Finished reading THIS LONG PURSUIT by British biographer Richard Holmes. For over 40 years Holmes has researched and written on the lives of British and French Romantic poets, writers and artists --- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley etc.
Published in 2016, “This Long Pursuit” is the third of a trilogy that began with “Footsteps” [1984] followed by “Sidetracks” [2000]. It is an inside account of Holmes at work and includes the experiences of other biographers that Holmes has admired --- biographers of Madam de Stael, Mary Somerville, John Keats, William Blake etc.
Showing how he investigated the lives of his subjects, Holmes says “the serious biographer must physically pursue his subject through the past. He must go to all the places where the subject had ever lived or worked, or travelled or dreamed. Not just the birthplace, or the blue-plaque place, but the temporary places, the passing places, the last places, the dream places.”
This book brought out memories of my English Literature studies in high school, particularly Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Holmes has made me adjust my reading plan for this year, so I am now including English Romantic books covering the period roughly between 1770 and 1830.