Quote of the Day (Margaret Forster, on the Burden and Satisfaction of Writing a Biography)

“With biography, you’re really weighted down with responsibility all the time. You’re fretting about, is this true? Is it fair? And then on top of that, am I making it readable? You know, you’re juggling so many things with biography. It’s a real sweat, a real grind. But on the other hand, it’s immensely satisfying. When you get to the end of it and you’ve done the job, then you feel—I feel—quite differently from a novel, when I think, ‘Okay, so I enjoyed it,  but after all, what is it?’”—English novelist, biographer, memoirist, historian and critic Margaret Forster (1938-2016), interview with Sue Lawley on Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, Dec. 9, 1994

I came across a podcast featuring this quote after watching the famous adaptation of one of the novels of Margaret Forster, Georgy Girl, last week. I had known nothing about the author, so I was surprised to find out not only that she had written so much, but that a considerable body of her work consisted of biographies.

As co-author (with my friend Rob Polner) of a biography myself (An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O’Dwyer), I identified completely with Ms. Forster’s anxiety about bringing a biography to the level she desired.

And I also could relate to a dilemma she mentioned in her interview with Sue Lawley: the fear of a discovery late in the project that could significantly alter or even delay publication. This occurred with Ms. Forster when working on her acclaimed, path-breaking biography of Rebecca novelist Daphne du Maurier.

While astonishingly prolific (25 novels and 14 works of nonfiction), Ms. Forster remains far better known in her native Britain than in the U.S. (In my local county library system, for instance, I could find only eight of her works.) But she sounds like an author whose works invite reading and whose dedication encourages imitation.

(For a warm and affectionate appreciation of the very private Ms. Forster, see Kathleen Jones’s 2016 post on her “A Writer’s Life” blog.)