Portraits of Actors: Elspeth Ballantyne, Julia Blake and the Challenges of Biography

Abstract

Inga Clendinnen describes the process of writing biography as being morally, socially and legally dangerous (2007, n.p.). In my experience of writing biography it is dangerous morally because of the possibility that the subject and his or her circle of friends will be hurt or damaged by revelations, dangerous socially because of the contempt with which biographers are sometimes regarded (even in scholarly communities), and dangerous legally because of the potential for legal problems arising from statements made by the biographer.