This chapter considers three interrelated genres of political writing that have been particularly prominent since 1900. These are memoirs, diaries, and biographies. Three of these genres have received some degree of treatment in previous scholarship, with memoirs having received the highest level of systematic discussion. There has been considerable attention paid to how specific books have helped shape the reputations of their authors/subjects. This has been related to questions of official secrecy and control over documents. But there is scope to investigate how these genres have developed over time and how they have been mutually interconnected. The chapter addresses the question of why these three types of work have become an accepted and largely unquestioned, part of the British political and publishing landscape. It investigates the impact that this dominance has had on how British politics has been conceived and understood. At the surface level, it seems quite understandable that prime ministers, cabinet ministers, and a number of relatively colourful junior ministers, advisers, and backbench MPs should have dominated the publishing landscape. But at the same time, the dominance of Westminster in the priorities of publishers reinforces a particular elitist, London-centric, and largely white male-centric view of what politics is about.

This chapter examines the Italian humanist discourse on vocation in terms of two intersecting binaries: on the one hand, the competing demands of shame culture (as in Cicero’s De officiis) and guilt culture (as in Augustine’s Confessions); on the other, the interplay between individual humanists and the status and expectations of their families. The result was the first substantive articulation of the concept of secular vocation.

Chapter 5 focuses on the notion of “common possession” (Gemeingut) in the formulas of world literature by Marx and Goethe. I suggest that their sense of collective possessiveness drew on the history of communal land ownership and its ramifications in German historical jurisprudence and Romantic philology. The chapter also claims that Goethe’s (conservative) scepticism about the liberal absolutization of private intellectual property formed an unlikely alliance with early socialist thought (Proudhon). On the other hand, the label “common good” attached to world literature in the Communist Manifesto not only resonated with Marx’s belief in the approaching dissolution of bourgeois property but also pointed at the ambivalent legal status of world-literary works before the internationalization of copyright. I argue that Karl von Savigny’s distinction between property and possession cuts across the legal history of world literature before and after the Berne Convention and signals a perpetual crisis of ownership in literary works.

This chapter examines the vocational odyssey of the most famous humanist of the Italian Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti, as he struggled to pursue a literary and creative life against the background (and sometimes obstacles) of his merchant natal family. It analyzes how he dealt with his vocational decision and aspirations in a variety of genres: a comedy (Philodoxus), dinner pieces (Intercenales), a treatise on the practical and moral features of learned professions (De commodis litterarum atque incommodis); consolatory and psychological dialogues (Teogenio, Della tranquillità dell’animo); his celebrated dialogue on the family (Della famiglia), in which he simulates paternal advice from his father and various surrogate fathers from within the family; and a treatise on vocational advice to the young (De iciarchia).

This chapter discusses the social and professional contexts for the emergence of the Italian humanists as a new cultural “class,” and traces the classical and Christian antecedents of their formation of a substantive discourse on secular vocation.

This chapter examines Petrarch’s construction of a vocational narrative through his various writings (Secretum, De vita solitaria, De otio religioso, Coronation Oration, “Ascent of Mt. Ventoux”) and especially his letters (Familiares, Seniles). It focuses on the role played by family members (father Ser Petracco, brother Gherardo, son Giovanni) in his vocational choice and literary aspirations, and shows how he sought surrogate family members to realize his aspirations.

Chapter 4 first tackles the early reception of the concept of Weltliteratur in German criticism. I argue that these discussions, informed by the emergent economic and cultural nationalism of the 1830s-40s, offered a protectionist critique of free trade cosmopolitanism. Based on the conviction that untrammelled exchange assisted the exploitation of less developed trading partners, protectionists such as Friedrich List agitated for the temporary restriction of imports in support of domestic productive forces. Echoing these doctrines, world literature was associated with an overgrown translation industry that advanced the expansion of already hegemonic foreign literatures, wiping out demand for home-grown products in budding national markets. This combination of commercial self-protection and cultural self-defence was taken up in wider regions of East-Central Europe, especially in Hungary. The second part of the chapter discusses the shifting positions of world literature in Hungarian criticism between the 1840s and 1860s, as represented by the work of János Erdélyi and Hugó von Meltzl and their alternate strategies of self-assertion and self-expansion from a minor-marginal position.

This chapter examines how Boccaccio, like Petrarch, initially hampered by his father in pursuing a literary career, wove the issue of filial freedom into several of his vernacular works (Filocolo, Ameto, De amorosa visione, Decameron) and in his Latin encyclopedia, the Genealogy of the Pagan Gods. He deployed this theme to assert his “vocatio” (calling) by God to a literary life; launched it as a biographical trope in his Life and Character of Petrarch, influencing later biographies of Petrarch; and tied it to the fate of women, defending their right of marital choice and decrying forced monachization.

This chapter explores the writings of working-class female activists during and after the 1984–85 miners’ strike, highlighting the numerous books and pamphlets produced that combined autobiography, group histories, photographs, and poetry. These works were primarily published by radical publishers, reflecting a boom in community publishing in the 1970s and 1980s, which sparked interest in working-class history and the experiences of ‘ordinary’ people. The chapter investigates the writing and publication processes of these texts, as well as their intended audiences. It situates these works within a longer tradition of working-class autobiography and poetry, with roots dating back to the nineteenth century, often serving political purposes - such as the poetry inspired by the Chartist movement or the autobiographical accounts of the Women’s Co-operative Guild, like Maternity (1915) and Life As We Have Known It (1931).The chapter analyses the moral economy created by women’s strike literature, focusing on how personal narratives were used for political impact, even when the authors downplayed their political identities. It argues that through authentic expressions of personal experience and emotion, women sought to establish themselves as legitimate political actors, thus validating their political aspirations within the leftist discourse of the time.

This chapter analyses the literary, textual, and propaganda work of the two main British fascist organisations in the interwar period: the British Fascisti (1923–1935), founded by Rotha Lintorn-Orman, and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF, 1932–1940). The evolving styles, structures, and aesthetics in fascist publications reflect shifts in policy and strategy, often influenced by opposing political movements. Fascist literature was a strategic tool in a war of words and ideas, and as such was crucial for promoting fascist ideology. The chapter highlights the dissemination of fascist materials, including newspapers sold at events, manifestos for recruitment, and pamphlets on diverse topics. Songs, short stories, and poems aimed to mobilise and instruct, while public speeches were central to fascist rallies and demonstrations. The BUF trained its members, the Blackshirts, in public speaking, making speeches integral to their propaganda efforts; these speeches were later published, recorded, or filmed. This ‘gestural politics’ is exemplified by the BUF’s newspaper Action!, a title that symbolised the movement’s focus on public performance and outreach. Through these varied forms, the chapter shows how fascist propaganda intertwined literary efforts with political activism to influence British society.