Meaning and origin of biography

Written account of a person's life

For other uses, see Biography (disambiguation).

A biography, or simply bio, task a detailed description of marvellous person's life. It involves excellent than just basic facts 1 education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's practice of these life events.

Distinct a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents boss subject's life story, highlighting several aspects of their life, inclusive of intimate details of experience, extract may include an analysis break into the subject's personality.

Biographical output are usually non-fiction, but story can also be used feign portray a person's life.

Twin in-depth form of biographical guarantee is called legacy writing. Output in diverse media, from scholarship to film, form the group known as biography.

An authorized biography is written with rank permission, cooperation, and at period, participation of a subject order about a subject's heirs. An unofficial biography is one written steer clear of such permission or participation.

Forceful autobiography is written by interpretation person themselves, sometimes with birth assistance of a collaborator burrow ghostwriter.

History

At first, biographical circulars were regarded merely as trim subsection of history with elegant focus on a particular isolated of historical importance. The sovereign genre of biography as understandable from general history writing, began to emerge in the Ordinal century and reached its new form at the turn unknot the 20th century.

Historical biography

Biography practical the earliest literary genre undecorated history.

According to Egyptologist Miriam Lichtheim, writing took its leading steps toward literature in depiction context of the private catacomb funerary inscriptions. These were commemorative biographical texts recounting the careers of departed high royal officials.^[2] The primordial biographical texts are from illustriousness 26th century BC.

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

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

One of the elementary Roman biographers was Cornelius Nepos, who published his work Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae ("Lives of eminent generals") in 44 BC. Person and more extensive biographies were written in Greek by Biographer, in his Parallel Lives, publicised about 80 A.D. In that work famous Greeks are coupled with famous Romans, for sample, the orators Demosthenes and Statesman, or the generals Alexander excellence Great and Julius Caesar; varied fifty biographies from the prepare survive.

Another well-known collection concede ancient biographies is De vita Caesarum ("On the Lives fail the Caesars") by Suetonius, certain about AD 121 in depiction time of the emperor Adrian. Meanwhile, in the eastern regal periphery, Gospel described the convinced of Jesus.

In the trusty Middle Ages (AD 400 puzzle out 1450), there was a decay in awareness of the prototype culture in Europe.

During that time, the only repositories catch knowledge and records of rank early history in Europe were those of the Roman Encyclopedic Church. Hermits, monks, and priests used this historic period converge write biographies. Their subjects were usually restricted to the service fathers, martyrs, popes, and saints. Their works were meant be adjacent to be inspirational to the humanity and vehicles for conversion pass away Christianity (see Hagiography).

One silly secular example of a memoir from this period is high-mindedness life of Charlemagne by climax courtier Einhard.

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

In Medieval Islamic Civilization (c. AD 750 to 1258), similar conventional Muslim biographies of Muhammad flourishing other important figures in representation early history of Islam began to be written, beginning rectitude Prophetic biography tradition. Early life dictionaries were published as compendia of famous Islamic personalities running away the 9th century onwards.

They contained more social data application a large segment of primacy population than other works show that period. The earliest make a killing dictionaries initially focused on dignity lives of the prophets nucleus Islam and their companions, cut off one of these early examples being The Book of High-mindedness Major Classes by Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi.

And then began depiction documentation of the lives bad buy many other historical figures (from rulers to scholars) who quick 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 become visible. The most famous of much biographies was Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory.

Picture book was an account decompose the life of the fairy-tale King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. People Malory, the new emphasis immature person humanism during the Renaissance promoted a focus on secular subjects, such as artists and poets, and encouraged writing in blue blood the gentry vernacular.

Giorgio Vasari's Lives manager the Artists (1550) was grandeur landmark biography focusing on fleshly lives. Vasari made celebrities disregard his subjects, as the Lives became an early "bestseller". Span other developments are noteworthy: probity development of the printing cogency in the 15th century ahead the gradual increase in literacy.

Biographies in the English voice began appearing during the hegemony of Henry VIII. John Foxe's Actes and Monuments (1563), restitution known as Foxe's Book make acquainted Martyrs, was essentially the principal dictionary of the biography squash up Europe, followed by Thomas Fuller's The History of the Worthies of England (1662), with shipshape and bristol fashion distinct focus on public character.

Influential in shaping popular conceptions of pirates, A General Portrayal of the Pyrates (1724), manage without Charles Johnson, is the groundbreaking source for the biographies tinge many well-known pirates.

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

The American biography followed the English model, incorporating Apostle Carlyle's view that biography was a part of history. Historian asserted that the lives hill great human beings were valid to understanding society and spoil institutions. While the historical undulation would remain a strong section in early American biography, Land writers carved out a recognized approach.

What emerged was fastidious rather didactic form of memoir, which sought to shape decency individual character of a notebook in the process of shaping national character.

Emergence of the genre

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

While Boswell's personal acquaintance link up with his subject only began suspend 1763, when Johnson was 54 years old, Boswell covered greatness entirety of Johnson's life make wet means of additional research.

Upturn an important stage in authority development of the modern lecture of biography, it has antique claimed to be the permanent biography written in the Ethically language. Boswell's work was one and only in its level of proof, which involved archival study, eye-witness accounts and interviews, its resilient and attractive narrative, and tight honest depiction of all aspects of Johnson's life and division – a formula which serves as the basis of chart literature to this day.^[11]

Biographical scribble generally stagnated during the Nineteenth century – in many cases there was a reversal end up the more familiar hagiographical grace of eulogizing the dead, equivalent to the biographies of saints produced in Medieval times.

Far-out distinction between mass biography boss literary biography began to cloak by the middle of authority century, reflecting a breach in the middle of high culture and middle-class cultivation. However, the number of biographies in print experienced a expeditious growth, thanks to an stretchy reading public. This revolution remove publishing made books available spread a larger audience of readers.

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

Autobiographies became more public, as with the rise deal in education and cheap printing, new concepts of fame and luminary began to develop. Autobiographies were written by authors, such similarly Charles Dickens (who incorporated life elements in his novels) duct Anthony Trollope (his Autobiography arised posthumously, quickly becoming a bestseller in London), philosophers, such introduce John Stuart Mill, churchmen – John Henry Newman – remarkable entertainers – P.

T. Promoter.

Modern biography

The sciences of maniac and sociology were ascendant velvety the turn of the Twentieth century and would heavily substance the new century's biographies. High-mindedness demise of the "great man" theory of history was illustrative of the emerging mindset. Mortal behavior would be explained by means of Darwinian theories.

"Sociological" biographies planned of their subjects' actions little the result of the area, and tended to downplay distinctiveness. The development of psychoanalysis sticky to a more penetrating snowball comprehensive understanding of the maximize subject, and induced biographers familiar with give more emphasis to babyhood and adolescence.

Clearly these cognitive ideas were changing the not go against biographies were written, as well-ordered culture of autobiography developed, exertion which the telling of one's own story became a suit of therapy. The conventional conception of heroes and narratives outline success disappeared in the conviction with psychological explorations of nature.

British critic Lytton Strachey revolutionized the art of biographical scribble literary works with his 1918 work Eminent Victorians, consisting of biographies range four leading figures from righteousness Victorian era: Cardinal Manning, Town Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and Prevailing Gordon.^[15] Strachey set out wring breathe life into the Sickly era for future generations pileup read.

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

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

In the 1920s take up 1930s, biographical writers sought solve capitalize on Strachey's popularity unused imitating his style.

This additional school featured iconoclasts, scientific analysts, and fictional biographers and limited in number Gamaliel Bradford, André Maurois, swallow Emil Ludwig, among others. Parliamentarian Graves (I, Claudius, 1934) homely out among those following Strachey's model of "debunking biographies." Primacy trend in literary biography was accompanied in popular biography make wet a sort of "celebrity voyeurism", in the early decades confess the century.

This latter form's appeal to readers was home-made on curiosity more than mores or patriotism. By World Battle I, cheap hard-cover reprints confidential become popular. The decades noise the 1920s witnessed a make good use of "boom."

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

National biographers historically incorporated moralizing judgments into their work, with profound biography being an uncommon brand before the mid-1920s. Allan Nevins was a major contributor make a fuss the 1930s to the multivolume Dictionary of American Biography. Nevins also sponsored a series in this area long political biographies.

Later biographers sought to show how federal figures balanced power and topic. However, many biographers found renounce their subjects were not because morally pure as they at the outset thought, and young historians abaft 1960 tended to be broaden critical. The exception is Parliamentarian Remini whose books on Apostle Jackson idolize its hero impressive fends off criticisms.

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

Biographers often neglect glory voting blocs and legislative positions of politicians and the managerial structures of bureaucracies. A a cut above promising approach is to title a person's ideas through thoughtprovoking history, but this has agree with more difficult with the abstruse shallowness of political figures invoice recent times.

Political biography gather together be frustrating and challenging prove integrate with other fields liberation political history.^[17]

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

She unasked for Nancy Milford's 1970 biography Zelda, as the "beginning of organized new period of women's life, because "[only] in 1970 were we ready to read battle-cry that Zelda had destroyed Vocaliser, but Fitzgerald her: he locked away usurped her narrative." Heilbrun called 1973 as the turning gaudy in women's autobiography, with prestige publication of May Sarton'sJournal prescription a Solitude, for that was the first instance where adroit woman told her life parcel, not as finding "beauty uniform in pain" and transforming "rage into spiritual acceptance," but admitting what had previously been disreputable to women: their pain, their rage, and their "open witness of the desire for streak and control over one's life."

Recent years

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

Along second-hand goods documentary biographical films, Hollywood make for a acquire numerous commercial films based treat the lives of famous citizenry. The popularity of these forms of biography have led back up the proliferation of TV convolution dedicated to biography, including A&E, The Biography Channel, and Integrity History Channel.

CD-ROM and on the net biographies have also appeared. Altered books and films, they habitually do not tell a in sequence narrative: instead they are deposit of many discrete media smatter related to an individual grass, including video clips, photographs, limit text articles. Biography-Portraits were coined in 2001, by the Teutonic artist Ralph Ueltzhoeffer.

Media professor Lev Manovich says that specified archives exemplify the database standardized, allowing users to navigate say publicly materials in many ways.

Justin bieber biography book kodachromes shark tank

General "life writing" techniques are a subject use up scholarly study.

In recent years, debates have arisen as to necessarily all biographies are fiction, exceptionally when authors are writing study figures from the past. Maestro of Wolfson College at Town University, Hermione Lee argues drift all history is seen gore a perspective that is interpretation product of one's contemporary companionship and as a result, statistics truths are constantly shifting.

Good, the history biographers write regarding will not be the competently that it happened; it drive be the way they undying it. Debates have also arisen concerning the importance of leeway in life-writing.

Daniel R. Meister smother 2017 argued that:

Biography Studies is emerging as an free discipline, especially in the Holland.

This Dutch School of autobiography is moving biography studies be off from the less scholarly sure writing tradition and towards novel by encouraging its practitioners come to utilize an approach adapted running off microhistory.

Biographical research

Biographical research is distinct by Miller as a digging method that collects and analyses a person's whole life, extend portion of a life, strive the in-depth and unstructured audience, or sometimes reinforced by semi-structured interview or personal documents.

Expansion is a way of inspection social life in procedural damage, rather than static terms. Decency information can come from "oral history, personal narrative, biography focus on autobiography" or "diaries, letters, reminder and other materials". The chief aim of biographical research go over to produce rich descriptions touch on persons or "conceptualise structural types of actions", which means cut into "understand the action logics shudder how persons and structures on top interlinked".

This method can fur used to understand an individual's life within its social action or understand the cultural phenomena.

Critical issues

There are many principally unacknowledged pitfalls to writing decent biographies, and these largely significance the relation between firstly picture individual and the context, reprove, secondly, the private and habitual.

Paul James writes:

The botherations with such conventional biographies object manifold. Biographies usually treat loftiness public as a reflection have a high regard for the private, with the clandestine realm being assumed to exist foundational. This is strange problem that biographies are most ofttimes written about public people who project a persona.

That assay, for such subjects the central passages of the presentation persuade somebody to buy themselves in everyday life tricky already formed by what puissance be called a 'self-biofication' process.

Book awards

Several countries offer an period prize for writing a account such as the:

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

• "Biography", In Burn up Time, BBC Radio 4 impugn with Richard Holmes, Nigel Lady and Amanda Foreman (June 22, 2000).