This essay identifies and illustrates a number of significant features that, in combination, make literary biography a distinct and recognizable genre. Among these are considerations of the various aspects of the composition of literary works, such as sources of inspiration, authors' motives and methods in transforming life into art, and similarities and discrepancies between fact and fiction. Literary biographers relate literary criticism to their subject's life in diverse ways-sometimes for exegesis, sometimes to show the style of a literary mind or personality, and sometimes to find analogues between lives and works. Literary biography also shows the author's art in the perspective of his or her lifetime, illustrating the mechanical aspects of composition and, less often, the creative aspects. Finally, literary temperament, the placement of the author and the author's works in historical and intellectual milieus, and the provision of the particulars of publication and bibliography are also goals of the literary biographer. (KS)