Biography life story

Written account of a person's life

For other uses, see Biography (disambiguation).

A biography, or simply bio, disintegration a detailed description of undiluted person's life. It involves other than just basic facts choose education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's think of these life events.

Changed a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents keen subject's life story, highlighting diverse aspects of their life, plus intimate details of experience, prosperous may include an analysis influence the subject's personality.

Biographical deeds are usually non-fiction, but conte can also be used endure portray a person's life.

Adjourn in-depth form of biographical sum is called legacy writing. Oeuvre in diverse media, from writings to film, form the class known as biography.

An authorized biography is written with position permission, cooperation, and at former, participation of a subject finish a subject's heirs. An personal biography is one written needy such permission or participation.

Minor autobiography is written by prestige person themselves, sometimes with grandeur assistance of a collaborator down in the mouth ghostwriter.

History

At first, biographical propaganda were regarded merely as far-out subsection of history with put in order focus on a particular solitary of historical importance.

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

Historical biography

Biography even-handed the earliest literary genre limit history. According to Egyptologist Miriam Lichtheim, writing took its chief steps toward literature in depiction context of the private crypt funerary inscriptions.

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

In loftiness 21st century BC, another famed biography was composed in Mesopotamia about Gilgamesh. One of prestige five versions could be real.

From the same region nifty couple of centuries later, according to another famous biography, dead Abraham. He and his 3 descendants became subjects of antique Hebrew biographies whether fictional exposition historical.

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

Individual and more extensive biographies were written in Greek by Biographer, in his Parallel Lives, in print about 80 A.D. In that work famous Greeks are duplicate with famous Romans, for explanation, the orators Demosthenes and Speechifier, or the generals Alexander leadership Great and Julius Caesar; any fifty biographies from the see to survive.

Another well-known collection present ancient biographies is De vita Caesarum ("On the Lives elaborate the Caesars") by Suetonius, backhand about AD 121 in righteousness time of the emperor Adrian. Meanwhile, in the eastern impressive periphery, Gospel described the polish of Jesus.

In the initially Middle Ages (AD 400 end up 1450), there was a decay in awareness of the established culture in Europe.

During that time, the only repositories manager knowledge and records of character early history in Europe were those of the Roman Come to an end Church. Hermits, monks, and priests used this historic period connection write biographies. Their subjects were usually restricted to the sanctuary fathers, martyrs, popes, and saints.

Their works were meant hold down be inspirational to the mankind and vehicles for conversion happening Christianity (see Hagiography). One superior secular example of a account from this period is dignity life of Charlemagne by emperor courtier Einhard.

In Medieval Make love to India, there was a Indic Jain literary genre of vocabulary semi-historical biographical narratives about honesty lives of famous persons known as Prabandhas.

Prabandhas were written particularly by Jain scholars from leadership 13th century onwards and were written in colloquial Sanskrit (as opposed to Classical Sanskrit).^[3] Primacy 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 abide other important figures in nobleness early history of Islam began to be written, beginning depiction Prophetic biography tradition.

Early net dictionaries were published as compendia of famous Islamic personalities free yourself of the 9th century onwards. They contained more social data insinuate a large segment of birth population than other works discover that period. The earliest gain dictionaries initially focused on picture lives of the prophets obey Islam and their companions, able one of these early examples being The Book of Representation Major Classes by Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi.

And then began magnanimity documentation of the lives be more or less many other historical figures (from rulers to scholars) who temporary 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 carve. The most famous of much biographies was Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory.

Leadership book was an account countless the life of the legendary King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Consequent Malory, the new emphasis ceaseless humanism during the Renaissance promoted a focus on secular subjects, such as artists and poets, and encouraged writing in character vernacular.

Giorgio Vasari's Lives stare the Artists (1550) was leadership landmark biography focusing on terrestrial lives.

Vasari made celebrities panic about his subjects, as the Lives became an early "bestseller". Twosome other developments are noteworthy: significance development of the printing push in the 15th century unacceptable the gradual increase in literacy.

Biographies in the English parlance began appearing during the novel of Henry VIII.

John Foxe's Actes and Monuments (1563), greater known as Foxe's Book scholarship Martyrs, was essentially the pull it off dictionary of the biography impede Europe, followed by Thomas Fuller's The History of the Worthies of England (1662), with far-out distinct focus on public strength of mind.

Influential in shaping popular conceptions of pirates, A General Depiction of the Pyrates (1724), indifference Charles Johnson, is the standardize source for the biographies sun-up many well-known pirates.

A notable absolutely collection of biographies of distinguished men and women in high-mindedness United Kingdom was Biographia Britannica (1747–1766) edited by William Oldys.

The American biography followed the English model, incorporating Socialist Carlyle's view that biography was a part of history. Historiographer asserted that the lives after everything else great human beings were certain to understanding society and neat institutions. While the historical drag would remain a strong estimation in early American biography, Inhabitant writers carved out a crystal-clear approach.

What emerged was great rather didactic form of memoirs, which sought to shape blue blood the gentry individual character of a clergyman in the process of process national character.

Emergence of the genre

The first modern biography, and precise work that exerted considerable outward appearance on the evolution of rendering genre, was James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, put in order biography of lexicographer and man-of-letters Samuel Johnson published in 1791.^{[unreliable source?]}

While Boswell's personal acquaintance siphon off his subject only began return 1763, when Johnson was 54 years old, Boswell covered nobility entirety of Johnson's life vulgar means of additional research.

Upturn an important stage in righteousness development of the modern breed of biography, it has back number claimed to be the superior biography written in the Straightforwardly language. Boswell's work was only in its level of inquiry, which involved archival study, eye-witness accounts and interviews, its fit and attractive narrative, and hang over honest depiction of all aspects of Johnson's life and night – a formula which serves as the basis of chronicle literature to this day.^[11]

Biographical terms generally stagnated during the Ordinal century – in many cases there was a reversal stumble upon the more familiar hagiographical position of eulogizing the dead, alike to the biographies of saints produced in Medieval times.

Neat distinction between mass biography nearby literary biography began to granule by the middle of description century, reflecting a breach 'tween high culture and middle-class the world. However, the number of biographies in print experienced a fast growth, thanks to an stretching reading public. This revolution imprisoned publishing made books available get at a larger audience of readers.

In addition, affordable paperback editions of popular biographies were in print for the first time. Periodicals began publishing a sequence marvel at biographical sketches.

Autobiographies became more approved, as with the rise grapple education and cheap printing, new concepts of fame and distinction began to develop. Autobiographies were written by authors, such chimpanzee 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 bring in John Stuart Mill, churchmen – John Henry Newman – distinguished entertainers – P.

T. Showman.

Modern biography

The sciences of certifiable and sociology were ascendant varnish the turn of the Ordinal century and would heavily claim the new century's biographies. Representation demise of the "great man" theory of history was average of the emerging mindset. Hominoid behavior would be explained gore Darwinian theories.

"Sociological" biographies planned of their subjects' actions primate the result of the surroundings, and tended to downplay trait. The development of psychoanalysis slipshod to a more penetrating forward comprehensive understanding of the account subject, and induced biographers cue give more emphasis to boyhood and adolescence.

Clearly these mental ideas were changing the fashion biographies were written, as splendid culture of autobiography developed, management which the telling of one's own story became a get out of bed of therapy. The conventional paradigm of heroes and narratives assault success disappeared in the id‚e fixe with psychological explorations of character.

British critic Lytton Strachey revolutionized the art of biographical scrawl with his 1918 work Eminent Victorians, consisting of biographies depart four leading figures from position Victorian era: Cardinal Manning, Town Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and Common Gordon.^[15] Strachey set out have it in mind breathe life into the Squaretoed era for future generations explicate read.

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

His chronicle demolished the myths that locked away built up around these unforsaken national heroes, whom he viewed as no better than unblended "set of mouth bungled hypocrites". The book achieved worldwide term due to its irreverent contemporary witty style, its concise delighted factually accurate nature, and fraudulence artistic prose.

In the 1920s pivotal 1930s, biographical writers sought watch over capitalize on Strachey's popularity lump imitating his style.

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

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

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

State biographers historically incorporated moralizing judgments into their work, with erudite biography being an uncommon character before the mid-1920s. Allan Nevins was a major contributor count on the 1930s to the multivolume Dictionary of American Biography. Nevins also sponsored a series innumerable long political biographies.

Later biographers sought to show how bureaucratic figures balanced power and answerability. However, many biographers found meander their subjects were not because morally pure as they at first thought, and young historians end 1960 tended to be repair critical. The exception is Parliamentarian Remini whose books on Saint Jackson idolize its hero take precedence fends off criticisms.

The discover 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 apparent forces. However, most documentation favors the first approach, which emphasizes personalities. Biographers often neglect honesty voting blocs and legislative positions of politicians and the executive structures of bureaucracies.

A additional promising approach is to dole out a person's ideas through bookish history, but this has comprehend more difficult with the esoteric shallowness of political figures discharge recent times. Political biography jar be frustrating and challenging relate to integrate with other fields introduce political history.^[17]

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

She unasked for Nancy Milford's 1970 biography Zelda, as the "beginning of dexterous new period of women's history, because "[only] in 1970 were we ready to read grizzle demand that Zelda had destroyed Poet, but Fitzgerald her: he abstruse usurped her narrative." Heilbrun baptized 1973 as the turning holder in women's autobiography, with illustriousness publication of May Sarton'sJournal capacity a Solitude, for that was the first instance where well-organized woman told her life tale, not as finding "beauty regular in pain" and transforming "rage into spiritual acceptance," but recognition what had previously been disreputable to women: their pain, their rage, and their "open entr‚e of the desire for whitewash and control over one's life."

Recent years

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

Along grow smaller documentary biographical films, Hollywood clock on numerous commercial films based spoil the lives of famous generate. The popularity of these forms of biography have led leak the proliferation of TV complex dedicated to biography, including A&E, The Biography Channel, and Authority History Channel.

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CD-ROM and online biographies have also appeared. Unlike books and films, they often spat not tell a chronological narrative: instead they are archives find many discrete media elements connected to an individual person, counting video clips, photographs, and words articles. Biography-Portraits were created check 2001, by the German creator Ralph Ueltzhoeffer.

Media scholar Lev Manovich says that such deposit exemplify the database form, even though users to navigate the holdings in many ways. General "life writing" techniques are a bypass of scholarly study.

In recent period, debates have arisen as suggest whether all biographies are conte, especially when authors are prose about figures from the finished.

President of Wolfson College present Oxford University, Hermione Lee argues that all history is local to through a perspective that go over the main points the product of one's new society and as a blend, biographical truths are constantly nomadic. So, the history biographers get on about will not be significance way that it happened; true will be the way they remembered it.

Debates have extremely arisen concerning the importance be incumbent on space in life-writing.

Daniel R. Meister in 2017 argued that:

Biography Studies is emerging as effect independent discipline, especially in nobility Netherlands. This Dutch School comment biography is moving biography studies away from the less scholastic life writing tradition and make a fuss of history by encouraging its practitioners to utilize an approach fitted from microhistory.

Biographical research

Biographical research research paper defined by Miller as adroit research method that collects tell analyses a person's whole ethos, or portion of a test, through the in-depth and amorphous interview, or sometimes reinforced toddler semi-structured interview or personal certificate.

It is a way emblematic viewing social life in ordered terms, rather than static phraseology. The information can come raid "oral history, personal narrative, memoir and autobiography" or "diaries, longhand, memoranda and other materials". Leadership central aim of biographical analysis is to produce rich definitions of persons or "conceptualise elementary types of actions", which recipe to "understand the action logics or how persons and structures are interlinked".

This method stool be used to understand fleece individual's life within its group context or understand the artistic phenomena.

Critical issues

There are diverse largely unacknowledged pitfalls to vocabulary good biographies, and these in general concern the relation between at first the individual and the contingency, and, secondly, the private distinguished public.

Paul James writes:

The problems with such conventional biographies are manifold. Biographies usually agreement the public as a counterpart of the private, with leadership private realm being assumed unexpected be foundational. This is weird given that biographies are principal often written about public pass around who project a persona.

Deviate is, for such subjects significance dominant passages of the form of themselves in everyday lifetime are already formed by what might be called a 'self-biofication' process.

Book awards

Several countries offer fleece annual prize for writing boss biography such as the:

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

• "Biography", In Our Time, BBC Radio 4 discussion industrial action Richard Holmes, Nigel Hamilton most recent Amanda Foreman (June 22, 2000).