The field of personal biography has existed practically since the start of organized writing and has permeated every culture in the world. The ancient Greeks and Romans were famous for writing tracts on their lives and accomplishments called "apologia." There was an explosion of popularity for the genre during the Middle Ages and Renaissance with personal biographies being written by people from all walks of life, from dynasty leaders in Asia to goldsmiths in Italy. During the Romantic and Enlightenment movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many intellectuals wrote their personal biographies, including Benjamin Franklin, Jean-Jaques Rousseau, P.T. Barnum and Charles Dickens. The personal biography has endured in popularity through modern times, with everyone from celebrities to sports stars to politicians publishing the account of their lives.
While the genre of personal biography is specific to an individual telling the history of their life, the presentation of the text can come in many different forms. A popular form is the memoir, where the author looks back on the events of their life through the lens of their present condition. Another popular form is the diary style, where the chronology of the subject's life is presented to the reader in a real-time format. A very well-known example of this style is "The Diary of Anne Frank."
Many personal biographies are designed to make a statement, political or otherwise, using the tragedies and experiences of the subject's life as a lens for the reader. The three personal biographies of Elie Wiesel, for example, use his experience as a prisoner of a Nazi concentration camp to send a warning to modern generations on the dangers of extremist regimes and fundamentalist dictatorship.
Writers often use the structure of personal biography for their works of fiction, using the first person narrative and reflective tone to simulate an autobiography. Classic examples of this technique include Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Charles Dickens' "David Copperfield" and Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre."
Due to the internet boom of the past twenty years, the definition of personal biography is extending to include works outside of published content, such as ebooks, video diaries and blogs.