In this collection of essays about Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hermione Lee attempts to answer the questions of how biographers circumnavigate the gaps in biographical data to produce the most complete and accurate account possible. She touches on the works of famous biographers--and the evidence from which they drew their stories--to explore from whence our myths of the greatest writers come.
Biography - The Nature of Biography?
What can we really know about another life? And, what pieces of the past fall through the cracks?
The individual moments of a person's life are lost forever when one dies. All we have left is a jumble of images and anecdotes--filtered through the perceptions and memories of family members, friends, and others. But, for a biographer, sifting through these mounds of contradictory life-time evidence reveals gaps and holes in any knowledge we can claim to have about a life. So, why do we still read and write biographies?
Lee says, "Whether we think of biography as more like history or more like fiction, what we want from it is a vivid sense of the person." We want to catch a glimpse of the person coming into the room. We want to see the famous writer penning the first lines of a famous novel, or experiencing the heartache or triumphs that will inspire an unforgettable novel. So, biographers give us what we want. They give us the highs and lows, the joys and sorrows. They may place the writer in the context of his or her time, explaining connections with other writers, literary movements, and historical action. Biographers offer us a connection with the past.
What can we really know about another life? And, what pieces of the past fall through the cracks?
The individual moments of a person's life are lost forever when one dies. All we have left is a jumble of images and anecdotes--filtered through the perceptions and memories of family members, friends, and others. But, for a biographer, sifting through these mounds of contradictory life-time evidence reveals gaps and holes in any knowledge we can claim to have about a life. So, why do we still read and write biographies?
Lee says, "Whether we think of biography as more like history or more like fiction, what we want from it is a vivid sense of the person." We want to catch a glimpse of the person coming into the room. We want to see the famous writer penning the first lines of a famous novel, or experiencing the heartache or triumphs that will inspire an unforgettable novel. So, biographers give us what we want. They give us the highs and lows, the joys and sorrows. They may place the writer in the context of his or her time, explaining connections with other writers, literary movements, and historical action. Biographers offer us a connection with the past.
Biography - Gaps, Absences & Missing Evidence
Even as we relish the mounds of details that biographers offer to readers, there is so much more we don't know, cannot know, nor can we probably imagine the truth. As Lee explains, there are "absences, gaps, missing evidence, knowledge or information that has been passed from person to person, losing credibility or shifting shape on the way." Facts--in the form of letters, diaries, anecdotes, etc.--may even have been purposely distorted or destroyed in an effort to shape how we imagine or mythologize famous writers of the past.
How do biographers make "life-writing" real? Why are we looking for meaning at the end of a life--when the why and wherefore is often unexplainable? In the end, she discusses how we mythologize death, just as we do with life. Biography-making is the process of filling in the gaps and making sense of a life and of death, but it is also a matter of re-interpreting the facts in an effort to piece together a coherent story of what happened. The biographer must put together the puzzle pieces, as the story is "continually being torn into parts and put back together again."
Even as we relish the mounds of details that biographers offer to readers, there is so much more we don't know, cannot know, nor can we probably imagine the truth. As Lee explains, there are "absences, gaps, missing evidence, knowledge or information that has been passed from person to person, losing credibility or shifting shape on the way." Facts--in the form of letters, diaries, anecdotes, etc.--may even have been purposely distorted or destroyed in an effort to shape how we imagine or mythologize famous writers of the past.
How do biographers make "life-writing" real? Why are we looking for meaning at the end of a life--when the why and wherefore is often unexplainable? In the end, she discusses how we mythologize death, just as we do with life. Biography-making is the process of filling in the gaps and making sense of a life and of death, but it is also a matter of re-interpreting the facts in an effort to piece together a coherent story of what happened. The biographer must put together the puzzle pieces, as the story is "continually being torn into parts and put back together again."
The essays in this volume offer a great introduction to the reading and study of biographies, offering a discussion of the issues involved in the developing of a comprehensive history of a life. Lee's style is informative and entertaining as she moves through some of the most fascinating stories of Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and others.
