Reflections on Biography - Paperback

by Paula R. Backscheider (Author)

Reflections on Biography is intended for all readers of biography--lifelong or occasional, critical or casual--and is written by an award-winning biographer, Paula R. Backscheider. The author examines biography from many angles and gives a tour of the decisions biographers make and some of the implications of those choices. Its aim is to increase the pleasure of reading biographies, to add new, enjoyable dimensions even as it increases readers' insights into the art of writing them. The book concludes with observations about the form's future directions and challenges. In this second edition, Backscheider provides a new Introduction that describes innovative forms of biography and new theoretical directions.

Author Biography

Paula R. Backscheider, Philpott-Stevens Eminent Scholar, specializes in Restoration and eighteenth-century literature, feminist criticism, and cultural studies. She is the author of several books including Daniel Defoe: His Life, (winner of the British Council Prize), Spectacular Politics, Reflections on Biography, and Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre (winner of the Modern Language Association Lowell Prize). Two of her books have been selected for the Choice Outstanding Academic Book award. She has published articles in PMLA, Theatre Journal , ELH, and many other journals. A former president of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, she has held ACLS, NEH, and Guggenheim Fellowships and is one of the few American members of the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Edinburgh. Her most recent book is Elizabeth Singer Rowe and the Development of the English Novel (Johns Hopkins University Press).