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Lead book review

The celebrated poet who’s been erased from English literature

18 May 2019

9:00 AM

18 May 2019

9:00 AM

Biographers are a shady lot. For all their claims about immortalising someone in print, as if their ink were a kind of embalming fluid, it has long been suspected that they enjoy wielding their pens more like a cosh or a scalpel. Victorian writers were especially nervous about the prospect of a biographer prodding and slashing away at their reputations.

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