![Plutarchs Lives Vol the Third 1727](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Plutarchs_Lives_Vol_the_Third_1727.jpg)
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or
curriculum vitae (
résumé), a biography presents a subject's life story, highlighting various aspects of their life, including intimate details of experience, and may include an analysis of the subject's personality.
Biographical works are usually
non-fiction
Nonfiction, or non-fiction, is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to provide information (and sometimes opinions) grounded only in facts and real life, rather than in imagination. Nonfiction is often associated with b ...
, but fiction can also be used to portray a person's life. One in-depth form of biographical coverage is called legacy writing. Works in diverse media, from literature to film, form the
genre
Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...
known as biography.
An authorized biography is written with the permission, cooperation, and at times, participation of a subject or a subject's heirs. An
autobiography is written by the person themselves, sometimes with the assistance of a collaborator or
ghostwriter
A ghostwriter is hired to write literary or journalistic works, speeches, or other texts that are officially credited to another person as the author. Celebrities, executives, participants in timely news stories, and political leaders often ...
.
History
At first, biographical writings were regarded merely as a subsection of history with a focus on a particular individual of historical importance. The independent genre of biography as distinct from general history writing, began to emerge in the 18th century and reached its contemporary form at the turn of the 20th century.
Historical biography
![Einhard](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Einhard.jpg)
Biography is the earliest literary genre in history. According to Egyptologist
Miriam Lichtheim
Miriam Lichtheim (3 May 1914, Istanbul – 27 March 2004, Jerusalem) was a Turkish-born American-Israeli Egyptologist, known for her translations of ancient Egyptian texts.
Biography
Miriam was born in Istanbul on May 3, 1914, to Richard Lichtheim ...
, writing took its first steps toward literature in the context of the private tomb funerary inscriptions. These were commemorative biographical texts recounting the careers of deceased high royal officials. The earliest biographical texts are from the 26th century BC.
In the 21st century BC, another famous biography was composed in Mesopotamia about
Gilgamesh
sux, , label=none
, image = Hero lion Dur-Sharrukin Louvre AO19862.jpg
, alt =
, caption = Possible representation of Gilgamesh as Master of Animals, grasping a lion in his left arm and snake in his right hand, in an Assy ...
.
One of the five versions could be historical.
From the same region a couple of centuries later, according to
another famous biography, departed
Abraham
Abraham, ; ar, , , name=, group= (originally Abram) is the common Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the special relationship between the Je ...
.
He and his 3 descendants became subjects of ancient Hebrew biographies whether fictional or historical.
One of the earliest Roman biographers was
Cornelius Nepos
Cornelius Nepos (; c. 110 BC – c. 25 BC) was a Roman biographer. He was born at Hostilia, a village in Cisalpine Gaul not far from Verona.
Biography
Nepos's Cisalpine birth is attested by Ausonius, and Pliny the Elder calls him ''Pad ...
, who published his work ''Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae'' ("Lives of outstanding generals") in 44 BC. Longer and more extensive biographies were written in Greek by
Plutarch
Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for hi ...
, in his ''
Parallel Lives'', published about 80 A.D. In this work famous Greeks are paired with famous Romans, for example the orators
Demosthenes
Demosthenes (; el, Δημοσθένης, translit=Dēmosthénēs; ; 384 – 12 October 322 BC) was a Greek statesman and orator in ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual pr ...
and
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...
, or the generals
Alexander the Great
Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to ...
and
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, ...
; some fifty biographies from the work survive. Another well-known collection of ancient biographies is
''De vita Caesarum'' ("On the Lives of the Caesars") by
Suetonius, written about AD 121 in the time of the emperor
Hadrian. Meanwhile, in the eastern imperial periphery,
Gospel
Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...
described the life of
Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
.
In the early
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
(AD 400 to 1450), there was a decline in awareness of the
classical culture in Europe. During this time, the only repositories of knowledge and records of the early history in Europe were those of the
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
.
Hermit
A hermit, also known as an eremite (adjectival form: hermitic or eremitic) or solitary, is a person who lives in seclusion. Eremitism plays a role in a variety of religions.
Description
In Christianity, the term was originally applied to a Ch ...
s,
monk
A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...
s, and
priest
A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in partic ...
s used this historic period to write biographies. Their subjects were usually restricted to the
church father
The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity. The historical pe ...
s,
martyr
A martyr (, ''mártys'', "witness", or , ''marturia'', stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an externa ...
s,
pope
The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...
s, and
saint
In religious belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of Q-D-Š, holiness, likeness, or closeness to God. However, the use of the term ''saint'' depends on the context and Christian denomination, denominat ...
s. Their works were meant to be inspirational to the people and vehicles for
conversion
Conversion or convert may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* "Conversion" (''Doctor Who'' audio), an episode of the audio drama ''Cyberman''
* "Conversion" (''Stargate Atlantis''), an episode of the television series
* "The Conversion" ...
to
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
(see
Hagiography). One significant secular example of a biography from this period is the
life of Charlemagne by his courtier
Einhard.
In
Medieval Western India, there was a
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
Jain
Jainism ( ), also known as Jain Dharma, is an Indian religion. Jainism traces its spiritual ideas and history through the succession of twenty-four tirthankaras (supreme preachers of ''Dharma''), with the first in the current time cycle being ...
literary genre of writing semi-historical biographical narratives about the lives of famous persons called
Prabandha
Prabandha is a literary genre of medieval Indian Sanskrit literature. The ''prabandha''s contain semi-historical anecdotes about the lives of famous persons. They were written primarily by Jain scholars of western India (Gujarat and Malwa) from 1 ...
s. Prabandhas were written primarily by Jain scholars from 13th century onwards and were written in colloquial Sanskrit (as opposed to
Classical Sanskrit). The earliest collection explicitly titled ''Prabandha-'' is
Jinabhadra
Jinabhadra or Vachanacharya Jinabhadragani Kshamashramana was Jain ascetic author of Prakrit and Sanskrit texts.
Life
Jinabhadra (520-623 AD) was a Svetambara Jain monk during sixth-seventh century CE. Not much is known about his life but it s ...
's ''Prabandhavali'' (1234 CE).
In
Medieval Islamic Civilization (c. AD 750 to 1258), similar traditional Muslim biographies of
Muhammad
Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the mo ...
and other important figures in the early
history of Islam
The history of Islam concerns the political, social, economic, military, and cultural developments of the Islamic civilization. Most historians believe that Islam originated in Mecca and Medina at the start of the 7th century CE. Muslims re ...
began to be written, beginning the
Prophetic biography tradition. Early
biographical dictionaries
A biographical dictionary is a type of encyclopedic dictionary limited to biographical information. Many attempt to cover the major personalities of a country (with limitations, such as living persons only, in ''Who's Who'', or deceased people onl ...
were published as compendia of famous Islamic personalities from the 9th century onwards. They contained more social data for a large segment of the population than other works of that period. The earliest biographical dictionaries initially focused on the lives of the
prophets of Islam and
their companions, with one of these early examples being ''
The Book of The Major Classes
Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Sa‘d ibn Manī‘ al-Baṣrī al-Hāshimī or simply Ibn Sa'd ( ar, ابن سعد) and nicknamed ''Scribe of Waqidi'' (''Katib al-Waqidi''), was a scholar and Arabian biographer. Ibn Sa'd was born in 784/785 C ...
'' by
Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi
Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Sa‘d ibn Manī‘ al-Baṣrī al-Hāshimī or simply Ibn Sa'd ( ar, ابن سعد) and nicknamed ''Scribe of Waqidi'' (''Katib al-Waqidi''), was a scholar and Arabian biographer. Ibn Sa'd was born in 784/785 C ...
. And then began the documentation of the lives of many other historical figures (from rulers to scholars) who lived in the medieval Islamic world.
![Foxe's Book of Martyrs - Frontispiece (1761)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Foxe%27s_Book_of_Martyrs_-_Frontispiece_%281761%29.jpg)
By the late Middle Ages, biographies became less church-oriented in Europe as biographies of
king
King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king.
*In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...
s,
knight
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...
s, and
tyrant
A tyrant (), in the modern English usage of the word, is an absolute ruler who is unrestrained by law, or one who has usurped a legitimate ruler's sovereignty. Often portrayed as cruel, tyrants may defend their positions by resorting to re ...
s began to appear. The most famous of such biographies was ''
Le Morte d'Arthur'' by Sir
Thomas Malory
Sir Thomas Malory was an English writer, the author of ''Le Morte d'Arthur'', the classic English-language chronicle of the Arthurian legend, compiled and in most cases translated from French sources. The most popular version of ''Le Morte d'Ar ...
. The book was an account of the life of the fabled
King Arthur and his
Knights of the Round Table. Following Malory, the new emphasis on
humanism
Humanism is a philosophy, philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and Agency (philosophy), agency of Human, human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical in ...
during the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
promoted a focus on secular subjects, such as artists and poets, and encouraged writing in the vernacular.
Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari (, also , ; 30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance Master, who worked as a painter, architect, engineer, writer, and historian, who is best known for his work '' The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculp ...
's ''
Lives of the Artists
''The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects'' ( it, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori), often simply known as ''The Lives'' ( it, Le Vite), is a series of artist biographies written by 16th-ce ...
'' (1550) was the landmark biography focusing on secular lives. Vasari made celebrities of his subjects, as the ''Lives'' became an early "bestseller". Two other developments are noteworthy: the development of the
printing press
A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the ...
in the 15th century and the gradual increase in
literacy
Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, hum ...
.
Biographies in the English language began appearing during the reign of
Henry VIII.
John Foxe's ''
Actes and Monuments'' (1563), better known as ''Foxe's Book of Martyrs'', was essentially the first dictionary of the biography in Europe, followed by
Thomas Fuller
Thomas Fuller (baptised 19 June 1608 – 16 August 1661) was an English churchman and historian. He is now remembered for his writings, particularly his ''Worthies of England'', published in 1662, after his death. He was a prolific author, and ...
's ''The History of the Worthies of England'' (1662), with a distinct focus on public life.
Influential in shaping popular conceptions of pirates, ''
A General History of the Pyrates
''A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates'' is a 1724 book published in Britain containing biographies of contemporary pirates, '' (1724), by Charles Johnson, is the prime source for the biographies of many well-known pirates.
A notable early collection of biographies of eminent men and women in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
was ''
Biographia Britannica
''Biographia Britannica'' was a multi-volume biographical compendium, "the most ambitious attempt in the latter half of the eighteenth century to document the lives of notable British men and women". The first edition, edited by William Oldys (16 ...
'' (1747-1766) edited by
William Oldys
William Oldys (14 July 1696 – 15 April 1761) was an English antiquarian and bibliographer.
Life
He was probably born in London, the illegitimate son of Dr William Oldys (1636–1708), chancellor of Lincoln diocese. His father had held the ...
.
The American biography followed the English model, incorporating
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature and philosophy.
Born in Ecclefechan, Dum ...
's view that biography was a part of history. Carlyle asserted that the lives of great human beings were essential to understanding society and its institutions. While the historical impulse would remain a strong element in early American biography, American writers carved out a distinct approach. What emerged was a rather didactic form of biography, which sought to shape the individual character of a reader in the process of defining national character.
Emergence of the genre
![James Boswell of Auchinleck](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/James_Boswell_of_Auchinleck.jpg)
The first modern biography, and a work which exerted considerable influence on the evolution of the genre, was
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (; 29 October 1740 ( N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary the English writer ...
's ''
The Life of Samuel Johnson
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
'', a biography of lexicographer and man-of-letters
Samuel Johnson published in 1791.
While Boswell's personal acquaintance with his subject only began in 1763, when Johnson was 54 years old, Boswell covered the entirety of Johnson's life by means of additional research. Itself an important stage in the development of the modern
genre
Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...
of biography, it has been claimed to be the greatest biography written in the
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...
. Boswell's work was unique in its level of research, which involved archival study, eye-witness accounts and interviews, its robust and attractive narrative, and its honest depiction of all aspects of Johnson's life and character – a formula which serves as the basis of biographical literature to this day.
Biographical writing generally stagnated during the 19th century – in many cases there was a reversal to the more familiar
hagiographical
A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies mig ...
method of eulogizing the dead, similar to the biographies of
saint
In religious belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of Q-D-Š, holiness, likeness, or closeness to God. However, the use of the term ''saint'' depends on the context and Christian denomination, denominat ...
s produced in
Medieval
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
times. A distinction between mass biography and
literary biography When studying literature, biography and its relationship to literature is often a subject of literary criticism, and is treated in several different forms. Two scholarly approaches use biography or biographical approaches to the past as a tool for i ...
began to form by the middle of the century, reflecting a breach between high culture and
middle-class culture. However, the number of biographies in print experienced a rapid growth, thanks to an expanding reading public. This revolution in publishing made books available to a larger audience of readers. In addition, affordable
paperback
A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, ...
editions of popular biographies were published for the first time.
Periodical
A periodical literature (also called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar example is a newspaper, but a magazine or a journal are also example ...
s began publishing a sequence of biographical sketches.
Autobiographies
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life.
It is a form of biography.
Definition
The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...
became more popular, as with the rise of education and cheap printing, modern concepts of fame and celebrity began to develop. Autobiographies were written by authors, such as
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
(who incorporated autobiographical elements in his novels) and
Anthony Trollope, (his ''Autobiography'' appeared posthumously, quickly becoming a bestseller in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
), philosophers, such as
John Stuart Mill, churchmen –
John Henry Newman
John Henry Newman (21 February 1801 – 11 August 1890) was an English theologian, academic, intellectual, philosopher, polymath, historian, writer, scholar and poet, first as an Anglican ministry, Anglican priest and later as a Catholi ...
– and entertainers –
P. T. Barnum
Phineas Taylor Barnum (; July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman, businessman, and politician, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus (1871–2017) with James Anthony Bailey. He was ...
.
Modern biography
The sciences of
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
and
sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...
were ascendant at the turn of the 20th century and would heavily influence the new century's biographies. The demise of the
"great man" theory of history was indicative of the emerging mindset. Human behavior would be explained through
Darwinian
Darwinism is a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that ...
theories. "Sociological" biographies conceived of their subjects' actions as the result of the environment, and tended to downplay individuality. The development of
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
led to a more penetrating and comprehensive understanding of the biographical subject, and induced biographers to give more emphasis to
childhood
A child (plural, : children) is a human being between the stages of childbirth, birth and puberty, or between the Development of the human body, developmental period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of ''child'' generally refers ...
and
adolescence. Clearly these psychological ideas were changing the way biographies were written, as a culture of autobiography developed, in which the telling of one's own story became a form of therapy. The conventional concept of heroes and narratives of success disappeared in the obsession with psychological explorations of personality.
![Eminent Victorians title page](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Eminent_Victorians_title_page.jpg)
British critic
Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of '' Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychological insight ...
revolutionized the art of biographical writing with his 1918 work ''
Eminent Victorians
''Eminent Victorians'' is a book by Lytton Strachey (one of the older members of the Bloomsbury Group), first published in 1918, and consisting of biographies of four leading figures from the Victorian era. Its fame rests on the irreverence and w ...
'', consisting of biographies of four leading figures from the
Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...
:
Cardinal Manning,
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale (; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was an English social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War, i ...
,
Thomas Arnold, and
General Gordon.
Strachey set out to breathe life into the
Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...
for future generations to read. Up until this point, as Strachey remarked in the preface, Victorian biographies had been "as familiar as the ''cortège'' of the undertaker", and wore the same air of "slow, funereal barbarism." Strachey defied the tradition of "two fat volumes... of undigested masses of material" and took aim at the four iconic figures. His narrative demolished the myths that had built up around these cherished national heroes, whom he regarded as no better than a "set of mouth bungled hypocrites". The book achieved worldwide fame due to its irreverent and witty style, its concise and factually accurate nature, and its artistic prose.
In the 1920s and '30s, biographical writers sought to capitalize on Strachey's popularity by imitating his style. This new school featured iconoclasts, scientific analysts, and fictional biographers and included
Gamaliel Bradford,
André Maurois, and
Emil Ludwig
Emil Ludwig (25 January 1881 – 17 September 1948) was a German-Swiss author, known for his biographies and study of historical "greats."
Biography
Emil Ludwig (originally named Emil Cohn) was born in Breslau, now part of Poland, on 25 Ja ...
, among others.
Robert Graves (''I, Claudius'', 1934) stood out among those following Strachey's model of "debunking biographies." The trend in
literary biography When studying literature, biography and its relationship to literature is often a subject of literary criticism, and is treated in several different forms. Two scholarly approaches use biography or biographical approaches to the past as a tool for i ...
was accompanied in popular biography by a sort of "celebrity voyeurism", in the early decades of the century. This latter form's appeal to readers was based on curiosity more than morality or patriotism. By
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, cheap hard-cover reprints had become popular. The decades of the 1920s witnessed a biographical "boom."
The feminist scholar
Carolyn Heilbrun
Carolyn Gold Heilbrun (January 13, 1926 – October 9, 2003) was an American academic at Columbia University, the first woman to receive tenure in the English department, and a prolific feminist author of academic studies. In addition, beginning ...
observed that women's biographies and autobiographies began to change character during the second wave of
feminist activism. She cited
Nancy Milford's 1970 biography ''Zelda'', as the "beginning of a new period of women's biography, because "
nlyin 1970 were we ready to read not that
Zelda had destroyed
Fitzgerald
The FitzGerald/FitzMaurice Dynasty is a noble and aristocratic dynasty of Cambro-Norman, Anglo-Norman and later Hiberno-Norman origin. They have been peers of Ireland since at least the 13th century, and are described in the Annals of the ...
, but Fitzgerald her: he had usurped her narrative." Heilbrun named 1973 as the turning point in women's autobiography, with the publication of
May Sarton's ''Journal of a Solitude,'' for that was the first instance where a woman told her life story, not as finding "beauty even in pain" and transforming "rage into spiritual acceptance," but acknowledging what had previously been forbidden to women: their pain, their rage, and their "open admission of the desire for power and control over one's life."
Recent years
In recent years,
multimedia
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...
biography has become more popular than traditional literary forms. Along with documentary
biographical films,
Hollywood produced numerous commercial films based on the lives of famous people. The popularity of these forms of biography have led to the proliferation of TV channels dedicated to biography, including
A&E,
The Biography Channel
FYI (stylized as fyi,) is an American basic cable channel owned by A&E Networks, a joint venture between the Disney Media Networks subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company and Hearst Communications (each owns 50%). The network features lifestyle pr ...
, and
The History Channel
History (formerly The History Channel from January 1, 1995 to February 15, 2008, stylized as HISTORY) is an American pay television network and flagship channel owned by A&E Networks, a joint venture between Hearst Communications and the Disney ...
.
CD-ROM and online biographies have also appeared. Unlike books and films, they often do not tell a chronological narrative: instead they are archives of many discrete media elements related to an individual person, including video clips, photographs, and text articles. Biography-Portraits were created in 2001, by the German artist
Ralph Ueltzhoeffer. Media scholar
Lev Manovich
Lev Manovich ( ) is an author of books on digital culture and new media, and professor of Computer Science at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Manovich's current research and teaching focuses on digital humanities, social computin ...
says that such archives exemplify the database form, allowing users to navigate the materials in many ways. General "life writing" techniques are a subject of scholarly study.
In recent years, debates have arisen as to whether all biographies are fiction, especially when authors are writing about figures from the past. President of Wolfson College at Oxford University,
Hermione Lee
Dame Hermione Lee, (born 29 February 1948) is a British biographer, literary critic and academic. She is a former President of Wolfson College, Oxford, and a former Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature in the University of Oxford and Pr ...
argues that all history is seen through a perspective that is the product of one's contemporary society and as a result, biographical truths are constantly shifting. So, the history biographers write about will not be the way that it happened; it will be the way they remembered it. Debates have also 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 in the Netherlands. This Dutch School of biography is moving biography studies away from the less scholarly life writing tradition and towards history by encouraging its practitioners to utilize an approach adapted from microhistory.
Biographical research
Biographical research
Biographical research is a qualitative research approach aligned to the social interpretive paradigm of research. The biographical research is concerned with the reconstruction of life histories and the constitution of meaning based on biographica ...
is defined by Miller as a research method that collects and analyses a person's whole life, or portion of a life, through the in-depth and unstructured interview, or sometimes reinforced by semi-structured interview or personal documents. It is a way of viewing social life in procedural terms, rather than static terms. The information can come from "oral history, personal narrative, biography and autobiography" or "diaries, letters, memoranda and other materials". The central aim of biographical research is 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 to understand an individual's life within its social context or understand the cultural phenomena.
Critical issues
There are many largely unacknowledged pitfalls to writing good biographies, and these largely concern the relation between firstly the individual and the context, and, secondly, the private and public. Paul James writes:
Book awards
Several countries offer an annual prize for writing a biography such as the:
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Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize
The Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize was a Canadian literary award, presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada to a work judged as the year's best work of biography, autobiography or personal memoir by a Canadian writer."$10,000 biography award launch ...
– Canada
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National Biography Award
The National Biography Award, established in Australia in 1996, is awarded for the best published work of biographical or autobiographical writing by an Australian. It aims "to encourage the highest standards of writing biography and autobiography ...
– Australia
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Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography – United States
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Whitbread Prize for Best Biography – United Kingdom
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J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography – United Kingdom
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Prix Goncourt de la Biographie
The Prix Goncourt (french: Le prix Goncourt, , ''The Goncourt Prize'') is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year". The prize carries a symbolic reward o ...
– France
See also
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Historiography
Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians ha ...
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Historiography of science
The historiography of science or the historiography of the history of science is the study of the history and methodology of the sub-discipline of history, known as the history of science, including its disciplinary aspects and practices (methods ...
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Historiography of the United Kingdom
The historiography of the United Kingdom includes the historical and archival research and writing on the history of the United Kingdom, Great Britain, England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. For studies of the overseas empire see historiography ...
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Historiography of the United States
The historiography of the United States refers to the studies, sources, critical methods and interpretations used by scholars to study the history of the United States. While history examines the interplay of events in the past, historiography exa ...
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Legal biography
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Letter collection
A letter collection or letter book consists of a publication, usually a book, containing a compilation of letters written by a real person. Unlike an epistolary novel, a letter collection belongs to non-fiction literature. As a publication, a lett ...
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Psychobiography Psychobiography aims to understand historically significant individuals, such as artists or political leaders, through the application of psychological theory and research.
Through its merging of personality psychology and historical evidence, psy ...
Notes
References
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Further reading
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External links
"Biography" ''In Our Time'', BBC Radio 4 discussion with Richard Holmes, Nigel Hamilton and Amanda Foreman (June 22, 2000).
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Genres
Non-fiction literature
History