ABSTRACT
In an early essay on ‘Biography’, the soon-to-be-renowned Victorian thinker Thomas Carlyle urged the readers of Fraser’s Magazine to:
Observe … to what extent, in the actual course of things, this business of Biography is practised and relished. Define to thyself, judicious Reader, the real significance of these phenomena, named Gossip, Egoism, Personal Narrative (miraculous or not), Scandal, Raillery, Slander, and such-like; the sum-total of which (with some fractional additions of a better ingredient, generally too small to be noticeable) constitutes that other grand phenomenon still called ‘Conversation.’ Do they not mean wholly: Biography and Autobiography?
