The Sphynx of San Cosme: A Historian’s Thoughts on Writing a Biography
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This essay is drawn from the author’s experience researching and writing a biography of Lucas Alamán (1792-1853). The author recounts the path he followed leading him, as a historian, to tackle the genre of biography, and some of the frustrations he encountered in choosing to write a biographical study of Alamán, a particularly opaque personality. The importance and pleasure of writing and reading biography in general is discussed, different frameworks for the writing of biography are proposed (one of the most promising, but riskiest, being that of psychohistory), sources of different sorts are analyzed, and narrative strategies addressed.
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