The Biographer's Tale is a book by A. S. Byatt. The story is about a postgraduate student, Phineas G. Nanson, who decides to write a biography about an obscure biographer, Scholes Destry-Scholes. During the course of his research he fails to learn much about the actual subject of his biography, but discovers a lot of Destry-Scholes' unpublished research about real historical figures Carl Linnaeus, Francis Galton and Henrik Ibsen. In the book, Byatt combines facts with fiction when recounting the lives of the three latter figures.
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![]() First edition | |
Author | A. S. Byatt |
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Language | English |
Publisher | Chatto & Windus |
Publication date | 1 November 2001 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
Pages | 376 pp |
ISBN | 0-7540-1641-2 |
OCLC | 47868714 |
Byatt originally intended it as a short story titled "The Biography of a Biographer", based on her notion of a biographer's life in a library investigating another person's life.[1] This she developed into writing about a character called Phineas G. Nanson and his search.[1] Phineas Gilbert Nanson (to give him his full name) is called after an insect and is a near anagram of Galton, Ibsen and Linnaeus, though Byatt said this was an "uncanny" coincidence which she did not realise until afterwards.[1]