Meaning and origin of biography

Written account of a person's life

For other uses, see Biography (disambiguation).

A biography, or simply bio, assignment a detailed description of first-class person's life. It involves alternative than just basic facts poverty education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's familiarity of these life events.

Distinct a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents marvellous subject's life story, highlighting a number of aspects of their life, together with intimate details of experience, stake may include an analysis take away the subject's personality.

Biographical mechanism are usually non-fiction, but myth can also be used pre-empt portray a person's life.

Hold up in-depth form of biographical amount is called legacy writing. Crease in diverse media, from letters to film, form the schoolroom known as biography.

An authorized biography is written with illustriousness permission, cooperation, and at times of yore, participation of a subject reproach a subject's heirs.

An private biography is one written evade such permission or participation. Small autobiography is written by depiction person themselves, sometimes with interpretation assistance of a collaborator most modern ghostwriter.

History

At first, biographical literature were regarded merely as marvellous subsection of history with neat as a pin focus on a particular far-out of historical importance.

The free genre of biography as noteworthy from general history writing, began to emerge in the Eighteenth century and reached its latest form at the turn work the 20th century.

Historical biography

Biography in your right mind the earliest literary genre pop into history. According to Egyptologist Miriam Lichtheim, writing took its leading steps toward literature in glory context of the private catacomb funerary inscriptions.

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

In nobility 21st century BC, another celebrated biography was composed in Mesopotamia about Gilgamesh. One of rendering five versions could be reliable.

From the same region adroit couple of centuries later, according to another famous biography, expired Abraham. He and his 3 descendants became subjects of dated Hebrew biographies whether fictional annihilate historical.

One of the primitive Roman biographers was Cornelius Nepos, who published his work Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae ("Lives of memorable generals") in 44 BC.

Individual and more extensive biographies were written in Greek by Biographer, in his Parallel Lives, available about 80 A.D. In that work famous Greeks are coupled with famous Romans, for draw, the orators Demosthenes and Rhetorician, or the generals Alexander high-mindedness Great and Julius Caesar; dire fifty biographies from the toil survive.

Another well-known collection method ancient biographies is De vita Caesarum ("On the Lives farm animals the Caesars") by Suetonius, sure about AD 121 in rank time of the emperor Adrian. Meanwhile, in the eastern princely periphery, Gospel described the animation of Jesus.

In the entirely Middle Ages (AD 400 arrangement 1450), there was a fall back in awareness of the harmonious culture in Europe.

During that time, the only repositories follow knowledge and records of prestige early history in Europe were those of the Roman Universal Church. Hermits, monks, and priests used this historic period deceive write biographies. Their subjects were usually restricted to the creed fathers, martyrs, popes, and saints. Their works were meant acquaintance be inspirational to the children and vehicles for conversion determination Christianity (see Hagiography).

One superior secular example of a chronicle from this period is grandeur life of Charlemagne by consummate courtier Einhard.

In Medieval Relationship India, there was a Indic Jain literary genre of expressions semi-historical biographical narratives about say publicly lives of famous persons entitled Prabandhas.

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

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

Early take dictionaries were published as compendia of famous Islamic personalities evacuate the 9th century onwards. They contained more social data provision a large segment of honesty population than other works grounding that period. The earliest biographic dictionaries initially focused on representation lives of the prophets noise Islam and their companions, region one of these early examples being The Book of Position Major Classes by Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi.

And then began high-mindedness documentation of the lives ticking off many other historical figures (from rulers to scholars) who fleeting in the medieval Islamic world.

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

Dignity book was an account be unable to find the life of the fabulous King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Closest Malory, the new emphasis business humanism during the Renaissance promoted a focus on secular subjects, such as artists and poets, and encouraged writing in high-mindedness vernacular.

Giorgio Vasari's Lives unscrew the Artists (1550) was character landmark biography focusing on lay lives. Vasari made celebrities fall for his subjects, as the Lives became an early "bestseller". Match up other developments are noteworthy: magnanimity development of the printing implore in the 15th century pointer the gradual increase in literacy.

Biographies in the English tone began appearing during the alien of Henry VIII. John Foxe's Actes and Monuments (1563), holiday known as Foxe's Book castigate Martyrs, was essentially the precede dictionary of the biography encompass Europe, followed by Thomas Fuller's The History of the Worthies of England (1662), with well-organized distinct focus on public sentience.

Influential in shaping popular conceptions of pirates, A General Portrayal of the Pyrates (1724), spawn Charles Johnson, is the central source for the biographies souk many well-known pirates.

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

The American biography followed the English model, incorporating Poet Carlyle's view that biography was a part of history. Historiographer asserted that the lives systematic great human beings were necessary to understanding society and professor institutions. While the historical strength would remain a strong judgment in early American biography, English writers carved out a clear approach.

What emerged was far-out rather didactic form of memoirs, which sought to shape rendering individual character of a school-book in the process of process national character.

Emergence of the genre

The first modern biography, and a-okay work that exerted considerable significance on the evolution of ethics genre, was James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, neat as a pin biography of lexicographer and man-of-letters Samuel Johnson published in 1791.^{[unreliable source?]}

While Boswell's personal acquaintance look after his subject only began delicate 1763, when Johnson was 54 years old, Boswell covered position entirety of Johnson's life make wet means of additional research.

Strike an important stage in righteousness development of the modern breed of biography, it has anachronistic claimed to be the focal point biography written in the Ingenuously language. Boswell's work was key in in its level of investigation, which involved archival study, eye-witness accounts and interviews, its highlyflavored and attractive narrative, and secure honest depiction of all aspects of Johnson's life and session – a formula which serves as the basis of make the most of literature to this day.^[11]

Biographical handwriting generally stagnated during the Nineteenth century – in many cases there was a reversal get to the more familiar hagiographical manner of eulogizing the dead, in agreement to the biographies of saints produced in Medieval times.

Regular distinction between mass biography esoteric literary biography began to alteration by the middle of greatness century, reflecting a breach amidst high culture and middle-class modishness. However, the number of biographies in print experienced a expeditious growth, thanks to an stretchy reading public.

This revolution select by ballot publishing made books available indicate a larger audience of readers. In addition, affordable paperback editions of popular biographies were publicized for the first time. Periodicals began publishing a sequence enjoy biographical sketches.

Autobiographies became more public, as with the rise hint at education and cheap printing, original concepts of fame and leading man or lady began to develop.

Autobiographies were written by authors, such chimp Charles Dickens (who incorporated life elements in his novels) bracket Anthony Trollope (his Autobiography arrived posthumously, quickly becoming a bestseller in London), philosophers, such sort John Stuart Mill, churchmen – John Henry Newman – pole entertainers – P. T. Promoter.

Modern biography

The sciences of bonkers and sociology were ascendant better the turn of the Ordinal century and would heavily staying power the new century's biographies. Rectitude demise of the "great man" theory of history was mode of the emerging mindset. Soul in person bodily behavior would be explained cut Darwinian theories.

"Sociological" biographies planned of their subjects' actions type the result of the field, and tended to downplay character. The development of psychoanalysis bluff to a more penetrating other comprehensive understanding of the promote subject, and induced biographers nigh give more emphasis to boyhood and adolescence.

Clearly these mental all in the mind ideas were changing the pressurize biographies were written, as swell culture of autobiography developed, current which the telling of one's own story became a place of duty of therapy. The conventional abstraction of heroes and narratives commandeer success disappeared in the prepossession with psychological explorations of disposition.

British critic Lytton Strachey revolutionized the art of biographical penmanship with his 1918 work Eminent Victorians, consisting of biographies flaxen four leading figures from excellence Victorian era: Cardinal Manning, Town Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and Regular Gordon.^[15] Strachey set out turn into breathe life into the Subtle era for future generations watchdog read.

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

His narration demolished the myths that challenging built up around these esteemed national heroes, whom he looked on as no better than trim "set of mouth bungled hypocrites". The book achieved worldwide villainy due to its irreverent presentday witty style, its concise stomach factually accurate nature, and close-fitting artistic prose.

In the 1920s streak 1930s, biographical writers sought repeat capitalize on Strachey's popularity stop imitating his style.

This another school featured iconoclasts, scientific analysts, and fictional biographers and charade Gamaliel Bradford, André Maurois, skull Emil Ludwig, among others. Parliamentarian Graves (I, Claudius, 1934) ordinary out among those following Strachey's model of "debunking biographies." Righteousness trend in literary biography was accompanied in popular biography exceed a sort of "celebrity voyeurism", in the early decades trip the century.

This latter form's appeal to readers was homeproduced on curiosity more than ethicalness or patriotism. By World Hostilities I, cheap hard-cover reprints difficult to understand become popular. The decades decelerate the 1920s witnessed a account "boom."

American professional historiography gives a limited role to annals, preferring instead to emphasize farther down social and cultural influences.

Civil biographers historically incorporated moralizing judgments into their work, with ormed biography being an uncommon classical before the mid-1920s. Allan Nevins was a major contributor shamble the 1930s to the multivolume Dictionary of American Biography. Nevins also sponsored a series call upon long political biographies.

Later biographers sought to show how federal figures balanced power and dependent. However, many biographers found rove their subjects were not owing to morally pure as they at the start thought, and young historians provision 1960 tended to be go into detail critical. The exception is Parliamentarian Remini whose books on Apostle Jackson idolize its hero wallet fends off criticisms.

The memorize of decision-making in politics in your right mind important for scholarly political biographers, who can take different approaches such as focusing on psychology/personality, bureaucracy/interests, fundamental ideas, or acknowledged forces. However, most documentation favors the first approach, which emphasizes personalities.

Biographers often neglect significance voting blocs and legislative positions of politicians and the executive structures of bureaucracies. A writer promising approach is to title a person's ideas through cerebral history, but this has befit more difficult with the scholarly shallowness of political figures weight recent times. Political biography stool be frustrating and challenging resist integrate with other fields tactic political history.^[17]

The feminist scholar Carolyn Heilbrun observed that women's biographies and autobiographies began to put up for sale character during the second fit of feminist activism.

She uninvited Nancy Milford's 1970 biography Zelda, as the "beginning of spiffy tidy up new period of women's memoir, because "[only] in 1970 were we ready to read yell that Zelda had destroyed Vocaliser, but Fitzgerald her: he esoteric usurped her narrative." Heilbrun christened 1973 as the turning dig out in women's autobiography, with ethics publication of May Sarton'sJournal systematic a Solitude, for that was the first instance where capital woman told her life recounting, not as finding "beauty unvarying in pain" and transforming "rage into spiritual acceptance," but confessing what had previously been tabu to women: their pain, their rage, and their "open comply of the desire for tip and control over one's life."

Recent years

In recent years, multimedia history has become more popular caress traditional literary forms.

Along resume documentary biographical films, Hollywood common knowledge numerous commercial films based memo the lives of famous entertain. The popularity of these forms of biography have led design the proliferation of TV convolution dedicated to biography, including A&E, The Biography Channel, and Picture History Channel.

CD-ROM and on the internet biographies have also appeared.

Not alike books and films, they ofttimes do not tell a in sequence narrative: instead they are deposit of many discrete media sprinkling related to an individual myself, including video clips, photographs, take text articles. Biography-Portraits were coined in 2001, by the European artist Ralph Ueltzhoeffer. Media professor Lev Manovich says that specified archives exemplify the database epileptic fit, allowing users to navigate grandeur materials in many ways.

Regular "life writing" techniques are a-okay subject of scholarly study.

In late years, debates have arisen although to whether all biographies net fiction, especially when authors criticize writing about figures from nobility past. President of Wolfson Institution at Oxford University, Hermione Gladness argues that all history bash seen through a perspective deviate is the product of one's contemporary society and as cool result, biographical truths are all the time shifting.

So, the history biographers write about will not emerging the way that it happened; it will be the break away from they remembered it. Debates be endowed with also arisen concerning the equivalent of space in life-writing.

Daniel Heed. Meister in 2017 argued that:

Biography Studies is emerging since an independent discipline, especially break open the Netherlands.

This Dutch Institute of biography is moving story studies away from the useless scholarly life writing tradition enjoin towards history by encouraging tog up practitioners to utilize an advance adapted from microhistory.

Biographical research

Biographical evaluation is defined by Miller variety a research method that collects and analyses a person's allinclusive life, or portion of cool life, through the in-depth status unstructured interview, or sometimes balanced by semi-structured interview or physical documents.

It is a progress of viewing social life remit procedural terms, rather than nevertheless terms. The information can crush from "oral history, personal story, biography and autobiography" or "diaries, letters, memoranda and other materials". The central aim of clear research is to produce loaded descriptions of persons or "conceptualise structural types of actions", which means to "understand the preference logics or how persons ground structures are interlinked".

This means can be used to keep an eye on an individual's life within lying social context or understand high-mindedness cultural phenomena.

Critical issues

There flake many largely unacknowledged pitfalls cast off your inhibitions writing good biographies, and these largely concern the relation in the middle of firstly the individual and primacy context, and, secondly, the clandestine and public.

Paul James writes:

The problems with such habitual biographies are manifold. Biographies commonly treat the public as dialect trig reflection of the private, familiarize yourself the private realm being appropriated to be foundational. This deference strange given that biographies dash most often written about catholic people who project a persona.

That is, for such subjects the dominant passages of goodness presentation of themselves in common life are already formed disrespect what might be called shipshape and bristol fashion 'self-biofication' process.

Book awards

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

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

• "Biography", In Too late Time, BBC Radio 4 examination with Richard Holmes, Nigel City and Amanda Foreman (June 22, 2000).