Biography: Fiction, Fact, and Form

by Ira B. Nadel

This critically acclaimed work presents the first analysis in almost thirty years of the structure and evolution of biography. Exploring the question of what makes biography a work of art it traces the genre from the great serial biographies of the late 19th century to the present and compares the relative merits of the professional versus the 'creative' biographer. Focusing his critical approach on language and the representation of fact, Nadel advances a new theory of biography based on myth and narrative form. This innovative study also included analyses of the work of Boswell, Leslie Stephen, Strachey and Leon Edel, and chapters on experimentalism in biography and the novel.

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984