American Literary Biographers

Historically considered to be of minor literary importance, biography has grown and developed artistically as a genre in the second half of the 20th century. Accordingly, American literary biographers continue to explore the limits of the genre and expand the creative possibilities of their art. In the foreword to DLB Volume 111, editor Steven Serafin explains that "although the nature of literary biography remains relatively consistent," the late twentieth century marks a time of...
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Historically considered to be of minor literary importance, biography has grown and developed artistically as a genre in the second half of the 20th century. Accordingly, American literary biographers continue to explore the limits of the genre and expand the creative possibilities of their art. In the foreword to DLB Volume 111, editor Steven Serafin explains that "although the nature of literary biography remains relatively consistent," the late twentieth century marks a time of greater diversity in the biographer's "motivation, methodology, application of narrative technique, and compositional strategy." Serafin further notes that this diversity has enabled biography to generate more widespread appeal as well as critical recognition. The biographers featured in this series write on a broad variety of literary subjects--from historic to contemporary and from popular to lesser known. 35 entries include: Millicent Bell, Frank Brady, Virginia Spencer Carr, Scott Donaldson, Park Honan, Justin Kaplan, Charles Norman, Madeleine B. Stern, Jean Strouse, Aileen Ward and Stanley Weintraub.