Great biographers: Claire Tomalin (recommend especially her
auotobiograhy), Victoria Glendinning (on Leonard Woolf), Claire Harmon
(on Charlotte Bronte, another on Fanny Burney), Hilary Spurling on
Christina Stead and Paul Scott. Older masterpiece: Gaskell's Life of
Charlotte Bronte. Francesca Wade's group biography Square Haunting, Mo
Moulton's Mutual Admiration Society: group biography of Dorothy Sayers
and her Somerville friends. Short ones: Virginia Woolf's brilliant
sketches. Of course Johnson and Boswell.
I really think none on Austen because of hagiography
Ellen
Ellen Moody