Biography and History

Barbara Caine. Biography and History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. vii + 152 pp. ISBN 978-1403987266, $29.00.

Barbara Caine's admirably clear and concise book is both a stimulating analysis of the relationship between biography, on the one hand, and history and autobiography, on the other, and a manifesto for the importance of the individual life history as a genre. Caine presents her book as a contribution to the "biographical turn" (1) that she sees affecting our culture in the past few decades. In a postmodernist world suspicious of grand narratives of collective experience, she argues, "biography can be seen as the archetypal 'contingent narrative' and the one best able to show the great importance of particular locations and circumstances and the multiple layers of historical change and experience" (2). Historians have traditionally considered biography as a lesser vehicle for exploring the past, while postmodernists have questioned its basic premise-the notion that there is any coherence in the notion of an individual life-but, Caine contends, in the hands of its contemporary practitioners, particularly those interested in women's lives, biography has demonstrated its own importance and vitality. Appealing to general readers and at the same time contributing to major intellectual debates, biography now occupies a strategic position as both a form of life writing and a partner with more traditional forms of history.

As Caine notes,...