The dynamic between the biographer and the subject is one of the most
fascinating aspects of biography as a genre. How does the biographer
stage the illusion that is the narrative life, the illusion that the
subject assumes a living form through words? In contrast to purely
fictional forms, biography writing does not allow total freedom to the
biographer in this creative act. Ideally, a biography's backbone is
structured by accurate historical facts. But its spirit lies elsewhere.
Rana Tekcan explores how some of the most accomplished biographers
manage to recreate "life" across time and space. She looks at their
illusionary art through the narrative strategies in Samuel Johnson's
Life of Savage, James Boswell's Life of Johnson, Lytton Strachey's
Eminent Victorians, Michael Holroyd's Lytton Strachey, Park Honan's
Jane Austen, and Andrew Motion's Keats. She notes three types of
distance in biographical narrative: First, where the biographer and the
subject personally know one another; second, where the biographer is a
near contemporary of the subject; and third, where biographer and
subject are distinctly separated, in some cases, by hundreds of years.