Revealing Fragments: Close and Distant Reading of Working-Class Autobiography

Abstract

Focusing on the Burnett Archive of Working Class Autobiography, one of the largest collections of life-writing ‘from below’, this article explores the process of writing and the emotional framework within which they were penned. The autobiographies vary in length but, essentially, all are fragments of a life and memories shared. Some are fragmentary by nature of their brevity, while others seem to be incomplete. Often these autobiographical fragments provide snippets of a voice, remembered conversations, or work as collective histories of the common people. Amidst renewed interest in the ways that autobiographical writings can be used to trace changes in British culture and society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this article investigates both individual memoirs and the Archive as a whole to explore how even the smallest fragment can illuminate our collective past and present.