Mortal Pages, Literary Lives: Studies in Nineteenth-century AutobiographyVincent Newey, Philip Shaw Scolar Press, 1996 - 259 pages This is an innovative reassessment of the practice and theory of autobiography in the nineteenth century, using contemporary and more recent interpretative approaches. It deals with a range of authors, canonical and non-canonical: Romantics - Clare, Wordsworth, de Quincy and Leigh Hunt; intellectuals - Carlyle, Mill and Newman; a constellation of women writers - Wollstonecraft, Eliot, Martineau and others; late threshold figures 'Mark Rutherford' and Conan Doyle; and Americans Mary Chestnut and Walt Whitman.The contributors consider the autobiographical impulse and the practice of autobiography in relation to major aesthetic, cultural and philosophic issues such as intertextuality, gender representation, nationality, spiritual quest and the challenge of secularisation. They show that the uncertainty and ingenuity of nineteenth-century autobiographers in their pursuit of identity predicts the freedom and scepticism of our modernity. |
Contents
The Example of Mary | 13 |
Wordsworth and the Paths to Rome | 31 |
De Quincey and | 61 |
Copyright | |
11 other sections not shown
Common terms and phrases
appears argues autobiography become beginning biography called Carlyle Carlyle's Catharine character claim Collect Confessions continued course critics cultural death describes discourse Doyle Doyle's early edition effect Eliot essay example experience expression fact feeling genre George give Hale human idea identity imagination interest Italy John journal kind language later Leaves less Letters literary lives London look Mary means memory Mill mind narrative nature never Newman novel objects offers Oliphant original Oxford past poetry political present published question readers reading references relation remains Reminiscences represents Rome seems sense sentences shock Specimen Days story success suggests thing thought tion truth turn University Press values Victorian voice White Whitman whole Wollstonecraft woman women Wordsworth writing written