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dorothean at 09:19pm on 23/10/2012
dorothean at 09:19pm on 23/10/2012I just finished Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë (published 1857) and am wondering -- is this the first major biography of a woman in English?
I can't think of any earlier ones. Memoirs and autobiographies, yes (especially by religious women), but no biographies. Although surely there were hagiographies, and Elizabeth I must have been the subject of a biography before the mid-1900s...
Maybe it's the first biography of a woman by a woman -- although certainly not the first biography by a woman, since I think it was fairly common, at least by the 19th century, for a surviving wife to write up her husband's life and edit his letters for publication.
Am I missing something obvious?
I can't think of any earlier ones. Memoirs and autobiographies, yes (especially by religious women), but no biographies. Although surely there were hagiographies, and Elizabeth I must have been the subject of a biography before the mid-1900s...
Maybe it's the first biography of a woman by a woman -- although certainly not the first biography by a woman, since I think it was fairly common, at least by the 19th century, for a surviving wife to write up her husband's life and edit his letters for publication.
Am I missing something obvious?
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