Autobiography exists in a mutually influential relationship with the literature history, private writings, and domestic practices of a society. This book illuminates the ways evolving class and gender identities interact with these inherited forms of narrative to produce the testimony of a culture confronting its own demise.

By examining many previously neglected texts, Grubgeld both recovers lost voices and shows their work can revise our understanding of such major literary figures as George Bernard Shaw, W. B. Yeats, John Synge, Elizabeth Bowen, and Louis MacNiece.