Prefaces, Prologues, Forewords and Introductions

Abstract

Set alongside the frontispiece photograph, these introductory sections are the first contact the reader has with the writer and I believe instigate similar questions. For example, what expectations is the reader given in these antecedent chapters? Do these preliminary guides all perform in a similar manner? Do women from different professions tend to include similar or different topics? Does the use of a prefatory work help or complicate the autobiographical form? Given the position of these chapters as part of the marginalia, we need to ask whether a similar evasion is undertaken by these texts. Finally, with these questions in mind, it will be of interest to establish if the writing at the margins of their work is representative of that in the main body of the text. Within the cohort of autobiographies examined for this book, 80 per cent of professional writers and doctors, 60 per cent of nurses, and 50 per cent of artists and headmistresses produced prefatory chapters. The most popular designation was ‘preface’ (50 per cent), followed by ‘introduction’ (26 per cent), and ‘foreword’ closely followed by prologue (14 and 10 per cent respectively).