Terry Teachout is re-reading W. Jackson Bate's biography of Samuel Johnson again:

Iím currently rereading W. Jackson Bateís Samuel Johnson, something I do every year or two. For me, Johnson is the most sympathetic figure in all of English literature, and the courage with which he climbed out of the abyss of failure and depression has helped nudge me through more than one dark patch of my own life. Not only is Bate better than Boswell when it comes to this particular aspect of Johnsonís psychology, but his biography is a masterly piece of writing for which no stylistic apologies of any kind need be made. Would that all academics wrote so lucidly. A friend of mine who studied under Bate at Harvard assures me that his Johnson class was better than the book, but I wouldnít knowóI didnít go to Harvard, or even Yale! All I can tell you is that Iíve read Samuel Johnson at least ten times since it was published in 1977, and profited from it every time, this one included.

I wrote some last week about how interesting, useful, and just plain fun I think a group lit blog might be, and in comments like Terry's the potential for such a blog becomes clear. Terry's description of why and how he reads Bate's Johnson is the sort of thing one would not find in the pages of academic journals. His frank admission that he finds the biography inspiring both as a scholarly work of art and as the "true story" of how one of the greatest figures in English letters overcame tremendous hardship is not the stuff of academic textual analysis. At the same time, it is the stuff of intellectual and personal honesty, of a critical imagination that is not pathologically disconnected from the (choose one: heart, spirit, soul, gut). I read biography for the same reasons Terry does (also on my shelf, fatly waiting to be read, incidentally, is Terry's H. L. Mencken). I find the sheer synthetic power of a good biographer amazing to behold. And I find the artifact that is a well-told life--a life both meticulously documented and scrupulously imagined--remarkably inspiring on a personal level. That may be the George Eliot in me--I tend to accept her idea that the best thing narrative can do for us is extend our sympathies--but so be it.

The phenomenon of endlessly re-reading a particular book, particularly a book that is the story of a life, is something writers themselves like to write about. I am thinking not just of how, say, Robinson Crusoe relied on his Bible when he was stranded on the desert island, but of how Gabriel Betteredge, the butler in Wilkie Collins' Moonstone, relies on Robinson Crusoe:

You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as Robinson Crusoe never was written, and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years--generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco--and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. When my spirits are bad--Robinson Crusoe. When I want advice--Robinson Crusoe. I have worn out six stout Robinson Crusoes with hard work in my service. On my lady's last birthday, she gave me a seventh. I took a drop too much on the strength of it; and Robinson Crusoe put me right again.

"I read no history, only biography, for that is life without theory" -- Benjamin Disraeli

Speaking of Disraeli, has anyone done a serious biography of him in recent years?

There is a massive 8 volume thing from the 1930s by a pair named Moneypenny and Buckle, and there is a pulpy book by Sarah Bradford from the 1980s. But that's all I've been able to find.

I would love to see someone do a new, critical life of Disraeli. A professing Anglican, he was the first person of admittedly Jewish descent to lead a modern democracy. He was often considered insufficiently English, yet he was the most influential Tory of the 19th century. And of course, he was a sometimes successful novelist (his _Sibyl_ is still taught in some Victorian lit. classes).

Ah well, maybe once I get tenure... (As Erin says, biographies actually sell -- becaues people actually want to read them.)

I'm also partial to Ackroyd's biography of T.S. Eliot. It's a little too forgiving, but gripping nonetheless. Another good one is Hermione Lee's _Virginia Woolf_.

I haven't read Bate's Johnson biography, but plan to before spring 2005, when I'll be teaching an 18th-century Brit lit survey. I'm a huge fan, though, of his biography of Keats, from which I copied into my commonplace book these two passages, both of which show that Bate proceeded from assumptions about life and literature that--I hardly need remind readers of Critical Mass--would be viewed as laughably outdated or dangerous by today's professoriate:

"The nineteenth century was generally satisfied to take [_Endymion_] simply and directly. Along with this unreflective trust in the nineteenth-century view is an implied censure of the Alexandrianism of twentieth-century scholarship and criticism: we all know that with the present-day premium on what Johnson calls the 'epidemical conspiracy for the destruction of paper,' ingenuity is stimulated more by rivalry and the search for novelty than by the facts of the case.

"As we go further into the letters and the context of the life [of Keats], we are increasingly struck by the fundamentally moral character of this imagination."

Amardeep,
I'm afraid I can't answer that question but I will give you some advice. When you do get tenure, raise your whiskey glass and repeat this Disraeli quote "I have climbed to the top, of the greased pole."

Amardeep,

I like Robert Blake's Disraeli. Very well written but not recent (1966).

Amardeep, Kobi's reference to Robert Blake's Disraeli is right on target. I was assigned the book during my undergraduate years in the U.K. As luck would have it I was engrossed in it during the height of the coal miner's strike that brought down Ted Heath. [Just thinking of that makes me feel soooooo old.] We had periodic blackouts and I remember being so absorbed in the book that I expended precious flashlight battery life during the evening in order to finish it. I believe it is out of print but well worth looking for in the library or Strandbooks.com, etc. Seem to recall being advised that this was the "definitive" biography of Disrael, to the extent any biography can ever be definitive.

Might also look into Roy Jenkin's Gladstone while you're at it. Jenkin's long career in the House of Commons added a good deal of insight into Gladstone's political life. It wasn't the best biography I have read (I have no immediate plans to read it again and again :) )but it was a solid read.

Ivan

Take a look at Walter Arnstein's recent biography of Queen Victoria when you get the chance. It's short, lively, and is the only biography of the Queen to pay sufficient attention to her political role.

Thanks Koby and Stolypin for the Blake rec. I did actually read some chapters from my library's copy while writing a paper on Disraeli a few years back. But I've never seen it in a used bookstore in the U.S. (let me now try strandbooks...)

Is it really definitive? Hm, let's see.

You can find a few copies of Blake in www.abebooks.com, one of the best places to go for used books.

I too love Bate's Johnson, and have read it more than once (though not recently...hmm...), also his Keats, also Robert Gittings' Keats. Also Rosemary Ashton's Coleridge (as I was telling Amardeep yesterday) and her George Eliot and her G.H. Lewes. Not to mention - okay that's enough now. You have delighted us long enough.

As a fictional account of a biographer's life, I highly recommend Bernard Malamud's Dubin's Lives. The impossible title character drives his wife off the deep end by taking on aspects of the real life characters he's writing about. As the novel opens, the marriage is pretty bad shape as he's just finished his biography of Robert Frost. Then, just to finish off all possibility of marital accord, he next tackles D.H. Lawrence. It's a screamingly funny dissection of the middle-aged male ego at its most delusional.

Amardeep, FYI - while browsing Amazon.com UK - I came across this announcment of an upcoming biography of Disraeli. I do not know the author.

Disraeli: A Personal History
Christopher Hibbert

Our Price: £25.00

Not yet published
Hardcover - (September 27, 2004) 448 pages

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Reviews

Synopsis
The masterly biography of one of the most fascinating men of the nineteenth century, Benjamin Disraeli, concentrating on his long and interesting private life: written by 'our outstanding popular historian' [A.N.Wilson]. Superb politician, orator, writer and wit, Benjamin Disraeli was -- according to Queen Victoria -- 'the kindest Minister' she had ever had, who 'reached the top of the greasy pole' [in his own words] despite considerable antisemitism. He enjoyed many scandalous affairs before marrying a widow twelve years older than himself -- an extremely eccentric woman to whom he remained deeply and touchingly devoted for the rest of his life. Disraeli had never intended to be a politician. He had begun his astonishing career by working unenthusiastically in a lawyer's office; he had tried unsuccessfully to found a newspaper; he had written a novel which lay unproductively in the publisher's office. A conspicuous dandy, sprightly, attentive and witty, he was attractive to women, enjoying many liaisons until he contracted a venereal disease in a St James's Street brothel. He married in 1839. 'Dizzy married me for my money,' Mary Anne used to say. 'But, if he had the chance again,

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The best (only?) novel I've read involving biography is Connie Willis' excellent Lincolns Dreams.

=darwin