Biographers and the Art of Biography, by Ulick O'Connor

How does a biographer faced with a mass of facts and dates approach the subject? Can a true portrait ever be achieved?

In Biographers and the Art of Biography, Ulick O’Connor investigates the two key elements of biography – that of ‘collecting’ all the available information to chronicle the life, and that of ‘selecting’ particular facts to create the portrait.

The book ranges over the work of many biographers, including such major writers as Michael Holroyd, Osbert Sitwell, Norman Mailer, Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey.  The biographies considered include those of popular as well as literary figures – Marilyn Monroe, Brendan Behan, Joyce, Proust, Gladstone and others.

Biographers and the Art of Biography is a valuable and stimulating challenge to both readers of biography and to biographers, and an exciting analysis of evolution in the art of writing a life.