Jonathan Eig's "King: A Life," a biography of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., was recognized as one of the best books of 2023. Biographies offer a chance to explore the decision-making and ...

Forty years ago, I telephoned Richard Ellmann, then recently retired as Goldsmiths’ professor of English literature at Oxford, and asked him to review the critic William Empson’s last book, “Using ...

Biographies have always been controversial. On his deathbed, the novelist Henry James told his nephew that his “sole wish” was to “frustrate as utterly as possible the postmortem exploiter” by ...

In Nicholas Boggs’ lively and vigorously researched biography of James Baldwin, the great writer’s search for the source of his art dovetails with his lifelong search for meaningful relationships.