The sole purpose of literary criticism is to get to the core of the text and discover what message the author is attempting to convey. Knowledge of an author's life and experiences can be the key to an otherwise bolted door leading to the deeper comprehension and interpretation of a literary work.
Literature has more meaning and depth when we understand circumstances which prompted the writer to write. An author's experiences, along with many other factors, help to shape his writing. Furthermore, a work of literature holds more importance to readers if the writer has credibility for writing on a certain topic. For example, how seriously would we take a book about the woes and poverty of Mexican immigrants if it had been written by Bill Gates (Werth 3). .
A reader simply does not connect himself as strongly with a written piece if he does not know the background and circumstances in which it was written. In fact, an author's work can even be misinterpreted and the whole point of the work can be lost if the reader does not know a small measure of the author's biographical information, even if the information is just one important fact. "Learning, for example, that the poet Josephine Miles was confined to a wheelchair or that Weldon Kees committed suicide at forty-one will certainly make us pay attention to certain aspects of their poems we might otherwise have missed or considered unimportant (Kennedy 2174)." It is of the utmost importance that the reader knows the circumstances surrounding the composition of the piece of literature. This helps the reader understand the intention of the author. .
However, it takes a superb literary critic not to take biographical criticism to the extreme in the interpretation of the text. Biographical information should only deepen the message that is already in the text. The reader must be careful to not rely on this biographical information too heavily in his understanding of the work (Kennedy 2175).