Types of Biographies

A biography is a literary work in which authors seek to present a detailed description of their subject’s life. Typical biographies cover the basic facts and timeline of a person’s life and offer valuable insight into the subject’s experience of their life events. This often involves the inclusion of significant details and, in many cases, an in-depth analysis of the subject’s character. As a result, writing a biography requires extensive research and the use of all available evidence and resources. With a long historic tradition dating back to antiquity, biography is an important and influential genre that remains broadly popular with contemporary readers. It is also a diverse genre that includes a variety of distinct forms. In addition to standard biographies, the biography genre also encompasses forms such as autobiographies, memoirs, academic biographies, and fictionalized biographies. This all makes biography one of the most diverse and uniquely insightful types of literature.

Background

The biography first emerged as a literary form in ancient Greece and Rome. The Greeks often wrote biographical stories about their gods and notable mortals like Icarus and King Midas. One of the most famous examples of Greek biography is Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, a landmark work in which the famed philosopher profiles several pairs of prominent men—one Greek and one Roman in each case—and compares them to determine which offers a better example for the reader to follow in life. Similarly, the Roman author Cornelius Nepos wrote Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae (Lives of the Generals), an early biographical work that focused on the lives of military leaders like Themistocles and Hannibal. Some of the most widely read biographies of the age were those of Julius Caesar and the first eleven Roman emperors found in Suetonius’ De vita Caesarum (On the Lives of the Caesars).

The biographical tradition established by the Greeks and Romans—that of large biographical works containing profiles of multiple subjects—continued to be the norm for centuries, but the predominant subjects of such works gradually changed over time. This was particularly true in the Middle Ages, when the growing influence of the Catholic Church led to a shift in interest from historical, political, and cultural figures to saints, popes, and other religious figures. There were exceptions to this trend, however. Two of the most notable biographies of the Middle Ages were Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550) and Einhard’s The Life of Charlemagne (circa 817).

In the eighteenth century, another significant change in the way biographies were written resulted in the emergence of the modern biography. Around that time, authors began to pivot from compiling large works on multiple subjects to writing shorter books on individual subjects. James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) is viewed by most scholars as the first modern biography. In developing his historic profile of the eponymous English author, moralist, and critic, Boswell crafted a compelling narrative through years of thorough research and by conducting numerous interviews. His efforts laid the groundwork for the modern biography and paved the way for the establishment of biography as a distinct literary genre.

The autobiography, a self-authored variant of the traditional biography, became increasingly popular in the twentieth century, especially in the aftermath of World War I. Author Robert Graves’s Goodbye to All That (1929) was one of many widely read autobiographies penned by survivors of the so-called Great War. Another of the era’s most popular autobiographies was Indian activist Mahatma Gandhi’s The Story of My Experiments with the Truth (1925–29). Like World War I, World War II inspired a new generation of biographical and autobiographical works. One of the most notable of these was author John Hersey’s Hiroshima (1946), which profiled six people who survived the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. By the 1960s, the leaders of the civil rights movement were popular subjects for biographers like Alex Haley, who penned the ground-breaking as-told-to work The Autobiography of Malcolm X in 1965. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the biography remained a popular literary form, with Martin Gilbert’s Churchill: A Life (1991), Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs (2011), and Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton (2020) all seen as some of the genre’s finest contemporary additions.

Overview

At its core, a biography is the story of an individual’s life. A biography can be written about any person—living, dead, famous, or unknown. Some biographies even focus on groups of people. In any case, a biography closely examines the facts of the subject’s life and highlights the key moments that helped make them who they are or were. This requires a considerable amount of research, including interviews with the subject, if alive, and people who knew the subject as well as reviewing primary sources produced by the subject. Such research allows a biographer to construct both a detailed picture of both the subject and the world in which they lived. A well-researched biography also illuminates how the subject impacted their world and how their world impacted them. Ultimately, this information is all intended to reveal some sort of life lesson that readers can learn from the subject and their life experience. In most cases, this lesson is what makes the biography an important and valuable form of literature.

Types of biographies can be categorized in different ways. Some are set apart by the type of subject on which they focus. Others are distinguished by how they are written or who the author is. Still others are defined by the purpose for which they are written or whether they include some degree of fictionalization along with historical fact. In short, biography is a remarkably diverse genre that affords authors and readers alike a wide variety of ways to study and learn about individual or group subjects and their contributions to the world at large.

Contemporary/Popular Biography

Contemporary and popular biographies are the most common and widely read type of biographies. These are straightforward works written by an author about a living or recently deceased subject. Simple biographies of this sort are typically written for general audiences and, therefore, easily accessible for most readers. Contemporary and popular biographies usually include information about the subject’s life and important events that shaped it. This often involves taking readers step-by-step through the subject’s life story from childhood through to whatever stage of life the subject has reached and offering insight into how the subject grew and evolved because of their experiences. Contemporary and popular biographies can be classified as either authorized or unauthorized. Authorized biographies are published with the approval of the subject or their family. Unauthorized biographies are published without permission—or perhaps even without any participation—from the subject or their family. The latter approach can sometimes be problematic if the subject or their family objects to how an author approaches a subject or the specific information divulged in the work.

Historical Biography

Historical biographies are similar to contemporary and popular biographies, except that they specifically focus on historically significant subjects who are usually long dead. They also differ from other types of biographies in that they typically place particular emphasis on exploring the relationship between the subject’s life and contribution and the time during which they lived. Most historical biographies are written about well-known subjects and go into exhaustive detail about their lives and accomplishments. One of the best examples of a classic historical biography is author Martin Gilbert’s Churchill: A Life, which provides an in-depth look at the life of famed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. As opposed to works like Churchill: A Life, some historical biographies focus on comparatively obscure figures who did not receive proper recognition in their own lifetimes or perhaps even long thereafter. A notable example of this type of historical biography is author Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010), a once little-known woman whose cancer cells served as the source of the first immortalized human cell line after she died of the disease in 1951.

Group Biography

If a group of people share certain characteristics or are connected through common circumstances, they may be profiled collectively in a group biography. The origins of this type of biography stretch back to the publication of A General History of the Pirates in 1724. In the work, Captain Charles Johnson profiles the lives of many of the era’s most notorious pirates. While some group biographies focus on broad groups of people like pirates, others aim for a narrower group of individuals. In Surreal Lives: The Surrealists 1917–1945 (1999), author Ruth Brandon looks at Salvador Dali and the relatively small group of artists, writers, and filmmakers who pioneered the surrealist movement. Other important group biographies include The Lunar Men (2002) by Jenny Uglow, Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe (2016) by John Julius Norwich, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (2019) by Hallie Rubenhold, and Rebels Against the Raj (2022) by Ramachandra Guha.

Academic Biography

Academic biographies are typically the most formal and detailed kind of biography. These biographies are strongly fact-based and accomplishment-oriented. The life lessons meant to be imparted by other types of biographies are largely absent as a result. Instead, academic biographies are usually aimed at examining the subject’s impact on the field with which they are most closely associated. Given their fact-driven and highly detailed nature, academic biographies are often quite dense and challenging to read. Most academic biographies also include numerous footnotes and other notations that indicate important references. Because of their formality, academic biographies are almost exclusively read in classroom settings.

Autobiography

One of the most distinct forms of biography is the autobiography. Unlike traditional biographies written by an author about a person, an autobiography is written by the subject, sometimes with the assistance of a ghostwriter. In an autobiography, a person details their own life story and highlights their own experiences and accomplishments. Autobiographies differ from traditional biographies in other ways as well. Because they are penned by the subject themselves, autobiographies are usually written from a first-person perspective. For the same reason, autobiographies tend to be less objective than traditional biographies.

Although people have been writing autobiographical works of one kind or another since antiquity, it was not until Augustine of Hippo wrote his Confessions around 398 that the first true autobiography was published. Another notable historical autobiography was the unfinished Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin that was first published in French in 1791. Among the most famous modern autobiographies is Long Walk to Freedom (1994), a classic work credited to South African President Nelson Mandela and ghostwritten by author Richard Stenger.

Memoir

Like an autobiography, a memoir is a work in which an author tells their own personal life story. Memoirs differ from traditional autobiographies in several important ways, however. First and foremost, a memoir does not tell the author’s entire life story. It instead focuses exclusively on a specific aspect or period of the author’s life that is of particular importance. In addition, a memoir is more reflective in nature than an autobiography. Finally, the purpose of a memoir is more about establishing an emotional connection with the reader and less about covering the basic facts and events of the subject’s life. One of the best-known memoirs ever written was author and poet Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). One of several memoirs Angelou penned over the course of her career, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings focuses on the author’s troubled childhood and ends when she becomes a mother at just sixteen years old. Another noteworthy memoir is former President Barack Obama’s A Promised Land (2020), which follows his entry into politics and continues through his first term in the White House. Hollywood director and former actress Jennette McCurdy's memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died (2022) describes the abuse she experienced as a child actor and the toxic relationship she had with her mother until she died in 2013. Critics described her award-winning coming-of-age story as a candid, mordantly funny account of a heartbreaking childhood that tapped into the reader's emotions.

Fictionalized Biographies/Biographical Fiction

Not all biographies are entirely true to life. Some biographical works incorporate a degree of fictionalization or, in some cases, are fully fictional. In either case, such works can be described as existing somewhere on the border between straightforward biography and traditional fiction. Two forms of biography fall into this category: fictionalized biographies and biographical fiction.

Fictionalized biographies are mostly true works based on the real facts and events of a subject’s life that incorporate some amount of fictionalization to create a more entertaining narrative. In most cases, a fictionalized biography is, like other biographies, predominantly a retelling of a person’s life story. The difference is that the author exercises some creative freedom in how they relate that story. As such, most fictionalized biographies often read a bit more like novels than normal biographies. Some notable examples of fictionalized biographies include Therese Anne Fowler’s Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (2013), Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), Melanie Benjamin's The Aviator's Wife (2013), and Marta Molnar's The Secret Life of Sunflowers (2022).

Biographical fiction is fiction that is written in the form of a traditional biography. Most works of this type essentially involve an author providing a wealth of background information on a fictional character or characters. While technically a novel, a work of biographical fiction tends to read like a traditional biography. One of the best-known examples of biographical fiction is George R.R. Martin’s Fire and Blood (2018), a novel that delves into the history of a royal family that first appeared in the author’s earlier work, A Song of Ice and Fire (1996).

Prophetic Biography

In a prophetic biography, an author seeks not only to tell a subject’s life story, but also to develop some sort of spiritual or ideological theme in relation to the subject that readers can apply in their own lives for the purposes of self-improvement. Prophetic biographies seek not only to entertain but also to inspire an idealistic change in the reader. Prophetic biographies are often read several times because the reader tries to delve deeper into their meaning and find guidance.

Like other types of biographies, a prophetic biography is based on facts about a subject. Once these facts have been compiled, a theme is chosen. Common themes of prophetic biographies include the liberation of the masses, social justice, a message of hope, and a depiction of a divine calling. In addition to learning about a person’s life, this type of biography provides information on the spiritual well-being of humankind. Many prophetic biographies are religious.

Examples of prophetic biographies include The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mohandas K. Gandhi (1927). Gandhi was a revered leader of India who liberated the country. Gandhi inspired change peacefully. People consider him a symbol of truth. He was a great thinker who sought to understand and guide human behavior.

The Autobiography of a Yogi (1946) by Indian-American Hindu monk Paramahansa Yogananda is a famous prophetic biography. Throughout his life, Yogananda encountered many spiritual leaders who taught him life lessons. The biography begins during his childhood and explains how he found his guru (spiritual teacher) and later became a monk.

Other Biography Classifications

Biographies are sometimes classified in ways other than those described above. Reference biographies are scholarly works often written by more than one author. They usually cover multiple subjects tied to a single topic. Literary biographies typically focus on writers or artists and mesh the elements of a traditional biography while examining how the circumstances of the subject’s life influenced their work. Critical biographies offer a more pointedly critical look at a subject’s life and work. So-called “special-purpose” biographies are biographical materials written to accomplish a specific tangible goal. Examples of this type of biography include potboilers written to serve as political propaganda or “as-told-to” narratives meant to generate publicity for a celebrity.

Bibliography

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