Quoted by Boswell as a saying of Dr Johnson's, no context given:
The writer of an epitaph should not be considered as saying nothing but what is strictly true. Allowance must be made for some degree of exaggerated praise. In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.
I wonder if this applies to the obituaries provided to the 'Other Lives' section in
The Guardian by fond relatives/friends/colleagues.
Doesn't yet appear in the online edition, but there is one today in which the obituarist claims that her mother published the 'first authorised biography of Sylvia Pankhurst' in 2003, having been provided access to unpublished materials by the family.
????
There have been several biographies of Sylvia and of the Pankhurst family more generally, published well before than date. Her papers are in the Institute for Social History Amsterdam, where I have consulted them myself.
One biography I can actually find on my own shelves, published 1987, not sure it was even the first, there had definitely been at least a family group bio before that, thanks Richard Pankhurst* for considerable help during the process.
I am honestly not sure what 'authorised' can possibly mean in that context.
However, I guess one should not get one's pedant snark on in such a context.
*Whom I met several times in my professional capacity, so am v few degrees of separation away from the Suffragettes, and was also in communication with over copyrights.
***
Talking of snark, I rather resonated to this in a review in Literary Review by Carol Tavris on a book on widowhood:
‘Why are we so reluctant to talk about it?’ Schipper asks, which did make me smile. Whenever women enter any new phase of life – menarche, motherhood, menopause, widowhood – the first thing they ask is, ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?’ They tried, dear, but you weren’t listening.
Am so reminded of all those trumpetings about somebody writing about That Thing That Has Never Been Writ About Ever Before, except, probably, at least once a decade for the last century or so, minimum.
***
Also in the Literary Review, was very taken by a suggestion that one might deem the period 1795-1837 'The Long Regency', in a review of a book on Regency Gardens. At least that somewhat delimits it, rather than assuming the Never-Ending Regency Period, ruled over by Zombie, or possibly Vampire, Prinny.
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