autobiography Archives

Writing Resistance

In 1884, the first of 68 prisoners convicted of terrorism and revolutionary activity were transferred to a new maximum security prison at Shlissel´burg Fortress near St Petersburg. The regime of indeterminate sentences in isolation caused severe mental and physical deterioration among the prisoners, over half of whom died. But the survivors fought back to reform the prison and improve the inmates’ living conditions. The memoirs many survivors wrote enshrined their story in revolutionary mythology, and acted as an indictment of the Tsarist autocracy’s loss of moral authority.

Writing Resistance features three of these memoirs, all translated into English for the first time. They show the process of transforming the regime as a collaborative endeavour that resulted in flourishing allotments, workshops and intellectual culture – and in the inmates running many of the prison’s everyday functions. Sarah J. Young’s introductory essay analyses the Shlissel´burg memoirs’ construction of a collective narrative of resilience, resistance and renewal. It uses distant reading techniques to explore the communal values they inscribe, their adoption of a powerful group identity, and emphasis on overcoming the physical and psychological barriers of the prison.

The first extended study of Shlissel´burg’s revolutionary inmates in English, Writing Resistance uncovers an episode in the history of political imprisonment that bears comparison with the inmates of Robben Island in South Africa’s apartheid regime and the Maze Prison in Belfast during the Troubles. It will be of interest to scholars and students of the Russian revolution, carceral history, penal practice and behaviours, and prison and life writing.

The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 13

The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 13 contains authoritative and fully annotated texts of all known and publishable letters sent both to and from Bentham between 1 July 1828 and his death on 6 June 1832. In addition to 474 letters, the volume contains three memorandums concerning Bentham’s health shortly before his death, his Last Will and Testament, and extracts from both the Autobiography and the manuscript diaries of Bentham’s nephew George. Of the letters that have been previously published, most are drawn from the edition of The Works of Jeremy Bentham, prepared under the superintendence of Bentham’s literary executor John Bowring. A small number of letters have been reproduced from newspapers and periodicals.

This volume publishes for the first time all the extant correspondence between Bentham and Daniel O’Connell, the Irish Liberator. Other new acquaintances included Charles Sinclair Cullen, barrister and law reformer, and John Tyrrell, the Real Property Commissioner. Throughout the period, Bentham maintained regular contact with old friends and connections, but he also entered into sporadic correspondence with such leading figures in government as the Duke of Wellington, Robert Peel and Henry Brougham. Further afield, Bentham corresponded, amongst others, with the Marquis de La Fayette in France, Edward Livingston in the United States of America and José del Valle in Guatemala.

Life-writing in the History of Archaeology

Life-writing is a vital part of the history of archaeology, and a growing field of scholarship within the discipline. Travels and adventures of the ‘great archaeologists’ have generated centuries-worth of bestselling books that, in turn, shaped the public perception of archaeology. The lives of archaeologists are entangled with histories of museums and collections, developments in science and scholarship, and narratives of nationalism and colonialism into the present. In recent years life-writing has played an important role in the surge of new research in the history of archaeology, including ground-breaking studies of discipline formation, institutionalisation and social and intellectual networks. Sources such as diaries, wills, film and the growing body of digital records are powerful tools for highlighting the contributions of hitherto marginalised archaeological lives including many pioneering women, hired labourers and other ‘hidden hands’.

This book brings together critical perspectives on life-writing in the history of archaeology from leading figures in the field. These include studies of archive formation and use, the concept of ‘dig-writing’ as a distinctive genre of archaeological creativity and reviews of new sources for already well-known lives. Several chapters reflect on the experience of life-writing, review the historiography of the field and assess the intellectual value and significance of life-writing as a genre. Together, they work to problematise underlying assumptions about this genre, foregrounding methodology, social theory, ethics and other practice-focused frameworks in conscious tension with previous practices.