Portal:Biography

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Introduction

Third Volume of a 1727 edition of Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans printed by Jacob Tonson

A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the 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 his or her life, including intimate details of experience, and may include an analysis of the subject's personality.

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 himself or herself, sometimes with the assistance of a collaborator or ghostwriter.

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Featured biography

Stede Bonnet (c. 1688 – December 13, 1718) was an early 18th-century Barbadian pirate, sometimes called "the gentleman pirate". Because of marital problems, Bonnet turned to piracy in the summer of 1717. He bought a sailing vessel, named it Revenge, and traveled with his paid crew along the American eastern seaboard, capturing other vessels and burning down Barbadian ships. After arriving in Nassau, Bonnet met the infamous pirate Blackbeard. Incapable of leading his crew, Bonnet temporarily ceded his ship's command to Blackbeard. Before separating in December 1717, Blackbeard and Bonnet plundered and captured merchant ships along the East Coast. After Bonnet failed to capture the Protestant Caesar, his crew abandoned him to join Blackbeard on the Queen Anne's Revenge. Bonnet stayed on Blackbeard's ship as a guest, and did not command a crew again until summer 1718, when he was pardoned by North Carolina governor Charles Eden and received clearance to go privateering against Spanish shipping. By July 1718, he had returned to piracy. In late August and September of that year, Colonel William Rhett led a naval expedition against pirates on the Cape Fear River. Rhett and Bonnet's men fought each other for hours, but the outnumbered pirates ultimately surrendered. Rhett arrested the pirates and brought them to Charleston in early October. Bonnet was brought to trial, and sentenced to death. After his request for clemency was turned down, Bonnet was hanged in Charleston on December 10, 1718. (Read more...)

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Selected portrait

Credit: Nadar

Louis Pasteur (December 27, 1822 – September 28, 1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist who is well known for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases, and his discoveries have saved countless lives ever since.

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On this day – March 22

Births

1599 - Anthony van Dyck, Flemish painter (d. 1641) (pictured)
1887 - Chico Marx, American comedian and actor (d. 1961)
1908 - Louis L'Amour, American author (d. 1988)
1923 - Marcel Marceau, French mime (d. 2007)
1931 - William Shatner, Canadian actor
1948 - Andrew Lloyd Webber, British composer
1976 - Reese Witherspoon, American actress

Deaths

1758 - Jonathan Edwards, American minister (b. 1703)
1772 - John Canton, English physicist (b. 1718)
1832 - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer (b. 1749)

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Did you know

... that American frontier doctor Charles Boarman (pictured), a founding member of the Society of California Pioneers, died fighting a smallpox epidemic in Amador County, California?
... that Tomás Menéndez Márquez was abducted from his ranch by pirates and rescued by Native Americans?
... that in 2007, Frederic Hauge appeared on Time magazine's list of "Heroes of the Environment"?
... that Isa ibn Shaykh al-Shaybani ruled a short-lived bedouin state in Palestine, governed Armenia for the Abbasids, and finally became ruler of Diyar Bakr, where he was succeeded by his son Ahmad?
... that almost all kings of Hungary after 1046 descended from Michael, the second son of Grand Prince Taksony?
... that Japanese surrealist gothic horror author Yumeno Kyūsaku dropped dead due to a cerebral hemorrhage while at an autograph signing party hosted by his publisher?
... that William Cantelo invented an early machine gun, then mysteriously disappeared?

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Quote of the week

"I never did write a biography, and I don't exactly know how to set about it; you see I have to be accurate and keep to the facts, a most difficult thing for a writer of fiction."

— Elizabeth Gaskell

Referring to her Life of Charlotte Brontë in a letter to Harriet Anderson, 15 March 1856

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