Peter France and William St Clair, ...

Peter France and William St Clair, ed Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography. Oxford and modern York: Oxford UP, 2002. 335 pp + index. ISBN 0-19-726269-4 $4995

This body in the British Academy Centenary Monographs series proffers eighteen essays by as many contributors. As the following summaries may prompt seven or eight of the essays are first-rate, a half dozen are readable if it were not that unstimulating, and a few be seen confused or restate the obvious.

Among the highlights are brace learned, informative studies of early biographical traditions. In "From Biography to