author
Gamaliel Bradford
1863–1932
Best remembered for pioneering the "psychograph," he wrote vivid, personality-focused portraits that helped reshape modern biography. His books on figures from Robert E. Lee to Abraham Lincoln made him one of America's notable literary biographers of the early 20th century.
2 Audiobooks
Darwin
by Gamaliel Bradford
Portraits of women
by Gamaliel Bradford
About the author
Born in Boston in 1863, Gamaliel Bradford VI became an American biographer, critic, poet, and dramatist. He came from a long New England line that traced back to Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony, and although he hoped early on to make his name in literature, real success arrived only after he turned from fiction to biography.
Bradford is most closely associated with what he called the "psychograph"—a short, interpretive form of life writing that tried to capture a person's inner character rather than simply list events in order. Britannica notes that Lee the American (1912) launched a successful series of these studies, and his later books included Confederate Portraits, Union Portraits, and Damaged Souls.
He spent much of his adult life in Massachusetts and died in 1932. Today he is remembered less for a single famous title than for the distinctive way he approached biography: concise, thoughtful, and deeply interested in personality.