English Biography in the Seventeenth Century
Subtitle: A Critical Survey
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: August 20, 2005
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780802038890
Subjects: Literary studies: 16th to 18th centuries; General; Biography as a literary form; Literature - Classics / Criticism; English; Literary Criticism; British Isles; Histoire et critique; Literary Criticism & Collections / General; Biographies; English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; 17th century; Angleterre; English prose literature; History and criticism
First sentence: Biography is today one of the most flourishing and vital English literary genres.
Description: "Although biography is one of today's most flourishing literary genres, its early history has attracted much less attention than that of other forms, a neglect that is especially apparent in the case of the formative period of English biography, the seventeenth century. This new work by Allan Pritchard fills the scholarly void by providing a wide-ranging and comprehensive survey of this period's biographical writings.".

"After charting the growth of seventeenth-century biographical writing, Pritchard explores the ways in which traditional forms of religious biography and lives of princes and other secular figures were adapted to, and transformed by, the crises and revolutions of the period. He then considers the development of less traditional biographical types and analyses the emergence of a 'new biography,' concerned essentially with individuality and with private as well as public life."--BOOK JACKET.