BIOGRAPHY

Throughout the year the readers of biography and autobiography had much the best of it. Whether writing about their own lives or the lives of others, these authors not only seemed to have more to say than the novelists, but some of them actually wrote more accomplished and more enjoyable prose. As usual, the British writers stood at the head of the class, but they did not have all the good marks to themselves.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LUCREZIA BORGIA, by Maria Bellonci, made the famous daughter of profligate Pope Alexander VI a more human and attractive woman than the poisoner of legend, but still conveyed the horrors that went on around her and finally drove her to a hair shirt and piety.

FORD: THE TIMES, THE MAN, THE COMPANY, by Allan Nevins, was a long, steady look at the stubborn, imaginative mechanic who stands as a symbol of U.S. industrial daring. Even more, the book was the definitive history of a mighty business in which Ford was not the real businessman.

THE SECRET DIARY OF HAROLD ICKES, VOLS. II AND III, could hardly be described as good reading, but future historians will have to consult them for inside descriptions of New Deal power plays, inner-circle animosities, and Honest Harold's cantankerous sum-up of liberal types.

MADAME DE POMPADOUR, by Nancy Mitford, saw the meeting of a lively writer and an ideal subject. A flashing, witty biography of the mistress of Louis XV that not only described the inane royal world of Versailles but made it plain that the French Revolution was inevitable.

A CHILD OF THE CENTURY, by Ben Hecht. What one man's ego looks like spread over 654 pages: the playwright and scriptwriter flaunted his hard outer shell, his soft inner character, unconsciously explained why he rarely found "love, understanding or comfort."

THE INVISIBLE WRITING, by Arthur Koestler. The man who wrote Darkresx at Noon describes how it got dark and finally light again: his seven years in the Communist Party, his party travels and chores, his disillusionment, and final escape to sanity. A familiar story, but brilliantly told.

THE ROOSEVELT FAMILY OF SAGAMORE HILL, by Hermann Hagedorn, showed Teddy and his family at home leading a life so strenuous that it seems a wonder he ever had a chance to write THE LETTERS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Vols. VII and VII, edited by Elting E. Morison, brought to an end the vast correspondence of the liveliest writer who ever held the presidency.

MELBOURNE, by Lord David Cecil, the second and final volume of one of the finest biographies in many years, described the life and times of England's last big Whig, Queen Victoria's first Prime Minister.

GEORGE WASHINGTON, by Douglas Southall Freeman. This sixth volume, finished on the day Historian Freeman died, carried Washington to the end of his first term as President, showed the same evidence of careful workman ship and regard for its great subject as the first five.

THE PRIVATE DIARIES OF STENDHAL, edited and translated by Robert Sage. An excellent translation of the private colloquy between Stendhal and his journal when the great novelist was a young man, offering tips on seduction, brilliant insights into human nature and glimpses of a fascinatingly complex personality.

SUNSET AND EVENING STAR, by Sean O'Casey. The sixth and last volume of one of the most readable and crotchety autobiographies written in this century, by the world's greatest living playwright.

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