Publisher's Synopsis
Biographies: what are they and why do we like reading them? Are the merely a high form of literary gossip, a lazy reader's entertainment (who wants to read all those serious books when you can read about the life instead - the affairs, the drinking, the public rows, the embarrassments)? Or do they satisfy an important curiosity? This special collection of biographies or brief lives - has been organized around a single idea: how do you tell the story of a life?