Biography

Lore & Background

A biography is a detailed account of a person’s life that goes beyond listing basic facts such as education, work, relationships, and death. It aims to portray the subject’s experience of these events, often including intimate details and an analysis of personality. Unlike a profile or résumé, a biography presents the full life story. Biographical works are usually non-fiction, though fiction can also be used to depict a life.

One in-depth form is legacy writing. The genre spans literature, film, and other media. An authorized biography is written with the subject’s permission and cooperation; an unauthorized one is not. An autobiography is written by the subject, sometimes with a collaborator.

Biography is the earliest literary genre, with the first biographical texts dating to the 26th century BC as commemorative tomb inscriptions for high officials. Roman biographers include Cornelius Nepos, who published Lives of Outstanding Generals in 44 BC. Plutarch’s Parallel Lives (c. 80 AD) paired famous Greeks with Romans, such as Demosthenes and Cicero.

Suetonius wrote On the Lives of the Caesars around 121 AD. The Gospels described the life of Jesus. In the early Middle Ages, biographies were largely written by church figures, focusing on saints and martyrs, with a notable secular exception being Einhard’s life of Charlemagne. In medieval India, Jain scholars wrote semi-historical Prabandhas from the 13th century.

Islamic biographical traditions began with lives of Muhammad and early figures, and biographical dictionaries emerged from the 9th century. By the late Middle Ages, biographies of kings, knights, and tyrants appeared, most famously Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. The Renaissance brought a focus on secular subjects like artists, with Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (1550) becoming an early bestseller. The printing press and rising literacy further spread the genre.

Reader's Guide

Boswell covered the entirety of Johnson's life through archival study, eye-witness accounts, and interviews, producing a robust narrative with honest depiction of all aspects of Johnson's life and character—a formula that serves as the basis of biographical literature to this day. Biographical writing generally stagnated during the 19th century, often reverting to hagiographical methods, though a distinction between mass biography and literary biography began to form by mid-century.

The number of biographies in print experienced rapid growth thanks to an expanding reading public and affordable paperback editions. Autobiographies became more popular with the rise of education and cheap printing, as modern concepts of fame and celebrity developed. The genre continues to encompass authorized biographies (written with the subject's permission) and unauthorized biographies (written without it), as well as autobiographies written by the subject, sometimes with a collaborator or ghostwriter.