famous-bio

Biographical dictionaries — a type of encyclopedic dictionary limited to biographical information — have been written in many languages. Many attempt to cover the major personalities of a country (with limitations, such as living persons only, in Who's Who, or deceased people only, in the Dictionary of National Biography). Others are specialised, in that they cover important names in a subject field, such as architecture or engineering.

International

* A Biographical Dictionary of Railway Engineers
* Dictionary of International Biography

Australia

* Australian Dictionary of Biography
* Dictionary of Australian Biography
* Dictionary of Western Australians
* Dictionary of Australian Artists Online

Canada

* Dictionary of Canadian Biography
* The Canadian Who's Who, published by University of Toronto Press

France

* Dictionnaire de biographie des hommes célèbres de l'Alsace (1909-1910)
* Dictionnaire de biographie française (1932)
* Nouveau dictionnaire de biographie alsacienne (1982)

German-speaking Europe

* Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (1875)
* Neue Deutsche Biographie (1953)
* Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (1990)
* Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie (1995)

Great Britain

* A Biographical Dictionary of British coleopterists - online at The Coleopterist
* A Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers
* British Biographical Index
* Dictionary of National Biography
* Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
* Who's Who, published by A & C Black

Poland

* Polski słownik biograficzny

United States

* African American National Biography Project
* American National Biography
* Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890
* Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
* Encyclopedia of American Biography
* Who's Who in America, published by Marquis Who's Who

Source : www.wikipedia.org

Etymology of the word "biography" is emanate from Greece : bios - meaning "life" and graphein - meaning "write". Therefore biography meaning to write about somebody's life.
A biography analyzes individual personality and more personal facts like : birth, place of birth, childhood, teenage, education, occupation, career, culture, work, hobby, relationships, friends, emotions, experiences...and death.
A biography explains a person's character and life ; in general of important people, not ordinary people.

One of the first known biography is The Jewish holy scripture.This refers at the lives of chiefs, kings, tribes, patriarchs and prophets.

First biographies appeared from antiquity : ancient Assyria, ancient Babylonia, ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, among others.
Ancient Greeks have written "Damascius' Life of Isodorus" , "Herodotus' Histories" and have followed a great tradition of biographies.
The biographical tradition does draw on these types, but it also gives explicit recognition to the importance of individual idiosyncrasies in defining a man, and places the emphasis firmly on a man's personality rather than merely listing his accomplishments. As Plutarch says in the introduction to his Life of Alexander the Great, 'in the most illustrious deeds there is not always a manifestation of virtue and vice, but a slight thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation than battles where thousands fall, or the greatest armaments, or sieges of cities'. Thus the individual is recognized as having some value and interest irrespective of the impact of his actions on the broader sweep of history.

Biography is a genre of literature and it can refer to events, sports, etc ; for example : Auto racing biography • Basketball biography • English football biography • Ice hockey biography • Track and field athletics

With the technological advancements created in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, multi-media forms of biography became much more popular than literary forms.Visual and film images were able to elaborate new dimensions of personality that written forms could not.The popularity of these forms of biography culminated in the creation of such cable and satellite television networks as A&E, The Biography Channel, The History Channel and History International. Along with documentary film biographies, Hollywood produced numerous commercial films based on the lives of famous people.

An autobiography is a biography written by the subject or composed conjointly with a collaborative writer (styled "as told to" or "with").
Biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and viewpoints; an autobiography may be based entirely on the writer's memory. A name for such a work in Antiquity was an apologia, essentially more self-justification than introspection.

A memoir is slightly different from an autobiography. Traditionally, an autobiography focuses on the "life and times" of the character, while a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on his or her own memories, feelings and emotions.

Modern memoirs are often based on old diaries, letters, and photographs. Although the term "memoir" may have begun to replace "autobiography" in its popular usage, the former term applies to a work more restrictive in scope.

Source : www.wikipedia.org