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'Biographers exist in a tight partnership with their chosen subject and there is often during the research and writing an equivalent reflective personal journey for the biographer. This is generally obscured, buried among an overwhelming magnitude of sources while the biographer is simultaneously developing the all-important ‘relationship’ required to sustain the narrative journey ahead. Questions and selections beset the biographer, usually about access to, or veracity of, sources but perhaps there are more personal questions that could be put to the biographer. The many works on the craft of biography or collections about the life-writing journey tell only some of this tale. It is not often enough, however, that we acknowledge how biography can be unusually ‘double-voiced’ in communicating a strong sense of the teller in the tale: the biographer’s own life experience usually does lead them to the biography, but also influences the shaping of the work. These are still ‘tales of craft’ in one sense, but autobiographical reflections in another. Perhaps this very personal insight can only be attempted in the ‘afterlife’ of biography; the quiet moments and years that follow such consuming works. In this article, I reflect on this unusually emotional form of life writing.' (Publication abstract)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
- Louisa 1987 single work biography
- Books That Saved My Life : Reading for Wisdom, Solace and Pleasure 2018 selected work essay
- Thea Astley : Inventing Her Own Weather 2015 single work biography
- It's Raining in Mango : Pictures from the Family Album 1987 selected work short story
- The Well Dressed Explorer 1962 single work novel
- Vanishing Points 1992 selected work short story
