The first volume uses case studies as exemplars to illuminate the historical development of the genre, while the second volume presents chapters on a theory of biography focussing on central aspects such as the connection between biography, archive and cultural memory, biography and mediality (writing, film, photography), biography and psychoanalysis, biography and gender, and on questions of intercultural communication through biographies. The work isedited by the Ludwig BoltzmannInstitute for the History and Theory of Biography in Vienna.