This book meditates on the nature of biography and the way biographers habitually explain their subjects' loves by reference to psychology, ancestry, childhood experience, social relations, the body, or illness.

David Ellis is Professor of English Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Among his books is D.H. Lawrence: Dying Game, 1922-1930, the acclaimed third volume of the writer's biography

Preface Chapter 1. Lives without Theory Chapter 2. Biography and Explanation Chapter 3. Ancestors Chapter 4. Primal Scenes Chapter 5. Body Matters Chapter 6. The Sociological Imagination Chapter 7. History, Chance, and Self-determination Chapter 8. Compatibility, Sartre and Long Biographies Chapter 9. 'Dignity and Uses of Biography' Notes Index