FLASHMAN AND THE ART OF THE FICTIONAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY MATTHEW CROFTS Readers opening the pages of George MacDonald Fraser ’s Flashman (1969) for the first time are met with something of a puzzle. The book purports to be an autobiography by Sir Harry Paget Flashman, someone who never existed, yet is written and edited with palpable earnestness. Amongst more recent works of neo-Victorian fiction this is perhaps nothing too unusual, as it is a genre that thrives on its ability to produce illusions that feel authentic, as Ann Heilmann has noted: Neo-Victorianism is sustained by illusion: the fabrication of a ‘plausible’ version of the Victorian past and a ‘credible’ representation of the places, characters, and experiences depicted in the text or film. (18) Flashman’s mixing of fact and fiction warrants further critical attention: its artifices and devices serve not only to enhance its own ‘illusory’ effects, but also to reassess the Victorian period’s own illusions. The novel’s content is so uncharacteristic of the Victorian era that it would be problematic to suggest it was intended to pass as a genuine autobiography, and yet great pains were taken to reinforce its tone as a work of the utmost seriousness. Before Flashman’s narrative commences, there is an explanatory note that states the text ’s fictionallorigins: The great mass of manuscript known as the Flashman Papers was discovered during a sale of household furniture at Ashby, Leicestershire, in 1965. The papers were subsequently claimed by Mr Paget Morrison, of Durban, South Africa, the nearest known living relative of their author. (7) The text goes on to further explain the history of the papers, estimating that they were written between 1900 and 1905, describing how the family were unanimously opposed to their publication and recounting how they then were untouched for fifty years in a tea chest. None of it is true, of course, and yet these details seem to have been convincing