It seems to me that there is widespread confusion among general readers about what a biography can and cannot do. It is driven by the immense popularity of memoir and amplified by today's social media-driven demand for full disclosure, coupled with the peculiar notion that a person can make her own "truth."
The author of a memoir obviously has access to her innermost feelings as well as to every remembered detail of her life. Whether she chooses to recount them all is, of course, up to her. Memoirists also are not obliged to consult any sources beyond their own, often deeply flawed memories. Facts can be ignored. Dates can be omitted. Fantasy versions of the life—whether created deliberately for the book or established so long ago that they have come to seem like the truth—can be offered to readers without apology.
The author of a biography, on the other hand, must contend with built-in constraints. Most obviously, we are not supposed to make up anything. We cannot invent dialogue or manufacture (or embellish) an event in our subject's life. If we want to suggest what our subject might have been thinking at any given moment, we have to build a plausible case based on known facts. For every element in the book there must be available documentation.
If the subject is deceased and there is no letter, no journal entry, no official document, no media coverage, no remark by someone on the scene that has been preserved on paper or film, or recounted to us, our hands are tied. (A further complication: there actually might be an existing letter or a diary entry, but we have to be able to read it. Letters may be stored in the attic of someone unknown to us—or someone who refuses to give us access. A key journal may have been stolen or destroyed, as was the case with one of my subjects.)
In a memoir, no one is looking over the writer's shoulder to point out omissions and errors. No matter how gifted a writer she may be, the memoirist remains inside the solipsistic bubble of her own life, usually not bothering to double-check facts. Biographies are written based on extensive research, with a more nuanced, contextual and (often) judgmental view of the life. A biographer may find some of the subject's remarks about herself and others—Person X, a friend with whom she quarreled; Person Y, a lover; Person Z, a critic who failed to appreciate her work—to be contradictory or too self-serving.
The women I have written about made their mark as creative people. I write about them to interest readers in their accomplishments and to discuss some of the ways their lives affected their work. I try to present a coherent and comprehensive narrative that looks honestly at their misapprehensions and errors of judgment as well as at their brilliant perceptions, loving relationships, and lasting importance in the worlds of literature and art.
That there is a place for both memoir and biography goes without saying. But I wish more readers understood these genres' different aims and constraints.
© Cathy Curtis 2025