Telling Women's Lives: The New Biography.

Abstract

well-researched, engrossing history and critique of biographies of women...A significant and provocative contribution to postfeminist literary criticism. --Kirkus Reviews An insightful introduction to the art of biography by and about women...Recommended. --Library Journal An exhaustive survey of the issues, problems, and ethical dilemmas faced by biographers, and ...a compelling reflection on the framing of any interpretive project, on the questions of voice and perspective, selection and organization, objectivity and invention. --Signs intelligent analysis of women's biographies is insightful, fascinating, and much needed...Anyone will read women's biographies with a fresh eye after this. --Choice compelling analysis of the power structures and unspoken personal investments that define biography as a genre and as a cultural institution. --Shari Benstock, author of Women of the Left Bank and No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton An insider's view of biographers at work, complete with lively revelations about what doesn't go into print. I read it with pleasure and admiration. --Diane Middlebrook, author of Anne Sexton: A Biography splendidly engrossing story-about-how-to-tell-a-story. This is an engaging book of ideas and gossip, humor and new information, people and publishing--by a woman biographer who seems to know everything about everyone. --Emily Toth, author of Kate Chopin: A Life of the Author of The Awakening Placing herself in the avid reader's chair, Linda Wagner-Martin writes about women's biography from George Eliot and Virgina Woolf to Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Mead, and even to Cher and Elizabeth Taylor. Along the way, she looks at dozens of other life stories, probing at the differences between biographies of men and women, prevailing stereotypes about women's lives and roles, questions about what is public and private, and hazy margins between autobiography, biography, and other genres. Linda Wagner-Martin is Hanes Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina. She is the author of Favored Strangers: Gertrude Stein and Her Family, Sylvia Plath: A Biography, and other books.