ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows the way in which George Ives fashioned a homosexual self in his diaries, using his own complicated 'voices' and a scrapbook of press cuttings that commemorated episodes in the public reception of homosexual identity. It points to the way in which late nineteenth-century local newspapers published lives of regional worthies in acts of 'civic remembrance'. The book looks at the way in which masculine identity was bolstered by narratives of travel in the empire. It provides a perspective on colonial governance and the masculine self at work, and explores Philip Meadows Taylor's The Story of his Life, a neglected work of autobiography that recorded the life of an administrator in colonial India. The book indicates the way in which the 'men of letters' canon has narrowed the range of Victorian biographies and autobiographies singled out for scholarly attention.
