We commend two interviews with distinguished life-writing theorists in this issue. In response to our questions, Margaretta Jolly, the editor-in-chief of The Encyclopedia of Life Writing, shows her broad academic vision espeially as she looks through life-writing studies in the west since the 1970s. Paul John Eakin focuses on his objectives and propositions, including aesthetics of autobiographical discourses, the relation between fact and fiction in autobiography, the invention of story and self, the identity in autobiographical narrative, etc. All these issues are key to the autobiographical studies and deserve more reading and further exploration.

Autobiography is a hot topic in present days. We include four papers in the section of “Autobiography Study”. It will be beneficial to read them when parallelling with Paul Eakin’s autobiographical theory. Zhu Xuchen compares Hong Ying’s two autobiographical novels with her two collections of short autobiographies in “‘The Virtual’ and ‘the Real’ in Hong Ying’s autobiographical novels.” Her close reading and analysis are intriguing. Song Xiaoying’s “The Depth and Breadth of ‘the Margin’ in the Autobiography of the Northern-American Chinese Women” centers on autobiography by those Chinese females born inChina’s mainland and analyzes their common theme “the margin”. With reference to the principle of functional stylistics, Xue Yufengto conducts a statistic survey of high-frequency words in Helen Keller’s autobiography, The Story of My Life. She analyzes the blind and deaf-mute female writer’s source of happiness upon her finding that words of positive emotions are dominant in the text. Yan Fang’s paper features theoretical deduction. The icon in the western modern life writing, Virginia Woolf conducted unique experiments in the attempt of exploring styles and theories in auto/biography. To the extent that most of the scholarship touches upon the issue of styles, Yan Fang addresses the theoretical issue in her study of Woolf’s A Sketch of the Past with the analysis of Woolf’s “autobiographical practice of anti-egoism.” Yan’s paper concerns several problems of autobiographical ontology and has important theoretical significance.  

The saying of “two prestigious Simas” is widespread inChina’s historical circle. Sima Qian’s ShiJi (Records of the Grand Historian) is not only a monumental historical work, but a classical biography. The biographical value of Sima Guang’s Zi Zhi Tong Jian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance) is, however, not fully recognized till now. The special section of “Zi Zhi Tong Jian Study” is therefore set up to fill the gap. Yang Zhengrun and Liu Jialin examine this giant work from different perspectives to demonstrate the prominent biographical factors in it. Chinese culture is indispensable to the prosperity of Chinese life writing and life-writing theories. For more than one thousand years, Zi Zhi Tong Jian has been attracting generations of readers. This is why modern life writers need to study Sima Guang’s writing experience.

The history of western life writing calls for more researches too. Li Kaiping analyzes British hagiography in the seventeenth century, an obscure field in the present Chinese academia, but it should not be neglected. It is because hagiography becomes increasingly secular in that century that the next century witnesses thepeakofBritishlife writing with Samuel Johnson and James Boswell as the pacesetters. In short, the seventeenth century is the preparatory phase necessary to the rise of modern life writing.

The section of “Comparative Biography” presents two papers. Cheng Tsun-Jen the Bildungsroman by comparing Lin Tai-yi’s Second Daughter of the Family and Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter, while Gong Like turns her comparison to three Shakespeare’s biographies by Chinese authors. Both authors choose an appropriate perspective and the relavant range in accordance with features of their subjects and their corresponding biographical texts. From this point the two papers are useful reference for scholars of comparative biography. We expect more achievements in this new area.

We expect young scholars to make more findings to methodology. In the section of “Text Study,” Chen Xi conducts a research on Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives, in which the concept of “Inter-narrativity” is proposed. Like Xue Yufeng’s statistic approach of functional stylistics, Chen’s experimental effort is supposed to be encouraged. 

In the section of “Subject Study,” Tang Yuqing comments on Sié Chéou-Kang, who has contributed much to Sino-French cultural communications but is nonetheless neglected. Chen Ruihong argues that, in the analysis of Oscar Wilde’s tragic fate, the literary genius is also a dandy who is the maker of his own tragedy. Through a close examination of theEnglandresidential Chinese housewife Dymia Hsiung’s life, Da Zheng digs out how she produced the highly-acclaimed-in-the-Anglosphere Flowering Exile. It is quite apparent that the authors of the three papers have made every effort to collect materials concerned.

Collecting and interpreting materials is decisive to the life writing and research. The new section “Material Interpretation” intends to demonstrate the in-depth explorations for the purpose. A biographer is said to be comparable to the detective Sherlock Holmes tracking down a criminal, for he/she has to examine a great variety of materials and discern the truth, or perceive the subject’s mind, from traces and clues out of the toil. In this section, the two writers have both perused and analyzed materials about Kafka, who is an important representative of the Western modernist school of writers and famous for his difficult works. Liang Qingbiao’s The Hands as Self-image examines the image of “hand” that frequently appeared in Kafka’s letters and diaries, so as to explore his spiritual world through in-depth analysis and the combination of Kafka’s thoughts and experience. Zhao Shankui focuses on the illustrated title page of Die Verwandlung, Kafka’s representative work. With respect to what the illustration conveys, what it relates to Kafka, and how critics interpretate it, Dr. Zhao proves that in between the biographical facts and the interpretations there is a meaning-generating space. The two papers are so fascinating that they must be inspiring to life-writing researchers.

The section of “Material Examination” sees Zhang Weina’s study. Liang Sicheng (1901-1972), the Chinese architect, had an car accident in 1923. There since has been a controversy on whether his left or right leg was hurt. Such a trivial and negligible anecdote is looked into by Ms Zhang minutely. The study discovers questions in the anecdote and finds the truth. This is the proper attitude in the life-writing research.

Bi Baokui the biographer gives an account of his experience of writing The Political Gale: A Biography of Wang Anshi and expresses his understanding of the subject. He believes that Wang Anshi, the Chinese historical figure, is not only a staunch reformer but also a firm advocate of national sovereignty and core interests. Bi proposes the dialog with the spirit of the subject so as to depict his inner world. This just echoes the prerequisites of modern biography.

Russiaboasts a tradition of life writing for great people. In the section of “Academic Info,” Zhang Lei briefs on the development ofRussia’s Life of Great People, which demonstratesRussia’s national willpower from the start. The reason why all forms of ideology attach great importance to life writing is attributable to the function of edification.Russia’s approach is appropriate to its social characteristics and cultural tradition. This contains experiences that deserve further researches.

                         August, 2015