Writing Lives in the Eighteenth Century

"Rich and thought-provoking, Writing Lives in the Eighteenth Century offers fresh perspectives on figures at the centre of studies of eighteenth-century life writing, including James Boswell and Frances Burney, and engages them in a fascinating dialogue with less prominent writers, such as Isabelle de Charrière and Alicia LeFanu. The essays are deeply knowledgeable, elegantly written, and pose important questions for studies of the genre. Collectively, they will be of significant value to scholars of eighteenth-century literature and life writing."

~Amy Culley, author of British Women’s Life Writing, 1760-1840: Friendship, Community, and Collaboration

"Writing Lives in the Eighteenth Century offers a rich and expansive collection of essays by accomplished scholars, demonstrating how underserved the topic of life writing has been in the field that, arguably, invented its modern form."

~Laura Rosenthal, author of Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives from the Eighteenth Century

“Caldwell’s edited collection thus offers invaluable models for the analysis of life-writing in its various modes, even beyond the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century subjects included. The stellar essays provide useful strategies for reading various genres even being written today beyond the typical life-writing forms of biography and autobiography.” ~Eighteenth-Century Studies