Neo-/Victorian Biographilia and James Miranda Barry : A Study in Transgender and Transgenre

Senior colonial officer from 1813 to 1859, Inspector General James Barry was a pioneering medical reformer who after his death in 1865 became the object of intense speculation when rumours arose about his sex. This cultural history of Barry’s afterlives in Victorian to contemporary (neo-Victorian) life-writing (‘biographilia’) examines the textual and performative strategies of biography, biofiction and biodrama of the last one and a half centuries. In exploring the varied reconstructions and re-imaginations of the historical personality across time, the book illustrates (not least with its cover image) that the ‘real’ James Barry does not exist, any more than does the ‘faithful’ biographical, biofictional or biodramatic rendering of a life in a generically ‘stable’ and discrete form. What Barry represents and how he is represented invariably pinpoints the imaginative, the speculative and the performative: reflections and refractions in the looking glass of genre. Just as ‘James Miranda Barry’, as a subject of cultural inquiry, comes into being and remains in view in the act of crossing gender, so neo-Victorian life-writing constitutes itself through similar acts of boundary transgression. Transgender thus finds its most typical expression in transgenre. Writing Barry - Writing Gender/genre Crossing: An Introduction ; (self-)representations: Gender, Genre And Transgression; Meta/textual Impersonations: Neo-victorian Biographilia ; Passing Reflections And Structures -- 'tell Me Your Secret, Doctor James': A Cultural History Of James Barry ; A 'creature Of Shadowed Origin': In Search Of James Barry ; Writing Games With Doctor James: Sexual/textual Hybridities ; The Barry Archive: Victorian To Neo-victorian Life-writing And The Construction Of The Barry Mythos ; Pronomial (mis)appropriations: 'i Must Still Use The Masculine'/'i Must Retain The Feminine Gender' -- Myths And Afterlives: Foundation Stories And Body Plots ; Narrative Archetypes Of Barry Biographilia: Celebration, Appropriation And Sensation ; Body Mnemonics: Barry In And Out Of The Looking Glass -- Performances In Gender And Genre: Barry In Contemporary Postmodernist Biodrama, Biography And Biofiction ; 'the Mourner Of Myself': Duality, Conflict And Redemption In Biodrama ; The Biographer's Tale: The Authorial Self-staging Of Biographiction ; 'there Are No Truths, There Are Only Layers Of Lies': Performing Barry In Postmodernist Biofiction -- Transformations: Transgender And Transgenre In Victorian And Neo-­victorian Life-writing - A Conclusion ; Appendices. Ann Heilmann. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 221-376) And Index. Front Matter ....Pages i-xxii Writing Barry – Writing Gender/Genre Crossing: An Introduction (Ann Heilmann)....Pages 1-23 ‘Tell Me Your Secret, Doctor James’: A Cultural History of James Barry (Ann Heilmann)....Pages 25-71 Myths and Afterlives: Foundation Stories and Body Plots (Ann Heilmann)....Pages 73-132 Performances in Gender and Genre: Barry in Contemporary Postmodernist Biodrama, Biography and Biofiction (Ann Heilmann)....Pages 133-182 TransFormations: Transgender and Transgenre in Victorian and Neo-Victorian Life-Writing – A Conclusion (Ann Heilmann)....Pages 183-198 Back Matter ....Pages 199-402