Search

Browse By Author

Author List

Share This Title

Send this product to a friend

MUP Catalogs

Home  >  Literary  >  All Literary

The Biographer’s Quest

The Biographer’s Quest
By author: Jeffrey Meyers
Product Code: HH1062
ISBN: 9798897360185
Availability:Not currently available.
(Backorder policy)
Price: $32.00

Qty:
THE BIOGRAPHER'S QUEST, based on fifty years of experience, describes how biographies are written. It reveals the excitement of the hunt and the attempt to probe the mystery of artistic creation. The life must interest readers and secure a publisher. Ideally, it should have a subject whose appeal will sustain you for several years, who is still relevant and influential, has unpublished material available in archives, family and friends to interview, and no recent competing biography. Using one's knowledge and skill to find the essential information is one of the keenest pleasures of biography. This book explains how life-writers do archival research, find new sources, and experience the thrill of constant discoveries; it also discusses how to conduct interviews by establishing confidence, asking the right questions, and persuading people to reveal what they know. Meyers describes how to create a chronology, interpret often conflicting written and spoken evidence, organize material into a meaningful pattern, and show how the author's life illuminates his work. Research can lead to some extraordinary encounters with distinguished informants. There can also be some extreme contrasts: between the collector who refused to show the only copy of Somerset Maugham's unpublished autobiography and shouted, "I curse the day you ever heard my name," to the daughter of Robert Frost's lover who was eager to reveal her secrets and declared, "I’ve been waiting all my life for you to come."
Bookmark and Share

Reviews

Review by: Nigel Hamilton, author of BIOGRAPHY: A BRIEF HISTORY; MONTY; JFK: RECKLESS YOUTH; FDR AT WAR; and LINCOLN vs. DAVIS - December 27, 2025
"In the world of literary biography, the name Jeffrey Meyers has become legendary: the Master Detective, the Inspector Javert of his time. In fifteen chapters of his new book, THE BIOGRAPHER'S QUEST, he has examined some of his most famous 'cases,' ranging from Hemingway to Orwell, Lawrence to Wyndham Lewis--as well as the missing son of Errol Flynn. These cases took him across the globe in search of new evidence that lesser authors will never provide; remorselessly prying unpublished documents from protective archives and tracking down vital witnesses who sought to mask or mythologize their heroes. Tart, trenchant, and taking no prisoners, THE BIOGRAPHER'S QUEST will surely become a major book for practitioners of the art, as well as providing general readers with brilliant insights into the harsh, demanding but fulfilling research required to present the truth."
Review by: Paul Mariani, American poet, author, and distinguished scholar - December 27, 2025
"What a fascinating and absorbing read THE BIOGRAPHER'S QUEST is! Jeffrey Meyers has done it again, as he has so often over the past fifty years. He has an indefatigable quest for learning the truth about his subjects, searching out the works, letters, places, films and especially the people who knew his subjects best, from writers like Katherine Mansfield, D.H. Lawrence, Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald to movie icons like Humphrey Bogart, John Huston, and Gary Cooper. Meyers' sharp wit, insights, and empathy for the complex nature of the brilliant if often fallen human condition are there on page after page. This book reads and fascinates like a first-rate detective novel, which is what the best biographers offer us."

Goodreads reviews