Table of Contents

List of Illustrations; Introduction; The Basics; The voice of the Biographer; Living with the Subject; Evidence: 'Bare Patches and Profusions'; Perspective, Personality, and Life Shapes; Expansions; Feminist Pressures; Pushing the Envelope; British Professionals and African-American Academics; Conclusion; Bibliography: Biography; Theory; General; Index

Reviews

She writes a fluent, good-humoured, often humorous prose, she wears her extraordinary erudition as lightly as a scarf, and her aims are disarmingly pragmatic: to offer a practical guide ... based on her personal experience ... and a remarkable range of intelligent reading (the bibliography is a treasure-trove) ... Her book will be blessed by generations of biographers and historians to come, not only because Backscheider makes the rough places plainer, but because she celebrates the biographer's art as at once compelling, horribly difficult and significant. Inga Clendinnen, London Review of Books