Biography, vol. 18, no. 4 (Fall 1995)

ARTICLES and ABSTRACTS

Being Definitive: Jefferson Biography Under the Shadow of Dumas Malone, pp. 291-304
Frank Shuffelton
The term "definitive" is often used loosely, but by looking at the way in which Dumas Malone's six-volume biography, Jefferson and His Time, displaced earlier biographies of Jefferson we can better understand what this label might signify. Furthermore, by examining the relationship between Malone's work and subsequent biographies of Jefferson we can gauge the power of a definitive biography to shape, limit, or encourage later life studies of the subject.

Postmodern Biography: Lively Hypotheses and Dead Certainties, pp. 305-327
Carole J. Lambert
Traditional biographies, resembling the nineteenth century realistic novel, provide a unifying effect that postmodernists call a "metanarrative." This essay introduces French theoretician Francis Vanoye's observations about postmodern biography, analyzes Simon Schama's Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations) as an example of this genre, and weighs the advantages and disadvantages of this innovative approach.

Life Writing/Death Writing: Biographical Versions of Poe's Final Hours, pp. 328-338
Scott Peeples
Given the prominence of death as a theme in Poe's fiction and poetry, as well as his career-long emphasis on "fact" as a textual construct, nothing could be more appropriate than a tradition of fabrication and speculation surrounding his own final hours.

The Coincidence of Biography and Autobiography: Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë, pp. 339-359
Gabriele Helms
A biography can also be read as an autobiography of the biographer-persona whose creation is recognized as a biography's core device. The case study of Elizabeth Gaskell'sThe Life of Charlotte Brontë shows how a profile of this persona can be (re)constructed as she writes her own self into the story of Charlotte's life.

Bibliography of Works About Life-Writing, pp. 360-368
Phyllis E. Wachter
This year's bibliography of works about life-writing (the eleventh in the series that began with Biography 8:4, Fall 1985) reveals that people are using an increasingly wide range of life-writing mediums to struggle with a variety of political, social, familial, cultural, and psychological issues as the line between autobiography and biography continues to blur.

REVlEWS, pp. 369-377
Reviews of new books.

REVIEWED ELSEWHERE, pp. 378-399
Extracts of reviews of biographies published in other sources.

INDEX, VOLUME 18 (1995), pp. 400-401