A Biography of Story, A Brief History of Humanity

Dedicated, “to all who love Story whoever you are,” this book encompasses storytelling since communication began and covers most corners of the globe. Story is personified, weaving through History, influencing events, and what happens affects the nature of stories. From early Creation stories of Africa and Australia, we move through legend, myth, saga and fable. As words begin to be written down, words confer authority and as we all know, history is written by the victors. Common themes of the wisdom of animals, of good versus evil, of disguise and mistaken identity recur but there are also specific features only present in one era. Trish Nicholson gives us tantalising details of the lives of so many tellers of tales, but as she says, “Teasing out strands of the old storytellers' lives is like following a thread through the Cretan labyrinth; the “Minotaur” we discover at the other end may turn out to be a goat rather than a bull.” The lives of Chaucer and Boccaccio are compared and the similarities and differences in their work marked. Similarly, she shows us how Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper reflected their era and their environment in using the tales told by the indigenous people of their countries. My favourite chapter tells us about Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, the talented sister of the King of France. Her life was varied and eventful, surrounded by poets and writers. A politically astute woman, she was widely respected and a skilled mediator. She spent time translating parts of the New Testament and more relevantly, writing stories. When her collection of tales was published posthumously in 1558, some of her humorous stories were considered of an unsuitable bawdy nature for a woman so some were edited and credited to a man. “A Biography of Story” is no boring book of literary criticism, since the author is herself a storyteller. She narrates significant stories to her readers, highlighting the essential strands of each literary era so that the book can be dipped into, using the clear descriptive chapter summaries or the comprehensive index. But perhaps, like me, you would rather start at the beginning and enjoy reading the entire delightful text.

This is a beautiful book, both in its words and in its presentation. The cover is gorgeous in look and feel and the text more than lives up to the promise of the cover. To be human is to tell stories. It's in our human nature to make sense of our lives through the stories we tell ourselves and others. And it's the development and variety of humanity's stories that Trish Nicholson explores in her book. She travels from the earliest oral traditions to the crossroads that the digital age has now brought us to. A crossroads where our stories can be spread across the globe and where they can be used either as tools for freedom or for oppression. It's a big ask for a book to live up to such a title but it most certainly does. Because of the nature of its contents, this is a book for dipping into rather than reading from cover to cover. Each chapter is a delight and there is no stuffy academic prose. The index of storytellers is comprehensive going from Aesop to Zola, as is the roll call of cultures visited which ranges from Aboriginal to Zulu. Every chapter has something to commend it but one of my favourites is the one on Sir Walter Scott. Yes, because this is a storyteller whose roots are close to home for me, but also because it's so absorbing and interesting. And it's a great example of one superb storyteller telling a great story about another. I highly recommend this book to oral storytellers, to writers and to readers.