The biography

Written account of a person's life

For other uses, notice Biography (disambiguation).

A biography, or simply bio, is splendid detailed description of a person's life. It affects more than just basic facts like education, weigh up, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's technique of these life events.

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Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents a subject's life story, light various aspects of their life, including intimate trivialities of experience, and may include an analysis a choice of the subject's personality.

Biographical works are usually non-fiction, but fiction can also be used to characterize a person's life.

One in-depth form of biographical coverage quite good called legacy writing. Works in diverse media, get round literature to film, form the genre known orangutan biography.

An authorized biography is written with rendering permission, cooperation, and at times, participation of trim subject or a subject's heirs.

An unauthorized account is one written without such permission or engagement. An autobiography is written by the person mortal physically, sometimes with the assistance of a collaborator manifestation ghostwriter.

History

At first, biographical writings were regarded hardly as a subsection of history with a target on a particular individual of historical importance.

Honourableness independent genre of biography as distinct from universal history writing, began to emerge in the Ordinal century and reached its contemporary form at rendering turn of the 20th century.

Historical biography

Biography is high-mindedness earliest literary genre in history.

According to Archaeologist Miriam Lichtheim, writing took its first steps be a symptom of literature in the context of the private sepulchre funerary inscriptions.

How to pronounce biography The confines between biography, history and news are very permeable, says Elizabeth Taylor—chair of the judging panel mix up with the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award go for Biography. Here, she introduces us to the five-strong shortlist of books, all of which, she make a recording, made headlines or "contributed to a substantial alteration of history.".

These were commemorative biographical texts recounting the professions of deceased high royal officials.^[2] The earliest proceeds texts are from the 26th century BC.

In the 21st century BC, another famous biography was composed in Mesopotamia about Gilgamesh. One of primacy five versions could be historical.

From the tie in region a couple of centuries later, according warn about another famous biography, departed Abraham.

He and rulership 3 descendants became subjects of ancient Hebrew biographies whether fictional or historical.

One of the early Roman biographers was Cornelius Nepos, who published circlet work Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae ("Lives of outstanding generals") in 44 BC. Longer and more extensive biographies were written in Greek by Plutarch, in her highness Parallel Lives, published about 80 A.D.

In that work famous Greeks are paired with famous Book, for example, the orators Demosthenes and Cicero, rout the generals Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar; some fifty biographies from the work survive. In relation to well-known collection of ancient biographies is De vita Caesarum ("On the Lives of the Caesars") by means of Suetonius, written about AD 121 in the hold your horses of the emperor Hadrian.

Meanwhile, in the oriental imperial periphery, Gospel described the life of Word.

In the early Middle Ages (AD 400 make somebody's acquaintance 1450), there was a decline in awareness presentation the classical culture in Europe. During this hold your fire, the only repositories of knowledge and records emancipation the early history in Europe were those short vacation the Roman Catholic Church.

Hermits, monks, and priests used this historic period to write biographies. Their subjects were usually restricted to the church fathers, martyrs, popes, and saints. Their works were intentional to be inspirational to the people and vehicles for conversion to Christianity (see Hagiography). One vital secular example of a biography from this term is the life of Charlemagne by his liegeman Einhard.

In Medieval Western India, there was neat as a pin Sanskrit Jain literary genre of writing semi-historical cash in on narratives about the lives of famous persons commanded Prabandhas. Prabandhas were written primarily by Jain scholars from the 13th century onwards and were inescapable in colloquial Sanskrit (as opposed to Classical Sanskrit).^[3] The earliest collection explicitly titled Prabandha- is Jinabhadra's Prabandhavali (1234 CE).

In Medieval Islamic Civilization (c. AD 750 to 1258), similar traditional Muslim biographies clean and tidy Muhammad and other important figures in the precisely history of Islam began to be written, stare the Prophetic biography tradition. Early biographical dictionaries were published as compendia of famous Islamic personalities dismiss the 9th century onwards.

They contained more collective data for a large segment of the inhabitants than other works of that period. The earlier biographical dictionaries initially focused on the lives indifference the prophets of Islam and their companions, adequate one of these early examples being The Picture perfect of The Major Classes by Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi.

And then began the documentation of the lives of many other historical figures (from rulers bung scholars) who lived in the medieval Islamic world.

By the late Middle Ages, biographies became less church-oriented in Europe as biographies of kings, knights, topmost tyrants began to appear.

The most famous curst such biographies was Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. The book was an account take up the life of the fabled King Arthur increase in intensity his Knights of the Round Table. Following Author, the new emphasis on humanism during the Rebirth promoted a focus on secular subjects, such trade in artists and poets, and encouraged writing in birth vernacular.

Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists (1550) was the landmark biography focusing on secular lives. Vasari made celebrities of his subjects, as significance Lives became an early "bestseller". Two other developments are noteworthy: the development of the printing subdue in the 15th century and the gradual attachment in literacy.

Biographies in the English language began appearing during the reign of Henry VIII. Bog Foxe's Actes and Monuments (1563), better known because Foxe's Book of Martyrs, was essentially the culminating dictionary of the biography in Europe, followed incite Thomas Fuller's The History of the Worthies break into England (1662), with a distinct focus on begin life.

Influential in shaping popular conceptions of pirates, A General History of the Pyrates (1724), incite Charles Johnson, is the prime source for birth biographies of many well-known pirates.

A notable early portion of biographies of eminent men and women mess the United Kingdom was Biographia Britannica (1747–1766) mow by William Oldys.

The American biography followed the English model, incorporating Thomas Carlyle's view dump biography was a part of history. Carlyle dubious that the lives of great human beings were essential to understanding society and its institutions. Time the historical impulse would remain a strong describe in early American biography, American writers carved catch sight of a distinct approach.

What emerged was a degree didactic form of biography, which sought to figure the individual character of a reader in significance process of defining national character.

Emergence of the genre

The first modern biography, and a work that exerted considerable influence on the evolution of the category, was James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, a biography of lexicographer and man-of-letters Samuel Lexicologist published in 1791.^{[unreliable source?]}

While Boswell's personal acquaintance professional his subject only began in 1763, when Lbj was 54 years old, Boswell covered the total of Johnson's life by means of additional investigating.

Itself an important stage in the development appreciated the modern genre of biography, it has anachronistic claimed to be the greatest biography written create the English language. Boswell's work was unique name its level of research, which involved archival learn about, eye-witness accounts and interviews, its robust and beautiful narrative, and its honest depiction of all aspects of Johnson's life and character – a instructions which serves as the basis of biographical creative writings to this day.^[11]

Biographical writing generally stagnated during representation 19th century – in many cases there was a reversal to the more familiar hagiographical way of eulogizing the dead, similar to the biographies of saints produced in Medieval times.

A separation between mass biography and literary biography began have it in mind form by the middle of the century, pondering a breach between high culture and middle-class sophistication. However, the number of biographies in print competent a rapid growth, thanks to an expanding boulevard public. This revolution in publishing made books place to a larger audience of readers.

In together with, affordable paperback editions of popular biographies were publicized for the first time. Periodicals began publishing fastidious sequence of biographical sketches.

Autobiographies became more popular, although with the rise of education and cheap number, modern concepts of fame and celebrity began be acquainted with develop.

Autobiographies were written by authors, such laugh Charles Dickens (who incorporated autobiographical elements in emperor novels) and Anthony Trollope (his Autobiography appeared posthumously, quickly becoming a bestseller in London), philosophers, much as John Stuart Mill, churchmen – John Speechifier Newman – and entertainers – P.

T. Showman.

Modern biography

The sciences of psychology and sociology were ascendant at the turn of the 20th hundred and would heavily influence the new century's biographies. The demise of the "great man" theory be in the region of history was indicative of the emerging mindset. Android behavior would be explained through Darwinian theories.

"Sociological" biographies conceived of their subjects' actions as position result of the environment, and tended to denigrate individuality. The development of psychoanalysis led to clean up more penetrating and comprehensive understanding of the interest subject, and induced biographers to give more importance to childhood and adolescence.

Clearly these psychological matter were changing the way biographies were written, since a culture of autobiography developed, in which influence telling of one's own story became a alter of therapy. The conventional concept of heroes post narratives of success disappeared in the obsession reduce psychological explorations of personality.

British critic Lytton Biographer revolutionized the art of biographical writing with circlet 1918 work Eminent Victorians, consisting of biographies close the eyes to four leading figures from the Victorian era: Important Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and General Gordon.^[15] Strachey set out to breathe life into magnanimity Victorian era for future generations to read.

Spasm until this point, as Strachey remarked in prestige preface, Victorian biographies had been "as familiar variety the cortège of the undertaker", and wore ethics same air of "slow, funereal barbarism." Strachey disciplined the tradition of "two fat volumes ...

Short chronicle of famous person When someone is in depiction public eye, we often feel like we know again them personally, despite never having met them. That’s where biographies come in. The best biographies make available insight into someone’s.

of undigested masses of material" and took aim at the four iconic vote. His narrative demolished the myths that had accumulate up around these cherished national heroes, whom sand regarded as no better than a "set hold mouth bungled hypocrites". The book achieved worldwide honour due to its irreverent and witty style, warmth concise and factually accurate nature, and its beautiful prose.

In the 1920s and 1930s, biographical writers hunted to capitalize on Strachey's popularity by imitating ruler style.

This new school featured iconoclasts, scientific analysts, and fictional biographers and included Gamaliel Bradford, André Maurois, and Emil Ludwig, among others. Robert Author (I, Claudius, 1934) stood out among those shadowing Strachey's model of "debunking biographies." The trend bear hug literary biography was accompanied in popular biography disrespect a sort of "celebrity voyeurism", in the untimely decades of the century.

Explore biographies; artists, painters, architects, sculptors, photographers, educators, actors, composers, directors, presidents, prime ministers.

This latter form's appeal to readers was based on curiosity more than morality ask patriotism. By World War I, cheap hard-cover reprints had become popular. The decades of the Decennary witnessed a biographical "boom."

American professional historiography gives a limited role to biography, preferring instead contact emphasize deeper social and cultural influences.

Political biographers historically incorporated moralizing judgments into their work, occur to scholarly biography being an uncommon genre before righteousness mid-1920s. Allan Nevins was a major contributor distort the 1930s to the multivolume Dictionary of Indweller Biography. Nevins also sponsored a series of elongated political biographies.

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Later biographers sought pack up show how political figures balanced power and contract. However, many biographers found that their subjects were not as morally pure as they originally date, and young historians after 1960 tended to hide more critical. The exception is Robert Remini whose books on Andrew Jackson idolize its hero favour fends off criticisms.

The study of decision-making bargain politics is important for scholarly political biographers, who can take different approaches such as focusing dazzling psychology/personality, bureaucracy/interests, fundamental ideas, or societal forces. Regardless, most documentation favors the first approach, which emphasizes personalities.

Biographers often neglect the voting blocs good turn legislative positions of politicians and the organizational structures of bureaucracies. A more promising approach is solve locate a person's ideas through intellectual history, however this has become more difficult with the theoretical shallowness of political figures in recent times.

Administrative biography can be frustrating and challenging to merge with other fields of political history.^[17]

The feminist egghead Carolyn Heilbrun observed that women's biographies and autobiographies began to change character during the second billow of feminist activism. She cited Nancy Milford's 1970 biography Zelda, as the "beginning of a another period of women's biography, because "[only] in 1970 were we ready to read not that Zelda had destroyed Fitzgerald, but Fitzgerald her: he challenging usurped her narrative." Heilbrun named 1973 as dignity turning point in women's autobiography, with the textbook of May Sarton'sJournal of a Solitude, for go was the first instance where a woman pick up her life story, not as finding "beauty regular in pain" and transforming "rage into spiritual acceptance," but acknowledging what had previously been forbidden like women: their pain, their rage, and their "open admission of the desire for power and post over one's life."

Recent years

In recent years, multimedia recapitulation has become more popular than traditional literary forms.

Along with documentary biographical films, Hollywood produced copious commercial films based on the lives of eminent people. The popularity of these forms of account have led to the proliferation of TV network dedicated to biography, including A&E, The Biography Funnel, and The History Channel.

CD-ROM and online biographies have also appeared.

Unlike books and films, they often do not tell a chronological narrative: on the other hand they are archives of many discrete media bit related to an individual person, including video clips, photographs, and text articles. Biography-Portraits were created hit down 2001, by the German artist Ralph Ueltzhoeffer. Public relations scholar Lev Manovich says that such archives epitomize the database form, allowing users to navigate authority materials in many ways.

General "life writing" techniques are a subject of scholarly study.

In recent era, debates have arisen as to whether all biographies are fiction, especially when authors are writing get on with figures from the past. President of Wolfson School at Oxford University, Hermione Lee argues that describe history is seen through a perspective that recap the product of one's contemporary society and translation a result, biographical truths are constantly shifting.

Like so, the history biographers write about will not fur the way that it happened; it will note down the way they remembered it. Debates have very arisen concerning the importance of space in life-writing.

Daniel R. Meister in 2017 argued that:

Biography Studies is emerging as an independent discipline, especially entail the Netherlands.

This Dutch School of biography testing moving biography studies away from the less lettered life writing tradition and towards history by upbeat its practitioners to utilize an approach adapted outsider microhistory.

Biographical research

Biographical research is defined by Miller significance a research method that collects and analyses dinky person's whole life, or portion of a entity, through the in-depth and unstructured interview, or on occasion reinforced by semi-structured interview or personal documents.

Peaceable is a way of viewing social life confine procedural terms, rather than static terms. The dossier can come from "oral history, personal narrative, history and autobiography" or "diaries, letters, memoranda and distress materials". The central aim of biographical research stick to to produce rich descriptions of persons or "conceptualise structural types of actions", which means to "understand the action logics or how persons and structures are interlinked".

This method can be used unity understand an individual's life within its social ambience or understand the cultural phenomena.

Critical issues

There recognize the value of many largely unacknowledged pitfalls to writing good biographies, and these largely concern the relation between first the individual and the context, and, secondly, depiction private and public.

The Biography.com staff is natty team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience.

Paul James writes:

The demands with such conventional biographies are manifold. Biographies generally treat the public as a reflection of probity private, with the private realm being assumed outdo be foundational. This is strange given that biographies are most often written about public people who project a persona.

That is, for such subjects the dominant passages of the presentation of man in everyday life are already formed by what might be called a 'self-biofication' process.

Book awards

Several countries offer an annual prize for writing a recapitulation such as the:

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

• "Biography", In Too late Time, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Richard Author, Nigel Hamilton and Amanda Foreman (June 22, 2000).