Dramatic poetry

Life writing flourished in the nineteenth century. Defined here as a personal narrative that meaningfully recounts the events and experiences of an individual life or lives, it was mainly non-fictional, encompassing autobiography, biography, memoir, diary, and letters, extending to miscellaneous formats, such as personal prefaces, poems, essays, and autobiographical novels.

Following an introductory overview, the essay is divided into four sections: Biography, Autobiography, Diaries, and Letters, each focusing on key nineteenth-century figures within a broader contextualization of timeframe, themes, and critical issues. Given the inevitable controversies surrounding the personal revelations of life writing, featured authors include the Carlyles, Harriet Martineau, John Ruskin, Margaret Oliphant, and John Stuart Mill; but the essay also shows how the flexible format of life writing gave a voice to women and working-class authors, besides encompassing subgenres such as reported interviews and childhood autobiography.

Life writing is best defined as any form of non-fictional writing that narrates the events and experiences of an individual life or set of lives. Taken in its broadest sense, this encompasses autobiography, biography, memoir, diary, and letters, but may extend to miscellaneous formats, such as personal prefaces, poems, essays, or autobiographical novels.

While its history can be backdated to ancient times, in Britain the nineteenth century was undoubtedly its heyday. During the period — life writing not only flourished, but expanded its range, developed new techniques, and was widely reviewed in the leading periodicals. From having been the preserve of male authors celebrating successful public lives, it increasingly appealed to women recounting both their professional and personal experiences, including their childhoods.

The genre was sufficiently broad and flexible to accommodate everything from narratives of whole lives to hybrid memoirs mixing quoted correspondence and diary entries with retrospective analysis.

Narrative poetry meaning

The academic study of life writing, now a thriving category of nineteenth-century studies, was significantly boosted by the development of a specialist critical industry, initiated largely in France and the United States. The most comprehensive reference work remains the Encyclopedia of Life Writing , edited by Margaretta Jolly who also edited the online Oxford Bibliography on Biography and Autobiography For ease of access, this essay is divided into sections on Biography, Autobiography, Diaries, and Letters.

Each section begins with a brief overview of the subgenre, followed by discussion of selected examples. Ideally, biography specialized in exemplary lives, designed to inspire readers with narratives of achievement and virtuous behaviour, but biography also examined personality and identified flaws as well as strengths.