definition of biography narrative

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1 Life Narrative: Definitions and Distinctions

• Published: January 2002
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This chapter explains the ordinary understandings of the concept and practices of self-referential narrative. It distinguishes between autobiographical writing and the practices of related kinds of life writing, namely, biography, the novel, and history writing. The working definition of self-life writing assumes that it is not a single unitary genre or form of autobiography. Rather, the historically situated practices of self-representation may take many guises as narrators selectively engage their lived experience and situate their social identities through personal storytelling. Located in specific times and places, narrators are at the same time in dialogue with the processes and archive of memory and the expectations of disparate others. The chapter describes how self-life writing shares features with the novel, biography, and history as it employs the dialogue, plot, setting, and density of language of novel.

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Literary Devices

Literary devices, terms, and elements, definition of biography, difference between biography and autobiography, common examples of biography, significance of biography in literature.

The genre of biography developed out of other forms of historical nonfiction, choosing to focus on one specific person’s experience rather than all important players. There are examples of biography all the way back to 44 B.C. when Roman biographer Cornelius Nepos wrote Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae (“Lives of those capable of commanding”). The Greek historian Plutarch was also famous for his biographies, creating a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans in his book Parallel Lives . After the printing press was created, one of the first “bestsellers” was the 1550 famous biography Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari. Biography then got very popular in the 18th century with James Boswell’s 1791 publication of The Life of Samuel Johnson . Biography continues to be one of the best selling genres in literature, and has led to a number of literary prizes specifically for this form.

Examples of Biography in Literature

And I can imagine Farmer saying he doesn’t care if no one else is willing to follow their example. He’s still going to make these hikes, he’d insist, because if you say that seven hours is too long to walk for two families of patients, you’re saying that their lives matter less than some others’, and the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that’s wrong with the world.

Tracy Kidder’s wonderful example of biography, Mountains Beyond Mountains , brought the work of Dr. Paul Farmer to a wider audience. Dr. Farmer cofounded the organization Partners in Health (PIH) in 1987 to provide free treatment to patients in Haiti; the organization later created similar projects in countries such as Russia, Peru, and Rwanda. Dr. Farmer was not necessarily a famous man before Tracy Kidder’s biography was published, though he was well-regarded in his own field. The biography describes Farmer’s work as well as some of his personal life.

On July 2, McCandless finished reading Tolstoy’s “Family Happiness”, having marked several passages that moved him: “He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others…” Then, on July 3, he shouldered his backpack and began the twenty-mile hike to the improved road. Two days later, halfway there, he arrived in heavy rain at the beaver ponds that blocked access to the west bank of the Teklanika River. In April they’d been frozen over and hadn’t presented an obstacle. Now he must have been alarmed to find a three-acre lake covering the trail.

A commanding woman versed in politics, diplomacy, and governance; fluent in nine languages; silver-tongued and charismatic, Cleopatra nonetheless seems the joint creation of Roman propagandists and Hollywood directors.

Stacy Schiff wrote a new biography of Cleopatra in 2010 in order to divide fact from fiction, and go back to the amazing and intriguing personality of the woman herself. The biography was very well received for being both scrupulously referenced as well as highly literary and imaginative.

Confident that he was clever, resourceful, and bold enough to escape any predicament, [Louie] was almost incapable of discouragement. When history carried him into war, this resilient optimism would define him.

( Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand)

I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden, one day, and he started talking about God. He [Jobs] said, “ Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50/50, maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more, and I find myself believing a bit more, maybe it’s because I want to believe in an afterlife, that when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated, somehow it lives on.”

Test Your Knowledge of Biography

2. Which of the following scenarios qualifies as a biography? A. A famous person contracts a ghostwriter to create an autobiography. B. A famous author writes the true and incredible life story of a little known person. C. A writer creates a book detailing the most important moments in her own life. [spoiler title=”Answer to Question #2″] Answer: B is the correct answer.[/spoiler]

3. Which of the following statements is true? A. Biographies are one of the best selling genres in contemporary literature. B. Biographies are always written about famous people. C. Biographies were first written in the 18th century. [spoiler title=”Answer to Question #3″] Answer: A is the correct answer.[/spoiler]

English Studies

This website is dedicated to English Literature, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, English Language and its teaching and learning.

Biography: A Literary Genre

The literary device of biography involves the meticulous construction of a narrative that captures the essence of an individual’s life through various literary techniques.

Etymology of Biography

Table of Contents

The term, biography, originates from the combination of two ancient Greek words: bios meaning “life” and graphein meaning “to write.” The word first appeared in the English language in the late 17th century, derived from the French word biographie. Its etymology reflects the essence of the genre , which involves the written account or narrative of an individual’s life.

Meanings of Biography

Biography has different meanings in different contexts. Here are some possible meanings.

• Written Account: Refers to a written account or narrative of a person’s life, detailing their experiences, achievements, and challenges.
• Comprehensive Exploration: Involves a comprehensive exploration of an individual’s personal and professional journey , offering insights into their character, motivations, and societal impact.
• Literary Genre: Describes the genre of literature or non-fiction writing that focuses on writing biographical accounts.
• Broader Scope: Can encompass any detailed study or examination of a person’s life, including audiovisual presentations, documentaries, or oral histories.
• Figurative Usage: Used metaphorically to describe the compilation or documentation of information about non-human entities, such as the biography of a company or an animal species, providing an understanding of their origins, development, and significance.

Definition of Literary Device of Biography

The literary device of biography involves the meticulous construction of a narrative that captures the essence of an individual’s life through various literary techniques. It uses characterization to portray the subject’s personality, motivations, and inner conflicts. It utilizes techniques such as direct and indirect characterization, dialogue, and anecdotal evidence.

Types of Biograph ies

Please note that these are general descriptions, and there may be some overlap or variations within each type of biography.

Literary Examples of Biographies

These biographies provide unique insights into the lives, experiences, and contributions of the individuals they feature, shedding light on historical events, social issues, and the complexities of human existence.

Suggested Readings about Biographies

• A xelrod, Alan, and Charles R. Cooper. The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing Biography . Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.
• Le, Hermoine. Biography: A Very Short Introduction . Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Lejeune, Philippe. On Autobiography . University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
• Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives . University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
• Spengemann, William C. The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre . Yale University Press, 1980.

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Biographies: The Stories of Humanity

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• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

A biography is a story of a person's life, written by another author. The writer of a biography is called a biographer while the person written about is known as the subject or biographee.

Biographies usually take the form of a narrative , proceeding chronologically through the stages of a person's life. American author Cynthia Ozick notes in her essay "Justice (Again) to Edith Wharton" that a good biography is like a novel, wherein it believes in the idea of a life as "a triumphal or tragic story with a shape, a story that begins at birth, moves on to a middle part, and ends with the death of the protagonist."

A biographical essay is a comparatively short work of nonfiction  about certain aspects of a person's life. By necessity, this sort of essay  is much more selective than a full-length biography, usually focusing only on key experiences and events in the subject's life.

Between History and Fiction

Perhaps because of this novel-like form, biographies fit squarely between written history and fiction, wherein the author often uses personal flairs and must invent details "filling in the gaps" of the story of a person's life that can't be gleaned from first-hand or available documentation like home movies, photographs, and written accounts.

Some critics of the form argue it does a disservice to both history and fiction, going so far as to call them "unwanted offspring, which has brought a great embarrassment to them both," as Michael Holroyd puts it in his book "Works on Paper: The Craft of Biography and Autobiography." Nabokov even called biographers "psycho-plagiarists," meaning that they steal the psychology of a person and transcribe it to the written form.

Biographies are distinct from creative non-fiction such as memoir in that biographies are specifically about one person's full life story -- from birth to death -- while creative non-fiction is allowed to focus on a variety of subjects, or in the case of memoirs certain aspects of an individual's life.

Writing a Biography

For writers who want to pen another person's life story, there are a few ways to spot potential weaknesses, starting with making sure proper and ample research has been conducted -- pulling resources such as newspaper clippings, other academic publications, and recovered documents and found footage.  

First and foremost, it is the duty of biographers to avoid misrepresenting the subject as well as acknowledging the research sources they used. Writers should, therefore, avoid presenting a personal bias for or against the subject as being objective is key to conveying the person's life story in full detail.

Perhaps because of this, John F. Parker observes in his essay "Writing: Process to Product" that some people find writing a biographical essay "easier than writing an  autobiographical  essay. Often it takes less effort to write about others than to reveal ourselves." In other words, in order to tell the full story, even the bad decisions and scandals have to make the page in order to truly be authentic.

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Life writing.

• Craig Howes Craig Howes Department of English and Center for Biographical Research, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.1146
• Published online: 27 October 2020

Since 1990, “life writing” has become a frequently used covering term for the familiar genres of biography, autobiography, memoir, diaries, letters, and many other forms of life narrative. Initially adopted as a critical intervention informed by post-structuralist, postmodernist, postcolonial, and especially feminist theory of the 1970s and 1980s, the term also refers to the study of life representation beyond the traditional literary and historical focus on verbal texts, encompassing not only other media—film, graphic narratives, online technologies, performance—but also research in other disciplines—psychology, anthropology, ethnic and Indigenous studies, political science, sociology, education, medicine, and any other field that records, observes, or evaluates lives.

While many critics and theorists still place their work within the realms of autobiography or biography, and others find life writing as a discipline either too ideologically driven, or still too confining conceptually, there is no question that life representation, primarily through narrative, is an important consideration for scholars engaged in virtually any field dealing with the nature and actions of human beings, or anything that lives.

• autobiography
• autofiction
• life narrative

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What Is a Biography?

Learning from the experiences of others is what makes us human.

At the core of every biography is the story of someone’s humanity. While biographies come in many sub-genres, the one thing they all have in common is loyalty to the facts, as they’re available at the time. Here’s how we define biography, a look at its origins, and some popular types.

“Biography” Definition

A biography is simply the story of a real person’s life. It could be about a person who is still alive, someone who lived centuries ago, someone who is globally famous, an unsung hero forgotten by history, or even a unique group of people. The facts of their life, from birth to death (or the present day of the author), are included with life-changing moments often taking center stage. The author usually points to the subject’s childhood, coming-of-age events, relationships, failures, and successes in order to create a well-rounded description of her subject.

Biographies require a great deal of research. Sources of information could be as direct as an interview with the subject providing their own interpretation of their life’s events. When writing about people who are no longer with us, biographers look for primary sources left behind by the subject and, if possible, interviews with friends or family. Historical biographers may also include accounts from other experts who have studied their subject.

The biographer’s ultimate goal is to recreate the world their subject lived in and describe how they functioned within it. Did they change their world? Did their world change them? Did they transcend the time in which they lived? Why or why not? And how? These universal life lessons are what make biographies such a meaningful read.

Origins of the Biography

Greco-Roman literature honored the gods as well as notable mortals. Whether winning or losing, their behaviors were to be copied or seen as cautionary tales. One of the earliest examples written exclusively about humans is Plutarch’s Parallel Lives (probably early 2 nd century AD). It’s a collection of biographies in which a pair of men, one Greek and one Roman, are compared and held up as either a good or bad example to follow.

In the Middle Ages, Einhard’s The Life of Charlemagne (around 817 AD) stands out as one of the most famous biographies of its day. Einhard clearly fawns over Charlemagne’s accomplishments throughout, yet it doesn’t diminish the value this biography has brought to centuries of historians since its writing.

Considered the earliest modern biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) by James Boswell looks like the biographies we know today. Boswell conducted interviews, performed years of research, and created a compelling narrative of his subject.

The genre evolves as the 20th century arrives, and with it the first World War. The 1920s saw a boom in autobiographies in response. Robert Graves’ Good-Bye to All That (1929) is a coming-of age story set amid the absurdity of war and its aftermath. That same year, Mahatma Gandhi wrote The Story of My Experiments with Truth , recalling how the events of his life led him to develop his theories of nonviolent rebellion. In this time, celebrity tell-alls also emerged as a popular form of entertainment. With the horrors of World War II and the explosion of the civil rights movement, American biographers of the late 20 th century had much to archive. Instantly hailed as some of the best writing about the war, John Hersey’s Hiroshima (1946) tells the stories of six people who lived through those world-altering days. Alex Haley wrote the as-told-to The Autobiography of Malcom X (1965). Yet with biographies, the more things change, the more they stay the same. One theme that persists is a biographer’s desire to cast its subject in an updated light, as in Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair that Shaped a First Lady by Susan Quinn (2016).

Types of Biographies

Contemporary Biography: Authorized or Unauthorized

The typical modern biography tells the life of someone still alive, or who has recently passed. Sometimes these are authorized — written with permission or input from the subject or their family — like Dave Itzkoff’s intimate look at the life and career of Robin Williams, Robin . Unauthorized biographies of living people run the risk of being controversial. Kitty Kelley’s infamous His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra so angered Sinatra, he tried to prevent its publication.

Historical Biography

The wild success of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is proof that our interest in historical biography is as strong as ever. Miranda was inspired to write the musical after reading Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton , an epic 800+ page biography intended to cement Hamilton’s status as a great American. Paula Gunn Allen also sets the record straight on another misunderstood historical figure with Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat , revealing details about her tribe, her family, and her relationship with John Smith that are usually missing from other accounts. Historical biographies also give the spotlight to people who died without ever getting the recognition they deserved, such as The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks .

Biography of a Group

When a group of people share unique characteristics, they can be the topic of a collective biography. The earliest example of this is Captain Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pirates (1724), which catalogs the lives of notorious pirates and establishes the popular culture images we still associate with them. Smaller groups are also deserving of a biography, as seen in David Hajdu’s Positively 4th Street , a mesmerizing behind-the-scenes look at the early years of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña as they establish the folk scene in New York City. Likewise, British royal family fashion is a vehicle for telling the life stories of four iconic royals – Queen Elizabeth II, Diana, Kate, and Meghan – in HRH: So Many Thoughts on Royal Style by style journalist Elizabeth Holmes.

Autobiography

This type of biography is written about one’s self, spanning an entire life up to the point of its writing. One of the earliest autobiographies is Saint Augustine’s The Confessions (400), in which his own experiences from childhood through his religious conversion are told in order to create a sweeping guide to life. Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first of six autobiographies that share all the pain of her childhood and the long road that led to her work in the civil rights movement, and a beloved, prize-winning writer.

Memoirs are a type of autobiography, written about a specific but vital aspect of one’s life. In Toil & Trouble , Augusten Burroughs explains how he has lived his life as a witch. Mikel Jollett’s Hollywood Park recounts his early years spent in a cult, his family’s escape, and his rise to success with his band, The Airborne Toxic Event. Barack Obama’s first presidential memoir, A Promised Land , charts his path into politics and takes a deep dive into his first four years in office.

Fictional Biography

Fictional biographies are no substitute for a painstakingly researched scholarly biography, but they’re definitely meant to be more entertaining. Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler constructs Zelda and F. Scott’s wild, Jazz-Age life, told from Zelda’s point of view. The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict brings readers into the secret life of Hollywood actress and wartime scientist, Hedy Lamarr. These imagined biographies, while often whimsical, still respect the form in that they depend heavily on facts when creating setting, plot, and characters.

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What Is a Biographical Narrative?

A biographical narrative is a story that relates the key events and facts about a person’s life from a first-person perspective. The writer of a biographical narrative describes the events in a chronological or logical sequence and reflects upon their significance. Use of descriptive details expands upon and explains shifts in the person’s perspective.

A biographical narrative contains biological information, physical descriptions, action details, anecdotes and personal interpretations of the subject. Authors of biological narratives typically choose people or characters that have personal significance to them. The point or direction of the narrative outlines the personal impact the subject has in the author’s life. In a biographical narrative, the author highlights certain details to develop an in-depth impression of the person. Sensory details replace direct explanations. The author creates an emotional impact with the narrative using specific and highly descriptive words and phrases.

Thoughts and summaries expand upon the details and emphasize the turning points in the narrative. Personal perspective is a key aspect of a biographical narrative. The thoughts of the author relate the turning points of the subject to their own life throughout the narrative. The introduction and conclusion of the narrative tie the elements of the story together and summarize the overall meaning.

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What Is a Biography? Definition & 25+ Examples

Have you ever wondered what lies beneath the surface of history’s most influential figures?

Imagine a chance to delve into the intricate tapestry of their lives, unraveling the threads that have woven together the very essence of their character, and unearthing the pivotal moments that shaped their destinies.

Welcome to the enthralling world of biographies, where you are invited to embark on a captivating journey into the lives of the extraordinary. Prepare to be captivated by the compelling tales of human resilience, ingenuity, and ambition that lie at the heart of each biography.

Table of Contents

Defining Biography

A biography is a detailed account of a person’s life, written by someone other than the subject. The term “biography” is derived from two Greek words: “bio,” which means life, and “graphy,” which signifies writing. Thus, a biography is the written history of someone’s life, offering an in-depth look at their experiences, achievements, and challenges.

Biographies typically focus on the life of notable individuals, such as historical figures or celebrities, and provide a comprehensive view of their personal and professional journey.

Biographers, the authors of these works, aim to offer an accurate, well-researched portrayal of their subjects by studying various sources and conducting interviews if possible. This thorough research and attention to detail ensure that the resulting narrative is both informative and engaging.

Biographies are a subgenre of non-fiction literature, as they chronicle the lives of real people. However, not all life stories fall under the category of biography.

Autobiographies and memoirs, for instance, focus on the author’s own experiences and are written from a first-person perspective. While autobiographies aim to present an overarching narrative of the author’s life, memoirs tend to focus on specific incidents or periods.

When crafting a biography, it is essential for the biographer to maintain a neutral tone, avoiding any judgment or personal bias. This objectivity allows readers to form their opinions based on the presented facts, gaining a broader understanding of the subject.

Elements of a Biography

A well-crafted biography contains several key elements that provide a comprehensive picture of the subject’s life. These elements help readers gain a deeper understanding of the subject while fostering an emotional connection. Below are some essential aspects of a biography:

Personal and Family Background

The personal and family background section of a biography provides an essential foundation for understanding the subject’s journey and the factors that shaped their life. By exploring the subject’s early years, readers gain insight into the environment and experiences that influenced their character, values, and aspirations.

This section typically begins with an overview of the subject’s birthplace, family origins, and cultural heritage. It delves into the family dynamics, including descriptions of the subject’s parents, siblings, and extended family, shedding light on the relationships that played a crucial role in their development.

The personal and family background section also addresses significant life events, challenges, and milestones that occurred during the subject’s upbringing. These formative experiences may include pivotal moments, such as moving to a new city, attending a particular school, or encountering a mentor who had a lasting impact on their life.

Education and Career

The education and career section of a biography is crucial for understanding the intellectual and professional development of the subject. By tracing the subject’s academic journey and career progression, readers gain a clearer picture of the knowledge, skills, and experiences that shaped their path and contributed to their success.

This section begins by outlining the subject’s educational background, including the schools they attended, the degrees or qualifications they obtained, and any specialized training they received. It also highlights the subject’s academic achievements, such as scholarships, awards, or distinctions, and any influential mentors or teachers who played a significant role in their intellectual growth.

The education and career section also delves into the subject’s professional life, chronicling their work history, job titles, and key responsibilities. It explores the subject’s career trajectory, examining how they transitioned between roles or industries and the factors that influenced their choices.

Major Events and Turning Points

The major events and turning points section of a biography delves into the pivotal moments and experiences that significantly influenced the subject’s life, shaping their character, values, and destiny.

By exploring these transformative events, readers gain a deeper understanding of the forces and circumstances that drove the subject’s actions and choices, as well as the challenges and triumphs they faced along the way.

This section encompasses a wide range of events, which could include personal milestones, such as marriage, the birth of children, or the loss of a loved one.

These personal events often provide insights into the subject’s emotional landscape and reveal the support systems, relationships, and personal values that sustained them through difficult times or propelled them to greater heights.

Influences and Inspirations

The influences and inspirations section of a biography delves into the individuals, ideas, and events that had a profound impact on the subject’s beliefs, values, and aspirations.

By understanding the forces that shaped the subject’s worldview, readers gain a deeper appreciation for the motivations driving their actions and decisions, as well as the creative and intellectual foundations upon which their accomplishments were built.

This section often begins by identifying the key figures who played a significant role in the subject’s life, such as family members, mentors, peers, or historical figures they admired.

It explores the nature of these relationships and how they shaped the subject’s perspectives, values, and ambitions. These influential individuals can provide valuable insights into the subject’s personal growth and development, revealing the sources of inspiration and guidance that fueled their journey.

The influences and inspirations section also delves into the ideas and philosophies that resonated with the subject and shaped their worldview. This could include an exploration of the subject’s religious, political, or philosophical beliefs, as well as the books, theories, or artistic movements that inspired them.

This section examines the events, both personal and historical, that impacted the subject’s life and inspired their actions. These could include moments of personal transformation, such as a life-altering experience or an epiphany, or broader societal events, such as wars, social movements, or technological innovations.

Contributions and Impact

The contributions and impact section of a biography is pivotal in conveying the subject’s lasting significance, both in their chosen profession and beyond. By detailing their achievements, innovations, and legacies, this section helps readers grasp the extent of the subject’s influence and the ways in which their work has shaped the world around them.

This section begins by highlighting the subject’s key accomplishments within their profession, such as breakthroughs, discoveries, or innovative techniques they developed. It delves into the processes and challenges they faced along the way, providing valuable insights into their creativity, determination, and problem-solving abilities.

The contributions and impact section also explores the subject’s broader influence on society, culture, or the world at large. This could include their involvement in social or political movements, their philanthropic endeavors, or their role as a cultural icon.

In addition to discussing the subject’s immediate impact, this section also considers their lasting legacy, exploring how their work has continued to inspire and shape subsequent generations.

This could involve examining the subject’s influence on their successors, the institutions or organizations they helped establish, or the enduring relevance of their ideas and achievements in contemporary society.

Personal Traits and Characteristics

The personal traits and characteristics section of a biography brings the subject to life, offering readers an intimate glimpse into their personality, qualities, and views.

This section often begins by outlining the subject’s defining personality traits, such as their temperament, values, and passions. By exploring these attributes, readers gain insight into the subject’s character and the motivations driving their actions and decisions.

These qualities could include their perseverance, curiosity, empathy, or sense of humor, which may help explain their achievements, relationships, and outlook on life.

The personal traits and characteristics section also delves into the subject’s views and beliefs, offering a window into their thoughts and opinions on various topics. This could include their perspectives on politics, religion, culture, or social issues, providing readers with a clearer understanding of the context in which they operated and the factors that shaped their worldview.

Anecdotes and personal stories play a crucial role in illustrating the subject’s personality and characteristics, as they offer concrete examples of their behavior, actions, or interactions with others.

Quotes and first-hand accounts from the subject or those who knew them well can also be invaluable in portraying their personal traits and characteristics. These accounts offer unique insights into the subject’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences, allowing readers to see the world through their eyes and better understand their character.

Types of Biographies

Biographies come in various forms and styles, each presenting unique perspectives on the lives of individuals. Some of the most common types of biographies are discussed in the following sub-sections.

Historical Fiction Biography

Historical fiction biographies artfully weave together factual information with imaginative elements, creating a vibrant tapestry of the past. By staying true to the core of a historical figure’s life and accomplishments, these works offer a unique window into their world while granting authors the creative freedom to delve deeper into their emotions, relationships, and personal struggles.

Such biographies strike a delicate balance, ensuring that the essence of the individual remains intact while allowing for fictional embellishments to bring their story to life. This captivating blend of fact and fiction serves to humanize these iconic figures, making their experiences more relatable and engaging for readers who embark on a journey through the pages of history.

Here are several examples of notable historical fiction biographies:

• “Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel (2009)
• “The Paris Wife” by Paula McLain (2011)
• “Girl with a Pearl Earring” by Tracy Chevalier (1999)
• “The Other Boleyn Girl” by Philippa Gregory (2001)
• “Loving Frank” by Nancy Horan (2007)

Academic Biography

Academic biographies stand as meticulously researched and carefully crafted scholarly works, dedicated to presenting an accurate and comprehensive account of a subject’s life.

Authored by experts or researchers well-versed in their field, these biographies adhere to rigorous standards of accuracy, sourcing, and objectivity. They delve into the intricacies of a person’s life, achievements, and impact, scrutinizing every aspect with scholarly precision.

Intended for an educated audience, academic biographies serve as valuable resources for those seeking a deeper understanding of the subject’s contributions and influence. By placing the individual within the broader context of their time, these works illuminate the complex web of factors that shaped their lives and legacies.

While academic biographies may not always carry the same narrative flair as their fictional counterparts, their commitment to factual integrity and thorough analysis make them indispensable resources for scholars, students, and enthusiasts alike

Here are several examples of notable academic biographies:

• “Einstein: His Life and Universe” by Walter Isaacson (2007)
• “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson (2011)
• “John Adams” by David McCullough (2001)
• “Alexander the Great” by Robin Lane Fox (1973)
• “Marie Curie: A Life” by Susan Quinn (1995)

Authorized Biographies

Authorized biographies offer a unique perspective on the lives of their subjects, as they are written with the explicit consent and, often, active participation of the individual in question.

This collaboration between the biographer and the subject can lead to a more accurate, detailed, and intimate portrayal of the person’s life, as the author is granted access to a wealth of personal information, documents, and anecdotes that might otherwise be inaccessible.

When working on an authorized biography, the biographer is typically given permission to access personal documents, such as letters, diaries, and photographs, which can provide invaluable insights into the subject’s thoughts, emotions, and experiences.

This primary source material allows the biographer to construct a narrative that is grounded in fact and captures the essence of the individual’s life and personality.

Here are several examples of notable authorized biographies:

• “Mandela: The Authorized Biography” by Anthony Sampson (1999)
• “Marilyn Monroe: The Biography” by Donald Spoto (1993)
• “Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words” by Malka Marom (2014)
• “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life” by Alice Schroeder (2008)
• “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg” by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik (2015)

Fictionalized Academic Biography

Fictionalized academic biographies merge the best of both worlds, combining the rigorous research and scholarly integrity of academic biographies with the engaging storytelling of historical fiction.

Authors of these works expertly navigate the delicate balance between maintaining factual accuracy and venturing into the realm of imagination.

This approach allows them to explore the subject’s personal life, relationships, and the broader historical context in a compelling manner, while ensuring the narrative remains firmly rooted in well-researched facts.

Here are several examples of notable fictionalized academic biographies:

• “The Women” by T.C. Boyle (2009)
• “Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald” by Therese Anne Fowler (2013)
• “The Marriage of Opposites” by Alice Hoffman (2015)
• “Vanessa and Her Sister” by Priya Parmar (2014)
• “The Last Days of Night” by Graham Moore (2016)

Prophetic Biography

Prophetic biographies delve into the rich and profound narratives of religious figures or prophets, meticulously weaving together insights from sacred texts, religious traditions, and historical accounts.

By providing a comprehensive portrayal of the individual’s life, teachings, and impact on society, these biographies serve as an invaluable resource for understanding the pivotal role these figures played in shaping the course of religious history and the lives of the faithful.

Here are several examples of notable prophetic biographies:

• “Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources” by Martin Lings (1983)
• “The Life of Moses” by F.B. Meyer (1893)
• “The Life of the Buddha: According to the Pali Canon” by Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli (1972)
• “The Quest of the Historical Jesus” by Albert Schweitzer (1906)
• “The Lives of the Saints” by Alban Butler (1756)

Biography Development Process

A biography is a comprehensive written account of an individual’s life, and the development process involves several essential components to ensure the biography’s accuracy and readability.

A biographer’s primary responsibility is to conduct extensive research in order to gather a comprehensive array of facts about the subject. This meticulous process involves reviewing various documents and sources that shed light on the individual’s life and experiences, as well as the historical context in which they lived.

Key documents, such as birth and death certificates, provide essential information about the subject’s origins and family background. Personal correspondence, letters, and diaries offer invaluable insights into the subject’s thoughts, emotions, relationships, and experiences. News articles, on the other hand, can reveal public perceptions of the subject, as well as their impact on society and culture.

Archives often serve as treasure troves of information for biographers, as they contain a wealth of primary sources that can help illuminate the subject’s life and times. These archives may include collections of personal papers, photographs, audio recordings, and other materials that offer first-hand accounts of the individual’s experiences or shed light on their accomplishments and impact.

Consulting relevant books and articles is another crucial aspect of a biographer’s research process, as these secondary sources provide context, analysis, and interpretation of the subject’s life and work.

By delving into the existing scholarship and engaging with the works of other researchers, biographers can solidify their understanding of the individual and the historical circumstances in which they lived.

Interviewing people who knew the subject personally is a vital component of a biographer’s research process, as it allows them to access unique insights, personal stories, and firsthand accounts of the individual’s life.

Friends, family members, co-workers, and colleagues can all offer valuable perspectives on the subject’s character, relationships, achievements, and challenges, thereby enriching the biographer’s understanding of their life and experiences.

While subjective anecdotes offer a more intimate glimpse into the subject’s personality and personal life, it is essential for biographers to balance these accounts with factual research.

By corroborating and contextualizing personal stories with objective information gleaned from primary and secondary sources, biographers can ensure that their portrayal of the individual’s life remains accurate and well-rounded.

This process of balancing subjective anecdotes with factual research also allows biographers to present a more nuanced and comprehensive view of their subject. By weaving together personal stories with historical context, biographers can create a richer and more engaging narrative that captures the complexity and multifaceted nature of the individual’s life.

In addition, by considering various perspectives and sources of information, biographers can address potential biases or discrepancies in their account, resulting in a more reliable and credible portrayal of the subject.

This careful attention to detail and commitment to accuracy not only enhances the quality of the biography but also helps establish trust between the biographer and their readers.

Chronological Narration

Organizing a biography in a chronological manner is a highly effective approach, as it allows readers to follow the subject’s life events in a logical and coherent sequence.

By presenting the information in a linear fashion, the biographer enables readers to trace the subject’s journey from their early years to their later accomplishments, making it easier to understand the context and progression of their life.

To effectively arrange a chronological narrative, the biographer should begin by highlighting significant milestones and accomplishments in the subject’s life. These key events serve as anchor points in the story, helping to structure the narrative and maintain the reader’s interest.

By focusing on these pivotal moments, the biographer can illustrate the subject’s growth, development, and achievements over time, providing a clear and engaging overview of their life’s trajectory.

Contextualization

Contextualizing the subject within their historical and cultural framework is a crucial aspect of biographical writing, as it enables readers to gain a deeper understanding of the individual’s life, choices, and significance.

Embedding the subject within their historical context involves examining the political, social, and economic landscape of the time. This includes exploring major events, trends, and issues that affected the subject’s life and decisions, such as wars, social movements, technological advancements, or cultural shifts.

Additionally, considering the subject’s cultural context is essential for understanding their beliefs, values, and creative expression. This involves examining the artistic, intellectual, and philosophical currents of the time, which may have influenced the subject’s work, ideas, or relationships.

Moreover, contextualizing the subject within their historical and cultural framework can help to humanize them, revealing the complexities, contradictions, and struggles that are often inherent in the human experience.

This approach offers readers a more nuanced and empathetic understanding of the subject, allowing them to see the person as a product of their time and circumstances, rather than as an isolated figure.

Famous Biographies and Biographers

The life of samuel johnson, ll.d. by james boswell (1791).

“The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.” is a biography of the English writer and literary critic Samuel Johnson, written by his friend and contemporary James Boswell. Published in 1791, it is often considered one of the greatest biographies in the English language and a pioneering work in the development of modern biography as a literary genre.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was a prominent figure in 18th-century English literature, known for his wide-ranging knowledge, wit, and moral authority. He is best remembered for his dictionary, “A Dictionary of the English Language,” published in 1755, which became the standard English dictionary for over a century. He was also a prolific essayist, poet, and critic.

James Boswell (1740-1795) was a Scottish lawyer, diarist, and author who became friends with Johnson in 1763. Over the course of their friendship, Boswell made detailed notes of their conversations and observations, which he later used as the basis for his biography.

“The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.” is a comprehensive and vivid portrait of Johnson’s life, character, and work. Boswell covers Johnson’s early years, education, and struggles with poverty and illness, as well as his rise to prominence as a writer and his involvement in the vibrant literary circles of 18th-century London.

The biography also delves into Johnson’s friendships and relationships, including his long association with Hester Thrale, a prominent society hostess, and writer.

What sets Boswell’s biography apart is his skill in capturing Johnson’s personality, wit, and conversation. By presenting Johnson’s thoughts and opinions on a wide range of topics, as well as anecdotes and reminiscences from those who knew him, Boswell creates a vivid and engaging portrait of his subject.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010)

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is a non-fiction book written by Rebecca Skloot, published in 2010. The book tells the story of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman whose cancer cells were taken without her knowledge or consent during a biopsy in 1951. These cells, known as HeLa cells, became the first immortal human cell line, reproducing indefinitely under laboratory conditions.

HeLa cells have been used extensively in medical research, contributing to significant scientific breakthroughs, such as the development of the polio vaccine, gene mapping, and cancer research.

Henrietta Lacks was a young mother of five when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cervical cancer at the age of 31. She received treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where a sample of her cancerous tissue was taken without her knowledge. Henrietta passed away in 1951, but her cells continued to live on, revolutionizing medical research.

Rebecca Skloot spent more than a decade researching Henrietta Lacks’ life and the scientific history of HeLa cells. Skloot also interviewed Lacks’ surviving family members, who were unaware of Henrietta’s contribution to science until the 1970s.

The book explores the ethical issues surrounding the use of human tissue in research, the question of consent, and the lack of compensation for the Lacks family.

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (2004)

“Alexander Hamilton” is a comprehensive biography of the American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, written by historian and biographer Ron Chernow. Published in 2004, the book provides an in-depth look into Hamilton’s life, from his humble beginnings in the West Indies to his significant contributions as a statesman, economist, and influential figure in early American history.

Chernow’s biography delves into Hamilton’s early life as an orphan in the Caribbean, his immigration to the American colonies, and his education. It also explores his involvement in the American Revolutionary War, where he served as an aide to General George Washington and later as an artillery officer.

The book details Hamilton’s role in the development of the United States Constitution and his work as the first Secretary of the Treasury under President Washington, where he was instrumental in establishing the nation’s financial system.

“Alexander Hamilton” also examines Hamilton’s personal life, including his relationships, marriage, and infamous extramarital affair, as well as his longstanding political rivalries with figures such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Aaron Burr. The biography concludes with the story of Hamilton’s tragic death in a duel with Burr in 1804.

It received critical acclaim and won several awards, including the George Washington Book Prize. The biography also inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda to create the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton,” which premiered in 2015 and went on to achieve widespread popularity and numerous accolades, further solidifying Alexander Hamilton’s place in popular culture and history.

Notable Biographies in Different Fields

Science and technology.

Biographies in the field of science and technology offer fascinating insights into the lives and minds of extraordinary individuals who have made significant advancements in their respective fields.

These biographies often provide an in-depth look at the personal and professional lives of scientists, inventors, engineers, and other innovators, highlighting their discoveries, inventions, and contributions to human knowledge and progress.

Arts and Literature

Biographies of artists, actors, and writers often provide captivating and inspiring accounts of the lives of these creative individuals. By examining their personal and professional journeys, these biographies allow readers to gain a deeper understanding of the inspirations, motivations, and challenges that have shaped their subjects’ artistic achievements.

These biographies often delve into the early lives of their subjects, exploring formative experiences that may have influenced their creative paths. They also examine the artistic processes and the development of the subjects’ distinctive styles, providing valuable insights into their creative methodologies, influences, and inspirations.

Sports and Athletics

Biographies of athletes provide riveting accounts of the lives and careers of remarkable individuals who have achieved greatness in the world of sports. These stories often serve as powerful sources of inspiration, showcasing the dedication, perseverance, and triumphs of athletes who have overcome obstacles and pushed the boundaries of human potential.

These biographies delve into the formative experiences of their subjects, exploring how early influences, innate talent, and personal motivations led them to pursue athletic excellence. They also provide insights into the rigorous training regimens, discipline, and sacrifices that athletes make to achieve their goals, highlighting the incredible determination and work ethic that underpin their success.

Additionally, biographies of athletes often touch on the personal challenges and setbacks these individuals have faced, such as injuries, controversies, or personal struggles.

Historical Figures

Biographies of historical figures offer a unique window into the lives, personalities, and experiences of individuals who have left lasting impacts on the world. By delving into the stories of these influential people, readers can gain a deeper understanding of the political, social, and cultural contexts that shaped their actions and decisions, as well as the lasting legacies they left behind.

These biographies often provide richly detailed accounts of their subjects’ lives, including their upbringing, education, relationships, and personal struggles. By exploring the complex facets of these individuals, biographies help to humanize historical figures, providing a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of their motivations, beliefs, and actions.

In addition to personal narratives, biographies of historical figures often weave together broader historical contexts and events. This allows readers to gain valuable insights into the social, political, and cultural forces that influenced their subjects’ lives and decisions.

Writing a Compelling Biography

A captivating biography requires more than just a simple retelling of a person’s life events. It delves into their personal experiences, relationships, and accomplishments, while maintaining an objective and authentic approach.

Being Objective and Authentic

An essential aspect of a well-written biography is its objectivity. The narrative should portray the real person, depicting their experiences and beliefs accurately.

While it can be tempting to embellish facts or minimize flaws, striving for authenticity is crucial in presenting a credible account. This involves thorough research and verification of facts, even when they contradict the author’s initial assumptions.

Authenticity also extends to the respectful portrayal of a subject’s relationships and exploration of their inner world, while avoiding speculation or gossip.

Balancing Personal and Public Life

When writing a biography, one must strike a balance between the subject’s personal and public life. This includes weaving together stories from their childhood, personal relationships, and major life events that may have shaped their character. The integration of both personal and public aspects contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of their vita.

However, careful consideration must be given to privacy concerns, and it is important to determine which aspects of the individual’s life are appropriate to disclose. Ultimately, the reader should gain insight into the person’s journey without feeling intrusive.

Creating Engaging Storylines

Just as in a novel, a great biography should feature engaging storylines that keep readers interested. This can be achieved by organizing the narrative around important events, challenges, and accomplishments that are relevant and compelling. To maintain a smooth flow, strategically transitioning between these key moments helps maintain reader interest.

The use of different perspectives, anecdotes, and historical context can also enhance the storyline. Paint vivid pictures of the settings, allowing readers to immerse themselves in the subject’s world. Furthermore, showcasing the subject’s resilience, growth, and impact, can contribute to a powerful and memorable biography.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can biographies be fictional or purely factual.

Biographies usually aim to present an accurate and factual representation of someone’s life. However, some authors might take creative liberties and incorporate fictionalized elements for dramatic or storytelling purposes.

It is crucial for readers to be aware of the author’s intentions and approach when reading such biographical works.

Can biographies be biased?

Biographies, like any form of writing, can be subject to biases depending on the author’s perspective, beliefs, or intentions.

It is essential for readers to critically evaluate biographies by considering factors such as the author’s credentials, potential biases, and the sources used in the research process.

By comparing multiple biographies on the same subject or cross-referencing with other sources, readers can develop a more comprehensive and balanced understanding of the individual’s life and achievements.

Are biographies always based on famous or historical figures?

While biographies often focus on famous or historical figures, they can also be written about lesser-known individuals with compelling stories or unique experiences.

These “everyday” biographies can provide valuable insights into the lives of ordinary people and the challenges they face, offering a broader understanding of the human experience and fostering empathy and connection among readers.

Are there any ethical considerations when writing a biography?

Yes, ethical considerations play a significant role in writing biographies.

Biographers must respect the privacy and dignity of their subjects, particularly when dealing with sensitive or personal information. They should also strive for accuracy and fairness, avoiding sensationalism or misrepresentation of facts.

Additionally, biographers should acknowledge and address any potential biases or conflicts of interest that may affect their portrayal of the subject.

Biographies offer us unparalleled access to the lives and legacies of remarkable individuals, spanning diverse genres and approaches.

From historical fiction to academic rigor, prophetic accounts to fictionalized narratives, biographies captivate our imagination and enrich our understanding of the human experience. These literary gems remind us that behind every great achievement lies a story of struggle, triumph, and unwavering determination.

So, let us continue to explore these remarkable journeys, as we delve deeper into the pages of history and the hearts of those who have shaped our world.

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Autobiography

Notoriously difficult to define, autobiography in the broader sense of the word is used almost synonymously with “life writing” and denotes all modes and genres of telling one’s own life. More specifically, autobiography as a literary genre signifies a retrospective narrative that undertakes to tell the author’s own life, or a substantial part of it, seeking (at least in its classic version) to reconstruct his/her personal development within a given historical, social and cultural framework. While autobiography on the one hand claims to be non-fictional (factual) in that it proposes to tell the story of a ‘real’ person, it is inevitably constructive, or imaginative, in nature and as a form of textual ‘self-fashioning’ ultimately resists a clear distinction from its fictional relatives (autofiction, autobiographical novel), leaving the generic borderlines blurred.

Explication

Emerging from the European Enlightenment, with precursors in antiquity, autobiography in its ‘classic’ shape is characterized by autodiegetic, i.e. 1st-person subsequent narration told from the point of view of the present. Comprehensive and continuous retrospection, based on memory, makes up its governing structural and semantic principle. Oscillating between the struggle for truthfulness and creativity, between oblivion, concealment, hypocrisy, self-deception and self-conscious fictionalizing, autobiography renders a story of personality formation, a Bildungsgeschichte . As such, it was epitomized by Rousseau ( [1782–89] 1957 ); Goethe ( [1808–31] 1932 ) and continued throughout the 19th century and beyond (Chateaubriand [1848/50] 2002 ; Mill [1873]1989 , with examples of autobiographical fiction in Moritz ( [1785–86] 2006 ), Dickens ( [1850] 2008 ), Keller ( [1854–55] 1981 ; a second, autodiegetic version [1879–80] 1985 ) and Proust ( [1913–27] 1988 ). While frequently disclaiming to follow generic norms, its hallmark is a focus on psychological introspection and a sense of historicity, frequently implying, in the instance of a writer’s autobiography, a close link between the author’s life and literary work.

Although 1st-person narrative continues to be the dominant form in autobiography, there are examples of autobiographical writing told in the 3rd person (e.g. Stein 1933 ; Wolf 1976 ), in epistolary form (e.g. Plato’s Seventh Letter ca. 353 B.C. [1966] ) and in verse (Wordsworth [1799, 1805, 1850] 1979 ). However, with its ‘grand narrative’ of identity, the classic 1st-person form of autobiography has continued to provide the generic model around which new autobiographical forms of writing and new conceptions of autobiographical selves have taken shape. At the heart of its narrative logic lies the duality of the autobiographical person, divided into ‘narrating I’ and ‘narrated I’, marking the distance between the experiencing and the narrating subject. Whereas the ‘narrated I’ features as the protagonist, the ‘narrating I’, i.e. the 1st-person narrator, ultimately personifies the agent of focalization, the overall position from which the story is rendered, although the autobiographical narrator may temporarily step back to adopt an earlier perspective. A pseudo-static present point of narration as the ultimate end of autobiographical writing is thus implied, rendering the trajectory of autobiographical narrative circular, as it were: the present is both the end and the condition of its narration. However, this apparent circularity is frequently destabilized by the dynamics of the narrative present, as the autobiographer continues to live while composing his/her narrative, thus leaving the perspective open to change unless the position of ‘quasi death’ is adopted, as in Hume’s notoriously stoic presentation of himself as a person of the past (Hume 1778 ). At the other end of the spectrum of self-positionings as autobiographical narrator, Wordsworth testifies to the impossibility of autobiographical closure in his verse autobiography ( [1799, 1805, 1850] 1979 ). Again and again, he rewrites the same time span of his life. As his life continues to progress, his subject—the “growth of a poet’s mind” ( [1850, subtitle] 1979 )—perpetually appears to him in a new light, requiring continual revision even though the ‘duration’ (the time span covered) in fact remains the same, thus reflecting the instability of the autobiographical subject as narrator. Accordingly, the later narrative versions bear the mark of the different stages of writing. The narrative present, then, can only ever be a temporary point of view, affording an “interim balance” (de Bruyn [1992] 1994 ) at best, leaving the final vantage point an autobiographical illusion.

With its dual structural core, the autobiographical 1st-person pronoun may be said to reflect the precarious intersections and balances of the “idem” and “ipse” dimensions of personal identity pertaining to spatio-temporal sameness and selfhood as agency (Ricœur 1991 ). In alternative theoretical terms, it may be related to “three identity dilemmas”: “sameness […] across time,” being “unique” in the face of others; and “agency” (Bamberg 2011 : 6–8; Bamberg → Identity and Narration ). In a more radical, deconstructive twist of theorizing autobiographical narrative in relation to the issue ofidentity, the 1st-person dualism inherent in autobiography appears as a ‘writing the self’ by another, as a mode of “ghostwriting” (Volkening 2006 : 7).

Beyond this pivotal feature of 1st-person duality, further facets of the 1st-person pronoun of autobiography come into play. Behind the narrator, the empirical writing subject, the “Real” or “Historical I” is located, not always in tune with the ‘narrating’ and ‘experiencing I’s’, but considered the ‘real author’ and the external subject of reference. The concept of the “ideological I” suggested by Smith and Watson (eds. 2001 ) is a more precarious one. It is conceived as an abstract category which, unlike its narrative siblings, is not manifest on the textual level, but in ‘covert operation’ only. According to Smith and Watson, it signifies “the concept of personhood culturally available to the narrator when he tells the story” (eds. 2001 : 59–61) and thus reflects the social (and intertextual) embedding of any autobiographical narrative. Reconsidered from the viewpoint of social sciences and cognitive narratology alike, the ‘ideological I’ derives from culturally available generic and insti­tutional genres, structures and institutions of self-representation. Depending on the diverse (inter-)disciplinary approaches to the social nature of the autobiographical self, these are variously termed “master narrative,” “patterns of emplotment,” “schema,” “frame,” cognitive “script” (e.g. Neumann et al. eds. 2008 ), or even “biography generator” ( Biographie­generatoren , Hahn 1987 : 12). What ties this heterogeneous terminology together is the basic assumption that only through an engagement with such socially/culturally prefigured models, their reinscription, can individuals represent themselves as subjects.

The social dimension of autobiography also comes into play on an intratextual level in so far as any act of autobiographical communication addresses another—explicitly so in terms of constructing a narratee, who may be part of the self, a “Nobody,” an individual person, the public, or God as supreme Judge.

At the same time, autobiography stages the self in relation to others on the level of narrative. Apart from personal models or important figures in one’s life story, autobiographies may be centred on a relationship of self and other to an extent that effectively erases the boundaries between auto- and heterobiography (e.g. Gosse [1907] 2004 ; Steedman 1987 ). In such cases, the (auto)biographical “routing of a self known through its relational others” is openly displayed, undermining the model “of life narrative as a bounded story of the unique, individuated narrating subject” (Smith & Watson eds. 2001 : 67). With its several dimensions of social ‘relatedness’, then, autobiographical writing is never an autonomous act of self-reflection, as sociological theorists of (auto-)biography have long argued (e.g. Kohli 1981 : 505–16). From a sociological angle, it may be considered a form of social action making sense of personal experience in terms of general relevance (Sloterdijk 1978 : 21). Autobiographical patterns of relevance are culturally specific, diverse and subject to historical change, as the history of autobiography with its multitude of forms and writing practices demonstrates.

Autobiography in Historical Perspective

Whereas its origins ultimately date back to antiquity (Roesler 2005 ), with Augustine’s Confessions ( [398–98] 1961 ) as a prominent ancient landmark, the history of autobiography as a (factual) literary genre and critical term is a much shorter one. In German, the term Selbstbiographie first featured in the collective volume Selbstbiographien berühmter Männer ( 1796 ) [Self-Biographies by Famous Men], its editor Seybold claiming Herder as source. Jean Paul called his unfinished and unpublished autobiography Selberlebens­beschrei­bung [‘description of one’s life by oneself’] ( [1818­–19] 1987 : 16). In English, D’Israeli spoke of “self-biography” in 1796 (95–110), while his critic Taylor suggested “auto-biography” (Nussbaum 1989 : 1). These neologisms reflect a concern with a mode of writing only just considered to be a distinct species of (factual) literature at the time; not until the mid-18th century did autobiography separate from historiography as well as from a general notion of biography. The latter, variously coined ‘life’, ‘memoir’ or ‘history’, had not distinguished between what Johnson then seminally parted as “telling his own story” as opposed to “recounting the life of another” ( [1750] 1969 and [1759] 1963 ).

The emergence of autobiography as a literary genre and critical term thus coincides with what has frequently been called the emergence of the modern subject around 1800. It evolved as a genre of non-fictional, yet ‘constructed’ autodiegetic narration wherein a self-reflective subject enquires into his/her identity and its developmental trajectory. The autobiographer looks back to tell the story of his/her life from the beginning to the present, tracing the story of its own making—in Nietzsche’s words, “How One Bec[ame] What One Is” ( [1908] 1992 ). As it tends to focus on the autobiographical subject as singular individual, auto­biography in the modern sense is thus marked by the secularization and the “temporalization ( Historisierung) of experience” (Burke 2011 : 13). In contrast, pre-modern spiritual autobiography, which followed the tradition of Augustine’s Confessions and continued well into the 19th century, constructed its subject as exemplum, i.e. as a typical story to be learnt from. Little emphasis was put on life-world particularities (although these tended to acquire their own popular dynamics as in crime confessions ). Dividing life into clear-cut phases centred round the moment of conversion, the spiritual autobiographer tells the story of self-renunciation and surrenders to providence and grace (e.g. Bunyan [1666] 1962 ). Its narrative becomes possible only after the key experience of conversion, yielding up a ‘new self’. Accordingly, Augustine commented on his former self with great detachment: “But this was the man I was” ( [387–98] 1961 : 105). While on the level of story, then, the division in spiritual autobiographies is one of ‘before’ and ‘after’, the level of narrative being ruled by the perspective of ‘after’ almost exclusively: only after and governed by the experience of conversion to Christian belief can the story be told at all. The moment of anagnōrisis and narrative present do not coincide.

The narrative mode of modern autobiography as a literary genre, firmly linked to the notion of the individual, evolved to some extent by propelling the moment of self-recognition towards the narrative present: only at the end of one’s story can it be unfurled from the beginning as a singular life course, staging the autobiographer as subject. The secular self accounts for itself as autonomous agent, (ideally) in charge of itself. This is the narrative logic of autobiography in its ‘classic shape’ that also informed the autobiographical novel. By 1800, the task of autobiography was to represent a unique individual, as claimed by Rousseau for himself: “I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not like any of those who are in existence” ( [1782] 1957 : 1). Most prominently, Goethe explicitly writes of himself as a singular individual embedded in and interacting with the specific constellations of his time ( [1808–31] 1932 ). Autobiography thus focuses on the life of a singular individual within its specific historical context, retracing the “genetic personality de­ve­lop­ment founded in the awareness of a complex in­terplay bet­ween I-and-my-world” (Weintraub 1982 : 13). In this sense, it may be seen to represent the “full convergence of all the factors constituting this modern view of the self” (XV). Its central figure is that of a Romantic self-constitution, grounded in memory.

As memory informs autobiography, self-consciously reflected upon since Augustine (Book XX, Confessions ), the boundaries between fact and fiction are inevitably straddled, as Goethe’s title Dichtung und Wahrheit ( Poetry and Truth ) ( [1808–31] 1932 ) aptly suggests. In the face of the inevitable subjectivity (or fallibility) of autobiographical recollection, the creative dimension of memory, and thus autobiography’s quality as verbal/aesthetic fabrication, has come to the fore. In this respect, the history of autobiography as a literary genre is closely interrelated with corresponding forms of autofiction/the autobiographical novel, with no clear dividing lines, even though autobiographical fiction tends to leave “signposts” of its fictionality to be picked up by the reader (Cohn 1999 ). In any case, autobiography’s temporal linearity and narrative coherence has frequently proved prone to deliberate anachronisms and disruptions—programmatically so in Nabokov ( 1966 ). Indeed, by the early 20th century there was an increasing scepticism about the possibility of a cohesive self emerging through autobiographical memory. Modernist writers experimented with fragmentation, subverting chronology and splitting the subject (Woolf 1985 , published posthumously; Stein 1933 ), foregrounding visual and scenic/topographical components, highlighting the role of language (Sartre [1964] 2002 ), conflating auto- and heterobiography or transforming lives into fiction (e.g. Proust [1913–27] 1988 ).

Critical Paradigms in Historical Perspective

From its critical beginnings, then, autobiography has been inextricably linked to the critical history of subjectivity. In his monumental study of 1907, Misch explicitly surveyed the history of autobiography as a reflection of the trajectory of forms of subjective consciousness ( [1907] 1950 : 4). He thus acknowledged the historical specificity of forms of autobiographical self-reflection. With his concept of autobiography as “a special genre in literature” and at the same time “an original interpretation of experience” (3–4), Misch aligned with the hermeneutics of Dilthey, who considered autobiography the supreme form of the “understanding of life.” Such understanding involves selection as the autobiographical self takes from the infinite moments of experience those elements that, in retrospect, appear relevant with respect to the entire life course. The past is endowed with meaning in the light of the present. Understanding, according to Dilthey, also involves fitting the individual parts into a whole, ascribing interconnection and causality ( [1910] 2002 : 221–22). Autobiography thus constructs an individual life course as a coherent, meaningful whole. Even if autobiography’s aspect of re-living experience, of rendering incidents as they were experienced at the time, is taken into account, the superior ‘interpreting’ position of the narrative present remains paramount, turning past events into a meaningful plot, making sense ( Sinn ) of contingency.

Hermeneutics continued to dominate the theory of autobiography, lagging behind its poetic practices. Gusdorf defined autobiography as “a kind of apologetics or theodicy of the indivi­dual being” ( 1980 : 39), yet shifted the emphasis somewhat by prioritizing its literary over its historical function. Anglo-American theories of autobiography similarly tended to focus on such a poetical norm of autobiography as a literary work devoted to “inner truth” (Pascal 1960 ), with Rousseau’s/Goethe’s autobiography as the recognizable generic model. “Any auto­biography that resembles modern auto­biographies in structure and content is the modern kind of au­to­biography”; these are “works like those that modern readers in­stinctively expect to find when they see Autobiography , My Life , or Memoirs printed across the back of a volume” (Shumaker 1954 : 5). Whether hermeneutics- or New Criticism-inspired, the history of autobiography as“art” (Niggl 1988 : 6) is seen to culminate around 1800, while its more immediate forerunners are often located in the Renaissance or earlier (e.g. Petrarch [1326] 2005 ; Cellini [1558–66] 1995 ). With regard to the primary role of the autobiographer as subject of his work, Starobinski argued that his/her singularity was articulated by way of idiosyncratic style ( 1970 , [1970] 1983 ).

Only in the wake of the various social, cultural and linguistic turns of literary and cultural theory since the 1970s did autobiography lose this normative frame. Relying on Freud and Riesman, Neumann established a social psychology - based typology of autobiographical forms. Aligning different modes of narrative with different conceptions of identity, he distinguished between the external orientation of res gestae and memoir, representing the individual as social type, on the one hand, as opposed to autobiography with its focus on memory and identity ( 1970 : esp. 25), on the other hand. Only autobiography aims at personal identity whereas the memoir is concerned with affirming the autobiographer’s place in the world.

More recent research has elaborated on the issue of autobiographical narrative and identity in psychological terms (Bruner 1993 ) as well as from interdisciplinary angles, probing the inevitability of narrative as constitutive of personal identity (e.g. Eakin 2008 ) in the wake of “the twin crisis of identity and narrative in the twentieth century” (Klepper 2013 : 2) and exploring forms of non-linearity, intermediality or life writing in the new media (Dünne & Moser 2008 ). The field of life writing as narratives of self—or of various forms of self—has thus become significantly broader, transcending the classic model of autobiographical identity qua coherent retrospective narrative. Yet whatever its theoretical remodelling and practical rewritings, even if frequently subverted in practice, the close nexus between narrative, self/identity, and the genre/practice of autobiography continues to be considered paramount. The underlying assumption concerning autobiography is that of a close, even inextricable connection between narrative and identity, with autobiography the prime generic site of enactment. Moreover, life narrative has even been promoted in modernity to a “general cultural pattern of knowledge” (Braun & Stiegler eds. 2012 : 13). (While these approaches tend to address autobiographical writing practices claiming to be or considered non-fictional, their relevance extends to autofictional forms.)

Next to narrative and identity, the role of memory in (autobiographical) self-constructions has been addressed (Olney 1998 ), in particular adopting cognitivist (e.g. Erll et al., eds. 2003 ) and psychoanalytical (Pietzcker 2005 ) angles as well as elaborating the neurobiological foundations of autobiographical memory (Markowitsch & Welzer 2005 ). From the perspective of ‘natural’ narratology, the experiential aspect of autobiography, its dimension of re-living and reconstructing experience, has been emphasized (Löschnigg 2010 : 259).

With memory being both a constitutive faculty and a creative liability, the nature of the autobiogra­phical subject has also been revised in terms of psychoanalytical, (socio‑) psychological or even deconstructive cate­gories (e.g. Holdenried 1991 ; Volkening 2006 ). ‘Classic autobiography’ has turned out to be a limited historical phenomenon whose foundations and principles have been increasingly challenged and subverted with respect to poetic practice, poetological reflection and genre theory alike. Even within a less radical theoretical frame, chronological linearity, retrospective narrative closure and coherence as mandatory generic markers have been dis­qualified, or at least re-conceptualized as structural tools (e.g. Kronsbein 1984 ). Autobiography’s generic scope now includes such forms as the diary/journal as “serial autobiography” (Fothergill 1974 : 152), the “Literary Self-Portrait” as a more heterogeneous and complex literary type (Beaujour [1980] 1991 ) and the essay (e.g. Hof & Rohr eds. 2008 ). While autobiography has thus gained in formal and thematic diversity, autobiographical identity appears a transitory phenomenon at best. In its most radical deconstructive twist, autobiography is reconceptionalized as a rhetorical figure—“prosopopeia”—that ultimately produces “the illu­sion of reference” (de Man 1984 : 81). De Man thus challenges the very foundations of autobiography in that it is said to create its subject by means of rhetorical language rather than represent the subject. Autobiography operates in complicity with metaphysical notions of self-consciousness, intentionality and language as a means of representation.

Whereas de Man’s deconstruction of autobiography turned out to be of little lasting impact, Lejeune’s theory of the “autobiographical pact” has proven seminal. It rethinks autobiography as an institutionalized communicative act where author and reader enter into a particular ‘contract’—the “autobiographical pact”—sealed by the triple reference of the same proper name. “Autobiography (narrative recounting the life of the author) supposes that there is identity of name between the author (such as s/he figures, by name, on the cover), the narrator of the story and the character who is being talked about” ( [1987] 1988 : 12; see Genette [1991] 1993 ) . The author’s proper name refers to a singular autobiogra­phical identity, identifying author, narrator and protagonist as one, and thus ensures the reading as autobiography. “The autobiographical pact is the affirmation in the text of this identity, referring back in the final analysis to the name of the author on the cover” (14). The tagging of the generic status operates by way of paratextual pronouncements or by identity of names; in contrast, nominal differentiation or content clues might point to fiction as worked out by Cohn ( 1999 ).

While Lejeune’s approach reduces the issue of fiction vs non-fiction to a simple matter of pragmatics, he acknowledges its own historical limitations set by the “author function” (Foucault [1969] 1979 ) along with its inextricable ties to the middle-class subject. As an ideal type, Lejeune’s autobiographical pact depends on the emergence of the modern author in the long 18th century as proprietor of his or her own text, guaranteed by modern copyright and marked by the title page/the imprint. In this sense, the history of modern autobiography as literary genre is closely connected to the history of authorship and the modern subject and vice versa, much as the scholarship on autobiography has emerged contemporaneously with the emergence of the modern author (Schönert → Author ).

In various ways, then, autobiography has proved prone to be to “slip[ping] away altogether,” failing to be identifiable by “its own proper form, terminology, and observances” (Olney ed. 1980 : 4). Some critics have even pondered the “end of autobiography” (e.g. Finck 1999 : 11). With critical hindsight, the classic paradigm of autobiography, with its tenets of coherence, circular closure, interiority, etc., is exposed as a historically limited, gendered and socially exclusive phenomenon (and certainly one that erases any clear dividing line between factual and fictional self-writings).

As its classic markers were rendered historically obsolete or ideologically suspicious (Nussbaum 1989 ), the pivotal role of class (Sloterdijk 1978 ), and especially gender, as intersectional identity markers within specific historical contexts came to be highlighted, opening innovative critical perspectives on strategies of subject formation in ‘canonical’ texts as well as broadening the field of autobiography studies. While ‘gender sensitive’ studies initially sought to reconstruct a specific female canon, they addressed the issue of a distinct female voice of/in autobiography as more “multidimensional, fragmented” (Jelinek ed. 1986 : viii), or subsequently undertook to explore autobiographical selves in terms of discursive self-positionings instead (Nussbaum 1989 ; Finck 1999 : esp. 291–93), tying in with discourse analytical redefinitions of autobiography as a discursive regime of (self-)discipline and regulation that evolved out of changes in communication media and technologies of memory during the 17th and 18th centuries (Schneider 1986 ). Subsequently, issues of publication, canonization and the historical nexus of gender and (autobiographical) genre became subjects of investigation, bringing into view historical notions of gender and the specific conditions and practices of communication within their generic and pragmatic contexts (e.g. Hof & Rohr eds. 2008 ). The history of autobiography has come to be more diverse and multi-facetted: thus alternative ‘horizontal’ modes of self, where identity is based on its contextual embedding by way of diarial modes, have come to the fore. With respect to texts by 17th-century autobiographers, the notion of “heterologous subjectivity”— self-writing via writing about another or others—has been suggested (Kormann 2004 : 5–6).

If gender studies exposed autobiography’s individualist self as a phenomenon of male self-fashioning, postcolonial theory further challenged its universal validity. While autobiography was long considered an exclusively Western genre, postcolonial approaches to autobiography/ life writing have significantly expanded the corpus of autobiographical writings and provided a perspective which is critical of both the eurocentrism of autobiography genre theory and the concepts of selfhood in operation (e.g. Lionett 1991 ). In this context, too, the question has arisen as to how autobiography is possible for those who have no voice of their own, who cannot speak for themselves (see Spivak’s ‘subaltern’). Such ‘Writing ordinary lives’, usually aiming at collective identities, poses specific problems: sociological, ethical and even aesthetic (see Pandian 2008 ).

Following the spatial turn, the concept of ‘eco-autobiography’ also carries potentially wider theoretical significance. By “mapping the self” (Regard ed. 2003 ), eco-biography designates a specific mode of autobiography that constructs a “relationship between the natural setting and the self,” often aiming at “discover[ing] ‘a new self in nature’” (Perreten 2003 ), with Wordsworth or Thoreau ( [1854] 1948 ) as frequently cited paradigms. Phrased in less Romantic terms, it locates life courses and self-representations in specific places. In a wider sense, eco- or topographical autobiographies undertake to place the autobiographical subject in terms of spatial or topographical figurations, bringing into play space/topography as a pivotal moment of biographical identity and thus potentially disturbing autobiography’s anchorage in time. In any case, the prioritizing of space over time seems to question, if not to reverse, the dominance of temporality in autobiography and beyond since 1800.

Whatever the markers of difference and semantic foci explored, the notion of autobiography has shifted from literary genre to a broad range of cultural practices that draw on and incorporate a multitude of textual modes and genres. By 2001, Smith and Watson (eds. 2001 ) were able to list fifty-two “Genres of Life Narrative” by combining formal and semantic features. Among them are narratives of migration, immigration or exile, narratives engaging with ethnic identity and community, prison narratives, illness, trauma and coming-out narratives as much as celebrity memoirs, graphic life writing and forms of Internet self-presentation. These multiple forms and practices produce, or allow critics to freshly address, new ‘subject formations’ within specific historical and cultural localities. Finally, scholars have engaged with the role of aesthetic practices that “turn ‘life itself’ into a work of art,” developing “ zoegraphy as a radically post-anthropocentric approach to life narrative” (van den Hengel 2012 : 1), part of a larger attempt to explore auto/biographical figures in relation to concepts of “posthumanism.”

Related Terms

Whereas autobiography, as a term almost synonymous with life writing, signifies a broad range of ‘practices of writing the self’ including pre-modern forms and epistolary or diarial modes, ‘classic’ autobiography hinges upon the notion of the formation of individual identity by means of narrative. With its historical, psychological and philosophical dimensions, it differs from related forms such as memoirs and res gestae. Memoirs locate a self in the world, suggesting a certain belonging to, or contemporaneity with, and being in tune with the world (Neumann 1970 ). However, all these forms imply a certain claim to non-fictionality which, to a certain degree only, sets them off from autobiographical fiction/the autobiographical novel, with highly blurred boundaries and intense generic interaction (Müller 1976 ; Löschnigg 2006 ).

Biography is used today both as a term synonymous with “life writing” (hence the journal Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 1978ff. ) as well as denoting hetero biography, i.e. the narrative of the life of another. (The term “life writing“ also includes heterobiography.) While in narratological terms experimental forms of autobiography may collapse the conventional 1st- vs 3rd-person boundary (§ 2), viewing the self as other, hetero­biography has generated its own distinct poetics and theory, extending from an agenda of resemblance as “the impossible horizon of biography” (“In biography , it is resemblance that must ground identity”; Lejeune [1987] 1988 : 24) to specific considerations of modes of representing the biographical subject, of biographical understanding, or knowledge, and the ethics of heterobiography (Eakin ed. 2004 ; Phelan → Narrative Ethics ).

Topics for Further Investigation

The intersections of hetero- and autobiography remain to be further explored. Significantly, ‘natural’ narratology’s theorizing of vicarious narration and the evolution of FID (Fludernik 1996 ) makes the limits of non-fictional heterodiegetic narration discernible: in its conventional form and refraining from speculative empathy, it must ultimately fail to render “experientiality” or resort to fiction, while autobiography’s experiential dimension invites further investigation (Löschnigg 2010 ). Additional study of the experimental interactions of life writing with no clear dividing lines between auto- and hetero-biography might yield results with interdisciplinary repercussions.

Finally, the field of self-representation and life writing in the new media calls for more research from an interdisciplinary angle.

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• Löschnigg, Martin (2006). Die englische fiktionale Autobiographie: Erzähltheoretische Grundlagen und historische Prägnanzformen von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts . Trier: WVT.
• Löschnigg, Martin (2010). “Postclassical Narratology and the Theory of Autobiography.” J. Alber & M. Fludernik (eds.). Postclassical Narratology. Approaches and Analyses . Columbus: Ohio State UP, 255 – 74.
• Markowitsch, Hans & Harald Welzer (2005). Das autobiographische Gedächtnis . Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
• Misch, Georg ([1907] 1950). A History of Autobiography in Antiquity. Vol. I. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Müller, Klaus-Detlef (1976). Autobiographie und Roman: Studien zur literarischen Autobiographie der Goethezeit . Tübingen: Niemeyer.
• Neumann, Bernd (1970). Identität und Rollenzwang. Zur Theorie der Autobiographie . Frankfurt a. M.: Athenäum.
• Neumann, Birgit et al., eds. (2008). Narrative and Identity: Theoretical Approaches and Critical Analyses . Trier: WVT.
• Niggl, Günter (1988). Die Autobiographie: Zur Form und Geschichte einer literarischen Gattung . Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
• Nussbaum, Felicity (1989). The Autobiographical Subject: Gender and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century England . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.
• Olney, James, ed. (1980). Autobiography. Essays Theoretical and Critical . Princeton: Princeton UP.
• Olney, James (1998). Memory & Narrative. The Weave of Life-Writing . Chicago: Chicago UP.
• Pandian, M. S. S. (2008). “Writing Ordinary Lives.” Economic and Political Weekly . 43.38, 34 – 40.
• Pascal, Roy (1960). Design and Truth in Autobiography . London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Perreten, Peter (2003). “Eco-Autobiography: Portrait of Place/Self-Portrait.” Autobiography Studies 18, 1–22.
• Pietzcker, Carl (2005). “Die Autobiographie aus psychoanalytischer Sicht.” M. Reichel (ed.). Antike Autobiographien. Werke – Epochen – Gattungen . Köln: Böhlau, 15 – 27.
• Regard, Frédéric, ed. (2003). Mapping the Self: Space, Identity, Discourse in British Auto/biography . Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne.
• Ricœur, Paul (1991). “Narrative Identity.” Philosophy Today 35.1, 73 – 81.
• Roesler, Wolfgang (2005). “Ansätze von Autobiographie in früher griechischer Dichtung.” Antike Autobiographien. Werke – Epochen – Gattungen . M. Reichel (ed.). Köln: Böhlau, 29–43.
• Schneider, Manfred (1986). Die erkaltete Herzensschrift: Der autobiographische Text im 20. Jahrhundert . München: Hanser.
• Shumaker, Wayne (1954). English Autobiography. Its Emergence, Materials and Form . Berkeley: U of California P.
• Sloterdijk, Peter (1978). Literatur und Organisation von Lebenserfahrung. Autobiographien der Zwanziger Jahre . München: Hanser.
• Smith, Sidonie A. & Julia Watson, eds. (2001). Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives . Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P.
• Starobinski, Jean (1970). “Le style de l’autobiographie.” Poétique 3, 255–65.
• Starobinski, Jean ([1970] 1983). “The Style of Autobiography.” J. Olney (ed.). Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical . Princeton: Princeton UP, 73–83.
• Volkening, Heide (2006). Am Rand der Autobiographie: Ghostwriting, Signatur, Geschlecht. Bielefeld: Transcript.
• Weintraub, Karl J. (1982). The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography . Chicago: Chicago UP.

Further Reading

• Jolly, Margaretta, ed. (2001). Encyclopaedia of Life Writing . London: Fitzroy Dearborn.
• Schwalm, Helga (2014). “Autobiography/Autofiction.” M. Wagner-Egelhaaf (ed.). Handbook Autobiography/Autofiction . Berlin: de Gruyter, forthcoming.
• Wagner-Egelhaaf, Martina (2000). Autobiographie . Stuttgart: Metzler.

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The books in this fifth category belong to biographical literature only by courtesy. Materials are freely invented, scenes and conversations are imagined; unlike the previous category, this class often depends almost entirely upon secondary sources and cursory research. Its authors, well represented on the paperback shelves, have created a hybrid form designed to mate the appeal of the novel with a vague claim to authenticity. This form is exemplified by writers such as Irving Stone , in his Lust for Life (on Vincent van Gogh ) and The Agony and the Ecstasy (on Michelangelo ). Whereas the compiler of biographical information (the first category) risks no involvement, the fictionalizer admits no limit to it.

The sixth and final category is outright fiction, the novel written as biography or autobiography. It has enjoyed brilliant successes. Such works do not masquerade as lives; rather, they imaginatively take the place of biography where perhaps there can be no genuine life writing for lack of materials. Among the most highly regarded examples of this genre are, in the guise of autobiography, Robert Graves ’s books on the Roman emperor Claudius , I, Claudius and Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina ; Mary Renault ’s The King Must Die on the legendary hero Theseus ; and Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian . The diary form of autobiography was amusingly used by George and Weedon Grossmith to tell the trials and tribulations of their fictional character Charles Pooter in The Diary of a Nobody (1892). In the form of biography this category includes Graves’s Count Belisarius and Hope Muntz’s Golden Warrior (on Harold II , vanquished at the Battle of Hastings , 1066). Some novels-as-biography, using fictional names, are designed to evoke rather than re-create an actual life, such as W. Somerset Maugham ’s Moon and Sixpence ( Paul Gauguin ) and Cakes and Ale ( Thomas Hardy ) and Robert Penn Warren ’s All the King’s Men ( Huey Long ).

“ Special-purpose” biography

In addition to these six main categories, there exists a large class of works that might be denominated “special-purpose” biography. In these works the art of biography has become the servant of other interests. They include potboilers (written as propaganda or as a scandalous exposé) and “as-told-to” narratives (often popular in newspapers) designed to publicize a celebrity. This category includes also “campaign biographies” aimed at forwarding the cause of a political candidate ( Nathaniel Hawthorne ’s Life of Franklin Pierce [1852] being an early example); the weighty commemorative volume, not infrequently commissioned by the widow (which, particularly in Victorian times, has usually enshrouded the subject in monotonous eulogy); and pious works that are properly called hagiography , or lives of holy men, written to edify the reader.

Informal autobiography

Autobiography, like biography, manifests a wide variety of forms, beginning with the intimate writings made during a life that were not intended (or apparently not intended) for publication. Whatever its form or time, however, autobiography has helped define a nation’s citizens and political ambitions. The form is crucial to not only how an individual meets the challenge of stating “I am” but how a nation and a historical period do so.

Letters, diaries , and journals

Broadly speaking, the order of this category represents a scale of increasingly self-conscious revelation. Collected letters, especially in carefully edited modern editions such as W.S. Lewis’s of the correspondences of the 18th-century man of letters Horace Walpole (34 vol., 1937–65), can offer a rewarding though not always predictable experience: some eminent people commit little of themselves to paper, while other lesser figures pungently re-create themselves and their world. The 15th-century Paston Letters constitute an invaluable chronicle of the web of daily life woven by a tough and vigorous English family among the East Anglian gentry during the Wars of the Roses; the composer Mozart and the poet Byron, in quite different ways, are among the most revealing of letter writers. Diarists have made great names for themselves out of what seems a humble branch of literature . To mention only two, in the 20th century the young Jewish girl Anne Frank created such an impact by her recording of narrow but intense experience that her words were translated to stage and screen; while a comparatively minor figure of 17th-century England, Samuel Pepys —he was secretary to the navy—has immortalized himself in a diary that exemplifies the chief qualifications for this kind of writing—candour, zest, and an unselfconscious enjoyment of self. The somewhat more formal journal is likewise represented by a variety of masterpieces, from the notebooks, which reveal the teeming, ardent brain of Leonardo da Vinci , and William Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy ’s sensitive recording of experience in her Journals (1897), to French foreign minister Armand de Caulaincourt ’s recounting of his flight from Russia with Napoleon (translated as With Napoleon in Russia , 1935) and the Journals of the brothers Goncourt , which present a confidential history of the literary life of mid-19th-century Paris.

What is Narrative?

Narrative definition, use of narrative in literature, history of narration or storytelling, narrative examples in everyday life, examples of narrative in literature, example #1: animal farm (by george orwell), example #2: faerie queen (by edmund spenser), example #3: the withdrawing room (by charlotte macleod), example #4: don quixote (by miguel de cervantes), function of narrative, related posts:, post navigation.