Autobiographical writing and British literature, 1783-1834

"The word 'autobiography' is a late eighteenth-century coinage, yet by 1826 it was already used in the title of a multi-volume anthology of self-writing, and by 1834 Thomas Carlyle was writing of 'these Autobiographical times of ours'. Over the course of a few decades, readers and writers came to recognize and name a new genre. This book is the first full study of the phenomenon, examining both the conditions and the practice of autobiographical writing in Romantic literature." "As well as reading a wide variety of those documents, with single chapters devoted to works by Coleridge, Byron, and Lamb, Treadwell examines writing on and around autobiography, including essays, reviews, and other forms of commentary. By preserving a continuous relation between the texts and their contexts, Autobiographical Writing and British Literature 1783-1834 offers the first proper study of what is meant by 'Romantic autobiography'."--Jacket.