Biography: A User's Guide

The Boston Globe

Rollyson is a lively and opinionated and knowledgeable writer, with much to impart.
— Sven Birkerts

Ann Waldron

Carl Rollyson knows more about biographies than anyone else in the world. His independent mind, his experience, and his voracious reading have equipped him to produce amazing insights into the reading—and writing—of biographies. A unique book.

Mary S. Millar

Wide ranging and provocative, Carl Rollyson's guide takes an intrepid journey through the many ramifications of biography—its history, its subjects, its practitioners, and its pitfalls. The section on 'fair use' alone makes his book essential reading for everyone involved in the art of writing lives. Add to those Rollyson's trenchant reviews of biographies new and old, and the guide becomes a master class in the virtues and vices of its subject.

Mary Dearborn

For biographers, Rollyson has written an absolutely essential guide to compelling biographical issues. But Biography: A User's Guide is also a treat for readers of literature—and anyone who loves good gossip. It's studded with gems of provocative insight and behind-the-scenes stories. Rollyson, a seasoned biographer, makes no secret of his biases or his reputation as a biographical outlaw: the story of his adventures in writing his biography of Susan Sontag is more than worth the price of admission. A fascinating book.

Marion Meade

Carl Rollyson's Biography: A User's Guide offers something witty and wonderful for everybody. Readers of biographies will be amazed to get a backstage guided tour of how these books are really produced. Writers of biographies should keep a copy under their pillows.

Patricia O'Toole

Carl Rollyson is to biography what Boswell was to Johnson: indispensable. An excellent biographer himself, Rollyson is also the finest critic of the art as well as a thoroughly delightful guide to the pleasures of reading biography and the perils of writing it.

Roger Lewis

With his high-powered and perceptive page-turners on Lillian Hellman, Rebecca West, Martha Gellhorn and Susan Sontag, Carl Rollyson has shown himself to be amongst the very first rank of contemporary biographical practitioners. More than this, however, with Biography: A User's Guide, Rollyson now proves that he is also the genre's foremost and most brilliant anatomist. His new book is typically erudite, mischievous, irresistible, and endlessly stimulating.

Doug Munro

Reflections on the biographer's art have become too much the domain of literary critics. It is timely that ground has been recovered with Carl Rollyson's Biography: A User's Guide, written by a practicing biographer who mixes reflection with commentary on the practical and ethical aspects of the craft, and who is not afraid to speak his mind. Here's a book to read and heed whatever one's position on the totem pole.

John Heilpern

For anyone mad enough to write a biography, this witty, definitive book is absolutely essential reading. For anyone who merely loves reading biography, it's a smashing insider's guide. Mr. Rollyson is informed and passionate and fun about a subject he knows intimately. He's also unafraid to let his personal opinions show, thank goodness. In short, he's written a wonderfully entertaining biography about the art of biography.

The Boston Globe - Sven Birkerts

Rollyson is a lively and opinionated and knowledgeable writer, with much to impart.

The Biographer's Craft

Promise(s) to generate discussion in the field.

The Washington Times

This book makes a notable contribution to a rare genre—the literature on biography.

Boston Globe

Rollyson is a lively and opinionated and knowledgeable writer, with much to impart.
— Sven Birkerts

Library Journal

Biographer Rollyson (English, Baruch Coll.; Rebecca West: A Life) provides an unusual mix of expertise and first-person anecdotes in 100 brief essays on various aspects of biography. Organized alphabetically by topic, the essays cover subjects ranging from "fair use" to "living figures" and include such prominent biographers as the late Richard Ellmann. The topical strategy may help readers who think, much like a biographer, in terms of categories, thus suiting Rollyson's work for writers and students. However, the organization also obscures some content, e.g., a detailed examination of John F. Kennedy biographies dominates the essay "Definitive Biography," yet it is only through the index that readers can find linked material on Kennedy. Rollyson maintains an informal writing style even for narrating academic questions, as in the essay "Libel," wherein he discusses legal constraints regarding the use of unpublished material. The popularity of biographies has recently encouraged in-depth discussion about the genre's development in both scholarship and journalism, evident in Nigel Hamilton's Biography: An Annotated Historyand David Burton's Animating History: The Biographical Pulse. An optional purchase for academic and large public libraries.
—Marianne Orme