Biographers

A biographer is a writer who composes and produces an account of a person’s life. The ones who write their own biographies are called autobiographers. There have been innumerable famous people from all fields of life who have walked on this earth from the past several centuries. The credit of documenting the information about these great personalities and preserving such knowledge for the future generations goes to the biographers. Plutarch of ancient Greek was one of the earliest biographers and his work ‘Parallel Lives’, one of the earliest known biographies. During the Middle Ages the task of writing biographies was usually performed by the hermits and monks and priests who wrote about church fathers, popes and saints in a bid to inspire people. The art of writing biography as a distinct genre of writing began emerging in 18^th century and evolved into its contemporary form in the 20^th century. Richard David Ellmann was a prominent biographer who wrote about James Joyce and Oscar Wilde. The life stories of Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin, and Ernest Hemmingway were authored by another famous biographer Kenneth Schuyler Lynn. Walter Isaacson recently rose to glory with Steve Jobs’ biography. Read on to learn more about famous biographers from all over the world.