Home » Reading & Literature » Biographies » A Biography Chronology

A Biography Chronology

© Michelle Troutman

The practice of chronicling people's lives has existed since ancient times. Early biographies were usually historical and moralistic chronicles of their subjects rather than analyses of their characters. During the Middle Ages, hagiographies became popular, covering the virtuous aspects of saint's lives, according to the church's influence at that time. Later, throughout the Renaissance, humanism emerged, and biographers adopted secular styles.

The 17th and 18th centuries were a time of experimentation, with biographies written in many styles and forms, often emphasizing their subject's virtues. Psychological analysis came in the early 20th century when psychiatrist Sigmund Freud's work became popular, while better education and technological advances made it easier to gain accurate accounts of people's lives through diaries, letters, and interviews.

• 4th century B.C. - 2nd century A.D. - Plato's (c. 428-c. 347 B.C.) dialogues and the Bible are among the first notable accounts of the lives of men written for posterity.

  Xenophon (430?-355? B.C.), disciple of Greek philosopher Socrates, writes Memorabilia, his account of Socrates and his dialogues.

  Greek writer Plutarch (46?-120 A.D.) writes Parallel Lives, a work which would later influence Shakespeare's Roman plays. It compared and contrasted pairs of great Greeks and Romans.

  Roman writer and historian Suetonius' (c. 69-140 A.D.?) Lives of the Twelve Caesars (c. 121 A.D.) is a less reliable series of biographies, mainly comprised of anecdotes and gossip.

• 5th - 15th centuries (Middle Ages) - Hagiographies, lives of the saints, dominate, offering idealized portrayals of their subjects.

  Important biographies of the period include Einhard's The Life of Charlemagne, Eadmer's Life of St. Anselm, Jean de Joinville's Memoirs of St. Louis IX (1309), Jean Froissart's Chroniques, Bishop Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks, and Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731).

• 14th - 17th centuries (The Renaissance) - A new style of thinking called humanism emerges and influences biographers. Among the noteworthy Renaissance-era biographies are Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists (1550), William Roper's Mirrour of Vertue in Worldly Greatness (1626), and Izaak Walton's Life of Donne.

• 1683 - English poet John Dryden (1631-1700), writing about Plutarch, uses the term "biography".

• 1791 - Scottish author and lawyer James Boswell's (1740-1795) biography The Life of Samuel Johnson is published. It is considered one of the greatest biographies ever written; Johnson's writings, interviews with people who knew him, and Boswell's own interaction with him form this account.

• 19th century - Many biographies focus only on the merits of people's lives instead of their flaws. Major biographical works of the 1800s include the seven volume Life of Sir Walter Scott (1837-1838) by John Gibson Lockhart, Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit, Thomas Moore's Letters and Journals of Lord Byron (1830), Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskells' Life of Charlotte Bronte, John Forster's Life of Charles Dickens, and Ernest Renan's