Biography, vol. 20, no. 1 (Winter 1997)

Editor's Note, p. iii

ARTICLES

Heroes and Orphans: Testimonial Memory as Resistance and Repression in Francisco Róbles Pérez's "Memorias", pp. 1-53
Vincent Pérez
In seeking to recover and critically interpret the autobiography of his grandfather, the author both positions the work in relation to recent criticism on Mexican American life-writing—arguing that his grandfather's nostalgic memory of the mythic "colonial" world of his childhood operates as an empowering reassertion of cultural continuity and pride in the face of later sociocultural displacement and fragmentation as a Mexican immigrant in the U.S.—and shows how that narrative represses alternate versions of the hacienda sociocultural economy of his Mexican forebears.

Coleridge's Biographia: When is an Autobiography Not an Autobiography?, pp. 54-71
H. J. Jackson
Critical discussion of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria has been dogged by questions about its form and genre since the book was first published in 1817. This article aims to answer these questions by considering the historical conditions under which the work was published; certain distinctive features of Coleridge's project; and the conventions of autobiography at large.

"I Then Was What I Had Made Myself": Representation and Charlotte Charke, pp. 72-94
Sue Churchill
An account of Charke's life published in the Monthly Mirror in 1796 has been used to impose a tragic ending on her Narrative, obscuring the originality of her form, especially her use of comedy and comic representation of female character. Examined outside traditional forms and her celebrated role as her "father's daughter," Charke's work reveals unrecognized matriarchal themes.

SKETCHES FROM LIFE

Detecting a Diary: A Case Study from 1905, pp. 95-102
Anna Makkonen
How can autobiography be distinguished from fiction when the author of the text is unknown? This case study in biography, autobiography, fiction, and criticism explores one reader's "biographical desire," awakened by an anonymous manuscript, written in diary form, depicting a summer in the life of a young girl in the Finnish countryside of 1905.

REVlEWS, pp. 103-108
Reviews of new books.

REVIEWED ELSEWHERE, pp. 109-134
Excerpts from recent reviews of current biographies.

LIFELINES, pp. 135-136
Upcoming events, calls for papers, and news from the field.