Great Biographies of Great Writers

Great biographies of great writers have a double whammy value: They are about wonderful writers that we care about; in addition, the best biographies are well written and sometimes become classics themselves. I was thinking about this the other day while talking with my friend B, a great admirer of Henry James. B spoke of what a masterpiece the Leon Edel five-volume biography of James was. I started thinking of other great bios of writers, and came up with the following as outstanding examples. One of the first such bios I was completely engrossed by was Michael Holroyd's "Lytton Strachey: A Biography." Of course that book was enhanced by its stories of the Bloomsbury group. And speaking of the Bloomsbury group, Quentin Bell's biography of his aunt, "Virginia Woolf: A Biography" is another classic. This book, like many of the classic bios, was found by later scholars to be somewhat biased and incomplete, but to me this doesn't subtract from the power of these great portrayals. Another and even older favorite of mine is Elizabeth Gaskell's "The Life of Charlotte Bronte." Gaskell and Bronte were contemporaries and knew each other, and as fellow female novelists, understood much about each other. Readers of that bio might want to read Winnifred Gerin's "Elizabeth Gaskell: A Biography." Claire Tomalin wrote the wonderful "Jane Austen: A Life," and R.W.B. Lewis wrote the terrific and slightly scandalous "Edith Wharton: A Biography." Although I don't believe one needs to know about a writer's life to appreciate her or his works, I -- like many readers -- am curious about the lives of my favorite authors, and have valued and enjoyed the great biographies listed above.