Letters, journals, private scribblings, saved memos, battered boxes bursting with faded photos and jaundiced newspaper clippings. This ephemera, alongside publicly archived material, is the beating heart of literary biography.
I have spent the past three years knee-deep in such treasures researching the life of Dame Quentin Bryce and as I uncovered golden nuggets revealing the inner thoughts and behind-the-scenes discussions of our first female governor-general, I started to wonder, "how will the next generation of biographers manage?".
Letters and diaries are an especially vital source. A unique thought process is involved in constructing a letter, the pen gliding across the page as ideas, emotions and sometimes private confessions tumble out. The handwriting itself is an extension of its creator's personality and state of mind.
"My biography of Queen Victoria would have been thinner and poorer without her immensely rich archive of letters and diaries," says Julia Baird, author of the award-winning Victoria: The Queen, an insightful biography of the British sovereign. "It would certainly have been less true, more a groping in a fog than fixing an eye on the way she wrote, how often she wrote, the words she used, the words she crossed out, the words she underlined and w
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