Download or read book Melancholy and Literary Biography, 1640-1816 written by J. Darcy and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-06-25 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the development of literary biography in the eighteenth century; how writers' melancholy was probed to explore the inner life. Case studies of a number of significant authors reveal the 1790s as a time of biographical experimentation. Reaction against philosophical biography led to a nineteenth-century taste for romanticized lives.