ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the life writing of middle-class men was characterised by a particular narrative of improvement that was employed to articulate claims to success and public recognition. It discusses that life writing of middle-class men was concerned to demonstrate a sense of self that was informed less through inferiority and more through a range of social relations. While studies have pointed to the broad social base of a cross-class masculinity it is clear that, whatever the discursive consistencies in self-representation, masculinity is 'problematic, fraught with conflicts and anxieties'. Distinctions between public and private in narratives of self-making were some of the strategies used to accommodate the tensions and contradictions that underlay middle-class masculinity. The self-made man was a central narrative in stories of middle-class men but success was also defined in putting aside one's own desires for the good of the community.
