There are many forms of biography and essay biography and it can be classified depending on the period it was written. Religious and epic biographies were introduced in the Renaissance period. In the western civilization, there was a propagation of inspirational literary works which included biographies of saints, martyrs and remarkable kings of the time. On the other hand, during the same period, the medieval Islamic civilization introduced Prophetic biographies that featured various traditional Muslim biographies of Muhammad – these presented the most historical information of his life and the early period of Islam. During this era, mass publications became popular with the introduction of paper in general population. Through this, a new genre entered the literary scene and termed as biographical dictionary – this contained massive but important social data of the pre-industrialized segment of society.
By the end of this period, writings became less religious and skewed on the principle of ‘humanism,’ – an approach in writing that focuses on human values and concerns.
The word ‘biography’ finally entered the world of literature in 18th century. This also gave birth to the term ‘classical biography’ that pertains to the Grecian and Roman works of ancient times, ‘romantic biography’ for the literary outputs of the Renaissance era and the ‘contemporary’ or ‘modern biographies’ for literary pieces produced at the dawn of 18th century until the present times. As used to defend reputations; classical biographies generally are discourses of accomplishments of Kings, tribe leaders, royal families and prophets. While romantic biographies focused on the lives of artists, authors and their works, modern biographies concentrate on the lives of celebrities and politicians – their rise to fame or otherwise; the lives of common people and their slice of life.
In terms of styles, AD 400 until 17th century followed chronology or the order of events in order to narrate a life of person as a subject of a literary work. By the end of the 17th century, Boswellian school of thought introduced the process of presenting documents as a way of emphasizing the subject in chronological order.
At the time of linguistic revolution by the end of this century, formal linguists believed that biographers should be able to see their subject in a more intimate way, thus introduced the use of carefully selected anecdotes and incidents that characterize their subjects without giving focus on the order of events. On the contrary, new critics used romantic point of view and confessional styles with the use memoire format in writing.
At the turn of the century, didactic form of biography was introduced in the United States
Mass biography and literary biography were defined in the middle of the 19th century as a reflection of the social differences between high culture and middle-class society brought about by the worldwide economic conditions.
