Memoirs and Madness examines memoir as a literary genre and investigates how Leonid Andreev's posthumous legacy was influenced by the writing of his contemporaries. A Book About Leonid Andreev (1922), which includes the work of renowned Russian authors such as Belyi, Blok, Chukovskii, Chulkov, Gor'kii, Teleshov, Zaitsev, and Zamiatin, has had an impact on how Andreev has been read and spoken about since his death. While past scholarship has focused on the philosophical and sociological factors in Andreev's life, Frederick White pays special attention to the author's history of mental illness, described by the memoirists with vague terms such as "creative energy" or "inner turmoil."
