Biography

A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents a subject's life story, highlighting various aspects of their life, including intimate details of experience, and may include an analysis of the subject's personality.

For other uses, see Biography (disambiguation).

Biographical works are usually non-fiction, but fiction can also be used to portray a person's life. One in-depth form of biographical coverage is called legacy writing. Works in diverse media, from literature to film, form the genre known as biography.

An authorized biography is written with the permission, cooperation, and at times, participation of a subject or a subject's heirs. An autobiography is written by the person themselves, sometimes with the assistance of a collaborator or ghostwriter.

– Canada

Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize

– Australia

National Biography Award

– United States

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography

– United Kingdom

Whitbread Prize for Best Biography

– United Kingdom

J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography

– France

Prix Goncourt de la Biographie

Several countries offer an annual prize for writing a biography such as the:

Historiography

Historiography of science

Historiography of the United Kingdom

Historiography of the United States

Legal biography

Letter collection

Psychobiography

(1911). "Biography" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 952–954.

Gosse, Edmund William

(1911), Principles of Biography, London: Cambridge University Press, Wikidata Q107333538

Sidney Lee

(2001). "Biography". Grove Music Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.41156. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0. (subscription or UK public library membership required)

Solomon, Maynard

In Our Time, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Richard Holmes, Nigel Hamilton and Amanda Foreman (June 22, 2000).