A Companion to Literary Biography

An authoritative review of literary biography covering the seventeenth century to the twentieth century A Companion to Literary Biography offers a comprehensive account of literary biography spanning the history of the genre across three centuries. The editor – an esteemed literary biographer and noted expert in the field – has encouraged contributors to explore the theoretical and methodological questions raised by the writing of biographies of writers. The text examines how biographers have dealt with the lives of classic authors from Chaucer to contemporary figures such as Kingsley Amis. The Companion brings a new perspective on how literary biography enables the reader to deal with the relationship between the writer and their work. Literary biography is the most popular form of writing about writing, yet it has been largely neglected in the academic community. This volume bridges the gap between literary biography as a popular genre and its relevance for the academic study of literature. This important work: Allows the author of a biography to be treated as part of the process of interpretation and investigates biographical reading as an important aspect of criticism Examines the birth of literary biography at the close of the seventeenth century and considers its expansion through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries Addresses the status and writing of literary biography from numerous perspectives and with regard to various sources, methodologies and theories Reviews the ways in which literary biography has played a role in our perception of writers in the mainstream of the English canon from Chaucer to the present day Written for students at the undergraduate level, through postgraduate and doctoral levels, as well as academics, A Companion to Literary Biography illustrates and accounts for the importance of the literary biography as a vital element of criticism and as an index to our perception of literary history.

Notes on Contributors ix Introduction 1 Richard Bradford Part I The History of Literary Biography 7 1 The Emergence of Literary Biography 9 Jane Darcy 2 Lasting First Impressions: On the Origins of Ambivalent Attitudes to the Lake Poets, Cockney Keats, and Satanic Shelley 25 Andrew Keanie 3 How to Be an Author: Victorian Literary Biography c. 1830–1880 45 ulian North 4 Un/making the Victorians: Literary Biography, 1880–1930 63 Amber K. Regis 5 “Aerial Creations of the Poets”? New Biography and the BBC in the 1930s 87 Claire Davison 6 Literary Biography in the Twentieth Century 107 Dale Salwak Part II Issues, Theories, and Methodologies 121 7 Ethics and Literary Biography 123 Craig Howes 8 Concerns about Facts and Form in Literary Biography 143 Jane McVeigh 9 Women with a Theory: Feminism and Biography 159 Kay Ferres 10 The Role of Diaries in the Development of Literary Biography 175 Paul K. Lyons 11 Blurred Boundaries: Literary Biography, Literary Autobiography, and Evidence 195 James Underwood 12 Reading and Interpreting: The Archival Legacies of Canadian Women Writers 213 Linda M. Morra 13 Johnny and Bess: Life Writing and Gender 229 Anna Beer 14 “The Man’s Life in the Letters of the Man”: Larkin, Letters, and Literary Biography 245 Rebecca Devine 15 J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Style in Autobiography 263 Emanuela Tegla 16 The Experience of Archives: Richmal Crompton and Others 275 Jane McVeigh 17 Disappearing into the Front Page: The Case of Salman Rushdie and the Postmodern Memoir 291 Madelena Gonzalez 18 Evidence and Invention: The Materials of Literary Biography 309 Emily Bell 19 Mustabeens and Mightabeens: The Unknowability of English Renaissance Playwrights 325 Kevin De Ornellas 20 Literary Biography, Literary Studies, and Theory: An Uneasy Relationship 339 Richard Bradford 21 Estate Management: Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark 357 Martin Stannard Part III Classic Cases 373 22 Chaucer 375 Marion Turner 23 Writing Shakespeare’s Life 391 Lois Potter 24 John Donne 405 Tim Hancock 25 Jonathan Swift 423 James Ward 26 Life and Death in the Literary Biographies of Pope and His Circle 437 Paul Baines 27 Richardson and Fielding 455 Thomas Lockwood 28 Biography as Myth‐Making: Obfuscation and Invention in Victorian Mand Post‐Victorian Literary Biography 469 Jan Jędrzejewski 29 Dickens, Tennyson, Kipling 489 John Batchelor 30 Would the Real Mr. Eliot Please Stand Up? 511 Andrew Keanie 31 After Ellmann: The State of Joyce Biography 529 John McCourt 32 Literary Biography and the De‐Canonization of Amy Lowell 547 Carl Rollyson 33 Reviewing the Lives and Works of Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis 565 Andrew James Index 581