Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1990 Authorial Introductions: Presentations of the Self as Author in Prefaces and Autobiographies. (Volumes I and II). Laurie Frances Leach Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Leach, Laurie Frances, "Authorial Introductions: Presentations of the Self as Author in Prefaces and Autobiographies. (Volumes I and II)." (1990). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 4998. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/4998 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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(Volumes I and II) Leach, Laurie Frances, Ph.D. The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical Col., 1990 Copyright ©1001 by Leach, Laurie Frances. All rights reserved. 300 N. ZeebRd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 Authorial Introductions: Presentations of the Self as Author in Prefaces and Autobiographies Volume I A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Laurie Frances Leach B.A., University of Virginia, 1986 M.A., Louisiana State University, 1987 August 1990 Acknowledgments I would like to thank the LSU Alumni Federation for the generous four-year fellowship which supported my graduate work at LSU, My greatest professional debts are to Professor James Olney and Professor Veronica Makowsky, Their seminars in autobiography and nineteenth century American literature respectively first sparked some of the interests which led to this dissertation. More importantly, I would like to thank Dr, Olney for his guidance and encouragement as my dissertation director and Dr. Makowsky for her thorough reading and helpful suggestions as each chapter was written as well as for directing the independent study in which I developed the original idea for this project. I would also like to thank the other members of my dissertation committee: Dr, J. Gerald Kennedy, Dr. Robin Roberts and my minor professor, Dr. Adelaide Russo. Dr. Rick Swartz and Dr. Michele Mass£ assisted me with comments on an early version of Chapter Two. On a personal note I would like to thank two people who have given me every conceivable kind of support during my graduate career and throughout my life: my parents, James Roland Leach, Jr. and Iris Poumaroux Leach. AUTHORIAL INTRODUCTIONS: Presentations of the Self as Author in Prefaces and Autobiographies Volume I Acknowledgments ii Abbreviations iv Abstract v Introduction vii PART ONE "Within These Limits": Prefaces as Permissible Autobiography 1 Chapter One: Bringing Oneself Forward in Print 2 Chapter Two: "My Dreams Were All My Own": Mary Shelley’s Assertion of Authorship 25 Chapter Three: Nathaniel Hawthorne: "A Man of Letters" 50 PART TWO "Centered . on Literature": Prefaces and Autobiographies as Stories of Authorship. 91 Chapter Four: Vladimir Nabokov: "A Doubly Obscure Novelist with an Unpronounceable Name" 92 Notes to Volume I 134 Volume II Chapter Five: Swan Songs of a "Persistent Novelist": Ellen Glasgow’s A Certain Measure and The Woman Within 174 Chapter Six: Henry James: "A Man of Imagination and Taste" 212 PART THREE "Tell All The Truth But Tell It Slant": Prefaces to Autobiographies 261 Chapter Seven: "A Personal Note in the Margin of the Public Page" 262 Chapter Eight: Lillian Heilman and Mary McCarthy: Writing, Lying, and Confrontation 291 Conclusion 325 Notes to Volume II 335 Works Cited 371 Vita 406 iii Abbreviations Works by Shelley Frk Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus Works by Hawthorne AN The American Notebooks BR The Blithedale Romance "C-H" "The Custom House, Introductory to The Scarlet Letter" "CE" "Consular Experiences" EN The English Notebooks MF The Marble Faun MOM Mosses from an Old Manse "OM" "The Old Manse: The Author Makes the Reader Acquainted with his Abode" OOH Our Old Home SG The House of the Seven Gables S-I The Snow-Jma^e and Other Twice-Told Tales SL The Scarlet Letter TTT Twice-Told Tales Works by Nabokov BS Bend Sinister CE Conclusive Evidence IB Invitation to a Beheading LATH Look at the Harlequins'. PF Pale Fire SM Speak, Memory: an Autobiography Revisited SO Strong Opinions Works by Glasgow BG Barren Ground CM A Certain Measure: An Interpretation of Prose Fiction EGRD Ellen Glasgow *s Reasonable Doubts WW The Woman Within Works by James Art The Art of the Novel AS The American Scene "MY" "The Middle Years" NHJ The Complete Notebooks of Henry James NSB Notes of a Son and Brother SB A Small Boy and Others Works by Conrad CP Collected Prefaces PR A Personal Record Works by McCarthy MCG Memories of a Catholic Girlhood HIG How I Grew Abstract This dissertation examines the prefaces and autobiographies of creative writers as "authorial introductions," textual spaces in which writers present themselves to their readers as authors. It consists of three main parts. Part One concerns autobiographical prefaces by two writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mary Shelley, who did not write autobiographies and who were defensive about the autobiographical content of their prefaces. Both writers were ambivalent about authorship and hesitant about bringing themselves "forward in print," but within the limits of their prefaces, they were able to speak autobiographically and portray themselves as authors. Part Two examines the autobiographies and prefaces of three prolific novelists as "stories of authorship." The lives of Vladimir Nabokov, Ellen Glasgow, and Henry James were all "centered on literature." Their autobiographies and prefaces reveal their pride in authorship and their ambivalent relationships with their readers, whose responses sometimes gratified, but more often frustrated these writers. For these three authors, the conviction that they were great writers was accompanied by a sense of being set apart from the mass of humankind. Their prefaces and autobiographies are attempts to bridge the gap between author and reader without sacrificing the privileged stance of the author for whom literary creation is its own reward. Part Three focuses on prefaces to autobiographies. A v theoretical chapter addresses two questions. First, what prompts an autobiographer, who is already addressing the reader in the first person, to step outside the text in a preface? Second, what effect does the presence of a preface have on the autobiography? The final chapter discusses two autobiographies which not only begin with prefaces but include prefatory interchapters: Mary McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood and Lillian Heilman’s Three. In both autobiographies the elusiveness of truth becomes a central issue, largely because of these interchapters and the authors’ awareness of themselves as writers which is manifested there. These autobiographies are contrasted with McCarthy’s How I Grew and Heilman’s Maybe, less successful autobiographies in which the consciousness of a dual role as storyteller and autobiographer, which the use of interchapters encouraged, is lost. vi A personal note in the margin of the public page Joseph Conrad A Personal Record (13). Introduction Joseph Conrad's mildly deprecating reference to his autobiography, A Personal Record, seems an apt way of characterizing not only autobiographies but prefaces as well. If the totality of a literary work represents "the public page," then the preface takes the position of the marginal personal note, and as such, according to Victor Hugo, is "usually of very little interest to the reader" ("Preface" to Cromwell 354). In Hugo's view, the reader inquires concerning the talent of a writer rather than concerning his point of view; and in determining whether a work is good or bad, it matters little to him upon what ideas it is based or in what sort of mind it germinated. One seldom inspects the cellars of a house after visiting its salons, and when one eats the fruit of a tree, one cares but little about the root. (354) Hugo probably underestimates the extent of the typical reader's interest in the mind or "point of view" of the man or woman behind the text.