Explores the challenges and rewards faced by literary biographers. Details the author's experiences writing the lives of writers including Edwin Arlington Robinson, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Cheever, and Archibald MacLeish.
Scott Donaldson ( 1928-2020) was an accomplished biographer and the Louise G. T. Cooley Professor of English at the College of William and Mary, emeritus. His publications include Fitzgerald and Hemingway: Works and Days (2009), Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship (1999), John Cheever: A Biography (1988), and Fool for Love: F. Scott Fitzgerald (1983). His Archibald MacLeish: An American Life (1992) won the Ambassador Book Award for biography.