Beyond the Book: Background information when reading The Age of Wonder

Beyond the Book

This article relates to The Age of Wonder

Richard Holmes
Biographer, poet, editor and historian Richard Holmes was born in London and attended Cambridge. He’s the author of:

• One for Sorrow, Two for Joy (poems)
• Shelley: The Pursuit
• Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage
• Coleridge: Early Visions
• Coleridge: Darker Reflections
• Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer
• Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer
• Insights: The Romantic Poets and their Circle

Of biography Holmes says:
"Of course I think biography aspires to be an art, just as the novel does. It is a piece of imaginative storytelling, as well as an historical investigation. It celebrates the wonderful diversity of human nature, and its aim is enlightenment. But biography is also a vocation, a calling. The dead call to us out of the past, like owls calling out of the dark. They ask to be heard, remembered, understood."

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This "beyond the book article" relates to The Age of Wonder. It originally ran in September 2009 and has been updated for the March 2010 paperback edition. Go to magazine.