Writers don't make good spouses. When I am writing, I'm not a good wife. I shut myself away, and all my emotions are directed towards what I'm trying to write.
From Claire Tomalin
Historians will handle a much wider range of sources than a biographer and will be covering a broader spectrum of events, time, peoples.
Biographers use historians more than historians use biographers, although there can be two-way traffic - e.g., the ever-growing production of biographies of women is helping to change the general picture of the past presented by historians.
Why do we read biography? Why do we choose to write it? Because we are human beings, programmed to be curious about other human beings, and to experience something of their lives. This has always been so - look at the Bible, crammed with biographies, very popular reading.
All the people I have written about remain with me - perhaps they are my closest friends.
Poetry was one of the things that interested me most as I was growing up. I used to write it in my head all the time. I still think the very greatest pleasure in life is to write a poem.
People who attack biography choose as their models vulgar and offensive biography. You could equally attack novels or poems by choosing bad poems or novels.
I continually get more information about a subject after the book has been published.
I think it's about as likely Jane Austen was gay as that she was found out to be a man.
Writing Charles Dickens' biography is like writing five biographies.
11 perspectives
9 perspectives
8 perspectives
6 perspectives
3 perspectives
1 perspectives