Mark Twain wrote, "Biography is the clothes and buttons of the man, but the real biography of a man is lived in his head twenty-four hours a day, and that you can never know." Was Twain right? Can a biographer ever really capture the essence of another person's life? If someone were to write a biography of you, how would they know what you are really like?

Should a biographer feel some empathy or affection for his subject to create a realistic portrait? If the biographer dislikes the subject, should he or she still write the biography? What difficulties might arise for the biographer if the subject of the biography were still living?

If someone in America today were to write a book similar in intent to Eminent Victorians, what figures either from the present or the recent past might he or...