All of my five biographies are the first, or first comprehensive accounts of their subjects' lives. Perhaps because reviewers are frequently not biographers themselves, I have found that they—and other readers—fail to understand what's involved when a biographer takes a maiden voyage with her subject.
Many biographies published today are about a famous person who has been the subject of multiple previous biographies. Because the authors of those books have established the chronology and the facts (as each writer perceived them), the new biographer is free to look at the life in more experimental ways. She can choose to write only about a certain period of the subject's life, to quarrel with the opinions presented in other books, to present a new theory, to focus on the work at the expense of the life (or vice versa), or to write in a more personal, essayistic style.
Conversely, first biographies—generally about people who are not widely known—are obliged to hew more closely to the "cradle to grave" model. A responsible biographer presenting a subject's life to the world for the first time presents the entire stretch of that life with a chronological organization (allowing for some forward-looking leaps when necessary), so that the consequences of early actions and beliefs can be understood in context. This biographer's primary role is to be in service to her subject—presenting her as completely and objectively as possible, with the fullest possible awareness of the standards and mores of her era.
Writing a first biography involves restraining the impulse to add fanciful suppositions or strained attempts to be "relevant." It means avoiding a style intended to imitate or compete with the cleverness of the subject, and (assuming a general, rather than an academic readership) not allowing a theoretical construct to overshadow the narrative of the life.
For these reasons, a first biography of an "unknown" person may seem somewhat less exciting or amusing or contentious than the more idiosyncratic Lives that follow. Yet even in a first biography there is plenty of room for nuanced writing, thoughtful conclusions, and the kind of precise descriptions and well-chosen quotations that make the subject come to life for the reader.
© Cathy Curtis 2025