Customer Reviews

Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer

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This is the kind of book at which Holmes, in my view, excels. I'm not that particularly fond of his painstaking mammoth biographies of Shelley and Coleridge because, well, they're too run-of-the-mill and not all that much fun to read.-In other words, just the opposite of books like this one. This type of book, where the relationship between Holmes and the author he is writing about is constantly in play add a mystery and a haunted quality inherent in the time elapsed between Holmes' time and the author's that keeps the readers attention constantly transfixed (or, at least, this reader's). As Holmes himself puts it, "The material surfaces of life are continually breaking down, sloughing off, changing, almost as fast as human skin." Examples: The passage on Shelley's view of the double, the "ghost of the living person" the view of which signified the shadow world invading this one; Shelley's view that this is what was happening to him just before he drowned himself is the most affecting passage I've read on Shelley's end, and together with the photograph of the Casa Magni, which I'd never actually seen, and whose setting Mary Shelley said caused them to be in touch with the unreal sent shivers up my spine. It's not to be missed.-The section on Nerval was also interesting, as were the others. Curiously, the same sort of thing seems to have affected Nerval "...Here began for me what I shall call the overflowing of dreams into real life." Both sections are excellent and Holmes' speculation that "Nerval's whole work was a form of suicide note" seems right on the mark. The other sections are intriguing as well, but these two haunted me the most. In a moment of brave self-exposure where Holmes is following Shelley's footsteps in Rome, he recounts a dinner where they toasted Shelley as a fellow-exile and his name "rang to the roof." Holmes writes, "I sat there looking at my plate dangerously close to tears. I...determined to write a book for people like them too, who would never read it, people who have lost most things except hope."-You've succeeded Mr Holmes.

Beginning with a journey tracing Stevenson's walking tour in France, Holmes shows himself to be both a remarkable adventurer and writer. The thing that comes out clearly when he discovers the ruins of a bridge crossed by Stevenson is that the past is the past. And while it has an impact on the world today, it is gone. If you only read it for the first essay, it is well worth the money. The other essays explore other themes that affect biographers. A superb book that should be read by anyone interested in the mysrerious relationship between biographer and subject.

This is one of the most addictive books that I have ever read - the language is rich and the stories are fascinating. Holmes interweaves his own experiences with short biographical sketches of Robert Louis Stevenson, Mary Wollstonecraft and Percy Shelley. A great book to take on a trip or vacation.

Richard Holmes is a man profoundly obsessed with other people's lives. This book reflects the process of how the author struggled to come to terms with the mysterious past which is flitting away from us. It is also a book which tries to answer the question "Why should it matter?"

Whether hunting for the Shelleys in Italy or pursuing Stevenson in the Cevennes, Holmes manages to convey the feeling that it does matter, that these people had their share in shaping European culture and literature.

However, there is a price to be paid if one aims to bring ghosts back to life. The author is ever balancing on the fine edge of cutting himself off from the present, of falling into the abyss of the past and never wake up again, and he is painfully aware of this.

Holmes seems to conceive of biography as a temporary annihilation of his own self in order to grasp the world that his subjects moved in. The literary outcome is a great and full picture. On a personal level, it is trauma.

This book will (if it is not already) be a classic for anyone remotely interested in reading or writing biography.

I read this the spring it came out, the spring I learned that once again there would be no summer vacation, no breaking free of the time zone. As much as a book can stand in for actual experience, this did, and I got a rollicking review of Romantic figures in the bargain. Holmes obviously conducts meticulous research, but he writes it up in a style that has the sweep of a fine novel. He is a master at marrying study and action.

I waited almost 20 years to track down this book. My advice to you, Reader, is don't wait a single minute. "Footsteps" is delightful from multiple vantage points. Holmes is a fine, empathic writer who reveals the inner workings of the process of biography. He is also an insightful travel writer with a strong sense of place. While I greatly enjoyed his chapter on Robert Louis Stevenson, I was fascinated by his treatment of Gerard de Nerval. This is one literary byway that should not be missed.

I thoroughly enjoyed Holmes's narrative detailing his efforts to trace journeys of some of his biographical subjects in Europe. Much has been written on the art and craft of biography, but Holmes presents biographical research as a physical undertaking and, at times, an adventure. His efforts to trace his subjects' journeys is nicely tied to the prevailing conditions of the times, and one can trace Holmes's development as a biographer. This is a "must read" for any aspiring biographer and, for the rest of us, a highly readable, enjoyable romp through parts of Europe.

Richard Holmes wrote this book as a young man in search of himself and in search of his true work. He begins by tracing the famous trek of Robert Louis Stevenson through great parts of France. He follows the exact path and the detailed record given in Stevenson's own travel - writing. He in the course of this explores the life and work of Stevenson and also reveals his own story and adventure. The method works and we see Holmes who originally started out as a Poet revealing how his involvement with the lives of others led him to become a biographer. Still each of the treatments should be understood and taken by itself. For instance Holmes very much idealizes the marriage of Stevenson and Fanny Osborne and says nothing about the large critical Literature about her alleged exploitation and domination of Stevenson. Holmes sees Stevenson in a very sympathetic way and so we do not hear strongly any of the criticisms made about him and his work. We also do not get a sense which is of course much stronger in Stevenson's latter years of his illness, and the profound part that played in his life.
Again I found Holmes more interesting in writing about his own subjects than in writing about himself. In the chapter on Wordsworth and Mary Wollstonecraft , the chapter which explores the French Revolution and its proposed parallel in the anti- DeGaulle uprising in the 1960's Holmes tells of her fascinating and ultimately disastrous love- story with the much less well- known American writer Gilbert Imlay.
Along with the accounts of the lives of other creative figures, among them Shelley and the French writer Gerard Nerval Holmes enriches the work with reflections on the Art of Biography. I suspect for many these passages may constitute the most instructive part of the work.
To give a taste of this fine work I conclude with one of Holmes reflections on the Art of
Biography.
"But that ordinariness,and that family intimacy,is the very thing that the biographer- as opposed to the novelist-cannot share or re- create. Tolstoy.. writes that all happy families are happy in the same way: he might have added that they leave little of the record of that happines, even though it is the stuff of life. The very closeness of husbands and wives precludes letters between them, and often the keeping of journals ( unless one party is secretly unhappy) The private domestic world closes in on itself, and the biographer is shut out. It is onl when arguments occur, separations, confrontations, crises, -or the sudden revelation in a letter to a friend, or a melancholy diary - that the biographer's trail warms up again."
A work well worth reading for all those who take interest in the writing and telling of life stories.

Richard Holmes is one of the very best biographers of the romantic period whose works are set principally in Europe and especially England. His vicarious adventures and concomitant emotions, while following in the footsteps of the famous, are marvelous evocations of nature, love, passion, artistry, and sheer love or horror of life. This book and another, Sidetracks, are wonderful excursions into the unseen world of the mind of great people, scientists, authors et al. Excellent reading. He currently has a best seller in The Age of Wonder which he discussed at the last National Book Festival with the customary flair of a nonchalant, albeit perfectionist, Brit. Enjoy!