Autobiologies: Charles Darwin and the Natural History of the Self

Though Gillian Beer's landmark Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (1983) drew scholars' attention to the metaphoric textures and ambivalences of Darwin's scientific work more than thirty years ago, the interplay of life writing and the life sciences in Darwin's and his naturalist colleagues' collective adoption of autobiography remains little discussed. Though Darwin invites extended attention, Harley next explores other evolutionists and the profuse permutations within evolutionary theory that shaped and were shaped by autobiographical forms. Because of his insistence on a causal connection between the evolution of species and the growth of the individual, Spencer's personal writings might be expected to reveal the most visible overlaps with his biological theories.