Ghost Stories
On Writing Biography
The memoir of a literary biographer in twentieth-century Montreal.
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 between the personal and the professional. Crossing paths with literary luminaries of the twentieth century, she went on to collaborate with Graham Greene on Reflections, the last of his books published in his lifetime. She recounts how she was entrusted with the publication of Leonard Woolf and Trekkie Ritchie’s love letters; how she found a way to hunt down Charlotte Haldane, one of the first women on Fleet Street; and how she came to write the biography of Max Reinhardt, the man behind the finest English publishing house of the mid-twentieth century.
A sharply observant and self-effacing narrator, Adamson brings vividly to life an anglophone upbringing in mid-century Montreal, the London literary scene, and the struggles faced by the women intellectuals of her time. Ghost Stories is a tale of good luck and the hard sleuthing of biographical work before the digital age.
“This literary memoir brims with insights about teaching, research, and the art and craft of biography. Adamson’s is a passionate, engaged, and delightfully politically incorrect voice.” Elaine Kalman Naves, award-winning author of Journey to Vaja and Shoshanna’s Story
“Through accounts of her relationships with her biographical subjects – largely writers and artists like Graham Greene, Charlotte Haldane, and Trekkie Ritchie Parsons – [Adamson] shows us that the biographer is not merely a stenographer. As is the case with any writer, they transform a story – a collection of events, observations, experiences – into a narrative. Ghost Stories shows how this transformation is mediated by archives, institutions, and the biographer’s own social position.” Montreal Review of Books
"[Picturing the Game] is an enormously ambitious book that is pleasurable, informative and deeply relevant to every reader. [With] an expertly-curated collection of images [and] writing that bristles with verve and passion, its remarkable depth and breadth of knowledge, and skillful handling of a complex mix of verbal and pictorial ingredients, this book is a template for what excellent non-fiction can be.” QWF Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction jury
- Commended, Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction, Quebec Writers' Federation 2024