Once, when academic history was very young — in the 1850s — biography and history co-existed in harmony. But the fundamental difference between the two led to rivalries. Pronouncements by men such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Carlyle, that the “history of the world is but the biography of great men”, presented historians with a
bête noire; one they have been hunting down ever since. Until this year, to the best of my knowledge, there was not a history department in the world which offered a degree in biography.
The fact that the two disciplines have long been estranged is no doubt news to many people. So I offer my own experiences as an example. I left Oxford in 1998 with a doctorate in 18th-century British history. History is my intellectual home, biography my craft. Last year I was hired by New York University to teach a course on Historiography and the art of Biography; I then discovered that my appointment had nothing to do with the History Faculty. I had joined the Creative Writing Department.
This is not the place for a discussion on historiography but clearly, the role of historians has changed. For a start, the discipline is much broader since the 19th century; second, research now shares the limelight with the application of theory, whether Marxist, feminist, or post-colonial; inspired by Freud or Foucault. “Cutting edge” history refers to the method involved, not the facts uncovered.
In consequence, some areas have flourished while others have withered. In the United States labour history is wildly popular but only the larger universities still teach diplomatic or military history. All three suffer from the perception of being elitist and irrelevant to the important questions about race, class and gender. The disciplines bear too close a resemblance to Carlyle’s “great men” theory to be taken seriously.
It is a shame, because Carlyle is a red herring. Historians accepted long ago that the world is made up of men and women, rich and poor, European and non-European. Moreover, we all agree that the history of anything is never one narrative but the sum of many different parts. This is one reason why theoretical frameworks are so useful. However, theory also makes it all too easy to ignore the role of individuals in anything other than a mechanical light. Oliver Cromwell and William Wilberforce become the end result of forces rather than forces themselves. As one of my professors put it, biography is impossible if your heroes are abstract nouns.
Happily, biography has never suffered the fashionable tyrannies or interdepartmental rifts of its estranged sibling. No committee or single individual has the kind of power base which exists in universities. Biography remains a commercial enterprise. It is judged by reviewers and book sales, thereby freeing writers from the dulling grip of departmental orthodoxy.
Unfortunately, this freedom is coupled with almost total isolation from the history community. Britain’s leading biographer, Richard Holmes, was recently awarded a professorship by the University of East Anglia. But the appointment is in English and American studies, not the History department. Graduate students in history do not have to study biography. Its methods are rarely analysed, its aims not questioned.
The field remains, by and large, the domain of the “gifted amateur”. It is a testament to biography’s vitality these so-called amateurs include Andrew Roberts and Hillary Spurling. Although hacks do churn at books on Posh Spice, the best biographers — the Peter Ackroyds and Claire Tomalins — consistently demonstrate why they are held in such high esteem.
If the public shies away from academic history it is because, unlike biography, it seems to lack narrative. Whereas in its simplest form, biography is narrative. Furthermore, biography differs from history in the way it treats causation. Several academics criticised my biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire for this reason. By concentrating on one woman, they said, I did not explain the role of aristocratic women in 18th-century society. This is a fair comment. I would have needed to do a wide-ranging study of 18th-century political women to make that kind of meta-judgment. But to complain that mine failed to do this is like saying that the London Underground fails as public transport because it only services the capital.
The other difference between biography and history is the peculiar part played by the biographer. Richard Holmes was the first to encapsulate the modern meaning of biography in his peerless Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer. And if there is a popular school at the moment, one might loosely term it the Holmesian Romantic, which searches the past for glimpses of the human spirit. Today, the aim of the modern biographer is to engage in a literary and artistic transformation. A friend of mine claims that he once asked Michael Holroyd why he wrote biographies, to which the reply was, “In order to understand myself”. I apologise to Mr Holroyd if the claim is untrue; yet the statement contains an artistic truth. In essence, biography is the alchemy of art and science.
This is a far cry from history, whose chief purpose is to begin with the question Why and end with the answer How. But in spite of the differences the disciplines still have a great deal in common. Many of the most widely respected historians employ narrative and are superb communicators. Apart from the historians who are so good on television, one only has to think of Linda Colley, Orlando Figes and Richard Evans, and another ten names come to mind.
Moreover, there have been and still are great academic endeavours which will always be beyond the means and scope of a single biographer. For example, the Yale project which produced the 48 annotated volumes of Horace Walpole’s correspondence, and similar Oxford ventures on British writers such as Edmund Burke and Fanny Burney. These meticulous and scholarly annotations are the blood and bone of the past to which biography adds flesh and spirit.
It is now time to recognise that biography is not lesser history, but one of its many branches. It uses the same tools; documents, diaries and correspondence. It employs much of the same methodology: research, comparison and interpretation. Furthermore, while not all good historians need to be good biographers, the reverse is the sine qua non of the biographer.
As I said at the beginning, until this year there was no such thing as a degree in biography. This week marks the launch of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters at Queen Mary, London. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board, it will offer a two year Master of Research course. For the first time biographers and historians will have the opportunity to work together, to share ideas, offer critiques and learn from each other. A great deal is riding on the success of the Centre. If it fulfils the ambition of its two directors, Lisa Jardine and Alan Stewart, the skills required for biography and scholarly editing will be saved, and new ones will be developed. Even more important, one of the longest-running, and most futile feuds in history will be over.
- Amanda Foreman is giving the inaugural HarperCollins Biography Lecture at the AHRB Centre for Editing Lives & Letters, Queen Mary, University of London, tonight at 7 pm. Limited tickets (free) still available; reserve yours by email: e.k.merchant@qmul.ac.uk
