What fierce imaginings their dark souls lit

[sovay]

I have just acquired a biography of Isaac Rosenberg. Not counting classical sources like Plutarch and Suetonius, memoirs, or novels whose protagonists are historical, this brings the sum total of biographies I own up to three. The other two are Mervyn Peake and Aubrey Beardsley. Last week when we were in Harvard Square, lesser_celery advised me not to buy any more biographies on the theory that anyone else I added would disturb the singularity of this combination, but I think a Jewish painter-poet of the First World War is probably not going to normalize it much. I am curious what I could have gotten the three of them to talk about together, though.

. . . of course, in the time it took me to shower, I remembered that I inherited from my grandmother a biography of Sholem Aleichem, written by his daughter Marie Waife-Goldberg, so I guess that's four. It's not in an easily accessible box, unlike the other two, so it didn't spring to mind. I wonder what other books I've forgotten.

Comments

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

I have over 100 biographies of all sorts of people.. I can go ages without reading one, then I go on this great gulping of lives as it were...

[sovay]

I have over 100 biographies of all sorts of people.

Do you have favorites?

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

I like bios written by Adrian Desmond, and A. Scott Berg. Desmond has written about Darwin (I have 6 books on him) and Berg did a fabulous one on Lindberg, he has done one on Kate Hepburn, but I havent read that one yet.

I have a lot of military bios, Chester Puller, Hyman Rickover, Truman, Eisenhower and anything written by William Manchester, who did his own story about a young marine in WW2. Civil War Generals and that ilk.

I enjoyed "The Lunar Boys" which was all about the young nerds of the 17th century. Richard Rhodes did bios of the Atomic Bomb (lots of math and physics)and the Hydrogen bomb, but I think those might be a niche history tho. A few books on the great explorers of the Victorian era, plus bios of Archaeologists and Egyptologists. Amelia Edwards rocks!

I have multiple books on Darwin, HG Wells, Winston Churchill, and Jules Verne.

To me, biographies fill in History, its a natural sort of detail. If you read about Patton, you need to read about Rommel.

[timesygn.livejournal.com]

"I am curious what I could have gotten the three of them to talk about together, though."

Women.

:-)

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

Royalties!

[sovay]

Women.

Beardsley?

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

He's the most intriguing WWI poet of whom I'd never heard before. I'll have to read his stuff.

Just to be shallow about it, he was pretty cute. His photo in uniform looks young and thoughtful.

[sovay]

I'll have to read his stuff.

I like his work very much; I discovered him after "Follow Me Home" and then did not understand why I could find almost nothing about him. That has now been remedied!

His photo in uniform looks young and thoughtful.

He did great self-portraits.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Well, he sounds like someone whose biography is worth having.

[sovay]

Well, he sounds like someone whose biography is worth having.

I think so!

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I think so!

Thus proving your good taste, not that it needed proven.

I just looked at the self-portraits you linked. Very nice.