Autobiography in Fragments
The Elusive Life of Edith Simcox
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10866747 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rosemarie Bodenheimer (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2002 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 399-422 |
| Publication date | 2002-04-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Victorian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0042-5222 • E-ISSN: 1527-2052 |
| Publisher | Indiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2979/vic.2002.44.3.399 |
| OpenAlex | W2079121382 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 6 |
rT ^he January 1870 issue of the North British Review carried a long, learned historical-theoretical essay entitled Autobiographies. Though its confident generalizations and Johnsonian syntax hardly seem the work of a literary novice, it marked the writer's first substantial appearance in print. The essay proposes a three-stage history of autobiography corresponding roughly Comte's three historic periods: first, the epic story of a heroic life written with primitive energy; then, the realistic narrative in which a man stands as a representative of his age; and finally, the more problematic category of post-Romantic autobiography. The modern autobiographer was, it seemed, trapped in an Arnoldian era of decaying originality in which the self and the world could come into no satisfactory relation. He was forced to chronicle thought instead of action, changes of opinion instead of succeeding experience, or else represent the influences of imaginary circumstances upon a real mind (Autobiographies 530). The irresolute subjectivity of the third phase is clearly rendered as a matter for dismay.' The writer of this apparently magisterial essay was a twenty-fiveyear-old woman called EdithJemima Simcox. Born in 1844, she was the youngest of three children and the only girl in an upper-middle-class London family. Her brothers were educated at Oxford; both became Fellows of Queen's College. The elder, Augustus, developed a reputation as a brilliant classical scholar as well as an eccentric; the younger, William, took orders and served as rector of a College living at Weyhill (McKenzie 1-3). Edith herself belonged a generation whose daughters, perhaps even younger sisters, could go women's colleges; she was writing her review of autobiographies just at the time Girton opened its doors. University would have been a natural step for this
Art · Art history · Biography · Literature · Autobiographical and Biographical Writing · Modernist Literature and Criticism
| Citations per year | 0.09 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2003 - 2006 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |