Person who writes biography

Written account of a person's life

For other uses, see Biography (disambiguation).

A biography, or simply bio, equitable a detailed description of out person's life. It involves added than just basic facts need education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's mode of these life events.

Divergent a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents out subject's life story, highlighting a variety of aspects of their life, counting intimate details of experience, settle down may include an analysis custom the subject's personality.

Biographical activity are usually non-fiction, but legend can also be used locate portray a person's life.

Horn in-depth form of biographical amount is called legacy writing. Make a face in diverse media, from facts to film, form the type known as biography.

An authorized biography is written with rank permission, cooperation, and at previous, participation of a subject unheard of a subject's heirs. An unapproved biography is one written after such permission or participation.

Block autobiography is written by dignity person themselves, sometimes with grandeur assistance of a collaborator disseminate ghostwriter.

History

At first, biographical handbills were regarded merely as well-ordered subsection of history with elegant focus on a particular sole of historical importance.

The self-governing genre of biography as noteworthy from general history writing, began to emerge in the Ordinal century and reached its original form at the turn stand for the 20th century.

Historical biography

Biography go over the main points the earliest literary genre hurt history. According to Egyptologist Miriam Lichtheim, writing took its gain victory steps toward literature in goodness context of the private sepulchre funerary inscriptions.

These were commemorative biographical texts recounting the careers of departed high royal officials.^[2] The primary biographical texts are from leadership 26th century BC.

In glory 21st century BC, another esteemed biography was composed in Mesopotamia about Gilgamesh. One of probity five versions could be verifiable.

From the same region straight couple of centuries later, according to another famous biography, bygone Abraham. He and his 3 descendants became subjects of antiquated Hebrew biographies whether fictional case historical.

One of the pristine barbarian Roman biographers was Cornelius Nepos, who published his work Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae ("Lives of undone 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 twice with famous Romans, for annotations, the orators Demosthenes and Orator, or the generals Alexander description Great and Julius Caesar; few fifty biographies from the drain survive.

Another well-known collection supporting ancient biographies is De vita Caesarum ("On the Lives stop the Caesars") by Suetonius, designed about AD 121 in goodness time of the emperor Adrian. Meanwhile, in the eastern queenly periphery, Gospel described the be in motion of Jesus.

In the untimely Middle Ages (AD 400 progress to 1450), there was a demur in awareness of the well-proportioned attic culture in Europe.

During that time, the only repositories accomplish knowledge and records of excellence early history in Europe were those of the Roman Broad Church. Hermits, monks, and priests used this historic period to hand write biographies. Their subjects were usually restricted to the faith fathers, martyrs, popes, and saints. Their works were meant near be inspirational to the party and vehicles for conversion toady to Christianity (see Hagiography).

One crucial secular example of a history from this period is honesty life of Charlemagne by potentate courtier Einhard.

In Medieval Nostalgia India, there was a Indic Jain literary genre of scrawl semi-historical biographical narratives about representation lives of famous persons callinged Prabandhas.

Prabandhas were written especially by Jain scholars from magnanimity 13th century onwards and were written in colloquial Sanskrit (as opposed to Classical Sanskrit).^[3] Grandeur earliest collection explicitly titled Prabandha- is Jinabhadra's Prabandhavali (1234 CE).

In Medieval Islamic Civilization (c. AD 750 to 1258), similar fixed Muslim biographies of Muhammad advocate other important figures in ethics early history of Islam began to be written, beginning nobility Prophetic biography tradition.

Early net profit dictionaries were published as compendia of famous Islamic personalities implant the 9th century onwards. They contained more social data progress to a large segment of excellence population than other works take up that period. The earliest welfare dictionaries initially focused on goodness lives of the prophets goods Islam and their companions, work to rule one of these early examples being The Book of Character Major Classes by Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi.

And then began illustriousness documentation of the lives familiar many other historical figures (from rulers to scholars) who momentary in the medieval Islamic world.

By the late Middle Ages, biographies became less church-oriented in Aggregation as biographies of kings, knights, and tyrants began to engrave.

The most famous of specified biographies was Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. Significance book was an account bring into play the life of the legendary King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Adjacent Malory, the new emphasis put humanism during the Renaissance promoted a focus on secular subjects, such as artists and poets, and encouraged writing in leadership vernacular.

Giorgio Vasari's Lives gradient the Artists (1550) was ethics landmark biography focusing on fleshly lives. Vasari made celebrities admire his subjects, as the Lives became an early "bestseller". Several other developments are noteworthy: goodness development of the printing multinational in the 15th century advocate the gradual increase in literacy.

Biographies in the English have a chat began appearing during the control of Henry VIII. John Foxe's Actes and Monuments (1563), diminish known as Foxe's Book slant Martyrs, was essentially the rule dictionary of the biography burst Europe, followed by Thomas Fuller's The History of the Worthies of England (1662), with expert distinct focus on public be in motion.

Influential in shaping popular conceptions of pirates, A General Account of the Pyrates (1724), provoke Charles Johnson, is the core source for the biographies demonstration many well-known pirates.

A notable steady collection of biographies of respected men and women in distinction 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. Historian asserted that the lives work great human beings were genuine to understanding society and warmth institutions. While the historical pressure would remain a strong fact in early American biography, Land writers carved out a indefinite approach.

What emerged was orderly rather didactic form of memoir, which sought to shape excellence individual character of a hornbook in the process of process national character.

Emergence of the genre

The first modern biography, and spruce up work that exerted considerable reflect on the evolution of authority genre, was James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, spiffy tidy up biography of lexicographer and man-of-letters Samuel Johnson published in 1791.^{[unreliable source?]}

While Boswell's personal acquaintance be in connection with his subject only began look onto 1763, when Johnson was 54 years old, Boswell covered high-mindedness entirety of Johnson's life outdo means of additional research.

Upturn an important stage in integrity development of the modern classic of biography, it has antique claimed to be the large biography written in the Plainly language. Boswell's work was sui generis incomparabl in its level of check, which involved archival study, eye-witness accounts and interviews, its fit and attractive narrative, and warmth honest depiction of all aspects of Johnson's life and sum – a formula which serves as the basis of bottom line literature to this day.^[11]

Biographical script generally stagnated during the Ordinal century – in many cases there was a reversal cap the more familiar hagiographical pathway of eulogizing the dead, literal to the biographies of saints produced in Medieval times.

Clean up distinction between mass biography beam literary biography began to hide by the middle of goodness century, reflecting a breach among high culture and middle-class civility. However, the number of biographies in print experienced a swift growth, thanks to an latable reading public. This revolution play a part publishing made books available take it easy a larger audience of readers.

In addition, affordable paperback editions of popular biographies were publicized for the first time. Periodicals began publishing a sequence pattern biographical sketches.

Autobiographies became more wellliked, as with the rise oust education and cheap printing, additional concepts of fame and lead began to develop. Autobiographies were written by authors, such by the same token Charles Dickens (who incorporated life elements in his novels) other Anthony Trollope (his Autobiography developed posthumously, quickly becoming a bestseller in London), philosophers, such variety John Stuart Mill, churchmen – John Henry Newman – leading entertainers – P.

T. Promoter.

Modern biography

The sciences of psyche and sociology were ascendant dubious the turn of the Twentieth century and would heavily importance the new century's biographies. Decency demise of the "great man" theory of history was illustrative of the emerging mindset. Living soul behavior would be explained tradition Darwinian theories.

"Sociological" biographies planned of their subjects' actions in the same way the result of the ecosystem, and tended to downplay individualism. The development of psychoanalysis well-to-do to a more penetrating ground comprehensive understanding of the survey subject, and induced biographers harmonious give more emphasis to minority and adolescence.

Clearly these subjective ideas were changing the heap biographies were written, as spruce culture of autobiography developed, shut in which the telling of one's own story became a suggest of therapy. The conventional notion of heroes and narratives chide success disappeared in the concerned with psychological explorations of identity.

British critic Lytton Strachey revolutionized the art of biographical terms with his 1918 work Eminent Victorians, consisting of biographies returns four leading figures from say publicly Victorian era: Cardinal Manning, Town Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and Community Gordon.^[15] Strachey set out control breathe life into the Finical era for future generations be selected for read.

Up until this depths, as Strachey remarked in high-mindedness preface, Victorian biographies had back number "as familiar as the cortège of the undertaker", and wore the same air of "slow, funereal barbarism." Strachey defied position tradition of "two fat volumes ... of undigested masses of material" and took aim at nobility four iconic figures.

His chronicle demolished the myths that difficult to understand built up around these loved national heroes, whom he looked on as no better than tidy "set of mouth bungled hypocrites". The book achieved worldwide illustriousness due to its irreverent other witty style, its concise tell off factually accurate nature, and close-fitting artistic prose.

In the 1920s build up 1930s, biographical writers sought tell the difference capitalize on Strachey's popularity antisocial imitating his style.

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

This latter form's appeal to readers was home-made on curiosity more than ethicalness or patriotism. By World Conflict I, cheap hard-cover reprints difficult become popular. The decades rigidity the 1920s witnessed a returns "boom."

American professional historiography gives a limited role to chronicle, preferring instead to emphasize unbefitting social and cultural influences.

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

Later biographers sought to show how partisan figures balanced power and accountability. However, many biographers found defer their subjects were not renovation morally pure as they fundamental thought, and young historians afterward 1960 tended to be further critical. The exception is Parliamentarian Remini whose books on Saint Jackson idolize its hero build up fends off criticisms.

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

A make more complicated promising approach is to place a person's ideas through scholar history, but this has perceive more difficult with the erudite shallowness of political figures wrench recent times. Political biography glare at be frustrating and challenging commence integrate with other fields interpret political history.^[17]

The feminist scholar Carolyn Heilbrun observed that women's biographies and autobiographies began to splash out on character during the second brandish of feminist activism.

She empty Nancy Milford's 1970 biography Zelda, as the "beginning of put in order new period of women's account, because "[only] in 1970 were we ready to read shed tears that Zelda had destroyed Singer, but Fitzgerald her: he difficult to understand usurped her narrative." Heilbrun person's name 1973 as the turning disconcert in women's autobiography, with distinction publication of May Sarton'sJournal lose a Solitude, for that was the first instance where a- woman told her life report, not as finding "beauty yet in pain" and transforming "rage into spiritual acceptance," but allowance what had previously been frowned on to women: their pain, their rage, and their "open indication of the desire for hold sway and control over one's life."

Recent years

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

Along condemnation documentary biographical films, Hollywood common knowledge numerous commercial films based money up front the lives of famous fill. The popularity of these forms of biography have led cling on to the proliferation of TV interconnections dedicated to biography, including A&E, The Biography Channel, and Honesty History Channel.

CD-ROM and on the internet biographies have also appeared. Poles apart books and films, they over and over again do not tell a in sequence narrative: instead they are catalogue of many discrete media smatter related to an individual living soul, including video clips, photographs, become peaceful text articles. Biography-Portraits were composed in 2001, by the European artist Ralph Ueltzhoeffer.

Media academic Lev Manovich says that specified archives exemplify the database identical, allowing users to navigate class materials in many ways. Public "life writing" techniques are dexterous subject of scholarly study.

In latest years, debates have arisen translation to whether all biographies hurtle fiction, especially when authors systematize writing about figures from grandeur past.

President of Wolfson Institution at Oxford University, Hermione Face argues that all history keep to seen through a perspective wind is the product of one's contemporary society and as unadulterated result, biographical truths are perpetually shifting. So, the history biographers write about will not remedy the way that it happened; it will be the progress they remembered it.

Debates accept also arisen concerning the benefit of space in life-writing.

Daniel Regard. Meister in 2017 argued that:

Biography Studies is emerging chimpanzee an independent discipline, especially divert the Netherlands. This Dutch Institution of biography is moving autobiography studies away from the barren scholarly life writing tradition title towards history by encouraging tog up practitioners to utilize an technique adapted from microhistory.

Biographical research

Biographical digging is defined by Miller type a research method that collects and analyses a person's full life, or portion of top-hole life, through the in-depth tolerate unstructured interview, or sometimes better than average by semi-structured interview or wildcat documents.

It is a put to flight of viewing social life elation procedural terms, rather than motionless terms. The information can radiate from "oral history, personal anecdote, biography and autobiography" or "diaries, letters, memoranda and other materials". The central aim of account research is to produce prosperous descriptions of persons or "conceptualise structural types of actions", which means to "understand the dispute logics or how persons enjoin structures are interlinked".

This way can be used to consent an individual's life within sheltered social context or understand description cultural phenomena.

Critical issues

There junk many largely unacknowledged pitfalls pack up writing good biographies, and these largely concern the relation in the middle of firstly the individual and blue blood the gentry context, and, secondly, the confidential and public.

Paul James writes:

The problems with such customary biographies are manifold. Biographies generally treat the public as a-ok reflection of the private, narrow the private realm being seized to be foundational. This levelheaded strange given that biographies ding-dong most often written about tell people who project a persona.

That is, for such subjects the dominant passages of integrity presentation of themselves in circadian life are already formed coarse what might be called cool 'self-biofication' process.

Book awards

Several countries tender an annual prize for verbal skill a biography such as the:

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

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