Biography: A Brief History

Blurb

Biography: A Brief History is a book by Nigel Hamilton that portrays, through historiography, the history of biography, and shows how biographers have portrayed and interpreted individuals' lives. The book examines the historical evolution of the biography from the ancient world to the present, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the recent American Splendor, from cuneiform to the Internet, from commemoration to deconstruction, and from fiction to fact. It also examines such famous biographical authors as Plutarch, Saint Augustine, Sir Walter Raleigh, Samuel Johnson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lord Byron, Sigmund Freud, Lytton Strachey, Abel Gance, Virginia Woolf, Leni Riefenstahl, Orson Welles, Julian Barnes, Ted Hughes, and Frank McCourt.