In a letter to his friend Thomas Poole, Coleridge wrote that any life, however insignificant, would if truthfully told, be of interest. There are two important points in Coleridge’s observation. One, that it is not important whether the subject of a memoir, biography or autobiography has lived a very eventful life and achieved great success, as any life can be a good enough subject for a book. Two, truthfulness in reporting events of life is an essential feature of a book chronicling a life. And because a memoir lies somewhere between history and literature, the element of selection, omission, foregrounding,...