Literary Biography (eBook)

Michael Benton is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Southampton. His publications include the highly influential Teaching Literature 9-14 (with Geoff Fox, 1985) and several widely used anthologies of poetry, most notably the Touchstones series (with Peter Benton, various editions 1968-2008). His most recent book was Studies in the Spectator Role: Literature, Painting and Pedagogy (2000).

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Literary Biography Now and Then

The Cinderella of Literary Studies

The Rise and Rise of Literary Biography

Dr Johnson: Biographer, Theorist and Subject

Virginia Woolf: Time, Memory and Identity

2. Life [Hi]Stories: Telling Tales

Aspects of Narrative

(i) Beginnings: Charlotte Brontë

(ii) Middles: Thomas Hardy

(iii) Endings: Jane Austen

The Naked Biographer

Inventing the Truth

3. Reading Biography

Biographer, Biography and the Reader

Imagining Blake

Problems of a Hybrid Form

Reading Lessons

4. Literary Biomythography

Biomythography

Myth-Making: The Brontë Paradigm

(i) Facts: Selection and 'Spin'

(ii) Fact into Fiction

(iii) Fiction into Myth

(iv) Myth into 'Faction'

(v) Demythologising the Brontës

Variations on the Theme

(i) Byron

(ii) Dickens

(iii) Sylvia Plath

Conclusions

5. Inferential Biography: Shakespeare the InvisibleMan

Virtual Shakespeares

(i) The Facts

(ii) The Theatrical Context

(iii) The Social Context

(iv) The Shakespeare Mythos

(v) The Shakespeare Canon

The Implied Author: Inferential Biography

(i) The Art of Love: The Sonnets

(ii) Prejudice, Discrimination and the Law: The Merchant ofVenice

(iii) War and the Politics of Nationhood: Henry V

(iv) Language and Thinking: Hamlet

(v) Art and Artifice: The Tempest

The Limits of Imagination

6. Literary Biography and Portraiture

Sister Arts

(i) Biography and Portraiture: Reynolds's Portrait of DrJohnson

(ii) Reading the Image: Cassandra Austen's Sketch of JaneAusten

(iii) Visual Myth-Making: Henry Weekes's ShelleyMonument

(iv) Celebrity Image: Thomas Phillips's Portrait of Byronin Albanian Dress

(v) Visual Memoir: Joseph Severn's Portrait of JohnKeats

(vi) Bardography: The Chandos Portrait of Shakespeare

(vii) The Inner Life: R. W. Buss's Dickens'sDream

(viii) Sisters' Arts: Vanessa Bell's Portrait ofVirginia Woolf

(ix) 'To prepare a face ...': PatrickHeron's Portrait of T. S. Eliot

(x) Branwell's Ghost: Branwell Brontë'sPortrait of his Three Sisters

Art to Order

7. Comparative Biography: Dickens's'Lives'

The Victorian Dickens

The Modern Dickens

The Post-Modern Dickens

Lives and Times

8. Literary Auto/Biography

Acts of Self-Creation in Wordsworth and Joyce

Wordsworth's 'biographic verse'

Joyce's 'artist, like the God of creation'

Masks and Metaphors

9. Biography in Practice

An Interview with Dominic Hibberd, author of Wilfred Owen: A NewBiography

Living with the Subject

Imagining Wilfred

Matters of Life and Death

10. Authorised Lives

The Life of Graham Greene by Norman Sherry

Bernard Shaw by Michael Holroyd

T. S. Eliot by Peter Ackroyd

Orwell: The Life by D. J. Taylor

Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life by AndrewMotion

Contemporary Lives

11. Literary Lives: Scenes and Stories

Dinner with Dr Johnson and John Wilkes

Dinner with Mrs Ramsay

Biography and Fiction

12. Biography and the Future

Select Bibliography

Further Reading

General Bibliography

Index

"Last year I was sent Michael Benton's Literary Biography: An
Introduction prior to publication, and was happy to supply a
recommendation for the dust jacket. I described it then as an
"elegant. introduction which is likely to appeal to both
established scholars and to the growing number of university
students who study the subject at all levels." Having read the book
again for the purposes of this review, I am happy to stand by my
initial response. Indeed, I would add that the book is sufficiently
rich and thoughtful to provide an even more enjoyable and
informative reading experience the second time around."
(Biography, Summer 2010)

"A general reader with an interest in literature or biography or
both will find much of interest here." (M/C Reviews, March
2010)

"Lucid and intelligent." (The Times Literary Supplement,
November 2009)

"Provides tutors and students with a useful means of entry to a
complex and rapidly developing area of debate."--(Dinah Birch,
University of Liverpool)

"I found this book both highly enjoyable and informative. It is
simply excellent - very well written, elegant in structure
and individual phrasing, a fascinating topic and a provocative
introduction to a range of biographies."--(Geoff Fox, Exeter
University)

"Last year I was sent Michael Benton's Literary Biography: An
Introduction prior to publication, and was happy to supply a
recommendation for the dust jacket. I described it then as an
"elegant. introduction which is likely to appeal to both
established scholars and to the growing number of university
students who study the subject at all levels." Having read the book
again for the purposes of this review, I am happy to stand by my
initial response. Indeed, I would add that the book is sufficiently
rich and thoughtful to provide an even more enjoyable and
informative reading experience the second time
around."--(Katherine Hughes, Biography)
"Brisk and readable ... lucid and intelligent"--(Claire
Harman, Times Literary Supplement)