| Description |
xi., 289 pages : illustrations, 4 plates of portraits ; 23 cm |
| Contents |
Introduction / John Batchelor -- 1. Biography: Inventing the Truth / Richard Holmes -- 2. A Life for a Life / Jon Stallworthy -- 3. Secondary Lives: Biography in Context / Catherine Peters -- 4. Biography: Cult as Culture / Jurgen Schlaeger -- 5. Psychiatry and Literary Biography / Anthony Storr --6. Women's Lives: The Unmapped Country / Lyndall Gordon -- 7. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester: An Author in Search of a Character / Ken Robinson -- 8. Conrad's Truancy / John Batchelor -- 9. Virginia Woolf and Offence / Hermione Lee -- 10. Huxley's Slump: Planning, Eugenics, and the 'Ultimate Need' of Stability / David Bradshaw -- 11. Elizabeth Bishop: The Secret Life of a Poet / Linda Anderson -- 12. Jane Austen, Matthew Arnold, Shakespeare: The Problem of the Opus / Park Honan -- 13. Starting Again: One of the Problems of the Biographer / Ann Thwaite -- 14. Pieties and Literary Biography / Norman White -- 15. The Necessary Ignorance of a Biographer / John Worthen |
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16. Virginia Woolf and 'The Proper Writing of Lives' /Julia Briggs -- 17. Learning about Ourselves: Biography as Autobiography / Humphrey Carpenter and Lyndall Gordon |
| Summary |
Is literary biography so widely read for popular, 'prurient' reasons, or for reputable intellectual reasons? Is it of interest only in so far as it illuminates a writer's work? How much can we know about a life, such as Shakespeare's, where the documentation is so scanty? These are among the questions addressed by the seventeen leading biographers and literary critics who have contributed essays to John Batchelor's The Art of Literary Biography. Always a popular genre, biography has become one of the most immediate and accessible modes of writing about literature and literary figures. In this book, individuals such as Conrad, Huxley, Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and the poets Elizabeth Bishop and Lord Rochester are examined. Also addressed are the nature and form of literary biography, including the relationships between biography and autobiography, the challenges the genre poses for the reader, and the problems confronted by the literary biographer at work |
| Analysis |
English literature Special subjects Biography |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Subject |
Authors -- Biography -- Authorship.
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Authors, English -- Biography -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc
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Biography as a literary form.
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English prose literature -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc
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English prose literature.
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| Author |
Batchelor, John, 1942-
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| LC no. |
94030502 |
| ISBN |
0198182899 (acid-free paper) |
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