STUDIA EUROPAEA GNESNENSIA 18/2018

ISSN 2082-5951
DOI 10.14746/seg.2018.18.8

Joanna Cymbrykiewicz
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8853-7018
(Poznań)

HOW NEW IS THE NEW BIOGRAPHY?

SOME REMARKS ON THE MISLEADING TERM’S
PAST AND PRESENT

Abstract
The article discusses the issue of the so-called “new biography” by underscoring
ambiguity of the term and presenting the different variants of “new biography”
it encompasses. In order to do that, an introduction is made where the tenets of
the classical biography are outlined. The inquiry focuses chiefly on England and the
USA, although remarks are also made with respect to biographical writing in other
countries. It appears that the term is contemporarily mainly associated with Lytton
Strachey’s model of biography which, having been formulated in 1918, proved
a breakthrough in life writing, since it operated with ironic detachment from the pro-
tagonist. Strachey perceived biography as an art and was determined to speak openly
about all spheres of the biographee’s life. The article proves that although other
attempts at creating a “new biography” were made after Strachey (by Leon Edel and
Jo Burr Margadant), their newness is either derivative and supplementary to Strachey’s
achievement, or advances a wholly new notion of biography, with the concept of mul-
tiplicity of the protagonist’s self. As the Stracheyan biographical model is almost
a century old, one can assume that what is understood as “new biography” is not
so new after all. In the meantime, though, biographical practice has taken a turn and
a novelistic mode of writing, i.e. biofiction, has become the current paradigm. The
author therefore suggests that the present-day understanding of “new biography” be
reconsidered by recognizing biofiction as one of the figures of biographical “newness”.

Key words
new biography, Lytton Strachey, biographical studies, biofiction

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The term “new biography” is widely used, but its meaning can be mis-
leading and ambiguous. Over several decades, scholars who delved into the
issue of biography have used it in different contexts and connotations. This
practice is quite understandable, since the term in itself seems quite innocuous
and might simply refer to the innovative component(s) of the most recent
biography type, in comparison with its predecessors. The problem appears
when several “new biographies” are encountered, referring each time to
a different issue and period in history. Consequently, a number of occur-
rences called “new biography” appear in biographical discourse, causing
perplexity and confusion. Hence, an urge arises to describe, clarify and
systematize the whole range of “new biographies” which, indeed, encompass
different notions and characteristics. The following paper is an attempt
to elucidate what is meant by the different “new biographies”, mainly in
English-speaking countries (especially England and the USA), with the
primary focus put on England, as it can be perceived as the cradle of modern
biography. Biographical interest has been strongest in England, which is
regarded by some scholars, such as Jürgen Schlaeger, as more prone to indi-
vidualism and experience, as opposed to Germany for example, whose pre-
dilection to “systematic thinking” and “philosophical traditions1” is stronger.
In order to present the matter in the clearest possible way, a chronological
principle has been chosen in the discussion that follows. Nevertheless, the
informative and illustrative attempt of the article to define the various forms
of the “new biographies” in contemporary literary discourse is not the only
one. It is also my intention to put forward some ideas which could serve as
a modest contribution to a revision of the term, based on the observed liter-
ary practice of today. My observations concern biofictions that are, in my
opinion, contemporary successors of the “new biography”. Perhaps it is time
to reconsider what can be named “new biography”, today and in the future.

THE BEGINNING

Biography as practice, not necessarily as a term or genre, has been known

in the Western culture for 2500 years. Its onset can be traced to ancient
Greece where bioi, ancient counterparts of contemporary biographies, were
written by such masters as Herodotus, Damascius, Xenophon or Plato. Little
is known of the overall shape of the oldest biographies, but it can be stated

1
Citation after: Tridgell 2004, p. 13.

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for certain that “biographies came into being at approximately the same time
as general historiography2”. Whereas Hellenistic biographers wrote mainly
biographies of philosophers and poets, the biographers of the age of the
Roman Empire preferred men of action and rulers as their protagonists.
Surprisingly though, life depiction by Plutarch, Suetonius and Tacitus is not
a simple consolidation of gains; it provides both an enumeration of the pro-
tagonist’s exploits and an attempt at a subtle portraiture. Plutarch’s contri-
bution to life-writing is especially significant since he distinguished between
praxeis (the protagonist’s life and accomplishments depicted in a chronologi-
cal sequence) and ethos (his character and moral conduct)3, and biography
designed in accordance with his guidelines was considered as a model of the
genre. Generally, the ancient Greek and Roman biographies still serve as
a frame of reference for younger biographies and are treated as a standard in
life-writing, therefore they are described here as “traditional” or “classical”, as
opposed to “new”. Accordingly, the set of traits which make up traditional
biography is as follows: a recognizable and distinguished protagonist,
a chronological order of true events from birth to death, depiction of the
individual’s public activity (private life is disregarded as insignificant), inten-
tional objectivity in life-depiction (though only ostensible/desired), the biog-
rapher’s inconspicuousness (transparency) and – usually – a pedagogical aim
of the biography. These characteristics were trivialized in the ages that
followed with the onset of Christianity in Europe and the dominating role of
hagiographies in biographical writing. Most medieval hagiographies are
alarmingly uniform in terms of life depiction and the didactic potential due
to the main interest of the Church in hagiographies – to inculcate piety in
the faithful. Hence, the truth about saints was not a priority to the authors
of this genre4. The oversimplification and deterioration of biographical stan-
dards in the Middle Ages was a fact, and not until the renaissance had begun
in Europe, did the restoration of the biographical genre take place. Seculari-
sation of biography and reinstatement of “great men” as its subjects, con-
tributed to a renewal and development of the genre. Francesco Petrarca’s
“De viris illustribus” (“On Famous Men”, 1384) and Giovanni Boccaccio’s
“De casibus virorum illustrium” (“On the Fate of Famous Men”, 1355-74)
can serve as best examples of the renaissance variant of the genre, although
Boccaccio was much more prone to bending facts and manufacturing
2
Momigliano 1993, p. 12.
3
Possing 2015, p. 29.
4
Garraty 1957, p. 60.

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anecdotes5. In England, in turn, the development took place considerably

later, in the baroque, when requirement of impartiality of the biographer
towards his biographee was reiterated and focus was put on “the coverage of
private concerns6”. Additionally, the significance of ordinary individuals’
lives was asserted, especially by Roger North (1651-1734) who convincingly
argued that any person’s life can be interesting7, if recreated by an apt and
devoted biographer. All these modifications in biographical writing were
heralds of the upcoming revolution within the genre, with Samuel Johnson
(1709-1784) and James Boswell (1740-1795) as leading figures.

THE NEW BEGINNING

With Samuel Johnson’s groundbreaking biography of Richard Savage

(“The Life of Richard Savage”, 1744), new light was cast on the realm of biog-
raphy and some of the fundamental principles of the genre were questioned.
Firstly, the figure of the subject was non-standard, as Richard Savage was
not even remotely a paragon of virtue or talent, but a third-class poet with
a criminal and scandalizing record. Consequently, his biography was practi-
cally devoid of didactic value. Secondly, Johnson did not aim at an objective
life-depiction of his protagonist, whom he knew personally and could freely
consult while working on his biography. Thirdly, in “The Life of Richard
Savage”, the biographee’s public achievements do not play the pivotal role, as
opposed to the details from his private and personal life, his mannerisms and
an overall picture of the “inner man8” that he was. All the above characteris-
tics, together with the protagonist’s modus vivendi, can be perceived as the
first signs of a process of demythologization and redefinition of an ideal sub-
ject, who did not need to be a hero or to have an interesting and inspiring
life. Paradoxically, here lies the pedagogical potential of Johnson’s biography.
As Michael Benton puts it,
Johnson’s educative principle is that people learn from other people’s experiences,
from particulars not from generalities, from life histories in which everyone can
imaginatively recognise shared hopes and problems, not from “histories of the
downfall of kingdoms and revolutions of empires”9.

5
Egeland 2000, p. 37.
6
Clifford 1962, p. xii.
7
Ibidem.
8
Edel 1987, p. 37.
9
Benton 2009, p. 10.

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Thus a new didactic value of biography was put forward. It could be de-
fined as seeking empathy and understanding among the readers by putting
focus on the imperfect human, whose right is to err. The tremendous success
of Johnson’s biography with the readers and critics was an important sign of
the end of humdrum panegyrical biographies (although the Victorian
“pseudobiography”, mentioned in the text that follows, can be seen as a pro-
longed exception). Johnson’s disciple and friend, James Boswell, followed in
his master’s footsteps, and even elaborated on and refined his method and
biographical practice by writing a biography of Johnson himself. His monu-
mental work, “The Life of Dr. Johnson” (1791), comprises over 1000 pages
and is a scrupulous and painstaking minutes of the writer’s otherwise quite
uneventful life (even though Johnson was clubbable and talkative, his leisure
pursuits restricted to book writing and discussions with friends, as well as
occasional travels). Boswell became acquainted with Johnson when he was
22 (Johnson was 54 at that time and enjoyed a high position in the English
literary world) and decided to write his biography by gathering all possible
material and writing down his protagonist’s utterances, jokes and observa-
tions. His primary goal was to “let Johnson speak for himself10”, i.e. to show
him in his natural environment, cite his own words and let his personality
unfold in numerous, ostensibly trivial and tedious situations. In order to
do so, Boswell incorporated authentic documents, extracts from letters,
obituaries and other sources11. The important “deviation” from the classical
norm was that Boswell did not present the protagonist’s life from cradle to
grave, but concentrated on his last twenty years, i.e. the period when he
accompanied him. This was a new perspective on the protagonist; it did not
make a life’s temporal aspect its crucial element, but preferred an internal
voyage to explore his “real self”. Personality was the key notion for Boswell,
so recreating the life of Johnson not only encompassed note-taking and
material-gathering, but also creating “occasions, incidents, encounters, for
the life he would ultimately write12”. This could obviously lead to manipula-
tion and inventing “facts” in the protagonist’s life, but the primary aim of
such practice was exposing his character in interaction with others. What was
crucial, though, in Boswell’s enterprise, was his observation that sometimes
in order to tell the truth about the subject, creativity and gap-filling have to
be employed. As a result, his biography of Johnson is one of the first biogra-
10
Sisman, 2001, p. 171.
11
Benton 2009, p. 11.
12
Edel 1957, p. 13.

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phies where the events were scarce, but the protagonist’s personality was
depicted in a possibly truthful manner, i.e. without excessive idealizing which
was often the case in classical biographies. It is also worth mentioning that
Johnson and Boswell actually introduced literary biography in England, and
thus promoted writing about “lives of the sedentary13”, as was pointed out
by Virginia Woolf much later.

THE NEW BIOGRAPHY BY STRACHEY

Although Johnson and Boswell’s biographies were undoubtedly a modern

breakthrough within the genre, a real revolution was to come in the 1920s.
It might seem strange that over 100 years had passed between the publication
of Boswell’s biography of Johnson and the onset of the “new biography”, i.e.
publication of “Eminent Victorians” by Lytton Strachey in 1918, but biogra-
phy in the 19th century regressed tremendously, mainly due to the prolonged
Victorian era in England, which explains the time span. The Victorian biog-
raphies were known for their prudery, they were hagiographic in their un-
critical attitude towards the protagonist and entirely didactic and eulogistic
in their tone. Some critics of the genre even called them “pseudobiogra-
phies14”, since they failed in rendering the whole picture of their subjects and
“covered up unpalatable facts about the subjects’ private lives15”. The poorly
condition of the genre in the 19th century was one of the factors which con-
tributed to the appearance of a new model of biography, known as the “new
biography”. Apart from the strictly literary reasons for its onset, there would
also be more profound and grievous ones, i.e. World War I and the deep
crisis it brought about in Europe. The new biography was supposed to be
a remedy, or at least an antidote, to the gruesomeness of the war which
deprived an individual human being of any value. The rise of the “new
biography” was, interestingly enough, not local but universal, since the idea
of a renewal within the genre appeared almost simultaneously in England,
Germany and France. It is customary, though, to perceive Lytton Strachey’s
set of biographies, “Eminent Victorians”, as emblematic for the new direction
in life-depiction, or even, as Laura Marcus suggests, as “the defining text of

13
Woolf 1958, p. 151.
14
Kendall 1965, p. 105.
15
Skidelsky 1988, p. 4.

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the ‘new biography’16”. Since then, the Stracheyan biographies have had the
status of the “new biography”, which is broadly recognized and referred to by
all researchers of the genre also today. What was new in “the new biography”
from 1918? “Almost everything” – one could jokingly answer, at least when
its hagiographical or panegyrical predecessors are treated as a frame of refer-
ence. First of all, this selection of biographies of four eminent personalities
from the Victorian age, cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas
Arnold and Charles Gordon, is debunking in its attitude towards the biog-
raphees and, as Nigel Hamilton aptly observes, is “brilliantly effective in
smashing Victorian reputations17”. Secondly, its volume is surprisingly mod-
est, as opposed to the detailed and lengthy enunciations of the Victorian
biographers, or, for that matter, Johnson‘s and Boswell’s. Thirdly, it shuns the
biographer’s proclaimed invisibility in life-depiction, excelling, in turn, in
manifesting his own personality. Fourthly, it is amusing and humorous
in describing its subjects, and its sardonic tone and “ironic detachment18”
become the genre’s trademark and is soon to be imitated by the admirers
of Strachey’s talent. All in all, the tenets of Stracheyan biography were almost
a complete contradiction of the Victorian pseudobiography’s principle and
drew a clear boundary between the old times and the new, disillusioned,
post-war ones. One could also describe the Stracheyan biographical project as
“truth-telling”, but it is worth emphasizing that “the truth” is somewhat diffi-
cult to define by Strachey, since he contradicts himself by stating that he aims
at “lay[ing] bare facts of some cases (…) dispassionately, impartially, and
without ulterior intentions19” and simultaneously he makes reservations that
his visions are “haphazard” and that his choice of subjects was determined
“by simple motives of convenience and of art20”. Importantly, the “new
biographies” which followed were accompanied by theoretical publications,
both normative and descriptive. As I have indicated, the new tendency within
the domain of biographical portraiture involved also writers and theoreti-
cians from other countries, making biography one of the most widespread
and debated genres of the 1920s and 1930s. Numerous writers published
their biographies at the time, as for example the German-Swiss Emil Ludwig
(1881-1848), whose biography of Napoleon (1926) brought him a great

16
Marcus 2002, p. 197.
17
Hamilton 2007, p. 151.
18
Kendall 1965, p. 114.
19
Strachey 1934, p. ix.
20
Ibidem, p. vii.

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success, and the French André Maurois (1885-1967), whose biographies’

literary qualities cannot be underestimated. These same authors, along with
lots of others, produced theoretical works which in many cases could be
called “biographical procedurals”, as they both encompassed descriptions of
the extant biographies, reflections on the working process and methodology
of life-writing, and anticipations of the genre’s future. Nigel Nicolson’s
“The Development of English Biography” (1927) can serve as a good example
of this practice in England, as well as André Maurois’ “Aspects of Biography”
(1929) which referred to Nicolson’s reflections and pondered over biogra-
phy’s doubtful status as a science. Emil Ludwig’s work “Die Kunst der Biog-
raphie” was published somewhat later (1936), but its line of inquest into the
matter was similar. Among the literary personalities who expressed their
views on the “new biography” and experimented with the genre as well
was Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), whose essay “The New Biography” (1927)
was one of the founding texts of the genre and still plays a central role in bio-
graphical discourse. The essay is enthusiastic towards Strachey’s biographical
prose and disdainful of the Victorian type of biographism, but it also elabo-
rates on the limitations, impossibilities and ambivalence of life-writing.
Woolf claims, for example, that biography writing is “trying to mix the truth
of real life and the truth of fiction21”, which essentially must prove unfeasible,
and yet is the only way the (new) biographer can choose. In her other articles
on the subject, for instance in “I am Christina Rosetti” (1930) she accuses the
genre of belittling its protagonists22, while in the novel “Flush: A Biography”
(1930) she mocks the biographical convention by providing an in-depth
study of a cocker-spaniel’s inner life. To sum up, the “new biography”, intro-
duced by Lytton Strachey and later taken up by various artists throughout
Europe (and the USA), changed the face of the genre and in a short time
became the new standard. Its prerogatives were the demythologizing charac-
ter of the biographical narration, the ambiguity as to the real subject of the
biography (is it only the biographee? Or, perhaps the biographer as well?),
brevity, selectiveness and humour. The importance of the relation between
truth and fiction was also one of its central interests. This, in fact, initiated
a discourse on the biography’s rightful affiliation (is biography a science or
an art? What methods should be employed in life-writing? How much liberty
is a biographer allowed? How to choose a right protagonist for oneself?),

21
Woolf 1958, p. 154.
22
Woolf 1967, p. 51-60.

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which is still topical. The “new biography’s” prevalence in the 1920s and
1930s might seem puzzling, but it is clearly a sign of the genre’s “coming of
age”, as the numerous theoretical deliberations on the matter are nothing less
but a call for legitimization of this genre in the academic circles. Alas, the
Stracheyan biographical formula became trivialized in a short time, mainly
owing to its imitators who contributed to the fact that the formula “as a per-
manent filter (…) proved a dead end for biography23”.

THE NEW BIOGRAPHY BY EDEL

The Stracheyan model of biography, once and for all, set out a new stan-
dard in life-depiction and encouraged theoretical and pragmatic reflection on
biography. One of the most important scholars who took up the subject was
an American, Leon Edel (1907-1997), an author of the renowned Henry
James’ biography and one of the best theoreticians of literary biography
as such. Edel saw himself as one of the heirs of Strachey’s heritage, so his
remarks on the process of biography-writing should be seen as an elaboration
on his master’s achievements. Nevertheless, he did much more than elabora-
tion: in “Writing Lives: Principia Biographica” (1984), which should be seen
as a follow-up to his major critical work “Literary Biography” (1957), he put
down a set of rules for future biographers, provided an extensive description
and criticism of chosen biographers (Boswell, Strachey, Van Wyck Brooks),
and gave an account of his own struggles and dilemmas with life-writing.
He also called his four rules of biography-writing as “the foundations of the
New Biography: the biography we have been creating since the days of Lytton
Strachey24”. The principles he proposed had, indeed, a lot in common with
Strachey. Basically, they came down to the issue of the mutual relation
between the biographer and the biographee, which was the very core of
the biographer-oriented Stracheyan model. His primary goal seemed to be
deciphering the “true person” behind the works, that is why he focused
on finding the key to “the deeper truths25” and discerning “the figure under
the carpet26”. In Edel’s reflection, however, much more attention was paid
to the biographer’s figure than to his/her subject. He discussed, for instance,

23
Hamilton 2007, p. 152.
24
Edel 1987, p. 31.
25
Ibidem, p. 29.
26
Ibidem.

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the emotional attitude of the biographer to the biographee (biographers

“can’t fall in love with them [their subjects]27”) and emphasized the necessity
of his/her understanding of the subject’s actions and motivations. Last but
not least, the biographer’s own literary talent was just as important as that of
the biographee’s, therefore, a lot of attention should be drawn to the very
form and structure of the biography. Edel stated that they ought to reflect
(or rather recreate) the protagonist’s way of thinking, remembering and
speaking. In other words, he found the old chronological and linear order of
narrative outdated and proposed a new one, which should be closer to fiction
in its language and artistic form28. All in all, Edel’s “new biography” elaborated
on Stracheyan ideas and reinforced them by encouraging the biographer’s
literary potential and creativity. The interpretative role of the biographer was
also crucial for his biographical reflections; it is especially noticeable in the
proclaimed investigative aspirations of the biographer whose task was to
establish and indicate the protagonist’s “private mythology29”.

THE NEW BIOGRAPHY BY BURR MARGADANT

Although the position of the “new biography” in the Stracheyan and

Woolfian sense seems unquestionable and recognizable in biography studies,
another “new biography” appeared in 2000 which ignored the tradition of
the term and all the associations it evoked. The initiative was undertaken
by Jo Burr Margadant and the publication “The New Biography: Performing
Femininity in Nineteenth-Century France”, which became another “version”
of the new biography and which she edited. In what respect is Burr Mar-
gadant’s collection of essays different? This volume, authored by six
accomplished historians and edited by Burr Margadant, consists of eight
contributions on famous women in nineteenth-century France who owed
their success in the public sphere to their ability to perform their femininity.
As Burr Margadant explains it herself in the introduction to the volume, its
subject is
a self that is performed to create an impression of coherence or an individual with
multiple selves whose different manifestations reflect the passage of time, the
demands and options of different settings, or the variety of ways that others seek
to represent the person30.

27
Ibidem.
28
Ibidem, p. 30.
29
Ibidem.
30
Burr Margadant 2000, p. 7.

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The crucial stance of the book is therefore conceptually different from

that of, say, Strachey or his followers, who perceived the human identity as
unified, “though not necessarily unconflicted31”, whereas Burr Margadant’s
point of view is postmodern in its convictions on the multiple character of
the self. Together with the other authors of the volume, she investigates the
ways in which the eight eminent French women “created their public iden-
tities by manipulating rather than challenging the ideology of gender differ-
ence that relegated women to the domestic sphere32”. Her and the other
authors’ perspective is feminist and gender-oriented, and the perception of
the protagonist as an active agent in creating her persona (as well as the
private self) aims at empowering the subject and equipping her with
mechanisms of self-creation, which Stracheyan or other modern protago-
nists lacked. In other words, Burr Margadant did not focus on the way that
the environment had formed the protagonist, but on the choices the subject
had made to create her own identity. It is, though, significant that the eight
contributions cannot be seen as biographies, but as academic interpreta-
tions of their subjects’ lives, which locates the work amongst scholarly pub-
lications rather than actual biographies. The feminist perspective may
therefore serve as a source of inspiration for future biographers, but is not
a “new biography” as such.

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN?

THE CASE OF BIOFICTION

All the “new biographies” discussed above do not exhaust the topic, since
the notion also occurs in other, minor contexts. Nevertheless, the presented
concepts of newness in biography-writing are the most crucial and represen-
tative. From the material presented above, it can be assumed that the central
and groundbreaking “new biography” is the one formed according to Lytton
Strachey’s rules, whilst Leon Edel’s contribution to the matter derives signifi-
cantly from the Stracheyan concept of the biographer’s importance in the
life-recreating process. Certainly, the input of the fathers of modern biogra-
phy – Johnson and Boswell – should be appreciated, as their works should
be seen as an intermediate between the classical biography and the new one.

31
Ibidem.
32
Prestwich 2001, p. 230.

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The newness of Strachey’s biography entailed an artistic, fiction-inspired

language, a detached and ironic attitude to the protagonist and commitment
to telling the truth, and also the unpopular and prominent position of
the biographer. The same can be said about Edel’s biography and its objec-
tive: to unveil the biographee’s personality and decipher the “figure under the
carpet”. Apparently, the newest “new biography”, the feminist one by Jo Burr
Margadant, did not refer to the famous predecessors, which can be inter-
preted as an intentional overlooking of the dominating biographical pattern
in order to propose a new start uncontaminated by previous biographical
realizations. However, time will tell whether the newness in biography,
according to Burr Margadant (i.e. her conviction on the multiplicity of self
and her proclaiming the value of an individual’s own decisions over the
influence of its environment), will become a new biographical standard. For
now, in the majority of biographical discourses, the “new biography” is first
and foremost associated with Strachey’s achievements, even though it is
almost one hundred years old. It is my conviction, though, the time has come
to revise our understanding of the “new biography” by scrupulous observa-
tion of today’s biographical practice. What is perhaps escaping contemporary
biography scholars is a genre (?), or rather a mode of writing whose pro-
liferation is indeed worth a reflection. What is meant here is the genre
of biofiction, which in several ways seems to satisfy the readers’ constant ap-
petite for “true stories”.
Located on the border between two separate ontological spheres – fiction
and reality – biography has always been a problematic genre due to its debt to
both the concrete life of the individual it describes and to the realm of
fiction, whose tools and findings it eagerly employs. Biofiction, in turn, being
a mode of writing whose “factional” commitment is limited, can be regarded
as a postmodern answer to biographical desire of readers, but it is much
more engaged in fiction than any previous forms of biographical writing.
Biofiction is not at all a new occurrence. It has already appeared in the form
of biographical novels, “fictionized biographies” and “novels-as-biographies”
in Kendall’s terminology33, or “narrative biography” and “fictional biogra-
phy”, according to James L. Clifford’s differentiaton34. The term itself was
coined relatively recently, in 1991, by Alain Buisine, who defines biofictions
as postmodern forms which are paradoxical in their endeavour to represent

33
Kendall 1965, p. 126-128.
34
Clifford 1970, p. 87-89.

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a life of a historical person, knowing that the project is doomed to failure due
to the author’s unintentional, yet immanent subjectivity35. In other words,
biofiction can be defined as biographical fiction which embraces the impossi-
bility of its objectives and cannot be held accountable to the truth. However,
it is perhaps not the protagonist who should be placed in focus of a biofic-
tional work, but the author’s projection of him or her, which is brought to
the surface by means of numerous strategies inherent in the realm of fiction
(perspective of the narrator, the focus and mode of narration, the chosen
storyline(s), the selection of events, the narrator’s visibility, moral judgment
or lack of it, insight into thoughts of the protagonist etc.). The tendency in
literature, where the border between reality and fiction is blurred, should be
seen in context of greater changes in historiographic discourse, with Hayden
White as a leading figure. White’s groundbreaking findings, drawing level
between fiction and history thanks to their common denominator (lack of
tangible reference)36, can be seen as an act of legitimizing the already existing
literary trends, which consist in a single term: hybridity. Therefore, the bio-
fictional boom is a manifestation of a broader postmodernist tendency where
the “anything goes” principle is one of the governing ones.

BIOFICTION IN PRACTICE

Some of the most interesting examples of the genre’s diversification are

two contemporary biofictions on the life of Henry James, who was otherwise
known for his secretiveness surrounding his private life. They were both
published in 2004 with a few months’ interval and both addressed the very
same subject: the writer’s “middle years”. The first, “The Master”, was written
by Colm Toíbín; the other, “Author, Author”, by David Lodge. In spite of the
obvious similarities in terms of the same protagonist and the chosen period
of his life, the two novels differ substantially as to their narrative strategies.
Whilst Toíbín (“The Master”) employs the Jamesian mode of narration,
focusing almost exclusively on the protagonist’s thoughts, on an “inner
chamber”37 of James’ consciousness, Lodge (“Author, author”) puts another
issue in focus, i.e. James’ friendship with George Du Maurier and thus
introduces a more dramatic storyline in his text. Another important matter

35
Buisine 1991, pp. 7-13.
36
White 1990, p. 82.
37
Hollinghurst 2004.

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concerns the attitude of both authors towards the genre that they embarked
upon. Toíbín’s work purports to be fiction, avoiding references in the form of
paratexts or a preface to Henry James and his life. “Author, author”, in turn,
entails a list of acknowledgements where Lodge accounts for the made-up
episodes and persons. This act can be regarded as a desire to remain within
the referential genre of biography, even though Lodge states that “this book is
a novel, and structured like a novel38”. This is true, indeed, that his biofiction
strives to behold the best of both worlds. Lodge operates with typically novel-
istic strategies, introducing a frame story (the dying James) and an actual
story (friendship with Du Maurier), numerous dialogues and descriptions,
but the knowledge on James and his times he amassed in the novel could
rightfully serve the purpose of a traditional, referential and truth-bound
biography. Both authors refer to James using his first name in order to, as
Vanessa Guignery sees it, bring the protagonist closer to the reader39, but
whilst in the case of Toíbín’s somewhat claustrophobic and insular prose
this familiarity is fully understandable and justified, in Lodge’s book it
seems at times misplaced due to the narrative. Both novels, despite their
seeming resemblance in terms of the protagonist and stage in his life, can be
said to have different purposes: Toíbín investigates the relation between the
author’s psyche and the painstaking writing process, and Lodge prefers
to elucidate those episodes in James’ life which, to his mind, were crucial to
understanding the author as a private person. They both represent two dif-
ferent faces of contemporary biofiction: one that takes the liberty of com-
bining freely the categories of fiction and reality by creative imitation of
Jamesian style, and the other that in spite of its declarations, resorts to the
more traditional solutions.
Another example of a contemporary pair of biofictions whose structure
and composition differ substantially despite the same protagonist can be
“Marie: A Novel about the Life of Madame Tussaud” (1983, English edition
1986, translated by Patricia Crampton) by Danish author Dorrit Willumsen,
and “Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution” (2011) by Michelle
Moran. Both novels, relatively truthfully, recreate the actual story of Marie
Tussaud, the French artist and creator of the museum of wax figures, and
their narrative strategies undoubtedly make them part of the biofictive genre.
However, the selected material constituting a story differs to a great extent.

38
Lodge 2006, p. 9.
39
Guignery 2007.

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Whilst Willumsen’s novel recreates Tussaud’s life in a relatively traditional

manner (the storyline is unilinear and basically chronological, the main
character matures with time, a teleological pattern of the protagonist’s fate
is applied etc.), Moran selects only six years of Marie Tussaud’s life to tell
her story – the years of the French Revolution. What the two novels have in
common is the type of narrator, quite untypical of what one associates with
the biographical genre. While in the two novels on Henry James the authors
resorted to the most reliable third person, auctorial narrator, in both stories
on Marie Tussaud a type of narrator characteristic of autobiographies is
chosen, i.e. the first person narrator, lending its voice to the protagonist her-
self. Admittedly, the first person narrator in Willumsen’s novel intertwines
with a seemingly objective third person narrator, but the perspective is con-
sistently that of Marie Tussaud. Moran’s Tussaud speaks for herself through-
out the whole novel. Again, both biofictions serve quite different purposes
and render different images of their protagonists. The Danish author’s work
excels in conveying a portrait of an “inner person”, a study of the conscious-
ness of an artist who does not compromise on the social conventions of her
times, a surprisingly modern woman unable to joggle her private life with
a professional career without paying an ultimate price for her choices. In
Michelle Moran’s representation of Marie Tussaud external factors play
the crucial role, and the dramatic occurrences of the French Revolution and
its actors are the main motivation of action. Lively dialogues, descriptions of
historical events and persons allow the reader to locate the work on the border
between a historical and biographical novel. When a reader of Willumsen’s
work is required to have some previous knowledge of the French Revolution
and its heroes, Moran facilitates the reading by extensive explanations and
an appendix where the most important terms are gathered and clarified. In
other words: Willumsen’s biofiction proposes total immersion in the protago-
nist’s psyche, without providing a comprehensive image of those historical
times, as opposed to Moran’s novel which presents the historical figure as
a consequence of the epoch she lives in.
But why do I actually maintain that what was once (and still is!) called
the “new biography” has been substituted or supplanted by biofiction? The
answer is that when inspected closely, biofictions display numerous similari-
ties to their predecessors. Firstly, biofictions can be seen as the fruit of the
debunking-type of biography, initiated by Strachey, since there is no place
for heroization of protagonists who tend to be represented today as ordinary
people rather than unattainable ideals. Secondly, protagonists of biofictions

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are often depicted as “self-made men/women”, i.e. the human will and charac-
ter are perceived as the prime movers in creating a successful life (as opposed
to fate, which used to play that role in numerous traditional biographies).
This conviction is the core of Burr Margadant’s revisions of past female lives.
Thirdly, biofictions are the realm of the narrator’s subjectivity, which is the
only reliable value in the postmodern world where only fiction is capable of
telling a true, i.e. universal, story. This, in turn, can be seen as a contribution
of both Strachey and Edel, who emphasized the significance of the narrator in
a biography. The important position that biofictions hold today is reassured
by the underlying statement about the discursive nature of all representations
of the past, and the origin of the mistrust towards reality and the past can
already be traced back to Strachey’s enunciations in “Eminent Victorians”.
Thus, the new biography is still alive, but it has modernized its form.

CONCLUSIONS

Contemporarily, the term “new biography” refers more to an aesthetic

phenomenon dating back to the 1920s than to actual innovation within bio-
graphical writing. Some attempts are made to redefine it, but they are either
too closely related to the original idea of Lytton Strachey, and hence do not
propose much newness (Leon Edel), or they proclaim a totally different
understanding of innovation and introduce another approach to the already
existing biographical narratives (Jo Burr Margadant). In the meantime,
biofictional writing, which originates from a postmodernist conviction of the
discursive nature of the past and unreliability of the (narrative) truth, has
conquered the kingdom of biography and relativized the essence of biogra-
phy, i.e. its referentiality. Biofictions can be regarded as a continuation of
Stracheyan, Woolfian and Edelian “new biography”, since they employ the
same principles: perceive biography as an art, locate the narrator and its
choices in the centre of the work, avoid idealization of their protagonists and
perceive selectiveness as the key to a good story. Therefore, it is my hope that
biofictions will soon be named “new biographies”, or at least trigger a discus-
sion on the condition of the genre today.

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HOW NEW IS THE NEW BIOGRAPHY? SOME REMARKS

ON THE MISLEADING TERM’S PAST AND PRESENT

Summary
The aim of the paper is to outline the phenomena which tend to be subsumed
under the term of “new biography”, especially in the English-speaking discourse in
the British Isles and the USA. This is due to the fact that, as it turns out, theorists
and practitioners of biographical writing apply the designation to several different
phenomena. In order to characterize the tenets of new biographical writing, the pa-
per introduces the essence of the classical biography, which constitute a natural
point of reference for the “new biography”. The latter emerged in 1918 with the
English modernist Lytton Strachey, who opposed the fossilized Victorian tradition
and its flagship model of panegyrical biography. Strachey effected a breakthrough in
European biographical writing, by creating biographies which demythicized their
protagonists, approaching them with an ironic distance and highlighting the biogra-
pher within the narrative. His model would soon become a new standard in
biographical writing. Another “new biography” discussed in the paper is the set of
biography rules presented by Leon Edel in 1984, to which the originator refers as
“New Biography”, a term he also applies to the biographies he authored. Still, Edel
drew to a large extent on Strachey, attaching particular importance to the predispo-
sition and talent of the biographer themselves. The latter’s contribution to a “new
biography” consists chiefly in identifying and relating the “most profound” truths
about the life of the protagonists, which provide a key to the understanding and
narrative portrayal of their character and personality. The last of the biographical
scholars discussed in the paper, Jo Burr Margadant, does not continue in the Stra-
cheyan or Edelian spirit in her 2000 The New Biography but unfolds a novel, feminist
perspective on biography, founded on the concept of multiple selves. She argues that
that one’s identity is a kind of performance, and seeks that “new biography” in the
narratives of life of eight eminent French female figures of the 18th century. Still,
in the contemporary scholarly discourse relating to biographical writing, “new
biography” is most often used as reference to the Stracheyan model, even though
a century has passed since it was conceived. At the same, time, biofiction gains ever
greater popularity in biographical writing today, being in my opinion the “new biog-
raphy” of the postmodern era, which I demonstrate using a number of examples.

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