[1] Reynolds' understanding of spiritual experience is similar to James Joyce's "epiphany" and Virginia Woolf's "moments of being" because the triggering event does not need to be extraordinary or uncommon but it must affect a person greatly and touch their soul.
According to Max Saunders, these criteria were important to Reynolds as a closeted homosexual man who wrote his essay eleven years after Oscar Wilde's trial.
[3] Reynolds said autobiografictional works should ideally be inspiring for other people and help them by showing readers they could follow the authors' examples of overcoming problems and hardships.
[2] Saunders rejects Reynolds' idea that all autobiografictional works should help the readers and give them hope, especially because this criterion was rooted in the zeitgeist of the turn-of-the-century England.
Johnson analyses diaries, letters, and formal autobiographies of queer modernist writers but she also references fictional works.