ABSTRACT
All the experiences here examined have been those recorded by the subjects themselves, so if our knowledge of what was involved has been one-sided it has at least been ‘inside’ knowledge. Dr Paul Delany, in his study of British autobiography in this period, has commented on ‘the age’s widespread concern with pinning down a personal identity which had become more elusive than it had ever been before’. Judgments about their powers of self-analysis are difficult to establish or refute. Professor Pascal finds Baxter ‘diffuse and pedestrian, without psychological insight’, and Grace Abounding ‘limited in its range’ because of Bunyan’s sectarian piety. Whilst spiritual autobiographies were published in order to influence their readers, they were often developed in the first instance for the benefit of the writer. To use Professor Starr’s convenient terminology, they served both a didactic purpose and an auto-didactic one.
