Robert Crawford’s Young Eliot has raised reviewers’ eyebrows by calling TS Eliot “Tom” throughout, a policy Crawford defends as reflecting a desire to portray a human being, rather than relate “the history of a monument”, and to see through the adult poet’s stiff public persona to the boy from St Louis ever present behind it.
Many object to this increasing tendency towards chumminess in literary biographies, and employing first names is a long way from becoming the orthodoxy (recent lives of the US giants Bellow, Cheever, Miller, Roth, Updike and Tennessee Williams all use their surnames, for example). But those in the given name camp can point to some distinguished precedents ...
Michael Holroyd Lytton Strachey (1967-68)
In this gossipy biography of a gossipy Bloomsburyite, the bold use of “Lytton” conveys affection but also intimacy and an implied right to be nosy – Holroyd’s eager plunge into Strachey’s private life raised the hackles of the hidebound in a still-prim era.
Brenda Maddox Nora (1988)
As well as solving practical problems, calling Nora Joyce “Nora” is a feminist alignment with her, of a piece with promoting her from supporting actor (in Richard Ellmann’s life of James Joyce) to star and seeing the Joyce family from her perspective.
Claire Tomalin The Invisible Woman (1990)
Ellen Ternan, Charles Dickens’s lover, “was almost always known as Nelly and will be called Nelly in these pages”, writes Tomalin, who in other books calls Jane Austen “Jane” but uses Pepys’ and Dickens’ surnames.
Andrew Lycett, Rudyard Kipling (1999)
Like Arthur Conan Doyle, the subject of a book by the same author, Kipling epitomises the kind of sturdy Victorian figure you’d expect biographers to defer to by using their surname; but instead Lycett opts for “Rudyard” and “Arthur”, foreshadowing Crawford’s use of “Tom”.
Kathryn Hughes The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton (2005)
A variant of the sisterly Maddox/Tomalin approach: the original domestic goddess is “Isabella” as girl, wife and business partner but “Mrs Beeton” as author and brand.
Patrick French The World Is What It Is (2008)
Using “Vidia” reflects French’s status as VS Naipaul’s authorised biographer, who stayed at the Nobel laureate’s home; but there’s a hint of impertinence about it, too, and a suggestion that Naipaul has never grown up as he indulges in rants or throws tantrums.
Martin Stannard Muriel Spark (2009)
Calling her “Spark” would have seemed “rude”, writes her semi-official Boswell, after 10 years of corresponding on first-name terms, but using “Muriel”, he cryptically adds, does not “signify that she considered me as a friend”.
Ion Trewin, Alan Clark (2009)
Trewin knew the priapic politician well as editor of his Diaries, so “Alan” is natural – but (as with French and Naipaul) also subtly adds to the sense of his subject as a perpetual naughty schoolboy.
Hilary Spurling, Burying the Bones (2010)
In her next biography after winning the Whitbread book of the year award for her life of Matisse, Spurling joined the given name camp by referring to Pearl Buck as “Pearl”.
Artemis Cooper Patrick Leigh Fermor (2012)
Using “Paddy” might seem unprofessional, writes Cooper, a long-standing friend of the travel writer, but using his surname would “rob him of the boyishness that was part of his nature”.
