AustLit

'Clio’s Lives is a most welcome and highly readable addition to scholarly literature on autobiography and biography. Inspired by ‘the increasing though still-limited body of scholarship connecting the writing of history directly with the lives of those who write it’ (1), it is based on a workshop held in Canberra during 2015. Part of the ANU Lives Series in Biography, the book brings together contributions from 13 highly regarded authors. Eleven of them are associated with Australian universities and two with Canadian universities. They discuss a quite wide variety of historians. Following the editors’ introduction, the four sections focus on historians’ autobiographies, historians who have defined their nation, those who have defined their discipline and collective biography of historians. Barbara Caine provides concluding reflections. Autobiography and biography are linked with intellectual and social developments. Clio’s Lives not only presents the results of its contributors’ research but also illuminates significant historiographical issues.'  (Introduction)