SOURCE: "The Historical Value and Historiographie Significance of Jane Addams' Autobiographies 'Twenty Years at Hull-House' and 'Second Twenty Years at Hull-House,'" in Reconstructing American Literary and Historical Studies, St. Martin's Press, 1990, pp. 285-97.

In the following essay, Lehmkuhl treats Addams's two Hull House books as historical narratives and examines them in the context of Charles A. Beard's "new history."

Since the late 1960s, when literary critics discovered the autobiography as a literary genre, much has been written on the literary qualities of autobiographical writings in order to prove the literary significance and value of autobiographies. These endeavours were quite successful if one looks at the long list of scholarly literature on autobiography written since the 1970s. They were successful not only in proving the autobiography's literary significance and in integrating this genre into the canon of literary studies but also in supporting historians who questioned the value...