Life-Writing

In addition to her biographies on Woolf, Cather, and Wharton, Hermione Lee has written extensively on issues associated with life-writing. She is the author of Biography: A Very Short Introduction for Oxford University Press, in which she considers the cultural and historical background of different types of biographies, looking at the factors that affect biographers and whether there are different strategies, ethics, and principles required for writing about one person compared to another. She also considers contemporary biographical publications and considers what kind of 'lives' are the most popular and in demand. Her book Body Parts: Essays on Life-writing is a collection of essays that examines the problems of reading and writing biography and explores the relationship between biography and fiction. Looking at writer's lives in connection with their work, Lee raises profound and intriguing issues about aspects of writing and reading a life. MeettheAuthor.co.uk Watch this short video in which Hermione Lee discusses the subject and development of her new book Biography: A Very Short Introduction. (3:16)		Biography: A Very Short Introduction by Hermione Lee (2009, reprinted 2011) Oxford University Press ISBN13: 9780199533541 ISBN10: 0199533547 Paperback, 144 pages UK / Canada / US Purchase online at OUP UK, OUP US, OUP Canada, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Waterstones.

 

Read the first chapter of Body Parts:

"Shelley's Heart and Pepys's Lobsters." (Available online from Princeton University Press)

Watch Videos of Hermione Lee's Lectures on Life-Writing
(Delivered at Princeton University)

Shelley's Heart and Pepys's Lobsters (September 27, 2004)
Real Audio (56K | 300K)
Media Player (56K | 300K)

Jane Austen Faints (September 28, 2004)
Real Audio (56K | 300K)
Media Player (56K | 300K)

Virginia Woolf's Nose (September 29, 2004)
Real Audio (56K | 300K)
Media Player (56K | 300K)

Lectures on Life-Writing

Hermione Lee is the 2012 Leslie Stephen Lecturer. Founded in memory of Sir Leslie Stephen (1832-1903), alumnus and sometime Fellow of Trinity Hall and the first editor of The Dictionary of National Biography, the Lecture must be given on ‘some literary subject, including therein criticism, biography and ethics’. First delivered in 1905, a new Leslie Stephen Lecturer is elected every other year. Hermione Lee's lecture will focus on Leslie Stephen's 1895 biography of his brother, James Fitzjames Stephen, and on wider questions about life-writing which arise from that particular case of brotherly biography.

Interviews on Life-Writing

Koval, Ramona. 'Writing Biography: Hermione Lee'. 'Books and Writing': ABC Radio National. 25 September 2005. Available online.