Difference between biography and historian barbara

Barbara Caine explores biography's relations with history in a study which covers major topics and authors: informed, lucid and thoughtful, she.!

BARBARA CAINE is Professor of History at Monash University, Australia.

Biography is the oldest way of writing about historical events, and the most popular.

Barbara Caine explores biography's relations with history in a study which covers major topics and authors: informed, lucid and thoughtful, she.

Examining key works that have changed the nature of biography, Barbara Caine also explores the way biographical narrative and life stories have become a central.

Barbara Taylor is Professor of Humanities at Queen Mary University of London.

Program: Biography and history

Peter Mares: In the introduction to his biography of American president Thomas Jefferson, historian Arthur Schlesinger said that one of the main purposes of biography was to remind us that 'the great public figures also put on their pants one leg at a time'.

The best biographies often provide insight into the intimate lives of important historical figures, which might help explain why biography is so popular with readers.

Some historians are uncomfortable with biography because of the way it personalises the past.

Others increasingly incorporate individual life stories into their work in an effort to make history richer and to convey not just events, but also emotions and experiences.

So how should we understand the relationship between biography and history and the role of the personal in the past?

Professor Barbara Caine is head of the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at the University of Sydney, and the author of se