BIOGRAPHY

 I. Definition 

A biography is an account of somebody's life written by somebody else, complete with details of the most important parts.

II. Purpose

The purpose of a biography is to share the life of another person with an audience.

III. Generic Structure 

A biography typically starts with the subject's birth (it's surprising how many begin with a description of the weather) and continues in a roughly chronological order until their death

IV. Types of Biography:

1. Contemporary Biography

Authorized or Unauthorized

Sometimes these are authorized–written with permission or input from the subject or their family

2. Historical Biography

3. Biography of a Group

When a group of people share unique characteristics, they can be the topic of a collective biography.

IV. Types of Biography:

4. Autobiography

This type of biography is written about one’s self, spanning an entire life up to the point of its writing.

5. Memoir

Memoirs are a type of autobiography, written about a specific but vital aspect of one’s life.

6. Fictional Biography

Fictional biographies are no substitute for a painstakingly researched scholarly biography, but they’re definitely meant to be more entertaining.

IV. Language Feature

They will look at the features of a biography, which include: Written in formal language. Use of compound and complex sentences, containing connectives. Written in the past tense and usually written in chronological order (in time order)

VI. Example 

Joseph Rolella

Born in Sydney in 1972, Rolella completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) in 1994 and went on to obtain a Masters in Visual Arts at the University of Western Sydney in 1998. Joseph Rolella has exhibited consistently for the past twelve years both nationally and internationally. Rolella has won several major art prizes including the Australian Cricket Art Prize in 2011 for the painting “Cricket at Kandahar”. The Oakhill Grammer School Art Prize in 2013 as well as being selected as a semi-finalist for the prestigious Doug Moran Portrait Prize. Complex and contradictory, Rolella’s recent abstract paintings seek to expose a delicate equilibrium between a sense of balance and visual calm and the tumult of painterly texture and surface tension. The play of light at the waters edge.