SOURCE: Epstein, William H. “Altering the Life-Text: Walton's Life of Donne.” In Recognizing Biography, pp. 13-33. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987.

In the following excerpt, Epstein analyzes the structure of Walton's Life of Donne, pointing out the author's unique contributions to the biography genre.

“Being speechless, and seeing heaven by that illumination by which he saw it; … he closed his own eyes; and then disposed his hands and body into such a posture as required not the least alteration by those that came to shroud him.”

(Walton's Life of Donne)

I

In a letter crucially situated in the narrative of Izaak Walton's Life of Donne (generally considered the first, influential English biography of a literary figure that is itself of literary merit)¹ the biographer induces his biographical subject to “bemoan himself”: “and yet, I would fain be or do something; … for, to chuse is to do; but, to...