Autobiography and Confession

In the wake of Rousseau'sConfessions(1782–9) autobiographical and confessional writing proliferated in England. Much of this writing was ephemeral and lacked ‘generic respectability’. If it was ‘above all a debatable practice’ (Treadwell 2005: 7, 8), by the middle of the nineteenth century, Romantic autobiography had produced some works that had achieved canonical status – De Quincey'sConfessions of an English Opium Eaterand Lamb's ‘Elia’ essays, both first published in theLondon Magazine. The process of canonization is reflected, for instance, in De Quincey's assertion in 1838 that ‘the essays of “Elia” are as exquisite a gem amongst the jewelry of literature as any nation can show’ (De Quincey 1897a: 37), and the posthumous publication of Wordsworth's blank verse autobiography,The Preludein 1850, also helped to enhance the literary standing of autobiography. If this rising genre emerged as ‘the prime instrument of Romantic knowledge’ (Spengemann 1980: 77), ‘the fully canonical De Quinceys or Wordsworths who invest narrative with a kind of expressive inwardness’ are the rare exception among ‘the non‐canonical mass of the period's self‐writing’ (Treadwell 2005: 112,170). The proliferation of such writing is attributed in an 1822 article in theEdinburgh Magazineto ‘the insatiable appetite of the public for every species of Private Memoirs and Corres pondence’. The contemptuous attitude of the conservative guardians of literary culture is reflected in John Lockhart's article on ‘Autobiography’ in theQuarterly Reviewin 1827, in which he sneers at ‘the mania for this garbage of Confessions, and Recollections, and Reminiscences’ as ‘a vile symptom’ (quoted in Treadwell 2005: 89, 77).