Split Infinitives
In 1926 Henry Watson Fowler published A Dictionary of Modern English Usage to great acclaim. I found my edition (2009, with a new introduction and notes by David Crystal) on a remainder table one workday lunchtime and picked up a $52 hardback for a winning $12. Yes, my colleagues were suitably impressed at my bargain-shopping…
Books about Biography
Sometimes it seems like I spend more time reading about writing than actually writing. More time listening to people talk about books (at festivals, on podcasts, in book reviews) than actually reading. I could beat myself up about this – and sometimes I do – but more often I just accept that I reading and…
Virginia Woolf – The Art of Biography
Woolf’s essay about biography is prescient and ever so slightly patronising. Thus the biographer must go ahead of the rest of us, like the miner’s canary, testing the atmosphere, detecting falsity, unreality, and the presence of obsolete conventions. His sense of truth must he alive and on tiptoe. Then again, since we live in an…
2014 Seymour Lecture with Ray Monk
Distinguished biographer Ray Monk will deliver the 2014 Seymour Lecture on the legitimate role – and limitations – of biography in understanding philosophers and scientists. These are free events, in association with the National Library of Australia and Melbourne Conversations. More info here. Friday, 19 September (6 pm) Bookings: nla.gov.au/bookings or (02) 6262 1271 Theatre,…