Gendered Authorship, Literary Lionism and the Virtues of Domesticity: Contesting Wordsworth's fame in the life writings of Harriet Martineau and Thomas Carlyle

In her justly influential work on nineteenth-century strategies of self representation, Subjectivities (1990), Reginia Gagnier describes the dominant characteristics of the ‘high’ literary tradition of nineteenth-century auto/biography as consisting of a meditative and self-reflective sensibility; faith in writing as a tool of self-exploration; an attempt to make sense of life as a narrative progressing in time, with a narrative typically structured upon parent/child relationships and familial development; and a belief in personal creativity, autonomy and freedom for the future.