Overview

This book traces the development of literary biography in the eighteenth century; how writers' melancholy was probed to explore the inner life. Case studies of a number of significant authors reveal the 1790s as a time of biographical experimentation. Reaction against philosophical biography led to a nineteenth-century taste for romanticized lives.

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9781349444557

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Reviews

'One of the highlights of the book is the originality of its examination of religious melancholy in the period and how biographers negotiated the politics of this potentially explosive issue. It is refreshing to see work on melancholy give such scope to this important contemporary issue... Melancholy and Literary Biography, 1640-1816 provides a valuable examination of the ways in which eighteenth-century biographers depict literary figures and demonstrates how significant the impact could be when they veered away from the poetic melancholy of sensibility. As such, Darcy's book is a welcome contribution to recent scholarship on the genre of literary biography and the posthumous publication of literary letters.' Anita O'Connell, The BARS Review

Author Information

Jane Darcy teaches English at University College London, UK, where she held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship.

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