Literary Biography

Michael Benton is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Southampton. His publications include the highly influential Teaching Literature 9–14 (with Geoff Fox, 1985) and several widely used anthologies of poetry, most notably the Touchstones series (with Peter Benton, various editions 1968–2008). His most recent book was Studies in the Spectator Role: Literature, Painting and Pedagogy (2000).

• List of Illustrations xiAcknowledgements xiiIntroduction xiii1 Literary Biography Now and Then 1The Cinderella of Literary Studies 1The Rise and Rise of Literary Biography 4Dr Johnson: Biographer, Theorist and Subject 7Virginia Woolf: Time, Memory and Identity 122 Life [Hi]Stories: Telling Tales 18Aspects of Narrative 18(i) Beginnings: Charlotte Brontë 19(ii) Middles: Thomas Hardy 21(iii) Endings: Jane Austen 25The Naked Biographer 28Inventing the Truth 303 Reading Biography 35Biographer, Biography and the Reader 35Imagining Blake 38Problems of a Hybrid Form 42Reading Lessons 454 Literary Biomythography 47Biomythography 47Myth-Making: The Brontë Paradigm 48(i) Facts: Selection and ‘Spin’ 49(ii) Fact into Fiction 50(iii) Fiction into Myth 50(iv) Myth into ‘Faction’ 51(v) Demythologising the Brontës 52Variations on the Theme 53(i) Byron 54(ii) Dickens 55(iii) Sylvia Plath 58Conclusions 635 Inferential Biography: Shakespeare the Invisible Man 67Virtual Shakespeares 68(i) The Facts 68(ii) The Theatrical Context 69(iii) The Social Context 71(iv) The Shakespeare Mythos 72(v) The Shakespeare Canon 73The Implied Author: Inferential Biography 74(i) The Art of Love: The Sonnets 75(ii) Prejudice, Discrimination and the Law: The Merchant of Venice 77(iii) War and the Politics of Nationhood: Henry V 79(iv) Language and Thinking: Hamlet 82(v) Art and Artifice: The Tempest 85The Limits of Imagination 876 Literary Biography and Portraiture 92Sister Arts 92(i) Biography and Portraiture: Reynolds’s Portrait of Dr Johnson 94(ii) Reading the Image: Cassandra Austen’s Sketch of Jane Austen 96(iii) Visual Myth-Making: Henry Weekes’s Shelley Monument 98(iv) Celebrity Image: Thomas Phillips’s Portrait of Byron in Albanian Dress 100(v) Visual Memoir: Joseph Severn’s Portrait of John Keats 102(vi) Bardography: The Chandos Portrait of Shakespeare 104(vii) The Inner Life: R. W. Buss’s Dickens’s Dream 106(viii) Sisters’ Arts: Vanessa Bell’s Portrait of Virginia Woolf 108(ix) ‘To prepare a face …’: Patrick Heron’s Portrait of T. S. Eliot 110(x) Branwell’s Ghost: Branwell Brontë’s Portrait of his Three Sisters 112Art to Order 1147 Comparative Biography: Dickens’s ‘Lives’ 117The Victorian Dickens 118The Modern Dickens 121The Post-Modern Dickens 125Lives and Times 1308 Literary Auto/Biography 132Acts of Self-Creation in Wordsworth and Joyce 132Wordsworth’s ‘biographic verse’ 134Joyce’s ‘artist, like the God of creation’ 143Masks and Metaphors 1499 Biography in Practice 152An Interview with Dominic Hibberd, author of Wilfred Owen: A New Biography 152Living with the Subject 153Imagining Wilfred 157Matters of Life and Death 16610 Authorised Lives 171The Life of Graham Greene by Norman Sherry 172Bernard Shaw by Michael Holroyd 176T. S. Eliot by Peter Ackroyd 181Orwell: The Life by D. J. Taylor 186Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life by Andrew Motion 192Contemporary Lives 19911 Literary Lives: Scenes and Stories 202Dinner with Dr Johnson and John Wilkes 203Dinner with Mrs Ramsay 208Biography and Fiction 21512 Biography and the Future 218Select Bibliography 225Further Reading 225General Bibliography 229Index 239