ABSTRACT
The Journal of a Soldier of the Seventy-First occupies a more canonical position in the historical literature of the Peninsular War than Porter's Letters. Nineteenth-century soldiers’ narratives have, admittedly, typically been viewed as forms of life-writing that are distinct from, even opposed to, the traditions of spiritual autobiography. Autobiographical accounts from soldiers that appeared in the period were typically written as spiritual autobiographies, in which the soldier’s life was identified with a dissolute and wayward immorality and sinfulness. Military officers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries certainly possessed a more elevated social status than private soldiers, often originating from the ranks of the gentry and even the aristocracy. The anti-theatricalism of the early nineteenth century, particularly in Scotland, viewed the profession of acting, like soldiering itself, as an itinerant life of immorality and idleness.
