Footstepping is the process whereby biographers endeavour to follow the traces left behind by their central characters, and few writers are better placed than Richard Holmes to do so with such grace and intensity. Footsteps unveils Holmes as a literary pilgrim, travelling across Europe, across space and time itself, in an attempt to gain an unadulterated insight into the lives of four Romantic writers.
Retracing Robert Louis Stevenson's travels through France, reliving the horror of Mary Wollstonecraft stranded during the Terrors, Holmes further follows the ghostly trail left by Shelley in Italy and embraces the afflictions of Gerard de Nerval in four self-contained and intriguing biographical sketches. This is a tribute to the art of biography itself.