Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1885 — Biography Writing. [ARTICLE]

Biography Writing.

Those who have attained a measure of reputation which justifies a biography are entitled to treatment of a reasonable and discriminating kind. It is not necessary and it is not proper that their private papers should be ransacked for piquant details of their intercourse with friends and acquaintances, or that all the flippant and derogatory observations of envious contemporaries should be repeated against them. They have a right to justice not only, but also to a eertain degree of charity. By the act of becoming noted, they do not authorize ready liberty to be taken with their personal records. It is the duty of the biographer to sift all the facts carefully, and exercise a sound discretion as to what belongs to the public and what is none of the public’s business, and this duty he owes not less to his audience than to his subject. The best biographies are not those which go into minute particulars, and follow the theory that everything should- be told, .leaving the reader to do his own discriminating and to pass his own judgments. To tell the story of a great man’s life in a fair, correct, and impressive manner, it is quite as essential to leave certain things out as it is to put certain things in.— tit Louis Globe-Democrat.