Neo-/Victorian Biographilia and James Miranda Barry

If Manion’s book rethinks a collective category, this one drills down into the case history of one person, Barry, who had a successful career as a naval surgeon (having identified as male to attend medical school in Edinburgh) and was only revealed to have been affirmed female at birth post-mortem. Barry’s story is an example of one problem with retroactively characterizing past lives, because it made economic sense to have used deception to gain access to a high-status profession, which is why for some Barry is a feminist pioneer. Heilmann’s book resists easy answers, tracking Barry’s presentation across multiple biographies… show more.