Multiple people who write detailed accounts of other people's lives and experiences.
From biography (bio- 'life' + -graphy 'writing') plus -er 'one who does' and plural -s. Biographers as a profession emerged strongly during the Renaissance when detailed life narratives became valued literary forms.
The best biographers are like detectives—Walter Isaacson interviewed 40+ people for his Steve Jobs biography, uncovering details that Jobs himself had forgotten or hidden.
Biographers historically composed narratives predominantly about male subjects and were themselves disproportionately male. The role acquired masculine default despite women's canonical contributions (e.g., James Boswell's Life of Johnson vs. overlooked female biographical scholars).
Use 'biographers' as gender-neutral default; when highlighting contributions, actively credit women biographers whose work shaped the discipline.
Pioneering women biographers like Elizabeth Gaskell (Life of the Brontës) and Lytton Strachey's contemporaries shaped literary biography; their methods remain foundational yet often uncredited.
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