Saturday, February 23, 2013

A technique for “injecting life” into writing historical biography

By Dennis Mellersh

One of the most important attributes the author of an historical biography must have, or develop, is the ability to “bring to life” the person the biography is about and to give a strong sense or feeling for the events and circumstances surrounding and influencing the life of that person.

In other words, it is essential to supply context in writing historical biography.

This is especially true for a book-length examination of someone’s life, and is particularly true if the subject of the book lived in a specific historical period and had significant influence on that historical period.

Although a biography in its entirety must supply a contextual setting, there are a number of ways this can be done at the beginning of the book, to help the reader quickly identify with the person profiled and the times they lived in.

One of these techniques is the “day in the life of” approach as a preamble or introductory section at the beginning of the book, although it might be too obvious, and awkward to give the preamble this actual title.

William Manchester did this exceptionally well in his second volume of the life of Winston Churchill: Winston Spencer Churchill, The Last Lion, Alone, 1932 – 1940*. Manchester titled the prologue The Lion Caged and used it in part to explain the historical context of that period of Churchill’s life, when he was out of power and in a political wilderness.

By focusing on a typical day in the life of his subject Manchester was able to give the reader an excellent sense of the entire man, what his surroundings were like, who some of the main people in his life were, and a feeling for this critical historical time period.

Rather than me describing the details of the prologue, I recommend that you borrow this book from your local library, or buy it used in paperback. In addition to being instructive from a writer’s point of view, it’s a great read.

* The book is a Laurel trade paperback and was published Dell Publishing, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. 1988, New York.

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