Max Beerbohm once observed there were some writers who have been spoiled by their desire to do “important” work: “Some people are born to lift heavy weights. Some are born to juggle with golden balls.

As an experienced biographer, Hermione Lee knows a hungry audience. “Readers of biography are greedy readers, with an insatiable appetite for detail and story,” writes the British scholar, a professor ...

Mark Bailey begins “Nine Irish Lives: The Fighters, Thinkers & Artists Who Helped Build America” — a collection of biographical essays — with his own introduction explaining his inspiration for the ...

LADY PRESTWICH, who survived her husband, Sir Joseph Prestwich, but little more than three years, died in 1899 at the age of sixty-six. They were married in 1870, and settled at Shoreham, near ...