Studies in Biography ed. by Daniel Aaron (review)

STUDIES IN BIOGRAPHY EDITED BY DANIEL AARON (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978. ? + 200 pages, $12.50.) As Daniel Aaron suggests in his brief but concise introduction to Studies in Biography, today's biographeris virtually unrestricted and free ofrestraints when practicing his craft. Yet, as Aaron warns, the "modern biographer's very freedom and the variety ofhis options create new methodological problems as well as new expectations on the part of his readers." This edition ofessays and lectures addresses some ofthose new directions biography and biographical criticism have taken recently. Justin Kaplan's "The Real Life," the introductory essay in this collection, discusses biographical aims and expectations and demonstrates why all good biography is literary in scope. Four other excellent essays explain new techniques and problems in biography: John Clive's "English 'Cliographers': A Preliminary Inquiry": James Clifford's " 'Hanging Up Looking Glasses at Odd Corners' ": "Ethnobiographical Prospects"; Kenneth Marc Harris' "Transcendental Biography: Carlyle and Emerson"; and Michael T. Gilmore's "Eulogy as Symbolic Biography: The Iconography of Revolutionary Leadership, 17761826 ." William C. Dowling's "Boswell and the Problem of Biography" and Andrew Delbanco's "Thomas Shepherd's America: The Biography of An Idea" deal with biography as a literary art and appraises Boswell and Shepherd respectively, two of the art's more celebrated practitioners. Joel Porte's "Emerson in 1838: Essaying to Be" concentrates on the biographical implications of Emerson's writings and ideas; Edward Mendelson's "Authorized Biography and its Discontents" focuses on the problems ofbiographers denied access to private papers; Jean Strouse's "Semiprivate Lives" shows what can be learned from uneventful lives; and Virginia Spencer Davidson's "Johnson's Life ofSavage: The Transformation of a Genre" deals with the implications of a single career and how it affects a biographical treatment. Despite the diversity of the essays in this collection, Aaron has chosen its contents judiciously. The essays are well-written by distinguished critics, and they provide what seem to be an implicit set of reasons why biography is rapidly becoming a principal method of criticism. JEFFREY B. WALKER* •JEFFREY B. WALKER has published in Seventeenth-Century News, held ACLS and NEH grants, and is a member of the Committee for Bibliography for American Literature. He is completing a biography of Benjamin Church, the eighteenth-century American poet, and is preparing an edition of eighteenth-century American poetry. 96VOL. 33, NO. 2 (SPRING 1979) ...