Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography - Reviews - Book Review

Contemporary Review, Nov, 2002

Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography. Peter France and William St Clair, editors. The British Academy (Oxford University Press). [pounds sterling]35.00. 350 pages. ISBN 0-19-726269-4. This collection of eighteen essays offers readers 'an historical, theoretical and critical perspective on biography, and particularly, though not exclusively, on the biography of writers, philosophers and other cultural creators.

Our concern is not simply with the writing of biography ... but with the functions which it can serve and has served ... its uses'. There are essays by biographers and academics on the history of biographical writing, on French and German biographies, on Victorian biographies, on Freud and biographies, on the use of cinema as a means of biographical expression, on Sartre's 'existentialist biographies' and on 'gender, biography, and the public sphere'. Some of the more philosophical examinations will amuse non-academic readers who know that for every copy of this book sold, thousands of biographies will be purchased throughout the world. (T.B.)