Abstract
The introductory chapter touches on some of the different ways that the biographies discussed in the book have been read. The author takes the view that how a biography has been written becomes part of the story of that life or group of lives. We all tell stories about our own lives and those of others, but the story may have a slightly different focus or emphasis depending on who is telling it, who they are speaking to, when the events discussed took place, and how the story is told. The author places herself in conversation with British literary biographers from the late twentieth century, who in turn are in conversation with their subjects.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Aubin, David, and Charlotte Bigg. 2007. Neither Genius nor Context Incarnate: Norman Lockyer, Jules Janssen and the Astrophysical Self. In The History and Poetics of Scientific Biography, ed. Thomas Soderqvist, 51–70. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate.
Backscheider, Paula R. 1999. Reflections on Biography. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bate, Jonathan. 1997. The Genius of Shakespeare. London: Macmillan.
Benton, Michael. 2015a. First published in 2009. Literary Biography: An Introduction. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.
———. 2015b. Towards a Poetics of Literary Biography. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cole, Phyllis. 2004. Conversation that Makes the Soul. In Lives Out of Letters: Essays on American Literary Biography and Documentation, in Honor of Robert N. Hudspeth, ed. Robert Habich, 205–224. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Cooper, John Milton. 2004. Conception, Conversation and Comparison: My Experiences as a Biographer. In Writing Biography: Historians and Their Craft, ed. Lloyd E. Ambrosius, 79–102. London: University of Nebraska Press.
Crick, Bernard. 1980. George Orwell: A Life. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penquin.
Eakin, Paul John. 2008. Living Autobiographically: How We Create Identity in Narrative. London: Cornell University Press.
Holderness, Graham. 2009. Author! Author!: Shakespeare and Biography. Shakespeare 5.1: 122–133.
Holmes, Richard. 1993. Dr Johnson & Mr Savage. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
———. 2005. First published in 1989. Coleridge: Early Visions. London: Harper Perennial.
———. 2016. This Long Pursuit: Reflections of a Romantic Biographer. London: William Collins.
Holroyd, Michael. 1988. How I Fell into Biography. In The Troubled Face of Biography, ed. Eric Homberger and John Charmley, 94–103. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan.
———. 2003. First published in 2002. Works on Paper: The Craft of Biography and Autobiography. London: Abacus.
———. 2014. A Dog’s Life. London: MacLehose Press.
Lee, Hermione. 2005. Body Parts: Essays on Life-writing. London: Chatto & Windus.
———. 2009. Biography: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
Motion, Andrew. 1997. Keats. London: Faber and Faber.
Woolf, Virginia. 1994. First published in 1928. Orlando. London: Flamingo.
Wroe, Nicholas. 2008. Life in Writing: Interview with Michael Holroyd. Guardian Saturday Review, September 13, 12–13.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McVeigh, J. (2017). We Tell Stories About Ourselves and Others. In: In Collaboration with British Literary Biography. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58383-9_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58383-9_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-58382-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-58383-9
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)