Abstract
Biographers deliberately produce a marketable account of subjects intended to intrigue readers. In order to do so, they manipulate information and make conscientious decisions about what material to include and how to package it, often not only to ensure sales but also to promote a political agenda. This is all the more true when treating some of the most controversial women writers of the long nineteenth century. This introductory chapter to Biographical Misrepresentations delineates this theory and summarizes the chapters that follow it in their exposé of distorted portraits of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Sydney Owenson, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Felicia Hemans, Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Caroline Norton, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, Lady Florence Dixie, George Eliot, and Edith Simcox.
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Ayres, B. (2017). Introduction; or‚ What You Will . In: Ayres, B. (eds) Biographical Misrepresentations of British Women Writers. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56750-1_1
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