Adam Begley

Adam C. Begley (born 1959 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American biographer. He was the books editor for The New York Observer from 1996 to 2009.

Begley is the son of Sally (Higginson) and novelist Louis Begley. He graduated from Harvard College in 1982, and from Stanford University with a Ph.D. in English and American literature in 1989. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Spectator, and The Atlantic.

He lives with his wife, Anne Cotton, in Great Gidding, Cambridgeshire. His stepdaughter is the novelist and art critic Chloë Ashby. He is the author of biographies of John Updike and the 19th-century French photographer Nadar. His biography of Harry Houdini appeared in the Yale Jewish Lives series. He is a frequent contributor to the Paris Review's Art of Fiction series. He is currently at work on a book about Harvard College.

Awards

• 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2011 Leon Levy Center for Biography Fellowship

Works

• Literary Agents: A Writer's Guide. With Debby Mayer, Penguin Books, 1993,
• The Art of Fiction No. 135: Don DeLillo, Paris Review, 1993
• The Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors, inter alia, Penguin Books, 2000,
• The Art of Fiction No. 173: Ian McEwan, Paris Review, 2002
• The Art of Fiction No. 179: Jim Crace, Paris Review, 2003
• Certitude: A Profusely Illustrated Guide to Blockheads and Bullheads, Past and Present, with Christopher Hitchens, Illustrator Edward Sorel, HARMONY, 2009,
• The Art of Fiction No. 204: David Mitchell, Paris Review, 2010
• The Art of Fiction No. 236: Ali Smith, Paris Review, 2017
• Updike, Harper-Collins, New York, 2014,
• The Great Nadar: The Man Behind the Camera, Tim Duggan Books, New York, 2017,
• Houdini: The Elusive American, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2020, ISBN 978-0-300-23079-6