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Lives & Letters
This book is a study of the changing ways in which biographies of English and American writers have been written from the 17th century to the present.
438 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1974
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About the author
Richard D. Altick
47 books10 followersRichard Altick was Regent’s Professor of English, Emeritus, at The Ohio State University and the author of numerous important works in the field of literary studies.
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November 16, 2016
It is difficult to rate this book. On the one hand, it is delightfully written, with delicious quotable sentences, humane judgements of people and things, and a plethora of telling details. On the other hand, it is quite unsatisfying as a history.
The principle reason for this, is that it contains too few examples. It is a history of biography, so one would expect Altick to actually consider some selected biographies as examples of the broad trends he discusses. He does so in section one, on biography before Johnson, and does later spend some time on Lytton Strachey, but otherwise he contents himself with broad generalisations. This has had the unfortunate effect of filling later historians of biography with deep prejudices which are hard to shake. But it also means that Altick cannot fully achieve his main aim, which is to vindicate biography as a form of "serious literary art." Art is particular, not general. It is impossible to describe what makes a great biography without describing some great biographies.
This also purports to be a history only of literary biography, but the limitation does not work. He feels free to write at length about biography in general, and the restriction to literary biography seems mostly a convenient device, allowing him to ignore non-literary biographies' contribution to the art of biography, and giving him scope to write long sections which have nothing to do with biography at all, but which do have to do with people's interest in the lives of writers. The result is an unequal book. He can't avoid discussing Strachey's non-literary Eminent Victorians, because of its recent influence, but conveniently leaves Southey's Nelson out of his discussion of nineteenth century biography, thus helping himself to prove that nineteenth century biographies were flabby and unartistic.
He also neglects to discuss short biographies other than Johnson's. This gap has been partly filled in recent years by Annette Carafelli's Prose in the Age of Poets, though that book has its own severe faults. But leaving out short biographies makes his discussion of the nineteenth century again extremely lopsided.
As should be clear, the first and third parts of the book are nearly flawless. It is only the poorly structured and badly evidenced second part, on the nineteenth century, which really lets it down. But unfortunately this part takes up more than half the book!
It is a delightful read despite these flaws, and has talked into an ill-deserved oblivion in the annals of literary criticism. 3/5
The principle reason for this, is that it contains too few examples. It is a history of biography, so one would expect Altick to actually consider some selected biographies as examples of the broad trends he discusses. He does so in section one, on biography before Johnson, and does later spend some time on Lytton Strachey, but otherwise he contents himself with broad generalisations. This has had the unfortunate effect of filling later historians of biography with deep prejudices which are hard to shake. But it also means that Altick cannot fully achieve his main aim, which is to vindicate biography as a form of "serious literary art." Art is particular, not general. It is impossible to describe what makes a great biography without describing some great biographies.
This also purports to be a history only of literary biography, but the limitation does not work. He feels free to write at length about biography in general, and the restriction to literary biography seems mostly a convenient device, allowing him to ignore non-literary biographies' contribution to the art of biography, and giving him scope to write long sections which have nothing to do with biography at all, but which do have to do with people's interest in the lives of writers. The result is an unequal book. He can't avoid discussing Strachey's non-literary Eminent Victorians, because of its recent influence, but conveniently leaves Southey's Nelson out of his discussion of nineteenth century biography, thus helping himself to prove that nineteenth century biographies were flabby and unartistic.
He also neglects to discuss short biographies other than Johnson's. This gap has been partly filled in recent years by Annette Carafelli's Prose in the Age of Poets, though that book has its own severe faults. But leaving out short biographies makes his discussion of the nineteenth century again extremely lopsided.
As should be clear, the first and third parts of the book are nearly flawless. It is only the poorly structured and badly evidenced second part, on the nineteenth century, which really lets it down. But unfortunately this part takes up more than half the book!
It is a delightful read despite these flaws, and has talked into an ill-deserved oblivion in the annals of literary criticism. 3/5
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