Writing Lives: Literary Biography

by Midge Gillies

• ISBN13: 9780521732314
• ISBN10: 052173231X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2014-03-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Critical introductions to a range of literary topics and genres. Writing Lives takes as its focus life-writing, both autobiography and biography, discussing these genres specifically within the contexts of the lives and literary careers of writers, past and present. In addition to exploring the key characteristics of life-writing, the book also examines the relationship between the lives of authors and the influence of these lives both on their own writing and on the reception of their work by contemporary and later readers. The book traces the origins of literary biography from its early roots to its position as a best-selling genre in its own right and asks to what extent the reader can trust biography and autobiography. Includes extracts from, and discussion of, a range of authors including Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Dickens, Virginia Woolf and Ian McEwan.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Reading life writing: The influence of early biographers: Plutarch

The Victorian approach

Bloomsbury

Autobiography

Life Writing and the Second World War

Women's autobiographical writing

Family memoirs

Biographical structure in the twentieth century and key writers

Ethics and biography

Assignments.2 Approaching the texts: How biographers choose their subjects

Structuring a life

New approaches to biography

Other forms of life writing: letters and diaries, autobiographical fiction

Sources

Illustrations

Assignments

Texts and extracts: Peter Ackroyd, from Dickens

Maya Angelou, from I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

John Aubrey, from Brief Lives

JG Ballard, from Empire of the Sun and Miracles of Life

Vera Brittain, from Testament of Youth and Letters from a Lost Generation: First World War, Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends

Elizabeth Gaskell, from The Life of Charlotte Brontd

Brian Keenan, from An Evil Cradling

Doris Lessing, from Alfred and Emily

Primo Levi, from If This is a Man

Alison Light, from Mrs Woolf and the Servants, Janet Malcolm, from The Silent Woman

Sylvia Plath, 'Morning Song'

Plutarch, from Parallel Lives

James Shapiro, from 1599, A Year in the Live of William Shakespeare

Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan, from Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers

Virginia Woolf, from The Diary of Virginia Woolf, volume III, 1925-30

Critical Approaches: The autobiographical writings of Doris Lessing

Alfred and Emily

Critical responses to Alfred and Emily

Assignments

How to write about life writing: The writer and the reader

Different perspectives: comparing texts ;The context of writing: facts and their emphasis

Your own and other readers' interpretations

Assignments

Resources: Chronology

Further reading

Websites

Glossary

Index

Acknowledgements

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