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By Their Words and Their Deeds, You Shall Know Them: Writing Live Biographical Subjects—A Memoir single work   autobiography  
Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 By Their Words and Their Deeds, You Shall Know Them: Writing Live Biographical Subjects—A Memoir
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'In 1791 James Boswell published The Life of Samuel Johnson LLD, a biography unlike anything that had come before it; indeed, few have matched it since.1 Written some 230 years ago, it was published to wide acclaim for its unconventional style in detailing the private life of its subject. Boswell’s subject, Samuel Johnson, was both his muse and his mentor. At the time, Johnson was the most celebrated biographer of his day. His approach was innovative and a stark departure from the usual style of the time, which focused on successes in public life and on pedigree and steered away from anything to do with the private life.' (Introduction)

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    y separately published work icon Australian Journal of Biography and History no. 3 April 2020 21209150 2020 periodical issue 'Australians have always been great travellers, not only internationally but between  Australian states and territories. Writing about Australian lives is thus a  biographical challenge when they transcend national and internal boundaries. It means that, when dealing with mobile subjects, biographers need to be nimble diachronically, because of changing locales over time, and synchronically because many Australians have not always seen themselves as bound to a particular place. Nonetheless, despite the problems of writing about mobile lives, the deft use of biography appeals as a means of examining individual life paths in their immediate contexts within the larger scales suggested by transnational historical practice. An abundance of books, edited volumes, and articles have followed individuals, families, and other collectives as they ‘career’ (to use the term adopted by Lambert and Lester in their influential 2006 volume, Colonial Lives Across the British Empire) around the globe.' (Malcolm Allbrook, Preface) 2020 pg. 117-135
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Last amended 3 Mar 2021 13:41:02
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