The Stream of English Biogaphy

Front matter

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Preface

This volume has been prepared in the conviction that readers and students of biography may wish to know something of its history through representative examples of the art. The stream of biographical writing in England has had a fairly steady flow from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The progress and diversity of this large contribution will be made clear in the historical sketch, while the complete units from notable biographies adequately illustrate the various types of life-writing old and new. Autobiography has been included throughout, but no informal species such as diaries, journals, and loose reminiscences. No attempt has been made to treat American biography as a distinct development; as a small tributary of the great stream, it has been represented by several examples which easily mingle with the larger flood.

It is of course greatly to be desired that complete works should be read, and it is hoped that the taste of a few choice morsels may lead to wholesale consumption. That is, no doubt, the ardent but unrealized wish of every compiler of an anthology. The great biographies lend themselves remarkably well to excerpting. Boswell’s Johnson, for instance, is more familiar in parts than as a whole; and it is better that outstanding biographies be read in fragments than not at all. As it is, many of them, because of their great length, are known by name only. Moreover, a book of selections from classic biographies furnishes excellent material for the study of prose style, for in them is to be found some of the best writing in our literature. The charming cadences of Cavendish and Walton, the clear white light of Mill, and the playful urbanity of Adams and Strachey, admirably illustrate the range and flexibility of our mother tongue.

The titles of the passages are the present editor’s, though in one vii

Vili PREFACE or two cases the phrase is taken from the text, and the notes are his. The brief introduction to each selection gives such information about the biographer, his subject, and the occasion of his writing as may be necessary for an understanding of its relation to the whole work. Two bibliographies will be found at the end of the book—one of important essays and volumes on biography, and the other a list of famous biographies from Plutarch to Strachey, chronologically arranged. Popular editions are named wherever these exist. The list is intended to be suggestive rather than exhaustive.

In the preparation of the preliminary account of English life-writing, I have made frequent reference to the scholarly work of Professor Waldo H. Dunn, English Biography (1916), which is indispensable to the student of that vast and varied field. To other works listed in the bibliography I am indebted in one way or another. Acknowledgments to publishers will be found attached to certain later selections. In writing the general introduction and in making the selections I have, of course, read and re-read extensively. Every biography mentioned in this volume has been examined, and every one discussed has been read.

J. C. M.