biography
biography,Biography is as old as gossip, and may be as ephemeral. Yet in the last 40 years it has achieved a Golden Age, and found a favoured if controversial place in literary and intellectual life. It has risen to power as virtually a new genre, challenging the novel in its ability to depict character and explore ideas through narrative, with some 3,500 new subjects appearing each year. But it has also courted sensationalism and scandal.
The modern form is comparatively recent. The Greeks and Romans bequeathed a public tradition of life-writing to English authors through the works of Xenophon , Suetonius , and Pliny , and notably through T. North 's great Tudor translation of Plutarch 's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans ( 1579 ), with its emphasis on political and military prowess. There was also a native tradition of early hagiography, as in Ælfric 's Lives of the Saints ( 993 – 8 ), in...
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