Ghost Stories: On Writing Biography

A biographer is, in a sense, the ghostwriter of someone else’s life, trying to keep out of the way but inevitably leaving an imprint and being changed in the enterprise. In her memoir Judith Adamson, a professional biographer, tells the ghost’s side of the story.

Adamson reveals the questions she asked herself as she researched and wrote, as well as the personal challenges she faced in producing a lively sense of the figure she was recreating on the page, drawing an unbreakable connection be...