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Deborah Lutz, a professor of Victorian literature and culture, is the author of six books, including The Brontë Cabinet and This Dark Night, a new biography of Emily Brontë. Below, Lutz recommends six books for lovers of biographies.
‘Virginia Woolf’ by Hermione Lee (1996)
Woolf composed her great modernist novels and her brilliant essays while troubled by suicidal thoughts and the tumult of two world wars. Lee’s portrait, searching and moving, first sparked my enthusiasm about biographies as histories of eras and of minds. Buy it here.
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‘Survival Is a Promise’ by Alexis Pauline Gumbs (2024)
This book is a poetic love letter to writer, poet, philosopher, and civil rights activist Audre Lorde. Gumbs makes the case that Lorde’s community organizing, teaching, and radical feminist lesbianism had a cosmic reach. She convinced me. This book also sent me back to reading Lorde’s marvelous poetry. Buy it here.
‘The Brontës’ by Juliet Barker (1994)
A giant, door stopping account of an entire literary family, Barker’s book is a monumental achievement. But it is also riveting and tragic, telling of the passions, failures, and early deaths of the four Brontë siblings, with a specific focus on Emily and Charlotte, the authors of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Buy it here.
‘Margaret Fuller’ by Megan Marshall (2013)
Fuller, an early feminist, played a central role in many progressive movements in 19th century America, including abolition and prison reform. In this deeply researched and absorbing life story, Marshall places Fuller among the famous thinkers of her day and proves that Fuller should be as famous as they are. Buy it here.
‘Super-Infinite’ by Katherine Rundell (2022)
A short account of the life and times of the Elizabethan poet John Donne, Rundell’s book bristles with energy and vivid set pieces. She tells of his many lives—scholar, clergyman, diplomat, and adventurer—and carries the reader into the courts and brothels of London. Buy it here.
‘Jane Austen’ by Claire Tomalin (1997)
It is easy to imagine a dull biography of Austen, since, apart from writing her great novels, not much happened in her life. Brisk and amusing, Tomalin’s book contradicts such simplification. Reading about how Austen set about writing and publishing her novels is delightful. Austen’s witty letters take center stage. Buy it here.
