National Biographers Day
Biographers keep histories of important figures, often digging deep into their pasts to keep that part of history alive. Read about some popular biographers.
Celebrate biography and memoir culture by promoting reading lists, ghostwriting services, and educational content about famous biographers and their subjects.
- Top 10 biographies that changed how we see history
- How much does it cost to hire a professional biographer? (And is it worth it?)
- From Plutarch to McCullough: The evolution of biography writing
- Memoir vs. autobiography: Which famous reads should you pick up this May?
Biographer’s Day takes place on the anniversary of the meeting of Samuel Johnson and his biographer James Boswell, which took place on May 16, 1763. However, biographies have existed much longer than their meeting!
Originally, biographies were written historically, with one of the first biographies written during the time of the Roman Empire. The first found record of this kind of journal was written by Cornelius Nepos in 44 BC, who wrote an extensive biography on the most famous generals of the Roman and Greeks.
During the Middle Ages, priests, monks, and hermits would write memoirs, mostly because much of the writing back then was written for the Roman Catholic Church. The same also went for the medieval Islamic cultures as well. However, even as more and more biographies were written during the 1500’s, it wasn’t considered to be a form of literature.
That’s where the story of Samuel Johnson came into play. When he and James Boswell published The Life of Samuel Johnson in 1791, Boswell’s research and narrative style on Johnson’s life helped set the standard for biographers, as during that time it was considered to be one of the best biographies in the English language. Even if biographies stagnated during the 19th century, autobiographies became more popular, and in today’s media-centered world, memoirs have become an innovative and quick way for people to research who people are on the Internet.
Today, many political figures and celebrities become tightly-knit with their biographers. Biographers are journalists who get all the nitty-gritty details of a person’s life, then decide how to disclose the information and which details to hide behind closed curtains. Because of this, a friendship between biographer and biographee can play an immense role in how the story of a life is portrayed while maintaining truthfulness about it.
Dig Deep Into Biographers
If you want to learn more about biographers, research about some of the most famous biographers in history, such as the Greek biographer Plutarch or the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle. Other famous biographers include Norman Mailer who wrote about Marilyn Monroe and Lee Harvey Oswald; and David McCullough, who has written several biographies including those based on the lives of Harry Truman, John Adams, and Theodore Roosevelt.
Grab Some Modern-day Reading Material
For some interesting modern-day autobiographical reads, check out Tina Fey’s humorous memoir, Bossypants, or a more serious autobiography like Michelle Obama’s Becoming. And for some very strange memoirs, check out Augusten Burroughs books, based mostly on his peculiar childhood. Memoirs differ slightly from autobiographies in that they chronicle a specific time or aspect of the writer’s life, while an autobiography is more all-encompassing, with details about the entire writer’s life to date.
Get Your Biography Written
For those desperate to have a biography written about them, but unwilling to write an autobiography themselves, there are professional ghost-writer biographers who are willing to write them for quite the pretty penny. An average 200-page ghostwritten biography will run anywhere from $15,000 to approximately $30,000 depending on the range of detail needed, and the amount of research involved. A biographer might charge as much as $45,000 for a 300-page biography! If you find biographies interesting, find a portrait of a person you admire and take the day to read about them.