Body Parts: Essays on Life-writing

New
Paperback
2008
$16.49

As readers, we seem to be increasingly fascinated by studies of individual lives. In this timely, unusual and exhilarating collection Hermione Lee is concerned in different ways with approaches to 'life-writing': the relation of biography to fiction and history; the exploration of writers' lives in connection with their works; the new and changing ways in which biographies, memoirs, diaries and autobiographies can be discussed. As the title suggests, she also unravels the complex links between physical, sensual details and the 'body' of a work. 'Shelley's Heart and Pepys' Lobsters', for example, deals with myths, contested objects and things that go missing, while 'Jane Austen Faints' takes five varied accounts of the same dramatic moment to ask how biography deals with the private lives of famous women, a theme taken up in 'Virginia Woolf's Nose', on the way that the author's life-stories have been transformed into fiction and film. Rich, diverting and entertaining, these brilliant studies by a leading critic and internationally acclaimed biographer raise profound and intriguing issues about every aspect of writing, and reading, a life.

Synopsis

As readers, we seem to be increasingly fascinated by studies of individual lives. In this timely, unusual and exhilarating collection Hermione Lee is concerned in different ways with approaches to 'life-writing': the relation of biography to fiction and history; the exploration of writers' lives in connection with their works; the new and changing ways in which biographies, memoirs, diaries and autobiographies can be discussed. As the title suggests, she also unravels the complex links between physical, sensual details and the 'body' of a work. 'Shelley's Heart and Pepys' Lobsters', for example, deals with myths, contested objects and things that go missing, while 'Jane Austen Faints' takes five varied accounts of the same dramatic moment to ask how biography deals with the private lives of famous women, a theme taken up in 'Virginia Woolf's Nose', on the way that the author's life-stories have been transformed into fiction and film. Rich, diverting and entertaining, these brilliant studies by a leading critic and internationally acclaimed biographer raise profound and intriguing issues about every aspect of writing, and reading, a life.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
Publisher: Pimlico
Published: 06 Mar 2008
ISBN 10: 1844137465
ISBN 13: 9781844137466
Book Overview: Brilliant, readable, lively essays on the problems of reading and writing biography.

Media Reviews

Elegant, level-headed tidbits of higher journalism and light scholarship * Guardian *
Fascinating * Independent *
In its cleverness, intimacy and verve, Lee's own work is utterly engaging - perfect material in which to lose yourself between the sheets -- Lucasta Miller * Sunday Times *
Enthralling...This is a superb, intriguing volume of literary curios * Scotland on Sunday *
Everything Hermione Lee, who both writes and teaches biography, has written about the states of the biographer's art in recent years is worth re-reading -- Anne Chisholm * Spectator *

Author Bio

Hermione Lee's previous books include the biographical studies Elizabeth Bowen and Willa Cather, the internationally acclaimed biography Virginia Woolf, and Edith Wharton, longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. She is a well-known reviewer and broadcaster, and, in 2006, Chair of the judges for the Man Booker Prize. She is the first woman Goldsmiths' Professor of English at Oxford University, a Fellow of New College, Oxford, of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature. She was awarded a CBE in 2003 for services to literature.