biographer

The British journalist and biographer had by this time been a thorn in the side of Anglophone Christianity for two decades.

Yet in their exhaustive, three-part account of Cooper’s life—the first two are by Mr. Clark, a biographer, and the third by Mr. Calvocoressi, a modern-art curator—they aim to resurrect another Cooper as well.

William H. Herndon, Lincoln’s future law partner and biographer, said “it was highly sophomoric in character and abounded in striking and lofty metaphor . . . the thing people expect from a young man.”

Reporters, biographers and avid fans all want his opinion.

Of course, facts are important, but they don’t necessarily reveal anything; it is the biographer’s folly to ascribe deeper meaning to them, to extrapolate truth from a disparate series of events.