“The Biography of Adelaide de la Thoreza: Fact or Fiction?”

Abstract

This article centres on the first part of James Cameron’s 1878 biography of Adelaida de la Thoreza, entitled Adelaide de la Thoreza: A Chequered Career, in order to briefly discuss the problematics of biography as a literary genre, but in particular to reveal what appears to be a reconstruction of identity in the figure of Adelaide. Although the discussion will leave many questions unanswered due to the lack of documentary evidence, this very lack of evidence will allow for a series of “reasonable doubts” to cast their shadow over the veracity of Cameron’s text.