Life Class: The Education of a Biographer by Brenda Niall

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Wear to book corners and edges, with some minor chipping to top and tail book edges. Light foxing to foredges. Previous owner has signed inside page, now covered with blank ex libris bookplate sticker. Dust jacket has some light creasing at edges and spine. Small scratch to lower front cover.

Brenda Niall describes her own life-journey, from childhood in the Melbourne suburb of Kew; her convent education; her university studies cut short by family tragedy.

Her first job, as editor of B.A. Santamaria's Catholic Action journal Rural Life, brought her suddenly and unexpectedly close to the dramatic events of 1954 when ALP leader Dr Evatt attacked Santamaria's Movement and the Australian Labor Party split disastrously. It was her interviews with 95-year-old Daniel Mannix, for Santamaria's biography of the Archbishop, that introduced her to life-writing.

Niall also retraces her literary footsteps to discuss the pleasures of biographical discovery and the pitfalls - technical, personal, and moral - of entering other people's lives.

Her biographical adventures include travels in England, Scotland and Italy, Austria and Hungary as well as scenes closer to home - in Melbourne, the Mornington Peninsula, Sydney and the Shoalhaven region of NSW. (book flap)