Mad Muse: The Mental Illness Memoir in a Writer's Life and Work

Mental illness can often be the driving force behind creativity. This relationship is never more apparent than in the memoirs of writers who have lived, worked and created with a mental illness. Mad Muse examines and unpicks this fascinating relationship, demonstrating that mental illness is often intergenerational while the story of mental illness is intertextual.
The study begins with William Styron's iconic memoir Darkness Visible, moving through a succession of mental illness memoirs fr...