Baden-Powell is a 1989 biography

Biography

A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...

 of Robert Baden-Powell by Tim Jeal

Tim Jeal

Tim Jeal is a British novelist, and biographer of notable Victorian men. His publications include biographies of Baden-Powell, Livingstone and his most recent, Henry Morton Stanley . In 2004 his memoir Swimming with my Father was acclaimed and was shortlisted for the J.R...

. Tim Jeal's work, researched over five years, was first published by Hutchinson

Hutchinson (publisher)

Hutchinson & Co. was an English book publisher, founded in 1887. The company merged with Century Publishing in 1985 to form Century Hutchinson, and was folded into the British Random House Group in 1989, where it remains as an imprint in the Cornerstone Publishing division...

 in the UK and Yale University Press

Yale University Press

Yale University Press is a book publisher founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day. It became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but remains financially and operationally autonomous....

 . It was reviewed by the New York Times. As James Casada writes in his review for Library Journal

Library Journal

Library Journal is a trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey . It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional practice...

, it is "a balanced, definitive assessment which so far transcends previous treatments as to make them almost meaningless."

Particular attention in reviews has been given to Jeal's analysis of whether Baden-Powell was a suppressed homosexual. Nelson Block states ""While the professional history community generally considers Jeal's conclusions on this topic to be speculative, the mainstream press seems to have taken them as fact". He then notes that there has been no published scholarly critique of Jeal.

Content

The book comprises 18 introductory

Preface

A preface is an introduction to a book or other literary work written by the work's author. An introductory essay written by a different person is a foreword and precedes an author's preface...

 pages, and 670 editorial

Editorial

An opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...

 pages. It has 19 chapters, covering Baden-Powell's life from birth and home, to his India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n and Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

n periods, the work he did on Scouting

Scouting

Scouting, also known as the Scout Movement, is a worldwide youth movement with the stated aim of supporting young people in their physical, mental and spiritual development, that they may play constructive roles in society....

 for boys, and his marriage. The text is encyclopedically

Encyclopedia

An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....

 referenced with over 1000 notes

Footnote

A note is a string of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document or at the end of a text. The note can provide an author's comments on the main text or citations of a reference work in support of the text, or both...

.