Biographical fiction : a reader Machine generated contents note: Acknowledgments Michael Lackey: Introduction Authors Reflections: 1 Leonard Ehrlich: Authors Note from Gods Angry Man (1932) 2 Wallace Stegner: Forward from Joe Hill: A Biographical Novel (1950) 3 S. Guy Endore: A Final Word from King of Paris (1956) 4 William Styron: Nat Turner Revisited from American Heritage (1992) 5 Julia Alvarez: A Postscript from In the Time of the Butterflies (1994) 6 Barbara Chase Riboud: Afterword from Sally Hemings (1994) 7 Malcolm Bradbury: Preface from To the Hermitage (2000) 8 David Ebershoff: Introduction to The Danish Girl (2000) 9 Thomas Mallon: The Historical Novelists Burden of Truth from In Fact (2001) 10 Jane Yolen and Robert J. Harris: What is true about this story from Girl in a Cage (2002) 11 Colm Tóibín: Henry James for Venice from The Henry James Review (2006) 12 M. Allen Cunningham: Authors Note from Lost Son (2007) 13 Susan Sellers: About Vanessa and Virginia from the Two Ravens Press UK website (2008) 14 Brian Hall: Authors Note from Fall of Frost (2008) 15 Barbara Mujica: Going for the Subjective: One Way to Write Biographical Fiction from a b:Auto Biography Studies (2016) 16 Joanna Scott: On Hoaxes Humbugs and Fictional Portraiture from a b: Auto Biography Studies (2016) The Case of Eliza Lynch 17 William E. Barrett: Foreword from Woman on Horseback: The Biography of Francisco Lopez and Eliza Lynch (1938) 18 Anne Enright: Acknowledgments from The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002) 19 Lily Tuck: Authors Note from The News from Paraguay (2004) Lectures and Forums: 20 Irving Stone: The Biographical Novel from Three Views of the Novel (1957) 21 C. Vann Woodward Ralph Ellison Robert Penn Warren and William Styron: The Uses of History in Fiction from The Southern Literary Journal (1968) 22 Michael Lackey Jay Parini Bruce Duffy and Lance Olsen: The Uses of History in the Biographical Novel from Conversations with Jay Parini (2014) Interviews: 23 Julia Alvarez: Fixed Facts and Creative Freedom in the Biographical Novel from Truthful Fictions (2014) 24 Russell Banks: The Truth Contract in the Biographical Novel from Truthful Fictions (2014) 25 Bruce Duffy: In the Fog of the Biographical Novels History from Truthful Fictions (2014) 26 Joyce Carol Oates: Enhanced Symbolic Interiors in the Biographical Novel from Truthful Fictions (2014) Essays: 27 Georg Lukács: The Biographical Form and Its Problematics from The Historical Novel (1937) 28 Carl Bode: The Buxom Biographies from College English (1955) 29 Paul Murray Kendall: Excerpt from Contemporary Biography from The Art of Biography (1965) 30 Ina Schabert: Fictional Biography Factual Biography and their Contamination from Biography (1982) 31 Alain Buisine: Biofictions from Revue des Sciences Humaines (1991) 32 Jay Parini: Fact or Fiction: Writing Biographies Versus Writing Novels from Some Necessary Angels: Essays on Writing and Politics (1997) 33 Martin Middeke: Introduction from Biofictions: The Rewriting of Romantic Lives in Contemporary Fiction and Drama (1999) 34 John Keener: Chapters four and five from Biography and the Postmodern Historical Novel (2001) 35 Ansgar Nünning: Fictional Metabiographies and Metaautobiographies: Towards a Definition Typology and Analysis of Self Reflexive Hybrid Metegenres from Self Reflexivity in Literature (2005) 36 Valentina Vannucci: The Canon and Biofiction: The Subjects of History and New Literary Worlds from Altri Canoni Canoni Altri: Pluralismo e Studi Letterari (2011) 37 Monica Latham: Serv[ing] under two masters: Virginia Woolfs Afterlives in Contemporary Biofictions from a b: Auto Biography Studies (2012) Bibliography In this anthology authors and scholars of biofiction reflect on clarify and define the nature of this unique genre that skilfully and strategically blends the fictional and the factual specifying precisely how it can engage the historical and critique the political more effectively than traditional forms of fiction In recent years the biographical novel has become one of the most dominant literary forms J.M. Coetzee Margaret Atwood Hilary Mantel Colum McCann Anne Enright Joyce Carol Oates Peter Carey Russell Banks and Julia Alvarez are just a few luminaries who have published stellar biographical novels. But why did this genre come into being mainly in the 20th century Is it ethical to invent stories about an actual historical figure What is biofiction uniquely capable of signifying Why are so many prominent writers now authoring such works And why are they winning such major awards In Biographical Fiction: A Reader some of the finest scholars and writers of biofiction clarify what led to the rise of this genre reflect on its nature and form and specify what it is uniquely capable of doing. Combining primary and critical material this accessible reader will be invaluable to students teachers and scholars of biofiction.