During the 19th century there was an upsurge of interest in life stories. Middle- and upper-class lives were portrayed in biographies and autobiographies while the lives of people at the margins of society (prostitutes, vagrants, etc.) were narrated through various "reports from the underworld". This project will situate the production of these life-stories in a wider context where the modern individual/citizen was constructed. It will take its theoretical cue from Joan Scott's discussion about abstract individualism and its principles of inclusion and exclusion. Portrayals of female prostitutes in these reports from the underworld had various, often conflicting, significations. In part, the prostitute was made visible, and in turn this visibility served to exclude them from notions of respectable womanhood. This study investigates how the Self of the female prostitute was produced in various autobiographical genres (diaries, autobiographies, letters, revivalist biographies, and various "reports from the underworld") at the fin de siècle. Particular attention will be paid to a unique collection of letters between a prostitute and a deaconess.