Traditions of Victorian Women's Autobiography

Linda H. Peterson is Professor of English and Chair of the English department at Yale University. She is author of Victorian Autobiography: The Tradition of Self-Interpretation and general editor of The Norton Reader, ninth and tenth editions.

Situating her study in relation to earlier attempts to discover--or invent--a tradition of women's autobiography, Peterson challenges some of the prevailing orthodoxies by her extensive research into texts that have, until now, been largely absent from such discussions. Lucidly written, elegantly argued, and impeccably structured, Traditions of Victorian Women's Autobiography will make a major contribution to nineteenth-century women's literary history. --Mary Jean Corbett, Miami University