The Art of Literary Biography [Hardcover]

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 slight? These are among the wide range of questions addressed by the seventeen leading biographers and literary critics in this important new work.

Always a popular genre, biography has become one of the most immediate and accessible modes of writing about literature. This book examines such literary figures as Conrad, Lawrence, Huxley, Virginia Woolf, and the poets Elizabeth Bishop and Lord Rochester, while addressing the nature and form of literary biography--the concept of biography as autobiography, the problems the genre poses, the necessity of the ignorance of a biographer, and the literary biographer at work. The distinguished contributors include Anthony Storr, Lyndall Gordon, Richard Holmes, Jon Stallworthy, Hermione Lee, David Bradshaw, and Ann Thwaite.

Excellent....It is the fact that biography shares two `homes'--the academy and the commercial market--that make it such a fruitful area for further scrutiny.The Art of Literary Biographypoints the way. --New Statesman and Society(UK)

A most attractive seminar on the art, or craft, of telling the story of story-tellers' existences. --The Observer

The best of these writers highlight what fun biography can be, and so shed light on a fascinating cultural phenomenon. --Financial Times

[A] sprightly collection of essays on the art of biography. --Sunday Times

[An] excellent book....The Art of Literary Biographyoffers an intriguing look at variety within the genre. --Isis

John Batchelor is Joseph Cowen Professor of English Literature at Newcastle University.