Use and Abuses of Biography

WH Hudson’s tome, An Introduction to the Study of Literature, is a primary and significant work that defines literature and makes students of literature aware of how they should study literature. The fourth part of first chapter, entitled as “Some Ways of Studying Literature” makes the students aware of the use and abuses of literature.

There is no doubt that the judicious use of good biography can certainly be useful in the study of literature. The study of author’s biography helps us to understand the works of that author in a better way. It makes us familiar with his life, social circumstances, his struggles, his problems, his relations to the world, and, the influences that shaped him. This makes us aware of the gradual intellectual growth of the author. 

Hudson makes twofold suggestions while using a biography: (a) “it is good biography which alone can be of service to us,” and, (b) “this must be used judicially.”  There are number of the biographies which pass under the name of literary biography but they have nothing ‘literary’ in them. They are mere trivial gossip about the private life of famous men with which student of literature has concern at all. Many biographies talk of the houses of great writers, the furniture of their houses, and their dresses – to which a student of literature has no regards. The craze for the personal details is often nurtured by the press and the media which hardly carries any literary significance. Hudson says that while reading literary biography, we must not deal with the external information that has nothing to do with the literary value of the writer’s works. We must focus on those facts only which have connection with the works of the writer. Thus a biography can be useful to us only if it is used judiciously, sensibly, wisely and with care.

To make us aware of abuses of the biography, Hudson suggests two important things to the student of literature. Firstly, he says that we must make sure that it should not be “idle and impertinent gossip about unimportant things,” and, secondly, we must distinguish between the reading of “biography as the piece of literature” and reading of “biography as commentary upon an author’s writing.” As student of literature, we must read biography in connection with the writer’s works. Hudson also says that sometimes seemingly insignificant fact proves very significant in the study of the author and sometimes important looking fact proves totally insignificant. So, it is reader’s duty to find out what is important for him.

Hudson gives an example of Dante and Goethe to suggest that many a times the literary works cannot be understand without the use of biography. It is very much difficult to understand the works of these writers when detached from the life. Their works are highly confessional in nature. Whereas there are some writers whose works and their life has no connection with each other. If one tries to read Johnson’s works in connection with his life, he will not find anything useful in biography that has connection with his life. Hudson makes it clear that, “the study of biography is not the study of literature, and it should never be made substitute for it.”

Hudson also insists on the cultivation of the spirit of sympathy while reading the biography. Our reading of the writer shall not be influenced by the comments of biographer on it. No one has right to impose his own judgment upon us; and honest likes and dislikes are never to be disregarded.  We should decide what we have correlate from biography with his works.

Thus, in this way, Hudson indicates the possible uses and abuses of biography. While studying a writer his biography helps a lot to understand his works in better way but simultaneously we must be aware of its use and abuses.