American Book Review

The semantics of the neologism “biofiction” clearly indicates that biography and fiction, truth and untruth, veracity and imagination, are brought together in an oxymoronic literary work. Yet, the straightforward composition of this portmanteau word may mislead us into thinking that such literary productions are mere juxtapositions of authentic facts and fanciful events; in practice, biofictional works display complex interactions between biography and fiction, as well as carefully considered transfers that are operated from one to the other. Such cross-fertilization produces unique, trans-generic, hybrid blends and offers immense potentialities to ingenious contemporary writers who choose to narrate the imaginary lives of real people. Biofiction is nowadays a flourishing literary genre growing on extremely fertile ground, at both production and reception levels. The unbound creativity of these authors is matched by the general public’s avid consumption of such literary products, by the critical recognition and by the increasing scholarly attention bestowed on this ever-evolving genre.

Contemporary authors are usually haunted and inspired by those predecessors whose lives and works have produced a lasting impression on them and left an imprint on their own production. Among the major literary figures of the twentieth century who have stirred such ardent devotion and have captivated imaginations, three solid pillars of modernism, Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) and D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930), continue to exert a formidable fascination today. These influential, prolific modernist “titans,” almost a century after their deaths, are widely considered as outstanding innovators who “made it new” and left to posterity many literary works that have become classics. In their times, they not only cast off literary conventions, but also revolted against rigid social rules and oppressive cultural norms. They had the courage to write freely, against the grain, and lived according to their profound beliefs, establishing physical and emotional relationships with men and women who aroused passions in them and made them feel alive.

In popular imagination, Virginia Woolf is often pictured as the mad, tormented genius who struggled with mental health all her life until she finally committed suicide at fifty-nine. Katherine Mansfield, an outsider and a figure of contradictions, had numerous turbulent love affairs and was entangled in lies and intrigue until her death at the age of thirty-five. She is often represented as an extravagant woman who fully lived her life despite suffering from tuberculosis. D. H. Lawrence was close to Mansfield until their friendship ended in acrimony. He was a mystical figure as well as a controversial author whose writing was deemed crude and pornographic by his contemporaries. Like Mansfield, he died prematurely of tuberculosis at forty-four. In their time, all three lifestyles and writing styles triggered controversies and provoked scandals. Their anguished lives and tragic deaths provide interesting material for adventurous, exciting, extraordinary fictional lives in contemporary works in which Woolf, Mansfield and Lawrence become out-of-the-ordinary characters. Despite their outstanding literary achievements, there is a persistent temptation for creative writers to focus on these titans’ personal weaknesses and terrible deaths, and they are often portrayed as victims, martyrs, or suffering beings courageously battling their illnesses, patriarchal oppression, public and critical opinions in order to express their creative visions. Like mythological heroes, these literary characters are undoubtedly endowed with power and greatness, but they also have flaws which bring about their downfall.

After the solemn declaration of the “death of the author” by Roland Barthes in the late 1960s, many creative writers have endeavoured to resuscitate larger-than-life authorial figures and stage them in worlds in which they might have lived and pursued their arts. There has indeed been an abundance and rich variety of such literary works on the literary market: Michael Cunningham’s The Hours (1998), Sigrid Nunez’s Mitz, The Marmoset of Bloomsbury (1998), Gillian Freeman’s But Nobody Lives in Bloomsbury (2006), Susan Sellers’s Vanessa and Virginia (2008), Norah Vincent’s Adeline: A Novel of Virginia Woolf (2015), Janice Kulyk Keefer’s Thieves: A Novel of Katherine Mansfield (2004), C. K. Stead’s Mansfield: A Novel (2004), Linda Lappin’s Katherine’s Wish (2008), Lorae Parry’s Bloomsbury Women and...