Complicated Ghosts

Which comes first, the biographer or the subject? That is more than a chicken and egg question, for biographers bring their own personalities, ambitions and baggage to the people they write about and it affects the way they approach and analyze the material. Case in point: these two biographers, Mark Abley and J. William Galbraith, one experimental and the other traditional, use different means to enlighten the reader about the true natures of their respective subjects, Duncan Campbell Scott and John Buchan.

Both subjects are prominent figures from the recent historical past, both were born in the Victorian era and died in the 1940s, both achieved substantial fame and applause in their lifetimes, and both have since been branded as intolerant, prejudiced and bigoted—in one case as a vicious anti-Semite; in the other, as a racist and supporter of, if not advocate for, the cultural...