Americans produced during the 19th century was mediated by collaborators, usually whites, who often distorted, censored, or weakened the cultural and political content. Critics are thus more than ordinarily sceptical about the work of collaborators, ghostwriters, and other such assistants in the production of African American texts. Malcolm’s agreement to work with Haley on the book was charged with controversy; he wanted to explain not only his roots in native soil, but also his liberatory politics of black separatism. He was an expert and experienced speaker who wanted a secretary; he did not seek an “interpreter” who might dilute his message to please white readers. Early on in their collaboration, as the book makes clear, Malcolm asserted: “Nothing can be in this book’s manuscript that I didn’t say, and nothing can be left out that I want in”. As Haley records in his epilogue, however, their sessions were closer to psychotherapy than dictation. Haley’s questions opened Malcolm to memories long unexplored. Haley composed these memories and ideas – in Malcolm’s voice – into the chapters of the book, which Malcolm then approved. The achievement of the writing is how fully Haley erases his shaping

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presence. As John Edgar Wideman notes in his essay “Malcolm X: The Art of Autobiography”, “what we get from first to last page is … one voice addressing us, an extended monologue, a sermon rap, recollection in tranquillity of the awesome variety and precipitous turnabouts of Malcolm’s life” (included in Wood). Before his death, Malcolm had read and approved almost all of the manuscript. The 74-page epilogue, written from Haley’s point of view, records the last few months of Malcolm’s life, the events of the assassination, and the funeral. But more importantly it records how he earned Malcolm’s trust and forged a friendship in the process of collaboration. The Autobiography of Malcolm X can be viewed as structured around Malcolm’s protean personality and changing identity, marked in the narrative by changes of name. Born Malcolm Little, he was transformed as a teenage criminal in Boston into “Detroit Red” and as a volatile prisoner in a Massachusetts penitentiary into “Satan”. After experiencing conversion to the Islamic faith of the Nation of Islam he changed his name to Malcolm X as a gesture of rejection of his slave and Christian past. He became the protégé of the Nation’s leader Elijah Muhammad, and then, as Minister Malcolm X, the national spokesman for the Nation. His final transformation followed his hegira, or pilgrimage, to Mecca, where he became an orthodox Muslim and took the name El-hajj Malik El-Shabazz. At the moment of his assassination, he had rejected the racial separatism of the Nation and was willing to work with Christian ministers and white liberals on the task of achieving freedom for blacks throughout the world. In the manner of other African American texts descending from the genre of slave narrative, Malcolm X’s Autobiography at first focuses on the ways that racial oppression and economic deprivation weigh on the subject’s life, distorting home and family, education and morality. The narrative develops Malcolm’s self-generated efforts to change his life, at first through crime and later through radical religion and racial politics. The book lies not only in the tradition of conversion narratives and spiritual autobiography running from Augustine to Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, but also connects with the secular rags-to-riches or failure-to-success model provided by Benjamin Franklin and imitated widely in American popular life writing. Like a political biography, the latter part of the narrative interlards excerpts from Malcolm’s speeches and writings, giving him, as it were, a second and unquestionably authentic voice in the text. These various modes of life writing are held together by Haley’s construction of Malcolm’s narrative voice, which is at once simple, eloquent, and intense. While we know that this is a man of extraordinary intelligence, strength of will, integrity, and forcefulness of character, he seems also a man of the people whose life is as representative as it is exemplary. Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr Biography Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, 19 May 1925. His father was a black nationalist Baptist minister. Grew up in Lansing, Michigan, from the age of four. Moved around with his family to avoid racial harassment. Home burned down by Ku Klux Klan; father died, suspected as murdered, 1931. Family lived on public welfare. Lived in foster homes after his mother became mentally ill, and was sent to detention centres because of his rebellious behaviour towards the white authorities, 1939–41. Dropped out of school, 1940. Went to live with his half-sister in Boston, 1941. Took various jobs, including

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as shoeshine boy and waiter. Convicted of burglary, 1946. Imprisoned in Concord Reformatory, Massachusetts, 1946. Began to study Black Muslim religious movement (officially the Lost–Found Nation of Islam) and the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, and also enlarged his vocabulary by copying words from a dictionary. Paroled from prison, 1952. Became Malcolm X, the name given to him by Elijah Muhammad. Recruited for the Black Muslim movement and appointed minister of New York Temple No. 7. Helped to establish temples in other cities and attracted much publicity and a strong personal following. Became Nation of Islam’s national representative, urging blacks to become politically separate from whites, 1957. Married Betty Sanders, who became Betty X, 1957: six daughters. Travelled to Europe and the Middle East on behalf of the Elijah Muhammad movement, 1959. Served as Elijah Muhammad’s emissary at a secret meeting with the Ku Klux Klan in Atlanta, 1961. Became a frequent guest on television and radio shows, and the best-known figure in the Nation of Islam, by 1963. Voiced opposition to the non-violent action advocated by Martin Luther King. Suspended by Elijah Muhammad who was jealous of his success within the Black Muslim movement. Left Nation of Islam to form his own religious group, the Muslim Mosque, Inc., March 1964. Made several tours to Europe and Africa and also journeyed to Mecca; met political activists and leaders, including Ghanaian independence leader Kwame Nkrumah. Repudiated anti-white political stance of the Nation of Islam after seeing Muslims of all colours worshipping at Mecca, and delivered the speech “Ballot or Bullet”, April 1964. Adopted Muslim name, El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, and formed a new political group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), May 1964. Attempts made by the FBI to undermine the influence of his work, 1965. Condemned as a traitor by Nation of Islam colleagues for his public criticism of Elijah Muhammad, and his home was firebombed, 1965. Assassinated by members of the Nation of Islam as he made a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in New York, 21 February 1965.

Selected Writings (with Alex Haley) The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 1965

Further Reading Baldwin, James, One Day, When I Was Lost: A Scenario, London: Michael Joseph, 1972; New York: Dial Press, 1973 Clarke, John Henrik (editor), Malcolm X: The Man and His Times, New York: Macmillan, 1969 Collins, Rodnell P. and A. Peter Bailey, Seventh Child: A Family Memoir of Malcolm X, Secaucus, New Jersey: Carol, 1998 Davis, Lenwood G. (editor), Malcolm X: A Selected Bibliography, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1984 Dyson, Michael Eric, Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995 Goldman, Peter Louis, The Death and Life of Malcolm X, New York: Harper and Row, 1973 Johnson, Timothy V. (editor), Malcolm X: A Comprehensive Annotated Bibliography, New York: Garland, 1986 Karin, Benjamin, Remembering Malcolm, New York: Carroll and Graf, 1992 Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, edited by George Breitman, New York: Merit, 1965 Malcolm X, The Speeches of Malcolm X at Harvard, edited by Archie Epps, New York: Morrow, 1968 Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary: Speeches, Interviews, and a Letter by Malcolm X, edited by George Breitman, New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970 Malcolm X, The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches, edited by Benjamin Goodman, New York: Merlin House, 1971 Malcolm X, Malcolm X: The Last Speeches, edited by Bruce Perry, New York: Pathfinder Press, 1989 Mostern, Kenneth, Autobiography and Black Identity Politics: Radicalization in Twentieth-Century America, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999 Perry, Bruce, Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America, Barrytown, New York: Station Hill Press, 1991 Perry, Theresa, Teaching Malcolm X, New York and London: Routledge, 1996

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Strickland, William and Cheryll Y. Greene (editors), Malcolm X: Make It Plain, New York: Viking Press, 1994 Wolfenstein, Eugene Victor, The Victims of Democracy: Malcolm X and the Black Revolution, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981; London: Free Association Books, 1989 Wood, Joe (editor), Malcolm X: In Our Own Image, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992 (includes John Edgar Wideman’s essay “Malcolm X: The Art of Autobiography”)

Malraux, André

1901–1976

French writer, politician, and autobiographer One of the most enigmatic figures of the 20th century, André Malraux celebrated action and reflective sensibility, melding his life experiences with his writings into a near-seamless tapestry. Known for his travels, adventures, and military exploits, he became France’s founding minister of culture for ten years from the late 1950s, under General de Gaulle’s presidency. An autodidact, Malraux’s accomplishments were very diverse. He wrote novels (winning the Prix Goncourt in 1933), travelled in Indochina and Persia, searched for the lost city of the Queen of Sheba, and commanded an escadrille for Republican Spain in 1936–37. After escaping from imprisonment in World War II, and helping to liberate Alsace-Lorraine, Malraux became minister of information in 1945–46. He then retired to private life to write lyrically driven metaphysical and spiritual ruminations concerning humanity and artistic heritages on a vast universal canvas. Essential to Malraux’s writing is his emphasis on wresting significance from chaos and the ontological separation of humanity from universal and natural phenomena. Critical here is a sense of spiritual journey on epic scale, traversing the millennia, surveying civilizations come and gone, asking penetrating questions, and offering insight into the existential, if not the spiritual, anguish of being human. As an active participant and observer in the many revolutions and wars of the 20th century, Malraux was able to transform these temporal experiences into metaphysical questioning, which is reflected in his profoundly autobiographical writings. Inured to the conventions of literary, art-historical, or philosophical enquiry, Malraux nevertheless betrayed his lifelong concern with reconciling human existence and activity with the travails of being human. Attention to his style forces one to enter a world peopled by grand historical figures and vistas, where individual autobiographical detail simply vaporizes, or is nonexistent. In his major text Antimémoires (1967; Anti-Memoirs) he noted: I have called this book Antimémoires because it answers a question which memoirs do not pose, and does not answer those which they do; and also because it is haunted, often in the midst of tragedy, by a presence as elusive and unmistakable as a cat slipping by in the dark. An inventory of his published works suggests a metabiographical pursuit from the beginning. A self-professed agnostic, writing and speaking via a carefully wrought spiritual vocabulary, Malraux explored religious, political, aesthetic, and

historical forces through a continuous dialogue with death, destiny, and human purpose. From his La Tentation de l’occident (1926; The Temptation of the West), through his near-iconic novels, La Condition humaine (1933; Man’s Fate) and L’Espoir (1937; Man’s Hope), to his pivotal Les Noyers de l’Altenburg (1943; The Walnut Trees of Altenburg) he remained steadfast to a literary presentation of his ideas and preoccupations while maintaining a concerted effort at remaining within the military and political arenas. Melding reality and image, he was accused of confounding his autobiography and creating a mythical persona. To some of his critics, such as Renee Winegarten and the biographer Curtis Cate, Malraux simply conflated, if not concertedly invented, or embellished his life experiences and events, to suit his profoundly egoistic legend-making. In 1967 Antimémoires captured the essence of Malraux’s idiosyncratic vision. Shattering autobiographical and biographical conventions, this work offers nothing of the personal or the psychological dimensions of the writer. The self vaporizes or is absent, while ruminations over the rise and fall of civilizations and conversations with Mao, De Gaulle, Nehru, or Trotsky join explorations of ancient, medieval, or modern art, Nazi concentration camps, and discussions of Alexander the Great, without chronological veracity. The structure of Antimémoires includes previously published excerpts from Malraux’s novels and speeches, and uses their respective titles as chapter titles. Later Antimémoires, in revision, was gathered together with previously published titles under Le Miroir des limbes [1976; Mirror of Limbo] as part 1, with part 2 entitled La Corde et les souris [1976; Rope and the Mice], consisting of Les Hôtes de passage [1975; Hosts of Passage], Les Chênes qu’on abat (1971; Fallen Oaks), La Tête d’obsidienne (1974, Picasso’s Mask), and Lazare (1974; Lazarus). Part 2 contained travelogues, speeches, discussions, fictive and otherwise, with de Gaulle, and conversations, imaginary or not, with Picasso, and a deathbed rumination, replete with excerpts from Les Noyers de l’Altenburg. Permeating and animating Malraux’s oeuvre is the concept of metamorphosis, well delineated in his Les Voix du silence (1951; The Voices of Silence) – a revision of La Psychologie de l’art (1947–49; The Psychology of Art) – La Métamorphose des dieux (1957; The Metamorphosis of the Gods), and L’Homme précaire et la littérature [1977; Precarious Man and Literature]. Malraux’s concept counters and negates death by creating a realm beyond the temporal and by transcending space: human art inhabits this plane, while civilizations and their characteristics transform themselves without disappearing, and through metamorphosis achieve a certain immortality. Suspicious of biographical veracity and aware of the creative nature of memory, Malraux transforms autobiographical writing into a metaphysical exploration, permitting textual and chronological displacement, as he makes plain in the first pages of Antimémoires: “In the creation of fiction, in war, in museums real and imaginary, in culture, in history perhaps, I have found again and again a fundamental riddle, subject to the whims of memory which – whether or not by chance – does not re-create a life in its original sequence.” In Malraux’s terms, the creative human is best celebrated by the questions he or she poses rather than by any proposed answers – a perspective that also best illuminates Malraux’s autobiographical venture. Jean-Pierre V.M. Hérubel

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Biography Born in Paris, 3 November 1901. His father was a wealthy banker. Went with his mother to live with his grandmother in Bondy after his parents separated when he was aged four. Educated in Bondy, and Ecole Turgot, Paris, 1915–18. Worked in Paris for the booksellers René-Louis Doyon and in the art department of the publishers Kra, 1918–23. Attended lectures at the Musée Guimet and Ecole du Louvre, and studied oriental languages, 1919. Married Clara Goldschmidt, 1921 (divorced 1930): one daughter. Accompanied an archaeological expedition to Indochina, 1923–24; detained for stealing ancient sculptures, but case dropped. Became involved in political activities in Indochina as a communist; established opposition newspaper, L’Indochine, later L’Indochine Enchaînée, 1925–26. Returned to Paris, 1927. Contributed to Nouvelle Revue Française, 1927–32. Worked as art editor, then literary editor, and director of the Pléïade series, Gallimard publishers, Paris, from 1928. Travelled widely, visiting Asia and the United States, and organizing exhibitions of artworks from different cultures and periods alongside each other, 1928–31. Wrote novels about communism in China, Les Conquérants (1928, 1949; The Conquerors) and La Condition humaine (1933; Man’s Fate), for which he received the Prix Goncourt. Joined or conducted several archaeological explorations, including digs in China and southern Arabia, wrote reviews, and became friends with the most prominent contemporary artists, including Picasso. Became president of the World Committee against War and Fascism, and gave a speech at the first Congress of Soviet Writers in Moscow, 1934. Fought in Spain during the civil war on the Republican side, as colonel, 1936–37; wrote L’Espoir (1937; translated as Man’s Hope and Days of Hope) about the war, and travelled to the United States to raise money for the cause, 1938. Served in the French army during World War II; wounded, imprisoned, escaped, and joined the Resistance (awarded the Croix de Guerre, Distinguished Order). Abandoned communism and served as minister of information in Charles de Gaulle’s government, 1945–46. Completed the film Espoir, for which he received the Prix Louis Delluc, 1945. Married his brother’s widow, Marie-Madeleine Lioux, a concert pianist, 1948: one stepson. Also wrote on art, including La Psychologie de l’art (1947–49; The Psychology of Art). Served as minister of information, 1958, and minister of culture, 1959–69, in de Gaulle’s cabinet. Both his sons killed in a road accident, 1961. Published his autobiography, Antimémoires (Anti-Memoirs), 1967. President, Charles de Gaulle Institute, 1971. Awarded the Nehru Peace prize, 1974. Officier, Légion d’honneur. Died in Paris, 23 November 1976.

Selected Writings Antimémoires, 1967, revised 1972; in Le Miroir des limbes, 1976; as Anti-Memoirs, translated by Terence Kilmartin, 1968 La Corde et les souris (miscellaneous auto/biographical prose): Les Chênes qu’on abat (on De Gaulle), 1971; as Fallen Oaks, translated by Irene Clephane, 1972; as Felled Oaks, revised and edited by Linda Asher, 1972 La Tête d’obsidienne, 1974; as Picasso’s Mask, translated by June and Jacques Guicharnaud, 1976 Lazare, 1974; as Lazarus, translated by Terence Kilmartin, 1976 Les Hôtes de passage, 1975

Further Reading Blend, Charles D., André Malraux: Tragic Humanist, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1963 Boak, Denis, André Malraux, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968 Bréchon, Robert, “La Condition humaine” d’André Malraux, Paris: Hachette, 1972 Cate, Curtis, André Malraux: A Biography, London: Hutchinson, 1995; New York: Fromm International, 1995 Friang, Brigitte, Un Autre Malraux, Paris: Plon, 1977 Gannon, Edward, S.J., The Honor of Being A Man: The World of André Malraux, Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1957 Lacouture, Jean, André Malraux, translated by Alan Sheridan, London: Deutsch, and New York: Pantheon Books, 1975 (French edition, 1973) Lemire, Laurent, André Malraux: Antibiographie, Paris: Lattès, 1995 Madsen, Axel, Malraux: A Biography, New York: Morrow, 1976 Malraux, Alain, Les Marronniers de Boulogne: Recitation, Paris: Plon,

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1978; “definitive” edition, Paris: Ramsay, 1989 Malraux, André, Malraux: Être et dire: textes, edited by Martine de Courcel, Paris: Plon, 1976 Payne, Robert, A Portrait of André Malraux, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1970 Spender, Stephen, World Within World: The Autobiography, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953 Tannery, Claude, Malraux: the Absolute Agnostic, or, Metamorphosis as Universal Law, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991 (French edition, 1985) Thornberry, Robert S., “André Malraux” in French Novelists, 1930–1960, vol. 72 of Dictionary of Literary Biography, edited by Catherine Savage Brosman, Detroit: Gale Research, 1988 Tison-Braun, Micheline, Ce monstre incomparable: Malraux ou l’énigme du moi, Paris: Armand Colin, 1983 Winegarten, Renee, “The Reputation of André Malraux,” American Scholar, 61/2 (1992): 267–74

Mandela, Nelson

1918–

South African politician, statesman, and autobiographer Autobiography has now become a privileged mode of communication for those who want to break the silence in which oppression and displacement have confined them and to speak for themselves, as well as for others whose rights they feel the need to defend. Like Rigoberta Menchú, who wrote about her life to tell the story of all poor Guatemalans – and earned the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless efforts as a political leader – and like Aman, a young Somali woman whose wrenching account of her coming of age in the face of tremendous social odds “is also the story of many, many other girls”), Nelson Mandela used the autobiographical model to claim the right to speak both for and beyond the individual. Long Walk to Freedom was published in 1994, shortly after Mandela was elected president of South Africa, but it was written largely during his years of captivity on Robben Island. Instead of simply tracing the life of the Nobel laureate from the blissful years of country childhood to his political ascent culminating in his leadership of a newly democratic nation, the account selectively reconstructs the awakening and development of Mandela’s political consciousness to focus on him as father and leader both to his family and to South Africa as a whole. Like its author and the nation of which Mandela is the most distinguished citizen, the book has a long history of struggle and setback. Begun clandestinely in 1974 during his imprisonment, it was eventually discovered and confiscated by the authorities. Without the skill and ingenuity of his fellow prisoners Mac Maharaj and Isu Chiba, who smuggled the manuscript out of the prison, Mandela, who resumed his writing after his release in 1990, might not have finished it, as he himself notes in his acknowledgement. Ironically, years of incarceration and physical deprivation are often conducive to the kind of deep introspection and intellectual achievement that produce classic autobiographical texts like The Diary of Anne Frank, or brilliant analyses like Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. Long Walk to Freedom is no exception. There is a clear sense throughout Mandela’s account that the “dark years” spent on Robben Island were rich with soul-searching and visions of what South Africa could and should become. As a largely political autobiography, the account presents

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what Cheryl-Ann Michael describes as “an illusion of a linear development of political consciousness which cloaks an erasure of difference between past selves and the present ‘I’ or subject”. The son of a Thembu chief who was brought up to advise traditional rulers and who demonstrated his leadership qualities and his hatred of injustice at an early age, Mandela emerges as an iconic figure who, from the start, appears to have been uniquely destined for the pivotal role he would end up playing. From the pain of ritual circumcision to the loneliness of the years underground to the trials of a quarter-century of captivity, every event, every struggle, recast from the vantage point of his ultimate victory over a lifetime of adversity, suggests the leader in the making. Yet, his image as a flawless leader comes at a high price: the pain and frustration he felt at being forced to live away from his family, unable to care for his mother or provide for his children. When a new prison protocol finally allowed for “contact” visits, Mandela movingly recounts what it felt like to hold his wife after 21 years of not being able to touch even her hand. Mandela’s book was received with great acclaim and soon became celebrated as a uniquely inspirational memoir, and a lesson in tolerance, forgiveness, and humanity. Yet the book is not simply about the “triumph of the human spirit”. Mandela, who became a vital force in the fight for human rights in South Africa at an early stage, takes pains to stress his commitment to reconciliation, egalitarianism, and pragmatism as he outlines his plan for multiracial democracy. The South Africa he envisages must be built by both blacks and whites, he insists, as he praises white South Africans who have stood up against racism and writes of embracing his jailors or shaking President de Klerk’s hand. Ultimately, Long Walk to Freedom was written to inspire and encourage South Africans as a whole but also to soothe the fears of Western elites, presenting Mandela as a family man, and a normal, flawed human being who, despite his responsibility for the use of violence in the anti-apartheid struggle, has far more in common with Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr, than with Che Guevara or Fidel Castro. Adeline Masquelier Biography Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. Born in Umtata, Transkei, Eastern Cape, South Africa, 18 July 1918. His father was Chief Henry Mandela of the Xhosa-speaking Thembu tribe; expected to become chief himself and retained hereditary right to a chiefdom. Sent to a Methodist boarding school after his father’s death, 1930. Studied at the University College of Fort Hare, 1938; expelled after organizing a student strike, 1940. Returned to Transkei, where he refused an arranged marriage. Moved to Johannesburg, where he worked as a goldmine policeman. Studied for BA by correspondence; graduated from University of South Africa, 1941. Trained in law at the University of the Witwatersrand, 1941–42. Married Walter Sisulu’s cousin, 1944. Joined the African National Congress (ANC), 1944. Formed the Youth League of the ANC with Oliver Tambo and others, and became secretary in 1948, and president in 1950. Joined the National Executive of the ANC, 1949. Set up the first black legal practice in South Africa, with Tambo, in Johannesburg, 1952. Directed the ANC civil disobedience “Defiance Campaign” against the apartheid policies of the government, 1952–53. Arrested and charged under the Suppression of Communism Act. Banned from moving out of Johannesburg and from attending gatherings of more than three people. Resigned officially from the ANC because of banning order, 1953. Continued clandestine leadership of ANC, organizing the movement into small groups, 1953–56. Arrested and charged with treason, 1956. Tried 1956–61, and finally acquitted. Divorced first wife and married Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela: two daughters. Arrested again during state of

emergency following Sharpeville massacre, 1960. Appointed first general secretary of the All-African National Action Council, a semiunderground, anti-apartheid organization, founded in 1961. Began pressing for acts of sabotage against the South African government. Attended Pan-African Freedom Movement meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to advocate ANC’s political violence, early 1962. Arrested and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment on return to South Africa, July 1962. Went on trial with several other ANC activists on accusations of sabotage, conspiracy to overthrow the South African government, and assisting armed invasion (the Rivonia trial) after the headquarters of the underground military wing of the ANC had been raided, 1963. Convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, 1964. Sent to prison on Robben Island, off the coast near Cape Town, then moved in 1982 to the maximum-security Pollsmoor prison. Hospitalized for tuberculosis, 1988. Released by President F.W. de Klerk under international pressure, 1990, and returned to public life. Deputy president, 1990–91, and president, 1991–97, of the ANC. Awarded Nobel Peace Prize, with de Klerk, 1993. Elected president of South Africa after the first multi-racial elections in the country, 1994. Retired 1999.

Selected Writings Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, 1994

Further Reading Aman: The Story of a Somali Girl, as told to Virginia Lee Barnes and Janice Boddy, New York: Pantheon, 1994 Benson, Mary, Nelson Mandela, London and Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986 Frost, Brian, Struggling to Forgive: Nelson Mandela and South Africa’s Search for Reconciliation, London: HarperCollins, 1998 Hoobler, Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, Mandela: The Man, the Struggle, the Triumph, New York: Franklin Watts, 1992 Mandela, Nelson, The Struggle is My Life, London: International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, 1976; revised 1986; New York: Pathfinder, 1990 Mandela, Winnie, Part of My Soul, revised edition, edited by Ann Benjamin, adapted by Mary Benson, Harmondsworth: Penguin, and New York: Viking Penguin, 1985 Meer, Fatima, Higher Than Hope: A Biography of Nelson Mandela, Johannesburg: Skotaville, 1988; London: Hamish Hamilton, and New York: Harper and Row, 1990 Menchú, Rigoberta, I Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, edited by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, translated by Ann Wright, London: Verso, 1984 Meredith, Martin, Nelson Mandela: A Biography, London: Hamish Hamilton, and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998 Michael, Cheryl-Ann, “Gender and Iconography in Auto/biographies of Nelson and Winnie Mandela” in The Uses of Autobiography, edited by Julia Swindells, London and Bristol, Pennsylvania: Taylor and Francis, 1995 Sampson, Anthony, Nelson Mandela: The Authorized Biography, London: HarperCollins, and New York: Vintage, 1999

Mandel’shtam, Nadezhda

1899–1980

Russian memoirist Nadezhda Iakovlevna Khazin was a highly acclaimed memoirist and social critic, married to Osip Mandel’shtam, one of the great Russian poets of the century. She originally trained as an artist in the studio of avant-garde set designer Aleksandra Ekster, and later became an English scholar, completing her thesis under the supervision of Viktor Zhirmunskii, one of the most distinguished of Soviet scholars. Her best-known memoirs Vospominaniia (published in New York, 1970; Hope against Hope) and Vtoraia kniga (published in Paris, 1972; Hope

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Abandoned) include important literary-biographical material related to the lives of her husband and the poet Anna Akhmatova, a close friend of Nadezhda for many years. Her previously unpublished writings and letters were included in Tret’ia kniga [Third Book], which appeared in Paris in 1987. As a memoirist, Nadezhda Mandel’shtam speaks on behalf of most of the remarkable Russian and Jewish intellectuals whose lives were destroyed or broken by the regime that followed the October revolution in 1917. Her recollections provide invaluable insights into the relationships among artists, bureaucrats, and secret police. The special mark of her narrative is intimate knowledge of the mechanisms of power and of their effects, seen through the dry recollection of everyday life and conversations. Her diary notes outweigh in significance many historical accounts of this period. Nadezhda Mandel’shtam was one of the most influential voices of the post-Stalinist dissident movement. Her second book of memoirs was imbued with the moral authority of a survivor of Stalinist purges and of a mourner of important cultural figures. It contrasts with the earlier diary-like account in Hope against Hope of her life in the 1930s, which dealt with especially the two arrests of her husband and of their life in exile in Voronezh, resembling the style of Pushkin’s “table-talk”, since Nadezhda Mandelshtam had in mind as her audience the young intellectuals of the post-Stalinist period with whom she had held numerous conversations about the past. The genre of direct conversations about life brought the memoirs tremendous success in samizdat literature, especially since the quality of sincerity had gained great aesthetic value in the 1950–60s. Her books were finally published in Russia in the 1990s, and influenced the memoirs of the former president’s wife, Raisa Gorbacheva. Some critics see Nadezhda’s Mandelshtam’s greatest achievement as the memorizing, copying, and distribution of Osip Mandel’shtam’s poetry and early poetry. Others have admired her for preserving freedom of speech and thought, despite limited readership in her home country. Yet her autobiographical writing awaits reassessment as an expression of postmodernist philosophy. Hope against Hope de-romanticizes the Russian avant-garde and links the October revolution’s success with the Russian intelligentsia’s aesthetic aspirations. On several occasions she states that there was nothing grand about the cultural atmosphere of the 1920s, and she strongly protested against the “grand narratives” (to use Lyotard’s phrase) that made utopian aspirations so attractive to many of her contemporaries. She criticizes those in the 1920s who used utopian images to justify the Red Terror and the formation of a totalitarian society. She defines herself and her husband as losers because they were realists and refused to contextualize themselves within the grand narrative of their times. Her memoirs also expose the position held by Soviet writers as a new privileged class, bribed by the authorities to conform to Stalinism. She speaks also of “refugees” who tried to dissolve into the countryside and keep silent. In such an environment, Nadezhda Mandel’shtam regarded friendship and individuality as signs of a surviving spiritual resilience to the totalitarian regime. The first book concludes with accounts of Osip Mandel’shtam’s death in a camp in December 1938: she was never informed of the facts. Hope Abandoned portrays Nadezhda Mandel’shtam’s generation as a whole, including a greater number of references to pre-revolutionary writing. She replaces intimate insights into the

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private aspects of history with recollections of cultural discussions and popular themes, providing a cultural context for the work of Osip Mandel’shtam and Akhmatova. The narrative is also more complex than the first book. The narrator compares herself to Akhmatova, and deals with the mythologizing of self as a reluctant muse for a poet. The theme of liberation, either social or personal, permeates the book, and offers a variety of female role models for a contemporary readership. Through her memoirs Nadezhda Mandelshtam epitomises, together with Akhmatova, the refined and rich liberal world of the Silver Age of Russian culture. A growing closeness to Akmatova made her judge some earlier figures (e.g. Ivanov and Briusov) from Akhmatova’s rather than Osip Mandel’shtam’s viewpoint. Some passages resemble Akhmatova’s own essays on Russian literature. Akhmatova appears to have liberated the literary talent of Nadezhda that made her rebel against the mould of muse and biographer of her husband. Alexandra Smith Biography Born Nadezhda Iakovlevna Khazin in Saratov, Russia, 31 October 1899. Her father was a well-educated Jewish lawyer. Educated in Kiev, Ukraine. Became well-read, spoke several European languages, and studied art in the studio of Aleksandra Ekster. Met poet Osip Mandel’shtam at Kiev cabaret, 1 May 1919. Went to Moscow with him, March 1921; married him formally, 1922. Returned to Moscow and lived in Herzen House. Close friendship with poet Anna Akhmatova from 1925. Lived in internal exile with her husband, 1934–38, then after his death (in 1938) until 1964. Taught English at the University of Central Asia, Tashkent, during World War II, then in provincial towns until she was permitted to return to Moscow. Worked at the preservation of her husband’s works and towards his rehabilitation (which came with the Thaw in 1956). Began publishing her works abroad, from 1970. Smuggled his archive to Princeton University, United States 1970s. Died in Moscow, 29 December 1980.

Selected Writings Vospominaniia, 1970; as Hope against Hope, translated by Max Hayward, 1970, and with introduction by Clarence Brown and obituary by Joseph Brodsky, 1991 Vtoraia kniga, 1972; as Hope Abandoned, translated by Max Hayward, 1974 Moe zaveshchanie i drugie esse [My Testament and Other Essays], 1982 Tret’ia kniga [Third Book], 1987

Further Reading Harris, Jane Gary (editor), Autobiographical Statements in TwentiethCentury Russian Literature, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990 Holmgren, Beth, Women’s Works in Stalin’s Time: On Lidiia Chukovskaia and Nadezhda Mandelshtam, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993 Isenberg, Charles, “The Rhetoric of Nadezhda Mandel’shtam’s Hope against Hope” in New Studies in Russian Language and Literature, edited by Anna Lisa Crone and Catherine V. Chvany, Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1987 Karlinsky, Simon, review of Hope Abandoned, New York Times Book Review (20 January 1974) Proffer, Carl R., The Widows of Russia and Other Writings, Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1987

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Mandel’shtam, Osip

1891–1938

Russian poet and autobiographical prose writer Osip Mandel’shtam, most often cited as 20th-century Russia’s most original poet, is no less distinguished as a master of prose. Of particular note are five remarkable pieces of life writing, written over the tempestuous ten years between 1923 and 1933: Shum vremeni (written 1923–25; The Noise of Time), “Egipetskaia marka” (written 1927; “Egyptian Stamp”), “Chetvertaia proza” (written 1929–30; “Fourth Prose”), “Puteshestvie v Armeniiu” (written 1931; “Journey to Armenia”), and Razgovor o Dante (written 1933; “Conversation about Dante”). The latter, unpublishable until the Thaw of the 1960s, was cited by Lidiia Ginzburg, foremost theorist of Russian life writing, as one of two “models” for the new unmediated genres of “contemporary prose”. Recollections of growing up in St. Petersburg grace the pages of Mandel’shtam’s lyric autobiography, Noise of Time, depicting his love for the elegant capital of the Russian empire and the city of his childhood (during the 1890s–1900s). It initiates a new phase in the poet’s creative work, employing his own life as basic poetic material for the first time, and associating his personal destiny with Russia’s cultural history. In an essay entitled (in its English translation) “End of the Novel”, he defined the “pivot” of the 19th-century novel as “human biography” – the “sense of time man possesses to act, to conquer, to perish and to love”. But, he claimed, 20th-century man is “devoid of biography” – hence Mandel’shtam’s choice of the genres of life writing to recover his “sense of time.” As one “devoid of biography”, he had first to comprehend the epoch of his formative years, and only subsequently, to re-imagine his self-image in history. As a poet, he had to acquire a language to articulate that history, for his autobiography was to be an act of cultural memory, not traditional recollections of a subconscious mind. A sense of identity came to him only after the revolution, with the catastrophic illumination of Russia’s historical and cultural legacy, and the poet’s identification with it. Thus, he concludes his first efforts at autobiography by drawing parallels between his new self-image and that of the raznochinets-writer (that is, the formerly subgentry writer who rose to form the core of Russia’s intelligentsia in the 19th century – here based on his teacher, Vladimir Vasilievich Gippius, Director of the Tenishev school) who voices truth and judgement: “Literary savagery! Were it not for you, what should I have to eat the salt of the earth with? You are the seasoning of the unleavened bread of understanding, the joyful consciousness of injustice” (Prose of Osip Mandelstam, translated by Clarence Brown). This covenant of salt and conscience is first enunciated in the collection of verse entitled 1921–25, in which the self-conscious lyric hero, aware of the fragility of life and art in the new Soviet state, alternates between outbursts of fear and courage, human need and metaphysical yearning. By1925, however, the enormity of self-sacrifice required to remain a poet of conscience apparently overwhelmed him, and five years of poetic silence followed. Prose helped to recast his self-image and re-establish his poetic gift. Mandel’shtam’s second effort at autobiographical prose, “Egyptian Stamp”, is a surrealistic nightmare vision of the terrifying experience of a writer vainly struggling to grasp the past as

it vanishes into the turmoil of the present. His would-be author’s abortive attempts to write a 19th-century novel forces him to switch from third-person narration to first, recognizing the power of the subjective consciousness as all that remains. The end of the 1920s found Mandel’shtam completely recasting his self-image and re-inventing a new poet-hero in his immensely complex and original jeremiad, “Fourth Prose”. Strong-willed, even wilful and perverse, he asserted here his pride in both his un-Russian name and his Jewish ancestry, re-evaluating his outsider status and proclaiming a world of inverted norms: everything society attributed to him as a weakness, he now viewed as a strength. Excoriating the entire literary establishment, he appealed to the all-consuming moral passion of Old Testament prophecy, taking the Mosaic Law “Thou shalt not kill!” as his fundamental ethical and aesthetic precept. Renewed faith in himself and his creative powers reinvigorated his challenge to the new age previously represented by “literary savagery”. “Journey to Armenia”, Mandel’shtam’s last-published prose piece, is a philosophical travelogue as well as a hymn to the gift of life and language, the struggle against death and destruction, and the grace of spiritual resurrection. Armenia is his metaphor for Mediterranean or world culture and cultural memory. Written in Moscow after “200 days in the Sabbath land”, it inscribes the poet into his own imperative, metaphorically represented as “the verb on horseback”, a reaffirmation of poetic and moral freedom. “Conversation about Dante”, written in the Koktebel’ Writers Home during the joyful and productive summer of 1933 and on the eve of his first arrest, is a unique and intimate tribute to his Florentine mentor as well as the culmination of his life writing. Dante is imagined as the last of Mandelshtam’s continually recurring images of the raznochinets-writer and poet-outsider of his earlier work; hence it alleges their common ancestry and poetics, while defying the various cultural paradigms assigned to Dante by the authorities. Its slyly autobiographical nature provides Mandel’shtam’s ultimate statement of his own poetic credo in a unique unmediated form. Jane Gary Harris Biography Osip Emil’evich Mandel’shtam. Born in Warsaw, Poland (then part of the Russian empire), 15 January 1891. Moved to St Petersburg as an infant. Educated at the Tenishev School, St Petersburg, graduating in 1907. Travelled to Paris, 1907–08, and to Germany, 1908–10; studied Old French literature at the University of Heidelberg, 1909–10. First poems published in the journal Apollon, August 1910. Joined the Poets’ Guild, 1911; had close personal ties with the poets Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilev. Studied philosophy at St Petersburg University, 1911–17, but never graduated. First book of poems, Kamen (Stone), published 1913. Attended meetings at Viacheslav Ivanov’s Bashnia [The Tower] and the St Petersburg Society of Philosophy. Welcomed the Revolution of February 1917; hostile at first to the October Revolution. Worked for Lunacharskii’s Education Ministry, 1918. Met Nadezhda Iakovlevna Khazina (Mandel’shtam, q.v.), 1919; married her formally, 1922. Translated works by Petrarch, Henri Barbier, Upton Sinclair, Charles de Coster, Jules Romains, and others, and works of Old French literature, into Russian, 1920s. Published his second (Tristia, 1922) and third (Stikhotvoreniya, 1928) books of poems. Travelled to Georgia and Armenia, April–November 1930. Moved to Moscow, December 1930. Lived in Koktebel, summer 1933. Wrote a poem critical of Stalin, 1933; first arrest, May 1934: the intercession of Akhmatova,

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Nicolai Bukharin, and Boris Pasternak led to a sentence of three years exile in Cherdyn rather than hard labour. Sentence commuted to exile in Voronezh after a suicide attempt. Released in 1937. Second arrest, May 1938: sentenced to five years in a labour camp for “counterrevolutionary activities”. Died in a transit camp at Vtoraia rechka, near Vladivostock in Siberia, 27 December 1938 (official date on certificate).

Selected Writings Shum vremeni, 1925; as “The Noise of Time”, translated by Clarence Brown in The Prose of Osip Mandelstam, 1965 “Egipetskaia marka”, Zvezda, 5, 1928; as “The Egyptian Stamp”, translated by Clarence Brown in The Prose of Osip Mandelstam, 1965, and by Jane Gary Harris in The Complete Critical Prose and Letters, 1979 “Puteshestvie v Armeniiu”, in Zvezda, 5 (1933); translated as “Journey to Armenia” by Clarence Brown in Quarterly Review of Literature, 17/3–4 (1973); revised 1980; also translated by Sidney Monas, 1979, and by Jane Gary Harris in The Complete Critical Prose and Letters, 1979 Sobranie sochinenii (collected works), edited by Gleb Struve, 1955 The Prose of Osip Mandelstam, edited and translated by Clarence Brown, 1965, corrected 1967; revised as The Noise of Time of Osip Mandelstam, 1986; as The Noise of Time and Other Prose Pieces, 1988 “Chetvertaia proza”; first published as “Fourth Prose”, translated by Clarence Brown in The Prose of Osip Mandelstam, 1965, and by Jane Gary Harris and Constance Link in The Complete Critical Prose and Letters, 1979 Razgovor o Dante, 1967; translated as “Conversation about Dante” by Jane Gary Harris in The Complete Critical Prose and Letters, 1979 Sobranie sochinenii (collected works), edited by Gleb Struve and Boris Filippov, 4 vols, 1967–81; vol. 1 revised 1967, vol. 2 revised 1971; vol. 3 revised 1969; vol. 4, edited by Nikita Struve et al., 1981 The Complete Critical Prose and Letters, edited by Jane Gary Harris, translated by Harris and Constance Link, 1979; as The Collected Critical Prose and Letters, 1991; revised and abridged as The Complete Critical Prose, 1997 Sobranie sochinenii (collected works), 4 vols, 1993–94

Further Reading Cavanagh, Clare, Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of Tradition, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995 Freidin, Grigory, A Coat of Many Colors: Osip Mandelstam and His Mythologies of Self-Presentation, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987 Ginzburg, Lidiia, Pretvorenie opyta [The Transformation of Experience], edited by Nikolai Kononov, St Petersburg: Assotsiatsiia “Novaia literatura”, 1991 Glazova, Marina, “Mandel’shtam and Dante: The Divine Comedy in Mandel’shtam’s Poetry of the 1930s”, Studies in Soviet Thought, 28 (1984): 281–335 Harris, Jane Gary “The ‘Latin Gerundive’ as Autobiographical Imperative: A Reading of Osip Mandel’shtam’s Journey to Armenia”, Slavic Review, 45/1 (1986): 1–19 Harris, Jane Gary, Osip Mandelstam, Boston: Twayne, 1988 Harris, Jane Gary, “Autobiography and History: Osip Mandelstam’s Noise of Time” in her Autobiograhical Statements in TwentiethCentury Russian Literature, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990 Harris, Jane Gary, introduction to Osip Mandelstam: The Complete Critical Prose, revised and shortened edition, edited and translated by Harris, New York: Vintage 1997 (first edition, 1979) Isenberg, Charles, Substantial Proofs of Being: Osip Mandelstam’s Literary Prose, Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1987 Levin, Iurii, “Zametki k Ravgovor o Dante O. Mandel’shtama”, International Journal of Linguistics and Poetics, 15 (1972) Mandel’shtam, Nadezhda, Hope against Hope: A Memoir, translated by Max Hayward, New York: Atheneum, 1970 Mandel’shtam, Osip, “The End of the Novel” in Mandelstam: The Complete Critical Prose, revised and shortened edition, edited and

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translated by Jane Gary Harris, New York: Vintage 1997 (first edition, 1979) Pollak, Nancy, Mandelstam the Reader, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995 Ronen, Omry, An Approach to Mandelstam, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1983 Samenko, Irina M., Poetika Posdnego Mandel’shtama, Rome: Carruci, 1986 West, Daphne, Mandelstam: The Egyptian Stamp, Birmingham, England: Department of Russian, University of Birmingham, 1980

Mann, Heinrich

1871–1950

German novelist, essayist, playwright, and letter writer By far the lesser known of the Mann brothers – if not totally unknown to many Anglo-American readers – Heinrich Mann is respected mainly as a writer of novels and novellas, but he was also a prolific essayist and letter writer. In particular, his letters to his brother Thomas, with whom he, as a Francophile and enlightened, liberal-democratic thinker – as opposed to Thomas Mann’s German-Romantic conservatism and nationalism – was reconciled after 1922, constitute some of his best and most compelling life writing. This is particularly true from 1940 until 1950, during which time Heinrich Mann was living unhappily and in desperate financial straits in exile in the United States. Throughout his extremely productive literary life Mann’s autobiographical sketches, diary entries, and letters recount not only his personal experiences – his privileged, patrician upbringing in Lübeck, his travels to Italy and France, his early peripatetic-bohemian lifestyle – but also his concern with the relationship between artistic consciousness and political conscience, between culture and politics. Indeed, he often sought to discount his personal views for the benefit of a public perspective: as he stated, “in what I have written, the word ‘I’ does not appear very often”. Against the background of a post-1871, unified Prussian Germany of Gründerzeit Parvenus (part-philistine, part-capitalist), Mann carried on the critical oppositional tradition of engagement – in stark contrast to his brother Thomas, and reminiscent of Heinrich Heine. Often placing his literature at the service of morality, society, and politics, he consistently chose liberal utopianism and republicanism over the conservative Romanticpessimistic ideology of Gemeinschaft, Kultur, and bourgeois idealism. His literary weapons of rational discourse, moral enlightenment, and social satire served him well in his task of defining the moral, social, and political conscience and consciousness. A significant component of Mann’s life writing appears as biography. In his many biographical essays – on Gustave Flaubert, George Sand, Voltaire, Goethe, Napoleon, Victor Hugo, Stendhal, Heine, Hennrik Ibsen, Georg Hauptmann, G.E. Lessing, Friedrich Nietzsche, et al. – he utilized biography as a vehicle for a central idea, because it allowed him to follow the realization of that idea in the world, embedding a concept in the concrete experience of an individual. In the biographical essay “Zola” (written 1915), Mann portrayed the French writer as a prophet of socio-political activism, personifying intellect in the service of society. Posing the question: “What is power without the law?”, it functioned as

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Mann’s own J’accuse against the writers of World War I, including his brother Thomas who was, at this time, an apologist for the German Sonderweg of Romanticism and idealism, of Nietzschean philosophy, Wagnerian music, and society as a völkisch Gemeinschaft (community). On moving to France in 1933 Mann became a leading figure in the anti-fascist movement, particularly the Volksfront. And it is during this tumultuous period that he created perhaps his best historical-biographical novel, the two-volume work Jugend und Vollendung des Henri IV (1935–36; Young Henry of Navarre; Henry, King of France). The novel also has autobiographical intent, in that Mann identifies with the French king who learned through experience the relationships and contradictions of power and reason. By far the most noteworthy work of Mann’s exile in the United States is the autobiographical essay and memoir Ein Zeitalter wird besichtigt [1945; Overview of an Age], an examination of his life and its socio-political background. Expanded from his journals and his “Kurze Selbstbiographie” [1943; “Short Autobiography”], the text integrates historical retrospective, commentary, biographical portraits, and memoir to render a subjective account of 20th-century European culture and history. By employing the autobiographical subject as witness to history, Mann reiterates once again his paradigms of enlightenment, morality, power, and intellect (“we only have our ability to reason”). For Mann the individual survives, overcomes, and ultimately gives meaning to meaninglessness – most obviously the chaos, death, and destruction of two world wars – by suffering the ruptures between life as it is and life as it should be. Ralph W. Buechler Biography Luiz Heinrich Mann. Born in Lübeck, Holstein, Germany, 27 March 1871; older brother of the writer Thomas Mann. His father was a prosperous grain merchant. Educated at a private preparatory school in Lübeck until 1889. Worked for a bookseller in Dresden, 1889–91, and a publisher in Berlin, 1891–92. Contracted tuberculosis and stayed in a sanatorium in Switzerland. Moved to Munich, 1894. Editor, Das zwanzigste Jahrhundert, 1894. Lived in France and Italy, 1895–96. Wrote his best-known works, the novels Professor Unrat (1905) and Der Untertan (1918; The Patrioteer). Married Marie (Mimi) Kanová, 1914 (divorced 1930): one daughter. Lecturer and journalist during the 1920s. Chair, Volksverband für Filmkunst, Berlin, 1928; president of literary section, Prussian Academy of the Arts, 1931–33 (dismissed). Moved to France to escape the Nazi regime, 1933, and was deprived of German citizenship. Became a Czech citizen, 1936. Married Nelly Kroeger, 1939 (committed suicide 1944). Moved to the United States, where he suffered from financial hardship. Writer, Warner Brothers film studios, Hollywood, 1940–41. Lived in Los Angeles, 1940–49. Appointed president of the Academy of Arts, German Democratic Republic [East Germany], Berlin, 1949. Awarded the GDR National prize, 1949. Died in Santa Monica, California, 12 March 1950.

Selected Writings “Zola” (biographical essay) in Geist und Tat Franzosen, 1780–1930, 1931; as Zola, 1962 Die Jugend des Königs Henri Quatre (fiction), 1935; translated by Eric Sutton as Young Henry of Navarre, 1937, and King Wren: The Youth of Henri IV, 1937 Die Vollendung des Königs Henri Quatre (fiction), 1936; translated by Eric Sutton as Henri Quatre, King of France, 1938–39, and Henry, King of France, 1939 “Kurze Selbstbiographie”, 1943 Ein Zeitalter wird besichtigt (autobiography), 1945 Briefe an Karl Lemke 1917–1949, 1963

Briefe an Karl Lemke und Klaus Pinkus, 1963 (with Thomas Mann) Briefwechsel 1900–1949, 1965; edited by Hans Wysling, 1968, revised 1984 and 1995; as Letters of Heinrich and Thomas Mann 1900–1949, translated by Don Reneau, 1998 Briefe an Ludwig Ewers 1889–1913, edited by Ulrich Dietzel and Rosmarie Eggert, 1980 The King and His Rival: The Expanded New Edition of the Correspondence between Thomas and Heinrich Mann, translated by Marcel Reich-Ranicki, 1985 Briefwechsel mit Barthold Fles 1942–1949, edited by Madeleine Rietra, 1993

Further Reading Ebersbach, Volker, Heinrich Mann: Leben, Werk, Wirken, Frankfurt: Rödenberg, 1978 Hamilton, Nigel, The Brothers Mann: The Lives of Heinrich and Thomas Mann 1871–1950 and 1875–1955, London: Secker and Warburg, 1978; New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1979 Wolff, Rudolf (editor), Heinrich Mann: Werk und Wirkung, Bonn: Bouvier, 1984 Wolff, Rudolf (editor), Heinrich Mann: das essayistische Werk, Bonn: Bouvier, 1986

Martin, Claire

1914–

Canadian autobiographer and fiction writer Martin, born Claire Montreuil, began writing at a relatively late age, and produced most of her works in the short period between 1958 and 1970. Her use of “Martin” – her mother’s maiden name – as her nom de plume highlights her refutation of the father in favour of a female lineage. She gained literary recognition on the publication of her first text, Avec ou sans amour (1958; Love Me, Love Me Not), which was awarded the Prix du Cercle du Livre de France. This collection of short stories foregrounds a theme – the ephemeral nature of love – seen in all of her later works, both fictional and nonfictional. The two novels that follow both take as their focus the personal relationships and the search for self of female protagonists. Doux-amer (1960; Best Man), for example, in which traditional male / female power relations are inverted, introduces the theme of self-discovery through writing by relating the story of an amorous relationship between a career-driven woman writer and her editor. Despite the success of her fictional works, Martin is most well known for her two-volume autobiography, Dans un gant de fer (1965) and La Joue droite (1966), translated together under the title In an Iron Glove. On the thematic level, the primary focus of the autobiography is Martin’s traumatic relationship with her father, and the physical isolation and psychological alienation of the family for which he was responsible. The title emblematizes the violence that colours her childhood memories, and much of the text revolves around the brutality and beatings to which the father subjected his wife and children. Although Dans un gant de fer opens with the narrator stating her forgiveness of her father, now a frail old man, the text nonetheless paints a powerful picture of her hatred and anger at the man who kept her imprisoned from the world. She makes it clear that she will put aside any feelings of sympathy – not for the man as her father, but as a human being – in order to recount truthfully the painful events of her youth. In the first volume, Martin articulates the

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experiences she remembers from her earliest years up to the death of her mother. The second volume continues to recount her school days, and emphasizes in particular the growing solidarity of the children in the family, the death of her beloved grandparents and the arrival of her stepmother, and closes on the positive note of her sister’s marriage and escape from the family. Taken together, the two volumes of autobiography follow a trajectory that takes Martin from anger to the possibility of liberation, and illustrate the shaping of self on a textual level. The oppressiveness of the father-figure is paradigmatic of the authoritarianism Martin ascribes to the patriarchal system in general, especially in the domains of education and the church. Her biting social commentary portrays her convent education as inferior in quality, oppressive in nature, and complicit in creating an unhealthy attitude to women’s bodies and sexuality. The nuns display the same penchant for persecution and denial of pleasure as does her father. Her only positive moments are those spent with her maternal grandparents, whose love and happiness provide a strong contrast with the atmosphere that reigns in the family home. The problematic nature of generic boundaries is reflected in the fact that Martin received a Governor General’s award and the Prix de la province de Québec for fiction for the work she most clearly considers nonfictional. Her autobiography is in many respects a traditional account of a life that respects the “autobiographical pact” in the fairly straightforward, chronological manner of the narrative and in the truth claim with which it opens: “servie par une mémoire impitoyable je n’ai rien oublié” (“graced with a pitiless memory, I have forgotten nothing”). As Mary Jean Green has observed, the text also possesses certain characteristics specific to life writing by women: “like many other female autobiographies, Claire Martin’s Dans un gant de fer is centered around the writer’s relationships with others from the first words of the text”. Martin relates the difficult nature of her own coming into being as a writer, a leitmotiv in her work, to the fact that women were often denied the same educational and career opportunities as men. With her traditional style and modern themes, Martin stands as a transitional figure; her feminist, anti-clerical stance, and her criticisms of marriage and the education of women, make her a subversive writer in her time. Susan Ireland and Patrice J. Proulx Biography Born Claire Montreuil in Quebec, Canada, 1914. Had an unhappy childhood, with a cruel and often violent father. Attended a convent school. Taken care of by her grandparents and later by her stepmother after her mother’s early death. Pursued career as radio announcer, before turning to writing: started writing under her mother’s maiden name, late 1950s. Married Roland Faucher. First collection of stories, Avec ou sans amour (1958; Love Me, Love Me Not), published to critical acclaim, followed by Doux-amer (1960; Best Man). President, Société des Ecrivains Canadiens, 1963–65. Lived in southern France for 10 years, where she concentrated on translation work, including books by Robertson Davies and Margaret Laurence; returned to Quebec City, 1982. Medal, Academie des Letteres du Québec, 1999.

Selected Writings Dans un gant de fer, 1965; in In an Iron Glove: An Autobiography, translated by Philip Stratford, 1975 La Joue droite, 1966; in In an Iron Glove: An Autobiography, translated by Philip Stratford, 1975

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Further Reading Boisclair, Isabelle, “Claire Martin, tous genres confondus”, Québec Studies, 26 (1998–99): 52–61 Green, Mary Jean, “Structures of Liberation: Female Experience and Autobiographical Form in Quebec” in Life/Lines: Theorizing Women’s Autobiography, edited by Bella Brodzki and Celeste Schenck, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988 Iqbal, Françoise and Gilles Dorion, “Claire Martin: une interview”, Canadian Literature, 82 (1979): 52–77 Ouellet, Lise, “De l’autobiographie à la fiction autobiographique dans la littérature feminine”, La Licorne, 27 (1993): 365–78 Vigneault, Robert, Claire Martin, son oeuvre: les réactions de la critique, Montreal: Pierre Tisseyre, 1975

Martineau, Harriet

1802–1876

English prose writer, travel writer, and autobiographer Thomas Carlyle spoke of Harriet Martineau as “a notable literary woman of her day”. That was in 1836, when she was enjoying the prodigious success of the didactic tales in her series Illustrations of Political Economy (1832–34). As the author of 36 books and pamphlets, the translator of Auguste Comte’s Positive Philosophy, and the writer of an perceptive thriceweekly column in the Daily News, she was an unusual figure – a female Victorian Sage, as Linda H. Peterson (1990) has put it – who saw it as her “duty” to tell her own story. Much of her writing derives from her own experience, but her major contribution to life writing is her Autobiography, published in 1877, a year after her death. Written 22 years earlier, in 1855, it had been the response to her “imminent death”. In December 1854 she consulted a specialist, who pronounced her heart diseased; she left him convinced she would soon die. Her thoughts turned immediately to an account of her life: “from my youth upwards,” she wrote, “I have felt that it was one of the duties of my life to write my autobiography.” The autobiography begins with her earliest memory – toddling through a door towards a tree – and moves chronologically to the date of composition – the section (prematurely) headed “Last View of the World”. The opening pages of the autobiography have elicited comparisons with Jane Eyre (notably from Charlotte Brontë herself, who had read an earlier version). Readers are introduced to Harriet as an awkward, sickly, ill-favoured child. She feels a guilty joy at the death of a much-feared music master, experiences a hysterical inability to see the ocean when set before it, and is unable to behold a magic-lantern image without losing control of her bowels. Suffering increasingly from deafness, she is sent to a boys’ day school, makes solitary intellectual discoveries through her reading, and finds consolation in religious fanaticism, before leaving the patriarchal household for London to sell her tales. Such self-analysis features less in other parts of the book. The text is divided into six “Periods”; the fourth of these covers her life from age 30 to 37, and consists mainly of reminiscences – portraits of literary figures she met in London. The list of acquaintances is rich enough to have made the autobiography a resource for literary historians and biographers: it includes Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Godwin, Robert Browning, and many others. Other parts of “Period IV” resolve into quae scripsi, as Martineau

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summarizes her earlier writings. The 1834–35 trip to America, which she had dealt with in Society in America (1837), is here presented in terms of the slavery question. For stretches of the autobiography, didacticism is to the fore. Harriet Martineau states that her business in life has been “to think and learn, and to speak out with absolute freedom what I have thought and learned”. The Autobiography follows these principles. Martineau tells how a deaf person can make a career for his or her self; how a woman can make her way in a male-dominated London literary world; how the truths of political economy can be made palatable to many. She states that slavery is an abomination and that her early Unitarianism was only a stage in her life, just as Christianity is only a stage in the history of mankind. The inclusion of such “essays” is not untypical of a certain kind of Victorian life writing, and Martineau’s text has this in common with the autobiographies of Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, and John Ruskin. It certainly deals with that staple of Victorian life writing, the “Crisis of Faith”, though in a characteristically positive manner: “At length I recognised the monstrous superstition [Christianity] in its true character of a great fact in the history of the race, and found myself, with the last link of my chain snapped, – a free rover on the bright, breezy common of the universe.” Feminist critics such as Deirdre David have expressed admiration for Harriet Martineau’s “forthright, courageous and life-long feminism”, while exploring the tensions behind her evident self-esteem and confident positivism. In particular, they have pointed to her own sense of her “auxiliary usefulness” to a male-dominated culture; to the autobiography’s tendency to value attributes perceived as male rather than female; to the disturbing complexities of her relationship with her aging mother; and to what Linda H. Peterson (1990) calls Martineau’s “rhetorical dilemma” as a female Victorian autobiographer: “how to create a position from which to speak”.

1968 (based on her years in the United States) Letters from Ireland, 1853 Complete Guide to the Lakes, 1854 Guide to Windermere, with Tours to the Neighbouring Lakes and Other Interesting Places, 1854 Guide to Keswick and Its Environs, 1857 Survey of the Lake District, 1860 Biographical Sketches, 1869; revised edition, 1876 Autobiography, 3 vols, edited by Maria Weston Chapman, 1877; as Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, 2 vols, introduction by Gaby Weiner, 1983 Letters to Fanny Wedgwood, edited by Elisabeth Sanders, 1983 Harriet Martineau in the London Daily News: Selected Contributions 1852–1866 edited by Elisabeth Sanders Arbuckle, 1994 Harriet Martineau and America: Selected Letters from the Reinhard S. Speck Collection, edited by R.A. Burchell, 1995

Further Reading Broughton, Trev Lynn, “Making the Most of Martyrdom: Harriet Martineau, Autobiography and Death”, Literature and History, 2/2 (1993): 24–45 David, Deirdre, Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy: Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, and London: Macmillan, 1987 Hunter, Shelagh, Harriet Martineau: The Poetics of Moralism, Aldershot, Hampshire and Brookfield, Vermont: Scolar Press, 1995 Machann, Clinton, The Genre of Autobiography in Victorian Literature, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994 Peterson, Linda H., Victorian Autobiography: The Tradition of SelfInterpretation, New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 1986 Peterson, Linda H., “Harriet Martineau: Masculine Discourse, Female Sage” in Victorian Sages and Cultural Discourse: Renegotiating Gender and Power, edited by Thais E. Morgan, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1990 Postlethwaite, Diana, “Mothering and Mesmerism in the Life of Harriet Martineau”, Signs, 14/3 (1989): 583–609 Sanders, Valerie, “Absolutely an Act of Duty: Choice of Profession in Autobiography by Victorian Women”, Prose Studies, 9/3 (1986): 54–70

Christopher Ringrose Biography Born in Norwich, Norfolk, England, 12 June 1802, into a family of Huguenot descent; sister of James Martineau. Suffered from poor health throughout her life, and began to go deaf at the age of 12. Educated at home, at the Revd Isaac Perry’s school in Norwich, 1813–15, and at a school in Bristol, 1818–19. Her father, a manufacturer of army cloth, lost business after the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, then was ruined in the financial crisis of 1825–26. Supported herself, her mother, and an aunt, after her father’s death in 1826, first with needlework, then with writing. Contributed to the Unitarian journal Monthly Repository, 1820s. Became a literary celebrity after publishing a series of stories exemplifying economic principles, Illustrations of Political Economy (1832–34). Settled in London. Travelled in the United States, 1834–35. Became ill and went to live near her brother-in-law, a physician, in Tynemouth, Northumberland, 1839–44; tried mesmerism as a cure and wrote about her experience. Moved to Clappersgate, near Ambleside, Westmorland (now Cumbria), 1845; met the poets William Wordsworth and Matthew Arnold. Had by now repudiated her early Unitarian beliefs and all religious faith. Travelled to Palestine and Egypt, 1846–47; wrote Eastern Life (1848). Contributed to Household Words, late 1840s, the People’s Journal, the London Daily News, 1852–66, and Edinburgh Review, from 1859. Refused a civil list pension on several occasions, fearing it would compromise her independence. Died in Clappersgate, 27 June 1876.

Selected Writings Society in America, 3 vols, 1837; edited by Seymour Martin Lipset,

Maximilian I

1459–1519

Holy Roman emperor and autobiographer Emperor Maximilian I is probably the Renaissance sovereign who devoted the most time and effort to the opportunities posed by written self-descriptions. His decade-long experimentation with adequate form and content began with the fragmentary Vita Maximiliani. Written in the 1490s, it tells the emperor’s story in three main sections: the origins of the house of Burgundy, the prince’s early years (birth, upbringing, and education), and his battles (especially in Burgundy). We know nothing about his immediate models. The memoir tradition of Burgundy (Olivier de la Marche, Georges Chastellain, and Jean Molinet) was clearly one of his main influences. The humanist Heinrich Bebel praised Maximilian as early as 1492 in an oratio as the ideal personification of the writing military commander in the tradition of Julius Caesar. The imperial secretary and historiographer Joseph Grünpeck revised and expanded the drafts and dictations of the autobiography (Gesta Maximiliani, Historia Friederici et Maximiliani) himself. Why Maximilian abandoned his erudite Latin self-analysis after 1500 can no longer be determined. The three German works Freydal, Theuerdank, and Weisskunig, which emulate the

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German heroic epics and the allegorical novel, tell us the story of Maximilian’s life in the manner of literary exaggeration and allegory. They, too, are mostly fragmentary. Only Theuerdank, the sole work written in verse, was published during the emperor’s lifetime (1517). Weisskunig follows the tripartite structure of the Vita Maximiliani. Instead of the genealogical chronicling introduction, part 1 is an account of Maximilian’s parents’ wedding and coronation. The story of his youth (part 2) serves as an introduction to a universal educational programme. Part 3 continues with the battles up to 1513. The other two works use Maximilian’s courtship with Mary of Burgundy as a point of departure for a series of episodes on heroic adventures: in Freydal these are the emperor’s jousts; in Theuerdank they are mostly hunting stories. Both pieces assist the reader in deciphering the autobiographical allusions. The three works in German were written under the sovereign’s constant supervision and thus constitute an authorized self-description.Occasionally Maximilian’s authorship is limited to his ideas on structure and motifs, which were then elaborated by co-workers and secretaries (e.g. Siegmund von Dietrichstein, Melchior Pfinzing, Marx Treitzsaurwein), not unlike the modern-day ghostwriters. After the Vita Maximiliani, part 3 of Weisskunig seems most probably to be the work of Maximilian himself. He also influenced the inclusion of numerous illustrations, of which Hans Burgkmair’s wood-carvings are considered the culmination of contemporary book illustration. The primary purpose of an autobiographical “work of glorification” is the Gedechtnus (commemoration, “memoria”). In words similar to those of Benvenuto Cellini or Siegmund von Herberstein in later years, Maximilian urges the individual to cultivate his own remembrance (Weisskunig, chapter 24). The prologues refer specifically to his direct descendants, principally his grandson King Charles of Spain (later the Emperor Charles V), among the readership. This also includes the closer, inner circle of persons living and working in the sovereign’s environment. The more recent literature on Maximilian’s writing stresses its contemporary political relevance. The universal validity of the educational programme presented in Weisskunig (part 2) reflects the increasingly complex governmental bureaucracy and elaborate life at the court of a sovereign in the early modern period. Instead of reforming the offices, the ruler himself, as a cult figure, must define the distinctions between bureaucratic tasks. In Freydal and Theuerdank Maximilian restricts chivalrous deeds to hunting and jousting. He excludes certain military issues like feuds or private wars which threatened the territorial order and the princely power during the late Middle Ages. In 1495 feuds were prohibited within the Holy Roman empire. According to these political and legal conditions Maximilian attempts to create a literary hero who offers his admirers a new aristocratic identity. As early as the Vita Maximiliani Maximilian attempts to give meaning to the successes and failures in his life. He mentions the unfavourable astrological constellation under which he was born and from whose negative effects he was spared only through the grace of God. Under the influence of humanist writers, this contrast of God with astrology shifts to Virtus versus Fortuna in Theuerdank. The chapter on astrology in Weisskunig reports that the emperor always adapted his actions to the needs of the time. Virtus and Fortuna are harmonized

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through Maximilan’s motto “Observe moderation!” and the humanist concept of Patientia. Machiavelli considered actions in accordance with the times (Fortuna) to be the appropriate policy for a wise politician, though hardly implementable (see Machiavelli’s The Prince, chapter 25). In the daring apotheosis of Weisskunig, such a policy seems, however, possible with the help of astrology. Contrary to the educational theme of Weisskunig, personal childhood experiences play a crucial role in the emperor’s philosophy of life in the Vita Maximiliani: it is these that explain the meaning of subsequent events in his life. In the danger to the lives of his family during the bombardment of the Imperial Palace of Vienna in 1462, Maximilian sees for the first time not only the working of God’s grace but also the negative effects of his horoscope, which has destined him for battle. The interpretative pattern of the metaphysical contrast between astrology and God’s grace brings one’s own personality into focus in the interplay of the outside world with one’s inner life. In Weisskunig the idealization of the sovereign’s self-portrait leaves no room for such tensions. Harald Tersch Biography Born in Wiener Neustadt, Austria, 22 March 1459, son of the Holy Roman emperor Frederick III and Eleanor of Portugal. Married Mary, daughter of Charles the Bold and heiress of the Burgundian lands, consisting of The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Artois, and Picardy, 1477: one son and one daughter. Ceded Artois and Burgundy to France after war with Louis XI, 1482. Wife died, 1482. Crowned king at Aachen, 1486, becoming co-ruler with his father; also granted the title King of the Romans. Taken prisoner by the citizens of Bruges, who resented his authority, 1488; rescued by his father. Drove out the Hungarians, who had seized much of Austria under King Matthias Corvinus, 1490. Defeated the Turks at Villach 1492. Became Holy Roman emperor on the death of his father, 1493. Met the lectors and princes of Germany at the Diet of Worms, where he established his authority, 1495; his Landfriede programme widely regarded as bringing about order and stability to the German lands. Promoted the marriage of his son Philip with Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and between his daughter Margaret and the Spanish prince John; later arranged dynastic marriages for his grandchildren, thus enlarging the Habsburg empire. Married Bianca Maria Sforza, niece of Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan, 1494. Joined the Holy League with the pope, Milan, England, and Aragon to stop the French in Italy, 1495. Was defeated by the Swiss confederation, who gained independence from the empire, 1499. Ceded Milan to Louis XII of France after several years of war, 1504. Joined the League of Cambrai against Venice, 1508, but defeated by the Venetians. As an ally of Henry VIII of England, helped to win the Battle of the Spurs against the French, 1513. Acquired the Tyrol peacefully. Created the Aulic Council, which exercised supreme jurisdiction in his territories, 1501. Fostered the arts and learning. Son Philip died, 1506; prepared his grandson, Charles (later the emperor Charles V), to rule the Habsburg holdings. Died in Wels, Austria, 12 January 1519.

Selected Writings Die Geuerlicheiten und eins Teils der Geschichten des loblichen Streytparen und hochberümbten Helds und Ritters Herr Tewrdannckhs, 1517, revised twice, 1519; as Thewerdanck, edited by Burkhart Waldis, 1553, 1563, 1589, and 1596; as Der allerdurchleuchtigste Ritter … Theur-Danck, edited by Matthaeus Schultes, 1679; as Theuerdank, edited by Carl Haltaus, 1836; as Teuerdank, edited by Karl Goedeke, 1878; as Der Theuerdank (facsimile of 1517 edition), edited by Simon Laschitzer, 1888 (reprinted 1966); as Teuerdank: Die Geferlicheiten und eins Teils der Geschichten des loblichen, streitbaren und hochberümbten Helds und Ritters Herr Teurdanks, edited by Helgar Unger, 1968; as

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Kaiser Maximilians Theuerdank (facsimile of 1517 edition), edited by Heinz Engels, 1968; as Kaiser Maximilian I: Teuerdank, edited by Horst Appuhn, 1979 Der weiss Kunig: eine Erzehlung von den Thaten Kaiser Maximilian des Ersten, edited by Joseph Kurzböck, 1775; as Der Weisskunig, edited by Alwin Schultz, 1888; as Weisskunig, edited by Heinrich T. Musper, 2 vols, 1956 Freydal: Des Kaisers Maximilian I. Turniere und Mummereien, edited by Franz Folliot de Crenneville-Poutet and Quirin von Leitner, 2 vols, 1880–82 Vita Maximiliani; as Lateinische Autobiographie, edited by Alwin Schultz in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses, 6 (1888); edited by Franziska Schmid in “Eine neue Fassung der maximilianeischen Selbstbiographie”, 1950 (unpublished dissertation)

Further Reading Burger, Heinz Otto, “Der Weisskunig: Die Selbststilisierung des ‘letzten Ritters’” in “Dasein heisst eine Rolle spielen”: Studien zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte, editied by H.O. Burger, Munich: Hanser, 1963 Cremer, Folkhard, “Kindlichait, Junglichait, Mandlichait, Tewrlichait”: Eine Untersuchung zur Text-Bild-Redaktion des Autobiographieprojektes Kaiser Maximilians I. und zur Einordnung der Erziehungsgeschichte des Weisskunig, Egelsbach: HänselHohenhausen, 1995 Füssel, Stephan, “Dichtung und Politik um 1500: Das “Haus Österreich” in Selbstdarstellung, Volkslied und panegyrischen Carmina” in Die Österreichische Literatur: ihr Profil von den Anfängen im Mittelalter bis ins 18. Jahrhundert (1050–1750), edited by Herbert Zeman, Graz: Akademische Durck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1986 Jackson, W.H., “The Tournament and Chivalry in German Tournament Books of the Sixteenth Century and in the Literary Works of the Emperor Maximilian I” in The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood, edited by Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey, Woodbridge, Suffolk and Dover, New Hampshire: Boydell, 1986 Kaulbach, Hans-Martin (editor), Neues vom Weisskunig: Geschichte und Selbstdarstellung Kaiser Maximilians I. in Holzschnitten, Stuttgart: Graphische Sammlung Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1994 Misch, Georg, “Die Stilisierung des eigenen Lebens in dem Ruhmeswerk Kaiser Maximilians, des letzten Ritters”, Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften Göttingen: PhilosophischHistorische Klasse, 1 (1930): 435–59 Moltke, Konrad, Siegmund von Dietrichstein: Die Anfänge ständischer Institutionen und das Eindringen des Protestantismus in die Steiermark zur Zeit Maximilians I. und Ferdinands I., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1970 Müller, Jan-Dirk, Gedechtnus: Literatur und Hofgesellschaft um Maximilian I., Munich: Fink, 1982 Pesendorfer, Franz, “Der Weisskunig Kaiser Maximilians I” (dissertation), Vienna: University of Vienna: 1931 Riedl, Kurt, “Der Quellenwert des Weisskunig am Beispiel des Schweizerkrieges 1499” in Festschrift Hermann Wiesflecker, edited by Alexander Novotny and Othmar Pickl, Graz: Historisches Institut der Universität Graz, 1973 Rupprich, Hans, “Das literarische Werk Kaiser Maximilians I” in Ausstellung Maximilian I., edited by Erich Egg, Innsbruck: Land Tirol, Kulturreferat, 1969 Scholz Williams, Gerhild, “The Arthurian Model in Emperor Maximilian’s Autobiographic Writings Weisskunig and Theuerdank”, Sixteenth Century Journal, 11/4 (1980): 3–22 Scholz Williams, Gerhild, The Literary World of Maximilian I: An Annotated Bibliography, St Louis: Center for Reformation Research, 1982 Schweiger, Wolfgang, “Der Wert des Weisskunig als Geschichtsquelle (Untersucht nach dem 3. Teil 1477–1498)” (dissertation), University of Graz: 1968 Strobl, Joseph, Studien über die literarische Tätigkeit Kaiser Maximilians I., Berlin: Reimer, 1913 Strohschneider, Peter, Ritterromantische Versepik im ausgehenden Mittelalter: Studien zu einer funktionsgeschichtlichen

Textinterpretation der Mörin Hermanns von Sachsenheim sowie zu Ulrich Fuetrers Persibein und Maximilians I. Teuerdank, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1986 Tennant, Elaine C., “Understanding with the Eyes”: The Visual Gloss to Maximilian’s Theuerdank in Entzauberung der Welt: deutsche Literatur 1200–1500, edited by James F. Poag and Thomas C. Fox, Tübingen: Francke, 1989 Wenzel, Horst, Höfische Geschichte: literarische Tradition und Gegenwartsdeutung in den volkssprachigen Chroniken des hohen und späten Mittelalters, Bern and Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1980 Wiesflecker, Hermann, “Joseph Grünpecks Redaktion der lateinischen Autobiographie Maximilians I”, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 78 (1970): 416–41 Wiesflecker, Hermann, Kaiser Maximilian I.: Das Reich, Österreich und Europa an der Wende zur Neuzeit, 5 vols, Munich: Oldenbourg, 1971–86 Wiesflecker-Friedhuber, Inge (editor), Quellen zur Geschichte Maximilians I. und seiner Zeit, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996

Medical Autobiography As a genre, medical autobiography encompasses a wide spectrum of life writing whose defining characteristic is the author’s confrontation with the body – more often than not, the ill or injured body. Generally, two perspectives determine in the genre. In the first category are autobiographies that recount the author’s personal experience with serious, life-threatening illness, disability, or injury. Current topics in this area include cancer, AIDS, neurological and neuromuscular disorders, mental illness, stroke, and paralysis. A second sub-genre springs from the perspective of medical professionals who recount their experiences with the medical institution, with patients, and with their development as health-care providers or researchers. Various points of view inform the works in each category. Historically, both perspectives represent fairly recent topics for life writing. Exceptions in the first case are spiritual autobiographies and autobiographies of oppression, such as slave narratives, which identify illness as inextricably tied to the experience being narrated. Exceptions to the second category, medical narratives, are rarer. The lectures of Galen (3rd-century Rome) and Paracelsus (15th-century Switzerland) could possibly fit into the type, as could the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, whose work with anatomy is detailed therein. The first sub-genre usually involves the individual’s confrontation with his or her mortality and with the challenge to identity created when the self is absorbed wholly with managing illness, pain, or disability. Closely related issues include political ones, particularly in the cases of cancer and AIDS, both of which are diseases that tend to stigmatize the ill person. A political stance will therefore, in the context of life writing, call for increased knowledge, regulation, and above all funding for research into a cure for the disease in question. The objectifying tendencies of the medical profession are countered by the narrator’s giving a face to human suffering. Terminal illnesses also often dictate the format of the autobiography, the journal or diary being the most appropriate, since it would be difficult for the author to imagine being well enough (or indeed alive) to write a retrospective account. Nonetheless, many retrospective accounts of “conquering” or managing the illness exist, although the author eventually succumbed; such is the case, for example,

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with the late African American poet Audre Lorde, whose optimistic Cancer Journals (1980) was followed by A Burst of Life (1988), which chronicled her struggle with metastatic breast cancer. British photographer Jo Spence’s Putting Myself in the Picture: A Political, Personal, and Photographic Autobiography (1986) is another such example. In AIDS narratives the autobiography is often narrated by the partner, as in Paul Monette’s Borrowed Time (1988), which also deals with the effects of AIDS on the gay community. Autobiographies of health-care professionals, the second subgenre, are equally numerous in the 20th century. Many autobiographies combine the history of a disease and its cure, if that has been developed, with the author’s (usually a doctor’s) personal account of his or her involvement with treatment and /or research. This type of medical autobiography is usually found in medical journals and other specialized periodicals. A sampling of these autobiographical essays reveals, for example, personal accounts of a medical librarian’s mentors (Robert M. Braude, “A Medical Librarian’s Progress”, Bulletin of the Medical Librarian’s Association, 86/2, 1998); “a highly personal view … of the early days of the discovery of human complement structural gene polymorphisms and deficiencies” (C.A. Alper, “A History of Complement Genetics”, Experimental Clinical Immunogenetics, 15/4, 1998); or a “pilgrim’s progress, from mousepox through myxomatosis to vaccinia and then smallpox” (F. Fenner, “Historical Vignette: A Life with Pox Viruses and Publishers”, Advance Virus Research, 51, 1998). The sheer number of these essays, which also include prize-acceptance speeches, strongly points to the need within the profession to give medicine a human face and to personalize what is often taken to be “objective” scientific research. Collections of personal essays written for the general public, best exemplified, at least in an American context, by the works of William Carlos Williams (Autobiography, 1951) and Richard Selzer (Confessions of a Knife, 1979, and Down from Troy: A Doctor Comes of Age, 1992), adopt a more literary style. Williams and Selzer both tend to romanticize the medical profession, the power of the physician, and the drama of lifeand-death situations. Both are highly accomplished writers (Williams, of course, having achieved fame for his poetry and fiction as well), whose introspection about their identity as doctors creates compelling prose. Similar to this approach are the autobiographies of notable physicians or scientists who have made groundbreaking contributions to the medical profession or whose names have become widely recognizable by the general populace. Most notable of this type is Albert Schweitzer’s Aus meinem Leben und Denken (1931; Out of My Life and Thought). These autobiographies are structured very much like the formal, retrospective work of a prominent public figure, with personal events and challenges in the background. Less romantic about their lives in the medical world are physicians whose autobiographies expose the overwhelming demands of medical school and residencies. Gender also figures strongly in these cases. Since the percentage of women in the medical profession was extremely low until the late 20th century, women have often faced discrimination and marginalization in an institution that was for so long predominantly male. Perri Klass combines these topics in her work A Not Entirely Benign Procedure: Four Years as a Medical Student (1987), which

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chronicles her medical school years, which she describes as depersonalizing and dehumanizing as well as sexist. Accounts of medical experiences under unusual circumstances, especially wartime, make up a fair percentage of medical autobiographies. Florence Nightingale’s letters (1854– 56) from the Crimean War are among the earliest of wartime medical chronicles (see Sue M. Goldies’s edition, 1997). Finally, a small but important body of literature deals with healers from outside mainstream-Western cultures, such as Thomas Yellowtail’s Yellowtail, Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief: An Autobiography (1991). Such autobiographies, however, are relatively rare, possibly because of the lesser emphasis on the individual in forming identity in non-Western cultures. And few of these works have been translated into English or the major European languages. Autobiography, of course, is essential for medical knowledge. It could be said that, physicians rely on patients’ body narratives, however limited, to aid them in diagnosis. For the patient, the entrance into the medical world is marked, literally, by providing the institution with a life writing, the form on which the patient is subject to all sorts of personal questions, some of which may have nothing to do with the current problem. The impulse towards autobiography, both by patient and professional, then, is solidly grounded in the medical institution. New to the horizon in this area will be autobiographies of those affected by genetic engineering as well as those administering these procedures. Bioethics will almost certainly form the focus of most of these autobiographies. Kay Cook Further Reading Churchill, Larry R. and Sandra W. Churchill, “Storytelling in Medical Arenas: The Art of Self-Determination”, Literature and Medicine, 1 (1982): 73–79 Couser, G. Thomas, Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and LifeWriting, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997 Hawkins, Anne Hunsaker, Reconstructing Illness: Studies in Pathography, West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1993 “Illness, Disability, and Lifewriting”, special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 6/1 (1991) Jordanova, Ludmilla, Defining Features: Scientific and Medical Portraits 1660–2000, London: Reaktion Books, 2000 Sanes, Samuel, A Physician Faces Cancer in Himself, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1979 See also The Body and Life Writing; Case Histories; Illness and Life Writing

Mehta, Ved

1934–

Indian autobiographer and essayist Conventional notions of “autobiography” usually privilege a certain linearity of chronology. By constantly revisiting various moments of his life in different books, Ved Mehta disregards received notions of either linear time or a linear life. The life writings of Mehta, India’s most prolific English-language autobiographer, reveal not only a constant preoccupation with the attaining of selfhood, despite – or perhaps because of – a visual

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handicap, but also a tussle with the vexed issue of identity and migrancy. The last is only to be expected given the many worlds – India, United States, and Britain – that Mehta so seamlessly straddles. Face to Face, Mehta’s first autobiographical work, was published in 1957 when he was only 23 years old. With its tripartite division into “India and Home”, “Pakistan and Transition”, and “America and Education”, Face to Face is a meticulously wrought autobiography which deconstructs the binaries – India / home, Pakistan / transition, America / education – set up in the novel’s very structure. All this is not to say that Mehta privileges the recording of the individual life over and above the more cataclysmic national upheaval of the time. Face to Face faithfully narrates the agonizing process of Partition and its impact on the Mehta family, which was ousted from Lahore when this northern city was given to Pakistan in 1947. Mehta’s experience at the Arkansas State School for the Blind (the only school out of 30 that accepted his frantic call for admission) in the United States is equally fascinating, transcending as it does the boundaries of mere autobiography and becoming instead a vivid recollection of collectively combating a handicap in the American South. Issues hinted at in Face to Face are brought to full focus in Vedi (1981). Published after Face to Face, Vedi predates the events narrated in the earlier book. It describes Mehta’s affliction with meningitis, which eventually left him blind, and his father’s determination to prevent him from succumbing to the usual fate of the blind in India. Thus isolation, and coming to terms with it, are key motifs running through Vedi. The Ledge between the Streams (1984) revisits the 1940s, which were a crucial time not only in Mehta’s life but also in that of his nation, poised as it was on the brink of independence. In Sound-Shadows of the New World, published in 1985, Mehta returns to narrating his experiences at the Arkansas State School for the Blind and how those formative years were a time of education, freedom, and possibility for him. Published in 1989, The Stolen Light takes the reader through Mehta’s college years in Pomona, California. As with Face to Face and Vedi, the reader gets the sense that Mehta has always tried to grapple with his handicap and live as “normal” a life as possible. So, for example, The Stolen Light is replete with lived examples from a “typical” American undergraduate career such as joining a fraternity and buying a car. This book is also a vivid recollection of the South Asian experience in the United States and a perceptive memoir of life in Southwest America in the languid 1950s. Mehta further demonstrates the versatility of his life and writing with the more recent memoir Up at Oxford (1993), which narrates his student life at Oxford University. Despite his famed cosmopolitanism, he is still very taken with the grandeur of Oxford but his book remains a vivid recollection of undergraduate life at the pinnacle of British education. Mehta has also written life histories of his parents titled Daddyji and Mamaji. These are more preoccupied with narrating the lives of his parents and their impact on the life of the young Ved. Mehta’s strength lies in his ability to reconstruct his extraordinary life with exemplary courage. What is really interesting about his writing is not only his replication of the migrant consciousness or the fact that his writing is so tactile and visually oriented, but also that life needs to be constantly re-experienced and retold. Memory and re-creation then become keys to under-

standing the always newly unfolding moments in the many life histories of Ved Mehta. Pallavi Rastogi Biography Born in Lahore, Punjab, India (now in Pakistan), 21 March 1934, into a Hindu family. His father, Dr Amolak Ram Mehta, was a public health officer and an important figure in the Red Cross Society. Blinded by spinal meningitis at the age of three; sent to a variety of hospitals and boarding schools, including the American Mission School, Bombay. Invited to study in the United States at Arkansas State School for the Blind, Little Rock, 1949 (high diploma). Studied at Pomona College, California, graduating in 1956. Won Hazen scholarship to attend Balliol College, Oxford University, England, where he studied modern history, 1956–59. Published his autobiography, Face to Face, 1957. Returned to the United States and studied at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (MA 1961). Visited India and Nepal with Dom Moraes, 1959. Published Walking the Indian Streets, 1959. Staff writer and reporter-at-large for the New Yorker, 1961–94. Wrote Fly and the Fly-Bottle: Encounters with British Intellectuals, about the philosopher A.J. Ayer, the historian A.J.P. Taylor, and others, 1962. Visited India again, 1965–66: published a collection of essays about the trip, Portrait of India (1970). Received a Guggenheim fellowship and Ford Foundation grant to travel and study the work of Mahatma Gandhi, 1971, resulting in Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles (1976). Wrote biographies of his father (Daddyji, 1972) and mother (Mamaji, 1979). Wrote and narrated the television film Chachaji, My Poor Relation, 1978. Married Linn Fenimore Cooper Cary, 1983: two daughters. Lecturer at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1990–93; lectured at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts; Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York; and Columbia University, New York, 1994–97. Published Rajiv Gandhi and Rama’s Kingdom, 1994.

Selected Writings Face to Face (autobiography), 1957 Walking the Indian Streets, 1959, revised 1971 Fly and the Fly-Bottle: Encounters with British Intellectuals (biographical studies), 1962 The New Theologian (biographical study of Dietrich Bonhoeffer), 1965 Delinquent Chacha, 1966 Daddyji (biographical study), 1972 Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles (biographical study), 1976 Mamaji (biographical study), 1979 Vedi (autobiography), 1981 The Ledge between the Streams (autobiography), 1984 Sound-Shadows of the New World (autobiography), 1985 The Stolen Light (autobiography), 1989 Up at Oxford (autobiography), 1993 Remembering Mr Shawn’s New Yorker: The Invisible Art of Editing (autobiography), 1998

Further Reading Dodge, Georgina, “Recovering Acts in American Im/migrant Autobiography” (dissertation), Los Angeles: University of California, 1996 Mehta, Ved, A Ved Mehta Reader: The Craft of the Essay, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1998 Philip, David Scott, Perceiving India through the Works of Nirad C. Chaudhuri, R.K. Narayan, and Ved Mehta, New York: Envoy Press, and London: Oriental University Press, 1986 Sinha, R.C.P., The Indian Autobiographies in English, New Delhi: S. Chand, 1978 Slatin, John M., “Blindness and Self-Perception: The Autobiographies of Ved Mehta”, Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, 19/4 (1986): 173–93

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Memoirs Memoirs personalize history and historicize the personal. Although memoirs are about individuals, they are also about “an event, an era, an institution, a class identity” (Hart, 1979). As a general rule, traditional autobiography makes the individual life central, while memoir tends to focus on the times in which the life is lived and the significant others of the memoirist’s world. Memoir is a much older term in English than is autobiography. The Oxford English Dictionary notes its use as early as the 16th century to denote any personal “record of events, not purporting to be a complete history, but treating of such matters as come within the personal knowledge of the writer”. On the other hand, the word autobiography was not used until the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when it came into the language to describe the more individualistic narratives of the self that were beginning to grow out of the revolutionary period and the Romantic movement. While the term autobiography has taken up a central position in the history of what we now call “life writing”, the generic term memoir, although constantly used by writers and reviewers to describe various personal writings, has remained largely unexamined by literary critics and theorists. In fact, memoirs have often been seen by literary critics as incomplete and superficial autobiographies and by historiographers as “inaccurate, overly personal histories” (Billson). This situation was changing by the end of the 20th century, as critics began to see the subversive and revisionary possibilities of the genre for those who feel excluded from mainstream culture and its generic expressions (see Quinby and Buss). Memoir as a genre has endured over the centuries because of its accessibility. In the past it has been practised by everyone from religious zealots to courtesans, from travel writers to pioneers, from business men to retired generals, from presidents to prostitutes, from former slaves to transgendered individuals. What inspires an individual writer (or the readers of a life story) to call an account a memoir rather than an autobiography is never entirely clear, but it would seem that memoir writers are more concerned with making their lives meaningful in terms of the lives of others and in terms of their communities rather than in terms of individual accomplishments. Typically, they want to make themselves more a part of public history and culture than would ordinarily have been the case. They often have a view of the past that they believe may be overlooked. Like the autobiographer they want to make their lives count in the public record; unlike autobiographers they tend to be less sure that their lives will count. Marcus Billson (1977) defines the difference in terms of the view of the subject that each genre seeks: autobiographers are more concerned with “becoming in the world”, memoir writers with “being in the world”. In order to understand memoir as a genre separate from autobiography we need to consider genre not only in the traditional way, as a set of writing practices, but also as a particular ideologically shaped discourse, in which we take into account the functional aspects of a genre, the way in which a genre arises from particular social needs, empowers a particular class of people, and becomes a cultural practice. Such a view of genre is always sensitive to issues such as gender, class, race, and sexual orientation. Therefore, the first question we should ask of a

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memoir is not “why is this person’s life an important or distinguished one?” but “what is the place of this writer in the culture represented?”. For example, in the early 1400s, an account of a medieval woman’s search for the religious life yielded the Booke of Marjorie Kempe, which in the present day has been republished as Memoirs of a Medieval Woman. In calling the book “memoirs” rather than autobiography, the modern editors would seem to be responding to the account’s differences from the “confessional” model of autobiographical practice dominant from the Confessions of Augustine in the 4th century to those of Rousseau in the 18th. Despite Kempe’s desire for the religious life, and her desire to imitate the confessional form in its preoccupation with the individual’s soul, her life does not easily fall into the pattern of sinful past, redemptive incident, followed by the merging of the individual soul with God’s will as a climactic end of the life story. Kempe’s salvation is constantly undermined by her place in culture as a woman. Her desire for chastity, a prerequisite for the spiritual life, is blocked by a husband who keeps insisting on his marriage rights and the tendency of the larger society to question her sanity. Kempe’s progress is full of false starts, reversals, and renewals, and the episodic structure of her book reflects this. As well, because her story necessarily involves the mundane obstacles put in her way by a very gendered material world, her plot is concerned with the detail of daily life in the world. Thus, two principal features of the memoir – its incremental, episodic structure and its preoccupation with the physicality of a materially located place in history and culture – are present as early as the 15th century. The 18th century is often seen as the birthplace of modern autobiography, because of Rousseau’s revolutionary secularized use of the confessional form in his Confessions (1782–89). The same period may also be seen as the birthplace of the modern memoir in the phenomenon known as the “scandalous memoirs” (see Nussbaum), a series of accounts by women who had “fallen” by the standards of their day. Their accounts also secularize the confessional form, represent themselves, like Rousseau, as more sinned against than sinning, and make appeals to the larger world to see their lives in the context of an oppressive culture. However, these stories are named memoirs rather than autobiography by literary historians because they are not the stories our culture has chosen as its central originating life stories. Rousseau and the “scandalous” memoirists might have been equally despised (by some) in their time; however Rousseau, because of the work of the discourses of history and literature, has become the father of modern autobiography, whereas the actresses, prostitutes, and women writers who as independent women penned their stories are merely memoirists. The end of the 18th century brings a very famous use of the memoir form, William Godwin’s Memoirs of the Author of “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1798) about his wife, the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, which exemplifies the ongoing problem of the memoir form’s tendency to be subsumed into other generic markers. In the 18th century memoirs were seen as more biographical than they are today. Since many biographers, such as Samuel Johnson’s biographer James Boswell, knew their subjects personally and often included in their texts accounts of their own interactions with their subjects (as Boswell did), memoir and biography were not always distinguished from one another. Just as in the 19th century, when memoirs were more aligned with historical discourses, and the memoirs of generals,

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explorers, and politicians were often accepted as histories, and similarly in the 20th century, when many memoir-type accounts bore the generic marker “autobiography”, so Godwin’s book – or indeed any memorial document (including obituaries) – was called “memoirs” in the 18th century. But just as the present moment tends to subsume the generic location memoir into the genre called autobiography, so did the 18th and early 19th centuries subsume it into the genre called “biography”. Godwin himself seems to make no distinction between “biography” and “memoir” as he sets out a narrative position that aspires to neutrality and historical assessment in relation to his wife’s life. But the failure of his stance is indicated by readers’ reaction to his account of Wollstonecraft’s life. His memoir unintentionally made his wife’s name notorious and her works largely unread for a century. Although Godwin understood that everything that Wollstonecraft stood for could only be expressed in a form in which public and private history are melded (an essential act of memoir), he seemed not to understand that he could not write of the personal details of Wollstonecraft’s past as a revolutionary, a woman writer, and a sexually active mother of a child born out of wedlock without ruining her reputation. Ironically, in the ways in which his book failed to do the job of biography, it succeeds (in more contemporary terms) as memoir as well as earning the unsavoury reputation that memoirs often carry of breaking the rules of good taste. In addition, as grieving husband Godwin cannot maintain the detached narrative voice of the biographer. He thus falls into the intimate and compelling personal voice of the memoirist who is not only witness and historian of events and persons, but an integrally involved participant in the story he narrates. What Godwin’s memoir of his wife highlights is the particular power of memoir, a form that often presents itself as being about a significant other and about history, but is always also about the self of the writer. Just as memoir brings together aspects of autobiography and biography, it tends to blend a number of writing practices to achieve its place as a historicized personal story, creating a style that is narrative and dramatic as well as essayistic. Not as ambitious as traditional autobiography in the goal of telling the whole life, memoirs tend to centre on significant moments of a life and use the devices of prose fiction to narrate those moments. In addition the memoir makes much use of the devices of the personal essay, favouring anecdotes that illustrate particular ideas, concepts, and views of the way a life is lived, making considerable editorial commentary on the nature of a particular ideological moment and the effect of that moment on individual lives. Memoirs have become ubiquitous in the last 200 years. Any library search will find hundreds in the 19th century and thousands in the 20th century. In contemporary times, from Alix Kates Shulman’s Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (1969) to Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes (1996), memoirs continue to represent a great variety of ordinary lives. A memoir can be written about almost any life circumstance, such as picking apples (Adele Crockett Robertson, The Orchard: A Memoir, 1995), keeping a kosher kitchen (Elizabeth Ehrilch, Miriam’s Kitchen: A Memoir, 1997), being a lesbian (Elspeth Cameron, No Previous Experience: A Memoir of Love and Change, 1997), or being a mother (Margaret Laurence, Dance on the Earth: A Memoir, 1989). All the concerns that plague our present moment, from separated dysfunctional families (Tobias Wolff,

This Boy’s Life: A Memoir, 1989) to life-threatening illness (Paul Monette, Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir, 1988), are represented. The memoir is also part of the postmodern revision of literature as exemplified by André Malraux’s revision of our sense of time and self in Antimémoires (1967; Anti-Memoirs) and Studs Terkel’s play with multiple selves through the histories of other celebrities in Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times (1977). Perhaps the most experimental literary memoir is Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1976), where genre-blending and fictive invention coexist with the self-conscious narrator’s personal testimony of actual cultural situations of our time. A series of episodic narratives of growing up female and Chinese in modern America, Kingston’s memoir uses biographical, historical, mythic, and essayistic techniques to write a life that, compared to lives represented in traditional forms of literature and history, would seem marginal, and uses that life story to revise our concepts of what makes a life important. Memoir has become historically important as well, as a central means of testifying to events so horrific that we are sometimes tempted to deny their very existence, or to minimize their extent and effect. Elie Wiesel, who has written a number of autobiographical accounts of the Holocaust, says that just as “the Greeks invented tragedy, the Romans the epistle, and the Renaissance the sonnet”, our own era has also invented a form central to its cultural needs: testimony (see Felman and Laub). The fact that Wiesel has subtitled one of his own testimonies of his experience of the Holocaust as “memoirs” (Tous les fleuves vont à la mer: mémoires, 1994; translated as All Rivers Run to the Sea) is illustrative of the close connection between the act of testifying and the memoir form, and underscores the continuing power of the memoir to revise both history and literature, the two discourses from which it traditionally draws. Helen M. Buss Further Reading Barrington, Judith, Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art, Portland, Oregon: Eighth Mountain Press, 1997 Billson, Marcus, “The Mem