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Livingstone’s ‘Lives’: A metabiography of a Victorian icon , written by Justin D. Livingstone

Livingstone’s ‘Lives’: A metabiography of a Victorian icon , written by Justin D. Livingstone Justin D. Livingstone, Livingstone’s ‘Lives’: A metabiography of a Victorian icon . (Studies in Imperialism): Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2014, xv + 304 pp., illus., Hdbk. £75.00 /$110.00, ISBN 978-0-7190-9532-0. A couple of years ago I was involved in helping the Scottish artist Andrew Crummy to design a David Livingstone panel as part of the Scottish Diaspora Tapestry. Though the result was attractive and visually pleasing, it was also, inevitably, reductionist and simplistic, in attempting to sum up a complex and controversial life in a small group of images made up of merely several thousand stitches. There is a sense in which Justin Livingstone, in his impressive study Livingstone’s Lives , is trying to do just the opposite. Through the academic approach of metabiography he is attempting to unstitch the myriad biographies of Livingstone: to examine their presuppositions and underlying ideologies and to explain how they were influenced by the particular contexts in which they were written. Early on in the book the author argues that ‘all biographies, regardless of sophistication, intersect with the socio-political cultures from which they emerge’ and ‘the biographical subject is not just interpreted, but constructed’. In other words, biographers tend http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Social Sciences and Missions (preceeded by Le Fait Missionaire until 2006) Brill

Livingstone’s ‘Lives’: A metabiography of a Victorian icon , written by Justin D. Livingstone

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
ISSN
1874-8937
eISSN
1874-8945
DOI
10.1163/18748945-02803004
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Justin D. Livingstone, Livingstone’s ‘Lives’: A metabiography of a Victorian icon . (Studies in Imperialism): Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2014, xv + 304 pp., illus., Hdbk. £75.00 /$110.00, ISBN 978-0-7190-9532-0. A couple of years ago I was involved in helping the Scottish artist Andrew Crummy to design a David Livingstone panel as part of the Scottish Diaspora Tapestry. Though the result was attractive and visually pleasing, it was also, inevitably, reductionist and simplistic, in attempting to sum up a complex and controversial life in a small group of images made up of merely several thousand stitches. There is a sense in which Justin Livingstone, in his impressive study Livingstone’s Lives , is trying to do just the opposite. Through the academic approach of metabiography he is attempting to unstitch the myriad biographies of Livingstone: to examine their presuppositions and underlying ideologies and to explain how they were influenced by the particular contexts in which they were written. Early on in the book the author argues that ‘all biographies, regardless of sophistication, intersect with the socio-political cultures from which they emerge’ and ‘the biographical subject is not just interpreted, but constructed’. In other words, biographers tend

Journal

Social Sciences and Missions (preceeded by Le Fait Missionaire until 2006) – Brill

Published: Jan 1, 2015

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