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unusual facts about biographer



A Season in Hell

According to biographer, Graham Robb, this began "as an attempt to explain why some of his Rimbaud's poems are so hard to understand, especially when sober".

Anaïs Nin: A Biography

Biographer Deirdre Bair has also gained notice for her biographies of Simone de Beauvoir, Samuel Beckett and Carl Jung.

Arkadi Suvorov

He was killed while crossing the Râmnicul Sărat River on 13 April 1811, though the story stating that he was drowned trying to save his coachman originated with his biographer E. Fuks and is not supported by his memoirs and documentary sources.

Arthur Marshall

Arthur Calder-Marshall (1908–1992), British novelist, essayist, memoirist and biographer

Ayton, Scottish Borders

The Scottish diarist and author James Boswell, biographer of Samuel Johnson passed through Ayton on his journey to London on 15 November 1762.

Boaden

James Boaden (1762–1839), English biographer, dramatist, and journalist

Bridgewater, Connecticut

Van Wyck Brooks (1886–1963), a long-time town resident, was a literary critic, biographer, and historian.

Charlotte von Rothschild

Charlotte de Rothschild became one of England's most prominent socialites whose dinner invitations, according to biographer Stanley Weintraub were favoured over those from Buckingham Palace.

Coots in the North

Coots in the North is the name given by Arthur Ransome's biographer, Hugh Brogan to an incomplete Swallows and Amazons novel found in Ransome's papers.

Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist

Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist is a biography of Charles Darwin by Adrian Desmond and James Moore.

Digby Mackworth Dolben

Hopkins's biographer Robert Bernard Martin asserts that Hopkins’s meeting with Dolben, "was, quite simply, the most momentous emotional event of his undergraduate years, probably of his entire life".

Dixie Lee

Crosby's biographer, Gary Giddins, describes Dixie Lee as a shy, private person with a sensible approach to life.

Doubting Thomas

An early biographer of Francis, Saint Bonaventure (1221 – 1274), reported that a soldier called Jerome was sceptical and moved the "nails" about.

Drifter's Escape

Biographer Clinton Heylin has noted that in writing "Drifter's Escape", Dylan found a new, economical style that allowed him to tell a five-act story in just three verses.

Edmond Fitzmaurice, 1st Baron Fitzmaurice

He was also a biographer, and published works on his great-grandfather, the Prime Minister the 2nd Earl of Shelburne and of his earlier ancestor, the economist, scientist and philosopher Sir William Petty, as well as on the 2nd Earl Granville.

Eric Midwinter

A recognized cricket historian (he was for seven years President of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians), he is Chairman of the Cricket Society Cricket Book of the Year Award and is a biographer of W.G. Grace.

Frans Hals

However, as biographer Seymour Slive has pointed out, the Frans Hals in question was not the artist, but another Haarlem resident of the same name.

Generalissimus of the Soviet Union

However, according to Stalin biographer Robert Service, Stalin regretted allowing himself the ostentatious military title, and asked Winston Churchill to continue to refer to him as a marshal instead.

Go See Eddie

Forgotten for decades, this story was uncovered in 1963 by Salinger's biographer Warren French.

Harry Clarke – Darkness in Light

Filmmaker John J Doherty traces the life and work of the Irish artist, book illustrator and stained glass artist Harry Clarke (1889–1931) with major contributions from his biographer Nicola Gordon Bowe as well as many stained glass artists, poets and historians.

Haydn and folk music

Haydn's early biographer Giuseppe Carpani claimed that the adult Haydn even did field work, collecting folk songs from the people as did Bartók and Vaughan Williams over a century later.

James Watson Webb

"In Paris and Rio de Janeiro, on land or sea", wrote Abraham Lincoln's biographer, Carl Sandburg, Webb "believed that Lincoln should have appointed him major general, rating himself a grand strategist, having fought white men in duels and red men in frontier war."

Jean Chantavoine

Jean Chantavoine (17 May 1877 – 16 July 1952) was a French musicologist and biographer and the secretary general for the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique.

John Robert Moore

John Robert Moore (1890–1973) was an American biographer and bibliographer of Daniel Defoe.

John Vicars

John Vicars (1582, London-12 April 1652, Christ's Hospital, Greyfriars, London) was an English contemporary biographer, poet and polemicist of the English Civil War.

Kevin Bazzana

Kevin Bazzana is a Canadian music historian and biographer, best known for his works on the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould.

Lady Margaret Sackville

His biographer David Marquand speculated that, although social considerations were a factor in her refusal, the main reason was that they were of different religions.

Lutyens

Mary Lutyens, writer and biographer of Jiddu Krishnamurti, and daughter of Emily and Edwin Lutyens

Margaret Clement

Sir Thomas Elyot had conveyed to her and her husband the indignation felt by Emperor Charles V, Catherine of Aragon's nephew, at More's resignation, but William Roper, writing years later, had the emperor talking about More's execution; as R. W. Chambers points out, Elyot was not ambassador to the imperial court when More died.

Marius, Martha, Audifax, and Abachum

Their relics later suffered various vicissitudes: some were transferred to the churches of Sant'Adriano al Foro and Santa Prassede, in Rome, and part of these relics were sent to Eginhard, biographer of Charlemagne, who lodged them in the monastery of Seligenstadt.

Nigel Jones

Nigel H. Jones (born 1961), British historian, journalist and biographer

Northern Circuit

There have been other Circuiteers who have attained fame outside the law – the author John Buchan, W.S. Gilbert and James Boswell, the biographer of Dr. Samuel Johnson.

Philip Carlo

Philip Carlo (April 18, 1949 – November 8, 2010) was a journalist and best selling biographer of Thomas Pitera, Richard Kuklinski, Anthony Casso, and Richard Ramirez.

Poor Richard's Almanack

At least one modern biographer has published the claim that Franklin "stole", not borrowed, the name of Richard Saunders from the deceased astrologer-doctor.

Rodolfo Pérez Pimentel

Pérez Pimentel won the prize in the literature category for his lifetime work as a biographer; Theo Constante won in the art category; Rodrigo Cabezas won in the science category; Luis Enrique Fierro won in the cultural activities category; and an award was given to the Academia Ecuatoriana de la Lengua (The Ecuadorian Academy of Language) for its history of excellence.

Royal Literary Fund

The Royal Literary Fund has given assistance to many distinguished writers over its history, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Samuel Rousseau, François-René de Chateaubriand, Thomas Love Peacock, James Hogg, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Hood, Richard Jefferies, Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Richard Ryan (biographer), Regina Maria Roche and Mervyn Peake.

Sarah Fielding

As a biographer, she wrote The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia in 1757, a history, written from Greek and Roman sources, on the lives of Cleopatra and Octavia, two famous women from Roman times.

Sedgwick, Maine

Doris Grumbach, novelist, biographer, literary critic and essayist

Stéphane Trano

The preface of Une Affaire d’Amitie was written by Jean Lacouture, the biographer of General Charles de Gaulle.

Sydney Smith Haldimand Dickens

When aged 3, and staying with the family at Broadstairs, his father asked him if he would walk to the railway station to meet John Forster, who was coming for a visit.

The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien

The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (ISBN 0-618-05699-8) is a selection of J. R. R. Tolkien's letters published in 1981, edited by Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter assisted by Christopher Tolkien.

The Need for Roots

Weil's first English biographer Richard Rees has written that Need for Roots can be described as an investigation into the causes of unhappiness and proposals for its cure.

The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet

According to Beatles author and Zappa biographer Barry Miles, the unreleased Beatles experimental track "Carnival of Light" which was recorded in January 1967 resembles "The Return of The Son of Monster Magnet," although it is believed that "Carnival of Light" is more fragmented and abstract than Zappa's effort the previous year.

Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl of Longford

Longford's daughters were Lady Violet Pakenham, a writer and critic and the wife of the noted novelist Anthony Powell, Lady Mary Clive, author of Christmas at the Savages and other novels, Lady Pansy Lamb, novelist, biographer, and wife of the painter Henry Lamb and Lady Julia Mount, mother of Sir Ferdinand Mount.

Trefasser

One possibility is that it is the namesake of Bishop Asser, a friend and biographer of King Alfred in the 9th century.

Wilhelm Stekel

He analysed, among others, the psychoanalysts Otto Gross and A. S. Neill, as well as Freud's first biographer, Fritz Wittels.

William Attersoll

In all likelihood the former was the William Attersoll of Calamy, whose name is simply entered under 'Hoadley (East), Sussex,' as among the ejected of 1662, and so, too, in Samuel Palmer's Nonconformist's Memorial (iii. 320).

Wright v. Warner Books

Wright v. Warner Books (1991) was a case in which the widow of the author Richard Wright (1908-1960) claimed that his biographer, the poet and writer Margaret Walker (1915-1998), had infringed copyright by using content from some of Wright's unpublished letters and journals.


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