Biography: An Historiography An Historiography

Biography: An Historiography examines how Western historians have used biography from the nineteenth century to the present – considering the problems and challenges that historians have faced in their biographical practice systematically. This volume analyses the strategies and methods that historians have used in response to seven major issues identified over time to do with evidence, including but not limited to the problem of causation, the problem of fact and fiction, the problem of other minds, the problem of significance or representativeness, the problems of perspective, both macro and micro, and the problem of subjectivity and relative truth. This volume will be essential for both postgraduates and historians studying biography.

1. Introduction: "It’s Just a Biography": historicising historians’ biographical debates 2. Victorians’ debate over heroism: the role of the significant individual in history 3. Post-Victorian debates over artistic and scientific approaches to biography 4. Historians and the problem of other minds in biography 5. Cold War debates over individuals in history; counterfactuals, contingency and causation in biography 6. Postwar debates over atomizing lives 7. Late Twentieth Century debate over microhistory and the singularization of history 8. Current debates about life writing and historians’ ego histoire 9. Conclusion: Trevelyan’s empiricism and historians’ biographical practices

Melanie Nolan is Professor of History, Director of the National Centre of Biography, and General Editor of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, in the School of History, at the Australian National University.