Drawing upon a wide range of biographies of literary subjects, from Shakespeare and Wordsworth to William Golding and V.S. Naipaul, this book develops a poetics of literary biography based on the triangular relationships of lives, works and times and how narrative operates in holding them together. Biography is seen as a hybrid genre in which historical and fictional elements are imaginatively combined. It considers the roles of story-telling, factual data in the art of life-writing, and the literariness of its language. It includes a case study of the biography of Ellen Terry, discussion of the controversial relationship between a subject's life and works, 'biographical criticism' and, through the issue of gender, the social and cultural changes biographies reflect. It frames a poetics on the basis of its strategy and tactics and demonstrates how the literal truth of verifiable data and the poetic truth of what is narrated are interdependent.
Preface Introduction: Lives Without Theory 1. Art & Artifice in Biography 2. Plotting A Life 3. The Author's Works (1): Signs of Life? 4. The Author's Works (2): Open to Criticism? 5. Their Times and Ours 6. Framing a Poetics of Literary Biography Notes and References Select Bibliography Index
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