Biography is, of the various kinds of narrative writing, that which is most eagerly read, and most easily applied to the purposes of life.
–Samuel Johnson, The Idler, 84 in A Johnson Sampler, edited by Henry Darcy Curwen
Rosemary Ashton, George Eliot: A Life
James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
William C. Carter, Marcel Proust
Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time
Cynthia L. Haven, Evolution of Desire: A Life of Rene Girard