Writing Lives
Literary Biography

Critical introductions to a range of literary topics and genres.

Midge Gillies (Author)

9780521732314, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 25 June 2009

130 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 0.7 cm, 0.22 kg

Critical introductions to a range of literary topics and genres. Writing Lives takes as its focus life writing, both autobiography and biography, discussing these genres specifically within the contexts of the lives and literary careers of writers, past and present. In addition to exploring the key characteristics of life writing, the book also examines the relationship between the lives of authors and the influence of these lives both on their own writing and on the reception of their work by contemporary and later readers. The book traces the origins of literary biography from its early roots to its position as a best-selling genre in its own right.

Introduction
1. Reading life writing: The influence of early biographers: Plutarch, Izaak Walton, John Aubrey, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell
The Victorian approach
Bloomsbury
Autobiography
Life Writing and the Second World War
Women's autobiographical writing
Family memoirs
Biographical structure in the twentieth century and key writers
Ethics and biography
Assignments
2. Approaching the texts: How biographers choose their subjects
Structuring a life
New approaches to biography
Other forms of life writing: letters and diaries, autobiographical fiction
Sources
Illustrations
Assignments
3. Texts and extracts: Peter Ackroyd, from Dickens
Maya Angelou, from I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
John Aubrey, from Brief Lives
JG Ballard, from Empire of the Sun and Miracles of Life
Vera Brittain, from Testament of Youth and Letters from a Lost Generation: First World War, Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends
Elizabeth Gaskell, from The Life of Charlotte Brontë
Brian Keenan, from An Evil Cradling
Doris Lessing, from Alfred and Emily
Primo Levi, from If This is a Man
Alison Light, from Mrs Woolf and the Servants, Janet Malcolm, from The Silent Woman
Sylvia Plath, 'Morning Song'
Plutarch, from Parallel Lives
James Shapiro, from 1599, A Year in the Live of William Shakespeare
Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan, from Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers
Virginia Woolf, from The Diary of Virginia Woolf, volume III, 1925–30
4. Critical Approaches: The autobiographical writings of Doris Lessing
Alfred and Emily
Critical responses to Alfred and Emily
Assignments
5. How to write about life writing: The writer and the reader
Different perspectives: comparing texts
The context of writing: facts and their emphasis
Your own and other readers' interpretations
Assignments
6. Resources: Chronology
Further reading
Websites
Glossary
Index
Acknowledgements.

Subject Areas: Educational: English literature [YQE]