The prolific biographer, first editor of the 26 volumes of the Dictionary of National Biography, and father of Virginia Woolf, shares secrets of the trade in this wide-ranging collection of essays. This first of four volumes published from 1898-1902 includes "National Biography," "The Evolution of Editors," shorthand inventor "John Byrom," "Johnsoniana," "Gibbon's Autobiography," "Arthur Young," and "Wordsworth's Youth."