ABSTRACT
The ideal of scientific history arose from the prestige of scientific discoveries in the 19th century; the growth of individualism must inevitably give rise to an individualistic kind of history. But personal history is not just a method: it also invites a different subject matter, a concern for the role of the individual in the past. It might however perhaps stimulate a minor historians' liberation movement, in that it requires a new kind of relationship with the social sciences. The historian's identity, the peculiar nature of the historical approach may be difficult to define, but the question is worth posing, whether history has no message, no value, independently of its partners. Biography moreover is no longer a monopoly of historians. The conclusion today is not that historians must change their models and apply these new approaches to biography, but that they need to develop approaches of their own.
