About Biographies

A biography is a nonfiction book or a film about a person's life. An autobiography is a biography written or filmed by its subject. A biography will emphasize the important events in an individual's life while giving those reading or watching it an intimate look into that person's thoughts and actions.

History

The ancient cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Assyria provided us with the first biographies, depicting the lives of their rulers who hired scribes to write their stories for posterity. The ancient Greeks have biographies that have survived from the 5th century B.C.E., but the details of the lives were certainly embellished. Biographies of the Roman emperors were written; often the opinion of the men writing the work surfaced in the biography.

Time Frame

From the years 400 to about 1450 C.E. only the Roman Catholic Church was an active biographer of people and deeds. The subjects were almost always martyrs, popes and saints and they were written by monks and priests. They wrote these biographies in an attempt to "inspire" the masses and to win converts for Christianity. Eventually the lives of kings and knights began to make it onto the written pages. With the advent of the printing press in the 15th century biographies became more common, with artists and poets as subjects.

Size

By the late 1700s the English had cornered the market on biographies but were putting their own touches on them. They tended to focus on the character of the person rather than his deeds. American Benjamin Franklin penned his autobiography and released it in 1793, and the idea was born that historical figures needed to have their lives studied, with the hope that the good character of the subject would rub off on the reader. The American biography began to be in demand, and from 1840 to 1860 almost ten times as many would be written than in the previous 20 years. New advancements in printing meant more books for the nation, which craved to read about its heroes and political figures. This would gradually give way into a biographical style that tried to explore what made these great men do the things they did.

Considerations

The written biography has been more or less replaced by the filmed one, with entire television channels dedicated to enlightening people about the lives of the famous. Channels such as A&E, the Biography Channel, and the History Channel air biographies of individuals of note.

Expert Insight

Often there can be controversy over unauthorized biographies. Famous people such as Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Nancy Reagan and Jackie Onassis have been portrayed in a less than flattering light by author Kitty Kelley. However, these books were bestsellers but also sparked lawsuits.