What does biography mean?
A biography is an account of a person's life written by someone other than its subject. It typically traces the individual's background, experiences, achievements, and relationships from birth — or earlier — through to death or the present day, drawing on sources such as letters, interviews, archives, and firsthand testimony. Biography sits alongside history and journalism as a form of narrative nonfiction, but its focus is intensely personal: it seeks not only to record events but to illuminate character and motivation. As a literary genre with roots stretching back to ancient Greece and Rome, biography ranges from brief profiles to multi-volume scholarly works, and may be either authorized (written with the subject's cooperation) or unauthorized. Its adjective is 'biographical', and its writer is a biographer. Because human lives are endlessly varied, biography remains one of the most widely read and enduringly popular forms of nonfiction writing.
nounAn account of a person's life written by someone else; also, the branch of literature dealing with such accounts.
- A written account of a person's life by another author.
- Such writings as a literary genre or field of study.
"Her acclaimed biography of the novelist took nearly a decade of research to complete."
"Boswell's Life of Johnson is often regarded as the greatest biography in the English language."
"She teaches a university course on biography and memoir as forms of nonfiction."
Regular plural; used when referring to multiple life accounts or the genre collectively.
"The library's collection includes hundreds of presidential biographies."
The word 'biography' didn't exist in English until the 17th century — for centuries before that, people simply called them 'lives'.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of biography
Biography derives from Greek bios ('life') combined with graphia ('writing'), literally meaning 'the writing of a life'. The term entered English in the 17th century, likely via medieval Latin biographia, though English writers had long used the simpler word 'lives' for such works — as in Plutarch's Lives. The same Greek elements appear in related words such as biology, autobiography, and geography, all reflecting graphia or bios in different combinations.
Related word forms
How biography is actually used
Neutral register, common in both formal and everyday contexts. Distinguish from 'memoir', which typically covers part of a life in a more personal voice, whereas a biography traditionally aims at a fuller, more objective account. An 'unauthorized' biography is written without the subject's cooperation or approval.
Easily confused with biography
A autobiography is written by its subject about their own life, while a biography is written by someone else about another person's life.
A biopsy is a medical procedure removing tissue for examination; it shares only the Greek prefix 'bio-' with biography.