When studying literature, biography and its relationship to literature is often a subject of literary criticism

Literary criticism

Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...

, and is treated in several different forms. Two scholarly approaches use biography as a tool for interpreting literature, literary biography and biographical criticism, and two genre's of fiction rely very heavily on the incorporation of biographical elements, biographical fiction and autobiographical fiction.

Literary biography

A literary biography is the exploration of the lives of writers and artists. Biographies about artists and writers are sometimes some of the most complicated forms of biography. Not only does the author of the biography have to write about the subject of the biography but also incorporate the relevance of individual works by the subject into the biography itself. Literary biographers must balance the weight of commentary on the individual works alongside the biographical content in order to create a coherent narrative. This balance is effected by the degree of biographical elements in an author's literary works. The close relationship between writer and artist and their work then relies strongly on the relationship between human psychology and literature and can be examined through psychoanalytic theory

Psychoanalytic theory

Psychoanalytic theory refers to the definition and dynamics of personality development which underlie and guide psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapy. First laid out by Sigmund Freud, psychoanalytic theory has undergone many refinements since his work...

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Literary biography tends to have a plethora of autobiographical sources. Elizabeth Longford, a biographer of Wilfrid Blunt noted "Writers are articulate and tend to leave eloquent source material which the biographer will be eager to use." However, some authors and artists go out of their way to discourage the writing of biographies about themselves, as was the case with Kafka, Eliot, Orwell and Auden. Auden said "Biographies of writers whether written by other of themselves are always superfluous and usually in bad taste.... His private life is, or should be, of no concern to anybody except himself, his family and his friends."

Well received literary biographies include Richard Ellman's James Joyce and George Painter

George Painter

George Duncan Painter, OBE known as George D. Painter, was an English author most famous as a biographer of Marcel Proust....

's Marcel Proust.

Biographical criticism

Biographical criticism is the deliberate use of biographical information to give light on the difference between author of a work and his audience, and thus provide insight into the work.

Biographical fiction

Biographical fiction is fiction which takes a historical individual and recreates an element of their life turning it into a fictional narrative, usually film or novel. The relationship between the biographical element and the fiction is variable. Some biographical fiction will assert itself as a factual narrative about the historical individual, like Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...

's Lincoln

Lincoln (novel)

Lincoln is a historical novel, part of the Narratives of Empire series by Gore Vidal.Set during the American Civil War, the novel describes the presidency of Abraham Lincoln through the eyes of several historical figures, including presidential secretary John Hay, First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln,...

. Some biographical fiction will create two parallel strands of narrative one in the contemporary and one focusing on the biographical history, such as Malcolm Bradbury

Malcolm Bradbury

Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE was an English author and academic.-Life:Bradbury was the son of a railwayman. His family moved to London in 1935, but returned to Sheffield in 1941 with his brother and mother...

's To the Hermitage and Michael Cunningham

Michael Cunningham

Michael Cunningham is an American writer, best known for his 1998 novel The Hours, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999.-Early life and education:...

's The Hours

The Hours

The Hours can refer to:* The Hours , by Francesco Bartolozzi, based on a painting by Maria Cosway* The Hours , by Michael Cunningham...

. No matter what style of biographical fiction, the novelist usually bases the novel on research done on the individual.

Biographical fiction has its roots in late 19th century; early 20th century novels which were based loosely on the lives of famous individuals without direct reference to them, such as George Meredith

George Meredith

George Meredith, OM was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era.- Life :Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England, a son and grandson of naval outfitters. His mother died when he was five. At the age of 14 he was sent to a Moravian School in Neuwied, Germany, where he remained for two...

's Diana of the Crossways

Diana of the Crossways

Diana of the Crossways is a novel by George Meredith which was published in 1885. It is an account of an intelligent and forceful woman trapped in a miserable marriage and was prompted by Meredith's friendship with society beauty and author Caroline Norton.The heroine Diana Warwick says: "we women...

(1885) and Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence

The Moon and Sixpence

The Moon and Sixpence is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham, told in episodic form by the first-person narrator as a series of glimpses into the mind and soul of the central character, Charles Strickland, a middle-aged English stockbroker who abandons his wife and children abruptly to pursue his desire...

(1919). During the early part of the 20th century this became a distinct genre, with novels that were explicitly about individuals' lives.

Autobiographical fiction

Autobiographical fiction, or autofiction, is fiction that incorporates the author's own experience into the narrative. Autobiographical fiction allows the author to both rely on and reflect on their own experience. However, the reading of the autobiographical fiction need not always be associated with the author himself, rather can be treated as distinct fictional works.