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Biography in the age of celebrity: what’s left to reveal?

What can a biography tell us about its subject that we can't learn from following them on Twitter?

4 Aug 2014 12:00

Karen Fox

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Writing and Publishing

US Senator Hillary Clinton; image via christopherfountain.wordpress.com

Virginia Woolf – so Hermione Lee writes in Virginia Woolf, her 1997 biography of the celebrated writer – thought it immensely difficult to ever know another person.

Today the winner of the 2014 National Biography Award will be announced, chosen from a shortlist that includes literary efforts to get to know subjects who are already well-known, such as Gideon Haigh’s biography of Shane Warne, and those who are not, such as Janet Butler’s account of the life of an Australian nurse in Europe during the first world war.

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Karen Fox

About the Author

Karen Fox is a Research Fellow at the National Centre of Biography at Australian National University.

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