Reflections on Biography - Softcover

Backscheider, Paula R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198299958 ISBN 13: 9780198299950

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2001

Synopsis

Reflections on Biography, written by the author of an award-winning life of Daniel Defoe, is an invitation to turn 'biography' over in the mind as we turn an artefact in our hands. Intended for all readers of biography-lifelong or occasional, critical or casual-it examines the subject from many angles, and gives a tour of the decisions biographers make and the implications of those choices. Its aim is to increase the pleasure of reading biographies, to add new, enjoyable dimensions even as it increases readers' insights into the art of writing them. Among the biographies given special attention are prize-winning lives of writers, mathematical geniuses, intellectual women, the Roosevelts, and unusual marriage partners. The book is full of lively comparisons, for instance, of Keats by Walter Jackson Bate, Andrew Motion, and others, and of a century of biographies of Edith Wharton. The opening chapters are on the four decisions most influential in shaping the biography and the reader's experience. The first concerns the biographer's voice, because this is the invisible bridge between biographer and reader and between reader and subject; examination of this also shows how things are hidden from the ordinary reader of biography. The other decisions are about choosing the subject; evidence; and theories of personality. The remaining chapters cover multiple forms of biography, consider additional choices in the differing contexts of work by feminist, British professional, and African-American biographers, and look towards the form's future directions and challenges.

About this title

Review

"A vivid and well-researched study useful to both scholars and readers of biography." --Choice "[Backsheider's] book will be blessed by generations of biographers and historians to come, not only because Backscheider makes the rough places plainer, but because she celebrates the biographer's art as at once compelling, horribly difficult and significant."--London Review of Books "Encourages both critical and casual readers of biography to examine biography from many angles, and gives a tour of the decisions biographers make and the implications of those choices. Among biographies given special attention are prize-winning lives of writers, intellectual women, the Roosevelts, and unusual marriage partners."--Book News "[A] fine book.... Beautifully written...full of lively examples.... Backscheider seems to have read every biography worthy reading. More pleasurably, she has the sort of eye for a telling detail or the choice anecdote that a good biographer has.... Backscheider triumphantly demonstrates over and over again that many of the newer questions have been alive all along in the old biographies, while the newer ones continue like no other genre to engage educated individual readers as narratives about both themselves and their culture."--English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 "A vivid and well-researched study useful to both scholars and readers of biography." --Choice "[Backsheider's] book will be blessed by generations of biographers and historians to come, not only because Backscheider makes the rough places plainer, but because she celebrates the biographer's art as at once compelling, horribly difficult and significant."--London Review of Books "Encourages both critical and casual readers of biography to examine biography from many angles, and gives a tour of the decisions biographers make and the implications of those choices. Among biographies given special attention are prize-winning lives of writers, intellectual women, the Roosevelts, and unusual marriage partners."--Book News "[A] fine book.... Beautifully written...full of lively examples.... Backscheider seems to have read every biography worthy reading. More pleasurably, she has the sort of eye for a telling detail or the choice anecdote that a good biographer has.... Backscheider triumphantly demonstrates over and over again that many of the newer questions have been alive all along in the old biographies, while the newer ones continue like no other genre to engage educated individual readers as narratives about both themselves and their culture."--English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 "A vivid and well-researched study useful to both scholars and readers of biography." --Choice "[Backsheider's] book will be blessed by generations of biographers and historians to come, not only because Backscheider makes the rough places plainer, but because she celebrates the biographer's art as at once compelling, horribly difficult and significant."--London Review of Books "Encourages both critical and casual readers of biography to examine biography from many angles, and gives a tour of the decisions biographers make and the implications of those choices. Among biographies given special attention are prize-winning lives of writers, intellectual women, the Roosevelts, and unusual marriage partners."--Book News "[A] fine book.... Beautifully written...full of lively examples.... Backscheider seems to have read every biography worthy reading. More pleasurably, she has the sort of eye for a telling detail or the choice anecdote that a good biographer has.... Backscheider triumphantly demonstrates over and over again that many of the newer questions have been alive all along in the old biographies, while the newer ones continue like no other genre to engage educated individual readers as narratives about both themselves and their culture."--English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 "A vivid and well-researched study useful to both scholars and readers of biography." --Choice "[Backsheider's] book will be blessed by generations of biographers and historians to come, not only because Backscheider makes the rough places plainer, but because she celebrates the biographer's art as at once compelling, horribly difficult and significant."--London Review of Books "Encourages both critical and casual readers of biography to examine biography from many angles, and gives a tour of the decisions biographers make and the implications of those choices. Among biographies given special attention are prize-winning lives of writers, intellectual women, the Roosevelts, and unusual marriage partners."--Book News "[A] fine book.... Beautifully written...full of lively examples.... Backscheider seems to have read every biography worthy reading. More pleasurably, she has the sort of eye for a telling detail or the choice anecdote that a good biographer has.... Backscheider triumphantly demonstrates over and over again that many of the newer questions have been alive all along in the old biographies, while the newer ones continue like no other genre to engage educated individual readers as narratives about both themselves and their culture."--English Literature in Transition 1880-1920

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198299958
• ISBN 13: 9780198299950
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312