Dr. Katherine D. Harris
English 201 (Fall 2007)

Textual History Group Project:
Biographical Resources

 

Primary Biographical Sources:

A Writer's Letters and Journals

Read through the letters to see if you can identify the general period of the text's composition and publication, and for the writer's reactions to contemporary reviews.

For composition, look for information on issues like the following:

• when the text was begun,
• what forces/ideas encouraged its origin,
• what lapses in composition occurred (and why), and
• what forces encouraged its completion.

Trace the author's ideas about and feelings toward the text. You could ask some of the following questions:

• How does the author describe the text to different audiences?
  For example, the publisher might get a very different set of comments about the text, than the author's best friend or the author's mother.
• Is there any consistency in the way that the author describes the text?
• Is there any relationship between the themes or ideas in the text and any events the author describes in letters or journals?

For publication, look for information on issues like the following:

• when the text was finished,
• who copied it (if not the author),
• when the copy was sent to the publisher,
• when the publisher sent it to the printer,
• what the publisher thought of the work,
• any response to those ideas that the writer had,
• when the initial advertisements were placed in the periodical press,
• when the text was expected to be released to the public,
• when it was actually released (if there is a discrepancy) and why,
• how many copies were printed,
• how quickly they sold
• how many editions the text went through in the first year, the first five years, etc.,

For comments about reviews, look for information on issues like the following:

• when the author learned about the reviews,
• which reviews the author read,
• how the author received the reviews (from the publisher, from a friend's summary, etc.),
• how the author responded to the reviews, etc.

Also, look for the writer's later comments on the text.

• When does the author mention the text again?
• in what contexts?
• does the author's response to the text change over time or is it fairly consistent?

Secondary Biographical Sources:

Letters and journals by Others

Published collections of letters and journals--unless dedicated to a particular correspondence--typically only provide one side of the conversation (the letters of the author under consideration.) As a result, it's often good to get the other writer's perspective, if their letters have been published as well. Now it seems like one ought to be able to identify correspondents simply from looking at the correspondent's lists in the published letters and journals. Certainly, that's a first step, but sometimes letters or whole groups of correspondence don't survive on one side of the exchange, but relics remain on the other side. So, use biographies of your writer to identify who might also be a likely correspondent, then check out their indices to see if your writer is mentioned or is a correspondent. If you can locate such additional references, ask how do the writer's friends, colleagues and other correspondents respond to the publication of the text, its ideas, the reviews, etc.

"Conversations"

For more recent writers, this category would include interviews, lectures, etc. Check the Steinbeck Center's catalog, speak to the Director (Paul Douglass) or look through a biography on Steinbeck.

Memoirs of Contemporaries

Often such memoirs are published decades later, thus their recollections are filtered through later events. As such, the recollections might be affected by a rise or fall in the reputation of the writer, by a later falling-out or reconciliation, etc. Sometimes one can gather information from such sources that is unattainable otherwise, but one must represent their information with the appropriate level of care.

Biographies

Biographies are good for offering a sense of a life, a trajectory of events. In general, though, it's a good idea not to be too accepting of their assertions. Biographies are often written to popular rather than academic standards, sometimes by professional biographers rather than by specialists in the author or in the field. The job of a biographer, then, is to give a reader a coherent narrative and a sense of psychological motivation, even when concrete evidence of such is lacking. As such, use biographies to get a sense of the trajectory of an author's life, not for an accurate "reading" of their beliefs, personality, or reactions.