act of confession allowed for closure, and the progression away from both unconscious and conscious suffering: writing in 1931 that 'a confession must be part of your new life.' The literary ‘confessional’ term was first attributed to a form of writing in 1959: by critic M.L. Rosenthal in response to the confessional poet Robert Lowell's seminal anthology Life Studies. The anthology is widely regarded as a seminal confessional text, in the poet's revelations on his relationship to his parents, marital conflict, depression, and generational trauma. Many Confessional Writers at the time were associated with or worked in American writing schools at institutions such as Boston University. Though the style has since gained global use (See: Global influence), confessional writing emerged in America during the turbulent late 1950s and early 1960s, and was initially characterised by movements away from strictly metred verse to free verse. Following the Second World War, the Holocaust, and during other collective traumas such as the Cold War, American ‘cultural alienation’ induced writers to externalise their internal, psychological anxieties and angsts through their literary outputs. The period was also marked by the secession of Modernism to Postmodernism, the Civil Rights Movement, the Gay Rights Movement, and the onset of Second Wave Feminism and Postcolonialism. As such, early confessional works, by writers such as Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, Dan Guenther, and Robert Lowell encompass personal and social issues including distrust of metanarratives, solipsism, taboos, and the transgression of restrictive social roles. Contemporary confessional works encompass broader social issues, including drug-use, digital identity, popular culture, and political engagement. Key features and notable works Confessional writing is often non-fictive and delivered in direct, first-person narration. Confessional writing usually involves the divulging and discussion of ‘shameful matters’, including personal secrets and controversial perspectives in forms such as autobiography, diary, memoir, and also epistolary narratives. Confessional writing often involves emotions such as shame, fear of ostracision, social discomfort, and disorder; as well as empowerment, self-expression, and liberation.Owing to the religious connotations of confession, confessional writing is often invocative of religious imagery as reflective of sin and desire. The potential aims of confessional writing include the achievement of closure, catharsis, and the representation of socially marginalised perspectives. Confessional Writing thus also may serve as a literary ‘therapeutic outlet.' Robert Lowell's Life Studies, an autobiographical suite of poems detailing Lowell's upbringing and personal family life, is often regarded as the seminal confessional work. Other