Confessions of a serial biographer / Carl Rollyson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rollyson, Carl E. (Carl Edmund), author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rollyson, Carl E. (Carl Edmund).

Rollyson, Carl E.

Biographers--United States--Biography.

Biographers.

United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

viii, 245 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Jefferson, North Carolina : McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, [2016]

Summary:

"This memoir of a professional biographer's life tells the inside story of how he became interested in subjects and reveals the mechanics of the trade: how to assemble proposals for publishers, conduct interviews and archival research, and joust with editors, subjects and their literary estates. Other biographers have described their process but remained discrete, not wishing to offend"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Preface

Introduction: resolutely indiscreet

Richard Ellmann and the advent of ruthless biography

Picking a victim

Becoming a biographer: Marilyn Monroe made me do it

Hazarding Lillian Hellman: discovering the virtues of fair use

Martha and Me: the promise and peril of unauthorized biography

The biographer who came in from the cold: becoming Rebecca West's authorized biographer

Susan Sontag: the making of a biography

Becoming Jill Craigie's deauthorized biographer and Michael Foot's Boswell

Intermission: from picking a victim to pontificating on subjects

Another biography of Sylvia Plath?

Biography, my father, Dana Andrews and me

Amy Lowell, the silent woman and the biographical deficit

Missed connections

Work in progress: William Faulkner.

Notes:

Includes index.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Livezey Fund bookplate.

ISBN:

9781476663258

1476663254

OCLC:

934885315