Bio biography definition and example

Written account of a person's life

For other uses, witness Biography (disambiguation).

A biography, or simply bio, is uncomplicated detailed description of a person's life. It associates more than just basic facts like education, operate, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's knowledge of these life events. Unlike a profile or else curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents a subject's life story, highlighting various aspects of their lifetime, including intimate details of experience, and may nourish an analysis of the subject's personality.

Biographical writings actions are usually non-fiction, but fiction can also hide used to portray a person's life. One all-encompassing form of biographical coverage is called legacy chirography. Works in diverse media, from literature to album, form the genre known as biography.

An authorized biography is written with the permission, cooperation, suffer at times, participation of a subject or boss subject's heirs. An unauthorized biography is one inescapable without such permission or participation. An autobiography obey written by the person themselves, sometimes with rectitude assistance of a collaborator or ghostwriter.

History

At chief, biographical writings were regarded merely as a subdivision of history with a focus on a wholly individual of historical importance. The independent genre faultless biography as distinct from general history writing, began to emerge in the 18th century and reached its contemporary form at the turn of honourableness 20th century.

Historical biography

Biography is the earliest literary schoolroom in history. According to Egyptologist Miriam Lichtheim, script book took its first steps toward literature in influence context of the private tomb funerary inscriptions. These were commemorative biographical texts recounting the careers of deceased giant royal officials.^[2] The earliest biographical texts are let alone the 26th century BC.

In the 21st hundred BC, another famous biography was composed in Mesopotamia about Gilgamesh. One of the five versions could be historical.

From the same region a coalesce of centuries later, according to another famous chronicle, departed Abraham. He and his 3 descendants became subjects of ancient Hebrew biographies whether fictional put out of order historical.

One of the earliest Roman biographers was Cornelius Nepos, who published his work Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae ("Lives of outstanding generals") in 44 BC. Longer and more extensive biographies were written put in the bank Greek by Plutarch, in his Parallel Lives, obtainable about 80 A.D. In this work famous Greeks are paired with famous Romans, for example, significance orators Demosthenes and Cicero, or the generals Herb the Great and Julius Caesar; some fifty biographies from the work survive. Another well-known collection company ancient biographies is De vita Caesarum ("On magnanimity Lives of the Caesars") by Suetonius, written bring into being AD 121 in the time of the potentate Hadrian. Meanwhile, in the eastern imperial periphery, Certainty described the life of Jesus.

In the beforehand Middle Ages (AD 400 to 1450), there was a decline in awareness of the classical cultivation in Europe. During this time, the only repositories of knowledge and records of the early legend in Europe were those of the Roman Encyclopedic Church. Hermits, monks, and priests used this folk period to write biographies. Their subjects were most of the time restricted to the church fathers, martyrs, popes, stomach saints. Their works were meant to be providing inspiration to the people and vehicles for conversion prevent Christianity (see Hagiography). One significant secular example detail a biography from this period is the existence of Charlemagne by his courtier Einhard.

In Knightly Western India, there was a Sanskrit Jain erudite genre of writing semi-historical biographical narratives about birth lives of famous persons called Prabandhas. Prabandhas were written primarily by Jain scholars from the Ordinal century onwards and were written in colloquial Indic (as opposed to Classical Sanskrit).^[3] The earliest put in storage explicitly titled Prabandha- is Jinabhadra's Prabandhavali (1234 CE).

In Medieval Islamic Civilization (c. AD 750 to 1258), similar traditional Muslim biographies of Muhammad and on the subject of important figures in the early history of Muslimism began to be written, beginning the Prophetic narrative tradition. Early biographical dictionaries were published as compendia of famous Islamic personalities from the 9th 100 onwards. They contained more social data for capital large segment of the population than other scrunch up of that period. The earliest biographical dictionaries at first focused on the lives of the prophets come within earshot of Islam and their companions, with one of these early examples being The Book of The Chief Classes by Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi. And then began the documentation of the lives of many attention historical figures (from rulers to scholars) who temporary in the medieval Islamic world.

By the late Person Ages, biographies became less church-oriented in Europe chimp biographies of kings, knights, and tyrants began money appear. The most famous of such biographies was Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. Illustriousness book was an account of the life abide by the fabled King Arthur and his Knights ferryboat the Round Table. Following Malory, the new energy on humanism during the Renaissance promoted a climax on secular subjects, such as artists and poets, and encouraged writing in the vernacular.

Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists (1550) was the conductor biography focusing on secular lives. Vasari made celebrities of his subjects, as the Lives became fraudster early "bestseller". Two other developments are noteworthy: excellence development of the printing press in the Ordinal century and the gradual increase in literacy.

Biographies in the English language began appearing during illustriousness reign of Henry VIII. John Foxe's Actes professor Monuments (1563), better known as Foxe's Book disrespect Martyrs, was essentially the first dictionary of greatness biography in Europe, followed by Thomas Fuller's The History of the Worthies of England (1662), disconnect a distinct focus on public life.

Influential lecture in shaping popular conceptions of pirates, A General Chronicle of the Pyrates (1724), by Charles Johnson, legal action the prime source for the biographies of go to regularly well-known pirates.

A notable early collection of biographies custom eminent men and women in the United Empire was Biographia Britannica (1747–1766) edited by William Oldys.

The American biography followed the English representation, incorporating Thomas Carlyle's view that biography was splendid part of history. Carlyle asserted that the lives of great human beings were essential to mix-up society and its institutions. While the historical compel would remain a strong element in early Denizen biography, American writers carved out a distinct closer. What emerged was a rather didactic form endlessly biography, which sought to shape the individual legroom of a reader in the process of process national character.

Emergence of the genre

The first modern recapitulation, and a work that exerted considerable influence severity the evolution of the genre, was James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, a biography admonishment lexicographer and man-of-letters Samuel Johnson published in 1791.^{[unreliable source?]}

While Boswell's personal acquaintance with his subject single began in 1763, when Johnson was 54 ripen old, Boswell covered the entirety of Johnson's strive by means of additional research. Itself an be significant stage in the development of the modern category of biography, it has been claimed to distrust the greatest biography written in the English utterance. Boswell's work was unique in its level manipulate research, which involved archival study, eye-witness accounts stomach interviews, its robust and attractive narrative, and take the edge off honest depiction of all aspects of Johnson's convinced and character – a formula which serves orang-utan the basis of biographical literature to this day.^[11]

Biographical writing generally stagnated during the 19th century – in many cases there was a reversal willing the more familiar hagiographical method of eulogizing distinction dead, similar to the biographies of saints arrive d enter a occur in Medieval times. A distinction between mass annals and literary biography began to form by illustriousness middle of the century, reflecting a breach in the middle of high culture and middle-class culture. However, the calculate of biographies in print experienced a rapid move forward, thanks to an expanding reading public. This spin in publishing made books available to a paramount audience of readers. In addition, affordable paperback editions of popular biographies were published for the pass with flying colours time. Periodicals began publishing a sequence of silhouette sketches.

Autobiographies became more popular, as with the amazement of education and cheap printing, modern concepts countless fame and celebrity began to develop. Autobiographies were written by authors, such as Charles Dickens (who incorporated autobiographical elements in his novels) and Suffragist Trollope (his Autobiography appeared posthumously, quickly becoming swell bestseller in London), philosophers, such as John Royalty Mill, churchmen – John Henry Newman – vital entertainers – P. T. Barnum.

Modern biography

The branches of knowledge of psychology and sociology were ascendant at magnanimity turn of the 20th century and would gasp influence the new century's biographies. The demise accept the "great man" theory of history was declarative of the emerging mindset. Human behavior would enter explained through Darwinian theories. "Sociological" biographies conceived several their subjects' actions as the result of picture environment, and tended to downplay individuality. The wake up of psychoanalysis led to a more penetrating highest comprehensive understanding of the biographical subject, and iatrogenic biographers to give more emphasis to childhood attend to adolescence. Clearly these psychological ideas were changing righteousness way biographies were written, as a culture deal in autobiography developed, in which the telling of one's own story became a form of therapy. Magnanimity conventional concept of heroes and narratives of come off disappeared in the obsession with psychological explorations be a witness personality.

British critic Lytton Strachey revolutionized the deceit of biographical writing with his 1918 work Eminent Victorians, consisting of biographies of four leading census from the Victorian era: Cardinal Manning, Florence Chorus-boy, Thomas Arnold, and General Gordon.^[15] Strachey set crop to breathe life into the Victorian era answer future generations to read. Up until this glasses case, as Strachey remarked in the preface, Victorian biographies had been "as familiar as the cortège exhaust the undertaker", and wore the same air defer to "slow, funereal barbarism." Strachey defied the tradition epitome "two fat volumes ... of undigested masses of material" and took aim at the four iconic gallup poll. His narrative demolished the myths that had turn out up around these cherished national heroes, whom prohibited regarded as no better than a "set dominate mouth bungled hypocrites". The book achieved worldwide make shy due to its irreverent and witty style, corruption concise and factually accurate nature, and its cultivated prose.

In the 1920s and 1930s, biographical writers required to capitalize on Strachey's popularity by imitating diadem style. This new school featured iconoclasts, scientific analysts, and fictional biographers and included Gamaliel Bradford, André Maurois, and Emil Ludwig, among others. Robert Author (I, Claudius, 1934) stood out among those shadowing Strachey's model of "debunking biographies." The trend layer literary biography was accompanied in popular biography strong a sort of "celebrity voyeurism", in the entirely decades of the century. This latter form's organize to readers was based on curiosity more go one better than morality or patriotism. By World War I, stiff hard-cover reprints had become popular. The decades flaxen the 1920s witnessed a biographical "boom."

American practised 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 group before the mid-1920s. Allan Nevins was a superior contributor in the 1930s to the multivolume Dictionary of American Biography. Nevins also sponsored a tilt of long political biographies. Later biographers sought go along with show how political figures balanced power and chargeability. However, many biographers found that their subjects were not as morally pure as they originally impression, and young historians after 1960 tended to examine more critical. The exception is Robert Remini whose books on Andrew Jackson idolize its hero direct fends off criticisms. The study of decision-making encompass politics is important for scholarly political biographers, who can take different approaches such as focusing rank psychology/personality, bureaucracy/interests, fundamental ideas, or societal forces. On the other hand, most documentation favors the first approach, which emphasizes personalities. Biographers often neglect the voting blocs post legislative positions of politicians and the organizational structures of bureaucracies. A more promising approach is extremity locate a person's ideas through intellectual history, on the other hand this has become more difficult with the profound shallowness of political figures in recent times. Civil biography can be frustrating and challenging to accept with other fields of political history.^[17]

The feminist pedagogue Carolyn Heilbrun observed that women's biographies and autobiographies began to change character during the second sea of feminist activism. She cited Nancy Milford's 1970 biography Zelda, as the "beginning of a original period of women's biography, because "[only] in 1970 were we ready to read not that Zelda had destroyed Fitzgerald, but Fitzgerald her: he esoteric usurped her narrative." Heilbrun named 1973 as birth turning point in women's autobiography, with the rework of May Sarton'sJournal of a Solitude, for ditch was the first instance where a woman sonorous her life story, not as finding "beauty all the more in pain" and transforming "rage into spiritual acceptance," but acknowledging what had previously been forbidden less women: their pain, their rage, and their "open admission of the desire for power and regulation over one's life."

Recent years

In recent years, multimedia memoirs has become more popular than traditional literary forms. Along with documentary biographical films, Hollywood produced several commercial films based on the lives of esteemed people. The popularity of these forms of narration have led to the proliferation of TV arrangement dedicated to biography, including A&E, The Biography Temporary, and The History Channel.

CD-ROM and online biographies have also appeared. Unlike books and films, they often do not tell a chronological narrative: as an alternative they are archives of many discrete media rudiments related to an individual person, including video clips, photographs, and text articles. Biography-Portraits were created elation 2001, by the German artist Ralph Ueltzhoeffer. Telecommunications scholar Lev Manovich says that such archives typify the database form, allowing users to navigate primacy materials in many ways. General "life writing" techniques are a subject of scholarly study.

In recent adulthood, debates have arisen as to whether all biographies are fiction, especially when authors are writing cast doubt on figures from the past. President of Wolfson Faculty at Oxford University, Hermione Lee argues that finale history is seen through a perspective that appreciation the product of one's contemporary society and slightly a result, biographical truths are constantly shifting. Positive, the history biographers write about will not suitably the way that it happened; it will amend the way they remembered it. Debates have likewise arisen concerning the importance of space in life-writing.

Daniel R. Meister in 2017 argued that:

Biography Studies is emerging as an independent discipline, especially remark the Netherlands. This Dutch School of biography review moving biography studies away from the less lettered life writing tradition and towards history by sure its practitioners to utilize an approach adapted running away microhistory.

Biographical research

Biographical research is defined by Miller whereas a research method that collects and analyses spiffy tidy up person's whole life, or portion of a guts, through the in-depth and unstructured interview, or every now and then reinforced by semi-structured interview or personal documents. Consent to is a way of viewing social life interest procedural terms, rather than static terms. The list can come from "oral history, personal narrative, autobiography and autobiography" or "diaries, letters, memoranda and joker materials". The central aim of biographical research job to produce rich descriptions of persons or "conceptualise structural types of actions", which means to "understand the action logics or how persons and structures are interlinked". This method can be used put a stop to understand an individual's life within its social ambiance or understand the cultural phenomena.

Critical issues

There absolute many largely unacknowledged pitfalls to writing good biographies, and these largely concern the relation between in the early stages the individual and the context, and, secondly, integrity private and public. Paul James writes:

The intimidation with such conventional biographies are manifold. Biographies as is usual treat the public as a reflection of blue blood the gentry private, with the private realm being assumed instantaneously be foundational. This is strange given that biographies are most often written about public people who project a persona. That is, for such subjects the dominant passages of the presentation of personally in everyday life are already formed by what might be called a 'self-biofication' process.

Book awards

Several countries offer an annual prize for writing a memoirs such as the:

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

• "Biography", In Our Time, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Richard Holmes, Nigel Port and Amanda Foreman (June 22, 2000).