The Palgrave Handbook of Auto/Biography Edited by Julie M. Parsons · Anne Chappell The Palgrave Handbook of Auto/Biography Julie M. Parsons · Anne Chappell Editors The Palgrave Handbook of Auto/Biography Editors Julie M. Parsons Anne Chappell University of Plymouth Brunel University London Plymouth, UK London, UK ISBN 978-3-030-31973-1 ISBN 978-3-030-31974-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31974-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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Cover image: © ‘Gala Parc’ by David Chappell, April 2019 This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland For Chris —Julie M. Parsons For David, Sam and Jack. —Anne Chappell Foreword The Palgrave Handbook of Auto/Biography is a welcome addition to the scholarly work on Auto/Biography. The authors of most of the articles and the editors themselves have a long affiliation to The British Sociological Association (BSA) Study Group on Auto/Biography (A/B). As such, it is worth noting the importance of that organisation for the development of Auto/Biographical Studies and therefore the work before us. The BSA Auto/Biography group was formed from a New Year initiat- ing conference held on the 1st and 2nd of January 1992 and organised by David Morgan and Liz Stanley (then of the University of Manchester) and consequent, in part, upon the researches that led to Stanley’s The Auto/ Biographical I—a volume that became a founding text for the sociology of auto/biography. There soon followed in 1993 a special issue of the BSA’s Primary Journal, Sociology, entitled ‘Auto/Biography in Sociology’ (edited by David Morgan and Liz Stanley) that consolidated Auto/Biography as an area of study and was a fillip to the nascent Study Group. The Editorial Introduction to the issue provided the best conspectus of the sociology of auto/biography to date. Some of the attendees at the 1992 Auto/Biography conference are represented in the volume herewith and others from the group have presented at various of the scores of conferences that have suc- cessfully followed the founding event. An enduring practice of the Auto/ Biography Study Group has been that, whilst promoting publication, confer- ence presentation and intellectual exchange, it has been done within a repub- lic of scholarly affection. This ethos and the commitment it generated has had consequences: Study Group members, as their careers developed, were increasingly responsible for inaugurating programmes of Auto/Biographical vii viii Foreword Studies and related areas (particularly at Masters and Doctoral levels) at numerous institutions within the UK system of Higher Education. For a Study Group, this is not a small nor an unimportant achievement. There is a long, detailed and useful dissertation to be written on why the area of sociology represented by the Study Group should have arisen when it did. Certainly, it was not the first time such matters had been of interest to social scientists. The distinguished work of the Chicago School of sociol- ogy alone was evidence of that. However, there was a marked losing sight of this sociological tradition by the 1970s and 1980s both in the UK and the USA. A renaissance was needed and the Study Group became part of one. Its first publication—a modest, pre-internet, few-page bulletin—set the tone for how it was to go about its work, describing Auto/Biography as follows: as the activity of attempting to render a succession of narrative moments relat- ing to a life in such a way as to make them comprehensible to others, who in turn may complement or alter them and so become part of the Auto/ Biographical project… Additionally, the term Auto/Biography demonstrates an alacrity to recognise that all biography has some impression of the biog- rapher upon it and that no autobiography can be produced by an individual entirely ungoverned by the social. (Erben et al. 1992: 1) Also, from the beginning, ordinary lives were explicitly given more atten- tion than those publicly regarded as exceptional. The epigraph of the Auto/ Biography journal is Dr. Johnson’s maxim that ‘there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful… no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography’ (Johnson 1750: 1). Further, it was not just the lives themselves that were of importance to the Study Group’s endeavours but the study of those telling those lives and the meaning of the notions of biography and autobiography per se. From this first 1992 bulletin, the Study Group has not been without a continuous publication and for the last twenty-one years, under the exemplary, untiring and exceptional editorship of Andrew Sparkes, it has produced a regular aca- demic journal containing high quality, original articles. Within its journal and through its monographs, the Study Group has accomplished the analy- sis and understanding of lives, identity and selfhood in numerous ways and via numerous methods: through action research, through archival research, through participant observation, through prosopography, through in-depth interview, through auto-ethnography, through case-study, through auto- fiction, through psychoanalysis, through literature and history, through art, cinema and virtual worlds and so on. Foreword ix Of course, it was not only in the formative BSA Auto/Biography Study Group that interest in the study of lives in novel ways was of interest. There were additional, co-extensive developments during this time. To a degree, this ‘biographical turn’ was brought about by a feeling that some of the High Theory of the 1970s and 1980s was proving repetitive, too self-involved, too remote from persons and too inaccessible. By the 1980s, it was felt increas- ingly within parts of the social sciences and humanities that it was time to bring human actors back on the stage. As a result, there is now a large body of work within an encompassing human sciences concerned with lives and the nature of selfhood. The growing interest in autobiographical and bio- graphical forms in terms of individuals, themes and disciplines is illustrated by the popularity of the comprehensive two-volume Encyclopedia of Life Writing of 2001 edited by Margaretta Jolly, to which a number of Auto/ Biography Study Group members made contributions. A consciousness of the notion of narrative (of ways the ineluctable nature of time plays itself out in lives) and the exploration of that complex filigree of places and spaces represented by the interplay of structure and agency have been central to the Study Group’s research mission. As such, the intri- cacies of lives in social context remain as fascinating now as they have always been and are well represented in what follows in this volume. Michael Erben Southampton Education School Southampton, UK References Johnson, S. (1750). The Dignity and Usefulness of Biography. The Rambler, p. 60. Erben, M., Morgan, D. H. J., & Stanley, L. (1992). Editorial, Auto/Biography, 1(1), 1–9. Acknowledgements The significance of auto/biography has evolved over the last three decades. This is exemplified in the work of the British Sociological Associations’ Auto/Biography (BSA A/B) Study Group. In part, this book is a tribute to all scholars, past, present and future, who have been or are yet to become acquainted with auto/biography and/or the Auto/Biography Study Group. The initial convenors and editors of the Auto/Biography Study Group from 1992 consisted of Michael Erben, David Morgan and Liz Stanley. Subsequent convenors and conference organisers are Jenny Byrne, Anne Chappell, Gill Clarke, Andrew Sparkes and Carly Stewart, with Michael maintaining a lead role throughout. Of course, there are also a host of other committed regular contributors to the group, journal and the field of auto/ biographical. Not least for Julie on a personal note, her former doctoral supervisor and research mentor Gayle Letherby, a passionate and commit- ted champion of auto/biography, who introduced her to auto/biography and the Study Group in 2010. Anne’s experience is that the group conferences and journals, and the colleagues who contribute, have created productive spaces to talk and think in auto/biographical ways. The academic support and encouragement provided by these colleagues are profound in their influ- ence on both research and confidence-building. The Auto/Biography Study Group is a unique and rich academic environment that has made a signif- icant contribution to the development of auto/biography, and we feel very privileged to be part of it. We are very grateful to all involved. xi xii Acknowledgements This Palgrave Macmillan Handbook of Auto/Biography has only been made possible with the commitment of all nine part editors and twenty-eight chapter authors, to whom we are very grateful. Similarly, the support from Sharla Plant and Poppy Hull at Palgrave Macmillan. A note from Julie: Anne and I have worked together on this handbook over the last four years, meeting regularly through Skype and spending time together in the British Library, as well as at Wolfson College, Oxford, Friends House, London and Dartington Hall, Devon, before and during various BSA Auto/Biography conferences. Throughout this time, Anne has been unwavering in her commitment to both the book and the Auto/ Biography Study Group. It has been an enormously enjoyable experience and we have had some laughs along the way for which I am truly thankful. A note from Anne: It has been an absolute pleasure to work on this with Julie over the last four years. We have had great fun as well as fascinating auto/biographical conversations. It has been a wonderfully collaborative aca- demic adventure with both Julie and all the contributors. I would like to thank David, Neil, Heather and Alfie for entertaining conversations about both auto/biography and the book cover.