Biography, vol. 30, no. 3 (2007)

Cover Art

Editors’ Note, p. iii

ARTICLES

Nancy K. Miller
I Killed My Grandmother: Mary Antin, Amos Oz, and the Autobiography of a Name, p. 319
Read together as autobiographies of a name, these two very different narratives provide unexpected points of connection to my silenced family story. The essay explores the extent to which my identity as a third-generation American has been entangled with a collective history shaped by the trauma of departure. I reimagine the documents of my personal archive within the grand immigration sagas of the twentieth century.

James Gregory
Eccentric Biography and the Victorians, p. 342
This essay examines a neglected biographical sub-genre—collective “eccentric biography”—in its Victorian form. It contextualizes the genre by outlining its early-modern origins in character books and collections of wonders, and by relating Victorian versions to a wider press and public interest in eccentrics. The essay addresses readership, critical reception, publishing history, and the relationship of eccentric biography to the poetry of William Wordsworth, and to the fiction of Walter Scott and Charles Dickens, as well as reasons for the absence of new collections after the 1860s.

REVIEWS

Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit, by Gillian Whitlock, p. 377
Reviewed by John Marx

Autobiography, Travel, and Postnational Identity: Gandhi, Nehru and Iqbal, by Javed Majeed, p. 379
Reviewed by Philip Holden

Remembering War: The Great War between History and Memory in the Twentieth Century, by Jay Winter, p. 382
Reviewed by Daniel Todman

Writing Medieval Biography: Essays in Honour of Frank Barlow, edited by David Bates, Julia Crick, and Sarah Hamilton, p. 387
Reviewed by Anne J. Duggan

The Holy Bureaucrat: Eudes Rigaud and Religious Reform in Thirteenth-Century Normandy, by Adam J. Davis, p. 389
Reviewed by Nicholas Vincent

The Recycled Bible: Autobiography, Culture, and the Space Between, edited by Fiona C. Black, p. 393
Reviewed by Jennifer Rycenga

Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, edited by Antoinette Burton, p. 397
Reviewed by Mark Allen Greene

Writing the Roaming Subject: The Biotext in Canadian Literature, by Joanne Saul, p. 400
Reviewed by Linda Warley

Métamorphoses du journal personnel. De Rétif de la Bretonne à Sophie Calle,
edited by Catherine Viollet and Marie-Françoise Lemonnier-Delpy, p. 402
Reviewed by Raylene Ramsay

Speaking Power: Black Feminist Orality in Women’s Narratives of Slavery, by DoVeanna S. Fulton, p. 406
Reviewed by Joycelyn Moody

REVIEWED ELSEWHERE, p. 412
Excerpts from recent reviews of biographies, autobiographies, and other works of interest

CONTRIBUTORS, p. 461