Biographers and the Art of Biography

by Ulick O'Connor

120 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Ulick O'Connor was an Irish writer, historian and critic.

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short but very enjoyable book by the Irish literary figure Ulick O'Connnor. A biographer and writer himself, he explores the art of biography comparing biographers such as Richard Ellmann (biographer of Joyce and Wilde) and Michael Holroyd (biographer of Strachey and Shaw), who accumulated masses of details about their subject and published weighty tomes, with biographers such as Lytton Strachey (of Eminent Victorians fame) and Norman Mailer (O'Connor gives the fascinating backstory of his Executioner's Song) who, in the words of Strachey, "over that great ocean of material, ... lower down into it, here and there, a little bucket, which will bring up to the light of day some characteristic specimen."

O'Connor also tells some great stories from his own life, for example about his time as the barrister representing Reuben Dodd junior when he sued the BBC over his appearance in Ulysses, and about his research into the circumstances of Brendan Behan's firing on a detective outside Glasnevin Cemetery, a crime that got Behan 14 years inside.