Arguing that women's autobiography does not represent a singular separate tradition but instead embraces multiple lineages, this work explores the poetics and politics of these diverse forms of life writing. It analyses the polemical ""Autobiography"" of Harriet Martineau and ""Personal Recollections"" of Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna, the missionary memoirs that challenge Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and the romantic autobiographies of the poet and poetess that Barrett Browning reconstructs in ""Aurora Leigh"". It also covers the professional stories of Margaret Oliphant and her contemporaries, and the Brontean and Eliotian bifurcation of Mary Cholmondeley's memoirs.