Biographies of women

[dorothean]

I just finished Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë (published 1857) and am wondering -- is this the first major biography of a woman in English?

I can't think of any earlier ones. Memoirs and autobiographies, yes (especially by religious women), but no biographies. Although surely there were hagiographies, and Elizabeth I must have been the subject of a biography before the mid-1900s...

Maybe it's the first biography of a woman by a woman -- although certainly not the first biography by a woman, since I think it was fairly common, at least by the 19th century, for a surviving wife to write up her husband's life and edit his letters for publication.

Am I missing something obvious?

Comments

[domtheknight]

I'm not up on official classifications of biographies as opposed to other types of history books, but would Alison Weir's works qualify? She's written a bunch about Elizabeth I and related people.

[oursin]

This is by the C21st a well-established genre, within which Weir is writing.

[dorothean]

Not exactly -- I was asking whether there was anything before Gaskell's life of Brontë, which was published in 1857. It was really a question about the history of biography!