Literary Biography , and: From Puzzles to Portraits (review)

Abstract

JAMES LOWRY CLIFFORD 1901-1978 We announce with great regret the death of the eminent American biographer, James L. Clifford. Those who knew Professor Clifford— either personally or through his books—will miss this perceptive, indefatigable and affable man. James Clifford was an unusual man of letters, coming to literary biography by way of the sciences and a short business career. His commitment to biography was prompted by his readings in literature after earning a B.S. at M.I.T. The resulting conversion carried with it the enthusiasm and care which mark all his work—as an imaginative and entertaining writer of, and about, biography; and as one of the finest contemporary editors of eighteenth-century literary studies. Those who have read Professor Clifford's lively biography of Mrs. Thrale, Hester Lynch Piozzi, or have trodden along as he recreated the sturdy walk of Young Sam Johnson, will not have been surprised to learn from such books on biography as From Puzzles to Portraits how much invention and industry went into his work. Many institutions and organisations have honored James Clifford's accomplishments. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, President of the Lichfield Johnsonian Society, and recipient of honorary degrees from several universities. But he was one of those generous and conscientious men who is best honored by the colleagues and students whom he helped. He himself has asserted that the two major interests of his later years were his work with advanced graduate students and his search for lost manuscripts, and many colleagues and friends among his ex-students will testify to the fruitfiilness with which he studied and taught. Reviews The following review was written prior to James Clifford's death. Our review section will periodically assess books which, while written before the start of the journal , are of pervasive importance to the craft. Literary Biography and From Puzzles to Portraits were felt to be two important recent contributions to the study of biography. The reissue of Professor Edel's work was an appropriate occasion on which to review the books. Professor Clifford's death is a sadder occasion, but also adds appropriateness to the review. Leon Edel, Literary Biography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973 (1959). 170 pp. $5.95. James Clifford, From Puzzles to Portraits. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970. 151 pp. $6.95. Critics of biography have seen the genre as a maiden form which, after a lusty infancy in Greece and Rome, was laid to a Theophrastian sleep during the middle ages only to be awakened by the kisses of the Boswell brigade. Recent critics have demurred from this notion. But few would deny that literary biography at least was neglected until the nineteenth century. And when we turn to criticism of the craft—such as the two books under review—the concern is overwhelmingly modern, as both Clifford and Edel assert. Clifford mentions that in the critically rich first half of the eighteenth century, there was not a single essay on the biographer's craft. At another point he relates how he found many modern biographers puzzled at, or resistant to, questions about their aesthetic. He was forced to agree with a friend that "life-writing is the last major discipline uncorrupted by criticism." Significantly, Clifford 's anthology, Biography as an Art, devotes as much space to twenty-two twentieth-century critics as to the twenty-five critics representing the preceding four centuries, and the same proportion pertains to histories of biography such as Nicholson's. Quantity is not, of course, everything. Moreover, Clifford and Nicholson confined their studies to English literature, and some would point out that the art of 84 biography Vol. 1, No. 3 biography has been more vital in Italy and France than in England. Nevertheless, only in our own time have critics such as Maurois, Nicholson, Kendall and the two writers under review given us systematic books on the art of literary biography. Leon Edel's Literary Biography and James Clifford's From Puzzles to Portraits starts where Maurois' Aspects de la Biographie left off. Like Maurois' book they were both first given as lectures: Edel's at Toronto and Clifford...