After Franklin

Although much has been written about Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, other writers of what Stephen Arch calls self-biographies in post-revolutionary America have received scant scholarly attention. This rich variety of texts dramatically shows the complex nature of 19th-century concepts of identity. Arguing that autobiography is a modern invention, Arch shows its emergence in the older, conservative self-biographies of Alexander Graydon, Benjamin Rush, and Ethan Allen and in the newer, more progressive, and even radical self-biographies of K. White, Elizabeth Fisher, Stephen Burroughs, and John Fitch. Describing the evolution of a concept as elastic as the self is not easy, but Arch offers a unique and imaginative study of the emergence of a specifically modern American identity.