Wendy Severson, age 14, of Arlington, S.D., for her question:

WHO WROTE THE FIRST BIOGRAPHY?

Biographies are by far the most popular form of nonfiction written today. Many of them appear on best seller lists and lots of them are made into motion pictures or TV plays. A biography is usually written about a person who was important in his own time or an individual who became more important many years after his death. Diaries are often used to research biographies.

A biography is the story of a person's life written by someone else. A person's account of his own life is called an autobiography.

The word biography comes from two Greek words: bios, which means a life, and graphein, which means to write.

The earliest written records of man, which go back to ancient Assyria, Egypt, Babylonia and Greece, include many biographies which tell of the lives of kings and warriors.

The father of classical biography, however, is considered to be Plutarch, a Greek philosopher who lived in Rome in the A.D. 70s. He wrote "Parallel Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans," which was made up of the biographies of 46 Greek and Roman statesmen, rulers and heroes.

Plutarch picked for his biographies men of action who held important positions in their communities. He wrote more about their importance in society than about their personalities or actions. He wanted to show the reader how and why each man became great.

Biographies by Plutarch are still read today as examples of clear, concise works, written in a dramatic style.

A number of biographies were written by Romans following Plutarch's pattern. One was on Agricola, the Roman ruler of Britain, written by is son in law, Tacitus. Suetonis wrote "Lives of the Caesars," which started with Julius Caesar and included all of the emperors from Augustus to Domitian.

Into the Middle Ages, biographers continued to use the pattern set by Plutarch. They wrote of bishops, saints, church leaders and martyrs but often used legends and folklore in their reports rather than sticking strictly to established facts.

Biographies began to resemble those written today during the 1400s and 1500s. They tried to describe the facts of a man's life and avoided legends and superstitions.

John Boswell, an English writer, is usually considered the first modern biographer.

John Boswell wrote "Life of Samuel Johnson" in 1791. The writer painstakingly collected all of the available information about Johnson's life, including details of his daily activities. The reader then was given an insight into Johnson as an individual.

 It has been said that a well written biography today is among the most delicate and humane of all branches of writing.