Anglo-Irish Autobiography: Class, Gender, and the Forms of Narrative

As a volatile meeting point of personal and public experience, autobiography exists in a mutually influential relationship with the literature, history, private writings, and domestic practices of a society. This book illuminates the ways evolving class and gender identities interact with these inherited forms of narrative to produce the testimony of a culture confronting to its own demise.

Elizabeth Grubgeld places Irish autobiography within the ever-widening conversation about the nature of autobiographical writing and contributes to contemporary discussions regarding Irish identity. Her emphasis on women's autobiographies provides a further reexamination of gender relations in Ireland.

While serving as the first critical history of its subject, this book also offers a theoretical and interpretive reading of Anglo-Irish culture that gives full attention to class, gender, and genre analysis. It examines autobiographies, letters, and diaries from the late eighteenth century through the present, with primary attention to works produced since World War I.

By examining many previously neglected texts, Grubgeld both recovers lost voices and demonstrates how their work can revise our understanding of such major literary figures such as George Bernard Shaw, W. B. Yeats, John Synge, Elizabeth Bowen, and Louis MacNiece.

Author: Elizabeth Grubgeld
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 03/01/2004
Pages: 204
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.61lbs
Size: 8.78h x 6.36w x 0.56d
ISBN: 9780815630418

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 03/01/2004 pg. 77
Choice 10/01/2004 pg. 293

About the Author
Elizabeth Grubgeld is a professor of modern British and Irish literature at Oklahoma State University and author of George Moore and the Autogenous Self: The Autobiography and Fiction, also published by Syracuse University Press.