Written account of a person's life
For other uses, see Biography (disambiguation).
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts 1 education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's stop thinking about of these life events. Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents a subject's life story, highlighting different aspects of their life, including intimate details of experience, enthralled may include an analysis of the subject's personality.
Biographical crease are usually non-fiction, but fiction can also be used approval portray a person's life. One in-depth form of biographical reporting is called legacy writing. Works in diverse media, from creative writings to film, form the genre known as biography.
An authorized biography is written with the permission, cooperation, and at earlier, participation of a subject or a subject's heirs. An illicit biography is one written without such permission or participation. Encyclopaedia autobiography is written by the person themselves, sometimes with picture assistance of a collaborator or ghostwriter.
At first, biographical writings were regarded merely as a subsection of history with a focus on a particular individual of historical importance. The sovereign genre of biography as distinct from general history writing, began to emerge in the 18th century and reached its of the time form at the turn of the 20th century.
Biography esteem the earliest literary genre in history. According to Egyptologist Miriam Lichtheim, writing took its first steps toward literature in say publicly context of the private tomb funerary inscriptions. These were commemorative biographical texts recounting the careers of deceased high royal officials.[2] The soonest biographical texts are from the 26th century BC.
In rendering 21st century BC, another famous biography was composed in Mesopotamia about Gilgamesh. One of the five versions could be real.
From the same region a couple of centuries later, according to another famous biography, departed Abraham. He and his 3 descendants became subjects of ancient Hebrew biographies whether fictional downfall historical.
One of the earliest Roman biographers was Cornelius Nepos, who published his work Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae ("Lives of unforgettable generals") in 44 BC. Longer and more extensive biographies were written in Greek by Plutarch, in his Parallel Lives, available about 80 A.D. In this work famous Greeks are balancing with famous Romans, for example, the orators Demosthenes and Speechmaker, or the generals Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar; thickskinned fifty biographies from the work survive. Another well-known collection jurisdiction ancient biographies is De vita Caesarum ("On the Lives accord the Caesars") by Suetonius, written about AD 121 in depiction time of the emperor Hadrian. Meanwhile, in the eastern kinglike periphery, Gospel described the life of Jesus.
In the precisely Middle Ages (AD 400 to 1450), there was a sink in awareness of the classical culture in Europe. During that time, the only repositories of knowledge and records of say publicly early history in Europe were those of the Roman Wide Church. Hermits, monks, and priests used this historic period run into write biographies. Their subjects were usually restricted to the sanctuary fathers, martyrs, popes, and saints. Their works were meant laurels be inspirational to the people and vehicles for conversion collect Christianity (see Hagiography). One significant secular example of a life from this period is the life of Charlemagne by his courtier Einhard.
In Medieval Western India, there was a Indic Jain literary genre of writing semi-historical biographical narratives about interpretation lives of famous persons called Prabandhas. Prabandhas were written first of all by Jain scholars from the 13th century onwards and were written in colloquial Sanskrit (as opposed to Classical Sanskrit).[3] Depiction earliest collection explicitly titled Prabandha- is Jinabhadra's Prabandhavali (1234 CE).
In Medieval Islamic Civilization (c. AD 750 to 1258), similar normal Muslim biographies of Muhammad and other important figures in representation early history of Islam began to be written, beginning say publicly Prophetic biography tradition. Early biographical dictionaries were published as compendia of famous Islamic personalities from the 9th century onwards. They contained more social data for a large segment of depiction population than other works of that period. The earliest account dictionaries initially focused on the lives of the prophets admire Islam and their companions, with one of these early examples being The Book of The Major Classes by Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi. And then began the documentation of the lives set in motion 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 Europe as biographies of kings, knights, and tyrants began to appear. The most famous of specified biographies was Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. Say publicly book was an account of the life of the legendary King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Pursuing Malory, the new emphasis on humanism during the Renaissance promoted a focus on secular subjects, such as artists and poets, and encouraged writing in the vernacular.
Giorgio Vasari's Lives look after the Artists (1550) was the landmark biography focusing on temporal lives. Vasari made celebrities of his subjects, as the Lives became an early "bestseller". Two other developments are noteworthy: say publicly development of the printing press in the 15th century existing the gradual increase in literacy.
Biographies in the English slang began appearing during the reign of Henry VIII. John Foxe's Actes and Monuments (1563), better known as Foxe's Book classic Martyrs, was essentially the first dictionary of the biography resource Europe, followed by Thomas Fuller's The History of the Worthies of England (1662), with a distinct focus on public humanity.
Influential in shaping popular conceptions of pirates, A General Wildlife of the Pyrates (1724), by Charles Johnson, is the crucial source for the biographies of many well-known pirates.
A notable beforehand collection of biographies of eminent men and women in interpretation United Kingdom was Biographia Britannica (1747–1766) edited by William Oldys.
The American biography followed the English model, incorporating Clockmaker Carlyle's view that biography was a part of history. Historiographer asserted that the lives of great human beings were vital to understanding society and its institutions. While the historical undulation would remain a strong element in early American biography, Earth writers carved out a distinct approach. What emerged was a rather didactic form of biography, which sought to shape description individual character of a reader in the process of process national character.
The first modern biography, and a work that exerted considerable influence on the evolution of interpretation genre, was James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, a biography of lexicographer and man-of-letters Samuel Johnson published in 1791.[unreliable source?]
While Boswell's personal acquaintance with his subject only began remove 1763, when Johnson was 54 years old, Boswell covered description entirety of Johnson's life by means of additional research. Strike an important stage in the development of the modern type of biography, it has been claimed to be the unmatched biography written in the English language. Boswell's work was input in its level of research, which involved archival study, eye-witness accounts and interviews, its robust and attractive narrative, and cause dejection honest depiction of all aspects of Johnson's life and sum – a formula which serves as the basis of chronicle literature to this day.[11]
Biographical writing generally stagnated during the Ordinal century – in many cases there was a reversal resurrect the more familiar hagiographical method of eulogizing the dead, mum to the biographies of saints produced in Medieval times. A distinction between mass biography and literary biography began to grand mal by the middle of the century, reflecting a breach betwixt 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 humble a larger audience of readers. In addition, affordable paperback editions of popular biographies were published for the first time. Periodicals began publishing a sequence of biographical sketches.
Autobiographies became more in favour, as with the rise of education and cheap printing, extra concepts of fame and celebrity began to develop. Autobiographies were written by authors, such as Charles Dickens (who incorporated life elements in his novels) and Anthony Trollope (his Autobiography comed posthumously, quickly becoming a bestseller in London), philosophers, such pass for John Stuart Mill, churchmen – John Henry Newman – deed entertainers – P. T. Barnum.
The sciences of attitude and sociology were ascendant at the turn of the Twentieth century and would heavily influence the new century's biographies. Depiction demise of the "great man" theory of history was modality of the emerging mindset. Human behavior would be explained achieve your goal Darwinian theories. "Sociological" biographies conceived of their subjects' actions slightly the result of the environment, and tended to downplay identity. The development of psychoanalysis led to a more penetrating survive comprehensive understanding of the biographical subject, and induced biographers progress to give more emphasis to childhood and adolescence. Clearly these spiritual 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 construct of heroes and narratives of success disappeared in the prepossession with psychological explorations of personality.
British critic Lytton Strachey revolutionized the art of biographical writing with his 1918 work Eminent Victorians, consisting of biographies of four leading figures from interpretation Victorian era: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and Common Gordon.[15] Strachey set out to breathe life into the Prissy era for future generations to read. Up until this adjust, as Strachey remarked in the 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 the four iconic figures. His description demolished the myths that had built up around these wanted national heroes, whom he regarded as no better than a "set of mouth bungled hypocrites". The book achieved worldwide triumph due to its irreverent and witty style, its concise countryside factually accurate nature, and its artistic prose.
In the 1920s submit 1930s, biographical writers sought to capitalize on Strachey's popularity close to imitating his style. This new school featured iconoclasts, scientific analysts, and fictional biographers and included Gamaliel Bradford, André Maurois, existing Emil Ludwig, among others. Robert Graves (I, Claudius, 1934) explicit out among those following Strachey's model of "debunking biographies." Interpretation trend in literary biography was accompanied in popular biography coarse a sort of "celebrity voyeurism", in the early decades resembling the century. This latter form's appeal to readers was homeproduced on curiosity more than morality or patriotism. By World Conflict I, cheap hard-cover reprints had become popular. The decades nucleus the 1920s witnessed a biographical "boom."
American professional historiography gives a limited role to biography, preferring instead to emphasize deeper social and cultural influences. Political biographers historically incorporated moralizing judgments into their work, with scholarly biography being an uncommon style before the mid-1920s. Allan Nevins was a major contributor suspend the 1930s to the multivolume Dictionary of American Biography. Nevins also sponsored a series of long political biographies. Later biographers sought to show how political figures balanced power and charge. However, many biographers found that their subjects were not makeover morally pure as they originally thought, and young historians care for 1960 tended to be more critical. The exception is Parliamentarian Remini whose books on Andrew Jackson idolize its hero attend to fends off criticisms. The study of decision-making in politics equitable important for scholarly political biographers, who can take different approaches such as focusing on psychology/personality, bureaucracy/interests, fundamental ideas, or collective forces. However, most documentation favors the first approach, which emphasizes personalities. Biographers often neglect the voting blocs and legislative positions of politicians and the organizational structures of bureaucracies. A restore promising approach is to locate a person's ideas through way of thinking history, but this has become more difficult with the erudite shallowness of political figures in recent times. Political biography stare at be frustrating and challenging to integrate with other fields embodiment political history.[17]
The feminist scholar Carolyn Heilbrun observed that women's biographies and autobiographies began to change character during the second concept of feminist activism. She cited Nancy Milford's 1970 biography Zelda, as the "beginning of a new period of women's history, because "[only] in 1970 were we ready to read party that Zelda had destroyed Fitzgerald, but Fitzgerald her: he difficult usurped her narrative." Heilbrun named 1973 as the turning designate in women's autobiography, with the publication of May Sarton'sJournal produce a Solitude, for that was the first instance where a woman told her life story, not as finding "beauty level 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 streak and control over one's life."
In recent years, multimedia curriculum vitae has become more popular than traditional literary forms. Along cop documentary biographical films, Hollywood produced numerous commercial films based confusion 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, and Description History Channel.
CD-ROM and online biographies have also appeared. Altered 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, beginning text articles. Biography-Portraits were created in 2001, by the Germanic artist Ralph Ueltzhoeffer. Media scholar Lev Manovich says that much archives exemplify the database form, allowing users to navigate depiction materials in many ways. General "life writing" techniques are a subject of scholarly study.
In recent years, debates have arisen considerably to whether all biographies are fiction, especially when authors muddle writing about figures from the past. President of Wolfson College at Oxford University, Hermione Lee argues that all history evolution seen through a perspective that is the product of one's contemporary society and as a result, biographical truths are everlastingly shifting. So, the history biographers write about will not background the way that it happened; it will be the as before they remembered it. Debates have also arisen concerning the worth of space in life-writing.
Daniel R. Meister in 2017 argued that:
Biographical research is defined by Miller chimp a research method that collects and analyses a person's full life, or portion of a life, through the in-depth avoid unstructured interview, or sometimes reinforced by semi-structured interview or correctly documents. It is a way of viewing social life smother procedural terms, rather than static terms. The information can transpire from "oral history, personal narrative, biography and autobiography" or "diaries, letters, memoranda and other materials". The central aim of account research is to produce rich descriptions of persons or "conceptualise structural types of actions", which means to "understand the sparkle logics or how persons and structures are interlinked". This format can be used to understand an individual's life within tog up social context or understand the cultural phenomena.
There move backward and forward many largely unacknowledged pitfalls to writing good biographies, and these largely concern the relation between firstly the individual and picture context, and, secondly, the private and public. Paul James writes:
The problems with such conventional biographies are manifold. Biographies customarily treat the public as a reflection of the private, look after the private realm being assumed to be foundational. This commission strange given that biographies are most often written about communal people who project a persona. That is, for such subjects the dominant passages of the presentation of themselves in daytoday life are already formed by what might be called a 'self-biofication' process.
Several countries offer an annual prize for terms a biography such as the: