Reimagining historic personalities

Biographies are generally a non-fiction genre, for even though they have some place for imagination and emotionality within them, they are mostly a collection of facts presented in an attractive way. But many writers, especially modern ones, try to reconsider this quite old genre and give a new life to it. Here I will tell you about some novels that depict images of famous people, and whose main aim is not to tell the story of someone’s life but to let the reader see these personalities through the author’s eyes.

1. Miss Charity by Marie-Aude Muriel

Loosely based on the life of Beatrix Potter this little comedy however managed to create a very credible image of the acclaimed children author. Beatrix Potter was a talented writer with her own unique vision of the world and her own ideas about woman’s position in society. Living in highly conventional Victorian society, she dared to state that any woman could be more than just a wife or a housekeeper. The book is written in the best traditions of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, beautifully stylized and makes a brilliant use of irony and satire. After reading make sure to watch a beautiful screen biography of Miss Potter starring Rene Zellweger (Miss Potter, 2004).

2. Little by Edward Carey

This novel is devoted to another unusual woman, Anna Maria Grosholtz known to the whole world as Madame Tussaud. Edward Carrie presents the reader an image of a strong personality with a very peculiar world perception. Although the story is purely fictional, the author preserved the names of some key characters who played an important role in Maria’s life, and the plot mentions all the known facts of Tussaud’s biography (a bit expanded by author’s imagination). The book has a gothic atmosphere about it and would be a great Halloween read.

3. Wanting by Richard Flanagan

Who is a savage? Is it the one who dances around the fire under the moon? Or is it somebody who cannot help falling for his desires? This is a book about both and it's up to you to decide which one in the real. “Wanting” tells three parallel stories – about a small daughter of a tribal king in Africa, about a wife of a famous explorer and about Charles Dickens when he was already a famous writer. The latter is of the most interest for us. It is a story of a man who has always praised the family happiness and the fidelity in marriage, who was an ideal of virtuousness for many people in England and who, in his late years fell in love with a young beautiful actress and forgot his wife and eight children. How is the acclaimed author connected to the African girl and the lady from London? What made him betray his own family ideas? These questions are for the reader to discover.

4. Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes

How much do you need to know about an author when you read a book? How much does personal experience of a writer influence his works? A retired doctor Geoffrey Braithwaite who is obsessed with Flaubert sets out on a journey to France to sink into the atmosphere of his favourite novels. On his journey he discovers two museums both of which claim to have a unique stuffed parrot that Flaubert described in “A Simple Heart”. But which one is real and how many parrots were there? Geoffrey starts his own investigation during which he discovers quite unexpected sides of his beloved writer. The doctor’s diary is interchanged with extracts from Flaubert’s letters and writings and pretty soon the reader finds it really hard to distinguish between the actual Flaubert and the images existing in the author’s and the narrator’s mind.

5. The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Whenever we mention Virginia Woolf we most certainly remember her most prominent novel “Mrs. Dalloway”. In Virginia’s lifetime the novel was quite a shock to the public, not only due to its form, but also due to the ideas hidden in it. Michael Cunningham offers us to reimagine this classic and presents three variations of Mrs. Dalloway: Laura Brown, a pregnant housewife who is reading “Mrs. Dalloway” in 1949 Los Angeles, a New Yorker Clarissa Vaughan planning a party for her friend Richard in 1999 and Virginia herself struggling with suicidal inclinations. Cunningham gives a new life to the stream of consciousness technique and connects the stories with a tangled web of allusions and reminiscences as if creating three parallel realities.  

6. The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes

This book is a perfect example of intermediality (several types of art combined) and it throws its reader into the majestic world of classical music telling about one of the most prominent composers of the previous century Dmitri Shostakovich and his complicated relations with Soviet authorities. It’s widely known that Soviet Union was not the most creative environment because of the great influence of ideology and censorship. Julian Barnes chooses to discuss the opposition of art and censorship during the period of Stalin rule when the problem was the most acute. Shostakovich here is not a hero fighting for the freedom of speech and consciousness, but a simple person with his own faults, fears and doubts, struggling to find a way to express his talent which would not betray his ideals but still wouldn’t turn him into an “enemy of the nation” in Stalin’s eyes.

7. The Lambs of London by Peter Ackroyd

Meet the genius of literary mystification and one of the most prominent creators of Neovictorian novel. For his novels Peter Ackroyd takes the most ambiguous historical personalities and events and makes up for the lack of facts using his creativity. This time he chooses the person whose works are as bright as his biography is shadowy – William Shakespeare. It is probably a dream of every academic working in the field of literary studies to discover a document, which would cast light upon Shakespeare’s life. Ackroyd offers us to imagine that it really happened. Charles Lamb (also a real historic figure) gets acquainted with a young man who claims he has discovered Shakespeare’s will and knows where to find some more precious relics. Is it just a clever forgery or do we have to reconsider everything we have known about Shakespeare so far?

8. The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham

The last novel in the list is devoted to the fine arts, and the main character of it, a middle-aged stockbroker Charles Strickland, was inspired by Paul Gaugin. Just like his prototype, Strickland abruptly decides to forsake his family and career and fulfil his life dream of becoming an artist. The narrator of the story, a young writer, meets Strickland at one of the parties and becomes interested in his story. For the next decade he is going to gather pieces of information about him from different people to present the whole story to the reader. Strickland is a type of an artist, for whom the art is the most important in life. He doesn’t care about money, or fame, or people surrounding him, he just paints whatever inspires him and is in constant search to create a real masterpiece. This image is even a little frightening, as by and by the reader begins to understand that he is losing the feeling of reality, but still it is so appealing that you’ll find it hard to put the book down.