This Long Pursuit: Reflections Of A Romantic Biographer
by Richard Holmes /
2017 / English / PDF
63.2 MB Download
From the award-winning author of
From the award-winning author ofThe Age of Wonder
The Age of Wonder and
andFalling Upwards,
Falling Upwards, here is a luminous meditation on the art of
biography that fuses the author’s own experiences with a history of
the genre and explores the fascinating and surprising relationship
between fact and fiction.
here is a luminous meditation on the art of
biography that fuses the author’s own experiences with a history of
the genre and explores the fascinating and surprising relationship
between fact and fiction.
In a book that ranges widely over art, science, and poetry,
Richard Holmes confesses to a lifetime’s obsession with his
Romantic subjects. It has become for him a pursuit, or pilgrimage
of the heart, that has taken him across three centuries, through
much of Europe, and into the lively company of many earlier
biographers. Central to this quest is a powerful and tender
evocation of the lives of women both scientific and literary, some
well-known and some almost lost to history: Margaret Cavendish,
Mary Somerville, Germaine de Staël, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the
Dutch intellectual Zélide. Holmes also investigates the myths that
have overshadowed the lives of some favorite Romantic figures: the
love-stunned John Keats, the waterlogged Percy Bysshe Shelley, the
chocolate-box painter Thomas Lawrence, the opium-soaked genius
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the mad visionary bard William
Blake.
In a book that ranges widely over art, science, and poetry,
Richard Holmes confesses to a lifetime’s obsession with his
Romantic subjects. It has become for him a pursuit, or pilgrimage
of the heart, that has taken him across three centuries, through
much of Europe, and into the lively company of many earlier
biographers. Central to this quest is a powerful and tender
evocation of the lives of women both scientific and literary, some
well-known and some almost lost to history: Margaret Cavendish,
Mary Somerville, Germaine de Staël, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the
Dutch intellectual Zélide. Holmes also investigates the myths that
have overshadowed the lives of some favorite Romantic figures: the
love-stunned John Keats, the waterlogged Percy Bysshe Shelley, the
chocolate-box painter Thomas Lawrence, the opium-soaked genius
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the mad visionary bard William
Blake.
The diversity of Holmes’s material is a testimony to his
empathy, erudition, and inquiring spirit—and, sometimes, to his
mischievous streak.
The diversity of Holmes’s material is a testimony to his
empathy, erudition, and inquiring spirit—and, sometimes, to his
mischievous streak.The Long Pursuit
The Long Pursuit gives us a unique
insider’s account of a biographer at work: traveling, teaching,
researching, fantasizing, forgetting, and even ballooning. From
this great chronicler of the Romantics now comes a chronicle of
himself and his intellectual passions; it contains his most
personal and most seductive writing.
gives us a unique
insider’s account of a biographer at work: traveling, teaching,
researching, fantasizing, forgetting, and even ballooning. From
this great chronicler of the Romantics now comes a chronicle of
himself and his intellectual passions; it contains his most
personal and most seductive writing.
