The Troubled Face of Biography

by Eric Homberger (Editor), John Charmley (Editor)

The leading biographers of Britain examine the practice of biography in the light of their own experiences. Essays include Only Biography and Truth, by Robert Skidelsky; Writing Lives, by Ann Thwaite; Writing Political Biography, by Kenneth O. Morgan; Lies and Silences, by Victoria Glendinning, and The Biographer's Chains, by Hugh Brogan. xv, i , 140 pages. cloth, dust jacket. small 8vo..

140 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Eric Homberger is professor of American studies at the University of East Anglia.

Reviews

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not great. Came apparently from a conference in the 1980s and it shows. Conference papers can be problematic for some reason: a whole other issue in itself I guess! I found very little actual insight here into the complexity and problems of writing biographies, though rather a lot of name-dropping, mainly of the DWEM variety. Ruth Dudley Edwards' chapter was just vile and typically offensive to Irish people. She and Roy Foster exhibit an inherent contempt for Irish people in their writing and yet so rarely get called on it. They've done a lot of damage to the progress of Irish history writing/research in my opinion, and her chapter in this book is exemplary of that problem. Sadly the book had no gems of knowledge to compensate.