ABSTRACT
This chapter considers K. Plummer's ideas about the humanities, and specifically literary methodologies. The Burnett Archive is a useful test case since it is a collection of documents of life, which might also variously be described as historical sources, literary works and autobiographical manuscripts. By identifying previously unknown autobiographies, John Burnett, David Vincent and David Mayall were able to contribute to a change in perceptions of working-class autobiographies, in part because, as Harrison wryly puts it, they had 'deliberately gone out to look for them'. Re-reading the original autobiographical manuscripts now in the Burnett Archive alongside the critical bibliography, it is clear that the autobiographer's literary endeavours are necessarily undermined when reduced to coded indices and edited extracts. From 2010 on, students on the Brunel MA in Creative and Professional Writing course have been invited to engage with the Burnett Archive as part of their assessed work.
