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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.

Featured biography

Shen Kuo or Shen Kua (pinyin: Sh?n Kuò; Wade-Giles: Shen K'uo) (1031–1095), style name Cunzhong and pseudonym Mengqi Weng, was a polymathic Chinese scientist and statesman of the Song Dynasty (960–1279). Excelling in many fields of study and statecraft, he was a mathematician, astronomer, meteorologist, geologist, zoologist, botanist, pharmacologist, agronomist, archaeologist, ethnographer, cartographer, encyclopedist, general, diplomat, hydraulic engineer, inventor, academy chancellor, finance minister, governmental state inspector, poet, and musician. He was the head official for the Bureau of Astronomy in the Song court, as well as an Assistant Minister of Imperial Hospitality. At court his political allegiance was to the Reformist faction known as the New Policies Group, headed by Chancellor Wang Anshi (1021–1086). (Read more...)

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Credit: Bain News Service, restored by jjron

Lillian Diana Gish (October 14, 1893 – February 27, 1993) was an American stage, screen, and television actress, director and writer whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987. She was a prominent film star of the 1910s and 1920s, particularly associated with the films of director D. W. Griffith, including her leading role in Griffith's seminal Birth of a Nation.

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On this day - September 21

Births

1645 - Louis Joliet, Canadian explorer (d. 1700)
1842 - Abd-ul-Hamid II, Ottoman Sultan (d. 1918)
1866 - H. G. Wells, English writer (d. 1946)
1874 - Gustav Holst, English composer (d. 1934)
1912 - Chuck Jones, American animator (d. 2002)
1931 - Larry Hagman, (pictured) American actor
1945 - Jerry Bruckheimer, American film and television producer
1947 - Stephen King, American author
1950 - Bill Murray, American actor
1954 - Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan
1957 - Ethan Coen, American film director
1963 - Curtly Ambrose, West Indian cricketer
1968 - Ricki Lake, American actress and talk show hostess
1972 - Liam Gallagher, British singer (Oasis)

Deaths

19 BC - Virgil, Roman poet (b. 70 BC)
1558 - Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1500)
1832 - Sir Walter Scott, Scottish writer (b. 1771)
1860 - Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (b. 1788)

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Did you know

... that Admiral Eduard von Capelle (pictured) was responsible for writing the legislation that funded the battleships of the German High Seas Fleet before World War I?
... that Cornelia Adair, during World War I, invited Belgian refugees to stay at her Glenveagh Castle in County Donegal, Ireland?
... that Ervin Marton, an internationally known Hungarian photographer based in Paris, was part of the French Resistance during World War II?
... that Bulla Felix was a legendary bandit who mocked and eluded Imperial Roman authorities for years, until betrayed by a lover and condemned to the beasts in the arena?
... that author and anti-globalization advocate Tim Costello started his writing career in the back of his truck while traveling as a long-haul truck driver?
... that King Stephen of England threatened to hang Roger le Poer, his ex-Lord Chancellor, in order to force Roger's mother to surrender the castle she held?
... that Yang Kyoungjong was a Korean soldier who was drafted into the Japanese, Soviet and German armies, and captured by US soldiers in Normandy on D-Day?

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Quote of the week

"From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wonder meets it. That the starry vault shall surcharge the heart with all rapturous marvelings, is only because we ourselves are greater miracles, and superber trophies than all the stars in universal space."

-- Herman Melville

In Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, 1852

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