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Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Preface to Revised Edition -- Introduction -- 1 Historians and the Question of Biography -- Introduction -- Biography and history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- Thomas Carlyle and the idea of biography as history -- The professionalisation of history -- Marxist history and the question of biography -- Biography and history in the twentieth century -- Changing ideas about the role of biography in history -- 2 A History of Biography -- Introduction -- The emergence of modern biography -- 'How delicate, decent is English biography, bless its mealy mouth!': the changing pattern of biography in the nineteenth century -- The 'new' biography and the inner life in the early twentieth century -- Biography and the quest for understanding -- Feminist impulses -- 3 Collective Biography -- Introduction -- Encyclopaedias and universal biography -- National biography in the nineteenth century -- Women and collective biography -- Prosopography -- Contemporary dictionaries of biography -- From collective to group biography -- Group biography -- 4 Auto/Biography and Life Writing -- Introduction -- Life writing -- Auto/biography -- History and autobiography -- Historian's autobiographies -- 5 Interpreting and Constructing Lives -- Introduction -- The biographer's craft -- Biography and psychoanalysis -- Texts and performances -- 6 Changing Biographical Practices -- Introduction -- The gender of biography -- New biographical subjects -- The individual and the wider world -- Conclusion -- History and the individual life -- Glossary -- Notes -- Further Reading -- Index.

Looking at the complex relationship between the discipline of history and the writing of lives, this key textbook provides an original and insightful introduction to a growing and increasingly important area of historical scholarship and research.