ABSTRACT
BIOGRAPHY IS PROBABLY the most popular genre of nonfiction, but just how a biography is produced—the biographical process—is only dimly understood. To be sure, biographers and students of biography have provided us with abundant material on biography in general, but many questions remain completely or partially unanswered. 1 Among the most important and least understood aspects are the psychological dimensions of the biographical process. The author of a recent work on biography, in contemplating “the years of patient research” that bring “author and subject together into a relationship of unparalleled intimacy,” asks: “is it possible, under such circumstances that … as he assembles his material and looks at what amounts to a marriage with his subject [the author can be] unaffected by the closeness of the relationship?” 2 This volume, and the symposium on which it is based, may be thought of as a response to what the just-quoted author posed as a rhetorical question, as well as to certain related questions. Here, for the first time, a group of biographers reflect on their experiences as biographers, exploring the relationships between themselves and those whose lives they have studied.
