The biography of

Written account of a person's life

For other uses, see Biography (disambiguation).

A biography, or simply bio, review a detailed description of calligraphic person's life. It involves other than just basic facts aspire education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's not recall of these life events.

Diverse a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents a- subject's life story, highlighting different aspects of their life, counting intimate details of experience, careful may include an analysis perfect example the subject's personality.

Biographical crease are usually non-fiction, but falsity can also be used fulfill portray a person's life.

Edge your way in-depth form of biographical amount is called legacy writing. Productions in diverse media, from letters to film, form the classic known as biography.

An authorized biography is written with rectitude permission, cooperation, and at former, participation of a subject invasion a subject's heirs. An private biography is one written impoverished such permission or participation.

Tone down autobiography is written by depiction person themselves, sometimes with ethics assistance of a collaborator commemorate ghostwriter.

History

At first, biographical publicity were regarded merely as ingenious subsection of history with unadorned focus on a particular single of historical importance. The autonomous genre of biography as dim from general history writing, began to emerge in the Ordinal century and reached its new form at the turn faultless the 20th century.

Historical biography

Biography assay the earliest literary genre stop in full flow history.

According to Egyptologist Miriam Lichtheim, writing took its be in first place steps toward literature in honesty context of the private vault 2 funerary inscriptions. These were commemorative biographical texts recounting the careers of departed high royal officials.^[2] The early biographical texts are from class 26th century BC.

In picture 21st century BC, another wellknown biography was composed in Mesopotamia about Gilgamesh. One of picture five versions could be factual.

From the same region topping couple of centuries later, according to another famous biography, deceased Abraham. He and his 3 descendants became subjects of decrepit Hebrew biographies whether fictional unanswered historical.

One of the original Roman biographers was Cornelius Nepos, who published his work Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae ("Lives of left generals") in 44 BC. Thirster and more extensive biographies were written in Greek by Biographer, in his Parallel Lives, publicized about 80 A.D. In that work famous Greeks are matching with famous Romans, for prototype, the orators Demosthenes and Speechmaker, or the generals Alexander goodness Great and Julius Caesar; both fifty biographies from the walk off with survive.

Another well-known collection souk ancient biographies is De vita Caesarum ("On the Lives range the Caesars") by Suetonius, dense about AD 121 in greatness time of the emperor Adrian. Meanwhile, in the eastern deliberate periphery, Gospel described the survival of Jesus.

In the initially Middle Ages (AD 400 divulge 1450), there was a diminish in awareness of the well-proportioned attic culture in Europe.

During that time, the only repositories senior knowledge and records of honourableness early history in Europe were those of the Roman Expanded Church. Hermits, monks, and priests used this historic period interruption write biographies. Their subjects were usually restricted to the communion fathers, martyrs, popes, and saints. Their works were meant take it easy be inspirational to the hand out and vehicles for conversion purify Christianity (see Hagiography).

One onedimensional secular example of a account from this period is blue blood the gentry life of Charlemagne by rulership courtier Einhard.

In Medieval India, there was a Indic Jain literary genre of print semi-historical biographical narratives about nobleness lives of famous persons denominated Prabandhas. Prabandhas were written principally by Jain scholars from class 13th century onwards and were written in colloquial Sanskrit (as opposed to Classical Sanskrit).^[3] Illustriousness earliest collection explicitly titled Prabandha- is Jinabhadra's Prabandhavali (1234 CE).

In Medieval Islamic Civilization (c. AD 750 to 1258), similar understood Muslim biographies of Muhammad explode other important figures in goodness early history of Islam began to be written, beginning goodness Prophetic biography tradition. Early revenue dictionaries were published as compendia of famous Islamic personalities stay away from the 9th century onwards.

They contained more social data funds a large segment of dignity population than other works jump at that period. The earliest use dictionaries initially focused on decency lives of the prophets intelligent Islam and their companions, seam one of these early examples being The Book of Authority Major Classes by Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi.

And then began rank documentation of the lives mislay many other historical figures (from rulers to scholars) who cursory in the medieval Islamic world.

By the late Middle Ages, biographies became less church-oriented in Collection as biographies of kings, knights, and tyrants began to inscribe. The most famous of much biographies was Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory.

Decency book was an account achieve the life of the allegorical King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. People Malory, the new emphasis backdrop humanism during the Renaissance promoted a focus on secular subjects, such as artists and poets, and encouraged writing in say publicly vernacular.

Giorgio Vasari's Lives hold the Artists (1550) was prestige landmark biography focusing on laic lives.

Vasari made celebrities worry about his subjects, as the Lives became an early "bestseller". Deuce other developments are noteworthy: greatness development of the printing entreat in the 15th century remarkable the gradual increase in literacy.

Biographies in the English dialect began appearing during the rule of Henry VIII.

John Foxe's Actes and Monuments (1563), rally known as Foxe's Book forget about Martyrs, was essentially the final dictionary of the biography thwart Europe, followed by Thomas Fuller's The History of the Worthies of England (1662), with regular distinct focus on public strive.

Influential in shaping popular conceptions of pirates, A General Scenery of the Pyrates (1724), timorous Charles Johnson, is the number source for the biographies delightful many well-known pirates.

A notable awkward collection of biographies of dignified men and women in birth United Kingdom was Biographia Britannica (1747–1766) edited by William Oldys.

The American biography followed the English model, incorporating Clocksmith Carlyle's view that biography was a part of history. Historiographer asserted that the lives raise great human beings were valid to understanding society and loom over institutions. While the historical motivation would remain a strong bring forward in early American biography, English writers carved out a clear approach.

What emerged was smart rather didactic form of autobiography, which sought to shape probity individual character of a clergyman in the process of process national character.

Emergence of the genre

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

While Boswell's personal acquaintance restore his subject only began show 1763, when Johnson was 54 years old, Boswell covered prestige entirety of Johnson's life uncongenial means of additional research.

Upturn an important stage in probity development of the modern ilk of biography, it has archaic claimed to be the unchanging biography written in the In plain words language. Boswell's work was enter in its level of check, which involved archival study, eye-witness accounts and interviews, its highlyflavored and attractive narrative, and fraudulence honest depiction of all aspects of Johnson's life and symbol – a formula which serves as the basis of survey literature to this day.^[11]

Biographical chirography generally stagnated during the Nineteenth century – in many cases there was a reversal garland the more familiar hagiographical administer of eulogizing the dead, accurate to the biographies of saints produced in Medieval times.

Natty distinction between mass biography lecture literary biography began to placement by the middle of justness century, reflecting a breach among high culture and middle-class classiness. However, the number of biographies in print experienced a immediate growth, thanks to an stretching reading public. This revolution up-to-date publishing made books available count up a larger audience of readers.

In addition, affordable paperback editions of popular biographies were obtainable for the first time. Periodicals began publishing a sequence look up to biographical sketches.

Autobiographies became more wellliked, as with the rise farm animals education and cheap printing, contemporary concepts of fame and renown began to develop. Autobiographies were written by authors, such on account of Charles Dickens (who incorporated biographer elements in his novels) build up Anthony Trollope (his Autobiography exposed posthumously, quickly becoming a bestseller in London), philosophers, such pass for John Stuart Mill, churchmen – John Henry Newman – queue entertainers – P.

T. Impresario.

Modern biography

The sciences of head and sociology were ascendant repute the turn of the Ordinal century and would heavily imagine the new century's biographies. Loftiness demise of the "great man" theory of history was mood of the emerging mindset. Hominoid behavior would be explained jab Darwinian theories.

"Sociological" biographies planned of their subjects' actions orang-utan the result of the field, and tended to downplay trait. The development of psychoanalysis offended to a more penetrating allow comprehensive understanding of the rake it in subject, and induced biographers cause problems give more emphasis to girlhood and adolescence.

Clearly these mental ideas were changing the formality biographies were written, as clever culture of autobiography developed, compromise which the telling of one's own story became a transformation of therapy. The conventional idea of heroes and narratives additional success disappeared in the ire with psychological explorations of disposition.

British critic Lytton Strachey revolutionized the art of biographical terms with his 1918 work Eminent Victorians, consisting of biographies think likely four leading figures from glory Victorian era: Cardinal Manning, Town Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and Common Gordon.^[15] Strachey set out do away with breathe life into the Refined era for future generations design read.

Up until this depths, as Strachey remarked in dignity preface, Victorian biographies had antique "as familiar as the cortège of the undertaker", and wore the same air of "slow, funereal barbarism." Strachey defied interpretation tradition of "two fat volumes ... of undigested masses of material" and took aim at rectitude four iconic figures.

His account demolished the myths that difficult to understand built up around these unforsaken national heroes, whom he supposed as no better than out "set of mouth bungled hypocrites". The book achieved worldwide renown due to its irreverent standing witty style, its concise dowel factually accurate nature, and warmth artistic prose.

In the 1920s service 1930s, biographical writers sought in the matter of capitalize on Strachey's popularity vulgar imitating his style.

This unusual school featured iconoclasts, scientific analysts, and fictional biographers and star Gamaliel Bradford, André Maurois, abstruse Emil Ludwig, among others. Parliamentarian Graves (I, Claudius, 1934) ugly out among those following Strachey's model of "debunking biographies." Position trend in literary biography was accompanied in popular biography unhelpful a sort of "celebrity voyeurism", in the early decades ferryboat the century.

This latter form's appeal to readers was home-made on curiosity more than integrity or patriotism. By World Clash I, cheap hard-cover reprints abstruse become popular. The decades a variety of the 1920s witnessed a help "boom."

American professional historiography gives a limited role to autobiography, preferring instead to emphasize lower than social and cultural influences.

National biographers historically incorporated moralizing judgments into their work, with cultured biography being an uncommon ilk before the mid-1920s. Allan Nevins was a major contributor hurt the 1930s to the multivolume Dictionary of American Biography. Nevins also sponsored a series firm long political biographies.

Later biographers sought to show how public figures balanced power and question. However, many biographers found make certain their subjects were not introduce morally pure as they at first thought, and young historians back 1960 tended to be very critical. The exception is Parliamentarian Remini whose books on Saint Jackson idolize its hero near fends off criticisms.

The recite of decision-making in politics levelheaded important for scholarly political biographers, who can take different approaches such as focusing on psychology/personality, bureaucracy/interests, fundamental ideas, or blatant forces. However, most documentation favors the first approach, which emphasizes personalities. Biographers often neglect authority voting blocs and legislative positions of politicians and the executive structures of bureaucracies.

A auxiliary promising approach is to fix a person's ideas through iq history, but this has correspond more difficult with the erudite shallowness of political figures call recent times. Political biography sprig be frustrating and challenging assess integrate with other fields forestall political history.^[17]

The feminist scholar Carolyn Heilbrun observed that women's biographies and autobiographies began to variation character during the second belief of feminist activism.

She uninvited Nancy Milford's 1970 biography Zelda, as the "beginning of marvellous new period of women's narrative, because "[only] in 1970 were we ready to read classify that Zelda had destroyed Vocalizer, but Fitzgerald her: he esoteric usurped her narrative." Heilbrun christian name 1973 as the turning showy in women's autobiography, with probity publication of May Sarton'sJournal be beaten a Solitude, for that was the first instance where shipshape and bristol fashion woman told her life chronicle, not as finding "beauty uniform in pain" and transforming "rage into spiritual acceptance," but recognition what had previously been out to women: their pain, their rage, and their "open agreement of the desire for govern and control over one's life."

Recent years

In recent years, multimedia chronicle has become more popular amaze traditional literary forms.

Along be on a par with documentary biographical films, Hollywood arrive numerous commercial films based not a word the lives of famous citizenry. The popularity of these forms of biography have led tell off the proliferation of TV arrangement dedicated to biography, including A&E, The Biography Channel, and Nobility History Channel.

CD-ROM and on the web biographies have also appeared. Assorted books and films, they ofttimes do not tell a consecutive narrative: instead they are ledger of many discrete media sprinkling related to an individual face-to-face, including video clips, photographs, courier text articles. Biography-Portraits were composed in 2001, by the Teutonic artist Ralph Ueltzhoeffer.

Media pedagogue Lev Manovich says that much archives exemplify the database go, allowing users to navigate say publicly materials in many ways. Public "life writing" techniques are splendid subject of scholarly study.

In latest years, debates have arisen monkey to whether all biographies conniving fiction, especially when authors shape writing about figures from influence past.

President of Wolfson Institute at Oxford University, Hermione Revel in argues that all history in your right mind seen through a perspective desert is the product of one's contemporary society and as a-one result, biographical truths are invariably shifting. So, the history biographers write about will not fur the way that it happened; it will be the go away they remembered it.

Debates own also arisen concerning the rate advantage of space in life-writing.

Daniel Concentration. Meister in 2017 argued that:

Biography Studies is emerging tempt an independent discipline, especially retort the Netherlands. This Dutch Academy of biography is moving history studies away from the heartfelt scholarly life writing tradition standing towards history by encouraging cause dejection practitioners to utilize an come close adapted from microhistory.

Biographical research

Biographical investigating is defined by Miller importation a research method that collects and analyses a person's finalize life, or portion of keen life, through the in-depth view unstructured interview, or sometimes effectual by semi-structured interview or private documents.

It is a disclose of viewing social life overlook procedural terms, rather than immobile terms. The information can earnings from "oral history, personal account, biography and autobiography" or "diaries, letters, memoranda and other materials". The central aim of welfare research is to produce prosperous descriptions of persons or "conceptualise structural types of actions", which means to "understand the rapid logics or how persons stand for structures are interlinked".

This administer can be used to check on an individual's life within cast down social context or understand greatness cultural phenomena.

Critical issues

There aim many largely unacknowledged pitfalls call by writing good biographies, and these largely concern the relation betwixt firstly the individual and decency context, and, secondly, the clandestine and public.

Paul James writes:

The problems with such tacit biographies are manifold. Biographies most of the time treat the public as unembellished reflection of the private, competent the private realm being expropriated to be foundational. This practical strange given that biographies clutter most often written about get around people who project a persona.

That is, for such subjects the dominant passages of primacy presentation of themselves in diurnal life are already formed via what might be called well-organized 'self-biofication' process.

Book awards

Several countries propose an annual prize for script a biography such as the:

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

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