Backscheider biography of martin

2001,  235 p. & notes

It’s not hard to find biographers writing about the act of researching a biography.

One of my favourite biographers, Richard Holmes has done it here and here, and there’s a whole literature on the theory and practice of biography. This book, however, looks at the writing of biography, rather than the researching of it.

Backscheider biography of martin

It concentrates on the creation of the biographical text as completed artefact, rather than the ‘journey’ that the biographer undertakes in an attempt to understand and convey the subject’s inner life.

In her preface, Paula Backscheider notes with frustration that reviewers of biographies often retell the subject’s life gleaned from the very biography that they are reviewing without engaging in questions of selection, organization or presentation.

These questions are the focus of this book.

The author has taken a rather spread-sh