The Art of Literary Biography

ISBN-13: 9780198182894 / Angielski / Twarda / 1995 / 310 str.

John J. Batchelor; John Batchelor

Opis

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.

Recenzje

an agreeable collection of essays ... with contributions from many distinguished practitioners ... This is an excellent collection which forces us to ponder the implications of the word 'art' in its title; for if biography can be so many kinds of art, what identity is it left with itself?

O autorze

John Batchelor is a well-known writer and reviewer, has written many books on major British writers, was General Editor of the World's Classics edition of Conrad; and between 1984 and 1990 was judge of the Duff Cooper Prize.