Portal:Biography
The Biography Portal
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just 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 their 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 themselves, sometimes with the assistance of a collaborator or ghostwriter. (Full article...)
Featured biographies –
Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
-
John Jeremy Thorpe (29 April 1929 – 4 December 2014) was a British politician who served as the Member of Parliament for North Devon from 1959 to 1979, and as leader of the Liberal Party from 1967 to 1976. In May 1979 he was tried at the Old Bailey on charges of conspiracy and incitement to murder his ex-boyfriend Norman Scott, a former model. Thorpe was acquitted on all charges, but the case, and the furore surrounding it, ended his political career.
Thorpe was the son and grandson of Conservative MPs, but decided to align with the small and ailing Liberal Party. After reading Law at Oxford University he became one of the Liberals' brightest stars in the 1950s. He entered Parliament at the age of 30, rapidly made his mark, and was elected party leader in 1967. After an uncertain start during which the party lost ground, Thorpe capitalised on the growing unpopularity of the Conservative and Labour parties to lead the Liberals through a period of electoral success. This culminated in the general election of February 1974, when the party won 6 million votes. Under the first-past-the-post electoral system this gave them only 14 seats, but in a hung parliament, no party having an overall majority, Thorpe was in a strong position. He was offered a cabinet post by the Conservative prime minister, Edward Heath, if he would bring the Liberals into a coalition. His price for such a deal, reform of the electoral system, was rejected by Heath, who resigned in favour of a minority Labour government. (Full article...) -
Edward Urner Goodman (May 15, 1891 – March 13, 1980) was an
influential leader in the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) movement for much of the twentieth century. Goodman was the national program director from 1931 until 1951, during the organization's formative years of significant growth when the Cub Scouting and Exploring programs were established. He developed the BSA's national training center in the early 1930s and was responsible for publication of the widely read Boy Scout Handbook and other Scouting books, writing the Leaders Handbook used by Scout leaders in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. In the 1950s, Goodman was Executive Director of Men's Work for the National Council of Churches in New York City and active in church work.
Goodman is best remembered today for having created the Order of the Arrow (OA), a popular and highly successful program of the BSA that continues to honor Scouts for their cheerful service. Since its founding in 1915, the Order of the Arrow has grown to become a nationwide program having thousands of members, which recognizes those Scouts who best exemplify the virtues of cheerful service, camping, and leadership by membership in BSA's honor society. As of 2007, the Order of the Arrow has more than 183,000 members. (Full article...)
Joseph Farran Zerbe (April 16, 1871 – December 25, 1949) was an American coin collector and dealer who was the president of the American Numismatic Association (ANA) in 1908 and 1909. He served as chief numismatist (person responsible for selling government coins) at the World's Fairs in St. Louis (1904), Portland (1905), and San Francisco (1915).
Zerbe was born in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, in 1871, and became interested in coins as a child. By the time he was 20, he was running a corner store in Tyrone, alongside involvement in other businesses. He joined the ANA in 1900, and thereafter made his living from coins. Accumulating a major collection of numismatic items, he exhibited them at the fairs and at local banks throughout the U.S. for over 20 years beginning in 1907. The high prices he charged for the commemorative coins issued by the U.S. Mint for the World's Fairs, as well as the fact that some of the coins sank in value after the fairs closed, earned him a reputation among some numismatists as a huckster. (Full article...)
Louis Riel (/ˈluːi riˈɛl/; French: [lwi ʁjɛl]; 22 October 1844 – 16 November 1885) was a Canadian politician, a founder of the province of Manitoba, and a political leader of the Métis people. He led two resistance movements against the Government of Canada and its first prime minister John A. Macdonald. Riel sought to defend Métis rights and identity as the Northwest Territories came progressively under the Canadian sphere of influence.
The first resistance movement led by Riel was the Red River Resistance of 1869–1870. The provisional government established by Riel ultimately negotiated the terms under which the new province of Manitoba entered the Canadian Confederation. However, while carrying out the resistance, Riel had a Canadian nationalist, Thomas Scott, executed. Riel soon fled to the United States to escape prosecution. He was elected three times as member of the House of Commons, but, fearing for his life, never took his seat. During these years in exile he came to believe that he was a divinely chosen leader and prophet. He married in 1881 while in exile in the Montana Territory. (Full article...)
Rachelle Ann Villalobos Go (born August 31, 1986) is a Filipino singer and actress. Known primarily for her work in theater, she has starred in musicals on Broadway and in the West End. She began her career as a pop artist in her native country and has received many accolades, including an Aliw Award, an MTV Pilipinas Music Award, two Awit Awards, and five Myx Music Awards. Tatler magazine named her one of the most influential people in Asia in 2021.
Go started performing in singing competitions as a child, and first gained recognition after winning the television talent show Search for a Star (2003). She signed with Viva Records in 2004 and released her self-titled debut studio album, supported by the cover single "Don't Cry Out Loud". Go then competed at the 2004 Shanghai Music Festival and the 2005 Astana Song Festival, winning the Silver Prize and Best Song in each competition. Under the same record label, she released four more studio albums—I Care (2006), Obsession (2007), Falling in Love (2009), and Unbreakable (2011)—and performed rock-influenced covers on the live album Rachelle Ann Rocks Live! (2008). Apart from music, she also took on roles in the television series Diva (2010), Nita Negrita (2011), Biritera (2012), and Indio (2013). (Full article...)
Eliza Acton (17 April 1799 – 13 February 1859) was an English food writer and poet who produced one of Britain's first cookery books aimed at the domestic reader, Modern Cookery for Private Families. The book introduced the now-universal practice of listing ingredients and giving suggested cooking times for each recipe. It included the first recipes in English for Brussels sprouts and for spaghetti. It also contains the first recipe for what Acton called "Christmas pudding"; the dish was normally called plum pudding, recipes for which had appeared previously, although Acton was the first to put the name and recipe together.
Acton was born in 1799 in Sussex. She was raised in Suffolk where she ran a girls' boarding school before spending time in France. On her return to England in 1826 she published a collection of poetry and released her cookery book in 1845, aimed at middle class families. Written in an engaging prose, the book was well received by reviewers. It was reprinted within the year and several editions followed until 1918, when Longman, the book's publisher, took the decision not to reprint. In 1857 Acton published The English Bread-Book for Domestic Use, a more academic and studious work than Modern Cookery. The work consisted of a history of bread-making in England, a study of European methods of baking and numerous recipes. (Full article...)
Rani Mukerji (pronounced [raːni mʊkʰərdʒi]; born 21 March 1978) is an Indian actress who works in Hindi films. Noted for her versatility, she is the recipient of multiple accolades, including eight Filmfare Awards. Mukerji has featured in listings of the leading and highest-paid actresses of the 2000s.
Born into the Mukherjee-Samarth family, Mukerji dabbled with acting as a teenager by starring in her father Ram Mukherjee's Bengali-language film Biyer Phool and in the social drama Raja Ki Aayegi Baaraat (both 1996). Mukerji had her first commercial success with the action film Ghulam and breakthrough with the romance Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (both 1998). Following a brief setback, the year 2002 marked a turning point for her when she was cast by Yash Raj Films as the star of the drama Saathiya. (Full article...)
Joseph Johnson (15 November 1738 – 20 December 1809) was an influential 18th-century London bookseller and publisher. His publications covered a wide variety of genres and a broad spectrum of opinions on important issues. Johnson is best known for publishing the works of radical thinkers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Thomas Malthus, Erasmus Darwin and Joel Barlow, feminist economist Priscilla Wakefield, as well as religious Dissenters such as Joseph Priestley, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Gilbert Wakefield, and George Walker.
In the 1760s, Johnson established his publishing business, which focused primarily on religious works. He also became friends with Priestley and the artist Henry Fuseli – two relationships that lasted his entire life and brought him much business. In the 1770s and 1780s, Johnson expanded his business, publishing important works in medicine and children's literature as well as the popular poetry of William Cowper and Erasmus Darwin. Throughout his career, Johnson helped shape the thought of his era not only through his publications, but also through his support of innovative writers and thinkers. He fostered the open discussion of new ideas, particularly at his famous weekly dinners, the regular attendees of which became known as the "Johnson Circle". (Full article...)
Ian Gillett Carmichael, OBE (18 June 1920 – 5 February 2010) was an English actor who worked prolifically on stage, screen and radio in a career that spanned seventy years. Born in Kingston upon Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but his studies—and the early stages of his career—were curtailed by the Second World War. After his demobilisation he returned to acting and found success, initially in revue and sketch productions.
In 1955 Carmichael was noticed by the film producers John and Roy Boulting, who cast him in five of their films as one of the major players. The first was the 1956 film Private's Progress, a satire on the British Army; he received critical and popular praise for the role, including from the American market. In many of his roles he played a likeable, often accident-prone, innocent. In the mid-1960s he played Bertie Wooster in adaptations of the works of P. G. Wodehouse in The World of Wooster for BBC Television, for which he received mostly positive reviews, including from Wodehouse. In the early 1970s he played another upper-class literary character, Lord Peter Wimsey, the amateur but talented investigator created by Dorothy L. Sayers. (Full article...)
.jpg)
![Image 13 George IV Artist: Sir Thomas Lawrence An oil on canvas portrait of George IV of the United Kingdom as the Prince Regent, by Sir Thomas Lawrence. In 1814, Lord Stewart, who had been appointed ambassador in Vienna and was a previous client of Thomas Lawrence, wanted to commission a portrait by him of the Prince Regent. He arranged that Lawrence should be presented to the Prince Regent at a levée. Soon after, the Prince visited Lawrence at his studio in Russell Square. Lawrence wrote to his brother that: To crown this honour, [he] engag'd to sit to me at one today and after a successful sitting of two hours, has just left me and comes again tomorrow and the next day. More selected portraits](/key/File:George_IV_bust1.jpg)
.jpg)
.svg){kind=small}
