Writing Biography: Historians and Their Craft

by Lloyd E. Ambrosius (Editor)

The historian as biographer must resolve questions that reflect the dual challenge of telling history and telling How does the biographer sort out the individual’s role within the larger historical context? How do biographical studies relate to other forms of history? Should historians use different approaches to biography, depending on the cultures of their subjects? What are the appropriate primary sources and techniques that scholars should use in writing biographies in their respective fields? In Writing Biography , six prominent historians address these issues and reflect on their varied experiences and divergent perspectives as biographers. Shirley A. Leckie examines the psychological and personal connections between biographer and subject; R. Keith Schoppa considers the pervasive effect of culture on the recognition of individuality and the presentation of a life; Retha M. Warnicke explores past context and modern cultural biases in writing the biographies of Tudor women; John Milton Cooper Jr. discusses the challenges of writing modern biographies and the interplay of the biographer’s own experiences; Nell Irvin Painter looks at the process of reconstructing a life when written documents are scant; and Robert J. Richards investigates the intimate relationship between life experiences and new ideas. Despite their broad range of perspectives, all six scholars agree on two central biography and historical analysis are inextricably linked, and biographical studies offer an important tool for analyzing historical questions.

Genres: History

166 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2004

About the author

Lloyd Ambrosius is former Samuel Clark Waugh Distinguished Professor of International Relations & Professor Emeritus of History at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He earned his BA (1963), MA (1964), and Ph.D. (1967) from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Reviews

[Molebatsi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a collection of essays on history and biography, and how the two illuminate each other. It is a collection of expert writing by academics on history and how biography fits in it.
The authors of the essays reckon that by telling lives, you tell history. Biography and historical analysis are inextricably intertwined, they aver. Biographical studies therefore offer a way to analyze important historical questions.
Questions that come to the fore are:
• How does the biographer sort out the individual’s role in the larger historical context?
• How do biographical studies relate to other forms of history?
Biography is an important form of historical analysis that can enable readers to transcend their own personal experiences and encounter another person from a different time and place.
In the book the six historians offer insights from their own experiences as biographers into the important topic of biography and historical analysis.
All six historians focused on the multiple relationships that shape the work of historians and biographers.
Their essays, which comprise the chapters in the book, explore the overlapping connections between autobiography and biography, between truth and subjectivity, between biographers and people they choose as subjects and their society and culture, between biographers and their own society or culture, between the personal and public aspects of the subject's life, and between various subjects and their legacies of historical records available to biographers.