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Life Class: The Education of a Biographer
Retracing footsteps to explore profound and intriguing questions, this personal memoir discusses the pleasures of biographical discovery and the pitfalls—technical, personal, and moral—of entering other people's lives. This deeply personal account of a biographer's life includes the adventures of childhood, convent education, university studies, and a late-blooming writing career.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2007
13 people want to read
About the author
Brenda Niall
24 books7 followersBrenda Niall is one of Australia’s foremost biographers. She is the author of several award-winning biographies, including her acclaimed accounts of the Boyd family and her portrait of the Durack sisters, True North. In 2016 she won the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal and the National Biography Award for Mannix. In 2004 she was awarded the Order of Australia for ‘services to Australian literature, as an academic, biographer and literary critic’.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 12, 2019
4 ☆
Finished reading ... Life Class: the education of a biographer / Brenda Niall ... 06 February 2019
ISBN: 9780522853438 … 290 pp.
This book was a joy to read. I loved it! The writing is beautiful. It's not 'chatty' but I did find it like a conversation - not one I contributed much to but one in which I nevertheless felt included.
I had only vaguely heard Niall's name and put it on my 'to be read' shelf when a friend gave me this book. And there it stayed for about 18 months until I needed to read something quickly for book group. The main reason it stayed unread for so long is that I wasn't, and still am not, particularly interested in the subjects of Niall's biographies. I'm sure they're fascinating lives but with so many books and so little time ....
The first part of the book gave pleasure because of the geographical familiarity. Where I live now is not all that far from where Niall - not I! - grew up. I discovered a distant relative was a neighbour in Niall's childhood and her sister had a daughter in the same primary school class as one of my daughters. Learning of school days and holidays brought their own interest - in particular the poor standard of maths/science education we both had in different times and different Catholic schools.
After school there is further education, travel, various jobs until Niall fell into writing and academia. From this point, autobiography finishes and The Writer takes over. How Niall gives shape to her biographies is both fascinating and enlightening. A novelist controls their 'facts' but a biographer is stuck with what s/he has got - or not got in the case of gaps in evidence and documentation. Fitting facts into some sort of narrative, giving shape and emphasis - Niall tells us how she works, including doing her own research.
Besides her major works, Niall wrote shorter pieces in a variety of circumstances. One little snippet horrified me. In 1987, at almost the last minute, Niall was asked to write a chapter in the forthcoming New Penguin History of Australian Literature. The area of Australian children's literature had been overlooked. Says Niall: "I was reminded of the precarious status of 'kiddylit', as it was patronisingly known among academics."(pp.148-149) Did these academics think fully formed adult readers fell from the sky?!
Anyone who reads non-fiction in general and biography in particular would find great pleasure in this book.
Finished reading ... Life Class: the education of a biographer / Brenda Niall ... 06 February 2019
ISBN: 9780522853438 … 290 pp.
This book was a joy to read. I loved it! The writing is beautiful. It's not 'chatty' but I did find it like a conversation - not one I contributed much to but one in which I nevertheless felt included.
I had only vaguely heard Niall's name and put it on my 'to be read' shelf when a friend gave me this book. And there it stayed for about 18 months until I needed to read something quickly for book group. The main reason it stayed unread for so long is that I wasn't, and still am not, particularly interested in the subjects of Niall's biographies. I'm sure they're fascinating lives but with so many books and so little time ....
The first part of the book gave pleasure because of the geographical familiarity. Where I live now is not all that far from where Niall - not I! - grew up. I discovered a distant relative was a neighbour in Niall's childhood and her sister had a daughter in the same primary school class as one of my daughters. Learning of school days and holidays brought their own interest - in particular the poor standard of maths/science education we both had in different times and different Catholic schools.
After school there is further education, travel, various jobs until Niall fell into writing and academia. From this point, autobiography finishes and The Writer takes over. How Niall gives shape to her biographies is both fascinating and enlightening. A novelist controls their 'facts' but a biographer is stuck with what s/he has got - or not got in the case of gaps in evidence and documentation. Fitting facts into some sort of narrative, giving shape and emphasis - Niall tells us how she works, including doing her own research.
Besides her major works, Niall wrote shorter pieces in a variety of circumstances. One little snippet horrified me. In 1987, at almost the last minute, Niall was asked to write a chapter in the forthcoming New Penguin History of Australian Literature. The area of Australian children's literature had been overlooked. Says Niall: "I was reminded of the precarious status of 'kiddylit', as it was patronisingly known among academics."(pp.148-149) Did these academics think fully formed adult readers fell from the sky?!
Anyone who reads non-fiction in general and biography in particular would find great pleasure in this book.
June 12, 2021
Brenda Niall demonstrates the personal qualities and strokes of good fortune required to enable her to access subjects of her biographies.
Very readable.
Very readable.
August 13, 2024
This was a very interesting book that an older lady lent me and I found it very interesting. I now want to read one of her biographies, of which there are quite a few.
September 7, 2011
The first part of book (author's early life) didn't grab me but the later chapters on her process of writing biography were fascinating. Will certainly read the biographies she has written after reading this one.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews