Abstract

This thesis examines how the British Empire and the legacies of colonial rule impact upon and are explored within modern and contemporary life writing. It offers a chapter-by-chapter discussion of three life writers – Penelope Lively, Doris Lessing and Janet Frame – who wrote and rewrote their memories of growing up in colonies, former colonies and protectorates of the British Empire across numerous autobiographical texts. As travellers from their respective childhood homes in Egypt (Lively), Southern Rhodesia (Lessing) and New Zealand (Frame), their life narratives converge in London across a twelve-year period from 1945-1957. These autobiographical self-representations intersect at a crucial historical juncture when colonial rule was being dismantled across Britain’s former Empire, yet the exchanges between metropole and colony remained equally intense. This study offers an original contribution to knowledge by drawing together three life writers whose work – with few notable exceptions – is rarely considered comparatively. While Lively’s, Lessing’s and Frame’s life narratives might connect through the streets of post-war London, I argue that this is only the beginning of their overlapping and mutual interests. All of their life writings address, engage with and are shaped by, the legacies of colonialism. Their numerous autobiographical self-representations reveal how empire and its aftermath seeps into everyday life, with these literary texts exploring how imperialism functioned as part of a given world both during and after colonial rule. This thesis examines a considerable number of life writings by three late twentieth-century authors, tracking how their autobiographical non-fiction is deeply concerned with the aftermath of empire and explores the resonant legacies of colonialism long after official decolonisation.