The Nature Of Biography
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
What does it truly mean to capture a life on the page? In The Nature of Biography, distinguished poet and biographer Robert Gittings presents a penetrating examination of the art and craft of biographical writing, drawing on a rich canon of literary history to interrogate the methods, ethics, and responsibilities of the biographer. With intellectual precision and disarming candour, Gittings chronicles the evolution of the biographical form — from the hagiographies of earlier centuries to the psychologically sophisticated portraits of the modern era — arguing that the biographer's own character and limitations are as consequential as the subject's. He scrutinises the tension between fact and interpretation, the dangers of hero-worship and detraction, and the irreducible challenge of reconstructing a human consciousness from the fragments of the historical record. Rooted in Gittings' own celebrated experience as the biographer of John Keats and Thomas Hardy, this work carries the rare authority of a practitioner reflecting on his own discipline with unflinching honesty. His prose is lucid and elegant, suffused with the conviction that biography, at its finest, is a moral as well as a literary act. The Nature of Biography stands as an essential text for writers, readers, and scholars alike — and its central question, whether any life can ever be truly known by another, lingers long after the final page.
Author: Robert Gittings
Format: Paperback
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
What does it truly mean to capture a life on the page? In The Nature of Biography, distinguished poet and biographer Robert Gittings presents a penetrating examination of the art and craft of biographical writing, drawing on a rich canon of literary history to interrogate the methods, ethics, and responsibilities of the biographer. With intellectual precision and disarming candour, Gittings chronicles the evolution of the biographical form — from the hagiographies of earlier centuries to the psychologically sophisticated portraits of the modern era — arguing that the biographer's own character and limitations are as consequential as the subject's. He scrutinises the tension between fact and interpretation, the dangers of hero-worship and detraction, and the irreducible challenge of reconstructing a human consciousness from the fragments of the historical record. Rooted in Gittings' own celebrated experience as the biographer of John Keats and Thomas Hardy, this work carries the rare authority of a practitioner reflecting on his own discipline with unflinching honesty. His prose is lucid and elegant, suffused with the conviction that biography, at its finest, is a moral as well as a literary act. The Nature of Biography stands as an essential text for writers, readers, and scholars alike — and its central question, whether any life can ever be truly known by another, lingers long after the final page.