Life Writing And Victorian Culture

by Amigoni,David; Amigoni,David

• ISBN13: 9780754635314
• ISBN10: 0754635317
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-03-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In this collection of interdisciplinary essays, experts from Britain and the United States in the fields of nineteenth-century literature, and social and cultural history explore new directions in the field of Victorian life writing. Chapters examine a varied yet interrelated range of genres, from the biography and autobiography, to the relatively neglected diary, collective biography, and obituary. Reflecting the rich research being conducted in this area, the contributors link life writing to the formation of gendered and class-based identities; the politics of the Victorian family; and the broader professional, political, colonial, and literary structures in which social and kinship relations were implicated.A wide variety of Victorian works are considered, from the diary of the Radical Samuel Bamford, to the diary of the homosexual George Ives; from autobiographies of professional men to collective biographies of eminent women. Embracing figures as diverse as Gandhi, Wilde, and Bradlaugh, the collection explores the way in which narratives contested one another in a society that devoted an abundance of cultural energy to writing about, and reading of, lives.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	vii
List of Contributors	ix
The Nineteenth Century Series General Editors' Preface	xiii
Dedication and Acknowledgments	xv
Introduction: Victorian Life Writing: Genres, Print, Constituencies	1	(20)
David Amigoni
Diary, Autobiography and the Practice of Life History	21	(20)
Martin Hewitt
Men and Women of the Time: Victorian Prosopographies	41	(26)
Alison Booth
The Self in Society: Middle-class Men and Autobiography	67	(20)
Donna Loftus
Male Masochism: A Model of Victorian Identity Formation	87	(18)
Martin A. Danahay
Promoting a Life: Patronage, Masculinity and Philip Meadows Taylor's The Story of My Life	105	(18)
Trev Lynn Broughton
Excursive Discursive in Gandhi's Autobiography: Undressing and Redressing the Transnational Self	123	(22)
Julie F. Codell
In the Name of the Father: Political Biographies by Radical Daughters	145	(20)
Helen Rogers
The Deaths of Heroes: Biography, Obits and the Discourse of the Press, 1890-1900	165	(30)
Laurel Brake
Sex Lives and Diary Writing: The Journals of George Ives	195	(20)
Matt Cook
`House of Disquiet': The Benson Family Auto/biographies	215	(18)
Valerie Sanders
Index	233