Times are tough for biography and its hipper younger cousin, narrative non-fiction. Five years ago, commissioning editors couldn't get enough of stories that were tethered deep in the archive but managed not to be "history" in the buckskin-bound way that we generally understand it. But now, with the party winding down, it's getting difficult to tempt publishers with tales of the real, unless that reality happens to encompass a stint in the Big Brother house or the bed of a Premier League player
This isn't whining, it's just the way things are, at least for now. Which is why it becomes all the more important to celebrate the fact that, in the first half of 2008, good stuff is still getting through. Gloomyguts will point out, of course, that most of these books were commissioned at least three years ago when the going was still relatively good. But, given 'tis the season to be jolly, we should probably count our current blessings while praying for better - that is bolder, smarter - times to return to the non-fiction lists.
In January Desmond Morris continues his popular anthropology franchise with The Naked Man (Jonathan Cape). Anyone who is of that generation which had its erotic instincts awakened by the racy illustrations in the original Naked Ape will surely want to revisit Morris and see whether all those line drawings and colour plates still have the power to rouse. All in the name of scientific investigation, obviously.
February, meanwhile, sees two books from established and impeccable talents, Norma Clarke and Lisa Appignanesi. Clarke, in the kind of book which is now on the official danger list, tells the story of Laetitia Pilkington, an 18th-century Irish writer whom Swift chummily described as "the most profligate whore in either kingdom". (He actually quite liked her, which makes one wonder what he said about people he couldn't stand). In Queen of the Wits (Faber) Clarke has Pilkington galloping through divorce and scandal while still managing to carve out a viable career as a poet and memoirist. Her story goes straight to the heart of that hectic nexus of hackery, media management and occasional genius which made up literary society in the lee of the Augustan age.
Appignanesi, meanwhile, tackles the vexed historical relationship of women and their mind doctors. Mad, Bad and Sad (Virago) takes a 200-year look at the way that all kinds of female discontents have been refashioned as moral, spiritual or psychological failings by the men in white coats. Here are all the usual suspects - Mary Lamb, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath - as well as some lesser-known case-histories including Theroigne de Méricourt, Fury of the Gironde, who lurched from the high blood lust of the French revolution to deranged incarceration in Salpetrière. What promises particularly well is Appigananesi's attentiveness to the lives not just of the patients but their doctors, too. Having previously written on Freud, she now takes on Jung and Lacan, before bringing the story up to date with more recent women-centred therapies.
In March, meanwhile, Lisa Jardine publishes Going Dutch (HarperCollins), a rich feast of a book which explores the relationship of competition and assimilation between England and the Netherlands in the 17th century. Long before William and Mary made their polite and effective bid for the Stuart throne, Dutch culture and commercial know-how had all but colonised English life. Jardine argues that Wren, Newton and a hundred lesser lights could not have shone as they did without the free and easy exchange of ideas and skills between the two great empires. What's more, she rewrites the conventional narrative which has Dutch influence in terminal decline as the century closes, and suggests instead that an expanding and bullish Britain quite self-consciously took on the job of spreading the Netherland's rich legacy of tolerance, resilience and commercial acumen.
Growing Up in England, 1600-1914 (Yale) is a new survey of what it's like to be small and helpless in History. Since Philip Aries's classic Centuries of Childhood there have been plenty of studies redefining the early years in particular places and at particular moments. But Anthony Fletcher's is one of the first since then to bring all that information together, as well as adding his own important new material, including rare teenage diaries surviving from the Georgian and Victorian periods. These show young people speaking for themselves about their friends and education, not to mention that perennial problem of how to avoid being seen in the street with your parents.
Also out in April is Anne's Song (Century) by Anne Nolan which promises to tell the "true" story of the Nolan sisters, that clan of chipmunk-faced young women who close-harmonied their way through the 1970s. At the time I wanted very very much to be a Nolan sister and I look forward to learning what my parallel life would have been like.
The following month Tig Hague brings out a misery memoir which takes suffering to a new place entirely. Arriving in Moscow on a business trip, Hague is hauled up by immigration for having a tiny piece of cannabis in the pocket of an old pair of jeans, the forgotten remnant of a recent stag weekend. The next four years are spent in a Russian prison alongside men who will never see freedom again. The moral of the story, obviously, is to always check your pockets. The pleasure of the story - entitled Zone 22 (Penguin) - is entirely in the tradition of Midnight Express and Papillon, in which you spend your time feeling thankful that, just for once, it's not all about you.
In June Hesperus, the publisher which does so much to put lesser-known classics back in print, and very prettily too, will bring out a clutch of biographical essays from Virginia Woolf under the title The Platform of Time. There are plenty of people who believe that there is already quite enough Woolf in the world, but for anyone interested in the theory and practice of "Life Writing", a term she all but coined, Woolf is simply one of the most interesting writers of the 20th century.
Jumping over the dog days, the high point of autumn 2008 looks likely to be The Age of Wonder from Richard Holmes (the literary Richard Holmes, that is, not the military one - confusingly they even have the same publisher). In his first major book for a decade Holmes returns to his favourite Romantic period and charts the wide-eyed lives of such scientific pioneers as Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday. Expect plenty of sparks and funny smells.
· Kathryn Hughes's biography of Mrs Beeton is published by Harper Perennial.
