Works on Paper : The Craft of Biography and Autobiography - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349113963 ISBN 13: 9780349113968

Publisher: Abacus, 2003

Synopsis

Michael Holroyd opens with a startling attack on biography, which is answered by two essays on the ethics and values of non-fiction writing. The book then examines the work of several contemporary biographers, the place of biography in fiction and of fiction in biography, and the revelations of some extravagant autobiographers, from Osbert Sitwell to Quentin Crisp - to which he adds some adventures of his own, in particular an important and unpublished piece THE MAKING OF GBS, a riveting story of deadly literary warfare. The book ends with a series of satires, celebrations, apologias and polemics which throw light not only on Michael Holroyd's progress as a biographer, but also his record as an embattled campaigner in the field of present-day literary politics.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Holroyd is the author of numerous biographies including Lytton Strachey, Augustus John, George Bernard Shaw.

From Publishers Weekly

Authors and celebrities have often derided the biographer's craft as downright parasitic. Rebecca West painted an image of biographers picnicking round the tombstones of the newly dead, "sucking the bones clean and flinging them over their shoulders." Holroyd (Lytton Strachey; Bernard Shaw), one of the most distinguished biographers of the 20th century, responds to these charges both directly and indirectly in his new collection of essays, previously published in various journals and volumes. He argues that biographers bring hidden lives into view and therefore humanize our history: "By re-examining the past and pointing it in a new direction, it may now be used to question our understanding of the present, and affect our vision of the future." The liveliest pieces offer a generous helping of Holroyd's own reminiscences, particularly "The Making of Bernard Shaw," a behind-the-scenes account of his attempt to befriend a cranky, ungenerous George Bernard Shaw scholar, and "The Battle for Public Lending Right," an account of Holroyd's battle for authors to be paid each time their books are checked out of the library. But the heart and soul of the book lies in the literary reviews; taken as a whole, they provide a sweeping overview of 20th-century British authors, trends and movements, including top-notch essays on Evelyn Waugh, Edith Sitwell, E.M. Forster, Augustus John and several writers of the Bloomsbury group. Holroyd's earliest essays were published in a 1974 collection, Unreceived Opinions, and this selection of lectures, essays and book reviews, all written between 1973 and 2001, makes an excellent companion.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Abacus
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0349113963
• ISBN 13: 9780349113968
• Binding: Paperback