What does family biography mean

This timeline will serve as a roadmap for your biography and help you organize your thoughts and information in a logical sequence. These themes could include resilience, perseverance, love, loss, or success. By sharing these intimate details, you can create a more engaging and authentic portrait of your family member. Ask for their input on the writing style, structure, and content of your biography, and be open to constructive criticism.

Biographers most often use primary sources such as interviews with the subject and their family and friends to provide first-hand accounts of the subject's life. However, in cases where the subject is dead, the biographer may use their diary, memoirs, or even secondary sources such as news stories and articles about them. Key background information The most essential part of research for a biographer is gathering all the key background information about their subject.

This includes the following factual details about their subject: The date and place of their birth Their family history Their language, culture and traditions Key stages in their education and career Knowledge and history about the various settings in the biography- the subject's birthplace, home, school, office etc. Relationships with other people and relevant details about these people Early life Most biographies begin with a description of the subject's early life, which includes their childhood and early education, their upbringing, stories about their parents and siblings and their familial traditions and values.

This is because the early developmental stages of a subject's life usually play a significant role in shaping later events in their life, their personality and worldview. Professional life Just as important as it is to share the subject's early life, biographers place special emphasis on their subject's career. This is because this is the part where the subject's contribution to the world is discussed.

This could serve as a major inspiration for people who are building a career in the same field, as readers could gain insight into the subject's motivations, secrets, successes and losses throughout their professional journey. Structure Typically, biographies follow a chronological order where they begin with the subject's birth and end with either their death or the present time.

However, flashbacks are often used to show connectivity between the subject's early experiences and adulthood. Emotions A biographer is not only responsible for presenting a factual recording of events in their subject's life but is also responsible for adding life to these moments by elaborating on the person's experiences and intimate thoughts and feelings during these moments.

The best biographers are able to recreate their subject's life in the way that that person lived it. Oftentimes, the biographer even provides their own opinions on the events they are detailing in the biography, perhaps to explain how these moments were significant to the subject and should be of significance to the reader. Moral Usually, a biography carries with it an important life lesson that it imparts to its reader.

Biographies, where the subject has encountered several hardships, may advise the reader on how to overcome adversity and deal with failure. Biographies of successes can teach the reader how to achieve their goals and may become a source of inspiration and motivation for them. Biography format While all biographies work to present the life of real people, biographers can follow different formats while writing them.

A few important ones have been discussed below. Modern biography A modern or 'standard' biography details the life span of someone who is still alive or who passed away very recently. Usually, it is done with the permission of the subject or their family. However, this biography was unauthorised by Sinatra, who tried to stop its publication but failed.

The biography consists of government documents, wiretaps, and interviews with Sinatra's colleagues, family and friends and was considered extremely revealing and controversial. In addition, affordable paperback editions of popular biographies were published for the first time. Periodicals began publishing a sequence of biographical sketches.

Autobiographies were written by authors, such as Charles Dickens who incorporated autobiographical elements in his novels and Anthony Trollope his Autobiography appeared posthumously, quickly becoming a bestseller in London [13] , philosophers, such as John Stuart Mill , churchmen — John Henry Newman — and entertainers — P. Modern biography The sciences of psychology and sociology were ascendant at the turn of the 20th century and would heavily influence the new century's biographies.

Human behavior would be explained through Darwinian theories. The development of psychoanalysis led to a more penetrating and comprehensive understanding of the biographical subject, and induced biographers to give more emphasis to childhood and adolescence. Clearly these psychological ideas were changing the way biographies were written, as a culture of autobiography developed, in which the telling of one's own story became a form of therapy.

Eminent Victorians set the standard for 20th century biographical writing, when it was published in British critic Lytton Strachey revolutionized the art of biographical writing with his work Eminent Victorians , consisting of biographies of four leading figures from the Victorian era : Cardinal Manning , Florence Nightingale , Thomas Arnold , and General Gordon.

His narrative demolished the myths that had built up around these cherished national heroes, whom he regarded as no better than a "set of mouth bungled hypocrites". The book achieved worldwide fame due to its irreverent and witty style, its concise and factually accurate nature, and its artistic prose. Robert Graves I, Claudius, stood out among those following Strachey's model of "debunking biographies.

This latter form's appeal to readers was based on curiosity more than morality or patriotism. By World War I , cheap hard-cover reprints had become popular. The decades of the s witnessed a biographical "boom. Political biographers historically incorporated moralizing judgments into their work, with scholarly biography being an uncommon genre before the mids.

Allan Nevins was a major contributor in the s to the multivolume Dictionary of American Biography. Nevins also sponsored a series of long political biographies. Later biographers sought to show how political figures balanced power and responsibility. However, many biographers found that their subjects were not as morally pure as they originally thought, and young historians after tended to be more critical.

The exception is Robert Remini whose books on Andrew Jackson idolize its hero and fends off criticisms. However, most documentation favors the first approach, which emphasizes personalities.

What does family biography mean

This tool will help you reveal not only the individual, but the family he was a part of and how they connected. After having completed your preparation and research from Part 1, you are ready to start writing a family biography. Insert your research into this easy to use template and begin. Create an Outline Outline the major events of the life of your main subject such as education, relationships and jobs.

Your outline can be in point form, one or two words. Aside from the facts, you may also wish to dig a little deeper, try to understand the person behind the life, what did their life mean. Writing a good biography is not just about a rendition of facts, ask yourself what is their story? Include other noteworthy accomplishments, events, tragedies and successes, offering more interest and colour to your biography.

This is a family biography, therefore we will draw on other family members and their memories, recollections and stories of family life that revolved around your focal character.