Life Class: The Education of a Biographer
by Brenda Niall
MUP, HK$195
In a reversal of her role as a biographer, Brenda Niall here examines her own life to trace those aspects of it that have affected her approach to writing about others. It's a tricky exercise, but the result is a shrewdly constructed book revealing how the Melbourne author discovered different ways of tackling each biography.
In case anyone thinks biographies have to begin with a subject's birth and follow their life chronologically, Niall shows how form and viewpoint have to be adapted for each individual, as she recounts the difficulties and gratifying surprises in researching another person's life.
The biographical instinct first nudged her when, as an academic, she was researching Edith Wharton in the US. She had been reared as a textual critic, but found herself fascinated by Wharton and not just her writing. Yet rather than write a biography she returned to Australia and, catching the renewed interest in Australian writing in the 1960s, wrote a parallel biography of two popular writers for children, Ethel Turner and Mary Bruce Grant.
