ABSTRACT
Virginia Woolf coined the term ‘life-writing’ in a manuscript essay around 1940, but in practice she found the craft of biography - as distinct from biographical fiction - difficult. The term was revived in 1976, since when there has been a remarkable proliferation and diversification of the genre. In the process, barriers that appeared to be impermeable - such as those dividing conventional biography from autobiography and memoir - have come tumbling down. This essay investigates the consequences of this ramification, from the point of view of writers, readers, and the publishing industry. The 1980s was the heyday of blockbuster biography, which seemed at the time to represent hot news and hot money. Since then the market has shrunk, but the form itself has turned increasingly experimental. Politicians, canonical writers, and generals used to be over-represented. Nowadays the subject matter has reached out to embrace scientists, obscure scholars, down-and-outs, and eccentrics of all kinds. Group and family biography has swum into vogue, and biographies are written about cities, historical periods, individual years, the universe, and even a bird of prey. As the forms of life-writing are interrogated and challenged, so they grow more vigorous. Much has been gained, but has something also been lost?
