Skip to main content

Abstract

This chapter discusses the usefulness of autobiography in historical research. It is recognised that this is, to some extent, still a controversial area of study. All earlier chapters written about each individual profession have, without a direct allusion to subjectivity, dealt with what these women understood to be their world and, in some cases, an acknowledgement of the difficulties of writing about it. Identity will be studied in this chapter and memory in the following one, to show how they can be used to expand on the historical understanding of a period and that, if analysed with intellectual rigour, can have a valid historical contribution.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. Shari Benstock, ed. The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writings (Routledge, 1988)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Sara Delmont Knowledgeable Women (Routledge, 1989)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  3. Laura Marcus, Autobiographical Discourses (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Liz Stanley, The Auto/biographical I (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Regenia Gagnier, Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain, 1832–1920 (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Mary Jane Corbett, Representing Femininity, Middle Class Subjectivity in Victorian and Edwardian Women’s Autobiographies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

    Google Scholar 

  7. William Lamont, Historical Controversies and Historians (University College London Press, 1998).

    Google Scholar 

  8. Malcolm Chase, ‘Autobiography and the Understanding of Self: the Case of Allen Davenport’, in Martin Hewitt ed., Representing Victorian Lives (Leeds centre for Victorian Studies 1999), p. 19.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Sara Burstall, Retrospect & Prospect: Sixty Years of Women’s Education (Longmans, Green, 1933), p. 50.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Patricia W. Romero, Sylvia Pankhurst: Portrait of a Radical (Yale University Press, 1987).

    Google Scholar 

  11. Wilhelm Dilthey, Pattern and Meaning in History (Harper & Row, 1961), p. 214.

    Google Scholar 

  12. John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (3rd edition) (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2000), p. 190.

    Google Scholar 

  13. David Rubin, Remembering Our Past: Studies in Autobiographical Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 1.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Netta Syrett, The Sheltering Tree (Geoffrey Bles, 1939), Preface.

    Google Scholar 

  15. René Konig, The Restless Image: A Sociology of Fashion (George Allen & Unwin, 1973).

    Google Scholar 

  16. Ledger, Sally, The New Woman, Fiction and Feminism at the fin de siècle (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997) p. 1.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Anthony Cascardi, The Subject of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  18. Roy Porter, Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present (Routledge, 1997).

    Google Scholar 

  19. Anthony Elliot, Concepts of the Self (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), p. 9.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 34.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Ethel Raglan, Memories of Three Reigns (Eveleigh Nash & Grayson, 1928), p. 233.

    Google Scholar 

  22. This replicates Cooper’s idiosyncratic spacing. Diana Cooper, The Rainbow Comes and Goes (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1958), p. 82.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Lilian M. Faithfull, In the House of My Pilgrimage (Chatto & Windus, 1925), p. 9.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Bertha Ruck, A Story-Teller Tells the Truth (Hutchinson, 1935), p. 80.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Baroness de T’Serclaes, Flanders and Other Fields (George G. Harrap, 1964), p. 34.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Sara Burstall, English High School for Girls: Their Aims, Organisation, and Management (Longmans, Green, 1907), p. 15.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Dr Gladys Wauchope, The Story of a Woman Physician (Bristol: John Wright & Sons, 1963), p. 15.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Dr Mary Scharlieb, Reminiscences (Williams and Norgate, 1924), p. 77.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Marion Cleeve, Fire Kindleth Fire: The Professional Autobiography of Marion Cleeve (London & Glasgow: Blackie & Son, 1930), p. 83.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Dr Elizabeth Bryson, Look Back in Wonder (Dundee: David Winter & Son, 1966), p. 126.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Lillah McCarthy, Myself and My Friends (Thornton Butterworth, 1933), p. 190.

    Google Scholar 

  32. Dr Isabel Hutton, Memories of a Doctor in War & Peace (Heinemann, 1960), p. 18.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Peter Corrigan, ‘Dressing in Imaginary Communities: Clothing, Gender and the Body in Utopian Texts from Thomas Moore to Feminist Scifi’ in Body and Society, vol. 2, no. 3 September 1996, pp. 89–106.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Roland Barthes, The Fashion System (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 1st pub., 1967, p. 38.

    Google Scholar 

  35. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison (Vintage Books, 1995), 1st pub. 1977.

    Google Scholar 

  36. Camilla Stivers, ‘Reflections of the Role of Personal Narrative in Social Science’, Signs, 18, 1993, pp. 408–425.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Philippe Lejeune, On Autobiography (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), p. 171.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors

Copyright information

© 2009 Christine Etherington-Wright

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Etherington-Wright, C. (2009). Self and Identity. In: Gender, Professions and Discourse. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230595026_10

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics